Socialism

For a brief moment, newspapers across the country spread word of a “secret society” of “Negro fanatics” called the United Socialists. Police, journalists, and ordinary settlers didn’t know what to make of them. Were they revolutionaries, a religious cult, or a swindling scheme? A scattered historical record suggests that they were an unusual kind of messianic movement, one that drew from the spiritual practices and political contradictions of poor Black people in the American West. In the process, they defiantly challenged the logic of political sovereignty and land ownership that shaped Western expansion. Their ideology consisted of two basic tenets: The group could “seize any property and occupy it,” and “the United States had no authority to interfere.”

The origin story of the United Socialists can be pieced together primarily from newspaper accounts. They were rumored to have chapters across the eastern side of modern-day Oklahoma, but the group was based in the Muscogee (or Creek) Nation’s area of relocation. They were powerful in their own right. Although a White-led socialist movement flourished in the region, the United Socialists “had no direct connection” to any established party.

John Rawls and the death of Western Marxism

https://josephheath.substack.com/p/john-rawls-and-the-death-of-western

Anti-capitalist theory needs to move beyond Marxism. The theory of inalienable rights and the labor theory of property are significantly more powerful critiques of capitalism than Analytical Marxism, and don't suffer from the problems that Marxist critiques do. The theory is also easy to understand. Marxism, unfortunately, has been more influential then classical laborists such as Proudhon

https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/

@socialism

Striking machinists at Boeing will vote Wednesday on a new contract proposal that includes a 35% pay hike over four years that could end a costly five-week-old strike, the company and union said Saturday.

There is a credible call for a general strike in the United States in four years.

The call first came from the United Auto Workers after its fall 2023 stand-up strike, in which the union took on the Big Three carmakers simultaneously in rolling, surprise work stoppages. All three contracts that emerged are slated to expire on the same day: May 1, 2028, International Workers’ Day. This is not the first time UAW has aligned the Big Three contracts, but what the union did next is remarkable. It put out a challenge to the US labor movement: “We invite unions around the country to align your contract expirations with our own so that together we can begin to flex our collective muscles,” UAW announced on October 29, 2023.

This appeal for joint expiration on such a meaningful day for workers opens up possibilities ranging from mass, simultaneous strikes that disrupt industries across the country to a tremendous number of concurrent contract campaigns that increase worker leverage. This kind of cooperation across unions and sectors—if carried out on a large scale—would be unprecedented in the 21st century United States.

There are signs that credible unions and labor leaders are taking this coordination and work seriously. The Chicago Teachers Union AFT-IFT Local 1 is working with UAW and other worker and training organizations to create an organizing institute for the express purpose of getting ready for May Day 2028. Some major unions, like the American Federation of Teachers, are formally supporting the effort to align contracts, alongside a growing number of local, regional, and labor bodies within the AFL-CIO. Labor activists say interest and momentum are spreading, including among rank-and-file formations like Unite All Workers for Democracy, a grassroots movement within the UAW.