Overview

A dramatic, deeply researched account of how legal repression and vigilantism brought down the Wobblies—and how the destruction of their union haunts us to this day. In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim of the most remarkable campaign of legal repression and vigilantism in American history. Under the Iron Heel is the first comprehensive account of this campaign. Founded in 1905, the IWW offered to the millions of workers aggrieved by industrial capitalism the promise of a better world. But its growth, coinciding with World War I and the Russian Revolution and driven by uncompromising militancy, was seen by powerful capitalists and government officials as an existential threat that had to be eliminated. In Under the Iron Heel, Ahmed White documents the torrent of legal persecution and extralegal, sometimes lethal violence that shattered the IWW. In so doing, he reveals the remarkable courage of those who faced this campaign, lays bare the origins of the profoundly unequal and conflicted nation we know today, and uncovers disturbing truths about the law, political repression, and the limits of free speech and association in class society.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ahmed White
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.680kg
ISBN:  

9780520382404

ISBN 10:   0520382404
Pages:   360
Publication Date:   25 October 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

Contents Introduction Face to Face with Tragedy  1. Socialism with Its Working Clothes On     Industrial Capitalism, Radical Unionism, and the Roots of Repression 2. Protecting the Business People     Class, Law, and the Criminalization of Radical Industrial Unionism 3. In the War of Capital against Labor Someone Must Suffer     The War and the IWW 4. I’ll Take neither Mercy nor Pity      Repression and the IWW during the Red Scare 5. Dealing the Death Blow      Repression and the IWW after the Red Scare 6. Between the Drowning and the Broken      Punishment, Law, and the Legacies of Repression Conclusion A Vision We Don’t Possess Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index  

Reviews

A comprehensive account of the campaign waged by the American state to destroy the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or 'Wobblies') in the decade surrounding the First World War. . . . Harrowing reading. * World Socialist Website *

Author Information

Ahmed White teaches labor and criminal law at the University of Colorado Boulder and is author of The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America.

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