Radicalism

Karl Marx - reserve

1813 - Robert Owen published his New View of Society, and began the practice of socialism at New Lanark, Scotland. In 1825 he established the socialist community of New Harmony in Indiana.

1838 - William Lovett drafted the People's Charter for electoral reform in Britain.

1840 - Perre-Joseph Proudhon became the first anarchist with his assertion that "property is theft" in his 1840 book What Is Property?

1841 - George Ripley applied the socialist ideas of Charles Fourier at the Transcendental utopian community of Brook Farm in West Roxbury, MA.

1844 - Friedrich Engels published Condition of the Workng Classes in England.

1848 - Karl Marx published in Feb. The Communist Manifesto, began writing articles for Charles Dana, the socialist editor of the New York Daily Tribune, published in 1867 Das Kapital

1866 - In Geneva, the first congress was held of the International Workingmen's Association that had been founded two years earlier in London. This congress would be called the First International, and passed a resolution calling for the eight-hour day. The Second International was held in Belgium in 1889, and the Third International, or Comintern, was founded in 1919 by Lenin

1871 - Paris Commune organized according to the ideas of Marx and Engels.

1872 - Friedrich Sorge led the International Workingmen's Association that had been moved from London to New York by Marx and Engels. The IWA merged with other workers parties in 1876 in Philadelphia to form the Workingmen's Party of the United States that became the SLP the next year.

1875 - In Germany, Social Demoratic party (SDP) founded by Ferdinand Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, based on the ideas of Ferdinand Lasselle and Karl Marx; was banned by Bismarck, but grew after 1890 to become the majority party in the Reishstag by 1912.

1877 - The Socialistic Labor Party was formed at Newark NJ out of the Workingmen's Party and named Phillip Van Patten as its first secretary. In 1890, its name changed to the Social Labor Party. This organization formed the Central lLabor Federation in 1890 and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance in 1895 that rejected the reform unionism of the AFL.

1880 - In Belgium, the Second International Congress met with Wilhelm Liebknecht of the German SPD and representatives of other socialist parties to promote trade unions and political parties in Europe. This led to the 1889 Congress in Paris.

1881 - In England, H. M. Hyndman formed the Social Democratic Federation, the first Marxist political group in Britain.

1883 - In England, the socialist debating club called the Fabian Society was formed by Edith Nesbit and Hubert Bland and Edward Pease.

1886 - The Union Labor party candidate Henry George ran for mayor of New York City and won 68,000 votes, second to the winner Abram S. Hewitt, but more than the votes of the third-place Republican candidate Theodore Roosevelt.

1887 - Four anarchists executed Nov. 11 (Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, George Englel) for the 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago.

1888 - Emma Goldman began her speaking tour organized by Johann Most.

1889 -In Paris, the International Socialist Congress met with delegates from 20 countries, created a new Socialist International, declared support for May Day as an international worker's holiday as proclaimed by the AFL in St. Louis in 1888 to recognize the great general strike of May 1, 1886, for the eight-hour day.

1890 - Edward Bellamy, the author of the 1887 utopian novel Looking Backward, was supported by a Commonwealth Party in New York state elections.

1892 - Daniel De Leon became editor of The People, had joined the SLP in 1890.

1893 - western miners organized the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and broke away from the AFL in 1897. Big Bill Haywood led strikes at Couer d'Alene, Idaho, and Cripple Creek, Colorado.

1894 - In France, anarchist Sante Jeronimo Caserio stabbed to death French President Sadi Carnot.

1900 - In England, the new Labour Party was created Feb. 27 by representatives of the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, the Independent Labour Party, and hosted by the Trades Union Congress.

1901 - In Italy, Italian-American immigrant anarchist Gaetano Bresci on July 29 assassinated King Humbert I of Italy. In Buffalo NY, at the anarchist Leon Czolgosz on Sept. 6 assassinated President William McKinley with two shots from a .32 caliber Iver-Johnson revolver (one shot was deflected by a button, the other shot hit the pancreas and kidney and caused the infection that killed McKinley Sept. 14)

1903 - Free Speech League founded.

1905 - IWW founded.

1908 - Roger Baldwin heard Emma Goldman speak on free Speech in St. Louis, inspired him to become a founder of the ACLU. Ben Reitman became Emma's road manager and lover, and Emma expanded her radical speeches to include free love, birth control, and women's rights. - handbill

1912 - San Diego jailed 150 IWW members in the largest confrontation over free speech in pre-war America. Emma Goldman and Ben Reitman were in a San Diego hotel room when vigilantes abducted Reitman and tarred him and branded him with letters IWW. - Mother Earth

1914 - In France, pacifist Socialist Jean Jaures was assasinated the day before mobilization. Many radicals in France followed the militant nationalism of Georges Clemenceau, Rene Viviani and Aristide Briand.

1916 - In Germany, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht created the Spartacus League that later evolved into the German Communist Party. The Socialist movement was split by pro-war and anti-war groups, and the Second International was dissolved.

1916 - In San Francisco, the Preparedness Day parade July 22 was the target of a bomb explosion killing 10 and wounding 40 in the worst terrorist act in San Francisco history. Two known radical labor leaders were arrested, Thomas Mooney and Warren K. Billings, convicted and later their sentences commuted to imprisonment.

1917 - Emma Goldman arrested June 5 for opposing the war with her No-Conscription League that encouraged resistance to the draft.

1917 - In Russia, the March Revolution replaced the Czar with the Provisional Government of socialist Alexander Kerensky. In November, Lenin came to power in the Bolshevik Revolution.    

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Photos:

Emma Goldman handbill from Emma Goldman Papers

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revised 11/1/06 by Schoenherr | WWI Timeline | Links | Topics | Maps | Reserve