You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Wednesday December 2, 1903
From The International Socialist Review: Resistance as a Religion?
Even when we cannot win against the overwhelming power of Capitalism, we can yet still resist that power with all of our strength and will. In this month's issue of the The International Socialist Review, Comrade Burrowes makes an interesting argument for that Resistance to become Our Religion:
The Religion of Resistance
by Peter E. Burrowes
IT IS our way to laugh with the laugh of the superiorly pitiful at the backwardness of the ancients who inferred that slaves and women had no souls. But like most of our moral derision this laugh of ours has no account behind it — it is only a laugh which does not understand.
Morality is an entirely social relation; that goes on the face of it. A man cannot be moral alone. Religion is some larger consideration than that of immediate punishment which induces people to be moral. Whatever else religion may have to say about heaven and souls she uses these as accessories of the mundane morals she happens to be teaching. Only a few fanatics who do not know why respectable people went to the trouble of making them religious in their youth have the audacity to separate religion from morals. Any church openly declaring such divorce would be forced out of business at once, and this they all perfectly well understand, though they may not understand true morality....
A community that is so organized that slavery, black or white, constitutes its essential requirement must therefore have some men in it that are less than men — men without souls. In free competitive wage slavery we require the largest part of our population to be thus deprived or destitute in order to keep them in the slave ranks. Our system requires, indeed, that the largest part population shall be less than men, and therefore outside the moral relation and having no soul, or only its germ.
Great numerical communities must be held together by force, by habit, by delusion or by the moral consideration — that is true religion. Force can only end itself and society sooner or later. Habit can only last up to its equivalent of physical necessity. Delusion works until several of them begin to compete and no longer, and there is really left for society in the end no other bond than that of the moral consideration. Now equality of conditions alone can provide the atmosphere for that moral consideration.
If the master classes of the world possess the soul life then it must be evident that slaves cannot possess it (or other dependents) except on the assumption that the soul life of religion is not moral at all. In which case it is difficult to understand why the master classes should be religious except as devotees of a war god fighting against the slaves. The assumption of a common soul- nature in all mankind and a common God involves equality of condition and they who work to-day for the increases of capitalistic property in mankind's machinery or means of living are utterly irreconcilable with either. Now, I regard socialism as the restitution of every man's right to spiritual life (including slaves, women and other dependents), and that this restitution must be preceded by a declaration of resistance. ...
Of all the odious and sickening things under the sun, remove me far from that man or child from whose lips proceed the stench of his own single righteousness. This is the dry rot of all false religions, that they are but differentiators — manufacturers of saints and sinners. Such religions, one and all, and all such affections, are evils to be strenuously resisted by the spirit of democracy.
They only have no God who feel themselves to be always under the necessity of holding him in their consciousness. They only have a god who knows of a constitution of things upon which they can lay working hands. The wrongs of society and of persons afford such a constitution of things to every man. Resistance to capitalism and all its attendants affords the most welcome and fruitful field for developing divinity in the lives of men.
These are only small excerpts from a long article, and we strongly recommend that everyone read the entire article by Comrade Burrowes in the December issue of the
Review.
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review
-of Dec 1903
(page 373 of 828)
http://books.google.com/...
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Tuesday December 2, 1913
From the Miners' Bulletin: "Seen by the Search-Light" of "MacNaughton's Eye"
"Seen by the Search-Light" is a regular feature of the
Miners' Bulletin and refers to "MacNaughton's Eye," the giant searchlight that James MacNaughton, manager of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, has had erected on the top of the main tower which sits in the middle of the town of Calumet, Michigan. The searchlight roams about the streets of Calumet, keeping a watchful eye on strikers and scabs alike. It shines into windows of the homes of the residents, interfering with a peaceful night's rest. Of course most of those streets, the houses, and the property upon which the town itself sits, is owned by C & H. Therefore, we suppose, MacNaughton has a perfect right to make of the town something resembling a prison.
Seen by the Search-Light
Senator James, in his office staring at the labor situation of the day, and concluding to remain silent; to draw the votes from both sides at election time.
James Torreana, the Laurium scab supporter, at mid-night when the Hyena walks around the graveyard walls, going to meet the modern Judas A. C. Marinelli, to furnish him with news of strike-breaking nature.
Mike Bargo, the Italian scab herder at the telephone, communicating some scabious news to the "Gazette."
A small man with spectacles riding a bicycle, from West Portland St. to the office of "The Italian Miner" of Laurium, with a parcel of written matter for publication.
Paul Tinetti looking at Pietro Micca's picture.
5th St.-The green grass growing in front of Keckonen store, but no other place for lack of pollen matter in the seeds.
Regarding the "green grass growing," we will remind our readers that MacNaughton has vowed that "grass would grow in the streets" of Calumet before he would treat with the Western Federation of Miners. This kind man has also vowed to teach the strikers and their families how to eat potato pairings.
SOURCES
Miners' Bulletin
"Published by authority of
Western Federation of Miners
to tell the truth regarding
the strike of copper miners."
-of Dec 2, 1913
Death's Door
The Truth Behind Michigan's Largest Mass Murder
-by Steve Lehto
MI, 2006
See also: Hellraisers, Nov 16, 2013
(scroll down)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
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Monday December 2, 2013
A Bonus Poem from the Dec 2nd, 1913 issue of the Miners' Bulletin:
THE WORKER
By Berton Braley
I have broken my hands on your granite,
I have broken my strength on your steel,
I have sweated through years for your pleasure,
I have worked like a slave for your weal.
And what is the wage you have paid me.
You masters and drivers of men?
— Enough so I come in my hunger
To beg for more labor again!
I have given my manhood to serve you,
I have given my gladness of youth;
You have used me, and spent me, and crushed me,
And thrown me aside without ruth;
You have shut my eyes off from the sunlight,
My lungs from the untainted air;
You have housed me in horrible places.
Surrounded by squalor and care.
I have built you the world in its beauty,
I have brought you the glory of spoil;
You have blighted my sons and my daughters,
You have scourged me again to my toil.
Yet I suffer it all in my patience,
For somehow I dimly have known
That some day the worker will conquer
In a world that was meant for his own!
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I Hate the Capitalist System-esp family
I hate the company bosses,
I'll tell you the reason why:
They cause me so much suffering
And my dearest friends to die.
-Sarah Ogan Gunning