Phil Hedges on Linebaugh’s May Day Essays and the UCL rent strikes
Phil Hedges is a trade union organiser and an alumnus of the International Labour and Trade Union Studies Masters (MA ILTUS) at Ruskin College, Oxford. This essay is dedicated to the 2014-16 MA ILTUS cohort.
In March 2016, the Marxist historian Peter Linebaugh released an anthology of essays highlighting the history and importance of May Day. The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day compiled work from 1986 to 2015 and coincided with the 130th anniversary of the Haymarket bombing.
These essays “most[ly] written the night or week before” 1st May[1] cover a broad range of topics and eras. Although Haymarket and Merry Mount are pivotal to many,[2] May Day is not constrained by these two events. Linebaugh’s May Day is an anti-capitalist festival[3] that incorporates but transcends these narratives.
Linebaugh’s biography and work suggests that piecing together theory is appropriate when attempting to understand this anthology. The historian was an early member of the Midnight Notes collective founded in 1979. Influenced by E.P. Thompson, Italian Operaist Marxists and Wages for House Work theorists, Midnight Notes was conceived as a “bridge between the workers movements of the past … and the new social movements”.[4] Linebaugh described Midnight Notes as “an anti-capitalist collective that was also struggling to express itself during those leaden times;”[5] so leaden that the collectives fluid membership sometimes remained anonymous to avoid repression.[6]
As his doctoral student, Linebaugh was sufficiently close to E.P. Thompson to introduce the reprint of William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, in which he mentions living with his mentor.[7] The elder historian was comfortable explicitly presenting his thoughts on the theory of class determination[8] and Linebaugh himself presents political theory – for example, inStop Thief! The Commons, Enclosures and Resistance regarding the nature of commoning.[9] Whilst Midnight Notes and Linebaugh’s bibliography is beyond the scope of this paper, this contextualises a vision of Linebaugh as a historian comfortable with theory.
This paper seeks to outline the boundaries of Linebaugh’s May Day, and in doing so, assemble a “theory of May Day”. This paper then concludes with a brief examination of a May Day essay. In doing so, this paper begins to explore two questions:
- – Can a “theory of May Day”, as understood by Linebaugh and demonstrated by his essays, be outlined?
- – Can his May Day essays be replicated?
After examining several of the key essays in the anthology, section 2 outlines what May Day means to Linebaugh, attempting to define the characteristics of a May Day essay and what the historian is attempting to achieve. Section 3 draws two key themes from the anthology and attempts to outline them as coherent theories. Section 4 is an examination of the essay May Day with Heart, attempting to understand and draw stylistic guidelines from this complex text. The conclusion – section 5 – examines an attempt to write a May Day essay themed around housing struggles and rent strikes based on the framework outlined in this paper.[10]
While an exploration of the role of radical festivals is beyond the scope of this paper, my own experience underpins interest in this project. Labour Day in Queensland, Australia is the 1st Monday in May and celebrates the 8 Hour Day[11] – a goal shared by the murdered McCormick strikers in Chicago, May Day 1886.[12] This was a key demand of the strikes that formed the Great Upheaval[13] of that “revolutionary year”[14] and embodied:
an assertion that the worker was a human being whose life should not be consumed in toil and an attack on the deliberate policy of keeping hours long and unemployment high to get the most work for the least wages.[15]
This demand went global; whilst fallacy to assume present-day Queenslanders are aware of Haymarket, there is a historic link.
In 2011, I took part in the parade through Brisbane; thousands participated in this show of strength and celebration of trade unionism and it was a social occasion that led to friendships with young activists. Returning to the UK, an attempt to celebrate May Day whilst organising with a union was largely abortive. Whilst historical festivals such as the Durham Miners Gala are successful in increasing attendance and inspiring a form of “emotional regeneration”[16] for mining communities, May Day appears in decline.
Yet where it is celebrated, it remains a powerful celebration of radicalism – which is perhaps in part why the Liberal National Party government in Queensland moved Labour Day to October. “The Newman government had no regard for Labour Day’s special place in Queensland’s history” breaking the link with the first march that took place during the Shearers strike of 1891.[17] To prove the point, the triumphant Labour state government reversed the decision, and Queensland saw record turn outs for the 2016 parade which Queensland Council of Unions General Secretary Ros McLennan labelled a warning to a right wing federal government .[18] In 2017, such warnings, the solidarity shared and the friendships made will be needed more than ever, and the researcher is sympathetic to the notion that scholarship developing interest in May Day provides soil to help them grow.
Methodology
The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day collates 11 essays written as self-contained texts across 19 years. As such, there are inconsistencies between them; arguably they were not planned as a coherent body of work and the topics covered are vast. Linebaugh himself appears to acknowledge this in interviews and discussions. The title essay is typically discussed as a proxy for the larger anthology, which is impossible to sound bite.[19] In doing so, other key elements are weaved to the narrative such as the role of Mexican immigrants in bringing May Day back to America[20] and Linebaugh touches on other theories such as X2 when directly asked.[21] This dynamic is also apparent in some reviews of the anthology[22] and the anthology blurb.
This paper principally examines 5 essays from the collection, selected because they cover material that appear in these discussions – the introduction essay The May Day Punch That Wasn’t, the titular essay, X2: May Day in Light of Waco and LA, May Day with Heart,and Ypsilanti Vampire May Day. A reading of these essays is accompanied by insights gleamed from a range of videos and podcasts recorded of Linebaugh in 2016. Where these contradict the texts, the text is prioritised, given the tendency to abridge the anthology’s contents and the greater care undertaken in crafting a written argument.
Since it was not possible to interview Linebaugh, this paper presents an interpretative approach[23] to understanding the May Day essays rather than a definitive reading. Linebaugh himself may contest the findings or offer insight that is missing from the sources accessed, whilst another researcher may draw different conclusions, stressing different elements of the texts and bridging contradictions in other ways.
Defining May Day
Linebaugh describes the May Day essays as “occasional”,[24] meaning that they relate directly to a specific occasion. But while the Haymarket bombing and its aftermath form the foundational events for the modern international holiday, Haymarket does not appear in every essay in the anthology (for example, it is absent fromSwan Honk May Day). If an “occasional” May Day essay is not automatically the origin story of the modern festival, what are its characteristics? Linebaugh’s definition is articulated inThe May Day Punch That Wasn’t:
May Day is about affirmation, the love of life, and the start of spring, so it has to be about the beginning of the end of the capitalist system of exploitation, oppression, misery, toil, and moil. Besides full affirmation May Day requires denunciation: the denunciation of capitalism, of patriarchy, of white supremacy, of war.[25]
In interviews, a fuller description is provided, with the book’s title structuring the discussions. This format is replicated below to highlight some key characteristics of a May Day essay. The history of May Day is incomplete in that it there are many more May Day stories to tell and the revolutionary promise is yet to be fulfilled; it is authentic because the essays are written to help activism; it is true because, although based on secondary sources, the essays present historical fact; and it is wonderful history because May Day has promises to provide romantic fulfilment and social justice.
The incomplete history of May Day
May Day is doubly incomplete; the anthology can not include every May Day story, and the anti-capitalist promise of May Day is not yet fulfilled. This provides the rationale for activist-scholars to produce further May Day essays; it is their role to widen the scope of the events covered and to agitate and educate for social change.
Addressing Historical Materialism Toronto, Linebaugh acknowledges that the Canadian experiences of May Day are missing from the volume,[26] an admission followed by an audience member highlighting Turkey’s “Bloody May Day” of 1977.[27] The historian’s confession that there are narratives untold within the anthology thus directly prompts the retelling of another May Day story.
Linebaugh repeatedly asserts that May Day is incomplete “because we haven’t finished our work”.[28] Whilst the motivation for each essay is linked to contemporary events, by 2016, the historian is inspired by the Sanders campaign; although the Democrat candidate is deemed insufficiently radical, his suggestions on regulating Wall Street have created possibilities for further discussions. May Day becomes a day to debate what socialism, anarchism and communism might look like and to redesign government institutions (and the USA in general) outside of capitalism.[29]
The authentic history of May Day
The Haymarket story is authentic because it is sustained outside of the academy – “It’s not part of institutions, of universities”.[30] Instead it was Spanish speaking (ibid) and working class radical communities that nurtured the historical memory of May 1886.[31]
Authenticity also stems from activism – the essays are written as part of a larger campaign, however lose, to revive May Day. Linebaugh’s engagement with activism is clear from his views regarding E.P. Thompson. Thompson’s “history was always about the present,” and TheMaking of the English Working Class was written because Thompson wanted a revolutionary working class to be made in the 1960’s. Given that Thompsonnever articulated this to the best of Linebaugh’s knowledge, this assertion is more revealing about his vision of radical history than that of Thompson’s. Having helped raise concerns about attacks on civil liberties inThe Magna Carta Manifesto, perhaps Linebaugh’s ultimate goal is to write history that helps to build a revolutionary global class.[32]
Linebaugh’s personal May Day activism included a tumultuous picnic at Rochester[33] and a pilgrimage to Quincy,[34] the sight of the Merry Mount May Pole. Some of the essays “lived” as pamphlets passed out on the street, and the historian is clear that while the job of the author is over with publishing the pamphlet, the job of the activist is not, declaring that “you readers must make it live.”[35] This is authenticity as a pseudo-evangelical calling to remind the public of its history,[36] and there is legitimacy implied by the sacrifices in doing so. These early May Day parties cost Linebaugh a job and resulted in the expulsion of the anarchist grad student “Freight train”.[37]
Attendees at the April 2016 Gathering recorded for PM Press provide anecdotes of May Day activism. Echoing an earlier action from the mid-1980s,[38] Linebaugh was involved in taking a May pole to the bank of Boston. This was assembled at lunchtime in small plaza, and activists danced around it and put on pro-Zapatista skit in front of a bank in order to disrupt work. In Jamaica Plains, Boston, residents celebrate a spring festival which often coincides with May Day. Anonymous activists displayed sheets of plywood for attendees to read that displayed most of the text of the original May Day essay. The following year panels appeared that included stories from other cultures.[39]
The true history of May Day
For Linebaugh, that the stories contained in the essays are historical fact[40] constitutes thetrue May Day. The author is not primarily a historian of Haymarket and the essays were often quickly drafted in the run up to May Day.[41] Therefore the material used to compile them is drawn from secondary sources such as the work of James Green.
Regarding the controversy surrounding the identity of the Haymarket bomber, Linebaugh admits to not studying the original German sources, resulting in disagreements with Timothy Messer-Kruse who believes him to be “ignorant” in his assertion the bomb was thrown by a police provocateur.[42] Whilst a discussion of radical historiography is beyond the scope of this paper, it is notable the May Day essay exists outside of the historian’s academic speciality and arguably a fulfilment of Howard Zinn’s assertion that radical scholarship should transcend these narrow boundaries.[43] This raises questions of how “amateur” radical historians relate to those who are recognised as being more academically specialist in a subject, particularly regarding politically polarised controversies.
The wonderful May Day
The wonderful May Day is the celebration of fertility and class resistance. Linebaugh notes that “wonderful” relates to “… tremendous things [that] happen when we act as a class in a righteous cause,”[44] referring to the capacity for social change that comes from working people combining to realise their power. The fertility aspect is hinted at when the historian professes that something wonderful will result from dancing around the May pole.[45] This refers of course to finding a romantic partner.
Critically reading the outline sketched by Linebaugh raises questions that are beyond the scope of this paper – for example, is reviving May Day an appropriate tactic to help develop radicalism? Focusing momentarily on Haymarket, a radical politics of mourning could motivate those remembering the original Martyrs but to the question “What complex historical valences transformed the deaths of Michael Brown, or Emmett Till, or Mohamed Bouazizi into catalysts of ruptural mourning when countless other deaths were not?”[46] can now be added the question – “Can these same feelings of ruptural mourning be revived over a century later?” Regardless, this is one critical interpretation of the task that Linebaugh has set.
The theory of May Day
This section outlines two theories articulated in Linebaugh’s anthology. Three essays are examined: the green and red May Day are articulated in the titular essay (1986) and Ypsilanti Vampire May Day (2012), whilst the theory of X2 is proposed in 1993’sX2: May Day in Light of Waco and LA and returned to inYpsilanti… The two earlier essays were printed as pamphlets, the first by the Midnight Notes Collective as a revised version ofThe Silent Speak pamphlet (1985); the second was given out randomly “on street corners and at sporting events”.[47]Ypsilanti… was published by Jeff Clark as part of Occupy Ypsi Press[48] and appeared on the Counterpunch website.[49]
These theories are vaguely sketched by Linebaugh; moreover, both have changed in key ways between their initial publication and their revisiting in Ypsilanti… two decades later. Regardless, they arguably retain potential as frameworks for making illuminating comparisons between seemingly disparate events. The green and red May Day allows the activist-scholar to understand the relationship between the pagan festival and modern workers demonstrations in a broad sense that allows for the interjection of topical events. X2 seeks to make explicit the hidden relationship between expropriation and exploitation, which are key to capitalism and oppositional to May Day. This section concludes by sketching a model linking both theories together.
Green and red May Day
May Day can be divided into green and red elements.[50] This section seeks to understand what each element represents. It begins by outlining the green May Day as part of an ancient egalitarian celebration of spring before moving to examine the red May Day, whose meaning shifts in the decades between the two essays from remembering the victims of capital to celebrating those who would oppose it in the social sphere.
The green.
The green element refers to the ancient custom of celebrating May Day as the onset of spring:
Green is a relationship to the earth and what grows there… Green designates life with only necessary labour … Green is natural appropriation … husbandry and nurturance … useful activity [and] … creation of desire … [51]
Linebaugh provides a brief international overview of the festival, acknowledging that “the origin of May Day is to be found in the Woodland Epoch of history … [where] people honoured the woods in many ways.”[52] The origin of May as the namesake of the mother of Greek Gods is outlined and highlighting celebrations of fertility, Linebaugh reminds the reader of the rhyme (also reproduced on the reverse cover of the pamphlet):[53] “Hooray! Hooray! The First of May! Outdoor fucking begins today!”[54] On 1st May, “many maids went into the woods and came back different than they went out.”[55]
Merry Mount is used to contrast the utopian, “paradise” of Thomas Morton’s North America[56] with that of the Puritans, for whom Morton’s abundance offended a life of scarcity.[57] Morton[58] and his detractors are quoted,[59] highlighting the celebration of ample natural resources and the free abandon of the May Day festivities. This, coupled with Merry Mount’s egalitarian notions, led to its destruction.[60] For Linebaugh, like Hawthorne, Merry Mount is a key event in American history – a “road not taken”[61] – and like Haymarket, one returned to throughout the anthology.
A crucial thread of the Green May Day is a rejection of work. Linebaugh highlights that the Native Americans encountered by Smith in 1606 worked a 4 hour week;[62] shifting to the persecution of pagans, May Day’s saints are highlighted. Adopted as part of the Roman Empire’s strategy of syncretism, the unproductive James and Philip are celebrated as “unwilling slaves to empire.” May Day “was not a time to work”,[63] setting it at odds with early capitalists and the sanctity of labour.[64] This led to oppression – which in turn spawned resistance to the “regimen of monotonous work”.[65]
The green thread of May Day is demonstrated as “a celebration of all that is free, green and life giving”[66] – themes not extinguished by the onset of capitalism, despite Linebaugh’s self-contradictory assertion.[67] As well as festivities extending in to the industrial revolution,[68] a poem written in 1980, demands “for land that’s green and life that’s saved, and less and less of the earth that’s paved.”[69] In the same year, workers in Mozambique “lamented the absence of beer” and witches rampaged across Hamburg.[70] Moreover, since the earth is being destroyed and it is capital that is responsible for “desertification” and “treating the Pacific Ocean as if it were a sewer,”[71] May Day has to be a green festival.
Since drafting The Incomplete…., Linebaugh likely collated contemporary case studies. For example, although James Matthews saw the defacing of the Winston Churchill statue on May Day in 2000 as a chance to “express a challenge to an icon of the British establishment”[72] in the name of free speech and human rights, this impulsive, passionate act was carried out in the heat of the moment[73] – perhaps “being spring time, there were sexual and generational as well as political energies coursing wildly about”[74]
Photos of the defacement show a Mohawk – made of green grass.
The red
The statue “was made to look as though blood was dripping from its mouth[75]”. The red May Day is “the relationship to other people and the blood spilt there among,”[76] and Churchill was not opposed to spilling blood. Alongside a chequered war record, he sent troops against strikers in Tonypandy in 1910 and the docks in 1911 and did not censure police violence against suffragettes.[77] This is the red thread:
death with surplus labour … social appropriation … proletarianization and prostitution … useless toil [and] … class struggle.[78]
If May Day is theorised as a duality, its nature here is contradictory. In the titular essay, it is an antagonistic relationship. This red is not aspirational but oppositional; it is the denial of the green, which represents radical values. It is a reminder of the barbarism of the current social relation and in memory of those who have fallen victim to it. These red flags of May Day are carried in memorial in keeping with the origin of May Day celebrations to remember the Haymarket Martyrs.
However, returning to theme 26 years later, it is clear that:
Red demonstrations sought to turn May Day into a revolution that had the abolition of the class system as its aim.[79]
By Ypsilanti… the red and green work in tandem ‘in opposition to avarice and privatization.” Here Green represents largely similar territory, with Red representing the “public sphere … formed in relation to the institutions of the state”[80] The same red flags are now flown to demand class justice. The red ofThe Incomplete… is pessimistic, highlighting the brutality of capital and the suppression of the Commons. The red ofYpsilanti… is optimistic, a vision of egalitarian social relationships and those who strive for it. In interviews, the red May Day is a story of class struggle,[81] with a focus on the 8 Hour Day and Haymarket.[82]
Interpretation
The difference in interpretation can be demonstrated by the story of Merry Mount. In the titular essay, Merry Mount is part of the green thread; by Ypsilanti…, it is part of the red, with the behaviour of humans most prominent over natural abundance (although Linebaugh cannot help but return to his earlier metaphor, noting that “America’s first Red May Day [came] to a bloody end”).[83] The red Merry Mount does not cover new territory; it comfortably fits within the broader green interpretation outlined above, but latterly becomes a distinct red strand within it. By 2016, Merry Mount again becomes the representation of the green May Day,[84] suggesting that it is thefocus given to the event within the narrative that enables it to move between both elements.
Linking the green and the red
Aware that he is addressing an anarchist academic of Haymarket – and of his own short comings as a historian of the events – while addressing Historical Materialism, Linebaugh attempts to outline his own contribution to the Haymarket story via the anthology’s cover art.[85] This shows five women in cutting corn using sickles that ensured the labourer cut higher up the stalk, leaving some of the crop for gleaners as welfare demanded. This is the green theme, stressing sustainability.
This can be linked to the red theme through the destructive industrialisation of agriculture. It was the McCormick iron workers of Chicago who built the mechanical reapers that replaced the manual work depicted in the painting. The same iron workers were pivotal in the events of May 1886.Therefore the painting offers a connection between the green and red of May Day, linking the demise of ecologically aware farming to class struggle.
Coevality
Linebaugh returns to the green and the red when discussing Bastille Day 2016, demonstrating the adaptability of the framework to events beyond the anthology. This discussion also provides further theoretical detail. The green is expanded to include human lungs; the steam engine leads to reliance on fossil fuels with the associated breathing problems. The red includes strikes, food riots, soldiering and development of alternatives to capitalism.[86]
Linebaugh describes a “coevality between 1790 and present”.[87] Coeval is a geological term meaning ‘of the same age or origin; contemporary’, which is why in Toronto, Linebaugh makes the same argument but uses the term “comptemporanity”.[88] Regardless, Linebaugh asserts that the strategies of the counter-revolution of 1790’s are apparent in 2016. These include incarceration, “commercial warfare” and racism (embodied by the prison, the factory and the plantation),[89] as well as fossil fuels, the privatisation of land, the rise of nation-states and the birth of what he dubs the “terrorist states” of the UK and USA.[90]
The red struggle is equally coeval;[91] as the factory survives in modified and diversified forms, so does worker resistance. Whilst problematic in that it obscures crucial differences, this concept reveals some structural commonalities between say, a sit down striker in 1934 and an absentee call centre worker in 2016.
X2
Linebaugh introduces the theory of X2 in the 1993 essayX2: May Day in Light of Waco and LA and reprises it in Ypsilanti… although the themes outlined are referenced throughout the anthology. X stands for three things – the unknown, expropriation and exploitation.
Unknown
X is the unknown quantity in algebra and the unknown quality in politics. It is the X in Malcolm X, for whom it was a reminder of “the theft of land and identity”. There was a “secret” to accumulation of wealth, which Linebaugh claims, to Marx was something unknown – unknown in this context meaning obscured.[92] More prosaically, inspiration for the X2 also came from fashion – from “kids [who] were wearing caps that had an X on them.”[93]
Linebaugh speaks of American’s “living in a fog of manufactured ignorance”.[94] Although never explicitly linked to X2, interviews highlight attempts to hide the meaning of May Day by presidents Cleveland and Eisenhower.[95] Until revealed to him by a student, May Day was reduced to a militaristic holiday celebrated by Communist states,[96] its American origins another unknown obscuring acts of expropriation and exploitation.
Expropriation
This is “the taking away of what’s ours, such as the rain forest, or the land”.[97] It is the process of “taking you away from your means of subsistence,”[98] “away from the means of life, taken away from the earth”.[99] For Linebaugh, expropriation means “The theft of our commons and common goods.”[100] Returning momentarily to the green May Day ofYpsilanti…, expropriation is the theft of the Commons that ‘tend to be invisible until taken away.”[101] It is an unknown because the act of theft is hidden – “the ruling class pretends it doesn’t happen”[102] in order to minimise resistance.
The archetypal expropriation was the Enclosure Acts; these took away the right to the English commons and were part of “that series of concrete universals … that [have] defined the crime of modernism.” This dynamic is always “imminent with the possibility of reoccurrence”[103] reappearing as foreclosures during the 2008 financial crisis.[104] For E.P. Thompson, enclosure was “class robbery,”[105] achieved according to Marx by “letters of blood and fire” – or their late modern equivalents:
drones, structural adjustment programs, invasions, civil wars, sectarian violence, “ethnic” violence, and school-closings, factory-closings, foreclosures and enclosures – and the subsequent cuts to our social wages and institutions[106]
Exploitation
This is coercion by capital into unpaid or under-paid work. For Linebaugh, exploitation is “the source of profit, interest, and rent” which is why the capitalist pretends it does not exist. It is an unknown, often even to those being exploited.[107]
This concept is ill-defined; after its introduction, it is rarely defined again outside of being one half of the equation. In interviews, exploitation is described as “oppression by making others work without giving them the value of their product”[108] and “being forced to labour by those who have the means and materials of work.”[109] In reference to Henry VIII breaking the London Guilds, exploitation is presented as jobs being “dissed (sic) as the monarchy imported capital”;[110] Lombard bankers and French merchants were used to “under-cut wages, lengthen hours and break the guilds”.[111] Referring to students inYpsilanti…, Linebaugh notes that “higher education fees and the massive student debt they incur constitute exploitation”,[112] where debt can be understood as a promise of labour power owed. A fuller explanation is absent and inYpsilanti…, Linebaugh provides no definition at all.
X2
In X2expropriation and exploitation are required to grasp the meaning of May Day which stands in opposition to both – to be understood, they need to become known and cease being an X of unknown quantities. It is up to the activist-scholar to reveal it. Here, X2 is X as an inseparable pair.[113] Writing two decades later, X2 is X squared: “expropriation compoundsexploitation”, explicitly mirroring David Harvey’s “exploitation by dispossession”.[114] Harvey’s term is a rebranding of Marx’s primitive/original accumulation to take in to account that these processes are ongoing. Special attention is paid to the credit system and finance capital “as major levers of preditation, fraud and thievery” legitimised by the state’s “monopoly on violence and definitions of legality”.[115] This dynamic mirrors the traditional English verse:
The law locks up the man or woman, who steals the goose from off the common, but lets the greater villain loose, who steals the common from the goose.[116]
Harvey expands on the list of strategies for late-capitalist primitive accumulation, for example via intellectual property rights.[117] The X2 relationship is demonstrated by the Evil May Day of 1517. Expropriation of the commons through enclosure led to judicial terror and dislocation. For those who fled to London, the welfare system run by Guilds was undermined by Henry VIII through his support of Italian bankers and French merchants. Having already lost the safety net of traditional rights to the commons, workers suffered exploitation in terms of support and the quality of employment. This led to May Day riots and further repression: “the dreaded thanatocracy”.[118]
Mapping the Theories
Fig. 1 – Mapping both theories
Although both theories appear in Ypsilanti…, Linebaugh does not directly link the green and red May Day with X2. Despite this, there is sufficient overlap to map simplified versions of both May Day theories as a single body (Fig. 1). In this model, the green story is one of life before and including expropriation: the abundance of Merry Mount cut short by the Puritans, of life up to the enclosure of the natural commons. This green story reveals the unknown X of expropriation. The red story is of life after expropriation, of exploitation and attempts to resist it, and reveals the unknown X of exploitation. It is the story of Haymarket and strikes for the 8 hour day where coeval institutions can be seen as competing against coeval tactics of resistance.
May Day with heart
Having defined Linebaugh’s May Day and outlined a theoretical framework, this section focuses on the May Day with Heart essay published by Counterpunch.[119] It is a hallucinogenic rendition of the Haymarket story, which in keeping with theIncomplete May Day that seeks to promote radical social change, was drafted in solidarity with 1.5 million “immigrant worker[s]”[120] protesting repressive legislation on 1st May 2006.[121]
May Day… is also a response to the publication of James Green’sDeath in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labour Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America[122] – an event arguably more significant in shaping the text. Green is referenced reverently and the essay climaxes with a call to “… take heart with Death in the Haymarket in hand!”[123] Perhaps its oblique form is inspired by a desire to do more than abridge Green’s work, given the text also shows similarities withThe Globalization Of Memory: The Enduring Memory Of Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs Around The World.[124] Green guides the “amateur” historian of the True May Day.
By 2016, Linebaugh’s interpretation of the immigrant marches of 10 years earlier reverses this significance. Latino communities mobilised in spring 2006[125] in response to proposed legislation designed to convert living undocumented within the USA from a civil to criminal offense[126] with May Day a day of action across 40 states.[127] The “Day Without an Immigrant” – which was yet to take place at the time of writingMay Day… – is a redemptive event, reflecting theAuthentic May Day: “May Day is brought back to the United States by those who have remembered it.”[128] In North America, it was Mexico alone who celebrated May Day; 1st May is the Day of the Martyrs of Chicago.[129] The yearly immigrant rights demonstrations that take place in many US cities are for Linebaugh a reminder of this May Day tradition[130] that he would no doubt consider Wonderful and it is telling that in the era of Trump, these marches are referenced in a call for a May Day 2017 General Strike.[131]
May Day… contains the same themes of exploitation and expropriation that run throughout the anthology, but whilst most texts in the collection feature a broad cast and shifting geography,May Day… is, subjectively, particularly dream-like. Because of this extremity, this essay foregrounds techniques that may be absent or muted elsewhere. Because of this – the later significance of May Day 2006 for Linebaugh – and because the events of Chicago in 1886 signify the birth of the modern May Day, this section examines this essay in detail. It begins by asking what a retelling of the May Day story “with heart” means (an obscure term when compared, for example, with the methodology and aims expressed in 2010’sObama May Day[132]) before discussing some of the stylistic elements of the paper – the deliberately confusing mix of actors and geography; the use of the historian as a tool to bring the reader back to the present; the inclusion of supernatural imagery; the deliberate use of anachronistic similes and juxtapositions; and the use of contemporary verse. This section concludes with a suggested list of guidelines for writing a May Day essay in this mould.
History with heart
Linebaugh provides a typically succinct definition of radical history: “Until the lions have their own historians, histories of the hunt will glorify the hunter.”[133] His history is that of the lions but beyond this, what it means to write a history “with heart” is never explicit.
It is UEL professor[134] and Midnight Notes associate[135] Massimo De Angelis, who likes the mushroom because “it may cause dreams,” that suggests that writing “with heart” is crucial.[136] Consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, a tool Linebaugh would approve of,[137] reveals:
With heart: with great sincerity, earnestness or devotion.[138]
May Day… does not seemingly lack sincerity. More enlightening is the “heart” as “the seat of courage”[139] which can be contrasted to the “loss of heart” that afflicted the labour movement after May 1886.[140] Perhaps revisiting the story of the Haymarket martyrs is a cure for its disappearance.
Equally instructive is the reminder that the heart is “halfway between the gut and the head”[141] This heart is “the seat of emotions generally; the emotional nature, as distinguished from the intellectual nature placed in thehead ”;[142] this is “heart” articulated as Jose Marti’s “political principle”,[143] the capacity to feel a unifying emotional pain. As “the seat of love or affection”[144] Linebaugh asks if this same “heart” can be big enough for class solidarity.[145] Alongside courage, history “with heart” is therefore the history of collective suffering and attempts at collective compassion.
Linebaugh demands the reader “study the record” of May Day, acknowledging the etymology of the word ‘record’ is to pass again through the heart; thus history must “pass through our heart again”. Assuming the historian has not been sampling De Angellis’ mushrooms, this then is a story of Haymarket written by this emotional heart, more dream-like than the traditional narrative of the rational brain but not overcome by the “grief we feel in the gut”.[146]
Actors
Counterpunch are the self-styled “fearless voice of the American left since 1993” that “tells the facts [and] names the names.”[147] Linebaugh’s visible involvement dates from 2001.[148] Arguably his audience are those engaged on the left, perhaps with an academic or activist history enabling them to understand many of the references within the essay.
This does not explain the obtuse presentation of actors within the essay who rarely appear often, are described with little context, and often disappear again quickly. In an essay about Haymarket, defendants Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab and Oscar Neebe appear in just one paragraph.[149] August Spies appears the most on only 5 occasions. George Engell does not appear at all. The reader is bombarded with names, some of which are wilfully obscured. Albert – or is it Lucy? – Parsons is introduced by family name.[150] James Green is also referred to as Jim Green.[151] Oscar Neebe is never granted his full name.
The reader is not meant to be able to follow actors through the narrative; rather, they flash as brief dream-like images. For the researcher, this effect subjectively recalls Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude,[152] where the reader is disorientated by many of the characters sharing names and personalities across generations; only for Linebaugh the effect is achieved not through recycling names until the reader can no longer maintain focus, but by overwhelming the reader with different ones. His actors are given minimal background and are almost interchangeable, flashing past in an instant as “our head spins and spins in the dizzy search for cause and effect”[153] The narrative is carried by outside contemporary commentators such as William Morris and Jose Marti, and the historian James Green.
Geography
Geography is employed in a similar fashion, bombarding the reader with places as well as names. This is clearest near the start and end of May Day… Page 71 includes overt and implied references to 6 distinct locations within a single paragraph, linking Witwatersrand in South Africa with race riots in Seattle against labour imported from China; the Paris Commune appears alongside an Africa divided by imperialists and Jose Marti, who, as outlined on the previous page, resides in New York. Samuel Gompers has no location and founded the AFL everywhere and nowhere in the USA, which is where Geronimo resides. Where Gottlieb Daimler perfected his engine andDas Kapital was published in English, the reader is none the wiser. Page 80 takes the reader to Abu Ghraib, Iraq; Argentina; Columbia; Cuba; France; Germany; Italy; Mexico; Milan, Italy; Petrograd, Russia; Spain; USA in general and Chicago, New York and Washington, DC in particular. Many locations are referenced only once or intermittently. Those that reappear are home to key actors: Chicago, William Morris’ England, Jose Marti’s New York, the undefined USA of the multitude of actors paraded before the reader. The result is, again, dream-like disorientation, particularly in the introduction and conclusion to the historical narrative.
Historian Voices
Authors referenced in the text are used to bring the narrative back to the present or as figures in an undefined past. James Green is principally used to bridge the past and the present. Green is always referred to in the present tense, in contrast to the historical narrative, which is largely written in the past tense. Linebaugh introduces Green in a paragraph where in order to start the exploration of May Day, he suggests “we take down the classics from the shelf”;[154] of the historians listed, it is only Green that appears throughout.
Green is a reminder the historian is writing history, bringing the reader back into the present by interjecting a deliberately artificial break within the narrative. In doing so, the reader’s focus is both on the present and on the past. When Linebaugh suggests that “Green tells the story with verse and drama,”[155] the reader jumps from 1886 to 2006 and back in the same paragraph, contracting 120 years twice in an instant.
Nelson Algren, by comparison, is mentioned in the past tense but has no defined time of his own. At this point in the narrative, the year is 1887 but Algren sits outside of this. Referring to “fifty years of industrial violence” Linebaugh notes that “these [years] laid the ‘bone deep grudges’ that Nelson Algren wrote about.” But he fails to outline when he wrote about them. The tense puts his writing in the past, but it cannot have been in 1887 if he was writing of events that occurred fifty years later. Algren instead floats in a vague past, some when between 1937 and 2006; because the quote could come from any point in this period, he exists and does not exist at every point between those years. Linebaugh underlines this by directly following with a quote from Green, firmly anchored in the present.[156]
The Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano is similarly utilised. After appearing initially in the present tense,[157] Galeano appears in the past tense throughout the rest of the text and like Algren, is never given a time period of his own. Through direct juxtaposition, he is implied as a contemporary of Jose Marti, writing in 1887;[158] Linebaugh pairs a quote from each with no explanation despite Galeano being born in 1940.[159] Likewise no context is given regarding his trip to Chicago. When did Galeano explore Haymarket? The same paragraph records dates from 1889 to 1970.[160]
The past tense places Galeano in history; the lack of an anchoring date places him every when and no when. This is deliberate. While it is possible to argue that the tenses stem from Green being alive[161] and Algren dead,[162] Galeano, spoken of primarily in the past tense, did not die until 2015.[163] Linebaugh’s use of Galeano and Algren purposely renders them as supernatural figures, floating undefined and outside of the narrative.
Supernatural elements
There are further overt supernatural images within the essay. Biblical references throughout the text accentuate the martyrdom of those executed and actors are predictably ascribed these metaphorical roles – as Linebaugh does Lucy Parsons, who was “the Mary Magdalene… of the suffering proletariat.”[164] Albert Parsons is quoted as reciting a verse from James, who Linebaugh teasingly suggests is Jesus’ brother. In doing so, Parsons is aping the role of an apostle, one step removed from the son of God.[165] That these roles are allotted due to family name is obvious; that Emma Lazarus is quoted – Lazarus being raised from the dead in the Gospel of John – is also not coincidental.[166]
De Angelis is transfigured into a hobgoblin[167] due to his preference for an alternative translation of the Communist Manifesto where it is a hobgoblin rather than a spectre haunting Europe. This then becomes his nickname. This strange and playful image transforms from a moniker into a more literal, supernatural being by the end of the essay, where the hobgoblin reappears without a reminder of whom it represents.
More innovative is the reference to a 1938 May Day march:
In May Day of that year a march on the South Side of Chicago was led by a float featuring a hooded man. In one direction of time, August Spies; in another direction of time, Abu Ghraib.[168]
A prophetic power is ascribed to the image, although a conscious foreshadowing by parade goers is not suggested. Rather juxtaposition prompts it in the readers mind. Linebaugh is careful to place a historian’s observation within history by not bringing the reader back to the present through an overt use of the present tense.
Condensing time and space
Alongside the historian’s voice, Linebaugh condenses time and space through two techniques – deliberate anachronisms and the juxtaposition of events that occur in separate temporalities. Anachronistic references bridge the period depicted in the historical narrative and the period of the reference. The May Day march in 1938[169] is an example of this; as well as ascribing prophetic powers, the use of a contemporary reference alongside two historical images with little explanation condenses the geographical and temporal distance for the reader; within two lines the reader is in Chicago in 1938 watching the parade, the same city in 1887 watching Spies execution and Iraq in the (then) present.
Likewise the comparison between Haymarket and Guernica:
Haymarket in Chicago in May 1886 was like Guernica in Spain in 1937 when the Condor Legion wiped it out by bombing: this is to say it was a busy, crowded market, ideal for terrorism.[170]
The reader is in both times and locations simultaneously, with perhaps a mental image of Haymarket as rendered by Picasso. This comparison is loaded with meaning; the Condor Legion were Nazis and although the death toll is disputed, 250 is the generally accepted figure[171] – outstripping that of Haymarket. Although arguably accurate in the terms referenced, the level of carnage invoked by this simile is disproportionate and ahistorically links the police terror – who “provoked the violence to stop the strike movement for the eight hour day” – with fascism.[172]
A third example of deliberate anachronism is the use of contemporary activists, who inherit the ambitions of the past:
Spies said, “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today”. We are finding voice. Cindy Sheehan gives us voice. “Si se puede” gives us voice[173]
Sheehan is a contemporary anti-war activist;[174] “si se puede” is closely linked with the United Farm Workers[175] and by extension, the immigrant rights movement. Through juxtaposition and tenses, within two lines the reader is brought from 1886 to the present. Through the voice motif inheritance is implied, placing anti-war activists and the Latino/a workers within the Haymarket lineage. One voice is extinguished, but others appear to carry on to inspire the historian and the reader who, as the undefined “we”, “are finding voice”.
The juxtapositioning that is used throughout to join events that occurred in different times and locations, on occasion reaches the extremes:
Paublo Neruda, Josie Marti, even Walt Whitman had a big, hemispheric conception of America … united by the German geographer Humboldt’s Afro-America[176]
Presenting this in one sentence with little supporting information hides that they did not do so together. Neruda died in 1973, perhaps murdered by Pinochet.[177] Jose Marti died in 1895[178] fighting for Cuban independence; arguably a contemporary of Whitman, who died in 1892,[179] both were dead before Neruda was born and likely knew Alexander Von Humboldt[180] only by his writing. The historian does not lie here; rather to collapse time and space, his sentence construction omits the facts that prevent the image of the four men in dialogue.
Poetry
E.P. Thompson maintained a life-long interest in poetry and often framed his studies with contemporary verse, such as The Making of the English Working Class which is framed by Blake.[181] Underscoring Thompson’s influence on Linebaugh,May Day… includes three sections of verse, the clearest in demonstrating this influence being from William Morris.[182] Morris was the subject of a biography by Thompson; Linebaugh in turn wrote the foreword for the PM Press reissue.[183]
This overview suggests a framework for writing an essay in the model of May Day… Given the subjective assessment that the text represents a stylistic extremity within the anthology, it is unlikely that future essays should employ all of these techniques.
- – The essay must be sincere. It must be a story of bravery, collective suffering and solidarity. Its dream-like format should be the voice of the emotional heart, not the rational head or the sorrow-filled gut.
- – The essay should be wide ranging in terms of actors and geographical references, and these should be deliberately under-developed in order to cause disorientation. Contemporary and historical observers should carry the narrative forward.
- – The voices of select authors should condense time; the use of tenses when employing these voices should bridge the present and the historical period to cause disorientation.
- – Supernatural elements should interject in minor ways – such as through actors’ adoption of biblical roles; the use of tenses to place select authors “outside time”; through simile/metaphorical descriptions; the juxtaposition of anachronistic observations with historical events in order to suggest clairvoyance.
- – Anachronism should be employed throughout – to disorientate through the condensation of time; to provide emotive and powerful comparators; to imply inheritance of the historical actor’s struggle.
- – Juxtaposition of actors who were not contemporaries should be employed to collapse time and geography and cause disorientation.
- – Contemporary verse should be quoted in line with the influence of E.P. Thompson.
Conclusion
Having examined a selection of Linebaugh’s May Day essays, this paper concludes by asking “can this May Day essay be replicated?” To do so, and in-line with the rationale of seeking to write an accessible paper that linked disparate events, a Rent Strike May Day (RSMD) essay has been written using the findings of this paper as a framework. This is available at http://ruskin.academia.edu/PhilHedges. This section refers directly to this text and these notes should be read in conjunction with it. It mirrors the structure of the paper by applying the insights uncovered to the RSMD essay. It begins by sketching how the essay reflects the model of May Day asincomplete, authentic, true andwonderful before moving on to look at how the politics of Linebaugh’s May Day is incorporated. It concludes by providing examples of the implementation of the techniques uncovered inMay Day With Heart. In doing so, it successfully demonstrates that the model of a May Day essay uncovered herein can be replicated.
Defining May Day
The incomplete May Day: RSMD embodies this by moving away from the two foundational narratives to tell other May Day stories, highlighting the incompleteness of Linebaugh’s anthology and also partly mitigating this. The unfulfilled promise of the anti-capitalist May Day is also acknowledged:
That’s partly why his May Day book is incomplete – the other reason of course being that although Neoliberalism has been looking a little creaky of late, it’s not yet had that final shove.
The authentic May Day: The authenticity of the essay is underpinned by the author’s positionality of being engaged in housing activism via a co-operative. Through circulating RSMD there is a goal to aid housing activism through contributing to the awareness of the current wave of rent strikes. In some small way, the RSMD will be a tool to support these actions.
The true May Day: The narratives are based on historical research. These stories are written from outside of my academic discipline (Labour Studies) and based on a limited number of secondary sources, which (breaking from Linebaugh’s model), have been referenced throughout RSMD to evidence this. The UCL rent strike material reworks research prepared for a previous paper into an accessible format and is consistent with this approach.
The wonderful May Day: The themes of fertility – although acknowledged with a call to “… sneak off hand-in-hand into the woods …” – are absent from the narrative. The promise is fulfilled instead by demonstrating what can be achieved through organising for change. The positive conclusion to the UCL narrative – e.g. the win at Campbell House West Halls of residence – further underpins this.
The theory of May Day
Red: The red May Day dovetails with the essays focus on housing given its link to exploitation. Whilst the X2 model is explicitly absent from RSMD, high rents are framed as exploitation in both red narratives:
They knew that cuts to rates and increases to rent meant that they were being exploited – they were subsidising the firms in the Borough whilst rewarding financiers who had outlaid for long mortgages to build council houses.
[Poor conditions and high rent] …was exploitation – and on May Day, we follow Peter Linebaugh’s lead and mark it.
Both red narratives are positive interpretations of the red May Day in that they focus on resistance to exploitation rather than the crushing of radicalism.
Green: The green May Day is more problematic. Expropriation of land in the UK that forces renting or the purchase of houses is classically thought of in terms of the Enclosure Acts. A decision was made in RSMD to avoid a more distant historical comparator. Instead the act of expropriation is a Compulsory Purchase Order, which:
meant forced relocation, what David Harvey called “accumulation by dispossession” – a rebranding of Marx’s Primitive Accumulation to reflect that the dynamic of theft, violence and enclosure are inherent to capitalist profit making and not simply a phase in its early development. These acts of expropriation are the opposite of the green May Day, and we remember Dotty – the last of the former residents to leave – and her courage and resistance.
This meant that the narrative moved away from rent strikes into squatting, diluting the overall theme of the essay but facilitating a contemporary narrative based around housing. The green theme was additionally referenced more subtly throughout, such as “some tradesmen laboured to build barricades for free rather than engage in alienating employment,” echoing where the “Green designates life with only necessary labour … [and] useful activity.”[184] Of course, the attempt to stop the M11 was motivated by ecological concerns and forms a green theme in itself.
Coveality: This is deliberately underplayed within RSMD because coveality between all three narratives is absent. Despite this, it can be understood that there are coeval intuitions and resistance between paired narratives. The institution of landlordism links the two red narratives as does the tactic of withholding rent, despite over 5 decades between them. The St Pancras rent strike and Claremont Road are both linked by the institutions of the police (and bailiffs), who work to suppress acts of resistance thirty years apart.
May Day with heart
Actors: The actors within the narratives are given little back story and are deliberately fleetingly referenced. Focusing on the St Pancras strike narrative, key actors such as Counsellor Prior, Don Cook are referenced only 3 and 4 times respectively despite their key roles. In doing so they become archetypes – the stubborn Conservative Counsellor and the principled rent striker.
Geography: The deliberately bewildering global overviews offered by Linebaugh are replicated in the UCL narrative:
tens of thousands protested in support of Aboriginal communities; Nimpagaritse fled rather than rubber-stamp an unconstitutional candidacy for president and tenants at the Hawkridge Halls of residence had been withholding rent payment for 23 days.
This refers to protests in Australia and New Zealand against funding cuts to remote communities[185], a judge fleeing from Burundi[186] and rent strikes in London.[187] In one sentence, the reader is simultaneously witnessing events in three continents – an effect amplified by the deliberate withholding of key information outlining that the events took place in different locations, condensing the physical distance between events thousands of miles apart. Beyond this, the geographical spread demonstrated inA May Day With Heart is largely downplayed in RSMD, which focuses on North and East London.
Voices: In RSMD, Peter Linebaugh takes on the role assigned to James Green. Linebaugh is referred to in the present tense, and occasionally as “Pete” as Green is “Jim”. Linebaugh exists in the “now” whilst the other key historians within the essay – such as Dave Burns – exist in the past tense, their era unspecified within the text. Burns exists in an unspecified past, some when between the events he describes in the 1960’s and the near present.
Supernatural elements: The hydra is borrowed as a metaphor from Linebaugh and Rediker’sThe Many Headed Hydra[188] and used in a similar way as the vampire/blood sucker in Ypsilanti Vampire May Day to frame the arguments within the essay. The many heads of the hydra dovetails with theincomplete May Day and the many untold May Day stories.
Condensing time: Juxtaposing historical events from different temporalities whilst withholding the dates events took place enabled the 1913 funeral of Emily Wilding Davidson[189] to seemingly occur during the protests at UCL open days in 2015:
Reports focused on 3rd July, when 300 protesters gathered on Mallet Street, ten minutes walk away from St Georges Church where suffragettes held a funeral for Emily Wilding Davidson.
Quotes: Reflecting the reduced importance of poetry during the eras that the narratives took place, RSMD quotes song lyrics rather than contemporary poetry. Quotes were chosen to reflect the themes of the narrative, even when to do so is to run counter to the theme of the song. Cathy’s Clown is about rejection but juxtaposed with the St Pancras narrative, lyrics about self respect in a romantic context are repurposed to explore self respect in a social justice context.
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[1] Linebaugh 2016, p.9.
[2] For example Linebaugh 2016, pp.15-17; Linebaugh 2016, pp.19-21.
[3] Linebaugh 2016, pp.8-9
[4] Caffentzis, 2013, pp.2-3.
[5] Linebaugh 2016, p.9.
[6] Lindeschmit, 2015.
[7] Linebaugh, 2014, pp.126-127.
[8] Kaye, 1995, pp.165-220.
[9] For example Linebaugh 2014, pp.13-16.
[10] The rationale underpinning this paper is two-fold; the model of the May Day essay offers the activist-scholar a technique to insightfully link together historical events. It also dovetails with a personal experience of May Day that suggests that the festival is of value in itself. This paper is the second in a year-long project to examine rent strikes, aiming to compare the rent strikes that took place in 2015/16 at London universities with historical strikes. Theoretically key to this undertaking is implementing a framework that enables the study of temporally and spatially disparate events. In his May Day anthology, Linebaugh appears to provide such a framework. Additionally these May Day essays were written to support on-going activism and are presented in a format that encourages engagement. “This is a scholarly historian who wants to be read, and who makes himself available to readers, at home in the academy and on the barricades;” (Cahill 2016) this mirrors my own commitment to engaged research.
[11] Queensland Unions 2015.
[12] Linebaugh 2016, p.74.
[13] Green 2006, p.145.
[14] Brecher 2014, p.40.
[15] Brecher 2014, p.58.
[16] Stephenson & Wray, 2005.
[17] Queensland Unions, 2015.
[18] McKinnell 2016; AAP, 2016.
[19] For example Flanders 2016.
[20] For example PM Press, 2016.
[21] For example Democracy Now!, 2016.
[22] For example Doyle, 2016; Wildermuth, 2016.
[23] Bryman 2012, p.28.
[24] Linebaugh, 2016, pp.9.
[25] Linebaugh 2016, pp.8-9.
[26] Taghbon 2016b.
[27] Taghbon,2016d
[28] Taghbon 2016d.
[29] Lamberton 2016.
[30] Democracy Now! 2016.
[31] Taghbon 2016b.
[32] Taghbon 2016b.
[33] Linebaugh 2016, p.3.
[34] Linebaugh 2016, p.8.
[35] PM Press 2016.
[36] Lamberson 2016.
[37] Linebaugh 2016, p.5-6; Taghbon 2016c.
[38] Linebaugh 1986.
[39] PM Press 2016.
[40] PM Press 2016; Taghbon 2016b; Democracy Now! 2016.
[41] Linebaugh 2016, p.9; Taghbon, 2016c.
[42] Taghbon 2016b.
[43] Zinn 1997, p.504.
[44] PM Press 2016.
[45] Democracy Now! 2016.
[46] Langstaff 2016, p.352.
[47] Linebaugh 2016, p.9.
[48] Maynard 2012.
[49] Linebaugh 2012.
[50] Linesbaugh 2016, p.11.
[51] Linebaugh 2016, p.11.
[52] Linebaugh 2016, p.12.
[53] May Day Rooms 2014.
[54] Linebaugh 2016, p.137.
[55] Flanders 2016.
[56] Linebaugh 2016, p.15.
[57] Linebaugh 2016, p.139.
[58] Linebaugh 2016, p.15.
[59] Linebaugh 2016, p.139.
[60] Linebaugh 2016, pp.16-17; Linebaugh 2016, p.139.
[61] Linebaugh 2016, p.86.
[62] Linebaugh 2016,p.12.
[63] Linebaugh 2016, p.14; Linebaugh 2016, p.139.
[64] Linebaugh 2016, p.17.
[65] Linebaugh 2016, pp.14-15.
[66] Linebaugh 2016, pp.138-139.
[67] Democracy Now! 2016.
[68] Linebaugh 2016, p.18.
[69] Linebaugh 2016, p.25.
[70] Linebaugh 2016, p.24.
[71] Flanders 2016.
[72] BBC 2000.
[73] Gillian 2000.
[74] (Linebaugh 2016, p.3.
[75] BBC 2000; Gillian 2000.
[76] Linebaugh 2016, p.11.
[77] Heffer 2015.
[78] Linebaugh 2016, p.11.
[79] Linebaugh 2016, p.141.
[80] Linebaugh 2016, p.141.
[81] PM Press 2016; Taghbon 2016c.
[82] Lamerson 2016; Taghbon 2016c; Democracy Now! 2016.
[83] Linebaugh 2016, p.139.
[84] Democracy Now! 2016; Flanders 2016; Taghbon 2016c; Lamberson 2016; PM Press 2016.
[85] Taghbon 2016c.
[86] Lindenschmit, 2016.
[87] Lindenschmit, 2016.
[88] Taghbon 2016b.
[89] Lindenschmit 2016,
[90] Taghbon 2016b.
[91] Lindenschmit 2016.
[92] Linebaugh 2016, p29.
[93] Democracy Now! 2016.
[94] Al Jazeera 2016.
[95] Taghbon 2016c.
[96] Lamberson 2016.
[97] Linebaugh 2016, p.29.
[98] Lamberson 2016.
[99] Democracy Now! 2016.
[100] Linebaugh 2016, p.152.
[101] Linebaugh 2016, p.141.
[102] Linebaugh 2016, p.29.
[103] Linebaugh 2014, p.142.
[104] Linebaugh 2016, p.152.
[105] Linebaugh 2014, p.145.
[106] Linebaugh 2016, p.151.
[107] (Linebaugh, 2016, p.29)
[108] (Lamberson, 2016)
[109] (Democracy Now, 2016)
[110] (Linebaugh, 2016, p.33)
[111] (ibid, p.32)
[112] (ibid, p.152)
[113] Linebaugh 2016, p.30.
[114] Linebaugh 2016, p.151.
[115] Harvey, 2004, p.74.
[116] Linebaugh 2014, p.1.
[117] Harvey 2004, pp.74-76.
[118] Linebaugh 2016, pp.32-33.
[119] Counterpunch 2006.
[120] Linebaugh 2016, p.68.
[121] Democracy Now! 2006.
[122] Linebaugh 2016, p.69.
[123] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.
[124] Green, 2005.
[125] Brecher 2014, pp.330-335.
[126] Brecher 2014, p.330.
[127] Brecher 2014, p.333.
[128] Lamberson 2016.
[129] Linebaugh 2016, p.18.
[130] PM Press 2016.
[131] Sawant 2017.
[132] Linebaugh 2016, pp.84-85.
[133] Linebaugh 2016, p81.
[134] UEL 2015.
[135] Lindenschmit 2015.
[136] Linebaugh 2016, p68.
[137] Linebaugh 2016, p.157.
[138] Simpson & Weiner 1989, p.62.
[139] Simpson & Weiner 1989, p.61.
[140] Linesbaugh 2016, p.69.
[141] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.
[142] Simpson & Weiner 1989, p.61.
[143] (Linebaugh, 2016, p.70)
[144] (Simpson & Weiner,1989, p.61)
[145] (2016, p.80)
[146] (ibid, p.69)
[147] (Counterpunch, 2016a)
[148] (Counterpunch, 2016b)
[149] Linebaugh 2016, p.75.
[150] Linebaugh 2016, p.73.
[151] Linebaugh 2016, p.72.
[152] Marquez 1978, p.7.
[153] Linebaugh 2016, p81.
[154] Linebaugh 2016, p.69.
[155] Linebaugh 2016, p75.
[156] Linebaugh 2016, p76.
[157] Linebaugh 2016, p.69.
[158] Linebaugh 2016, p.79.
[159] Gott 2015.
[160] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.
[161] Marquard 2016.
[162] New York Times 1981.
[163] Gott 2015.
[164] Linebaugh 2016, p.76.
[165] Linebaugh 2016, p.73.
[166] Linebaugh 2016, p.76.
[167] Linebaugh 2016, p.68.
[168] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.
[169] Linebaugh 2016, p.81.
[170] Linebaugh 2016, p.74.
[171] Briggs 2007.
[172] Linebaugh 2016, p.74.
[173] Linebaugh 2016, p.75.
[174] Norton, 2016.
[175] United Farm Workers unknown.
[176] Linebaugh 2016, p.79.
[177] Associated Press 2015.
[178] Editors The 2016.
[179] New York Times 1892.
[180] Kellner 2007.
[181] Haye 1995, p.171.
[182] Linebaugh 2016, pp.77-78.
[183] Linebaugh 2012, pp108-134.
[184] (Linebaugh, 2016, p.11)
[185] Davidson 2015.
[186] France-Presse 2015.
[187] Marshall 2015a.
[188] Linebaugh & Rediker 2000.
[189] Rosenberg 2015, p.135.
