Bryan D. Palmer is a historian of labor and the Left, and author of the forthcoming James P. Cannon and the Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States, 1929–1939.
When the Great Depression sank workers to new depths, craft unions weren’t up to the task. Then, in 1934, a team of revolutionary leftists in Minneapolis organized a brave and bloody strike that reinvigorated labor and changed the course of American history.
A long history suggests that while the crisis of the moment dictates directing the state’s security resources and personnel toward the Right, this focus will, inevitably, shift back to the Left.
As the world’s premier Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm’s intellectual range was unrivaled. Never one to pander to conventional politics, he was often a brave voice of dissent. Today more than ever, Hobsbawm’s work deserves serious examination.
Minneapolis teamsters in 1934 knew something we should remember — police enforce the ruling class’s unjust order.
The working class has always been divided by varying forms of dispossession. Its strength lies in its collective power.
The radical teamsters of Minneapolis showed what democratic unionism looks like.