L ouis Adamic, Dynamite with , offers us a book as delightful as depressing. Gratifying, because it reminds us that just about everywhere in the West - and more specifically the United States, since it is the object of his study - in the early hours of industrialization, workers, employees and other proletarians have spontaneously organized to oppose and resist exploitation and inhumanity of the owners and bosses. Depressing, because it must be admitted that the balance of this century of union struggle (1830-1930) we described Adamic is not wildly positive despite the struggles and confrontations eventually remained proles of proles and exploiters exploiters .
Yet by the 1860s the Molly Maguires , Irish immigrants, had set the bar particularly high. Reproducing operation they were already practicing in Ireland, they were accustomed to murder, without further ado, all employers, foremen or other representatives of the employers who behaved improperly with one of their (refusal to hire, lowering wages, unfair dismissal ...). And it is clear that the effectiveness was the appointment and that employers will think twice before taking misguided decisions ... In 1875, the dismantling of the secret society the Molly Maguires marks the first major victory "order" and "law" loyal allies of capitalism and its elites.
What emerges most specifically the book by Louis Adamic, is that Molly Maguires the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, though violence has always been one of the main parameters of social struggle in America, violence has never been the sole preserve of unionists and left-wing protesters. Quite the contrary: the bosses and other defenders of the capital, meanwhile, have never hesitated to use the strong method to crush the recalcitrant workforce. Making regular use of mercenary armies or strikebreakers ready to molest - even kill - the demonstrators or strikers who fell into their hands, they have also always enjoyed the full support of the authorities and regular forces, judges, police officers, governors, military ... For a century, employers were able to bully, humiliate, kill a staggering number of men, women and children without ever being worried (much less condemned).
For their part, workers and their representatives (unions like the AFL or the IWW) quickly realized that if they wanted to defend and assert their rights, they should not hesitate to resort to violence too: they eventually hire Gorillas head to keep knowing strikebreakers. They in turn enlisted mercenaries able to face the guns of soldiers from employers. And especially, as the title indicates the book Adamic, they have regularly made use of the "dynamite" to sow confusion among their opponents. With alas, only results for the blasters, most often, to alienate any part of public opinion and end their life in a penitentiary or a rope. For if righteousness knows to be conciliatory when the blood is that of the strikers, it is relentless when it comes to that of a boss or a defender of the "order" of capitalism.
In the 1930s, the frontier between the social struggle and violence offender becomes increasingly difficult to trace: for strength to accuse the poor of being bandits some of them eventually become . The unions will slowly cease to be cons-powers that count: the liberal system consolidates and nothing seems to be able to shake since even those who want to oppose it are obliged to adopt its methods .
Dynamite, even if it describes a historical context that begins to date and held in a country far removed from ours, yet forces us to ask ourselves what we live today also in France. Again, the system is in place and they are increasingly few who still believe strongly that in the can shake. Over the years the unions, who can do anything else but always rehashing the same slogans, lose their credibility. During the demonstrations they are now stealing the show, almost every time by "thugs", these "offenders" who do not believe even for a brighter future! Well these thugs, these criminals, we Dynamite makes almost endearing because basically we say that they at least, these descendants of Molly Maguires , they still have enough guts to respond with violence to violence, when they know very well that the ensuing repression will always be for their mouths, never to that of their opponents ... That is why, paradoxically, we come to this sad realization that contrary to what we oath the media, politicians and well-meaning, those "savages", the "scum", these "thugs" should not be required for unconscious endangering the republic rather they form the last bastion of the democratic ideal of 1789.
1789 ... ... The Revolution And Marseillaise, it reminds you of something? But if the "Marseillaise! Not that our current president wants to make mandatory in football stadiums! No, the Americans sang the rioters, there are more than a century of this in the streets of Boston or Chicago because they saw it again in a hymn to liberty, equality and fraternity .
This Marseille there, Louis Adamic's book gives us almost want to refredonner ... What is not nothing!
Stephane Beau
Dynamite! A century of class violence in America.
Louis Adamic, editions Sao Mai, 2010
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