Today In Labor History March 26, 1872: French individualist anarchist Émile Armand was born. He wrote about and agitated for free love and polyamory, pacifism, and against war and militarism. He wrote for and edited L'Ère nouvelle (1901–1911), L'Anarchie, L'En-Dehors (1922–1939) and L'Unique (1945–1953).
Today in Labor History March 3, 1873: U.S. Congress enacted the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene literature and articles of immoral use" through the mail. This included any literature discussing birth control. The authorities imprisoned many birth control and free love advocates for violating the law, including Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger.
Today in Labor History January 21, 1525: Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz and George Blaurock founded the Swiss Anabaptist movement by baptizing each other and breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union. The Anabaptists were considered Radical Reformers. They preached against hate, killing, violence, taking oaths, participating in use of force or any military actions and against participation in civil government. They also believed in separation of church and state. However, some Anabaptists went even further, like those in the Munster Commune, who called for the absolute equality of man in all matters, including the distribution of wealth. They called upon the poor of the region to join them in sharing all the wealth of the town. Many also believed in polygamy and free love. Not surprisingly, both the Roman Catholics and the nascent Lutherans persecuted them heavily. This history is wonderfully portrayed in the epic novel, “Q” by the Italian fiction collective, Luther Blissett.
Today in Labor History January 11, 1804: The Sussex Examiner reported that the English authorities tried poet & painter William Blake for saying “Damn the king and damn his soldiers.” Blake was both religious and hostile to the Church & organized religion. His poetry often embodied rebellion against class power. He disdained the blighting and impoverishing effects of the Industrial Revolution. He despised slavery and was a proponent of free love. Some consider him an early proponent of what would later be called anarchism.
Today in Labor History August 4, 1792: Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born. He promoted freedom of speech, ending aristocratic and clerical privilege, and equal distribution of income and wealth. He was also a vegetarian, advocate for free love and an atheist, who wrote about the link between organized religion and social repression. His poems and political writings were admired by Marx, Gandhi and others. His poem The Mask of Anarchy (1819) was the first modern work to support nonviolent protest. It was recited by students at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and by protesters in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution of 2011. Shelley wrote The Mask of Anarchy following the Peterloo Massacre (8/16/1819), when the British cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand political representation, killing 13. He was married to, Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein.
The Mask of Anarchy:
Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!