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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36419 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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In the US, real wages for young men rose by upwards of 50% (some sources suggest 100%) in the period between 1914-1920 due to labor market tightness. It was, in all likelihood, one of the fastest rises in real incomes anywhere in history. In the UK, there were also smaller real increases, certainly much larger than during the preceding fifteen years.

Elsewhere, especially in France and Italy (which produced so many anarchists), postwar governments and employers reacted to the Bolshevik revolution and high rates of inflation in 1918-1920 by giving industrial workers a lot of what they wanted, including shorter working days and better pay. When the postwar recession hit in 1920-1922, unions were in disarray and some extant socialist movements were torn over events in Russia, and workers had already negotiated better conditions in many cases.

All true, though this burst in prosperity was of course followed shortly by a pretty incredible dip in living conditions during the Great Depression. And socialist movements did indeed rise again in this era, and even continued to raised heck across the western world during the latter-mid century when living conditions were actually pretty good - but anarchism never had a comparable resurgence.

I think basically, though, that you're right: it's a combination of living/working conditions getting a lot better while dissent got cracked down upon, along with @Stefferi's point that anywhere that revolution actually was possible, socialists pretty literally defeated anarchists on the battlefield, and their ability to create viable socialist societies acted as PR that suctioned directionless leftists into their orbit who in another era might have followed the road to Catalonia.

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