September 16, 1920, New York City. In the heart of the financial district, a horse-drawn carriage with 100 pounds of dynamite and 500 pounds of cast-iron weights parked in front of the offices of JPMorgan Chase Bank at 23 Wall Street. A timer is set. The bomb went off as the driver disappeared into the crowd.
The blast was so powerful it knocked a trolley off the track several blocks away. The Wall Street Bombing was the culmination of an unfortunate revolutionary strategy known as “action propaganda.”
Fifty years ago, in 1871, a mass uprising broke out in Paris. Two million people formed dozens of worker cooperatives and elected representatives in place of politicians to represent them. Everyone, no matter how poor, has a say in how their society is run. The experiment known as the Paris Commune was brutally suppressed. After being occupied by French soldiers, thousands of Parisians were massacred. Karl Marx described the violence in Paris this way:
The civilization and justice of the bourgeois order always shines brightly when its slaves and villains rise up against their masters. Civility and justice then take the form of unabashed brutality and lawless vengeance.
The Paris Commune was deeply influenced by anarchism, and as a result, anarchists throughout Europe were driven underground. Most remained non-violent, a few turned to terrorism. Their targets include police chiefs, business leaders, politicians and kings. Their goal: to spark a mass revolution.
Under similar conditions of mass poverty and state violence, “action propaganda” arose in the United States. At the end of the 19th century, the working people lived a meager life of poverty, depravity and hardship.
Most people are at or below subsistence level. There are few or no safety precautions in the workplace. Child labor is widespread. Living conditions are getting worse and worse. When workers tried to organize, they were met with violence. Their oppressors include the police, vigilantes, private investigators, and even the federal military.
According to historian Philip Taft, by the turn of the century, the United States was home to the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrialized country in the world.
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Directed by: Scott Noble
