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The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke with Mark Kruger about his new book, The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Douglas Lyons: Mark, could you tell us something about your background and how you became interested in this little-known yet extraordinary and revolutionary event in American history?

Mark Kruger: Thanks very much for inviting me. I went to college at the University of Wisconsin in Madison during the late 60s and that was a life changing event, just being on that campus then. After that I went to law school at Washington University in St. Louis and then later received a PhD from Saint Louis University.

Through the years in reading labor history, I kept coming across these short remarks about how during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 workers seized power in St. Louis. I had to wait until my retirement when I had time to sit down and look at it to begin to try to piece together the answers to some of those questions. So, the subject was on my mind for a number of years but it was really about four years ago that I began to really research it and delve into it.

DL: Were you involved in left-wing, working class politics?

MK: I formed a group that would go after individual kinds of problems, political, environmental, that sort of thing. For a while I was involved with the Workers League [forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party]. They came down from New York and sponsored a talk on campus on the Vietnam War. And also, the YSA [the youth organization of the Socialist Workers Party]. I always liked the Black Panther Party because they had that class analysis, so I began selling their newspapers on the Washington University campus.

DL: What's so important about your book is that you put the St. Louis Commune in the international context of the First International, the Paris Commune of 1871 and the 1848 revolutionaries. I was wondering if you can explain more about this influence on the American working class.

MK: As I got into it, I realized that this was almost more of a European event than it was an American event, because the roots of the St. Louis Commune were in Europe and that you had to look at those events to understand the Commune. So, for example, you had the 1848 revolutions throughout Europe but especially in the German-speaking states and after that was suppressed those people moved to the United States and many of them settled in St. Louis because the city had a very long history of German immigration. It was very attractive to German immigrants to come here because there were a lot of people who spoke their language and had their culture. All of those things were present.

You had all these revolutionaries from the German-speaking areas coming to St. Louis, as well as Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Chicago and other places. Then, in 1871, the Paris Commune was suppressed. A lot of those people also came to the United States, many of them settling in St. Louis because it was originally a very French city.

Marx formed the First International in 1864, and that moved headquarters to the United States in 1872. So, you had a thread between all these revolutionaries where they were all members, or mostly members, of the First International. And it came together in the city. St. Louis had a very strong section of the International with German, French, Bohemian, and British or English-speaking sections. You had all of these European influences that ultimately resulted in the St. Louis general strike that grew out of the Railroad Strike of 1877.

DL: What was the city itself like? Could you compare it to others such as Chicago or Pittsburgh?

MK: It was the fourth-largest city in the country and growing by leaps and bounds. There were even efforts to move the nations capital to St. Louis. The city was big in manufacturing. It had large iron ore deposits in the Carondelet area of the city. It rivaled Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Birmingham, Alabama in steel production. There was massive trade going through the city into the West and South. Hence, its claimed today to be the Gateway to the West.

St. Louis is sort of a mix between a northern and southern city and some people have joked that it combined the best of northern hospitality with southern efficiency. It was a racist city, but at the time it was a very racist country so that was not unusual. But before the Civil War, because of the German immigrants, there was a very strong anti-slavery feeling to the city and as a result there was strong support for the Republican Party and strong support for Abraham Lincoln.

The state of Missouri on the other hand was very conservative, very Confederate in the southern and western parts of the state. St. Louis was kind of an island in this sea of Confederacy. The governor of Missouri during the Civil War was Claiborne Jackson who was a Confederate sympathizer, trying to get Missouri to join the Confederacy. St. Louis residents resisted, especially the Germans, many of whom became Union generals and very strong Unionists.

DL: Your book does a fantastic job covering Joseph Weydemeyer, a German revolutionary and friend of Karl Marx. Were there other prominent 1848ers in St. Louis?

MK: In St. Louis, the big hero was Franz Sigel. There is still a statue to him in Forest Park. He had been in the Prussian army and then took part in the 1848 revolutions and at one time considered going to Italy to fight in the revolution there, but instead came to the United States and fought for the Union during the Civil War. To this day he is still a hero among the German-descent citizens here.

DL: Why did these German revolutionaries support Lincoln?

new wsws title from Mehring Books

The New York Times 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History

A left-wing, socialist critique of the 1619 Project with essays, lectures, and interviews with leading historians of American history.

MK: Lincoln kind of fit into the Marxist perspective of the capitalists taking control from feudalists in the South. Marx would support that as part of the progressive movement toward socialism. So, Lincoln was a very progressive figure and was supported by a lot of these German revolutionaries.

DL: You mentioned racism in St. Louis and Missouri, but, during the strike, white and black workers united along class lines, as did different nationalities.

MK: Its always hard to put your yourself in the place of people 150 years ago. You get bits and pieces, like a puzzle, and you try to give an idea of what something looked like. But 1877 was a very racist time and you had a young working class in the United States. Slaves were only recently freed, and as a result, a lot of the early unions were racist in nature. Most unions did not allow blacks. Blacks formed their own unions in many cases. Only later did we overcome that. The Knights of Labor and the National Labor Union (NLU) were two unions that went out and specifically attempted to organize women and black people, which was very unusual 150 years ago. The NLU was immense in its membership, having about 800,000 members. They were two unions that tried to organize on the basis of class rather than race.

What emerged in St. Louis in 1877 was a coming together of black and white people in the general strike. You had black workers on the bargaining committee that met with the railroad owners. You had white workers supporting black steamship workers and helped them get a 50 percent raise in wages. You had blacks marching with whites through the streets. The newspapers at the time were full of descriptions of black hordes marching with white people and taking over society, so the Commune actually brought together black and white workers in a class focus.

DL: One episode which definitely showed the evolution of American society was when two former Union and Confederate generals united and took orders from the government to squash the revolutionaries.

MK: When I saw that a Union general and a Confederate general were both chosen to lead the forces against the St. Louis community, against the workers, I thought how symbolic is that: Two former enemies that were killing each other came together now to suppress the workers. In the antebellum South, the generals supported the southern plantation owners, the feudal interests. In the North, the capitalist class was emerging, and they controlled their own forces, so when the North won the Civil War and the northern capitalists took control of the American government, the army then was going to follow the orders and support the interests of that ruling class. The new enemy was not slaveowners in the South; the new enemy of those capitalists was the working class.

DL: Can you talk more about the labor movement after the Civil War and how it coalesced around the international trends you study?

MK: At that time, what was happening in Europe and in the United States was a big change in the working class with the industrial revolution and new machinery in the factories. A lot of the skilled workers were being forced into factories as wage earners. Before they were earning a pretty good wage and they controlled their own lives and working conditions. But now their skills were not valued, and as a result their higher wages were lowered because they were just running the machines like any unskilled worker.

Low wages and bad working conditions were ubiquitous all through American industry. This is a very young working class that really is searching for its consciousness. At the same time, you have all these German and French revolutionaries coming to the United States and joining the working class and trying to instill this class consciousness in the workers and unite them.

DL: Why do you think the Great Railroad Strike followed a spontaneous course, and why did it draw in skilled and unskilled workers, white and black workers, and the unemployed?

MK: Conditions were so bad for the working class at that time. The railroad industry plays a big part in the book because the working conditions were so dangerous and with the three pay cuts in 1877. But the whole working class was really suffering. There was no social safety net. If you could not buy coal to heat your house, then you would freeze to death. If you could not buy food, you would starve to death, and that was a pretty general situation. All it took was one spark and then everybody who was in the same boat began to react. These strikes began happening in Martinsburg, West Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland, and then spreading west from there. It was all spontaneous and within a week it had reached California. That is how fast it was moving.

DL: But in St. Louis the Workingmens Party (WP) harnessed this eruption.

MK: Workers did form, out of the First International, the Workingmens Party of the United States, but in 1877 it was only a year old. You have got a young party that is watching this, and they are taken by surprise. In the eastern states it happened too fastthey could not react to it but in St. Louis it took a few days to reach the city and the party tried to provide some leadership. They organized a general strike, and when the city was abandoned, they took it over. But they were not ready to take leadership and make it a national movement, rather than individual movements in different localities.

DL: The demands of the WP, such as nationalization of the railroads and telegraph industries under the control of the working class, underscore the influence of the First International.

MK: The 1848 revolutionaries that came to St. Louis provided the philosophy of class consciousness that was otherwise lacking among workers in the city. You had with the WP a radical leadership. James Cope was one of the leaders and he was a member of the London, England trades council before he came to the city. Albert Currlin was a member of the First International and a founder of the party. Twenty percent of the WP lived in St. Louis, so you had a lot of revolutionaries and radicals, and that had the effect of changing what was a strike over wages and working conditions into something broader. These were Marxists that recognized this was a struggle between classes that was emerging, and they tried to provide that leadership and that philosophy to educate the workers.

The WP held these mass meetings where a number of speakers were talking about not just wages and working conditions such as the eight-hour day and the end to child labor, but also planned out the takeover of these different industries to be run for the benefit of the working class rather than a few rich capitalists. They infused the philosophy of socialism.

DL: This era was termed the Gilded Age, and today the term the Second Gilded Age is being used to describe the state of society. What similarities do you see between 1877 and today and what do you think will happen when another working class uprising happens in the United States?

In Depth

The New York Times 1619 Project

The Times Project is a politically-motivated falsification of history. It presents the origins of the United States entirely through the prism of racial conflict.

MK: There were so many things about the Gilded Age that are similar to today. The expansion of capitalism, the control of the government by the capitalists, the suppression of working class organizations. And today unions are at their weakest point they have been in many years. You have voter suppression and a tremendous gap in wealth between the capitalists and the workers. A lot of the conditions are there for a struggle to emerge.

When I was a kid, I grew up in a very working class town just north of Chicago which has become infamous in recent days Kenosha, Wisconsin, the city of [fascist killer] Kyle Rittenhouse. The town was extremely working class. American Motors was headquartered there and so was Simmons Mattress. Everyone it seemed belonged to a union and all of my friendsall of their fathers belonged to unions, and they all lived in middle-class neighborhoods, a very middle-class life. That was the post-war period when the economy was good, and the unions were strong.

When I was a sophomore in Madison in 1968, I thought there was going to be a revolution before I graduated college. People were talking about what are you going to do after the revolution. But today is similar to 1877, nobody expected it to break out when it did and so that could happen at any time.

I think that what was lacking in St. Louis in 1877, which is lacking today, is a leadership that was socialist, was Marxist. There was a Workers Party there, which attempted to lead this uprising. But it was young and inexperienced. I think a socialist leadership is necessary if something is going to happen now.

DL: We saw the immense power of the youth and workers after the horrendous murder of George Floyd. That was a huge spontaneous uprising sending shockwaves throughout the entire world. But I would have to disagree with you on the leadership, because we have the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party.

I would also have to argue that the trade unions have not done anything for workers. They are going along with the capitalist class to keep workers in COVID-infested workplaces and schools for profit. We are calling on the working class to create new organizations of struggle based on internationalism and socialism, rank-and-file committees. This will not come through the corporatist and nationalist AFL-CIO and other unions.

MK: I think you are right. When we talked about the earlier movements, leadership is so important. When the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged, one of the things that they stressed was a lack of leadership. And they were proud of that. The first thing that entered my mind was the Students for a Democratic Society meetings in the 1960s, where there was no leadership in those meetings. It went on for hours and hours and hours, and accomplished very little. The leadership of a socialist organization like yours I think is crucial to any kind of working class movement.

Marx talked about building up workers organizations and then a workers party, and he said that if workers supported any of the mainstream parties, the capitalist parties, they would be exploited by those parties for their votes but they would not get anything in return. And that seems to me to be exactly what has happened in this country. It is going to take some real leadership, I think, in order to point the working class in the direction of class interests rather than just a few more dollars or one hour less of a workday.

That is totally related to my biggest fear right now and that is the emergence of fascism in the United States. This is being fed by the Republican Party today. The threat is a lot stronger than I think a lot of people realize.

DL: This brings me to the other capitalist party that divides the working class through identity politics, the Democratic Party, which, through its main organ, the New York Times, has waged a falsification of history in the 1619 Project. What are your thoughts on this?

MK: I did read a number of those articles and interviews that are in your book, and to me it is so simplistic and wrong to say that race is the one factor that has defined all of history. History is so complicated, and there are so many different things going on at the same time. It takes a great deal of thinking and research to try to understand what forces are at work and what effect they were having.

To me, the 1619 Project is the logical consequence of identity politics. I do not say that looking at certain groups or focusing on them to understand those groups is not important, for example, the Black Power movement. I think it serves some ends in understanding what has happened to that particular group. Courses on womens history helps women understand why they have been repressed in the society. But it is not the answer to the ultimate question.

The claim that the American Revolution was primarily in order to preserve slavery in the United States, is, to me, ridiculous. It totally ignores the Enlightenment. All the leaders of the American Revolution were students of the Enlightenment, children of the Enlightenment. The 1619 Project does not touch the issue that the purpose of colonies was to exploit them and provide profits for the mother country. You had the fledgling capitalist corporations in England setting up colonies, and the whole idea was to take as much from them as possible and line your pockets with that exploitation.

There are a number of factors that go into the American Revolution. A lot of the colonists were slaveowners. But we are talking about the 1700s, and there were slaves all over the world at the time, not just in what was to become the United States. So to say that a countrys entire history is based on its treatment of black people I think is very simplistic, very one dimensional. And what it has is the effect of dividing the working class into a number of different groups, each with their own interest, each with their own complaints, and failing to see the common denominator.

I just read a book by Les Payne called The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X. No one was more race conscious in his earlier years than Malcolm X. He attributed all the problems of black people to the blonde-haired blue-eyed devil, white people. An extremely racist-focused interpretation of history. But then he began to change in his later years. There were a couple of things in the book that caught my attention: Malcolm told [civil rights leader and later Congressman] John Lewis in Nairobi, Kenya, to shift focus from race to class. Malcolm came to a certain understanding that class and capitalism lead to racism, rather than it being some kind of natural thing, a natural conflict between white people and black people. I think that is where the 1619 Project goes wrong. It just focuses on one thing, tries to draw conclusions based on one element in American history, and that is much too narrow and much too simplistic to explain anything.

DL: Martin Luther King Jr. moved towards a class analysis of society as well, which the 1619 Project completely ignores.

MK: Right, they went from marches in the South for black civil rights to the Poor Peoples Campaign, trying to unite black and white workers. It may be a coincidence, but that raises the question of his assassination, when he started this campaign. This raises a point with the Workingmens Party. For them the problem of racism and the repression of women would all be solved when capitalism was ended, the basic problem that led to both of those problems was capitalism.

DL: Thank you for the opportunity to talk about this important book and subject.

MK: Thank you for having me. Its not everybody that is interested in a weeklong event that occurred in St. Louis 150 years ago. But I always thought that the first general strike in American history, and the only time an American city was being run by communists, was pretty interesting.

Read more here:
An interview with Mark Kruger, author of The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland - WSWS

Christiane Taubira, the former Socialist justice minister who won a so-called popular primary of the French left and environmentalists on Sunday night, has said the poll would be the last chance for a possible union of the left.

The primary was intended to whittle the number of left and Green candidates in the French presidential race from seven down to one. But feuding contestants refused to accept the results and the exercise in futility increased chaos and confusion, 2 months before the election.

Sandrine Rousseau, who lost the Greens primary last September, told Le Monde: Every day, or almost, some new variable complicates the equation on the left. The sudden appearance of Christiane Taubira, the ambiguity created by [former Socialist president] Franois Hollande [about his possible candidacy] . . . Collectively, we look ridiculous.

The online primary was organised by the environmentalist activist Mathilde Imer (31) and Samuel Grzbowski (29), a leftist Catholic, because they were, Imer said, fed up with losing elections and watching the progression of voter abstention.

While only 23 per cent of respondents showed any interest in the popular primary in an Ifop poll published on January 20th, 392,738 people nonetheless voted in the three-day election. Taubira was the only one of the top five candidates who promised to accept the results and pull out of the race if she lost.

The others claimed the primary was a scheme to promote Taubira, who did not declare herself a presidential candidate until January 15th. Her victory on Sunday night changed nothing, they said, refusing to rally behind her. Taubira denounced the others lack of respect for the process.

The economic daily Les chos prints a daily barometer of voter intentions, compiled by the Opinion Way polling company. Mondays poll still showed the left and Greens at the bottom of the pile in projected first-round results. President Emmanuel Macron is steady at 24 per cent while his three conservative and far-right challengers are at 17 and 13 per cent.

Despite Taubiras victory in the poll, Jean-Luc Mlenchon, an accomplished orator and showman from the far left, is leading the losers pack at 10 per cent. Taubira and the Green MEP Yannick Jadot are tied at 5 per cent, while the official Socialist candidate and mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, and the Communist candidate Fabien Roussel, are at 3 per cent too low to recoup their election expenses.

Hidalgo and Jadot won Socialist and Green primaries last year. Hidalgo is at war with Olivier Faure, the secretary-general of her own party. Faure reportedly hopes that Hidalgos poor performance in the poll she ranked fifth will force her to drop out of the race.

In December, Hidalgo briefly defended the idea of the popular primary before concluding that it was a vehicle for Taubira. Hidalgo said she would participate, but only if Jadot also accepted the results, which he categorically refused to do. Mlenchon denounced the primary as obscure tricks to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

The Covid pandemic has fostered a greater desire for a protective state, public services, and social justice. Rising inflation has made purchasing power a leading concern of French voters, along with global warming. These themes ought to favour the left and Greens, at a time when the right is obsessed with immigration, security and identity politics. But there is a disconnect between voter concerns and left and Green politicians, who lack charisma.

The French Socialist Party was founded at the Congrs dpinay 50 years ago last June and its glory days were during Franois Mitterrands 1981-1995 presidency, with a brief revival under Lionel Jospins plural left government from 1997 until 2002. The Socialist leader Franois Hollande was elected in 2012 because the electorate rejected Nicolas Sarkozy. His term was a huge disappointment.

This movement was one of the great components of European life for generations of workers, intellectuals and citizens, the philosopher Pierre Manent told Europe 1 radio station, lamenting the pathetic perplexity which has seized French socialism.

The Socialist candidate Benot Hamon won only 6.36 per cent of the vote in the last presidential election. The partys membership has shrunk from 111,450 in 2016 to 22,000 at present.

It appears that political parties, like individuals and states, are incapable of learning from their past. As the left heads for disaster in April, many are again blaming Taubira for sowing division. Had she not insisted on standing for a splinter party in 2002, the Socialist prime minister Jospin would have made it to the runoff and might have defeated Jacques Chirac.

The shambles on the French left is all the more striking because Social Democrat parties are in power in Denmark, Germany where Greens also play a prominent role and Sweden, and Socialists lead the governments of Portugal and Spain.

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'Popular primary' does nothing to mitigate shambles on French left - The Irish Times

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According to a new dirt sheet rumor, WWE has run out of people to fire and is now firing people who don't even work there! Shane McMahon, who is reportedly not under contract to WWE, has reportedly been fired by the company for ruining the Royal Rumble!

Greetings, comrades! It is I, your El Presidente, bringing you the latest wrestling news and hot goss burning up the dirt sheets and the IWC. This latest report comes from the always-reliable Ringside News, claiming that Vince McMahon has "quietly" fired Shane McMahon after the Best in the World was blamed for botching the Royal Rumble booking. Haw haw haw haw! Someone has got to take the fall, comrade!

This year's Rumble was disappointing to most viewers, not because it was particularly worse than the rest of WWE's terrible weekly programming, but because people tend to have higher expectations for the Rumble. While the Women's Royal Rumble match at least featured multiple legends to garner nostalgia pops and the return of Ronda Rousey so that fans can boo her as a babyface while WWE inserts fake crowd noise from the WWE 2k video game series to make it seem like people are actually cheering, the Men's Royal Rumble match was an absolute wasteland of boring wrestlers, boring action, and a predictable and boring outcome as Brock Lesnar returned to win the Rumble.

The only "surprise" in the match was the return of Shane McMahon himself, who, according to backstage rumors, was also heavily involved in producing the match, and the wrestlers involved were just as disappointed as fans were. When the Royal Rumble, meant to kick off the excitement of WrestleMania season, otherwise known as the only time of year WWE comes close to being entertaining, went over like a wet fart, someone had to take the fall.

And so, according to Ringside News, Shane McMahon has been "quietly let go" by his own father, Vince McMahon, despite rumors Shane would appear regularly on WWE Raw and have a match at WrestleMania. But there's just one problem: even by the admission of Ringside News itself in the same report, Shane McMahon isn't actually an employee of WWE. So how can you fire someone who doesn't even technically work there? Well, comrades, when it comes to WWE, if there's a will, there's a way. Besides, it's better than Vince McMahon taking ultimate responsibility for producing a bland and boring product for the last twenty years.

Of course, it's important to take rumors like this with a grain of salt that is if you can get your hands on any, thanks to supply chain issues. Until next time, comrades, remember: socialism or death!

See the rest here:
Rumor: Shane McMahon Fired by WWE Even Though He Doesn't Work There - Bleeding Cool News

A mass political and military movement led by the working class and headed by Communists freed Italy from fascism in the early 1940s. A society which seemed extremely stable and controlled, destined to continue in the same way forever, suddenly exploded from below with mass activity, such that for a brief period everything seemed possible, Marxist historian Tom Behan writes of the period.

Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had ruled the country since 1922. But the tide turned in 1942-43. His army suffered disastrous military defeats in North Africa and, from 5 March 1943, more than 200,000 workers in Turin went on strike for higher wages, greater rations and an end to the war. It was the first and largest strike wave in occupied Europe during the Second World War, and it sealed Mussolinis downfall.

In July 1943, the Allied armies invaded Italy from the south, landing in Sicily. Two months later, Italy announced an armistice. Meanwhile, Germany invaded the north of the country and propped up Mussolini. An alliance of anti-fascist parties formed the National Liberation Committee (Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale). And at the end of September, Naples was liberated without assistance from the Allies, the first civilian uprising against Nazi occupation in Europe.

From this time until the final liberation of Italy from fascism in April 1945, the country was split in two. In the south, the Allies ran the show in concert with General Pietro Badoglio and the kinga non-fascist regime, but nonetheless repressive towards workers and the left.

The Italian resistance in the north was military, political and industrial, led by workers and the left. In March 1944, 1.2 million workers went on strike, demanding peace and the cessation of war production for Nazi Germany. In terms of mass demonstrations, in occupied Europe nothing can come close to the revolt of Italian workers, a New York Times reporter wrote.

The Communist Party had cells in many factories in the northern cities. Some of them had access to arms and carried out armed actions against the occupying German forces at night and on weekends. According to a party report, at Milans Redaelli factory, of 1,295 workers, there were twenty male party members, one female, and many sympathisers. A committee of agitation exists. Football team [code for armed workers] discreetly equipped. Many women were couriers who would transport information, medicine, money, ammunition or bombs.

Florence was liberated by a three-week insurrection in July and August. The partisans refused the Allies demands to disarm and made it known than if the Allies tried to disarm them, they would be treated as an enemy. Partisans liberated their own city, and residents spontaneously joined the insurrection.

Left-wing newspapers began to be sold openly, even during the fighting, as Behan recounts in The Italian Resistance. A man stopped me in piazza San Marco, he must have been 70-75. Without saying a word he held out his hand to take the paper, and held it just as a Christian might hold a sacred object, Socialist leader Sandro Pertini recalled of his time selling the party paper, Avanti. And he kissed it ... And he started crying.

Hundreds of thousands of partisans fought in the mountains, usually operating in military units of 40 to 50. The Communist Party organised the Garibaldi Brigades, comprising at least half of the partisans. Each brigade had a military commander and a political commander, both elected and recallable. The political commander organised a political hour every day to discuss the war and to organise more general political education and debate. They even tried to keep libraries of books.

With little equipment or military experience, and being poorly fed, clothed and housed, partisans faced the most formidable fighting machine in the world in the German army. The resistance was full of left-wing volunteers, fighting not just for the defeat of fascism, but for a better world. This was key to their victory.

The Communist Party was by far the largest left force in the resistance. Its members and supporters were fighting for socialism. But the leadership pursued a fundamentally conservative strategy. The party argued for national liberation first and progressive democracy secondan application of the Stalinised Cominterns Popular Front to Italy. The working class was to form an alliance with the progressive section of the bourgeoisie, while the party would form a political alliance with the centre-right Christian Democratic Party.

After the 1943 Allied invasion, Communist leaders agreed to work with the Italian army and the king to oust Mussolini. Meanwhile, the Badoglio government was shooting down striking workers. On 2 April 1944, after a meeting with Stalin, Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti issued the Salerno turn, announcing that the party would join the kings government under Badoglio.

This ensured the integrity of the Italian state and set the scene for the rehabilitation of fascists after the war. As journalist and partisan Giorgio Bocca argued, Whoever collaborates with Pietro Badoglio, Marshal of the Empire, and with the King, who legalised the March on Rome, can obviously no longer demand the purging of those who worked on behalf of the fascist state. Togliatti and the PCI received great political prestige because they provided a lot: a previously non-existent certificate of anti-fascist credibility.

Other left-wing parties with a national presence were the Action Party and the Socialist Party. The Action Party provided about one in five of the resistance fighters. Its revolutionary wing rejected the Soviet Union as a socialist model. It attracted many radicals to its ranks and was less willing than the Communist Party to compromise on issues of principle. But it didnt have a stable working-class base, having been founded only in 1942.

Unlike the Communists, the Italian Socialist Party hadnt maintained an underground organisation. Like the Action Party, it had both revolutionary and reformist wings. The revolutionary wing was highly critical of the Badoglio government. But it was too small to have a decisive influence on events.

Other political forces to the left of the Communist Party operated in various cities. In Rome, there was the group Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag), which was the biggest resistance faction in the city. In the two decades of Mussolinis rule, Communist cadres had been exiled in France or the Soviet Union. But local activists, left to their own devices for decades, had not undergone the same process of indoctrination in Stalinism. Historian David Broder writes that they rejected the idea of a common national interest and pursued a class war and revolutionary agenda.

The Allies and the anti-fascist partisans had a tense relationship. Britain and Americas alliance with the partisans in Italy was based on geopolitical considerations, not a principled opposition to fascism. And their support was limited. Supply drops focused on non-military goods.

The Allies wanted fighters who would risk their lives but make no political demands. What they got was hundreds of thousands of armed partisans, largely workers, alongside a political mass movement and strikes in the cities.

On 13 November 1944, Allied officer General Harold Alexander ordered the cessation of operations and cut off supplies for months. The partisans were ordered to go homean impossibility for outlaws. The partisan movement survived but was weakened. In December, resistance leaders agreed to disarm and hand over military and political power to the Allies immediately upon liberation, in return for money.

Women were involved in all aspects of the resistance, as striking workers, anti-fascist activists and armed fighters. There were female commanders and all-female units. Some urban militias (terrorist groups) were led by women.

Eighty of the 200 members of the 7th Gianni GAP (Patriotic Action Group) in Emilia-Romagna were women. Commander Novella Vanda Albertazzi reportedly said: It seemed absurd and impossible to stay bent over a table ten hours a day, to gossip with friends, while the Germans walked the streets, while the fascists arrested young men. An estimated 35,000 women took part in military action. Five hundred and twelve women were recognised to have been political commissars.

While the politics of the Communist Party regarding women, and the behaviour of male partisans, were far from perfect, the mass struggle opened up a space for womens involvement in politics and for sexist attitudes to be challenged. After the resistance struggle, women were granted the vote.

In April 1945, insurrections took place in all the cities of the northern industrial triangleMilan, Turin and Genoato finally throw off the shackles of fascism. All took place before the Allied armies arrived.

Thirty thousand German troops were stationed in Genoa in the lead-up to the insurrection. Partisans numbered 8,000, some with only hand guns. Against the Allies wishes, the resistance called for an insurrection and told the Nazis they would accept only unconditional surrender.

Residents spontaneously joined partisan squads, arming themselves with weapons seized from fascists. Gunther Meinhold, a decorated major general and career officer in the German army, surrendered to an emaciated partisan in civilian clothes, Remo Scappini, an industrial worker and Communist leader. In the days after the liberation, Mussolini and his closest associates were executed by partisans.

When the Allies arrived in liberated cities, they found them functioning, with some form of democratic control over civil society. Bosses feared the prospect of social revolution. But they need not have worried. The Communist Party wasnt interested in mobilising the masses to create organs of workers power. It insisted on a self-limiting insurrection aimed at giving its leaders a bargaining chip to ensure their participation in the postwar Italian state. The insurrection we want does not have the goal of imposing social or political changes in a socialist or communist sense, party leader Togliatti declared.

As historian Paul Ginsborg argues in A History of Contemporary Italy, the Stalinist strategy of national liberation first, social and political reform second, caused the party to dissipate the strength of the resistance and of worker and peasant agitation ... at the very moment when the partisan and workers movement was at its height ... The Communists accepted the postponement of all questions of a social and political nature until the end of the war.

The Allies were handed control of the cities and the workers guns, while the Communist Party leaders took three ministries in a grand coalition government.

While fascism was defeated, many partisans were disappointed with postwar Italy. Factory bosses who had collaborated with fascism and profited from the war stayed around. The purging of the state apparatus was limited. Togliatti, as justice minister, shamefully passed an amnestywhich meant that many fascist acts of torture, rape and murder went unpunishedand worked closely with Giuseppe Azzariti, the president of the Tribunal of the Race, which enforced anti-Semitic laws from 1938 to 1943. Hunger and rationing continued, and many former partisans were left unemployed.

Workers hid their arms on a huge scale. In large factories, one or two workers were delegated to keep weapons in working order. In Emilia Romagna, 413 kilos of ammunition were found between 1970 and 1995. For partisan and historian Claudio Pavone, the burying of the machine gun symbolised the covering up of an alternative pathone that would not have stopped with the defeat of fascism, but would have continued on to try to establish a socialist society.

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The Italian resistance to fascism - Red Flag

The Defense Departments Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, a new hub to align disparate AI-centered pursuits across the vast enterprise, officially reached initial operating capacity this weekbut much must still be puzzled out before its totally realized this summer.

John Sherman, DODs recently Senate-confirmed chief information officer, will play a major role in seeing it through. Hes taking the offices lead as acting chief digital and AI officer until the department completes its search for the right person to fill this first-of-a-kind position.

In addition to getting the OCDAO up and running for [full operational capacity], rest assured we'll remain laser-focused on our CIO dutiescybersecurity, digital modernization and other areas the department relies on us for, Sherman told reporters during a press call on Wednesday. We're not taking our eye off the ball.

He and two other senior defense officials shared fresh details about the new units establishment and what its ultimately meant to accomplish. Two memorandums signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks on Tuesday and released on Wednesday also provide further clarity on the OCDAOs functions.

The Pentagon in December announced plans to stand up this central office to underpin the integration and synchronization of all data- and AI-associated work, which is primarily led by DODs Joint AI Center, office of the chief data officer and Defense Digital Service. Officials intend for the tedious reorganization to eventually provide DOD with end-to-end cohesion from the time data is captured, to when it's used for advanced analytics.

The deadline for initial operating capacity set for Feb.1, was met this week. Now, officials are working to reach full capacity by June 1.

Let me just note that the goal here is for data, and data analytics and AI to enable faster and better decision-making, and therefore military advantage from campaigning to conflict, a senior defense official explained. As many of you know, China, in particular, is investing aggressively and using these capabilities to offset traditional U.S. advantages, and this is a key part of our efforts to match that pacing threat.

A memo to Defense leadership announcing that the office reached IOC on time also highlights some of what it will be responsible for during this phase. It notes that officials will need to oversee DODs strategy development and policy formulation for data, analytics and AI; break down barriers to technology adoption; produce an enabling infrastructure for digital solutions; and selectively scale existing assets for enterprise and joint use cases for Pentagon components.

On the call, officials said theyre also working at this point to help create a greater sense of team among the components involved.

Multiple shifts additionally need to be hashed out before the OCDAO can come to full fruition.

For instance, the IOC memo asserts that the DODs chief data officer will continue to report to the CIO for now, in compliance with the 2020 National Defense Authorization Actbut the supporting data office will transfer to the OCDAO. The CDAO is directed in the memo to draft a legislative proposal to permit the CDO to report up to the new office down the line.

The document also confirms that the CDAO has assumed the existing authorities of its component organizations, and the OCDAO is now considered their successor.

Further, it requires DODs CDAO to steer a comprehensive review of all authorities and governance structures connected to DOD data, analytics and AIand provide recommendations for updates to Pentagon leadership by May 1.

Officials on the call noted that, so far, Congress members have been supportive of this ongoing initiative, and are looking forward to DOD moving faster in this technological realm.

I think we have very much appreciated the bipartisan collaborative nature of these engagements with Congress. This is an area where I think in a very polarized time there's just a lot of sort of joint problem solving and figuring out how we can make more rapid progress, a senior defense official said. Theres a lot of good ideas coming from experts and staffers on the Hill on where we can start looking for opportunitiesand we look forward to continued engagement with them.

In a separate memo also published Wednesday, the department also sheds light on how this new CDAO role differs from but will work with other DOD positionssuch as the CIO and undersecretaries for research, engineering and policy, among others. The hub will clarify and codify its final role within its chartering directive due this summer.

During the call, a senior defense official confirmed the CDAOs office will have an initial budget of about $500 million and include about 200-to-300 employees from across the massive enterprise.

It really is a collective ecosystem, Sherman said. We had the parts of it, but were putting it together in a way we havent before to deliver that decision advantage that our leaders need.

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DOD Debuts Office to Help It 'Move Faster' on Artificial Intelligence - Nextgov