Dyer Lum
Dyer Daniel Lum 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 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, 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
Family and childhood
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
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
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
Greenback period
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. 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, which Lum himself joined in 1885.
Conversion to anarchism
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.