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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 1, 2 January 1950, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Dear Brother Reuther:
Trade-union leaders, even those who boast (or don’t boast) of radical pasts, are not given to generalized discussions. “That’s just theory,” they like to say when someone points to the possible consequences of a dangerous step they have taken. Sometimes, however, theory has an odd way of standing up and smacking you right in the face. If you will forgive the suggestion, theory has just given you a good strong wallop to the jaw.
In the last few years the leadership of the UAW has developed the idea that trade unions have the right to exert tight political discipline over their functionaries. You have also developed the Idea that the CIO has the right to insist that international unions follow Its political line.
Thus, one of the main charges you pressed against the Stalinist-led CIO unions was that in the last presidential election they supported Wallace instead of Truman. “Either follow CIO policy or get out,” you said to the Stalinists. The fact that this came with a certain dubious grace from you who, in the famous GM strike, had veered from Murray’s wage policy, we shall riot here underline too heavily.
That was your policy with regard to political action – a policy, incidentally, far more rigid and disciplined than the one followed by the British trade unions that support the British Labor Party, and even more rigid and disciplined than that followed by political tendencies that are occasionally attacked as “Bolshevik.”
Anti-Stalinist militants in the UAW spoke up against this policy, insisting that unions do not have the right to exert political discipline over their affiliates of functionaries, that the political action of a union must be entirely on a voluntary basis, and that the CIO had no right to force an affiliate to adhere to political discipline. You rejected such criticisms.
Now we would bring to your attention an incident that happened in New York recently. The ILGWU refused to support for mayor of New York the Tammany hack who was endorsed by most of the AFL unions. The ILGWU instead endorsed Newbold Morris, a Fusion-Republican-Liberal candidate.
The wisdom of this choice need not here be discussed; what is important is the right of the ILGWU to make its choice. After the election the nabobs of the AFL Central Council began putting pressure on Joseph Tuvim, ILGWU delegate to that council, to resign because he had not supported the AFL political line in New York City. Latest reports have it that the ILGWU may withdraw from the council entirely.
Now don’t you think that’s an interesting incident? We would ask you: in light of your position on political discipline in trade unions, wouldn’t you have been required to endorse the AFL action against the ILGWU? We assume that if you were in New York you might have agreed with the ILGWU position in the last election; we assume your conception of realism has not yet matured to the point of supporting a Tammany agent.
You see, perhaps, how theory has a way of boomeranging. When you’re playing political second fiddle to Phil Murray in the quite comfortable movement against the Stalinists, you shout: “Follow CIO policy or get out.” But then why can’t the AFL leaders in New York say the same thing to your friend Dubinsky? And now that they have, doesn’t the logic of your view require you to support the AFL leadership against Dubinsky?
Will you speak up on this question, or will you remain as silent about it as the UAW’s Ammunition has been with regard to a certain book – but hush! Livingston might hear us ...
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Yours for theory, |
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Last updated: 23 February 2023