26. Juni

Chicago 1886: The Fight for the 8-Hour Day (S2E4)

The Haymarket Affair did not begin with a bomb. It began with a movement. In the years before Haymarket, Chicago became the center of a growing labor revolt as workers demanded shorter hours, greater dignity, and more control over their lives. At the heart of that movement stood a small group of radical organizers: Albert and Lucy Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Lizzie Holmes, and others, figures whose ideas of anarchism, solidarity, and direct action helped transform the campaign for the eight-hour day into one of the largest labor mobilizations in American history. In this episode, we explore the rise of Chicago's anarchist movement, the spread of the Knights of Labor, the impact of mechanization on skilled workers, and the extraordinary events leading to the first May Day on May 1, 1886. Next: Chicago 1886: The Haymarket Affair Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/ Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ Support the Show: PayPal Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

1 Std. 10 Min.

12. Juni

What is Unionism? Building Power From Below (S2E3)

How can workers build power in an economy dominated by giant corporations and monopolies? To explore that question, we turn to the history of unionism and the rise of the American labor movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1905, labor organizers gathered in Chicago to found the Industrial Workers of the World, better known as the Wobblies. Their goal was to unite workers of every trade, skill level, race, nationality, and gender into One Big Union capable of challenging the power of industrial capitalism. In this episode, we trace the origins of that idea through the history of the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, Lucy Parsons, Samuel Gompers, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Along the way, we explore the central debates that shaped the labor movement: craft versus industrial unionism, reform versus revolution, and the challenge of building working-class power in an economy increasingly dominated by concentrated wealth and corporate power. From Chicago to Spokane, this is the story of revolutionary industrial unionism and the movement that sought to transform not only the workplace, but society itself. This is Season Two—The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor Revolt Next: Chicago 1886: The Fight for the Eight-Hour Workday Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/ Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ Support the Show: PayPal Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

47 Min.

29. Mai

Chicago 1877: The Great Railroad Strike (S2E2)

The moment when the belief that the United States was immune to class conflict was shattered. In July 1877, railroad workers across the United States stopped work. What began as a wage dispute in a small rail town in West Virginia quickly became the largest labor uprising in American history. Trains sat idle, freight yards were occupied, and entire cities ground to a halt. In Chicago, unemployed workers, socialists, labor organizers, and immigrant communities joined a movement that seemed capable of bringing the nation’s economy to a standstill. In response, business leaders armed private militias, police opened fire on crowds, and federal troops occupied American cities. The violence of 1877 exposed deep divisions between labor and capital and helped lay the foundations of both the modern labor movement and American anarchism. In this episode, we follow the strike from the rail yards of Martinsburg to the streets of Chicago, where Albert and Lucy Parsons first encountered the movement that would transform their lives and American history. This is Season Two—The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor Revolt Next: What is Unionism? Building Power From Below Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/ Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ Support the Show: PayPal Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

1 Std. 5 Min.

19. Mai

What is Anarchism? Liberty's Great Refusal (S2E1)

Anarchism emerged not simply as a theory, but as a response to hunger, repression, industrial capitalism, and the growing power of the modern state. In this opening episode of Season 2, we trace anarchism's roots in the late nineteenth century, from the aftermath of the Paris Commune to the labor struggles of industrial Chicago. Through figures like Louise Michel, Lucy Parsons, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin, we explore how anarchism evolved from a critique of authority into a mass movement rooted in strikes, unions, and collective action. Along the way, we examine the origins of the black flag, the rise of anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist communism, and the radical vision that inspired workers across the globe to imagine a world beyond capitalism and the state. This is the story of anarchism’s great refusal. This is Season Two—The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor Revolt Next: Chicago 1877: The Great Railroad Strike Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/ Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ Support the Show: PayPal Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

45 Min.

13. Apr. · Bonus

Thoreau’s Plea for John Brown: Conscience Against the State

In the wake of John Brown’s raid, Henry David Thoreau delivered one of the most forceful defenses of moral action in American history. While much of the North recoiled after Harpers Ferry, Thoreau stood up in Concord and defended Brown as a man of principle, willing to act where others would only speak. What follows is a reading of Thoreau’s A Plea for Captain John Brown, one of the clearest expressions of the idea that when a government becomes unjust, the individual conscience may stand above it. This episode serves as a bridge into Season 2 of ISM: The Age of Anarchism and the American Labor Revolt, where these same questions about conscience, resistance, violence, and legitimacy will reappear in new and more collective forms. Next: Season Two — The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor Revolt Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack and Patreon. Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ Support the Show: PayPal Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

1 Std. 7 Min.

23. März · Bonus

Harpers Ferry 1859: John Brown, An American Radical

In October of 1859, a small band of abolitionists led by John Brown seized the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Their goal was simple but audacious: to ignite a mass slave uprising and bring an end to slavery by force. Within 36 hours, the raid had collapsed. Brown’s men were killed, captured, or scattered. Brown himself was wounded, arrested, and sentenced to hang. But Harpers Ferry was never just a failed insurrection. In the aftermath of the raid, something shifted. Across the North, Brown was transformed from criminal to martyr. Across the South, his actions ignited fear, mobilization, and a growing sense that war was no longer avoidable. The illusion that slavery could be contained, or compromised with, began to dissolve. This episode traces the rise and fall of John Brown: from the violent struggles of Bleeding Kansas, to the quiet planning of his final campaign, to the last stand at the Engine House, and the trial that turned him into a national symbol. But more than that, it asks a deeper question: What happens when a political problem becomes a moral one? And what happens when a nation begins to believe that justice may require violence? From Harpers Ferry to the Civil War, and beyond, this is the story of how one man’s radical act helped transform the moral language of the United States and how that transformation would echo far beyond the abolition of slavery. Because the questions raised at Harpers Ferry did not end in 1865. They moved. This is an ISM Interlude on John Brown and the American Radical Tradition. Next: Thoreau’s Plea for John Brown — Conscience Against the State Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack and Patreon. Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ Support the Show: PayPal Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

1 Std. 12 Min.

3. Feb.

Marxism vs. Anarchism: The Question of the State (S1E9)

What began as a family quarrel within socialism would become a permanent schism that would shape every revolution that followed. When sailors at Kronstadt rose to demand “All power to the soviets, not the parties,” they believed they were defending the true legacy of 1917. Instead, they were crushed by the Red Army on the frozen ice of the Gulf of Finland, exactly fifty years after the Paris Commune had first been declared. For many revolutionaries watching in horror, Kronstadt marked the moment when the promise of socialism hardened into one-party rule. This episode traces the long road to that rupture. From the ashes of the Paris Commune to the collapse of the First International, socialism’s first generation wrestled with a question that would define the modern left: Can the state be used to liberate the working class? Or must it be abolished altogether? Through the ideas and conflicts of Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, and through the lived experiences of figures like Louise Michel, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman, we follow how a shared revolutionary tradition fractured into two opposing visions. Marx and his allies argued that capitalism’s centralized power could only be defeated by an organized, disciplined workers’ movement capable of seizing the state and transforming it from within. Bakunin and the anarchists insisted that power itself was the enemy—that any revolutionary state would inevitably reproduce domination, hierarchy, and terror. These disagreements, once theoretical, were forged into doctrine by defeat, exile, and bloodshed. From The Hague Congress of 1872 to the repression of Kronstadt in 1921, and from the Bolshevik victory in Petrograd to the anarchist collectives of Spain, this episode follows the hardening of that divide and the human costs on both sides. The question of the state was never settled. But its consequences would carry across centuries and continents. This is Season One—The Origins of Socialism: Paris and the Making of Modern Revolution Next: Season Two—The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor Revolt Written and produced by Matt Payne. Original Musical score by Ian Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/ Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ Support the Show: PayPal Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

34 Min.

27. Jan.

Paris 1871: The Death of the Commune (S1E8)

For 72 days, the Paris Commune turned the capital into a living experiment in working-class democracy. Parks opened, palaces became public space, newspapers and clubs exploded with debate, and a wave of reforms tried to remake daily life from the ground up: secular schools, cooperative workshops, equal pay in the National Guard, and a new vision of the “social republic.” But outside the city walls, Versailles gathered an army, and the dream of peaceful federation gave way to civil war. Inside the Hôtel de Ville, the Commune’s contradictions sharpened into open conflict. Jacobins demanded unity and discipline. Blanquists pressed for emergency powers. Internationalists and Proudhonists resisted anything that resembled a new state. As shells fell and bread ran thin, fear began to replace the exhilaration of March. The Decree on Hostages, the return of a Committee of Public Safety, and the tightening grip of censorship exposed a brutal question that had haunted every revolution since 1793: how does a movement built on liberty survive when surrounded? Then, on May 21, as Parisians gathered for a concert in the Tuileries, Versailles troops slipped quietly through an undefended gate. What followed was not a conventional battle, but a methodical annihilation as Versailles conquered Paris district by district. The week would end in massacre, executions, and fire: the Tuileries in flames, the Hôtel de Ville reduced to ash, the Commune’s leaders hunted down, and tens of thousands of working people crushed in the streets. In the aftermath, the revolution would put on trial, especially in the figure of Louise Michel, who refused repentance and claimed the Commune as “the Social Revolution” itself. And from the ruins of Paris, the left would inherit its defining divide as Marx and Bakunin both hailed the Commune but drew opposite lessons—centralism versus federation, discipline versus spontaneity, the workers’ state versus the negation of the state. The Commune lasted seventy-two days, but its fires would continue to burn for a century. This is Season One—The Origins of Socialism: Paris and the Making of Modern Revolution Next: Marxism vs. Anarchism: The Question of the State Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/ Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ Support the Show: PayPal Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

56 Min.

ISM | Ideas Meet Power

Chicago 1886: The Fight for the 8-Hour Day (S2E4)

What is Unionism? Building Power From Below (S2E3)

Chicago 1877: The Great Railroad Strike (S2E2)

What is Anarchism? Liberty's Great Refusal (S2E1)

Thoreau’s Plea for John Brown: Conscience Against the State

Harpers Ferry 1859: John Brown, An American Radical

Marxism vs. Anarchism: The Question of the State (S1E9)

Paris 1871: The Death of the Commune (S1E8)

Trailer

Introducing ISM: Ideas Meet Power

Info

Informationen

ISM | Ideas Meet Power

Folgen

Chicago 1886: The Fight for the 8-Hour Day (S2E4)

What is Unionism? Building Power From Below (S2E3)

Chicago 1877: The Great Railroad Strike (S2E2)

What is Anarchism? Liberty's Great Refusal (S2E1)

Thoreau’s Plea for John Brown: Conscience Against the State

Harpers Ferry 1859: John Brown, An American Radical

Marxism vs. Anarchism: The Question of the State (S1E9)

Paris 1871: The Death of the Commune (S1E8)

Trailer

Info

Informationen