Portal:Society

The Free Association of German Trade Unions (FVdG) was a trade union federation in Imperial and early Weimar Germany. It was founded in 1897 in Halle as the national umbrella organization of the localist current of the German labor movement. During the years following its formation, the FVdG began to adopt increasingly radical positions. During the German socialist movement's debate over the use of mass strikes, the FVdG advanced the view that the general strike must be a weapon in the hands of the working class. The federation believed the mass strike was the last step before a socialist revolution and became increasingly critical of parliamentary action. Disputes with the mainstream labor movement finally led to the expulsion of FVdG members from the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1908 and the complete severing of relations between the two organizations. Anarchist and especially syndicalist positions became increasingly popular within the FVdG. Immediately after the November Revolution, the FVdG very quickly became a mass organization. It was particularly attractive to miners from the Ruhr area opposed to the mainstream unions' reformist policies. In December 1919, the federation merged with several minor left communist unions to become the Free Workers' Union of Germany.

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A drawing of travelers on the California Trail, one of the major emigrant trails across the Western United States used by over 250,000 people heading west during the California Gold Rush. This, combined with those coming from the east across the Isthmus of Panama or around Cape Horn, greatly increased the population of California, and spurred the movement to make it the 31st U.S. state.

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• ... that among long-term prisoners held at Akershus Fortress (pictured) in the 19th century were Norwegian career criminals Gjest Baardsen and Ole Høiland, and Sami rebel Lars Hætta?
• ... that the 1981 general strike in Bielsko-Biała in Poland forced several officials to lose their jobs?
• ... that members of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors include United Kingdom's most experienced and successful songwriters like Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Elton John?

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• 9 June 1886 - Centennial celebration of the foundation of the Stoughton Musical Society
• 14 June 1957 - IEEE Education Society was formed as the IRE Professional Group on Education
• 24 June 1834 - The Canadiens founded what would become the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society
• 30 June 1897 - Foundation of the Shanghai Foot Emancipation Society (foot binding pictured)

“ When society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use in attempting to rebuild it on the old plan. ” — John Stuart Mill, Dissertations and Discussions (1859)

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Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist, historian, and political theorist. He was a prominent exponent of the Austrian School of economics and fundamentally influenced the American libertarian movement and contemporary libertarian and classical liberal thought, by theorizing a form of free-market anarchism which he termed "anarcho-capitalism". Building on the Austrian School's concept of spontaneous order, support for a free market in money production, and condemnation of central planning Rothbard advocated abolition of coercive government control of society and the economy. He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term well-being of the populace, labeling the state as "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large" and the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society. Rothbard concluded that all services provided by monopoly governments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. He viewed many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the "public interest" as self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as they were not subject to market disciplines. Rothbard held that there were inefficiencies involved with government services and asserted that market disciplines would eliminate them, if the services could be provided by competition in the private sector. Rothbard was equally condemning of state corporatism, criticizing many instances where business elites co-opted government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals. He argued that taxation represents coercive theft on a grand scale, and "a compulsory monopoly of force" prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers. He also considered central banking and fractional reserve banking under a monopoly fiat money system a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial fraud, antithetical to libertarian principles and ethics. (Full article...)

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