Wars, Home and Abroad. posted by Richard Seymour

In 1962, Secretary of State to President Kennedy, Dean Rusk, composed a list called "Instances of the Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-1945", with the intention of persuading members of Congress sceptical about the proposed invasion of Cuba that it was, in fact, a profoundly American venture.

In it, there is only one year in which there is no use of American troops abroad: 1892. What went wrong?

July 1892, a massive strike erupts at Homestead, Pennsylvania, at Andrew Carnegie's steel plant. Carnegie hired Pinkertons to fight the strikers, killing and wounding many. The strike spread to include coal miners in Tennessee, railroad men in Buffalo, copper miners in Idaho. There were huge battles, Pinkertons thugs used the latest weaponry including Gatling guns and Winchester rifles, to sieze factories and break the strikes. In Homestead, when the Pinkertons were defeated by the union who themselves were armed and by then controlled the town, the governor sent the state militia in to defend and protect those who were prepared to break the strike.

The strike, and solidarity action continued until November but it was finished once the militias entered the town. The unions lost heavily both in terms of the strike itself and the funds it had used. Activists were to be subject to harsh legal sanction, except that sympathetic juries kept letting them off the hook. This episode, more than any other, was the experiential background to the formation of mass, industrial unionism, especially in the 1930s.

The point, however, is that while there was class war at home, no imperialist war could take place abroad. During the firefighters' strike, senior army figures pointed out that a continued strike during the war itself would make British participation impossible, as the army would be too busy scabbing. Unfortunately, the leadership of the FBU, unlike the membership, remains umbilically attached to the Labour Party, and was therefore all too easily bought off with vaguely whispered promises, the odd pat on the thigh and hot-breathed seduction. But if you want to stop wars in the future, unionise. If you're unionised, organise - for better pay, conditions etc. Agitate over policies in your union, not just about privatisation but also about Palestine. And, if your bosses won't give on on your pay demands or whatever, strike, go on an indefinite walk-out. Walk out and don't explain when you will return to work - none of this '24 hour action' business. That's a recipe for timidity and defeat, and you will often end up having to re-ballot for the same action over the same issue because the same fucking bosses are doing the same things.

There are just wars, and they are the revolts Malcolm X thought of when he said:

"It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a radical conflict of black against white or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter."