American labor activist (1839?1893)
Dyer Daniel Lum
(February 15, 1839 ? April 6, 1893) was an
American labor activist
,
economist
and
political journalist
. He was a leading figure in the
American anarchist movement
of the 1880s and early 1890s, working within the organized labor movement and together with
individualist theorists
.
Born into an
abolitionist family
, Lum voluntarily enlisted in the
Union Army
during the
American Civil War
, in which he fought for the abolition of slavery. After the war, he plied his trade as a
bookbinder
in
New England
and became involved in the nascent
spiritualist movement
, although he soon became
skeptical
of
organized religion
and converted to
Buddhism
. At this time, he became involved in the growing
political reform
movement, joining the
Greenback Party
and
lobbying
for the institution of the
eight-hour day
, as well as
monetary
and
land reforms
.
By the early 1880s, he had become disillusioned by
third party politics
and moved towards
revolutionary socialism
and
individualist anarchism
. He joined the
International Working People's Association
(IWPA) and the
Knights of Labor
, within which he advocated for workers organization to push for economic reform and political revolution. Lum was deeply affected by the
Haymarket affair
, as he was close friends with many of the defendants, including
Albert Parsons
,
Adolph Fischer
and
Louis Lingg
, the latter of whom he helped commit suicide in order to avoid execution. Lum's involvement in the affair became a source of criticism from Chicago anarchists, who accused him of displaying a cavalier attitude towards
revolutionary martyrdom
, as well as the individualist Boston anarchists, who were alienated by his advocacy of revolutionary violence. Lum attempted to use his position to bridge the divide between the two factions, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
After Haymarket, he moved away from advocating violent revolution and became more closely involved in trade union organizing, which he thought provided a means through which to achieve a
free association of producers
and
anarchy
. He became an influential figure within the
American Federation of Labor
(AFL), encouraging its
anti-political
stance and practice of
voluntary association
. At this time, he developed a political programme that called for the implementation of
mutualist economics
through workers' organization and revolutionary tactics. But by the early 1890s, he was overcome by
depression
and
suicidal ideations
. He committed suicide in 1893, months before the pardoning of the Haymarket defendants.
Early life and activism
[
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]
Family and childhood
[
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]
Dyer Daniel Lum was born on February 15, 1839,
in
Geneva, New York
.
His paternal family was descended from the
Scottish American
settler Samuel Lum;
and his maternal family were descended from Benjamin Tappan, a
minuteman
who fought in
Massachusetts
during the
American Revolutionary War
, and the father of the abolitionists
Arthur
and
Lewis Tappan
.
Lum's parents recalled him being a rebellious child, who would often stay up at night to watch
storms
.
Raised in the
Presbyterian Church
, as a child, Lum became
skeptical
of religion after he noticed that he had not been struck down for saying "
damn
" on a Sunday.
Military career
[
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]
From an early age, Lum himself joined the
abolitionist cause
,
going on to voluntarily enlist in an
infantry
regiment
of the
Union Army
after the outbreak of the
American Civil War
.
During the war, he was captured and imprisoned twice by the
Confederates
,
but both times managed to escape.
He was then transferred from the infantry to the
14th New York Volunteer Regiment
,
in which he rose to the rank of
captain
.
At the time, he sincerely believed he was fighting for the abolition of slavery, but he later came to regret that he had risked his life "to spread cheap labor over the South."
Spiritualism, activism and journalism
[
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]
Following the end of the war, Lum moved to
New England
and found work as a
bookbinder
,
a common trade among
anarchists
of the period.
Seeking knowledge about the
afterlife
, he turned towards
spiritualism
and wrote on the subjects of
science
and
religion
in the journal
Banner of Light
.
Within the spiritualist movement, he came into contact with various associated reform movements, including
feminism
and
socialism
. He became an active participant in reform campaigns, participating in the
National Equal Rights Party
's campaign to nominate
Victoria Woodhull
for
President
and petitioning against the declaration of a
Christian state
.
But by 1873, he had become disillusioned with the
superstition
of the spiritualist movement, publicly denouncing it and joining the
Free Religious Association
.
In 1875, in search of
spirituality
outside of
organized religion
, he converted to
Buddhism
, which he saw as an
egalitarian
and
humanist
philosophy. The Buddhist concept of
Nirvana
influenced his later turn to
revolutionary socialism
, as it provided a justification for
revolutionary martyrdom
.
Political career
[
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]
Greenback period
[
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]
Towards the end of the
Reconstruction era
, Lum moved to
Massachusetts
.
At this time, the beginning of the
Long Depression
brought him into the nascent
organized labor movement
.
He went into politics, joining the
Greenback Party
and participating in the
1876 Massachusetts gubernatorial election
as the running mate of the abolitionist
Wendell Phillips
.
He also served as the private secretary of union leader
Samuel Gompers
during the
Great Railroad Strike of 1877
.
Lum's political campaigning caused him to lose his job, so in 1878, he moved to
Washington, DC
in order to continued working as a bookbinder.
He also found work as a
political journalist
,
writing articles for
Benjamin Tucker
's
Radical Review
and
Patrick Ford
's
Irish World
, the latter of which helped him to forge ties between
Irish republicans
and American workers.
In March 1879, he was appointed as a secretary for a
congressional committee
charged with investigating the "
depression of labor
."
In 1880, he and
Albert Parsons
were also appointed to a national committee to lobby for the
eight-hour day
in the
United States Congress
.
But despite their lobbying efforts, Congress was unmoved and their hope for reform started to whither.
Lum's experience in national politics got him elected to the
executive committee
of the Greenback Party, where he pushed for improved
labor rights
,
monetary
and
land reform
, and the establishment of a
third party in the United States
.
From this position, he took a tour of the country, making a broad range of contacts, including socialists such as Albert Parsons in
Illinois
,
Mormons
in
Utah
and labor leader
Denis Kearney
in
California
.
From then on, Lum became a convinced
anti-capitalist
and, drawing from his abolitionist background, began campaigning for the abolition of "
wage slavery
". He set his sights on the abolition of
rent
,
interest
,
profit
, which he saw as "the triple heads of the monster against which modern civilization is waging war."
Lum held the
Federal government of the United States
responsible, drawing attention to its "class legislation" which had prioritised
railroad construction
and
military training
, the latter of which made him consider whether armed revolution would be justified.
He momentarily set his sights on the abolition of the
two-party system
. Although sympathetic to the
Republican Party
's abolitionist roots, he felt it had since become a party of
imperialism
and
centralized government
, while he considered the
Democratic Party
an unreliable partner for establishing
social democracy
. He hoped that the Greenback Party could supplant them and realign American politics towards labor reform, but the
party's nomination
of the Republican
James B. Weaver
for the
1880 United States presidential election
dashed his hopes.
On October 2, 1880, Lum left the Greenback Party, its executive committee and his post at
Irish World
,
and joined the
Socialist Labor Party
(SLP).
But after the failure of both left-wing parties in the 1880 election, they collapsed, with many socialists beginning to move away from
reformism
and
electoralism
towards
insurrectionary
tactics. Revolutionary socialists subsequently broke away from the SLP and established the
International Working People's Association
(IWPA),
which Lum himself joined in 1885.
Conversion to anarchism
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]
During the early 1880s, Lum was
radicalized
towards
anti-statism
, culminating in his adoption of
individualist anarchism
.
In 1882, he published a pamphlet reporting on the federal government's repression of the Mormons'
cooperative
and
voluntary associations
,
which he argued had been done in order to extend American mining companies' holdings into Utah.
His shift to individualist anarchism was inspired by the
laissez-faire
economics of
Herbert Spencer
, whose "
law of equal liberty
" provided him with a basis for Lum's anarchist philosophy and whose advocacy of
limited government
influenced him to argue against government intervention in labor affairs.
He was also influenced by the
mutualism
of
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
, whose advocacy of
mutual banking
inspired the monetary reform policies of many American individualist anarchists, grouped around Benjamin Tucker's magazine
Liberty
.
In his radicalisation, Lum had pursued both paths that reformers had taken towards anarchism during this period: he rejected reformism in favor of revolution, while also adopting a
laissez-faire
analysis of wage slavery, respectively acquainting himself with the strategy of
anti-state socialism
and the ideology of
individualism
.
This "dual path to anarchism" influenced his belief in the necessity for a united anarchist movement, capable of providing a coherent ideology, strategy and organization for the labor movement.
Lum considered the time he lived in to have presented a
revolutionary situation
for anarchists, due to the
power vacuum
left by the collapse of the left-wing parties, the failure of legislative form and the rapid growth of
industrial unions
under the
Knights of Labor
.
It was during this time that Lum first developed his anarchist political programme, which advocated for the organization of the working class, a refined
revolutionary
strategy, and a mutualist economic system.
Anarchist activism
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In 1885, Lum gave infrequent lectures on revolutionary anarchism in
New Haven, Connecticut
, before moving to
Port Jervis, New York
. There he joined the Knights of Labor and began writing for a number of anarchist periodicals, including
Moses Harman
's
free love
magazine
Lucifer
,
Benjamin Tucker's individualist magazine
Liberty
and Albert Parsons' collectivist newspaper
The Alarm
.
In
Lucifer
and
Liberty
, he called on individualists to support the Knights of Labor and adopt revolutionary politics. While in
The Alarm
, he wrote frequently about his ideas on workers' organization, revolutionary strategy and individualist economics, while also attempting to link the contemporary labor movement with earlier American revolutionary history.
By this time, popular unrest in the United States was reaching an apex.
He predicted that that this wave of unrest would soon erupted into
social revolution
: "From the Atlantic to the Mississippi, the air seems charged with an exhilarating ingredient that fills men's thoughts with a new purpose."
Haymarket affair
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]
On May 3, 1886, the
Chicago Police Department
attempted to shut down a demonstration of striking workers in
Haymarket Square
. A bomb was thrown from the crowd and the police opened fire back, resulting in several people being killed.
Lum quickly responded to the bombing with enthusiastic support, although he also expressed regret that it had only been an isolated, uncoordinated incident.
Although the identity of the bomb thrower was never discovered,
Lum himself believed the bomb had been thrown by an anarchist, rejecting later "puerile"
conspiracy theories
that alleged it had been thrown by an
agent provocateur
.
Government repression swiftly followed the bombing, resulting in the closure of
The Alarm
, Lum's primary platform within the IWPA.
Albert Parsons, along with
George Engel
,
Samuel Fielden
,
Adolph Fischer
,
Louis Lingg
,
Oscar Neebe
,
Michael Schwab
and
August Spies
, were arrested and brought to trial for what became known as the
Haymarket affair
.
Lum sold his bookbinding business in Port Jervis and moved to Chicago in order to support their defense campaign,
reviving
The Alarm
under his own editorship
and visiting them in the
Cook County Jail
on a daily basis.
Lum staunchly defended the accused, believing them to have been innocent of the bombing.
At the defendants' direction, he compiled the court records and trial transcripts into a book, in which he attempted to demonstrate that they were being convicted for their political beliefs. He also edited their autobiographies, which were published by the Knights of Labor, and organised their defense fund together with the Knights of Labor.
Although no evidence was ever produced of their culpability in the bombing, all eight men were found
guilty
.
When Parsons asked Lum what he ought to do, given the sentence that faced him, Lum responded bluntly: "Die, Parsons."
He convinced the sentenced men not to appeal for clemency, as it would "compromise their position".
He later claimed that "no one helped them more than I to reject all proffers of mercy."
Lum collaborated with
Burnette Haskell
, together with whom he planned to unite the IWPA and SLP into a single "American Socialist Federation". But after allegations came out that they were planning to foment a revolution in 1889, on the centenary of the
French Revolution
, Lum was forced to narrow his strategy.
Five days before their execution was scheduled to take place, he wrote in
The Alarm
that he believed the only thing that could save the Haymarket defendants from their fate would be an act of
terrorism
.
Together with
Robert Reitzel
, Lum began planning such an attack, intending to blow up the jail in order to free them from their cells.
Lum scheduled the attempt to take place on the day before they were due to be hanged. But as the day approached, the prisoners themselves called off the plot, telling Lum that they preferred to die. Lingg told him: "Work till we are dead. The time for vengeance will come later."
Despite his desperation, Lum accepted that his comrades were about to die.
On November 10, 1887, Lingg committed suicide with an cigar-shaped explosive he had smuggled into his prison cell.
Although journalists
Charles Edward Russell
and
Frank Harris
hypothesised that it was Lingg's girlfriend who had smuggled him the dynamite, Voltairine de Cleyre believed it had been brought to him by Lum, recounting this version to her son
Harry
, who in turn told
Agnes Inglis
.
Inglis didn't believe this version of events and instead hypothesised that it had been prison guards who had killed Lingg, but this counter-narrative was disregarded by
Alexander Berkman
, as the guards would have known Lingg was about to hang and considered him to have been "the kind of man who'd prefer to die by his own hand."
Historian
Paul Avrich
himself considered it to have been plausible that Lum could have carried this out, "to enable Lingg to cheat the hangman and at the same time enhance his heroic image".
Citing Avrich, Frank H. Brooks also considered Lum to have been responsible for enabling Lingg's suicide.
On November 11, 1887, Parsons, Engel, Fischer and Spies were
hanged
.
Lum had been a close friend of all five of the men, who were now considered
martyrs
of the anarchist movement. After their execution, he published biographies and poems about each of the men, as well as a history book about the affair. He also refused to shake hands with the
Knights of Labor
leader
Terence V. Powderly
, who had previously denounced the men as "bombthrowers".
Lum reported that he "shed no tears" for his fallen comrades and wrote that he was glad that the Haymarket affair had taken place.
His apparently frivolous attitude towards the affair alienated him from others in the anarchist movement, with Spies' own wife
Nina Van Zandt
accusing him of "wishing their death", while
Johann Most
and
Lucy Parsons
thought him an insensitive "
hair splitter
".
Lum defended himself as having wanted to save "their honor to the cause" and insisted that the defendants had agreed with him.
Shortly after the hanging, he wrote to
Joseph Labadie
: "I am very sorry you take their deaths so hard ? can’t you realize that it was nothing but an episode in our work? I do ? Perhaps my nearness to them and seeing and feeling their enthusiasm gives me a different feeling."
Lum himself actually regretted that he had not himself been with his comrades on the gallows. Union leader
George A. Schilling
wrote to him that "[t]he trouble is you want to be with Engel, with Spies and Parsons, stand a crown upon your forehead and a bomb within your hand; you want to be a martyr and fill a martyr’s grave."
Regrouping attempts
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Rather than sparking a revolution, the Haymarket affair served to discredit Lum's revolutionary strategy.
Benjamin Tucker's individualist group, already suspicious of such a strategy, distanced themselves from the revolutionary socialism of the Chicago anarchists,
stressing the differences between it and their own
laissez-faire
anarchism.
Lum thus set out to mend the divide between the individualist and
socialist anarchists
.
He defended the Haymarket anarchists and challenged Tucker's rejection of revolutionary strategy,
resulting in a polemical exchange breaking out between the two, as his position on revolutionary violence only alienated the individualists further.
His "middle position" on the issue of
private property
also drew ideological criticisms.
In the pages of
Liberty
,
Victor Yarros
called Lum's economic ideas "neither fish nor flesh". Tucker himself described his proposals as "amusing, and at the same time painful", telling
Joseph Labadie
that he had come to despise Lum. Lum himself returned fire at those contributors to
Liberty
whom he called the "dung-beetles", denouncing them for their excessive
self-interest
and lack of care for issues that affected wider society, particularly citing Tucker's defense of
strikebreakers
, who Lum described as "social traitors".
Meanwhile, the labor movement in Chicago was experiencing an organizational collapse. Despite Lum's protestations, many anarchists retreated into a defensive strategy, with a number of rank-and-file anarchists participating in
local elections
, while the IWPA itself had effectively dissolved in the wake of the post-Haymarket repression.
Despite the diminished influence of
The Alarm
and the Knights of Labor, Lum attempted to use his positions within both to regroup anarchists around the labor movement. Although he still believed in the inevitability of revolution, he realized that the situation after Haymarket required a different strategy and called for efforts to be refocused towards propagating the principles of
anarchist socialism
.
He opened the columns of
The Alarm
to anarchists of all political tendencies, while continuing to promote his own ideology as editor. In the paper, he focused on the importance of the labor movement, arguing that the Knights of Labor, through its pursuit of
workers' cooperatives
and rejection of electoralism, could become a vehicle for an economic revolution.
In early 1888, he began publishing more radical articles, which caused issues with the Post Office and drew increasing levels of police harassment. In June 1888, he moved the printing offices of
The Alarm
to New York, where he received support from local German anarchists led by
Johann Most
. There Lum continued printing calls for closer cooperation between the Knights of Labor and the anarchist movement, with articles on the organized labor movement eventually supplanting his earlier focus on mutualist economics, which alienating his remaining individualist readership. By February 1889, the paper had gone bankrupt and ceased publication.
Finding himself unable to get his work published in
Liberty
, Lum began writing for smaller publications like
Individualist
and
Twentieth Century
. His attempts to revive the anarchist movement were ultimately unsuccessful, due to pervasive political repression, factionalism and widespread distrust in revolutionary anarchist ideology.
By 1890, Lum's attentions had turned towards the
American Federation of Labor
(AFL),
as he saw its
craft unions
as vehicles capable of moving society towards anarchism.
That year, he published his pamphlet
The Economics of Anarchy
, which advocated for mutual banks, land reform and workers' cooperatives, and was designed to be read in workers' studies groups.
While he continued to believe in the inevitability of revolution, he now discarded revolutionary struggle in favor of union agitation, encouraged by the voluntary cooperation carried out by the AFL's unions in their campaign for the eight-hour day.
In 1892, he developed his thoughts into a pamphlet titled "The Philosophy of Trade Unions", which was published by the AFL until 1914. Lum, alongside
Joseph Labadie
and
August McCraith
,
committed himself to a long-term strategy of influencing trade unions towards anarchist principles.
His abandonment of violent revolutionary strategy earned him criticism from Johann Most and other anarchist communists, who accused him of joining a "bourgeois scheme".
Later life and death
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Relationship with Voltairine De Cleyre
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]
Lum was married and had two children, but later separated with his wife after their children grew to adulthood.
In 1888, he met
Voltairine de Cleyre
.
At the time, De Cleyre was in a relationship with
Thomas Hamilton Garside
, a man who Lum considered to be of a
vain
and
hedonistic
character. Lum attempted to warn De Cleyre away from Garside, but the two lovers ran away together; only a few months later, Garside abandoned De Cleyre.
De Cleyre was deeply hurt by the rejection and fell into a depression.
Lum was there to comfort her and became a stable presence in her life, as "her
teacher
,
confidant
and
comrade
."
The two had a lot in common: they both came from New England abolitionist families; they shared a keen interest in essay writing, poetry and translating from the
French language
; their anarchist philosophy blended
individualism
and
socialism
; they were both
ascetics
and shared sympathy towards the
working class
and
immigrant communities
; and they both suffered from
mental illness
, particularly
depression
.
Lum later wrote to De Cleyre that he had been attracted to her because of her "wild nature".
Although they spent a lot of time apart - Lum living in New York and De Cleyre in Philadelphia - and Lum was 27 years her senior, they came to fall in love with each other.
By the following year, Lum was professing his love in poems written to De Cleyre, whom he called "Irene"; De Cleyre herself described her relationship with Lum as "one of the best fortunes of my life".
Lum's relationship with De Cleyre was not just romantic, but also "intellectual and moral".
De Cleyre's anarchist philosophy developed further under Lum's guidance,
inspiring her to reject
communist
and
collectivist anarchism
in favor of mutualism and
voluntaryism
.
Lum himself had his hopes for an anarchist future revived by De Cleyre, who inspired him to re-examine individualist anarchism and reconsider his revolutionary startegy.
By the early 1890s, Lum and De Cleyre had established an anarchist study group, which grew to include some twenty members.
The couple also wrote a
social novel
together,
in which they expounded their social and political philosophy, but it wasn't published during their lifetimes and the manuscript has been lost.
Decline and suicide
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By 1892, Lum had become dissatisfied with his trade union activities, frustrated by his
poverty
, difficulties with publishers and his long-distance relationship with De Cleyre.
At this time, a new cycle of popular protest had broken out, culminating in a series of labor strikes, the largest of which was the
Homestead strike
. Lum responded by renewing his revolutionary agitation. He gave revolutionary speeches to the
Irish Republican Brotherhood
, involved himself in bomb plots and organized black miners in
Southwest Virginia
.
After
Alexander Berkman
's attempted assassination of the Homestead plant manager
Henry Clay Frick
, Lum publicly defended the attack,
believing it was his duty to "share the effects of the counterblast his action may have provoked".
At a public defense meeting in New York, Lum concluded that "the lesson for capitalists to learn is that workingmen are now growing so desperate that they not only make up their minds to die, but decide to take such men as Frick to
St. Peter's gate
with them."
He also smuggled Berkman poison, in case he was sentenced to death; after Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison, he initiated a campaign for the reduction of his prison sentence.
By this time, Lum was himself making plans for a violent attack against the ruling class.
Lum had written extensively to De Cleyre of his violent ideations, confessing that his anger would frequently consume him until it developed into
hatred
.
He confided to De Cleyre that he planned to carry out a
suicide attack
to avenge the Haymarket martyrs.
De Cleyre herself had come to reject violence and attempted to dissuade him, but Lum responded with derision, calling her "Moraline" and "Gusherine" and sarcastically saying "let us pray for the police here and the Tzar in Russia."
He remained determined to fulfill his "pledge" to the Haymarket martyrs, writing to De Cleyre one final time, on February 5, 1892:
I never lost sight of my purpose. I will raise the money and carry out my part of the programme. I am cold, relentless, unflinching. If any fools get in the way, so much the worse for them. In this sentiment cuts no figure. And this time a poster will let people know the 'police' did not do it ? as Mrs. Parsons said before. If done, and I think it will work, as we use chemicals, the responsibility will be assumed in posters on the walls.
But Lum never carried out his planned attack, instead falling into a severe depression that left him unable to eat or sleep. Facing
poverty
, he moved into a
flophouse
in
Bowery
. As his
insomnia
worsened and he became more desperate to get rest,
he turned to
alcohol
and
opiates
.
He also sought refuge in Buddhism, as well as the
philosophical pessimism
of
Arthur Schopenhauer
.
He briefly attempted to move to his family's home in
Northampton, Massachusetts
, but under constant financial pressure, was forced to return.
One of his friends recalled him, in September 1892, always wearing shabby clothes and carrying a large number of papers, "looking at no one, caring for nothing save the propaganda of Anarchism."
On the night of April 6, 1893, Lum went out for one last walk in New York City,
before returning to his bedroom and swallowing a lethal dose of poison.
According to De Cleyre, Lum "seized the unknown Monster, Death, with a smile on his lips."
In her obituary on Lum, de Cleyre wrote that: "His early studies of Buddhism left a profound impress upon all his future concepts of life, and to the end his ideal of personal attainment was self-obliteration ?
Nirvana
."
Philosophy
[
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]
Throughout his life, Lum drastically adapted his political strategy, moving from
lobbying
and
third party politics
to
anti-political
revolutionary activism and
trade union
organization. He also went through a large ideological evolution, from
republicanism
and
social democracy
to
revolutionary socialism
and
individualist anarchism
, resulting in his development of an
eclectic
political philosophy.
Lum's political philosophy synthesised elements from various different foundations within anarchist theory.
Lum thought that a successful anarchist movement would require a "convincing and culturally-grounded"
critique of political economy
, which he proposed in the form of
mutualism
, and a way of putting such economic reforms into practice, proposing
trade union
organization and
revolutionary
strategy.
He believed that the formation of a radical labor movement along such lines could attract enough workers that it could become a revolutionary force.
Lum also elaborated on the
evolutionary ethics
that he believed underpinned
anarchism
, anticipating the later works of
Peter Kropotkin
.
Lum drew from both American and European political thinkers,
including
Thomas Paine
,
Thomas Jefferson
,
Ralph Waldo Emerson
and
Henry David Thoreau
from the former,
and
Herbert Spencer
and
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
from the latter.
Lum's anarchist ideology was grounded in the American radical tradition,
rather than imported ideas from
Germany
or
Russia
, and he consciously linked his anarchism with what he called the "American idea".
Lum's philosophy thus represented a synthesis of
American individualism
and
libertarian socialism
.
Mutualist economics
[
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]
Lum was inspired by the economic theory of
mutualism
and defended individual autonomy and voluntary cooperation, outlining his economic views on these matters in
The Economics of Anarchy
.
Lum's own views on mutualism were based in an analysis of "
wage slavery
" and the reforms that would be necessary to abolish it.
While grounding his economic theory in labor issues, Lum applied
laissez-faire
economic theory to union organizing,
drawing from the
anti-statism
of
Thomas Paine
and
Herbert Spencer
, as well as
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
's
critique of political economy
, which advocated for
mutual banks
,
land
and
monetary reform
, and
workers' cooperatives
.
Drawing from individualist economic theory, he argued that labor issues were caused by government-backed
monopolies
on land and money. He built on
Joshua K. Ingalls
' land reform policies, arguing that the state-backed land monopoly could be eliminated by abolishing
property titles
and granting
free access to land
, which would make
renting
impossible. He also drew from
William B. Greene
's monetary theory, arguing that the state-backed monetary monopoly could be ended by establishing mutual banks that could issue their own currency and provide
interest
-free loans in order to support
economic growth
.
But to Lum, these two reforms were insufficient by themselves; they additionally required the establishment of a
free association of producers
, which could counter the negative effects of
industrialization
, while maintaining economic progress and not resorting to a
reactionary
reversion to artisanal production.
Workers' organization
[
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]
Lum adopted the
collectivist
emphasis on revolutionary organizations as a means to unite the
working class
and solve the "labor problem".
He called for the abolition of wage labor and for anarchists, individualists included, to support unions as a means to achieve the end of the wage system. Lum himself was closely involved in the organized labor movement, as he considered unions to be the best method for workers to combat
class stratification
and
political repression
.
Lum's ultimate economic goal was the establishment of a
free association of producers
, based on
cooperative
and
voluntary
principles.
In order to achieve this goal, Lum considered it necessary to organize workers within the industrial economy into
labor unions
,
and that the anarchist movement would need to identify itself closely with these organizations. He considered the idea of
economic freedom
for individual workers to be
anachronistic
, as workers in an industrial economy rarely produced anything by their own individual labor; he thus concluded that economic freedom could only be achieved through voluntary cooperation between workers. But unlike
Marxists
or
anarchist communists
, he did not think that
common ownership
was an inevitabile consequence of this process, and instead proposed individual ownership of
shares
within a
worker cooperative
. His view on workers' cooperation thus synthesised the individiualist view on individual ownership with the collectivist view on collective ownership.
Lum's theory of trade unionism led him to join the
Knights of Labor
and shape the
anti-political
and
voluntarist
practice of the
American Federation of Labor
(AFL).
He argued for the Knights to pursue workers' cooperation and avoid electoral participation, hoping that the union could serve as a means to achieve a libertarian economic revolution.
He later saw the AFL's craft unions as vehicles for advancing towards
anarchy
, promoting their voluntarism and supporting their campaign for the eight-hour day, while influencing them to adopt his own economic and political programme.
His long-term strategy in this process was to bring trade unions close to anarchist principles.
Revolutionary strategy
[
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]
Lum believed in the necessity of a
social revolution
against all forms of "
tyranny
and
exploitation
".
Inspired by the methods of the radical abolitionist
John Brown
, Lum was an advocate of violence, even
terrorism
, as means to overthrow the state and capitalism.
As he thought that the ruling class would only yield power when forced to, he advocated for workers to take up arms against "
wage slavery
".
He also favored
propaganda of the deed
over
agitation
, arguing that one event could serve as a better "education" than years of publishing and speechmaking:
"Educate the people to grow up to the issue? Nonsense! Events are the true schoolmasters."
De Cleyre wrote that Lum's belief in the inevitability revolution was comparable to his understanding of
cyclones
: "when the time comes for the cloud to burst it bursts, and so will burst the pent up storm in the people when it can no longer be contained"
Eclectic anarchism
[
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]
Lum took an
eclectic
approach to anarchism, coinciding with the principles of
anarchism without adjectives
and anticipating the later school of
synthesis anarchism
.
Lum believed that economic proposals of different anarchist schools, whether they advocated for
collectivism
,
communism
or mutualism, ought to be set aside until they had secured
liberty
, which he held to be the primary objective of all anarchists, irrespective of economic differences.
In the article "Communal Anarchy", Lum proposed that, as such economic arrangements were questions of the future, they must be subordinated to anarchists' shared
anti-statist
principles until
anarchy
is achieved.
Lum thus advocated for unity between the anarchist movement's
socialist
and
individualist
factions, attempting to defend the movement's inherent
heterogeneity
.
He disliked the "
ultra-egoists
" that followed the philosophy of
Max Stirner
, due to their disregard for social problems and defense of
strike breakers
.
He was also staunchly opposed to
state socialism
,
under which he thought would "incompetency will be able to select competency, or capacity to run the social machine."
In 1889, he predicted that it would constitute a new form of
slavery
and necessitate that
individualists
wage war against the "dependence and collective mediocrity" of the collectivist state.
He even criticised
Lucy Parsons
for adopting the label of "
communist
".
Legacy
[
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]
Tributes
[
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]
To Voltairine de Cleyre, Dyer Lum was "the brightest scholar, the profoundest thinker of the American Revolutionary movement."
In her eulogy to Lum, written for
Twentieth Century
on May 4, 1893, De Cleyre wrote that "his genius, his work, his character, was one of those rare gems produced in the great mine of suffering and flashing backward with all its changing lights the hopes, the fears, the gaieties, the griefs, the dreams, the doubts, the loves, the hates, the sum of that which is buried, low down there, in the human mine."
One friend, writing for
Liberty
on April 15, 1893, said that "in disposition, Mr. Lum was most amiable; in the character of his mind, he was philosophical; in mental capacity, he was at once keen and broad."
In a 1927 letter to
Joseph Ishill
,
Emma Goldman
wrote that "although he [Lum] seemed dry on the surface I rather think he had considerable depth. He certainly had a beautiful spirit as I am able to testify from my own acquaintance with the man."
De Cleyre wrote of his personality that:
Underneath the cold logician who mercilessly scouted at sentiment, underneath the pessimistic poet that sent the mournful cry of the whip-poor-will echoing through the widowed chambers of the heart, that hung and sung over the festival walls of Life the wreathes and dirges of Death; underneath the gay joker who delighted to play tricks on politicians, police and detectives; was the man who took the children on his knees and told them stories while the night was falling, the man who gave up a share of his own meagre meals to save five blind kittens from drowning; the man who lent his arm to a drunken washerwoman whom he did not know, and carried her basket for her, that she might not be arrested and locked up; the man who gathered four-leafed clovers and sent them to his friends, wishing them "all the luck which superstition attached to them"; the man whose heart was beating with the great common heart, who was one with the simplest and poorest.
Historical recognition
[
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]
Although Lum is recognized as an important figure in American anarchist history of the 1880s and 1890s, he has largely been referenced in relation to other, more famous, anarchists such as
Voltairine de Cleyre
,
Albert Parsons
and
Benjamin Tucker
.
Historian
Paul Avrich
described Lum as "one of the most neglected and misunderstood figures in the history of the anarchist movement";
Frank H. Brooks depicted him as a "late casualty of the Haymarket repression";
and Henry David said that Lum was "intellectually head and shoulders above most of the Chicago revolutionaries."
Lum's attempt to bridge the divide between the individualist "Boston anarchists" and the collectivist "Chicago anarchists", as well as his contacts with various immigrant radicals, put him at the centre of the American anarchist movement of the 1880s.
Most histories of the American anarchist movement focus on one camp or the other, with historians of the Chicago movement paying little attention to the individualists; while historians of the individualist camp focus largely on tracing intellectual and economic thought, disregarding the collectivists as "violent" and "alien".
But Lum's radical activities in several different movements, in different regions, and across two and a half decades, resulted in him also acting as a bridge in the gap of anarchist historiography.
Influence
[
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]
The anarchist movement that Lum left behind struggled to keep up with the changing times. Political reforms brought by the
Progressive Era
made anti-statism less appealing, while the rise of the
People's Party
and the resurgence of the SLP overtook the movement's anti-electoral strategy.
Only two months after's Lum's death, the Haymarket defendants were pardoned by Illinois governor
John Peter Altgeld
, who ordered the release of Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab from prison.
Inspired by Lum's ecumenical approach to anarchism, in 1893,
William
and
Lizzie Holmes
organized an international anarchist conference in
Chicago
, where they attempted to formulate a common programme for anarchists to unite behind.
Lum had previously described the Holmes couple as "two of Chicago's most able and devoted Anarchists."
They were joined by
Voltairine de Cleyre
,
Honore Jackson
,
C. L. James
,
Lucy Parsons
and
William Henry van Ornum
, but the conference was boycotted by
Benjamin Tucker
and
Johann Most
, who were still locked in an ideological conflict.
De Cleyre herself became the most visible proponent of Lum's
anarchism without adjectives
.
By the mid-1890s, De Cleyre had adopted Lum's mutualist philosophy,
synthesising
socialism
and
individualism
by advocating for
cooperation
without
state ownership
.
Lum inspired de Cleyre to expand her philosophical outlook by reading from American, as well as European sources, with
Thomas Jefferson
's work particularly influencing her approach to anarchism.
Although de Cleyre had been a convinced
pacifist
during Lum's life, by the turn of the 20th century, she had moved closer to Lum's position on revolutionary violence, in some cases seeing it as a justified means to resist capitalism and the state.
Lum's maxim that "events are the true schoolmasters" was taken up by De Cleyre following the outbreak of the
Mexican Revolution
, influencing her to support the actions of the
Magonistas
.
In 1902, De Cleyre was shot in an assassination attempt against her. It worsened her physical condition, leaving her in
chronic pain
for the rest of her life.
Selected works
[
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]
Poems
[
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]
- "The Needlewoman. A Vision of Prayer in the Nineteenth Century of Christian Civilization" (April 2, 1874,
Index
)
- "The Evolution of Deity" and "The Supreme Being - Humanity" (January 27, 1876,
Index
)
- "Wendell Phillips's Grave" (June 20, 1885,
Liberty
)
- "Harvest" (August 8, 1885,
The Alarm
)
- "The Alarm" (October 17, 1885,
The Alarm
)
- "Revolution of 1789" (January 23, 1886,
The Alarm
)
- "John Brown" (April 3, 1886,
The Alarm
)
- "You and I in the Golden Weather" (February 1890,
Truth
)
- "Les Septembriseurs, September 2, 1792" (February 3, 1901,
Free Society
)
Articles
[
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]
- "The Need of Personal Development" (April 29, 1871,
Banner of Light
)
- "Mental Health vs. Mediumship" (December 21, 1872,
Banner of Light
)
- "Prognostications" (September 9, 1875,
Index
)
- "Theism" (November 2, 1876,
Index
)
- "Buddhism Notwithstanding: An Attempt to Interpret Buddha from a Buddhist Standpoint" (April 29, 1875,
Index
)
- "Nirvana" and "The Modern Nirvana" (August 1877,
The Radical Review
)
- "Decoration Day" (May 30, 1885,
The Alarm
)
- "To Arms: An Appeal to the Wage Slaves of America" (June 13, 1885,
The Alarm
)
- "A Connecticut Village" (October 31, 1885,
The Alarm
)
- "Definitions" (November 28, 1885,
The Alarm
)
- "An Open Letter to a State Socialist" (December 12, 1885,
The Alarm
)
- "The American Idea" (January 1, 1886,
The Alarm
)
- "Revolution" (January 23, 1886,
Liberty
)
- "Rights of Man" (February 6, 1886,
The Alarm
)
- "Is the Commune a Finality?" (March 6, 1886,
The Alarm
)
- "
Communal Anarchy
" (March 6, 1886,
The Alarm
)
- "
Evolution or Revolution
" (March 20, 1886,
Lucifer
)
- "Drift" (March 20, 1886,
The Alarm
)
- "Inciting to Riot" (May 2, 1886,
Lucifer
)
- "The Knights of Labor" (June 19, 1886,
Liberty
)
- "Pen-Pictures of the Prisoners" (February 12, 1887,
Liberty
)
- "Anarchists Listen to the Siren Song" (April 23, 1887,
Liberty
)
- "Theoretical Methods" (July 16, 1887,
Liberty
)
- "Still in the Doleful Dumps" (July 30, 1887,
Liberty
)
- "The Polity of Knighthood" (February 11, 1888,
The Alarm
)
- "The Shield of Knighthood" (March 10, 1888,
The Alarm
)
- "To All My Readers" (April 28, 1888,
The Alarm
)
- "Correspondenzen" (May 12, 1888,
Freiheit
)
- "Greeting" (June 16, 1888,
The Alarm
)
- "The I.W.P.A" (July 14, 1888,
The Alarm
)
- "Trade Unions and Knights" (July 14, 1888,
The Alarm
)
- "Powderly's Allies" (October 13, 1888,
The Alarm
)
- "A Milestone in Social Progress" (September 1889,
Carpenter
)
- "Collectivist or Mutualist" (March 31, 1890,
Individualist
)
- "The Social Question" (May 1890,
The Beacon
)
- "
The Fiction of Natural Rights
" (May 1890,
Egoism
)
- "
Why I Am a Social Revolutionist
" (October 30, 1890,
Twentieth Century
)
- "August Spies" (September 3, 1891,
Twentieth Century
)
- "The Social Revolution" (October 24, 1891,
The Commonweal
)
- "
The Basis of Morals
" (July 1897,
The Monist
)
- "Evolutionary Ethics" (July 1899,
The Monist
)
Books
[
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]
- The "Spiritualist" Delusion: Its Methods, Teachings and Effects
(1873, Philadelphia)
- Utah and Its People
(1882, New York)
- Social Problems of Today
(1886, New York)
- A Concise History of the Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists in 1886
(1886, Chicago)
- The Economics of Anarchy
(1890)
- The Philosophy of Trade Unons
(1892, New York)
- In Memoriam, Chicago, November 11, 1887: A Group of Unpublished Poems
(1937, Berkeley Heights)
References
[
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]
Bibliography
[
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]
Further reading
[
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]
- Brooks, Frank H. (1988).
Anarchism, Revolution, and Labor in the Thought of Dyer D. Lum
(
PhD
).
Cornell University
.
OCLC
39696813
.
ProQuest
8900770
.
- de Cleyre, Voltairine
(2004) [1893]. "Dyer D. Lum". In Brigati, A. J. (ed.).
The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader
.
AK Press
. pp. 147?149.
ISBN
1-902593-87-1
.
- Johnpoll, Bernard (1986).
"Lum, Dyer D. (1839-1893)"
. In Johnpoll, Bernard K.; Klehr, Harvey (eds.).
Biographical Dictionary of the American Left
. Westport: Greenwood Press. pp. 255?257.
ISBN
978-0-313-24200-7
.
- McCormick, John S. (1976). "An Anarchist Defends the Mormons: The Case of Dyer D. Lum".
Utah Historical Quarterly
.
44
(2): 156?169.
doi
:
10.2307/45059577
.
ISSN
0042-143X
.
JSTOR
45059577
.
- Schuster, Eunice (1970).
Native American Anarchism: A Study of Left-Wing American Individualism
. New York City: Da Capo Press.
ISBN
9780306718380
.
LCCN
79-98688
.
OCLC
165990
.
- Tucker, Benjamin
, ed. (April 15, 1893).
"Death of Dyer D. Lum"
(PDF)
.
Liberty
.
IX
(33): 3. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on September 27, 2007
. Retrieved
August 7,
2007
.
External links
[
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]
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