American socialism

The World Tree in Socialist Cosmology (part II of IV)

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My second example is the cover of the very first issue from 1906 of renowned anarchist Emma Goldman’s journal Mother Earth. At a verdant tree stands a young man and woman, maybe Ask and Embla. At the roots of the tree lays the fetters that they have just liberated themselves from. The man salutes the rising sun. They are both naked and the era seems to be simultaneously before the birth of civilisation and after its termination.

bild 2Despite the fact that Walter Crane now and then played with baccantic motives and portrayed ludic games out in the wild, the more carnal aspects of the thiasos were alien to the nature of his art. Likewise, the humans on this cover (by an unknown artist) lack any sense of sinfulness. Yet, the cover image, with the erected tree between the seperated lands, easily opens up for interpretations of a sexual sort. In any case, some kind of emancipated, physical senusalism is cherished. Reinforcing these arcadian qualities is the fact that whilst Crane  maintained a hierarchical order, with the tree in the middle of the image, the visual “movement”  on the cover is rather horizental: the glance of the viewers drift away from tree and mankind. The tree trunk may be pleasant to lean against, but it is the distant rising sun  – and the utopian land its brings with it – that is the true centre of the world.

Socialist Phaleristics

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försäljning e-bayI’m uncertain whether the interest in label pins and their history belongs to phaleristics or not. Perhaps phaleristics proper only study symbolic items granted to someone by someone, and not to label pins that you purchase? Until somebody enlightens me on this scholarly obscurity, I will place socialist pins under the label “socialist phaleristics”.

Anyhow, the cause for this post is to draw attention to a very neat site about pins form the history of the German Social Democrats that I just stumbled into. Have I look at “Pins zu 150 Jahren SPD-Geschichte”!

KofLpins ur Irons & Russel sid 224 kopiaThis blog post is decorated with medallions/charms from the Knights of Labor as displayed in F. Irons & Charles A. Russell, Illustrated Catalogue of Solid Gold. Society Emblems, Pins, Buttons and Charms, Providence, Irons & Russell (1895) and a marvellous pin from CNT-FAI that I happend to find on e-bay.KofLpins ur Irons & Russel sida 163.jpg

Right money for the Left

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I just came across a prototype for what money ought to represent and what they might look like.* This banknote prototype is from the early 19th century Cincinnati, USA.  We understand from it that its owner has completed honest work and therefore is entitled to shoes, or an amount of corn, equivalent to his/her effort.

pengar kopia

Depicted in the middle are Justitia and  Minerva (maybe, but why?). In the right corner is a clock with the caption “Time is wealth” and above it is the toiling titan Atlas, carrying the whole world on his shoulders, depicted. On the left we find “100” repeated twice, the number corresponding to the amount of corn the owner of the bill is entitled to. Also there is a picture of a goddess seated on a package at a wharf, a full-rigged ship sailing away. Possibly this is supposed to symbolise trade.

The general idea expressed is that only time-consuming, “living labour” creates value and wealth – “dead labour”, i.e. products and capital, creates no value and wealth without it. The true beauty of the banknote is however the text above the goddesses in the middle: “The most disagreeable labour is entitled to the highest compensation”

800px-250-rouble_note_of_Russia,_1919_-_backThe very first notes ever to be printed and circulated in a socialist realm is probably the rouble banknote from the Soviet Union in 1919. Or?

* The American banknote was found in George E. McNeill, (ed.) (1887). The Labor movement. Boston: A. M. Bridgman

The Rose of the Great Seal of Knighthood

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44 kopiaI’m reading the final draft for The Style and Mythology of Socialism. Socialist Idealism, 1871-1914 (to be published by Routledge in 2018). In this book I’m, among other things, trying to understand the symbolism of the Knights of Labor. One of their key symbol was the “Great Seal of Knighthood”.

I have tried to interpret its symbolism in details, but it is only now when I read this final draft that I perceive that from a distance the Great Seal of Knighthood on Grand Master Terence V. Powderly’s gravestone (next to the Masonic emblem) appears as a rose.42 kopia

How could I have missed this! More precisely, it comes into sight as a so-called heraldic or Tudor rose. 220px-Tudor_Rose.svg

I’m reminded of the poem by Elizabeth Doten (who was she?), recited during the opening ceremonies of the K of L:

God of the Granite, and the Rose, // Soul of Archangel, and the Bee; // The mighty tide of Being flows, // Through every channel, Lord from Thee; // It springs to Life in grass and flowers, // Through every grade of being runs; // Till from Creation’s radiant towers, // Thy Glory flames in Stars and Suns

Moreover, I need to look into the history of the use of the red rose by social democratic parties, at least the Swedish branch…Socialist_Party_of_Granida_rose.png

 

 

Roman salute

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dav_oathIn modern times the so-called Roman salute was immortalized by Jacques-Louis David in his The Oath of the Horatii from 1786. Today the gesture is foremost associated with the Nazis. Less well-known is the fact that until 1941 the Roman salute was likewise used in American civil religion and performed when pledging allegiance to “the stars and stripes”. The idea to pick up the old Roman way of greeting – most certainly imagined with the help of David’s painting – seems to have came up within a group of Christian socialists. Included in this group was the Baptist minister Francis Bellamy who broadcasted the use of the salute, allegedly suggested by a friend in the early years of 1890s, thereby giving rise to the nickname “the Bellamy salute”.

I have however encountered an earlier use of the Roman salute among the Knights of Labor. This Christian socialist/humanist secret order was tremendously influential in ths US, especially in the 1880s. In the very first outline to their imperative ritual manual Adelphon Kruptos, a handwritten draft from sometimes between 1869 and 1874, probably written by Uriah Smith Stephens, we learn that the knights had a special secret “covenant sign”: “The (officer) W.A. will call all in the room up and to a rest or military attention, when prayer may be offered by any one designated by the W.A. or by the (officer) D.A.S. Place all eyes on the W.A. and all give the covenant sign in five motions to a rest.” In the marginal of the draft, this ritual element is described as “officers and appis(?) make pentagon”. A couple of pages later it is explained this way: “In five motion 1 left hand on right breast, 2 right hand raised closed, 3 open right hand palm in front, 4 right hand down to side, 5 left hand down to the side, in military rest pause a moment.”

Bellamy_salute_1915

I’ll bet Francis and his friends once were knights! It is also noteworthy, that, if I am correctly informed, Francis Bellamy was the cousin of Edward Bellamy, the author of the extremely influential socialist utopian novel Looking Backward: 2000–1887 from 1888.

The path transferring the Roman salute of David and French republicanism to fascism and Nazism, is said to go through the Italian epic movie Cabiria from 1914 (that I haven’t yet watched). The author to the screenplay was the fascinating Gabriele d’Annunzio, who in his short-lived republic of Italian Regency of Carnaro mixed proto-fascist themes with radical syndicalism.

Masonic G and Anarchist A (1)

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free-marxConspiracy theories about occult origins of socialism circulate on the Internet. Socialists who have been initiated into freemasonry or accidental similarities between socialist and esoteric iconography are taken as proof of an occult, virtually satanic, genesis of the worker’s movement. Not everything in these far-fetched theories is false however, as the existence of The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor may indicate. Right now I am in particular curious about the origin of the anarchist A, the one encircled.

As is well known, the most visible masonic emblem is the G (for God, that at least seems to be the most common exoteric interpretation) in the middle of a square and compasses. Look now at the emblem for the Spanish branch of the First International.* We find in it something aithalfway between a pair of compasses and an A – “A” for Asociation/Association, I take it. It’s like the pair of compasses (and maybe the square/ruler) builds the letter. (There is probably also a plumb bob.)

tecknad-holmes-4Inspired by the masons, the above-mentioned Knights of Labor used an emblem called Great Seal of Knighthood, depicting simply an encircled triangle. (Here represented in the animated Sherlock Holmes and the Valley of Fear from 1984 as the ominous emblem of The Eminent Order of Freemen.) The triangle is a good start on the way to the letter A as in the anarchist A… After the collapse of the Knights of Labor, the anarcho-syndicalist IWW entered the American radical scene. Was it perhaps in this milleau that the anarchist A was first drawn? Has the anarchist A actually been formed from the freemasonry square and compasses? Or is this only coincidences and the anarchist A actually, as have seen suggested here and there, a later invention, independent of everything esoteric? (Have you noticed the incessant presence of the @? Obviously the covert, miniscule form of the anarchist A, a fact that clearly demonstrates the final, worldwide victory for masonic satanism…)

Proof!g-till-a

* I’ve tried to check the authenticity of the emblem. The stated source for it is “La masonería y el movimiento obrero: imagos e ideas para una reflexion teórica” by historian Alberto Valín Fernández.  Even though I know one or two words in Spanish, reading Galician is not my thing. I however observe that no emblem is reproduced in the article and that we probably should look into ”The Order of Eternal Progress: the quasi-masonic roots of the First International in the United States» by Mark Lause, presented at the conference “’We Band of Brothers’: Freemasonry in radical and social movement 1700-2000” held in Sheffield in 2004.

K of L emblems, pins, charms

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KofLpins ur Irons & Russel sid 224 kopia.jpgThe Holy and Nobel Order of the Knight of Labor was a (proto-)socialist order, spread all over USA in the late 19th century. The order had something like 750 000 initiated members, males and females, whites and blacks, skilled and unskilled workers.* Despite its huge impact on the American worker’s movement, this romantic and mythic socialist order is today, due mainly to the biased historiography of victorious form of socialism, largely forgotten.

The emblems/pins/charms (I am uncertain about the correct term) display the triangle (trinity) of God surrounded by the circle of humanity. If the knights follow the rules of European heraldry, the lozenge-shaped emblems/pins/charms was probably intended for women. The “SOMA” written on one of them is the acronym for the motto of the order: “Secrecy, Obedience, and Mutual Assistance”.

* Best book about the K of L is without doubt Robert E. Weir’s Beyond labor’s veil: the culture of the Knights of Labor. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press(1996). ** From Irons, Charles F. & Charles A. Russell (no year, probably 1895). Illustrated Catalogue of Solid Gold. Society Emblems, Pins, Buttons and Charms. Providence: Irons & Russell, updated version of an earlier version by Irons alone.