-ism | Ideas Meet Power

From the Haymarket trial of 1886 to the recent Prairieland case in 2026, American history reveals a recurring pattern whereby radical political ideas become evidence of criminal conspiracy.In this special episode, I read my recent essay tracing that history through the prosecution of anarchists, labor radicals, communists, antifascists, and other political dissidents. Along the way, we encounter Eugene V. Debs, Clarence Darrow, the Palmer Raids, and the enduring question of where the prosecution of political violence ends and the prosecution of political ideas begins. The full essay can be read here: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/p/antifa-cells-and-anarchist-conspiraciesNext: Chicago 1894: The Pullman StrikeWritten and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

In this finale to Season 2 The Age of Anarchism, we explore the nature of political authority through the ideas of Max Weber, Mikhail Bakunin, Walter Benjamin, and Michel Foucault. From the state’s claim on legitimate violence to the disciplinary institutions of modern society, these thinkers offer radically different ways of understanding how power operates, how it is justified, and how it might be challenged.Returning to Chicago, we follow Lucy Parsons through the Haymarket executions and into the Progressive Era when reformers like Jane Addams and George Schilling increasingly sought to harness political power to improve the lives of working people. But for Parsons, the promise of reform could never resolve the fundamental dangers of concentrated authority.As Season 2 comes to a close, we return to the question that divided anarchists and socialists throughout the nineteenth century. Should state power be reformed, seized, or abolished altogether?Next: Chicago 1894: The Pullman StrikeWritten and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

In the summer of 1886, eight anarchists went on trial for a murder the state could not prove they had committed.Unable to identify who threw the bomb at Haymarket, prosecutors built their case around a broader theory of conspiracy, arguing that years of revolutionary speeches, newspaper articles, and political organizing had created the conditions for violence.But as the trial moved toward its conclusion, the defendants turned the courtroom into a political platform. August Spies, Albert Parsons, and their comrades defended anarchism, condemned industrial capitalism, and accused the State of Illinois of carrying out a judicial murder.During the trial, appeals for clemency that first grew within Chicago’s labor movement quickly spread to prominent reformers and public figures around the world. The Haymarket case then became something larger than a murder trial; it became a struggle over revolution, conspiracy, free speech, and the limits of political dissent.Next: What is State Power? The Claim on Legitimate ForceWritten and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

History never answered who threw the Haymarket bomb. But it forever changed what Americans believed about labor, radicalism, and political dissent.As tens of thousands of Chicago workers walked off the job in May 1886, hopes for peaceful reform collided with years of mounting class conflict. Following a deadly police shooting at the McCormick Reaper Works, August Spies issued a desperate call to workers, a rally was organized in Haymarket Square, and a single bomb transformed one of the largest labor movements in American history into a national panic.In this episode, we follow the events leading to the Haymarket Affair, from the growing militancy of Chicago’s anarchists to the explosion that changed the labor movement forever. We then examine the wave of repression that followed and the beginning of the trial that would make Haymarket one of the defining political dramas of the nineteenth century.Next: Chicago 1886: Anarchism on TrailWritten and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

The Haymarket Affair did not begin with a bomb. It began with a movement.In the years before Haymarket, Chicago became the center of a growing labor revolt as workers demanded shorter hours, greater dignity, and more control over their lives. At the heart of that movement stood a small group of radical organizers: Albert and Lucy Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Lizzie Holmes, and others, figures whose ideas of anarchism, solidarity, and direct action helped transform the campaign for the eight-hour day into one of the largest labor mobilizations in American history.In this episode, we explore the rise of Chicago's anarchist movement, the spread of the Knights of Labor, the impact of mechanization on skilled workers, and the extraordinary events leading to the first May Day on May 1, 1886.Next: Chicago 1886: The Haymarket AffairWritten and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

How can workers build power in an economy dominated by giant corporations and monopolies? To explore that question, we turn to the history of unionism and the rise of the American labor movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.In 1905, labor organizers gathered in Chicago to found the Industrial Workers of the World, better known as the Wobblies. Their goal was to unite workers of every trade, skill level, race, nationality, and gender into One Big Union capable of challenging the power of industrial capitalism.In this episode, we trace the origins of that idea through the history of the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, Lucy Parsons, Samuel Gompers, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Along the way, we explore the central debates that shaped the labor movement: craft versus industrial unionism, reform versus revolution, and the challenge of building working-class power in an economy increasingly dominated by concentrated wealth and corporate power.From Chicago to Spokane, this is the story of revolutionary industrial unionism and the movement that sought to transform not only the workplace, but society itself.This is Season Two—The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor RevoltNext: Chicago 1886: The Fight for the Eight-Hour WorkdayWritten and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

The moment when the belief that the United States was immune to class conflict was shattered. In July 1877, railroad workers across the United States stopped work. What began as a wage dispute in a small rail town in West Virginia quickly became the largest labor uprising in American history. Trains sat idle, freight yards were occupied, and entire cities ground to a halt.In Chicago, unemployed workers, socialists, labor organizers, and immigrant communities joined a movement that seemed capable of bringing the nation’s economy to a standstill. In response, business leaders armed private militias, police opened fire on crowds, and federal troops occupied American cities. The violence of 1877 exposed deep divisions between labor and capital and helped lay the foundations of both the modern labor movement and American anarchism.In this episode, we follow the strike from the rail yards of Martinsburg to the streets of Chicago, where Albert and Lucy Parsons first encountered the movement that would transform their lives and American history.This is Season Two—The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor RevoltNext: What is Unionism? Building Power From BelowWritten and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

Anarchism emerged not simply as a theory, but as a response to hunger, repression, industrial capitalism, and the growing power of the modern state.In this opening episode of Season 2, we trace anarchism's roots in the late nineteenth century, from the aftermath of the Paris Commune to the labor struggles of industrial Chicago.Through figures like Louise Michel, Lucy Parsons, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin, we explore how anarchism evolved from a critique of authority into a mass movement rooted in strikes, unions, and collective action.Along the way, we examine the origins of the black flag, the rise of anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist communism, and the radical vision that inspired workers across the globe to imagine a world beyond capitalism and the state.This is the story of anarchism’s great refusal.This is Season Two—The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor RevoltNext: Chicago 1877: The Great Railroad StrikeWritten and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

In the wake of John Brown’s raid, Henry David Thoreau delivered one of the most forceful defenses of moral action in American history. While much of the North recoiled after Harpers Ferry, Thoreau stood up in Concord and defended Brown as a man of principle, willing to act where others would only speak.What follows is a reading of Thoreau’s A Plea for Captain John Brown, one of the clearest expressions of the idea that when a government becomes unjust, the individual conscience may stand above it.This episode serves as a bridge into Season 2 of ISM: The Age of Anarchism and the American Labor Revolt, where these same questions about conscience, resistance, violence, and legitimacy will reappear in new and more collective forms.Next: Season Two — The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor Revolt Written and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack and Patreon.Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com

In October of 1859, a small band of abolitionists led by John Brown seized the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Their goal was simple but audacious: to ignite a mass slave uprising and bring an end to slavery by force.Within 36 hours, the raid had collapsed. Brown’s men were killed, captured, or scattered. Brown himself was wounded, arrested, and sentenced to hang. But Harpers Ferry was never just a failed insurrection.In the aftermath of the raid, something shifted. Across the North, Brown was transformed from criminal to martyr. Across the South, his actions ignited fear, mobilization, and a growing sense that war was no longer avoidable. The illusion that slavery could be contained, or compromised with, began to dissolve.This episode traces the rise and fall of John Brown: from the violent struggles of Bleeding Kansas, to the quiet planning of his final campaign, to the last stand at the Engine House, and the trial that turned him into a national symbol.But more than that, it asks a deeper question: What happens when a political problem becomes a moral one?And what happens when a nation begins to believe that justice may require violence?From Harpers Ferry to the Civil War, and beyond, this is the story of how one man’s radical act helped transform the moral language of the United States and how that transformation would echo far beyond the abolition of slavery.Because the questions raised at Harpers Ferry did not end in 1865. They moved.This is an ISM Interlude on John Brown and the American Radical Tradition.Next: Thoreau’s Plea for John Brown — Conscience Against the StateWritten and produced by Matt Payne.Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack and Patreon. Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/Support the Show: PayPalContact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com