Socialism
Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management, as well as the political theories and movements associated with them. Social ownership can be citizen ownership of equity. There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them, with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms. Socialist systems are divided into market forms. Non-market socialism involves the substitution of factor markets and money with engineering and technical criteria based on calculation performed in-kind, thereby producing an economic mechanism that functions according to different economic laws from those of capitalism. Non-market socialism aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with capital accumulation and the profit system. By contrast, market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and in some cases the profit motive, with respect to the operation of owned enterprises and the allocation of capital goods between them.
Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm, or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend. The socialist calculation debate concerns the feasibility and methods of resource allocation for a socialist system. Socialist politics has been both nationalist in orientation. Originating within the socialist movement, social democracy has embraced a mixed economy with a market that includes substantial state intervention in the form of income redistribution, a welfare state. Economic democracy proposes a sort of market socialism where there is more decentralized control of companies, currencies and natural resources; the socialist political movement includes a set of political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism. By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify opposition to capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production.
By the 1920s, social democracy and communism had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement. By this time, socialism emerged as "the most influential secular movement of the twentieth century, worldwide, it is a political ideology, a wide and divided political movement" and while the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to socialism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, some economists and intellectuals argued that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism or a non-planned administrative or command economy. Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence on all continents, heading national governments in many countries around the world. Today, some socialists have adopted the causes of other social movements, such as environmentalism and progressivism. In 21st century America, the term socialism, without clear definition, has become a pejorative used by conservatives to taint liberal and progressive policies and public figures.
For Andrew Vincent, "he word ‘socialism’ finds its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and medieval law was societas; this latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen". The term "socialism" was created by Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would be labelled "utopian socialism". Simon coined the term as a contrast to the liberal doctrine of "individualism", which stressed that people act or should act as if they are in isolation from one another; the original "utopian" socialists condemned liberal individualism for failing to address social concerns during the industrial revolution, including poverty, social oppression and gross inequalities in wealth, thus viewing liberal individualism as degenerating society into supporting selfish egoism that harmed community life through promoting a society based on competition. They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the shared ownership of resources, although their proposals for socialism differed significantly.
Saint-Simon proposed economic planning, scientific administration and the application of modern scientific advancements to the organisation of society. By contrast, Robert Owen proposed the organisation of ownership in cooperatives; the term "socialism" is attributed to Pierre Leroux and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud in France. The modern definition and usage of "socialism" settled by the 1860s, becoming the predominant term among the group of words "co-operative", "mutualist" and "associationist", used as synonyms; the term "communism" fell out of use during this period, despite earlier distinctions between socialism and communism from the 1840s. An early distinction between socialism and communism was that the former aimed to only socialise production while the latter aimed to socialise both production and consumption. However, M
Thomas Preston (British Army officer)
Thomas Preston was a British officer, a captain who served in Boston in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He commanded troops in the Boston Massacre in 1770 and was tried for murder. Historians have never settled. Preston was from Ireland. Thomas Preston was an officer of the 29th Regiment of Foot, part of the British garrison in Boston under the overall command of Thomas Gage, he was present at the Boston Massacre on 5 March 1770, when British troops fired on colonists of the city, after an aggressive mob had confronted the troops and thrown snowballs and rocks at them. Charges were brought against him and other soldiers, but he was acquitted in a trial held in Boston, Massachusetts. Future United States President John Adams was his attorney, it is still unknown. Two of his men, Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy, were found guilty of manslaughter, they "prayed clergy" to avoid the death sentence. Instead, they were branded on the thumb with the letter "M" for murder. Captain Preston was found not guilty.
After his trial, Preston retired from the army. He settled in Ireland. Adams recalled seeing him in London in the 1780s, when Adams was serving there as US Minister to Britain; the communities of East Preston and North Preston, Nova Scotia may have been named for him. In the 2008 American miniseries, John Adams, Preston was played by British actor Ritchie Coster. In the 2015 History Channel miniseries, Sons of Liberty, Preston, is portrayed by Shane Taylor. Hibbert, Christopher. Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution Through British Eyes. Avon Books, 1990
Suffolk County Courthouse
The Suffolk County Courthouse, now formally the John Adams Courthouse, is a historic courthouse building at 3 Pemberton Square in Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Massachusetts Appeals Court. Built in 1893, it was the major work of Boston's first city architect, George Clough, is one of the city's few surviving late 19th-century monumental civic buildings, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The John Adams Courthouse is located on the west side of Pemberton Square, now little more than an open plaza bounded by the courthouse on the west, the backside of the curved Center Plaza building, which faces Tremont Street opposite the Boston City Hall plaza; the courthouse is a six-story granite structure, fifteen bays wide, with an eclectic stylistic composition. Its first 1-1/2 floor function by appearance as an elevated basement, with small arched windows close to the ground, above which are larger rectangular windows divided in the upper third by a stone stringcourse.
Above this basement level is an arcaded mezzanine of large round-arch openings in which paired sash windows are topped by a half-round transom. A dentillated cornice separates this level from a narrower band of three-part windows, above, a two-level mansard roof pierced by a variety of dormers. There are projecting pavilions at the ends of the main facade, rising to the top of the mezzanine level on the sides, the full roof height on the front; the courthouse was built in 1893 to a design by Boston city architect George Clough. Stylistically the building was described at the time as "German Renaissance". Of the many buildings Clough designed for the city, this is his most elaborate design. Clough designed the 1909 enlargement of the structure, which added the French Chateau-style roof. From 1893 to 1938, the Supreme Judicial Court and the Social Law Library occupied the building, known as the Suffolk County Courthouse. In 2002, the Supreme Judicial Court, the Massachusetts Appeals Court, the Social Law Library returned to the restored building, renamed the John Adams Courthouse.
Local couples "courting" each other outside of the beautiful Courthouse Building who are lucky enough to find themselves alone are supposed to kiss. National Register of Historic Places listings in northern Boston, Massachusetts List of courthouses in Boston Virtual tour of the John Adams Courthouse from the Massachusetts Judiciary
Boston Police Department
The Boston Police Department, dating back to 1838, holds the primary responsibility for law enforcement and investigation within the American city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest police department in the United States; the BPD is the 20th largest law enforcement agency in the country and the largest in New England. Before the existence of a formal police department, the first night watch was established in Boston in 1635. In 1703, pay in the sum of 35 shillings a month was set for members of the night watch. In 1796, the watch was reorganized, the watchmen carried a badge of office, a rattle, a six-foot pole, painted blue and white with a hook on one end and a bill on the other; the hook was used to grab fleeing criminals, the rounded "bill" was used as a weapon. The rattle was a noise-making device used for calling for assistance; the Day Police, which had no connection to the night watch, was organized in 1838. The Day Police had six appointed officers; this organization would lead to the establishment of the modern-day Boston Police Department.
In 1838, a bill passed in the General Court that allowed the city to appoint police officers, paving the way for the creation of a formal police department. The Boston Police Department was formally founded in May 1854, at which point both the night watch and Day Police were disbanded. A fourteen-inch club replaced the old hook and bill, in use for one hundred and fifty-four years. At the time of its founding, the Boston Police constituted one of the first paid, professional police services in the United States; the department was organized and modeled after Sir Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Service. On November 3, 1851, the first Irish born Boston Police officer, Bernard "Barney" McGinniskin, was appointed, his presence generated considerable controversy. The Boston Pilot wrote, "He is the first Irishman that carried the stick of a policeman anywhere in this country, meetings Faneuil Hall meetings, have been held to protect against the appointment." At the time, the police salary of $2.00 a day for the morning and afternoon beat and $1.20 for the night watch was nearly twice as high as the wages of laborers.
City Marshal Francis Tukey resisted mayor John Prescott Bigelow's appointment of McGinniskin, expressing the predominant anti-Irish sentiments in the city by arguing it was done at "the expense of an American." On January 5, 1852, shortly before the newly elected mayor Benjamin Seaver took office, Tukey fired McGinniskin without giving a reason. After criticism in the press, Seaver reinstated McGinniskin, who remained in the police until the 1854 anti-Irish groundswell of the Know Nothing/American Party movement, when in the words of the Boston Pilot, "Mr. McGinniskin was discharged from the Boston Police for no other reason than he was a Catholic and born in Ireland." McGinniskin became a United States inspector at the customhouse and died of rheumatism on March 2, 1868. McGinniskin is buried in the St. Augustine Cemetery in South Boston. On October 18, 1857, at about 5:15 a.m. Boston Police Officer Ezekiel W. Hodsdon was patrolling the Corner of Havre and Maverick Street in East Boston. Hodsdon attempted to arrest two suspects for a burglary.
A struggle ensued, one of the suspects was able to get behind Hodsdon and shoot him in the head. Hodsdon died about 10:00 A. M. becoming the first Boston police officer killed in the line of duty. He was 25 years old; the murderers fled. Thousands of people visited the station house to view the body. Hodsdon left behind his wife Lydia and infant son Ezekiel, born just 13 days prior to his death, he was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett, according to Boston Globe newspaper reports on Oct 19, 1857. On October 18, 2007, a memorial was held in honor of Hodsdon on the Corner of Havre and Maverick Streets in East Boston. In 1871, the Boston Police Relief Association was founded; the Boston Police Department appointed Horatio J. Homer, its first African American officer, on December 24, 1878, he was promoted to sergeant in 1895. Sgt. Homer retired on Jan 1919 after 40 years of service, he and his wife, Lydia Spriggs Homer, are buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Brighton, MA. On June 26, 2010, the Boston Police Department dedicated a gravestone in honor of Sgt.
Homer's service. On September 9, 1919, when Police Commissioner Edwin Upton Curtis refused to allow the creation of a police union, 1,117 BPD officers went on strike; this signaled a dramatic shift in traditional labor relations and views on the part of the police, who were unhappy with stagnant wages and poor working conditions. The city soon fell into riots and public chaos as over three-fourths of the department was no longer enforcing public peace. Governor Calvin Coolidge intervened to quash further chaos. Coolidge announced that the police did not have the right to strike against the public safety and brought in the state national guard to restore order to Boston; the strike was broken, when Coolidge hired replacement police officers, many of whom were returning servicemen from World War I, the former officers were refused re-entry into the department. The new officers hired in the wake of the strike received higher salaries, more vacation days and city-provided uniforms, the demands the original strikers were requesting.
The BPD strike set a precedent for further movements to stymie police unionization around the country. Coolidge's intervention in the strike brought him national fame, which, in turn, led to his nomination as Harding's running mate for Vice-President in the 1920 presidential election. In 1921, Irene McAuliffe, daughter of the late Weston police chief and horse breeder Patrick McAuliffe, was among the first
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre, known to the British as the Incident on King Street, was a confrontation on March 5, 1770 in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in Boston. The event was publicized by leading Patriots such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. British troops had been stationed in the Province of Massachusetts Bay since 1768 in order to support crown-appointed officials and to enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation. Amid tense relations between the civilians and the soldiers, a mob formed around a British sentry and verbally abused him, he was supported by eight additional soldiers, who were hit by clubs and snowballs. They fired into the crowd without orders killing three people and wounding others, two of whom died of their wounds; the crowd dispersed after Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson promised an inquiry, but they re-formed the next day, prompting withdrawal of the troops to Castle Island. Eight soldiers, one officer, four civilians were arrested and charged with murder, they were defended by future President John Adams.
Six of the soldiers were acquitted. The men found. Depictions and propaganda about the event heightened tensions throughout the Thirteen Colonies, notably the colored engraving produced by Paul Revere. Boston was the capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and an important shipping town, it was a center of resistance to unpopular acts of taxation by the British Parliament in the 1760s. In 1768, the Townshend Acts were enacted in the Thirteen Colonies putting tariffs on a variety of common items that were manufactured in Britain and imported in the colonies. Colonists objected that the Acts were a violation of the natural and constitutional rights of British subjects in the colonies; the Massachusetts House of Representatives began a campaign against the Acts by sending a petition to King George III asking for repeal of the Townshend Revenue Act. The House sent the Massachusetts Circular Letter to other colonial assemblies, asking them to join the resistance movement, called for a boycott of merchants importing the affected goods.
Lord Hillsborough had been appointed to the newly created office of Colonial Secretary, he was alarmed by the actions of the Massachusetts House. In April 1768, he sent a letter to the colonial governors in America instructing them to dissolve any colonial assemblies that responded to the Massachusetts Circular Letter, he ordered Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard to direct the Massachusetts House to rescind the letter. The house refused to comply. Boston's chief customs officer Charles Paxton wrote to Hillsborough for military support because "the Government is as much in the hands of the people as it was in the time of the Stamp Act." Commodore Samuel Hood responded by sending the 50-gun warship HMS Romney, which arrived in Boston Harbor in May 1768. On June 10, 1768, customs officials seized Liberty, a sloop owned by leading Boston merchant John Hancock, on allegations that the ship had been involved in smuggling. Bostonians were angry because the captain of Romney had been impressing local sailors.
Given the unstable state of affairs in Massachusetts, Hillsborough instructed General Thomas Gage, Commander-in-Chief, North America, to send "such Force as You shall think necessary to Boston", the first of four British Army regiments began disembarking in Boston on October 1, 1768. Two regiments were removed from Boston in 1769, but the 14th and the 29th Regiments of Foot remained; the Journal of Occurrences were an anonymous series of newspaper articles which chronicled the clashes between civilians and soldiers in Boston, feeding tensions with its sometimes exaggerated accounts, but those tensions rose markedly after Christopher Seider, "a young lad about eleven Years of Age", was killed by a customs employee on February 22, 1770. Seider's death was covered in the Boston Gazette, his funeral was described as one of the largest of the time in Boston; the killing and subsequent media coverage inflamed tensions, with groups of colonists looking for soldiers to harass, soldiers looking for confrontation.
On the evening of March 5, Private Hugh White stood on guard duty outside the Boston Custom House on King Street. A young wigmaker's apprentice named Edward Garrick called out to Captain-Lieutenant John Goldfinch, saying that Goldfinch had not paid a bill due to Garrick's master. Goldfinch had settled the account the previous day, ignored the insult. Private White called out to Garrick that he should be more respectful of the officer, the two men exchanged insults. Garrick started poking Goldfinch in the chest with his finger. Garrick cried out in pain, his companion Bartholomew Broaders began to argue with White which attracted a larger crowd. Henry Knox was a 19-year old bookseller who served as a general in the revolution; as the evening progressed, the crowd around Private White grew more boisterous. Church bells were rung, which signified a fire, bringing more people out. More than 50 Bostonians pressed around White, led by a mixed-race former slave named Crispus Attucks, throwing objects at the sentry and challenging him to fire his weapon.
White had taken up a somewhat safer position on the steps of the Custom House, he sought assistance. Run
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, was a landmark decision of the U. S. Supreme Court issued in 1896, it upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality – a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation, passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction Era; the decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1, with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the lone dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan. Plessy is regarded as one of the worst decisions in U. S. Supreme Court history. Despite its infamy, the decision itself has never been explicitly overruled. However, a series of subsequent decisions beginning with the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education—which held that Plessy's "separate but equal" doctrine is unconstitutional in the context of public schools and educational facilities—have weakened it to the point that it is considered to have been de facto overruled.
In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars. Concerned, a group of prominent black and white New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens dedicated to repeal the law or fight its effect, they persuaded a man of mixed race, to participate in an orchestrated test case. Plessy was born a free man and was an "octoroon". However, under Louisiana law, he was classified as black, thus required to sit in the "colored" car. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket at the Press Street Depot and boarded a "Whites Only" car of the East Louisiana Railroad in New Orleans, bound for Covington, Louisiana; the railroad company, which had opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more railcars, had been informed of Plessy's racial lineage, the intent to challenge the law. Additionally, the committee hired a private detective with arrest powers to detain Plessy, to ensure that he would be charged for violating the Separate Car Act, as opposed to a vagrancy or some other offense.
After Plessy took a seat in the whites-only railway car, he was asked to vacate it, sit instead in the blacks-only car. Plessy refused and was arrested by the detective; as planned, the train was stopped, Plessy was taken off the train at Press and Royal streets. Plessy was remanded for trial in Orleans Parish. In his case, Homer Adolph Plessy v; the State of Louisiana, Plessy's lawyers argued that the state law which required East Louisiana Railroad to segregate trains had denied him his rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution, which provided for equal treatment under the law. However, the judge presiding over his case, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies while they operated within state boundaries. Plessy was convicted and sentenced to pay a $25 fine. Plessy sought a writ of prohibition; the Committee of Citizens took Plessy's appeal to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, where he again found an unreceptive ear, as the state Supreme Court upheld Judge Ferguson's ruling.
In speaking for the court's decision that Ferguson's judgment did not violate the 14th Amendment, Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Charles Fenner cited a number of precedents, including two key cases from Northern states. The Massachusetts Supreme Court had ruled in 1849 — before the 14th amendment — that segregated schools were constitutional. In answering the charge that segregation perpetuated race prejudice, the Massachusetts court famously stated: "This prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law, cannot be changed by law." The law itself was repealed five years but the precedent stood. In a Pennsylvania law mandating separate railcars for different races the Pennsylvania Supreme Court stated: "To assert separateness is not to declare inferiority... It is to say that following the order of Divine Providence, human authority ought not to compel these separated races to intermix."Undaunted, the Committee appealed to the United States Supreme Court in 1896. Two legal briefs were submitted on Plessy's behalf.
One was signed by Albion W. Tourgée and James C. Walker and the other by Samuel F. Phillips and his legal partner F. D. McKenney. Oral arguments were held before the Supreme Court on April 13, 1896. Tourgée and Phillips appeared in the courtroom to speak on behalf of Plessy. Tourgée built his case upon violation of Plessy's rights under the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees the same rights to all citizens of the United States, the equal protection of those rights, against the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Tourgée argued that the reputation of being a black man was "property", which, by the law, implied the inferiority of African Americans as compared to whites; the state legal brief was prepared by Attorney General Milton Joseph Cunningham of Natchitoches and New Orleans. Cunningham was a staunch supporter of white supremacy, who according to a laudatory 1916 obituary "worked so in restoring white supremacy in politics that he was arrested, with fifty-one other men of that community, tried by federal officials."On May 18, 1896, the Court ruled against Plessy in a 7–1 decision.
Justice David J. Brewer did not participate, as he had left Washington just before oral arguments to attend to the sudden death of h
Slavery
Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property. A slave works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, the word slavery may refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. Scholars use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour to refer to such situations. However, under slavery in broader senses of the word, slaves may have some rights and protections according to laws or customs. Slavery existed in many cultures since the time before written history. A person could capture, or purchase. Slavery was legal in most societies at some time in the past, but is now outlawed in all recognized countries; the last country to abolish slavery was Mauritania in 2007. There are an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide subject to some form of modern slavery.
The most common form of modern slave trade is referred to as human trafficking. In other areas, slavery continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most widespread form of slavery today, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, forced marriage; the English word slave comes from Old French sclave, from the Medieval Latin sclavus, from the Byzantine Greek σκλάβος, which, in turn, comes from the ethnonym Slav, because in some early Medieval wars many Slavs were captured and enslaved. An older interpretation connected it to the Greek verb skyleúo'to strip a slain enemy'. There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as unfree labourer or enslaved person, rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, including Andi Cumbo-Floyd, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language. Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with "person" implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow for.
Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan. The services required to repay the debt, their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt, it is the most widespread form of slavery today. Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia. Chattel slavery called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities. Under the chattel slave system, slave status was imposed on children of the enslaved at birth. Although it dominated many different societies throughout human history, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is rare today; when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the legal system of any internationally recognized government. "Slavery" has been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.
For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens. Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to refer to when an individual is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person; this may include institutions not classified as slavery, such as serfdom and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work, are subject to forms of coercion and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work. Human trafficking involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, India and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Examples of sexual slavery in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations," "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery. In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts. More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty such as in restaveks in Haiti. Forced marriages or early marriages are considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West. Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa. Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a national average of 69% of marriages in
