The Yankee International: Marxism and the American Reform Tradition, 1848-1876Univ of North Carolina Press, 1998 - 319 pages Examining the social and intellectual collision of the American reform tradition with immigrant Marxism during the Reconstruction era, Timothy Messer-Kruse charts the rise and fall of the International Workingman's Association (IWA), the first international socialist organization. He analyzes what attracted American reformers--many of them veterans of antebellum crusades for abolition, women's rights, and other radical causes--to the IWA, how their presence affected the course of the American Left, and why they were ultimately purged from the IWA by their orthodox Marxist comrades. Messer-Kruse explores the ideology and activities of the Yankee Internationalists, tracing the evolution of antebellum American reformers' thinking on the question of wage labor and illuminating the beginnings of a broad labor reform coalition in the early years of Reconstruction. He shows how American reformers' priority of racial and sexual equality clashed with their Marxist partners' strategy of infiltrating trade unions. Ultimately, he argues, Marxist demands for party discipline and ideological unity proved incompatible with the Yankees' native republicanism. With the expulsion of Yankee reformers from the IWA in 1871, American Marxism was divorced from the American reform tradition. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The American Reform Tradition | 6 |
Marx and the Republican Tradition | 45 |
The New Democracy | 71 |
The Rise of the Yankee International | 94 |
Marxism Civil Rights and the Sources of Division in the American International | 128 |
The Marxist Coup and the Splitting of the American International | 157 |
Race and Class in the Two Internationals | 187 |
The International the Working Class and the Trade Unions | 215 |
The Legacy of the Yankee International | 245 |
Notes | 259 |
Bibliography | 289 |
Index | 307 |
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Common terms and phrases
abolitionism abolitionists Advocate African Americans American radicals American reform Anti-Slavery black workers Boston capital Central Committee Chinese Claflin's Weekly congress convention cooperative delegates Democracy democratic Eccarius eight-hour emancipation English English-speaking sections equality Foner Garrison German American German American Marxists Gompers History Ibid ideology immigrant International Workingmen's Association International's Irish issues IWA's IWAP Karl Marx Knights of Labor labor movement labor reform land reform leaders Marx's Marxists MECW meeting membership organization Paris Commune party Philadelphia Phillips political principles racial republican resolution Samuel Bernstein Section 12 Section 26 Sept Siegfried Meyer slavery social society Sorge Sorge's Sovereigns of Industry Spiritualism Spiritualists Spring Street Council Stephen Pearl Andrews Tenth Ward Hotel tion trade unions Victoria Woodhull voted wages William West women women's rights women's suffrage Woodhull & Claflin's Yankee International Yankee Internationalists Yankee radicals York Herald York World York's