Hey! Here's the first part of my CSA AAR, The Second American Revolution!
Excerpt from "A Young Person's History of Syndicalism", a textbook by Eric Foner (1992)
Our nation's two civil wars are apt comparisons with one another, they occurred for the same exact reason: the snapping of an untenable contradiction between the promise and egalitarian ideals of Democracy with the realities of horrific economic exploitation, dehumanization, and caste systems. In the first Civil War, the nation snapped in twane over the contradiction of slavery. An untenable contradiction which had been evaded by the fathers at the nation's founding, one which they admitted to. With one side of their mouth, they spoke in grand terms that rights were ordained to all by their creator, tapping into revolutionary solidarity for a bourgeois revolution. With the other side of their mouth, or rather, their pocketbooks and cotton gowns, blacks were chattel, property, an extremely valuable form of capital.
In our second Civil War, this contradiction was once again over the conflict between the rights of humanity and the accumulation of capital. The democratic system was now inundated by the forces of capital far more thoroughly than it once was by slaveholders. Corporate trusts held democracy in a chokehold, and the series of increasingly ineffective and capitalist candidates spat out by the system since president Roosevelt's failed attempt at trust-busting is proof of this failure. Allowed to run rampant with the state as its lapdog, the market tore through the nation, bringing sudden booms of overwhelming wealth which immediately decayed into choking dust and skyrocketing debt, bringing about the Great Depression, felt globally after the Berlin stock exchange crash on Black Monday. Capitalism in America had entered its oroborous-esque late stage, wherein its only ability was to consume humanity and itself. The straw which broke the camel's back was another flaw inherent in the supposedly immaculate, and therefore unrevised, structure of the founders: a tie in the presidential election.
Part One: "We Stand Outcast and Starving Midst the Wonders We Have Made"
[New Years Day, 1936. ](
)
America lies choking on dust and smog, wracked by racial tension, labor strife, and corruption. President Hoover is at an unprecedentedly low approval rating of 11%. Hoover had done little to aid the majority of citizens clawing at the dirt to get by every evening. He continued to give tax breaks to companies, who assured him they would hire more and turn this bad spell around. This trick, tried over and over and over again by Hoover, had never worked before and it did not work this time.
In an uneasy coalition, Socialist and America First party members submitted an impeachment to the Senate, convicting Hoover of Incompetence and Negligence in his duties as President. The Socialists and AFP continued running their Presidential campaign with zealous fervor, leaving the traditional stultified parties in the dust in many a local election. "By hook or by crook", as Josephine McCoughlin (S-MI) orated during the deliberation on impeachment of Hoover, "Hoover's Presidency is not long for this nation." She was correct.
the Democratic and Republican parties had their electoral firewalls, the politically neutral midwestern states, DC, and New England. America First unsurprisingly won only in states which had seceded. the Socialists had the Red Belt, New York City, and Washington. New and odd players on the field emerged, making use of the new technologies of radio and rail to get their messages out far and wide. Syndicalist musicians Woody Guthrie and Paul Robeson both used physical appearances to garner significant attention to the otherwise timid Jack Reed campaign.
Reed himself was unsure that he could fill the void left by the blustery and charismatic mountain of a man that was Big Bill Haywood, upon whose shoulders the IWW grew from a fledgling organization to by far the largest labor union in America. Though certainly not imposing in appearance, Reed was blessed with a silver tongue that could beat out even the smooth snake oil of Huey Long in debates broadcast over the Radio.
Once the votes were tallied up, as a shock to all, the Socialists barely won a majority in the electoral college, 274 delegates, and 39.8% of the popular vote. Second came Long's 152 and 38.7%. Two above the minimum required amount to be declared president. Immediately, questions arose in the lameduck period, and nationwide dawned an uncertain gnawing horror.
The Socialists had won, but their unprecedented victory was so close that challenging it would be easy for the three oppositional parties to pounce and pull some form of chicanery or military action to prevent a dreaded red from entering the oval office.
(Foner, 1992)
When Reed emerged barely victorious, all other parties marshaled their forces against the syndicalists. Strikes nationwide were set upon with a brutal efficiency. Strikers at the Michigan Ford Rouge plant were mowed down by goons led by Henry Ford's personal bodyguard, Harry Bennett, who was shot and killed by an armed UAW member during the brawl. This rapid crackdown led to a rapid mobilization: union militias, already somewhat commonplace in areas where strikes had become particularly brutal, became a necessity for those striking or in any sort of union. No longer were weapons a boon to have on your side, they were a necessity to avoid being another fish in the pinkerton's barrel. Particularities were thrown out the window during this time of utmost crisis, wives and children stood alongside husbands in hopes that it would reduce the chance of a massacre, it rarely did. Women joined unions and militias en masse. Racial hangups were abandoned. Most previously segregated unions simply did not have the time nor energy to enforce their racial strictures. The pressure placed on workers during this lame-duck period was an essential aspect to the rapid mobilization of the IWW and their eventual vast outnumbering of the opposing factions. The capitalist class had revealed their hand, that the fascists and the federalists were merely different heads of the same beast both aiming to strangle workers' democracy in its crib...
a month before the inauguration could hope to begin,
General McArthur rode to the White House with 5 Tanks, and Hoover gladly allowed him to step inside and seize executive power.
Reed, having made a contingency plan for this predictable soft coup, fled by unmarked cargo train to Chicago, whereupon he founded the [Combined Syndicates of America](
), with the
IWW congress as its deliberative body. With the secession of the Red Belt, the Neo-Confederate AFP seceded as well, and the moderate pacific governors appalled by MacArthur's swift destruction of American Democracy. Reed penned and put to vote the Declaration of Independence of the Workers of America. This founding document of the CSA opens with a full-throated condemnation of all other players in the civil war: MacArthur and his Federalist lapdogs who clung to the flag drained of all its meaning by the utter betrayal of Democracy,
Long and his Minutemen and Silver Legion goons who attempted to restore the horrific feudal state of the Confederacy, and the Pacific Governors whose feeble attempts at protecting fragile liberal democracy at a time such as this are futile at best and a front for capitals' influence at worst. It called for all working men and women of the nation to lay down their tools, unionize with their comrades, and either make demands from their employers or rise up in arms against them if necessary. He specifically called for African Americans in the remaining Federal western states, PSA, and particularly the AUS to rise up against their oppressors or make a pilgrimage to freedom and safety in the combined Syndicates, with promises that volunteer pilots would provide a 'Skyway Railroad' out of the stampeding hooves of the Klan. Famed Opera singer and Basso Contrato Paul Robeson read the document aloud, and his voice was broadcast nationwide,
a call to arms.
The Call to Arms worked like a charm. Unions nationwide heeded the call, rose up in arms, and occupied their workplaces, the nation's rail and electrical networks shut down, and the economy ground to a complete and utter halt. New York City was
engulfed in the throes of revolution, the already heavily working-class city threw off the yoke and
forced the bourgeoisie to flee. New York, already somewhat derisively nicknamed so for about a decade, now became, in common parlence, "The Red Apple".
Cut in half and beset on all sides by separating factions, MacArthur quickly moved to martial his troops to DC. Unfortunately, those troops were moving straight into two simultaneous offensives from the Syndicalists and Longists intended to meet head on. The small corridor in southwestern Kentucky which connected the Western Federalist Government from the DC Government. Starved, outmanned and outgunned, the Eastern front of the Federalists was eaten away at mile by mile by the Longists and Syndicalists. The Pacific states mobilized against both radical movements, proclaiming themselves the restorers of American democracy. A nation formed out of fear and convenience had accrued a fundamental mission. Upon the degeneration of the war from clusterfuck to full-on civil war
[Upon their seizure of Washington, DC](
), the Combined Workers' Militias lowered the stars and stripes and rose up the black and red banner above the capital building. When asked by Smedley Butler if he personally wished to relocate the capital to DC Reed laughed and said "I'd far rather have that whole unholy construction pushed into the potomac a brick at a time." Federal Government buildings were raided along with the Northern Virginian domiciles of the elite who had skipped town long ago, leaving decadent husks behind as reminders of how we got here.
Much of their fineries were appropriated by those who found them or melted down for currency, the largest homes were split into eight to ten separate living quarters with a shared dining area. We would joke that the builders of these homes were in many ways deficient by being so intentionally and flippantly wasteful of their resources. Their floral wallpaper, though it made a sickening smell, burned long and bright, perfect for a group of Factory Worker militiamen or women to settle for a night of actual sleep in the chaos of the civil war. This 'Mattress Bomb' of appropriated wartime residences, as it was jokingly coined by Syndicalist generals, had a very real and instrumental role in the Syndicates' victory in these decisive early battles which tipped the fight against the longists. The Awareness, Alertness, and effectiveness of the union militias against foes mainly either conscripted, tired, or both (if they weren't raving natpops) gave them a heck of an upper hand in the Battles of Louisville, Harlan, and Alexandria.
Soon after the federalist collapse, the Syndicates halted their offensive and consolidated their territorial gains, with militias' primary purpose being the establishment of war syndicalism in communities and informing them on the simples principles of the ideology to sway the many uninitiated to any sort of politics. The Revolution had far from stopped. On the seas, the 'Black and Red' Navy, as it was nicknamed, (officially it was the American People's Navy) established dominance over the eastern seaboard and began their blockade of the AUS' main atlantic ports. Despite some probing naval raids by the Black and Reds, the Gulf of Mexico remained firmly under the control of the FSN (Free States Navy). In the Sky, Pancho Barnes'
Red Witches became the terror of the south after a brutally effective strafe on an AUS cavalry charge.
Federalist resistance remained strong, before the collapse, MaCarthur moved to build an insurgency in
long island which could potentially occupy a juicy, unguarded Red Apple. The militias martialed in long island made for a large force of nearly 16,000 men, but their siege of the Red Apple was a hopeless endeavor. Millions of New Yorkers found a military attack on the city by long islanders to be perhaps the greatest insult they could conceive of, and they responded accordingly. The militias were eventually starved out, as they could reach no ports, no bridge or tunnel offensives to reach the city were ever successful, and the militias found themselves easy pickings for the Red Witches with no air support to speak of. Other federalist militias found slightly more success, with some successfully able to hold Cleveland for two days
before being surrounded by the CWM and beset by guerrilla union resistance members who set the Cuyahoga on fire to incumber the occupying national guardsmen.
Longist militias in Appalachia managed to hold out for significantly longer periods of time, with some holing up in the mountains long after all hostilities had ended, still unaware that the struggle of the new confederacy was long over.
Syndicalist militias, meanwhile, were able to take power and form two temporary syndicalist communes, the Miners' Republic of Harlan and the
Seattle Commune. Both of which would remain independent throughout the civil war and afterwards became their own contiguous syndicates within the new nation.
To be continued in part 2: "In our hands was placed a power", coming very soon!
