Strung Out Episode 115. WHY LABOR DAY MAKES ME SEE RED.

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In the United States, we have this odd holiday, called Labor Day.  Labor Day was created because the day for labor, May Day was considered too "anarchist and socialist" after the Haymarket Affair took place in Chicago.  There were a lot of people; anarchists, socialists and even communists helping to form the fledging labor movement in the US.   At that point in history, such ideas were fresh and untested.  But this was the Gilded Age, and the Robber Barons were not going to concede to the need of the humble worker.  These new concepts were dangerous and needed to be brought to heel. 

The Haymarket Affair, in which a peaceful rally to create an eight-hour workday was thwarted by a confrontation between police, workers and someone who threw a bomb. The result was a taint that has stayed with us in the United States until today.  

What resulted was that labor throughout the world, embraced the May Day rally as a cause for the working person.  In Chicago and the rest of the United States, May Day was distanced for the very reason it was embraced elsewhere.  The result is this confusion about labor, about the terms conceived by Marx (including the term capitalism) and this lack of understanding of how our economic system is markedly different from our political system.   

We attempt to cut through the hyperbole with history and expert analysis and just plain definitions of what these terms mean. 

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