The Proletariat in Search of a Class, by Gaither Stewart

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Originally published Feb. 3, 2020
October 16, 2022

The super-indoctrinated, Trump-voting American working class, dulled by the mass media and the “American dream”, has changed very little since the crushing of the great textile strikes that swept the United States in the 1920s. Not an iota of class-consciousness has it absorbed. (Nor has it been explained and offered to all wage earners in sufficient doses.) For also the middle classes, crushed by an ever more desperate, an “end of times” form of capitalism, has not yet grasped that they too are now part of the American proletariat. In that respect it seems that the old, often criticized word proletariat is still quite adequate.

When The Revolution Comes by Gaither Stewart

Image by Giorgia Colletti via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Previously published August 8, 2011
April 21, 2020

The Historical Gastonia Textile Mill Strikes Are Not Forgotten

When in the early part of this millennium I was writing a rather surrealistic novel, ASHEVILLE, about the town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina where I started out my life, I ran into the story of the Asheville-based self-professed Communist writer, Olive Tilford Dargan, of whom I had never heard before. Visiting then her gravesite in the little known Green Hills Cemetery in West Asheville and researching her and her activities I fell into a gossamer review of early 19th century labor struggles in the good old U.S. South.

The Proletariat In Search Of A Class, by Gaither Stewart

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
February 3, 2020

The super-indoctrinated, Trump-voting American working class, dulled by the mass media and the “American dream”, has changed very little since the crushing of the great textile strikes that swept the United States in the 1920s. Not an iota of class-consciousness has it absorbed. (Nor has it been explained and offered to all wage earners in sufficient doses.) For also the middle classes, crushed by an ever more desperate, an “end of times” form of capitalism, has not yet grasped that they too are now part of the American proletariat. In that respect it seems that the old, often criticized word proletariat is still quite adequate.

Definitions: The Proletariat by Gaither Stewart

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Previously published Sept. 12, 2008
August 20, 2018

“Suppose that some great disaster were to sweep ten million families out to sea and leave ‘em on a desert island to starve and rot. That would be … an act of God, maybe. But suppose a manner of government that humans have set up and directed, drives ten million families into the pit of poverty and starvation? That’s no act of God. That’s our fool selves actin’ like lunatics. What humans have set up they can take down…. Whoever says we’ve got to have a capitalist government when we want a workers’ government, is givin’ the lie to the great founders of these United States….”

(A Stone Came Rolling, Olive Tilford Dargan)

When The Revolution Comes by Gaither Stewart

Image by Children’s Bureau Centennial via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Previously published August 8, 2011
June 22, 2017

The Historical Gastonia Textile Mill Strikes Are Not Forgotten

When in the early part of this millennium I was writing a rather surrealistic novel, ASHEVILLE, about the town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina where I started out my life, I ran into the story of the Asheville-based self-professed Communist writer, Olive Tilford Dargan, of whom I had never heard before. Visiting then her gravesite in the little known Green Hills Cemetery in West Asheville and researching her and her activities I fell into a gossamer review of early 19th century labor struggles in the good old U.S. South.

When the Revolution Comes by Gaither Stewart

by Gaither Stewart
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
2 August, 2011
Rome, Italy

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

The Historical Gastonia Textile Mill Strikes Are Not Forgotten

When in the early part of this millennium I was writing a rather surrealistic novel, ASHEVILLE, about the town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina where I started out my life, I ran into the story of the Asheville-based self-professed Communist writer, Olive Tilford Dargan, of whom I had never heard before. Visiting then her gravesite in the little known Green Hills Cemetery in West Asheville and researching her and her activities I fell into a gossamer review of early 19th century labor struggles in the good old U.S. South.