The establishment of what would become the Federal Bureau of Investigation in...

The establishment of what would become the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1908-led from 1924 until 1972 by J. Edgar Hoover-was a direct response to the revolutionary wave that gripped the American working class. FBI agents, often little more than state-employed goons and thugs, ruthlessly hunted down those on the left. The FBI spied on and infiltrated labor unions, political parties, radical groups-especially those led by African Americans-antiwar groups, and later the civil rights movement in order to discredit anyone, including politicians such as Henry Wallace, who questioned the power of the state and big business. Agents burglarized homes and offices. They illegally opened mail and planted unlawful wiretaps, created blacklists, and demanded loyalty oaths. They destroyed careers and sometimes lives. By the time they were done, America's progressive and radical movements, which had given the country the middle class and opened up our political system, did not exist. It was upon the corpses of these radical movements, which had fought for the working class, that the corporate state was erected in the late twentieth century.

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