Periodical Series: Back to Kenosha

 “Kenosha ‘Trial’ Was Rigged – Fascistic Murderer Gets Off”, The Internationalist (Oct-Nov 2021, No.65)

Given the inadequate and faulty information on this trial from both the corporate media and some outfits like the SWP, this article is a refreshing change, as it comes from a reporter who seems to have watched the whole trial.  Many think the Left press prints no valuable information – it is only a source of rhetoric, polemics or history worship and nostalgia. 

This article was written by the Internationalist Group (LFI). It contradicts the official narrative and makes a good number of factual points that refute Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim, as well as showing how the Judge and the ‘prosecution’ helped Rittenhouse.  It is worth reading as to the corrupt nature of the present legal system, which is no secret now.  DA’s might be forced to bring charges, but subsequently make a hash of the case.  This was a sham trial.

As is well known, Rittenhouse was a minor who traveled over a state border carrying a gun that was not his, enabled by his right-wing mother, to ‘defend’ businesses in Kenosha from anti-racist protesters over the racist shooting of Jacob Blake by Kenosha police.  ‘Open carry’ at this point enables right-wing militias to intimidate people, though ‘open carry’ was not on trial here – but perhaps it should have been.  Nevertheless ‘open carry’ is illegal in Wisconsin for minors, so Rittenhouse should have been arrested immediately.   Nor was the gun registered to him.  These facts ‘poison’ any defense he might have for killing 2 and wounding 1 in alleged ‘self-defense.’   

However, in this trial, that didn’t matter, as the issue could not be brought up, nor was it pursued by the prosecution.  The judge ruled this ‘breach’ inadmissible as a charge, thus hiding the original law-breaking by Rittenhouse.

The Internationalist lists these facts:

1.   The local DA never charged the cop who shot Blake, Rusten Sheskey, for anything.  This is the same DA’s office behind the ‘prosecution’ of Rittenhouse.

2.   Rittenhouse was part of a large crowd of gun-toting militia members menacing protesters, a context missing from the trial.

3.   Rittenhouse pointed the AR-15 at protesters in a threatening manner.  The defense tried to exclude evidence related to this.  Viewing this, you might think that self-defense was the motivation behind the people confronting Rittenhouse!

4.   The ‘prosecution’ accepted the idea that Rittenhousee's self-defense claim was a real issue, even though they charged Rittenhouse with murder, seemingly on both sides of their own case.

5.   The Trumpist judge, Bruce Schroeder, ruled that the prosecution could not refer to the dead and injured as ‘victims,’ but only as ‘rioters,’ ‘looters’ and ‘arsonists.’

6.   Schroeder refused to admit into evidence a video of Rittenhouse watching looters at a CVS pharmacy, saying he wished he had a gun to shoot them.  The judge explicitly admitted that it showed he had a propensity for violence, which is why it was excluded.

7.   Trumpers like Mike Lindell paid Rittenhouse’s bail.  Rittenhouse attended a 2020 MAGA rally in Iowa, sitting in the front row.  Trump later celebrated Rittenhouse’s actions.  This is the overall political context.

8.   After sentencing, Rittenhouse skipped town without leaving an address, so the DA's office asked for his bail to be raised.  Schroeder refused.

9.   Schroeder refused to allowed pics of Rittenhouse giving ‘white power’ salutes with Proud Boys or the fact that they flew him to Miami to meet their leader, thus hiding his ideological motivations.

10.               Schroeder frequently threatened to call a mistrial when the prosecution attempted to even do a partial job.

11.               The judge reviewed videos seated next to Rittenhouse.

12.               Jury selection was rammed through in one day.  One juror was admitted even though he said he couldn’t be impartial because of his high support for the 2^nd amendment.

13.               The judge had the defendant, Rittenhouse, pull alternate juror names out of a hat like he was some employee of the court. (!!)

14.               Rittenhouse cried crocodile tears over being threatened by unarmed demonstrators trying to grab his AR-15.  He showed no remorse for the people he shot.  As we know, courts take remorse seriously.  See the Potter trial in Minneapolis, where Potter got a light sentence for killing an unarmed black man, partly after she showed frequent tearful remorse.

15.                 The prosecuting Assistant DA himself, Thomas Binger, was cited by right-winger podcasters and the AP as ‘building a case for the defense.’  His choice of witnesses, and their coaching, resulted in him choosing witnesses that said they did not feel ‘seriously’ threatened by Rittenhouse.

16.               The DA put fascists and right-wingers on the stand as part of the prosecution case, who of course backed up Rittenhouse’s claims.

17.               Rittenhouse spent much of the night walking with a Boogaloo Boi Ryan Balch, a neo-Nazi.   Balch said Rosenbaum (one of the dead) shouted threats against the militiamen. This shows Rittenhouse never stayed in place protecting a store, as was his claim for coming to Kenosha.

18.               Asst. DA Binger denounced one of the dead, Rosenbaum, for overturning a dumpster and lighting it on fire.  He approved the presence of the militias, as they were ‘on private property’ – even when they weren’t.  He approved of the cops giving water to Rittenhouse and other militia members, for supporting them via loudspeaker, and for not arresting the known shooter that night.  Asst. DA Binger couldn’t have cared less about Rosenbaum and Huber.

19.               Binger’s office, at the same time, was prosecuting anti-racist demonstrators from that night.

20.               Evidence of collusion between the militias and the police was left out of the trial, which is a significant fact related to the fascistic laissez faire atmosphere on that night.  For instance…

21.               Kenosha’s police have a long history of racist policing – almost no black cops on force, racial profiling, brutality.  The police said the demonstrators were illegal because it was ‘after curfew’ – which evidently didn’t apply to the alt-right militias.

22.               Kenosha FB posts by the “Kenosha Guard,” the 3%ers and the “Citizen Guard” organized against the demonstrations. Some of their posts said “Shoot to Kill,” which is what Rittenhouse did.

23.               Balsh, the Boogaloo Boi, told protesters that the KPD police told him they were going to push demonstrators towards the militias, so the militias could ‘deal with them.’

24.               Lawsuits were filed by Huber’s family and Grosskreutz, who was wounded, alleging the KPD ‘deputized’ thugs like Rittenhouse and others to intimidate and kill demonstrators.  Kenosha showed a clear case of collaboration between the state and fascist militia men – something that is common in history, past and present.

The Shooter 

The Internationalist does not bring up the legal Castle Doctrine, which states that someone in their home can shoot an intruder in self-defense.  But in public places the duty is to retreat.  Rittenhouse did not retreat, but acted with impunity, as if the street was his home.  Nor was an effort made to get another judge before the trial was carried out, in spite of Schroeder being a well-known arch-conservative.  I think it was also possible for the DA's office to ask for a mistrial due to his actions.  (Schroeder actually reminds me of the openly prejudicial judge in the Chicago 8 trial, Julius Hoffman.)

The claim of ‘self-defense’ is used by killer cops, racist vigilantes, ‘crime-fighters’ and fascists to shoot at or gun down those they oppose.  Even Biden said that looters should be ‘shot in the leg.’

The article ends by calling for “workers defense guards” and mass black / labor / immigrant action to defend oppressed communities.  By the way, the slogan ‘workers defense guards’ is a part of the transitional program of the old 4^th International.

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P.S. - 2/20/22, news that one is dead, 5 wounded in Portland, OR during a protest over the killing of Amir Locke in Minneapolis.  This is undoubtedly the fruit of the Rittenhouse decision.  A local hard-right homeowner opened fire on protesters and one shot back in self-defense.  Benjamin Smith was reported as always talking about shooting commies and antifa by someone who knew him.  Smith has been charged with murder, while the anti-racist defender who protected the march has been charged by police too!

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms:  “The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution,” “Anti-Fascist Series,” “The Appeal” (Grisham); “The Post,” “With Liberty and Justice For Some” (Greenwald);  “The Divide – American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap” (Taibbi); “Bad Cops, Bad Cops,” “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” “Defund, Disband or Abolish the Police?” or words like ‘fascism’ or ‘police.’

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Red Frog

February 19, 2022

Cops, Cons, Camps and Curling

 Streaming Dust-Up

Line of Duty, produced by Jed Mercurio, 2012-2021

This series, produced by the BBC, is a rarity.  It is not some conventional cop / detective hosanna, full of the predictable tropes of crime shows.  It is centered around an internal police investigative unit, AC-12, which is looking into a large network of corrupt police tied to organized crime.  The corruption involves 4 top officers in the London Metropolitan Police, along with their uniformed minions and cops caught up in the ring.

In U.S. TV, police internal affairs groups are hated (see Law & Order, etc.) but in England it seems they are somewhat legit.  Now the odd part is that as the series went on, cop leaders and an older female ‘top cop’ preside over the Police.  She – and others around her – are eager to present the Metro Police as having no systemic corruption problem.  Oddly, this old lady reminds one of Cressida Dick, who did preside over London's Metropolitan Police in reality and just retired.  She hated Line of Duty.

Cressida Dick

At any rate, the seasons of Line of Duty involves hard-bitten and thorough cop liars, constant unreal and unnecessary plot twists and AC-12 officers who are tough and still make mistakes.  One AC-12 officer can’t keep himself from having sexual relationships with suspects, informants and fellow officers.  The old Irish gaffer leading the crew toughs out every stupid or corrupt overseer who tries to shut down his investigations.  The lead AC-12 woman officer goes undercover in other departments to root out the slime balls.  At this point their task is to find ‘the fourth man’ – the last remaining top officer linked to the bloody world of organized criminals. AC12 has already nailed 3 ‘bent’ top coppers in earlier parts of the series. 

Like the long line of television series and movies exposing the partial criminality of the CIA, it is refreshing to see this trend now focused on the police.  The U.S. certainly needs a show looking into bad forensics, neglected rape kits, planted evidence, organized lying, illegitimate seizures of property, selective enforcement, police corruption and racist crimes, but no U.S. studio will go over that line in a streaming series. Line of Duty is rated as one of the top shows in Britain. It is in its 6^th season.

Inventing Anna, produced by Shonda Rhimes, 2022

This show is a fictional representation of the real life New York con artist Anna Delvey, a.k.a. Sorokina.  She ingratiated herself into New York society – society matrons, artists, architects, haute couture and most importantly, lawyers and top bankers, attempting to start an exclusive private arts club and foundation.  

Sorokina had no money, no experience, a hidden Russian background, a fake rich father and a fake Trust Fund, a fake name and a very unpleasant personality.  But she did observe these society people in their natural habitat and adopted many of their customs in order to fit in, like a cow bird laying eggs in another bird’s nest. For a time she defrauded these ‘worldly’ nincompoops and institutions, along with her 'friends,' into paying her bills, giving her massive loans, stealing their property and working on her Anna Delvey ‘Foundation,’ sometimes for free. She commits check fraud and phone impersonations. Her relationship started as a parasitic relationship with another bogus tech entrepreneur, along with a real society woman. Both gave her entrée into the hidden precincts of New York’s ruling elite.

The investigative lead is a naïve, improbable, pregnant and thick-headed but driven journalist working for Manhattan Magazine – a renaming of New York magazine.  She is shown as unprofessional and unethical, as she actually helps the defense.  She slowly digs up some facts of Anna’s story, partly through repeated visits with Anna in Riker’s Island jail.  Anna herself, played by the same actress who played Ruth in Ozark, has a terrible, bogus accent that does not sound German. The accent alone would give her away. The series seem to have a tolerant and 'hip' appreciation of Anna – is she a proletarian hero, getting back at the bankers?  Is she a sad social climber?  Is she a poor young woman oppressed by older men who don’t pay for their mistakes?  That is certainly one of her manipulative lines.  Or is she just a plain shit that bought into the bourgeois fable of entrepreneurship, luxury and money?  I think the latter.  She is a delusional consumerist and sociopath, a fake feminist, but coming from a working-class background.

As an aside, her most gullible friends and acquaintances are young women like herself, which makes out these women as helplessly naive.  The young female reporter is sympathetic, while the series shows Sorokina as a fashion and media sensation, getting her 15 minutes of fame - which we are supposed to take as a hoot.  The trial defense is shown, while none of the prosecution. Key facts about the crimes are left out, like the forgeries she used to try to prove she had collateral.   The series' obsession over Anna by her goofy defense attorney and the mugging reporter is completely weird.  Netflix's framing is actually a participant in this fraud.  

What is best about the series is showing the extraordinary wealth and inbred clubbiness of this spoiled group of New Yorkers.  Their yachts, country houses, Bergdorff expense accounts, extravagant parties, exclusive sports clubs, upscale hotel stays, private jets, art buys, huge apartments, designer clothing, lavish accessories, champagne lust, drinking binges and completely catered lifestyles make it easy to see why expropriation would be quite a satisfying answer to this class of snobby fucks.  The series mentions similar frauds like the Fyre Festival, Marvin Shrekli and Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, so it puts Anna's actions in the context of a culture of moneyed bullshit, legal and illegal. New York comes off as a modern version of Rome, Versailles, the Winter Palace, the Forbidden City, Batista’s Havana or a decaying Abu Dubai.  It is the permanent Davos of present day capital.

By the way, Anna's approach of 'fake it until you make it' is also the approach of multi-level marketing schemes, otherwise known as Ponzi schemes - which is what this was.  See the "Tinder Swindler" for a romance fraud who wanted to live the life of a capitalist billionaire, and runs Ponzi games on unwitting women to get their money.

Creepy facts: Netflix and Rimes paid beaucoup bucks - $350K - to Sorokina for her 'side' of the story, money that was (partly?) taken by the courts to pay restitution.  So Netflix was taken in by this con artist too. Sorokina spent around 2 years in jail on a 4-12 year sentence (how does that happen?) and is again in police custody in 9/21 due to deportation proceedings back to Germany after overstaying her visa.  Of course, she is appealing.

‘The Humanity Bureau’ Movie: 

The Humanity Bureau is another cultural product about escaping from the U.S. to Canada, this time in the apocalyptic aftermath of climate change and nuclear meltdowns.  It involves a government-sponsored “New Eden” which is really a death camp for poor citizens patterned after the Nazi extermination camps.  A euphemistic ‘Humanity Bureau’ enforces the deportations to New Eden. As we know, Orwellian euphemisms are all the rage for present ruling class organizations and this one is a doozy. 7 million die in the camps.  Revolution follows when the truth leaks out.  A sad, aged, weird Nicholas Cage is the lead.   

And Speaking of the Olympics: 

If you’ve watched the Olympics in some way, you will note several things – besides the corporate commercialism, middle class professionalism, toxic nationalism and examples of bad journalism and vicious politics. 

1.  The largest television showing of women’s sports of the year. Fabulous examples of kinetic / physical intelligence.

2.  The new, mixed gender events.

3.   The competitive winning idiocy of being ‘off the podium’ because of losing by 1/100s of a second.   Time for some ties.   

4.  The differences between a sports contest that demands a huge investment in engineering and concrete; and a simple event that needs basic equipment.  Examples of the useless former:  Luge, ‘Skeleton,’ Bobsled, Half Pipe, Snowboard Big Air, Ski Jumping.  Examples of the latter:  Cross Country and Downhill Skiing, Speed Skating, Ice Dancing, Hockey, Downhill Snowboard, Moguls, Biathlon, Curling.   If we ever have a proletarian Olympics again, we’d think about getting rid of the former events as involving very few people and being a huge waste of labor, concrete and steel. 

5.  The pressure to ‘win’ in front of millions of people every 4 years seems to be a cruel emotional trap.  These are the wages of isolated, middle-class professionalism. 

6.  Injuries!  Broken bones, torn ligaments, concussions, you name it.

7.  A very well-organized, almost flawless Olympics, without a CoVid outbreak - totally unmentioned by U.S media.

8.  The enjoyment of seeing the U.S. lose to Finland, China, Slovenia, Canada and Norway.

Stay tuned: 

Ozark is in its last tense and overly plot-twisted season.  Ozark has become an exposure of the corruption of the FBI.  It was mostly filmed in Georgia around Lake Lanier, not the 'Lake of the Ozarks. (Prior review of Ozark below.)

Most importantly, The Peaky Blinders last season will be airing soon.  Steven Knight, its producer and director, grew up in Small Heath in Birmingham, England in a working class family, so he knows the world he created.  Birmingham’s Small Heath neighborhood is the central location of the series. The Romani Peakys will confront Mosely’s domestic fascists in the 1930s once again, though without the aid of Helen McCrory, who played Polly Shelby, the matriarch of the Shelby family gang.  She died of cancer in 2021 at 52.  (Prior review of the Peaky Blinders below.)

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive of streaming reviews, using these terms:  “Peaky Blinders,” “Ozark,” “The Meta-Meaning of Ridiculous Cops Shows,” “Streaming Run-Down,” “The Good Lord Bird,” “Trapped and Detective Series in General,” “Watchmen,” “3%,” “Maid,” “Goliath,” “Cults and Cultists,” “Rebellion,” Handmaid’s Tale,” Comrade Detective,” “The Wire,” “Treme,” “Vikings,” “Black Sails,” “Game of Thrones,” “Deadwood,” “Damnation,” “Fargo,” “White Lotus,” “Mayans M.C.,” “The Golden Age of U.S. Television,” “Hunger Games,” “Line of Separation.”

The Cultural Marxist

February 15, 2022

Class Classic Continued, Part 5 - Conscious and Made Men

 “The Making of the English Working Class”by E.P. Thompson, 1963 Part 5 Sketch: (pgs. 781 to 939 w/ Afterword)

Thompson comes to the culmination of working class consciousness, which he dates in May 1832, during the passing of the Reform Bill by the House of Lords in a situation of revolutionary crisis throughout England.  To Thompson, this consciousness consists of 1, an awareness of the identity of interests of every working class strata, 2, subsequent class opposition to the landlords and capitalists and 3, a vision of a new cooperative society.  The Reform Bill events occurred during or prior to the European revolutions of 1830, 1832, 1848, 1870, 1917, 1919, the formation of the British Labour Party, the 1926 English General Strike or the creation of the NHS in 1948.  He thinks it continued into the 1960s when he published this book.

Education has its Benefits

Thompson looks into the intellectual culture of popular Radicalism at this time, which was mostly made up of auto-didacts.  In 1825 the Combination Acts were repealed and an open ferment of ideas percolated through society - reading aloud to the illiterate, study groups, ballads, theater performances, cartoons, satire and parody, articles, books, discussions and speeches.  Jargon had to be explained or avoided, as technical phrases like “universal suffrage” might mean to the uninitiated “that all must suffer if any suffer.”  Or calling for a “provisional government” might mean “a government that provides provisions.”  (We still have this problem today on the left … archaic language, symbols or odd historical usages that do not communicate.)  2 of 3 working people might be able to read a bit at this point. Through these methods radical ideas permeated into the smallest rural village. 

The Government raised the price of transfer stamps through the 1891 Stamp Act in order to inhibit the mailing or approval of radical publications, so an underground movement of ‘unstamped’ publications was created.  Punishment under the “Vagrant Act” led to instances like this, where 2 workers were tied to the ‘whipping post’ for distributing unstamped Radical publications.  (Sound familiar?) Eventually parody and satire were legalized in 1820 when the Government’s Crown prosecutors failed to prove its case in a jury trial.  A chuckling crowd of ‘mechaniks’ might congregate around a London print shop showing the latest lampoon of the ruling elite by Cruikshank. This period resulted in ‘freedom of the press’ becoming widespread throughout England, at least in practice, a direct result of the labor ferment in the country.

Thompson identifies two Radical publics in 1832 – the working class one and the middle class one.  At all times they fought for dominance and this situation still exists. Thompson goes into a long analysis of Cobbett, whose journalism and speeches had a major impact on workers for years, but who never actually came up with a consistent theory.  He really harked back to a time of small producers, of sturdy, individual ‘free-born Englishmen,’ of rural life.  Yet Thompson considers him a representative of the working classes.  Cobbett spoke directly to the working class, sometimes using his own experience.  He avoided flowery language, impressive diction and high-flown illusions, perhaps an early example for Orwell.  This is unlike more academic Radical writers like Hazlitt, who peppered his writings with literary references, really directing his blows in the language of the middle and upper classes.

Yet auto-didacticism has its limits, as it sometimes, in Thompson’s words, allows for ‘wide swings of opinion, given its partial nature.’  Some autodidacts are only able to grasp part of a situation due to their spotty understanding and lack of consistency, and can go completely off-road in their pursuit of 'the truth.' 

5 INTELLECTUAL CURRENTS

Thompson identifies 5 currents that eventually came together to form a working class consciousness, a class 'for itself.'  These were based on the material effects of the industrial revolution that were occurring at the same time, which created a working class 'in itself.'  1, the afore-mentioned Corbett; 2, Paine-Carlile tradition; 3, Utilitarianism; 4, trade unionism; 5; Owenism.

Carlile, one of the leading London activists, put his emphasis on the French Revolutionary past, invoking the ‘Bastilles’, excoriating clerics and Kings, celebrating individualist, libertarian rebellion, scorning organization, pushing ‘cheap’ government.  His narrative was somewhat out of step in a time of creeping industrialization that was changing the cultural landscape.  Thompson considers him a ‘petit-bourgeois individualist.’  Carlile ran one of the largest speech venues in London, the Rotunda, which became a center of Radicalism.  In a way, this libertarianism can be seen as a crude, initial stage of rebellion and understanding.

Utilitarianism focuses on what is ‘useful.’  Their leading journal was London’s “The Gorgon,” edited by J Wade, influenced by the middle-class reformer Place. They understood that focusing on ‘the good ‘ol days’ - when Radicalism thundered against the evil Norman Conquest and mythologized ‘free-born Englishmen’ via Alfred - were archaic references.  Wade published practical information on present working class trades, embracing Ricardo’s 1821‘labor theory of value’, seeing there was a ‘productive’ class and a parasitic one.  Wade was also influenced by middle-class political economy like the myth of ‘supply and demand.’  The Utilitarians never went so far as to see the difference between the use value of a thing and the exchange value of a thing.  

The trade union forces were represented by leaders like Henson, Doughtery and Gast.  Gast was a long-time London shipwright who eventually led the London Trades Council and established a Trade Union newspaper.  The trade unionists opposed the Utilitarian idea that unemployment was ‘natural’ due to a surplus population – Malthus’ theory.  Instead of seeing the key issue related to unemployment was between a man and woman and contraception, the unionists saw it as a conflict between workers and employers. They, through Hodgeskins, also embraced the labor theory of value.  However, capitalists were included in the productive class if they actually worked, as the unionists still had no consistent social theory.  Eventually they concluded that every labor organization should be in one national union coalition, a great step forward.

A Cooperative Community

OWENISM

The most well-known current was Owenism, based on a politically clueless, kind and philanthropic Scottish mill owner, Robert Owen.  He wanted to ‘re-moralize’ lazy and careless Scottish workers into collective producers. He developed a theory and plan of a cooperative society, in which cooperative living, villages, farms, trading, work, mutual aid, capital and exchange were the basis of society, uniting all classes in a heaven-on-earth. Many of his practical projects were put into effect all over England, perhaps 500 projects involving 20,000 people. As part of this, bazaars where workers traded goods to each other through barter came into existence across the country. 

Thompson calls him “politically vacant” and a bit utopian, as he ignored England’s classes, repressive state and the issue of large property in his appeals.  Owen was no “Leveler”, as he believed this cooperative society would painlessly produce ‘new wealth, not expropriate old wealth.  In a way, the U.S. counter-culture of the 1960s-1970s worked quite the same stream, as does the exclusive promotion of cooperatives by Marxists like Richard Wolff. 

Owen was against religion, pecuniary marriage, celibacy and supported the unity of physical and intellectual labor. He believed that machinery should not compete with labor but cooperate with it – quite a different approach from the capitalist method.   

The labor leaders feared Owen’s plan would turn villages into workhouses for the poor, but gradually the labor movement adopted the view of organizing society on a cooperative basis as a real goal.  Instead of looking nostalgically to the past  - as even many U.S. social-democrats still do, re-running the New Deal of 1933-1939 - Owenism gave to the labor movement a picture of a different future.

During this period of labor ferment, millenarian and messianic instability continued among more backward rural laborers and workers.  A crippled shoemaker, Zion Ward, took up Southcott’s mantle, claiming to be Christ, while denouncing the official Church.  Another, T.N. Tom, claimed God would take his vengeance on the rich and society.  12 of his armed followers were killed in a forest battle with police when they tried to arrest him. 

The Revolutionary Crisis of 1832

Thompson considers 1832, like 1819, to be another point of potential revolution, as the Reform Bill was being heard in Parliament.  The ‘bunker’ reactionaries were against any concessions – Wellington, the Bishops, many Peers, the King. It would give the right to vote in England and Wales to male householders who paid £10 rent, to small landowners, to tenant farmers and to shopkeepers.  Note it excluded men without property, all women and also all of Scotland and Ireland, which were still colonies or being treated as such.  The Bill was roundly opposed by the working-class movement of the day, as it was not even for full male suffrage.  But the middle-class preferred this ‘half a loaf’ as Cobbett called it, which actually looked more like crumbs.

Huge demonstrations of 100K workers happened in London and Birmingham for a better bill.  In Leeds the suggestion was made in a mass rally that the banks be attacked, that the Political Unions should arm themselves and that no one should pay taxes. The poorest, most desperate sectors of the working class rioted in Derby, Nottingham and Bristol.  The proletarian Poor People’s Guardian published a guide to street fighting. The middle-class reformers waved the threat of revolution in the face of the reactionary elite, who finally, after 11 days of debate in the House of Lords, passed the measure. Compromise saved the system.  This was the intention of the middle-class ‘reformers’ (we can now put them in quote marks) - to bind the population to the State and property via this compromise.     

This seems somewhat similar to Obama telling Wall Street’s executives in 2009 that he was the only thing between them and “the pitchforks.”  Similarly we did not get any kind of real Wall Street ‘reform’ bill except the toothless Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill. The trillions pumped into the coffers of the banks by the government only confirmed the fact that the Kings of Finance in the U.S. were still in control.

The details of the Reform Bill are even worse.  The sponsors found out through surveys that barely 1 in 50 workers paid £10 rent and qualified to vote.  In the town of Holbeck of 11,000, only 150 would get the vote. In Leeds, (pop. 124,000) 355 workers could vote.  And so on.  The middle-class Whig ‘reformers’ had their way, as one of them put it – “the high and middling orders are the natural representatives of the human race.”

The MIDDLE-CLASS VICTORY

As noted by the Irish editor of the Poor Man’s Guardian, James O’Brien, the idea that the middle-class ‘Radicals’ cared about the proletariat was dashed, based on this and their later support for the Irish Coercion Bill, opposition to the 10 Hour Bill, attack on the trade unions and support for a backward revision of the Poor Laws. Another examples is that in 1834 Dorchester laborers were sent to Australia as punishment for a strike by this ‘reform’ Parliament.  Deporting ‘criminals’ to Australia or Tasmania was delicately called ‘transportation,’ based on an old Elizabethan law.  Instead, O’Brien advocated a peaceful political revolution, expropriation of the rich and the promulgation of Owenite communities.  Yet Thompson gives him a bit of a hard time for sectarianism towards possible future allies in the middle classes. 

The Reform Bill was denounced by labor as ‘the shopocrat franchise’ or a ‘rag merchant monarchy.’  180k gathered on Newell Hill in Birmingham for a festival and protest, which is estimated by Thompson as including people from half of the city and surrounding areas.  This ‘crumby’ Bill led directly to Chartist activity from 1838 to 1857, which called for votes for all men; secret ballot; no property qualifications for members of Parliament; paid leave to vote; equal voting districts; annual elections.  In other words, an actual representative, though still bourgeois, democracy.

In this period ‘the vote’ meant far more than what it means today, almost 200 years of manipulation and shenanigans later.  It meant that workers could be taken seriously, had some avenue for power and social control.  But like today, there was also a reaction to this real lack of a franchise in 1832, which resulted in purely labor syndicalism and a rejection of politics by some Radicals. 

Thompson ends the book with a 1968 Afterword regarding criticisms of the book, some his own.  They are:  He did not have enough new research about living standards. He was too hard on the Methodists.  He ignored for the most part coal miners, factory workers, transport, iron and building trades.  He had little focus on the right-wing nuttery found among working people during this same period.  He exaggerated underground activity or crowd sizes.  Thompson deals with all these objections in a detailed way, some of which he agrees with.   

APPLICABLE?

The inference I draw from this whole book is … has the existing U.S. working class achieved consciousness as a class for itself? I think not, certainly not now and even in the early part of the 20th century.  The three characteristics that Thompson chose – 1, an awareness of the identity of interests of every working class strata, 2, subsequent class opposition to the landlords and capitalists and 3, a vision of a new cooperative society  - have not been achieved.  

Re 1, many still don’t know they are in the working class, though that understanding is changing.  The lowest strata of the working class made up of people of color, Latinos and light-skinned working poor (our modern Irish or Scots) – are still looked down upon by some workers, especially white collars. Additionally, unionization rates are weak.  Re 2, a good number of working class people look up to the rich, thinking they too will be rich someday, or that they need their leadership. They don’t have a material grasp of what a ‘ruling class’ is, or what rich class actually is.  The Democrats and Republican are clearly run by capitalists, with legislators that are mostly millionaires, but many still vote for those parties. Class understandings is obscured by pure identity understandings cultivated by capital.  3, there is almost no vision of a new society, at best just an amelioration – ‘capitalism with a human face’ as I put it.  Single Payer might be the closest thing to the British NHS, but even that a distant goal.

There is definitely mass hostility to government, an explosion in libertarianism, opposition to various failed ‘pillars’ of society, to Wall Street, to billionaires and corporations, along with diffuse anti-war sentiment.  But this has not congealed into a left-wing movement of any size or organization.  That is one reason among many why this book is valuable, as a way to track the growth in class consciousness in the U.S. or other countries – or its opposite, its deterioration. 

P.S. - An analysis of Thompson's later work from a dialectical materialist point of view.  Much of the debate after the book was about Thompson becoming someone who thought 'culture' made a class, not its material role in production:  

https://www.marxists.org/archive/fryer/1957/09/lenin-phil.html?fbclid=IwAR2MmipedYN7rVeL1FkjgLHnN0RAPhxTfV3V1QfN_QQWgQMCfe6Bs6nPxmE

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using titles or words like this:  “The Making of the English Working Class” (Parts 1,2,3 and 4);“Class – the New Critical Idiom,” “Chavs – the Demonization of the Working Class,” “Class Against Class – the Miner’s Strike” (Matgamna); “Left Confusion on Brexit,” “The City” (Norfield); “Pride,” “Mr. Turner” (Leigh); “Coming Up For Air”(Orwell); “Monsters of the Market” (McNally); “The Football Factory” (King); "The North Water,” “The Young Karl Marx,” “The Peaky Blinders.”

Red Frog

February 12, 2022

Class Classic Continued, Part 4 - It's Luddite Time!

 “The Making of the English Working Class”by E.P. Thompson, 1963 Part 4 Sketch: (pgs. 515 to 780)

Thompson turns to the illegal struggles in England between 1799 and 1824, during which the English government made any labor ‘combination’ illegal. The government used new laws, old Elizabethan / Tudor laws about ‘leaving work undone’ or common laws against ‘conspiracy’ in the battle with people’s political and industrial organizations and work strikes.  This repressive ‘laissez faire’ approach forced political and labor groups underground and also together, resulting in illegal movements in parallel with fruitless and expensive appeals to Parliament.

General Ludd's Army

Luddism

This was a period of midnight “Black Lamp” meetings in the Midlands, oaths, arms caches, military training in the woods, food riots and secret societies opposing unemployment, starvation wages, high taxes, soaring food prices and the continuing war.  In 1801-1802 a revolutionary ex-solider, Edward Despard, was executed for organizing an underground army to fight for civil, political and religious rights and against flogging, along with the independence of Ireland. The ostensible plan was to kill the king, free prisoners in the ‘Bastilles’ and occupy the Tower and the Bank in London.  The afore-mentioned Spencer societies in London used ‘diffuse,’ non-organization anarchist methods to spread their ideology of land nationalization in the back rooms of taverns and hidey-holes. 

Years of this legal and illegal struggle against the government resulted in the Luddite Rebellion in the Midlands of Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, West Riding and Yorkshire in 1811-1812 and 1816. Due to the high levels of secrecy involved in Luddism, Thompson has to parse through the liberal historians who discounted it and the government’s flawed informers, who many times lied. He also refutes two Fabian historians who either erred through microscopic academic ignorance or specious and obvious political pleading.  His method is to take a step back and see what is underneath the smoke and fire.

Hundreds of weavers, cloth workers, stockingers, framework knitters and others broke power looms, shearing frames, stocking looms and gig mills to protect their jobs and maintain the apprentice system against cheap labor.  They were backed by whole communities, smaller masters and other trades against the factory and mill system.  Factories were attacked or burned by men with blackened faces and bludgeons.  The mill owners garrisoned their mills and won two bloody fights when their mills were attacked in Rawfolds' and Burton's mills. 

Direct Action’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Support weakened when one Luddite resorted to assassination.  Their successes in blunting the looms - destroying over a 1,000 - left them fewer but harder targets.  The jailing and execution of supposed members of Ned Ludd’s Army of Redressers didn’t help either.  Whitehall had sent 12,000 soldiers and many spies and provocateurs to stop the rebellion. Gravenor Henson was one of the suspected Luddite leaders, who was active for over 40 years in various struggles.  But no one left a long memoir telling the story from the inside due to the legal ramifications.  Nor was a real person called Ludd ever discovered.

Thompson contends that class collaborationism, while pushed by moderate Constitutional reformers, never took hold in this period in England.  This is unlike the U.S. context, where unions such as the UAW make it policy and have for some time.  Rightist reformers like Place were against the Combination laws - but not because they stopped labor, but because he saw them as provoking strikes, political upheaval and unionization, which he was actually against.  This was one of many examples of middle-class ‘reformers’ opposing the labor movement, which should remind present day leftists of people in our own day.

The English Government removed all protective legislation and paternal laws in 1809 that shielded the trades, while protecting landlords with the Corn Laws and mercantile capitalists with guaranteed prices.  When Scottish weavers struck in 1812 over owners ignoring and not paying a local legal minimum wage, their Glasgow leaders were jailed trying to enforce this law.  This was another ‘straw.’ Luddism became the dominant tendency in the labor movement after these events. 

The Demands

The factory system ultimately destroyed the craft system.  Thompson sees Luddism as a form of “transitional conflict” and “quasi insurrectional” as the two systems collided. Besides its direct action tactics, Ned Ludd’s Army called for:  a minimum wage; free trade unions; jobs for the unemployed; against shoddy products and opposed the super-exploitation of women and children.  Some of  Ludd’s proclamations called for an overthrow of the Government. They harked back to a prior time when the ‘trades’ were somewhat protected, and this memory was part of their agitation. It saw no other way to oppose brutal capitalist laissez faire except through organized and direct struggle, a tendency that again emerged in the 1840s with ‘physical force Chartism.’ 

Luddites were armed, engaged in military sorties, attacked in consistent ways across many villages, were disguised, bashed down doors with a special large hammer and passed over small masters who did not break Luddite rules.  But they had no national organization or social plan beyond bringing down the Government or the factory system somehow, except vague ideas of a ‘general uprising.’  The lack of a national approach is similar to the efforts of the Mexican revolutionaries Zapata and Villa, or the local efforts of activists all over the U.S. who remain locked in their cities.  In a way it marked its rural roots and distance from London, the political center of the country.

Thompson gets a dig in against Charlotte Bronte’s middle class story “Shirley” that insulted and distorted the Luddites.

The Official Reformers

Thompson goes on to describe the efforts of the Parliamentary gentlemen Radicals – William Cobbett, Henry Hunt (who spoke at Peterloo), Burdett, Thistlewood, Cartwright, Bamford, Watson and their organizations like the Hampden Club  - based in London, sometimes borrowing from Libertarianism.  According to Thompson, London was not a national reform center until 1832. The ‘rump’ Westminster Committee had moved to the right, while leaders and writers in London rose and fell frequently. 

These Radicals operated in a context where the majority of the community, and certainly in London, in various classes and strata within classes, all opposed the Government. They were mostly Whiggish, middle-class types, though not all, disdainful of the working class, and might seem familiar to anyone in the present U.S. context.  Yet they were appalled by the treatment of the plebeian masses.  The London execution of a poverty-stricken sailor named Cashman was especially gruesome and gathered mass anger.  They gave speeches, wrote treatises, published in the press and traveled the country making appearances.  

Crown and Anchor Public House Where Radicals Met

The Spencean or Depardian pubs, taverns and proletarian clubs of London were a far cry from the drawing rooms of the Hampden set.  This class difference among the 'reformers' always lurked.  Hunt was a preening egoist, well caught in Mike Leigh’s film “Peterloo.”  Thompson calls him a demagogue, but also courageous and the most influential journalist for 30 years. To Thompson, vanity was the great problem of Radical leaders, based on their self-congratulatory personalism, full of quarrels, intolerance and disagreements. Yet the Hampden Clubs expanded beyond London.  Cobbett’s pamphlet Address to the Journeymen and Labourers flourished across the country, much like Paine’s Rights of Man had previously. References to revolution peppered liberal Whig statements, perhaps only as literary flourishes, but still.  Most of them ignored the question of real organization or illegal acts, though not all.  This weakness for middle-class Radical heroes did not bode well for the popular movement, as it sowed discord, disorganization and weakness.  

The Hampden clubs convened a national meeting at the Crown and Anchor public house in London.  Several great rallies at Spa Fields in December 1816 occurred just prior, attended by many discharged and unemployed soldiers and sailors, out of which some incoherent and drunken rioting took place led by a fraction of the incompetent leadership. The Crown & Anchor meeting proceeded in this context, endorsing the working-class demand of the male franchise over the middle-class demand of the ‘householder’ franchise (only those with permanent addresses).  Nothing else was achieved, the meeting ended in confusion and the movement was subsequently smashed by government edicts due to the Spa Field riots.  Cobbett then decamped and declared all organization suspect.  Much like so many present podcasters and leaders who ignore organization and remain basically journalists.

Mike Leigh's Peterloo Film

PENTRIDGE & PETERLOO

Thompson goes on to describe continuing Radical self-organization in the factories, mills and rural towns back in the Midlands with an impressive flurry of names, organizations, towns, quotes and events – unfortunately separated 200 miles from London. Insurrectionists waited on London; London waited on the Midlands; the pathetic happened.   This resulted in the failed 1817 Pentridge Uprising – 300 armed workers in Yorkshire, along with several hundreds in other areas, egged on by a government agent in London, Oliver, who claimed London too would rise.  The Government got its wish and its convictions, executing one Pentridge leader, Brandreth, who was probably a former Luddite.  Thompson calls this the first exclusively proletarian armed attempt in English history.

The Pentridge rising undermined the legitimacy of physical force methods, leading directly to 1819 Peterloo rally's mass reformist content.  The violent attack on the rally illustrated that the primitive English regime was beginning to shatter.  Thompson claims a revolution was possible in 1819 due to the extreme isolation of the English government from nearly all groupings and classes except the most upper.  This was the heyday of Radicalism and many reform and radical periodicals that spread across the country, like The Black Dwarf.

Disciplined mass meetings started to be held in large cities, in defiance of the laws. Unions began to openly display their banners in processions.  A National Convention had been proposed based on male suffrage, to challenge the government as a form of dual power.  At St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester, the 60-100K of ‘rabble’ had become an organized class – a prospect even more terrifying to the owners and elite. The ‘Peterloo’ massacre in Manchester on St. Peter's Fields was an attempt to stop this working class movement nationwide, the Government calling it ‘treason.’  Thompson thinks concessions by the ruling class would have led to some kind of working-class victory, as the middle-class reformers were too weak.

Hussars and “Yeomanry” on horses (the Yeomanry were local gentry, owners, shopkeepers - the 'Whites; of their day...) slashed and killed defenseless men, women and children from horseback – 11 dead, 571 injured. This was a major historic turning point in English history. 300,000 greeted Hunt as he was conveyed to London for trial after his arrest, as the whole country was angry or upset.  The massacre conjured up huge demonstrations all over the country, in defiance.  100k pitman demonstrated in the coal field shires.  Military drilling and guns resumed in the Midlands. But again, the stupid weaknesses of Radical leaders like Hunt, the lack of national organization, the split between revolutionary and Constitutionalist wings; the repression of the Government made it all come to naught. 

Subsequently dozens of leaders were imprisoned in 1820. Thistlewood, a more left leader who wanted to revenge Peterloo, was executed for the desperate London ‘Cato Street’ conspiracy. More scattered attempts at insurrection surfaced in the north, Scotland and the Midlands.  But it was done.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms:  “Making of the English Working Class” (Parts 1,2 and 3);“Class – the New Critical Idiom,” “Chavs – the Demonization of the Working Class,” “Class Against Class – the Miner’s Strike” (Matgamna); “Left Confusion on Brexit,” “The City” (Norfield); “Pride,” “Mr. Turner” (Leigh); “Coming Up For Air”(Orwell); “Monsters of the Market” (McNally); “The Football Factory” (King); "The North Water,” “The Young Karl Marx.”

Red Frog

February 8, 2022