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From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 46, 14 November 1949, pp. 1. & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The 1949 convention of the CIO is over; and there is no doubt that crucial steps have been taken in Cleveland – steps to which labor will look back later in hindsight as their effects unroll in the next few years.
On the heels of the expulsion of the Stalinist-dominated United Electrical Workers (UE) and Farm Equipment Workers (FE), the action of the convention in barring (or more accurately, taking the first steps to dump) all of the other ten Stalinist unions from the executive board makes it clear that the heralded split is really here. Whether it is brought to a climax through new expulsions by the Murray majority or through a gradual or speedy withdrawal of the Communist Party bloc to found a new trade-union center around the UE, this will only determine the secondary features of the split but not the fact of the split itself.
The pernicious influence of the CP in the CIO is on the way out, if not yet quite smashed. If this were all that need be noted about the action of the convention, only cheers would be in order – and an evaluation of the convention would be much simpler. But it is not. Some of this evaluation we have made in the last few weeks; a summing up is necessary.
First things first:
After all that needs to be said has been said about what has already taken place, the fact is that what is now beginning is an all-out fight. It is a fight between the CIO and the Communist Party – in local union elections, NLRB votes, court battles, jurisdictional struggles.
In this fight we emphasize that the first duty of every union militant is to rally the workers to remain in the CIO, and where the Stalinists succeed in taking them out, to support the CIO against them, to fight. to bring their locals back in.
The course of the CIO leadership has not made that fight any easier, but has made it many times harder than it should be. That may not be true for the main body of the CIO rank and file, but especially in the most hotly contested centers of Stalinist influence it is true of many – especially many among the best militants, not the worst, repelled by the political-purge tactics of the Murrayites.
But regardless of what deep-going differences any union militant may have with the present leadership of the CIO, regardless of how he may condemn its methods, he will be making a fatal, mistake unless he realizes that, the CIO-CP struggle is no ordinary conflict on the level of trade-union differences, even the most important. It is not at bottom a matter of a divergence of policy inside the working class but a. death struggle between two tendencies:
Stalinism is the most reactionary force inside the labor movement. This is not so because this or that specific policy it advocates al this or that moment is more reactionary than Murray’s – on the contrary, it is capable of any degree of demagogic leftism which typically in. such cases tends to slide off into adventurism. Its slogans, its policies, its tactics change with dizzying rapidity, but its guiding goal and objective .remains fixed and unalterable: it aims to make the labor movement (or whatever section of it that it can lay its hands on) a tool of the foreign policies of the monstrous Stalin totalitarianism in Russia.
The Stalinists are at bottom the reactionary agents of a barbarous anti-working-class power. The Communist Party does fight the American capitalist class, but not in the least in order to advance the interests of the American working class – exclusively to promote the aims of the Kremlin rulers, rivals of the American capitalist class. Never and nowhere do they oppose their real masters in Moscow; they are ready to go to any extreme to cut the union movement to pieces if need be (as need was in Eastern Europe), to lead it either into suicidal adventures or into capitulatory compromises in accordance with the demand of Russian diplomacy.
Thus today, the Stalinist-dominated unions preferred to orient toward a split from the CIO rather than abandon their propagation of Russian foreign policy. This was amply indicated by the UE convention’s arrogant ultimatum to the CIO, its virtual walkout (announcement of stoppage of per-capita tax) even before CIO action, its merger with FE .in defiance of the CIO. The Stalinists are not in the least interested in the trade-union democracy for which they now yell, but which is never seen by oppositions in the unions they control.
The leadership of the CIO is a conservative officialdom. It supports the basic features of American imperialist foreign policy. It continues to rely upon capitalist politicians, to collaborate with capitalist parties. It supports the capitalist system. For all these reasons, its policies, in the opinion of Socialists, weaken the effectiveness of the labor movement and make it difficult to advance the class struggle of the labor movement and prevent the powerful union movement from utilizing its full power for the advantage of the working class.
Nevertheless, the CIO officialdom represents a legitimate working-class tendency. Although they support capitalist policies, they must and do fight against the capitalist class in their own way. In their own inadequate way, they fight for the elementary interests of the working class, they must fight to defend the existence of the labor movement; they remain subject to the pressure of the working class and in one degree or another respond to its needs. None of these considerations apply to the Stalinists.
The basic cause of the split is the deep-going antagonism between the CIO officialdom and the Stalinists which had been temporarily suppressed during the war but which is now brought out into the open once again with the rise and intensification of the cold war between Russian and American imperialism. Over a period of years, the Communist Party had won strategic positions of influence in the CIO; it is determined to use these posts to further the Kremlin line. But it can no longer do so and remain in the CIO. Two currents of anti-Stalinism merge to batter it to pieces: the elements of the wartime rank-and-file movement and the hostility of the labor leadership.
The fight against the no-strike pledge and the wildcat strike wave during the war reached the highest intensity in the mass CIO unions, and that was the beginning of the end for the CP. Although the official leadership (Murray,) and the Stalinists saw eye-to-eye on the major questions of wartime policy, the CP defended strikebreaking policies with a special viciousness. Many of the ordinary conservative labor officials compromised with the oppositional rank-and-file movements, but not the Stalinists: they became a bureaucratic police force against union militants; imposed piecework where they could; vilified all tendencies toward independent political action; expelled critics; and hatcheted strikes, like the Montgomery-Ward strike, which were endorsed by the legitimate trade-union movement. Union militants learned that there was no limit to the anti-union role of the CP. Before the Russian-U.S. alliance wore out, Stalinist union leaders like Bridges, were even proposing a post-war no-strike pledge.
But the present struggle against Stalinism is of a^far more wide-sweeping character. The same conservative labor leaders who tolerated Stalinism during the, war .and protected it against militants and anti-Stalinists, are now themselves taking the lead in a drive to oust it from control. Phil Murray, until recently, ignored the groundswell of anti-CP opposition within the Stalinist-controlled unions.
In the UAW, Reuther defeated R.J. Thomas, the Stalinist-supported candidate in 1946; but Murray opposed Reuther. In the UE, Murray played little or no role in wakening the fight in the ranks against Stalinism even after James Carey reappeared as one of the UE opposition leaders – this even in the last months when it became clear that Murray himself desired the ousting the the CP leaderships from office.
Despite Murray’s diffidence, anti-Stalinist oppositions increased in strength (UE); were successful (UAW); and former Stalinist fellow travelers like Curran and Quill flipflopped under pressure from their own rank and file and prevailing public opinion.
Murray avoided awakening a rank-and-file fight against the Stalinists, even though he wanted the CP removed from control, because such methods of relying on the ranks are foreign to his own bureaucratic conceptions and are dangerous to the machine control of the Murray leadership itself. Such rank-and-file movements would certainly have accepted basic CIO policy, but at the same time they would have developed independently, gained self-confidence in the course of the fight, and become less amenable to machine control. Instead of mobilizing the ranks against the CP, Murray sought arrangements f)om the top – pressure on the Stalinist leaders to refrain from implementing their policies, then ultimatums and threats.
Unlike the mass rank-and-file movements which are essentially democratic in-their methods, Murray’s techniques are typically bureaucratic. With the cooperation of Walter Reuther, who tested the “new line” at the last UAW convention, Murray devised a new principle that all affiliated International unions and all city and state industrial union councils must “carry out official CIO policy” especially on political questions. This super-centralist discipline insists upon the rigid presentation of a single viewpoint of all questions to a degree which is not even true of the two big political parties in the U.S., let alone the trade unions.
This bureaucratic concept of super-centralization was invoked to put a pistol to the heads of the Stalinist leaders who were anxious to support the Russian propaganda line. But it has an edge directed against anti-Stalinist militants who are not satisfied with the political policies of the CIO.
Stalinism must be defeated in the labor, movement. But how? By expulsions, political purges, constitutional decrees and the like? Or by full and free discussion without overhanging threats of “discipline”? Stalinism is an acute, immediate, threat to the CIO.
BUT A CHRONIC LONG-TERM PROBLEM FOR THE LABOR MOVEMENT, AS FOR THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE. IS THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS. In all unions, the most progressive as well as the most conservative we see the solidification of a machine of paid officials. Even in the UAW – even in the best section of the union movement – this process is evident; the subtle encroachments of the machine can be seen. In the National Maritime Union, a crude expulsion campaign is in full swing, aimed at stifling all criticism especially organized criticism in the form of caucuses.
Their methods of fighting Stalinism deepen the tendencies within the labor movement toward bureaucratism and undermine the leading role of its progressive wing. The new super-centralist dictum ties the hands of such genuine left-wing unions as the UAW, preventing it from initiating new political methods. Stalinism can be defeated by the free democratic action of the rank and- file. That is why we oppose the expulsion of International unions which deviate from “official” policy, including unions controlled by the CP; reject the expulsion of the unionists who remain members of the CP; and stand out against “settling” the problem of Stalinism by constitutional provisions barring members of the CP from holding office.
Murray’s method gives the CP totalitarions a golden opportunity to parade as defenders of “democracy” and “autonomy.” This is not the least reason why militants condemn it.
The split situation was not created by Murray’s bureaucratic methods although they brought it to a head in an immediate sense in a manner advantageous to the CP. Long before the current split developed, the Stalinists forced small splits in the unions they themselves controlled. They expelled oppositionists and shops and whole locals out of their unions, even out of the CIO, in a series of authoritarian acts. So long as Murray permitted them their “autonomy” in expelling critics, they were content to remain in the CIO.
Even if the Murrayites had utilized democratic methods, aroused the rank and file of the Stalinist unions, encouraged them to form caucuses and groups, defended their rights against the inevitable assaults of the Stalinist apparatus, the CP would have found it more necessary to split in order to hold their remaining base in the unions. But they would have had to do so under more onerous and embarrassing conditions; they would have found it more difficult to take along large sections of the rank and file of their unions.
They accepted this opportunity of splitting because it gives them the incontestable advantage of rallying their followers around the banner of “democracy” and “autonomy.” Murray’s methods simplify the task of the CP.
The course of the fight in the UE illustrates the factors leading to split. The rise of a powerful anti-Stalinist opposition drove the CP toward dictatorial measures. It prepared for the expulsion of its opponents at the last UE convention. Without the intervention of the top leadership of the CIO, the situation in the UE might have festered for many months while the split was in preparation, marked by the expulsion of leading anti-Stalinists and locals as in the past. As the opposition increased in strength so would the CP have intensified its dictatorial methods.
But once Murray began to move against the CP, the Stalinist UE leadership decided upon a quick move in anticipation of a general split so that the UE might serve as the rallying center of all Stalinist forces. The action of the CIO convention served to speed up the inevitable split in the UE.
Aside from the question of Stalinism, the CIO continues as before the convention. Its political platform calls for the support of so-called “liberals” in the capitalist parties. Militants must continue to press for a policy of class independence – for the formation of an independent Labor Party based upon the unions. Despite their differences with the policies of the CIO leadership, they will of course fight as loyal members, of the CIO against the attempts of the Stalinists to tear it apart. In criticizing the methods employed by the CIO leadership in the fight against Stalinism, militants do so not to defend Stalinism but to preserve democracy at its maximum within the labor movement. The union movement cannot go forward without union democracy.
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