HIST
Abbera
1917through1920s1.pptx1917-1920s
Professor Mindi Sitterud-McCluskey
“All over the world on November 11, 1918, people were celebrating, dancing in the streets, drinking champagne, hailing the Armistice that meant the end of the war. But at the front there was no celebration. Many soldiers believed the Armistice only a temporary measure and that the war would soon go on. As night came, the quietness, unearthly in its penetration, began to eat into their souls. The men sat around log fires, the first they had ever had at the front. They were trying to reassure themselves that there were no enemy batteries spying on them from the next hill and no German bombing planes approaching to blast them out of existence. They talked in low tones. They were nervous.
After the long months of intense strain, of keying themselves up to the daily mortal danger, of thinking always in terms of war and the enemy, the abrupt release from it all was physical and psychological agony. Some suffered a total nervous collapse. Some, of a steadier temperament, began to hope they would someday return to home and the embrace of loved ones. Some could think only of the crude little crosses that marked the graves of their comrades. Some fell into an exhausted sleep. All were bewildered by the sudden meaninglessness of their existence as soldiers – and through their teeming memories paraded that swiftly moving cavalcade of Cantigny, Soissons, St. Mihiel, the Meuse-Argonne and Sedan.
What was to come next? They did not know – and hardly cared.
Their minds were numbed by the shock of peace. The past consumed their whole consciousness.
The present did not exist-and the future was inconceivable.”
--Colonel Thomas R. Gowenlock, 1st Division, US Army
End of WWI
The End of World War I
The closing scenes of World War I included a growing number of protests on European home-fronts and mutinies within armies on both sides of the conflict.
As early as 1915, European nations began to experience waves of resistance, including rent strikes, bread riots, and strikes within industries essential to the war effort.
In 1917, mutinies commenced to break out across both the Western Front and the Eastern Front.
In the spring half the French army- 68 divisions, refused to return to the front after an offensive which cost 250,000 lives. They raised the red flag of revolution and sang the Internationale. After 50 executions and 500 death sentences, France suppressed the mutiny through a combination of repression, coercion, threat and concession.
The Italian military also mutinied in 1917, with a resistance of 50,000 soldiers.
British soldiers carried out a five-day rebellion of some 100,000 soldiers at a base camp. British officials quelled the resistance through violence, concessions, and the secret execution of resistance leaders.
World War I
On both sides of the conflict, smaller mutinies and scattered groups of soldiers continued to walk out of the trenches for the duration of the war, despite charges of sedition, prison sentences, and formal and informal executions.
Fearful of another Christmas Truce, British officers were ordered, beginning in 1917, to shoot any man seeming to endeavor to make contact with the other side.
As discontent rose, European governments resorted to ever heavier restrictions of civil liberties, ever more stringent censorship of bad news, and ever more ridiculous caricatures and vilifications of the enemy.
Paralleling the US home-front, those who had the temerity to criticize their nation’s war effort were prosecuted as traitors, civilians as well as high-ranking politicians became imprisoned, and private meetings and discussion groups became raided and suppressed.
Russian Revolution: On the Eastern Front, the fighting first began to disintegrate as Russian soldiers left the trenches, first to tend to starving families; then, amid mass fraternization & informal truce with the “enemy,” and finally, as part of a formal truce following the overthrow the Tsarist regime.
End of WWI
Partially inspired by the Russians, the people of the Austro-Hungarian Empire rose and collapsed their already faltering monarchy and, with it, the ability to continue the fight.
On the Western Front, fresh troops and supplies from the United States offset the shift toward mutiny and revived the faltering Allied effort. German military leadership responded by becoming ever more reckless.
As German generals recklessly threw their armies at the Allied front, knowing the war was lost, the German trenches and home-front became beset by rebellion.
In the trenches, many German soldiers resisted having their lives squandered to preserve the honor and rank of their superiors.
At sea, German sailors responded to rumors of a forthcoming (& suicidal) order to attack the British fleet with protests and work stoppages.
Opposition within the German military became united with opposition on the German home-front after three sailor were shot for insubordination. Hence, German soldiers and workers commenced a series of protests and strikes, asserting that that the continuation of this war was less important than the lives of the German people.
End of WWI
As in Russia, the class struggle in Germany had come to entail a struggle against the war as well as a ruling class who sent armies of mostly laboring men into the trenches for no real defensive purpose while their families bore the weight of wartime hardship.
Accordingly, revolutionary councils formed in cities across Germany and demanded.
An end to the war
The abdication of the Kaiser
The release of political prisoners
Political reforms and social reforms: “Peace, bread, and an eight-hour workday”
Meanwhile, the victorious Allies, led by Britain and France, decided that a German defeat was not enough. Germany had to be humiliated and made to pay reparations. Afterall, without extracting hefty reparations from Germany, Britain and France would have a difficult time repaying the war-debts owed to the global bankers such as JP Morgan
End of WWI
In addition to ending World War I, the Treaty of Versailles, imposed financial, territorial and military retributions upon Germany:
Accept culpability for the war
Pay the cost of the war via reparation payments to the victors (who would then pay the bankers/ creditors).
Give up colonies and 13% of German territory in Europe.
Demilitarize: Germany was ordered to give up 2,500 heavy guns, 2,500 field guns, 25,000 machine guns, 1,700 airplanes, all submarines, and most warships. Germany was to be rendered defenseless and humiliated.
Germany was barred from becoming a member of the newly created League of Nations, a forerunner to the United Nations. Side Note: The US congress voted to keep the US out, as well, believing sovereignty to be already undermined by the nation’s banking interests.
To ensure Germany agreed to these terms of peace, Britain maintained a naval blockade of German ports and starved civilians of food and supplies.
An estimated 100,000 German civilians died of starvation and disease during this period. This was in addition to the 400,000-800,000 civilian deaths caused by the war-time blockade.
In Vienna, for example, 1 in every 4 babies died during the blockade.
End of World War I
With the close of World War I, Europe became tasked with putting itself back together.
Cities laid in ruin
Tens of millions of soldiers and civilians were dead or severely wounded
Limbless, disfigured, and mentally/ emotionally scared veterans returned home disenchanted, even among the victor nations
Every belligerent nation buckled under the weight of wartime debt, sending much of the world into an economic downward spiral. Indeed, a global great depression began to set-in in the aftermath of the “Great War.”
The only real victors were the financiers and those who profiled from supplying militaries.
No nation would suffer more during the subsequent global economic depression than Germany.
From Germany, Italy, Japan, and scattered factions around the world, fascism began to rise from the wreckage of World War I.
US Home-Front
1917-1920s
In the process of mobilizing a reluctant public to enter the war, the federal government and pro-war forces had manipulated and terrorized the public into compliance, criminalized dissent, and turned the so-called “patriotic” “good Americans” viciously and even murderously upon their neighbors.
With the advent of the Russian Revolution, the imaginary “German Menace” became shapeshifted and remade into the “Red Menace” and used to break the back of the labor and socialist movements. In the collaborations among big government, big business, and “patriotic” vigilante organizations during this period, we see manifestations of fascism akin to what will rise throughout the world in the aftermath of the Great War (WWI)
Beyond the business class, certain groups of Americans were able to use the US entrance into World War I to their benefit, however:
Temperance Activists:
Those who wished to see alcohol banned argued that alcohol is a German conspiracy to undermine the morals, minds, economic security & stamina of the American people.
1917-1933: Prohibition- alcohol became illegal
Alcohol did not go away. It became illegally trafficked, bought and sold, leading to the rise of organized crime (Al Capone) and the expansion of speak-easies. Tasked with suppression, the power of the FBI became further expanded.
Women’s Suffrage Movement:
The boldest individuals within the movement to extend voting rights to women used Wilson’s WWI rhetoric about fighting for freedom and democracy abroad to basically shame the man and label him a hypocrite in the context of American women not having a right the vote.
Women began to be arrested for loitering and other charges intended to simply silence dissent through imprisonment (political prisoners)
Women went on hunger strikes and applied enough pressure to force Wilson into supporting suffrage. Hence the 19th Amendment passed, providing a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote.
African-Americans
Many activists believed that Black men should enlist in the military and, thereby, prove their worthiness for equal rights and protections under the law. As citizens, Black men should have already been protected in daily life, political participation, and equality under the law. Nevertheless, the war was imagined as an opportunity to prove loyalty, bravery, and worthiness of full-inclusion as equal citizens.
1917-1920s
375,000 Black men served in WWI, many with distinction and returned to their communities as decorated heroes.
Harlem Hell Fighters.
This African-American infantry unit from New York spent more time in combat than any other American unit, black or white, keeping in mind that the US military was segregated until the Korean War.
It did so under the French flag, as US leadership simply handed them over to the French.
Two members subsequently became the first Americans, black or white, to be awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery.
The Harlem Hell Fighter band, led by a professional concert conductor, became well known and very popular in France and beyond. Many of the musician-soldiers returned to France after the war and became the driving force in introducing Europe to jazz and ragtime to a vibrant Parisian cultural scene.
1917-1920s
For the Harlem Hell Fighters and other Black soldiers, military service in France proved to be a profound and impactful experience. Even as the US military and much of American society remained segregated:
The Hell Fighters and several other Black units fought alongside French soldiers in integrated units.
They experienced a level of respect and comradery that was absent in American society, except perhaps among the working class Left and socialists.
Even as the US military became notorious during World War I for its dehumanizing treatment of, and violence toward, its own Black soldiers, they found that the rituals of deference and subservience honed-in the US in the context of the threat of racial violence did not apply in France.
They learned they could dance with, talk to, and court white French women, and the only men this seemed to care were white American men.
These realities raised profound questions…
1917-1920s
Did Black soldiers return from war to a more just and racially tolerant United States?
No. The years encompassing World War I and into the 1920s saw an upsurge of racial violence and hostility on the American home-front. Pre-existing racism became accelerated by the fear, paranoia, ultra-nationalism, and “100% Americanism” ginned-up to condition the American people toward compliance with the war.
In fact, the US home-front produced an outpouring racial violence, including riots and white mob attacks on Black communities during this time period.
The worst year was 1919. During the so-called “Red Summer,” racial violence reached its peak and overlapped with the outpouring of violent suppression targeting the working class and socialists. Indeed, many African Americans experienced attacks upon the basis of race (Black) and class (working class). African Americans constituted an important part of the surge of labor activism after the war (which became violently suppressed). Many also came under attack for being socialists.
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1917-1920s
Between January 1 and September 14, 1919, white mobs lynched at least 43 African Americans, eight of which were burned alive. A US Senate Committee on the Judiciary identified 38 separate riots targeting Black communities in 1919, alone. Hundreds, if not thousands, of African Americans were killed in these attacks, occurring simultaneous to violent suppressions of the labor movement.
Examples:
1917: East Saint Louis- After a black man was rumored to have killed a white men, a week-long rampage by white mobs and allies in law enforcement resulted in the death of 40-200 African Americans. 6,000 black homes, churches, schools, and businesses were burned.
1917: Houston, Texas- Tensions escalated as black soldiers endured discrimination and humiliation as well as harassment and abuse of power by police. When a well-respected black MP inquired about a black soldier who had been arrested, he was beaten, shot at, and arrested. Though released, rumors received reported him dead. A group of black soldiers marched on the police station, and violence erupted. 15 whites and 4 black soldiers were killed. 19 black soldiers were later court martialed and hanged for treason/mutiny. 63 others were sentenced to life in prison.
1919: Washington DC: In response to rumors of a white woman being raped, a mob rampaged the city for four days and committed acts of violence against random black individuals and businesses. The mob included whom American soldiers in uniform, a number of whom were American Legionnaires. As was all too common, local paper ginned-up the violence with fake stories and sensationalism. When they city’s police refused to intervene, the black community fought back.
1919: Chicago, Illinois: In the context of segregated beaches, a black child swam into the white section and drowned after having stones hurled at him. When the police refused to take action, young black men hit the streets and became accosted by white mobs led by ethnic Irish immigrants. The violence and destruction lasted 13 days and destroyed hundreds of mostly black homes and left at least 50 people dead.
1917-1920s
1919: Elaine, Arkansas (Elaine Massacre). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdm1LukEN7w Elaine and the surrounding area was one of the many places in the south where slavery seemed to persist with modest alterations as sharecropping. African Americans outnumbered white people 10-1. Alongside a lesser number of poor and landless white families, black men, women, and children labored on plantations where many of their parents and grandparents had been chattel slaves.
They were poor; they were taken advantage of at the plantation store; they were perpetually cheated out of agreed to compensations; they were spied on, and expressions of resistance were not infrequently met with racial violence and murder. Seeking to rectify these circumstances, black sharecroppers began to organize a union that might allow them to capitalize upon their superior numbers and the dependency of landowners upon their labor.
Under unclear circumstances, shots became exchanged between the sharecroppers and men paid to spy on a meeting among the sharecroppers. One white man was killed and another wounded. A 500-1,000 strong posse became dispatched. Bogus rumors of a planned black insurrection provided the pretext for indiscriminate mass murder. Somewhere between 100-300, maybe more, African Americans were killed. Five whites were killed. An all-white jury indicted 122 black men and charged 73 with murder. Confessors were coerced through beating, whipping, electric shock, and other tortures. No charges were brought against white members of the murderous mob.
1917-1920s
Tulsa Riot
The “Black Wall Street”: By the 1920s, the Greenwood section of Tulsa was home to one of the most prosperous, if not the most prosperous, Black communities in the nation. Affluence, the high number of black-owned businesses, and economic health lead the community to the referred to as “the Black Wall Street.”
African-American attorneys, real estate agents, entrepreneurs, and doctors….
Many black wage-workers left Greenwood each morning to earn money in the white neighborhoods. They brought their earnings back to Greenwood and injected it into black owned businesses, which, in turn, injected it into another black-owned business.
Incident: A young black man bumped a young white women in an elevator while they were alone. She screamed but reported he had not assaulted her. Even so, the young man was arrested and jailed.
The Tulsa Times ran the headline, TO LYNCH NEGRO TONIGHT and a scathing, inflammatory editorial….. because racism and the prospect o racial violence sells papers.
Within hours, thousands of armed white men surrounded the Tulsa courthouse where the young man was held.
Determined to not allow another lynching, black men, many of whom were World War I veterans, armed themselves and rushed to the scene. A shot was fired and “all hell broke loose,” a massacre survivor recalled later.
1917-1920s
Other Riots:
1919: Jenkins Country, Georgia
1919: Macon, Mississippi
1919: Baltimore, Maryland
1919: Omaha, Nebraska
1919: Charleston, South Carolina
1919: Longview, Texas
1919: Knoxville, Tennessee
1920: Ocoee, Florida
1921: Frankfort, Illinois
Throughout the early morning hours, groups of armed white and Black people squared off in gun fights. Part of the mob became deputized by the police, though not necessarily to restore peace. Gun wielding American Legionnaires reinforced the mob.
Looting and violence rather quickly became joined by arson. Some eye-witnesses claim an airplane ignited some of the Greenwoods multistory buildings.
African Americans were beaten and murdered. Many fled the city. Many were rounded-up and placed in a stockade.
Between 100-300 Black Americans were killed. The search for mass graves continues today.
35 square blocks of the neighborhood burned, 191 black businesses destroyed and 1200+ homes, as well as schools and churches.
9,000 residents were left homeless. Many lost everything, including the savings with which they intended to send their children to college or, otherwise, elevate the next generation.
1917-1920s
World War I and its aftermath marked a watershed moment for Black Americans. It is in this context that the New Negro archetype emerged, centered in what became called the Harlem Renaissance.
By this time, we see a third generation. It’s not the largely deferential generation that came out of slavery. It’s not the second generation of polite leaders and ambitions in middle class respectability. It’s a much bolder and more assertive generation, determined to have freedom and dignity.
Writers, artists, and intellectuals began to speak of the “New Negro” --- a new generation that was intellectual, artistic, socially conscious, politically astute, international, and determined to exist in the United States as part of a race of truly free people.
WEB DuBois took note of a new spirit among the returning Black veterans, in particular: They had military training; they carried guns, and many vowed to defend their communities, from lynching and white riot attacks:
We return from the slavery of uniform
which the world’s madness demanded us to don…
We stand again to look America squarely in the face
and call a spade a spade.
We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls,
have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land…
We return
We return from fighting
We return fighting- WEB DuBois
1917-1920s
By the God of Heaven,
we are cowards and jackasses if now that the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight…
against the forces of hell
in our own land.
WEB DuBois
New Negro- 1920s
The Great Migration:
During World War I, many African Americans migrated north to work in wartime industries. Although 80% of the US’s black population remained in the South, vibrant African American communities developed in northern urban centers, especially Harlem New York.
Harlem Renaissance:
Name given to an outpouring of black cultural, artistic, and intellectual expression centered on New York’s Harlem neighborhood following WWI.
New Negro:
Term popularized during the Harlem Renaissance, implying a more courageous demand for dignity and a refusal to submit quietly to the practices and laws of Jim Crow and racial violence.
Refers to a “new” kind of “negro” who is socially and politically conscious and artistically and intellectually charged.
Advocates asserted, this is not the gentleness and timidity of the “Old Negro”
Harlem Renaissance- 1920s
A. Philip Randolph
This golden age intersected with the ascendance of great Black labor and civil rights leaders, such as A. Phillip Randolph:
His family history was intimately connected to the Black empowerment efforts of the Reconstruction period.
Valedictorian of his high school who could not attend college due to the limited financial resources of his family.
Randolph became a “soapbox” intellectual, preaching Leftist thought in the streets of Harlem amid the violent WWI crackdowns on socialists and anti-war dissenters. The State Department labeled him “the most dangerous Black man in America” for his vocal opposition to WWI.
Civil Rights cannot be separated from Economic Rights: He understood that the liberal struggle against racial discrimination, alone, would not liberate African Americans. Real uplift relied also on class uplift.
Among his mentees was Martin Luther King, Jr., who also came to believe that racial uplift would not bring about real freedom without class uplift. Thus, his famous speech, “I have a Dream” was part of the “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” Randolph enthusiastically attended.
During the 1930s, he succeeded in mobilizing the labor movement to successfully pressure FDR into issuing Executive Order 0082: The Fair Employment Practices Commission (abolishing racial discrimination in federal jobs).
Harlem Renaissance- 1920s
Intellectual life:
During a time when city traffic entailed mostly foot traffic rather than automobiles, urban centers like Harlem stood as vibrant social, cultural, and intellectual spaces. “Street intellectuals” abounded in this environment, delivering sophisticated screeds and lectures on soap boxes, fraternal halls and coffee shops. The Black intellectuals of this period laid the groundwork for both the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement.
Hubert Harrison
The epitome of Harlem’s New Negro intellectual life:
Described as “the father of Harlem radicalism” by labor and civil rights activist, A. Philip Randolph. Historian J. A. Rogers described him as an “Intellectual Giant,”…“perhaps the foremost Afro-american intellect of his time.”
Member of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) and a socialist. He took the free speech struggle to Harlem.
1917: Founded the first organization for the New Negro, The Liberty League, and first newspaper for the New Negro Movement, The Voice: A Newspaper for the New Negro
Anti-Lynching: During the war to allegedly “make the world safe for democracy,” Harrison led an anti-lynching campaign, with the slogan,“Make the South Safe for Democracy”
Armed self defense: Amid lynching, white mob attacks on black communities, and a domestic war on radicals and anti-war dissenters of all colors, he promoted gun ownership and armed self-defense.
Harlem Renaissance- 1920s
Anti-Colonialism and Pan-Africanism: Harrison promoted a pan-African consciousness and concern for Africa and all colonized regions of the world. He understood that the same class which oppressed and suppressed African Americans and the poor/working class, in general, was the same which advanced colonialism and, thus, oppressed and suppressed people around the world.
We must “work for the ultimate realization of democracy in Africa — for the right of these darker millions to rule their own ancestral lands”
Opposition to Empire: Harrison viewed WWI as one between imperialists over who would dominate the world, which meant who would dominate the colonial world. He hoped, “washed clean by its baptism of blood, the white race will be less able to thrust the strong hand of its sovereign will down the throats of other races.”
Race and Class: Harrison understood the inseparability of race and class issues. There would be no liberation for the working class- black, brown, or white, without liberation from racism. There would be no liberation from racism without liberation from the domination of a capitalist class that uses race to divide and disempower, recognizing that division renders the people more easily controlled and exploited.
“That is the promise of Socialism, the all-inclusive working-class movement. In the final triumph of that movement lies the only hope of salvation from this second slavery; of black men and of white.” Harrison
IWW:
Front Row-
Hubert Harrison, Elizabeth Girly Flynn & Big Bill Haywood
Harlem Renaissance- 1920s
Marcus Garvey
Garvey became an influential figure in Harlem after he opened a branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1916. Garvey promoted:
Armed Self-Defense:
Pan Africanism:
Black Capitalism: Whereas Harrison believed that liberation lay in an evolution away from capitalism to a human-centered society governed by those who labor, Garvey imagined liberation in Black business development.
Garvey’s promotion of spending “black dollars” in black neighborhoods and businesses did bolster the economic health of black communities. Critiques pointed out that in promoting black capitalism, Garvey promoted the growth and empowerment of a black business class, rather than the uplift and liberation for all black people.
Dignity and Self-Betterment: His speeches, writings, and programs were remarkably effective in generating a sense of pride, dignity, and community spirit.
Origins of the “Black is Beautiful Campaigns (1960s and 1970s).
Auxiliaries for women and educational programs for children.
Song, rituals, symbols, a new black nationalist flag.
Harlem Renaissance- 1920s
Harlem Renaissance
Harlem became a mecca for black intellectuals and artists, as well as those craving stimulation and creative energy.
Music:
Jazz and Blues brought out of the South became further developed in urban clubs.
Artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, Cab Calloway (skat music)
Theater
The famous Apollo Theater
Rejected black face and minstrel shows for scripts and characters with emotional and intellectual depth.
Literature- Poems, Books, Plays
Literary artists such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay.
Innovations, including jazz poetry.
Harlem Renaissance- 1920s
Themes:
Racial Pride
Expressions of “the black experience”
Pain and resistance… and resistance through having a good time
Women- not just about being black, but also about being black and a woman
Social and Political Consciousness
“New Negro” intellectualism, widespread Marxist/ socialist thought as well as Christian and Muslim themes.
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?
I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes.
Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America
Langston Hughes
Billie Holiday
Harlem Renaissance
Josephine Baker
Growth andDepression
1920s: Negotiating Global Depression
With the close of World War I, most of the world descended into a steep economic downturn. The only two nations that experienced significant economic growth through the 1920s were the United States and Soviet Russia.
Soviet Russia: Economic growth through modernization projects and a socialist reorganization of the economy.
Eliminated unemployment and homelessness
Universal public education and healthcare
Achieved 100% literacy, up from 20%
Doubled life expectancy from 35 to 70.
Industrial output increased by 800%
Agricultural output increased by 400%
The world’s largest hydroelectric powerplant
Rapid industrialization and modernization
The United States: Momentary economic growth through credit expansion and consumer debt. The US created a credit economy.
Agrarian/Industrial Unity, Soviet Russia, 1920
SideNote: Russia
Did Socialism work in Soviet Russia?
If we measure success according to where Russia was- economically, technologically, scientifically, intellectually, etc., when it began its socialist experiment and the degree to which the quality of life improved for the average Russian, absolutely.
What was Russia like before the Revolution?
A backward semi-feudal nation, populated primarily by illiterate peasants who toiled for sustenance on the estates of privileged landlords.
Life expectancy was low- 35 years, hunger and famine were rampant, and protest against the tsarist monarchy was met with severe repressions and periodic massacre.
Russian society nurtured some of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers, such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and Pushkin, but the nation lagged significantly behind the West in literacy, science and technology.
What was Russia like after the Revolution?
Under the socialist experiment, Russia became an economic, technological, scientific, and intellectual powerhouse.
The quality of life for the average former peasant or wage-worker improved, tremendously, as evidenced in life expectancy doubling from 35 to 70 in just a few decades.
It recovered from WWI more quickly than any other European nation.
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SideNote: Russia
What was Russia like after the Revolution?
While the capitalist world fell into financial crises and productive stagnation across the 1920s and 1930s, the economy of the USSR boomed, as did programs for social uplift.
By the 1930s, unemployment & homelessness were eliminated. They remained non-existent even as the capitalist West endured rampant unemployment and homelessness during the Great Depression.
For the first time, universal public education became available to all children and adults. Moreover, accommodations were made to ensure that mothers and all laboring people had a reasonable opportunity to enjoy free educational opportunities.
Free childcare for working mothers and student-mothers while they attended school and worked.
Reduced work hours and a living wage, allowing both laboring men and women time for education.
By 1937, Soviet Russia achieved 100% literacy, up from 20% in 1920.
By the 1930, life expectancy had doubled from 35 to 70.
By the 1930, Russia had become the first nation in the world to adopt universal healthcare
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SideNote: Russia
Even as American small farmers became increasingly failed out of agriculture, government programs mechanized and modernized farming in Russia without burdening farmers with production costs.
This generated a tremendous increase in agricultural production, considering that by 1928, ¾ of the land had been sown by hand; ¼ of farmers owned no draft animals, and ½ owned no plows.
By the 1930s, industrial output had increased by 800% through government investment in factories which the workers democratically managed in consultation with government officials about the needs of the nation.
1931: Soviet Russia built the largest hydro-electrical plant in the world (and rebuilt it after the Nazi rampage of WWII)
Modern infrastructure, including theaters, schools, dams, parks, railroads, etc. became constructed, even in rural areas.
Example: Moscow Metro (1931), with its elegant art-work celebrating the working class, is still in use.
Soviet Russia made special efforts to extend the fine arts and theater to the working class and cultivate a culture that celebrates the working class. Many Americans became inspired by these populist expressions and replicated them in the US.
The Moscow Metro
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SideNote: Russia
What was Russia like after the Revolution?
1940s- World War II: The USSR became the primary and essential force in the defeat of Nazi Germany:
Soviet Russia took-on the brunt of the Nazi war machine alone for three years and then turned the tide of the war well-ahead of the celebrated D-Day invasion by which its American and British allies opened a second European front.
By the time its American and British allies had achieved a foothold in Western Europe, the Red Army was beating back nearly 200 German divisions + dozens of other mixed Axis divisions on the Eastern Front. By comparison, the Western Front never faced more than 50 divisions.
1940s- Post-WWII- Despite losing 26-27 million people in the Great Patriotic War (WWII) and having the most modernized and productive half of the nation destroyed, Soviet Russia rapidly rebuilt itself and emerged as one of two superpowers.
By 1947, the USSR had again doubled its output and nearly rebuilt itself, including the world’s first nuclear powerplant.
Soviet Russia launched the first satellite (Sputnik) and put the first person into outer-space.
Soviet workers functioned in democratized workplaces and enjoyed better benefits than western workers and earlier retirement ages, even at the peak of US labor/worker power.
Soviet soldiers welcome American soldiers at the Elbe River, as other Red Army forces press-on to victory in Europe with the Battle for Berlin.
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SideNote: Russia
By the 1950s, American students were being told that they must work hard to catch up to the Russians. Soviet Russia developed an exceptional classical education system.
1950s-1970s: Rapid economic growth in Soviet Russia.
Between 1960 and 1984: Per capita income and per capita production in Soviet Russia tripled.
Russia did not achieve perfection, but it did progress rapidly far beyond what it had been under tsarist capitalism and what it would have likely remained without the revolution.
To measure the success of Soviet socialism, we must also prioritize what the Russian people prioritized in the context of their daily lives.
The average Russian sought health, education, opportunity, social uplift, security from starvation and persistent invasion, and direct democracy within the workplace. Soviet Russia did well in these areas.
Soviet officials rightly assessed that before a functional democracy can be implemented, the people must be fed, educated, and initiated into such empowerment at a local level. Thus, local “soviets”- workers councils existed at a local level.
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SideNote: Russia
To measure success, we must assess the challenges and hurdles which set a society apart from others.
The Soviet socialist experiment occurred in the context of a population of mostly illiterate and impoverished peasants in need of uplift.
It occurred in the aftermath of a bloody revolution and a foreign invasion by a British-led confederacy.
It occurred even as foreign-backed White Russians (tsarists) continued to launch border raids, burn fields, sabotage infrastructure, and infiltrate the new Soviet government.
It occurred amid the largest land invasion in human history- the Nazi Operation Barbarossa, and humanity’s most destructive war. No nation lost more people and endured more devastation in WWII than Soviet Russia- as many as 27 million dead and the most developed half of the nation was destroyed. That it rebuilt and quickly bounced-back as one of two super-powers is remarkable.
The socialist experiment occurred amid a Cold War perpetuated by the West which saddled Russia with the need to guard against continual foreign subversion and infiltration, US-backed and engage in a costly arms race which cannibalized the resources needed to do socialism properly.
Still, Russia became one of two world super-powers despite these challenges (which the other Super-Power did not face), became known for its superior educational and cultural institutions, and ensured that all of its people had a job, a home, health care, education, a reasonable retirement age, and security for the young, sick, and elderly. What might it have become if allowed to have security and invest its resources more fully in human uplift? IDK
“History does not tell us what a Soviet Union, allowed to develop in a "normal" way of its own choosing, would look like today. We do know, however, the nature of a Soviet Union attacked in its cradle, raised alone in an extremely hostile world, and, when it managed to survive to adulthood, overrun by the Nazi war machine with the blessings of the Western powers.”
William Blum
35
SideNote: Russia
Did Soviet Russia achieve political democracy? How about liberal freedoms like speech and press? Did it whither away the centralized state and become fully communist (stateless), as Marx had hoped? No.
National security challenges- let alone perpetual national security challenges and invasions, are not conducive to greater liberal freedoms and democracy. No responsible nation has ever opened-up more fully to this western high ideals in the context of being threatened by hostile foreign forces. Moreover, it such a context, the centralized state always expands rather than withers away.
As centralized states do- yes, the Soviet government became bureaucratic, insufficient, corrupt, and heavy-handed, but no more so than that of many capitalist nations.
Through the cooperative model of organizing production, Russian workers enjoyed a truly democratized workplace. They exercised extraordinary democracy in the spaces where their lives were chiefly lived- in the workplace and in their communities (“soviet” councils). American workers, as a whole, have never enjoyed comparable empowerment at work and in their communities.
36
SideNote: Russia
We must not hold the socialist Soviet Russia to standards that we are not willing to apply to Western capitalism and the United States.
Stalin’s purges and gulags were bad, but US prisons hold far more people than the Soviet gulags (prison work camps) ever did, and often under substandard and inhuman conditions for victimless crimes.
The Soviet Union did not implement political democracy and liberal freedoms, but we can not say that the US has been stellar in these arenas. Wealth and corruption almost nullify the democratic potentials Americans are offered, and the press is monopolized by corporations and CIA infiltration (Operation Mockingbird). Freedom of Speech, among other rights listed in the Bill of Rights, are easily nullified under the rubric of national security (beyond the Espionage and Sedition Acts).
If we are going to blame socialism for all of the bad things that certain socialist/communist world leaders have done, we must hold capitalism to the same standard and make it accountable for the conquest of the Americas, global imperialism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Hitler (who became bankrolled into power by German industrialists to restore profits), resource wars, and many, many more things.
We must not pretend that the Soviet Union collapsed because of socialism…
The Soviet Union collapsed primarily as a result of becoming manipulated by the US into military overexpansion into Afghanistan, which gutted the social spending and economic health of the home-front, rendering the USSR vulnerable to US subversion and color revolution (stirring the masses to revolt). The same fate may very well befall the capitalist United States.
“The question is this: Did the Soviet Union collapse because socialism is unworkable? No it didn’t. There was a crisis in the Soviet Union… We have to read through a lot of intelligence to understand that.. But that’s our duty, as people who are living history, or who seek to understand history… The Soviet Union today, in the absence of this extraordinarily crafty, well-thought out,, extremely costly and risky strategy deployed by the Reagan administration would be a society struggling through great difficulties. It would still be a socialist society … It would be far from perfect, but it would still be there.”
Dr. Sean Gervasi, 1990
Economics professor, UN advisor,
and advisor to JF Kennedy
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1920s: Negotiating Global Depression
Why did the US develop a Credit Economy?
During WWI, industrial production and business profits had soared in the context of producing that which was needed for the war effort and selling these supplies to Europe and then the US government.
To maintain profits and production, domestic consumption had to increase. This would require an increase in purchasing power among the public. Production requires consumption
Rather than encourage employers to pay workers a greater share of the profits, that they might increase the consumption of domestic goods, the private bankers of the Federal Reserve opted to extend credit to the masses. For the first time in the US, ordinary people could amass debt to make everyday and luxury purchases and, thereby, increase domestic consumption.
Credit allowed manufacturers to continue amassing profits. Generally low wages became countered by the purchasing power of credit.
Credit allowed bankers to profit by charging interest. Hence, the private bankers at the Federal Reserve expanded debt enslavement to civilians.
Ironically, even as US capitalists condemned the “centralized planning” of Soviet government in Russia, the private banking cabal at the Federal Reserve “centrally” managed the US money supply and unilaterally determined to cultivate a credit-based economy. It was reckless. It was a racket, not done to benefit the average American.
United States
The expansion of purchasing power among ordinary Americans through credit purchases paralleled the expansion of a relatively new industry: Advertising.
Drawing heavily upon psychology and sociology, advertisers appealed to emotions and exploited insecurities to convince consumers that they “needed” the goods being sold. “Needs” were created that did not exist before.
Ordinary Americans began purchasing automobiles, radios, appliances, entertainment, beautification goods, and other non-necessities like never-before.
Thus, the pictures of prosperity and “good times” which are typically used to represent the 1920s are largely a façade. Many Americans purchased a posh lifestyle and luxury items on credit and amassed debt.
This credit-based consumer culture helped to create a credit bubble, and this credit bubble contributed to the Great Depression.
1920s: Advent of stage and film stars, fashion icons, speakeasies, sports stars, jazz age, and a consumer culture propped up by credit and a sophisticated advertising industry
United States
Good times and risk-taking were had by some Americans on borrowed money. Other Americans relied on credit to purchase necessities. Behind the facade of prosperity, the majority of Americans during the 1920s were poor.
Across the 1920s, over 60% of Americans existed below the poverty line. Government welfare programs for the impoverished did not exist until the mid-1930s. Hence, to make ends meet, many Americans became dependent upon credit.
Between 1925-1929, the total amount of credit doubled.
The wealth generated from the new credit economy concentrated in the hands of the few.
Income disparity widened through the 1920s.
The top 1% enjoyed a 75% boost in disposable income.
“Many factors played a role in bringing about the Great Depression, however, the main cause was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920s and the extensive stock market speculation that took place during the latter part of the decade.“
Paul Alexander Gusmorino
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1929: Stock-Market collapse
The American Great Depression was part of a global economic crisis that had been accelerating since the end of WWI. In the US, the eventual collapse was made more sudden and dramatic by financial recklessness and the greed-driven extremes of the 1920s.
Consumer Credit Bubble:
The Federal Reserve made it possible for ordinary people to amass significant debt to buy what the capitalist was selling.
This absolved factory, mine, and railroad owners (etc.) from paying their employees a just share of the wealth that their labor made possible. The public needed an increase in purchasing power in either wages or credit to buy the goods they created (what the capitalist was selling) in order to keep production rolling.
The expansion of credit was reckless because, without a raise in wages, there could be no reasonable expectation of debtors being able to pay-off their loans in the near future. Hence, Credit bubble (consider debt to wages ratio)
1929: Stock-Market Collapse
Reckless and Illegal Financial Behavior:
Buying on Margin: Not only did ordinary people begin to play the stock market, they were able to do so with barrowed money.
The Pecora (senate) investigation later found widespread manipulation of earnings, conflicts of interest, and insider abuse by the nation’s most elite financial firms.
The term “Ponzi Scheme” was coined during this period in reference to a real-estate developer, Charles Ponzi, who literally laundered counterfeit mortgages through banks. He was not alone.
Government Negligence: Government should have regulated the reckless speculation, fraud, and “buying on margin” which soared through the 1920s, but it had become too corrupt and cross-pollinated (mixed) with Wall Street.
Economist James K. Galbraith
compared the fraud of the
1920s to the fraud which
Precipitated the 2008 crisis:
“In both cases, the government knew what it should do. Both times, it declined to do it. In the summer of 1929 a few stern words from on high, a rise in the discount rate, a tough investigation into the pyramid schemes of the day, and the house of cards on Wall Street would have tumbled before its fall destroyed the whole economy. In 2004, the FBI warned publicly of “an epidemic of mortgage fraud.” But the government did nothing, and less than nothing, delivering instead low interest rates, deregulation and clear signals that laws would not be enforced. The signals were not subtle… There followed every manner of scheme to fleece the unsuspecting ….”
1929: Stock-Market Collapse
October 29, 1929: Traders dumped 16 million shares in one day, sending markets into freefall.
In the following months, stocks rallied but the economy continued to deteriorate as credit became curtailed and consumers either could not spend real money or were reluctant to do so.
Hundreds of banks collapsed, thousands of businesses failed, and unemployment skyrocketed to 25%.
Downward Spiral to Stagnation:
Banks collapsed = People rushed to withdraw their money = More banks collapsed.
When the banks collapsed, many individual and small business depositors lost their savings (no FDIC, yet, to federally insure deposits) = Small businesses closed = Jobs lost = Purchasing power declined
When banks collapsed, business loans became unavailable = Jobs and purchasing power further declined
Without credit or wages, the purchasing power of the public declined sharply = more businesses closed = more jobs lost ...even less purchasing power among the public…
The economy stagnated. “Production required consumption”
1929: Stock-Market Collapse
Reckless Over-Plowing of the Topsoil = Agrarian Crisis
Across the 1920s and beyond, American small farmers continued to pursue the “free labor dream” of economic self-sufficiency, self-rule, and claiming the fruits of one’s own labor on the land outside the waged-labor system.
Reality: Agricultural profits for most small farmers barely offset the cost of farming, and these low profits were failing a growing number of farmers into a state of exploitive tenant farming (renting land to farm) and sharecropping.
To be competitive, one had to invest in mechanization (new tractors, etc.). This cost cut into profits and often required credit purchases.
To get crops to the market, one had to use monopolistic railroads (monopoly = high rates). This cut into profits.
Since the Civil War, the US had lost its position as the world’s sole producer of cotton; thus, international production left markets with more supply than demand = low profits.
Agribusiness (corporate farms), which relied upon cheap migrant labors, drove-down the market value of crops through mass production (supply and demand)
Agrarian America
Myths Versus Reality
Social narratives continued to circulate across the 1920s that tied success to hard work and virtue and strongly suggest that the solution to poverty was simply working more diligently: “Work hard, get ahead.” Strive and succeed.”
In the context of newly available consumer credit, many farmers had reasoned that the solution to their poverty was to take out a loan to purchase additional land and put it under cultivation, perhaps with more productive equipment, also purchased with credit.
Work harder = cultivate more land = Greater profit?
Problem 1: Too much crop on the capitalist market drives down the price. The farmer can work hard- all day, every day, and produce an abundance of crops, but still pocket a small profit due to the law of supply and demand = too much crop on the market = low sale price and low profit.
Agrarian America & the Dustbowl
Problem 2: Reckless overproduction on the land amid cyclical drought in the Midwest agrarian “breadbasket” led to the infamous Dust Bowl Crisis
The Dustbowl crisis began in the 1920s and continued through much of the 1930s. Thus, the agrarian crisis compounded the market crisis, deepening the Great Depression.
The Dustbowl
Location: Great Plains/ Texas and Oklahoma panhandles
When: Roughly, the late 1920s through the 1930s.
What happened? : Recurring & severe dust storms blanketed the region & smothered prime agricultural & grazing land, destroying livelihoods
Cause : Severe cyclical (naturally occurring) drought & high winds coupled with extensive plowing of the topsoil.
Deep & widespread plowing of the topsoil had killed the natural grasses which normally kept the soil of the treeless Great Plains in place, even during periods of drought and high winds.
With the natural grasses gone, the wind was able to pick and move tremendous amounts of earth… even as far as New York City, at times.
The Dustbowl
The Dust Bowl phenomenon greatly contributed to the over-all “depressed” mood of the nation, even in cities. Many Americans believed they were witnessing the “end of days” predicted in the Bible.
Millions of acres of prime farmland became useless (Over 100,000,000 acres effected)
The Dustbowl
The dust storms killed livestock by either clogging their lungs with dust or destroying the grasses needed for survival.
The Dustbowl
Their fields and crops destroyed, tens of thousands of agrarian families could not afford to pay their mortgages and other debts owed to the banks. Thus, they lost their farms and set out in search of a place to exist.
Dust Bowl
The uprooted people from the Midwest dust bowl loaded all their worldly possessions onto automobiles and followed rumors of employment across America, building make-shift camps on the side of the road.
Families and whole communities became uprooted and dispersed.
A long-term outcome: Agribusiness purchased the land cheaply from the banks and created large corporate enterprises.
Dustbowl Migrants
Referred to derisively as “Okies,” the dust bowl refugees became distinguished by their migrating caravans of overloaded vehicles as well as by their lack of formal education, dire poverty, malnourishment, and desperation.
They were not infrequently greeted by billboards, roadblocks, and even armed police on the outskirts of towns with a message, “keep moving.” They were not welcome in many communities, for fear they would drain local resources.
Many set out for Pacific Coast and southwest to offer themselves as farm laborers. Hence, the seasonal migrations of Mexican farm workers to harvest crops north of the border ceased as Okies took their place
