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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 18, 1 May 1950, p. 12.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In an epoch that demands great decisions and bold actions to solve the urgent world problems pressing on humanity, the strategic role of the American labor movement assumes increasing importance, since it constitutes the largest free working-class force in the world at its peak of strength. Yet its tragic impotence is remarkable.
The contrast between the potential role of the American unions with aggressive socialist leadership and the actual facts of life constitutes a gap the like of which has never been seen before in modern capitalist society. Even a cursory glance at the record of defeats and so-called victories of the trade unions since May 1949 illustrates the point quite clearly. Furthermore, a review of the previous year’s labor history doos give a clue to the coming events and the part which the labor movement may play during the next immediate period.
It is customary in union circles to confine any review primarily to a statistical report: Last year the unions had X number of contracts, this year X plus 100 contracts. This is called progress. Last year the unions collected X millions in dues, this year they took in X plus A millions in dues: more evidence of progress.
The mentality of the tradeunion officialdom confines itself within the limits of a static world which, while only fictitious, does lend support to the statistical approach which they find so comforting. The trick of the trade-union officials consists not in relating the evolution of the union movement to the social problems of the day and to the new tasks created by turbulent national and international events.
The vast post-war unrest and search for economic security finally reflected itself in the labor movement by demands for pensions for the workers “too old to work and too young to die.” John L. Lewis grasped the sentiment and won the first industry-financed pension plan. In 1949 the CIO leadership made pensions the major economic demand for the coming year, and Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, as usual, eloquently outlined the significance of this blueprint to labor and the country.
In 1950 the results of the CIO campaign are almost in, and they have proved to be quite disillusioning to most workers whose unions won industry-financed pension plans. In the case of other workers – as, for example, the Chrysler strikers now out of work nearly four months in a pension strike – the disillusionment has set in before the “triumph.” The whole pension drive of the labor movement has served to emphasize the insecurity of modern society rather than give any assurance of security.
Nor has there been any period in which the union movement seemed to sacrifice so much in terms of struggle for such minor gains. The pension pattern has turned out to be very disappointing to labor. In addition, in other strike struggles like Bell Aircraft and Singer Sewing Machine, the unions suffered big defeats. The AFL unions which, by and large, skirted the pension issue or opposed it, confined themselves primarily to consolidating previously won contracts and winning minor economic concessions.
Until the coal miners’ strike victory temporarily halted the anti-labor drive, the entire American labor movement seemed headed for a period of more retreats and defeats. Not the least important aspect of the coal miners’ success against the Truman administration’s strikebreaking, the coal operators and federal injunctions was the fact that no labor leader except John L. Lewis thought the coal miners could do anything except suffer defeat. This is the sorry past to which the American labor leadership has come in the last year.
The significance of the successful tactics of the coal miners and John L. Lewis has been completely missed by the rest of the labor bureaucracy. They shudder at the very thought of “taking on the whole world” as the United Mine Workers union was forced to do.
Another aspect of the coal miners’ strike which should not be lost is that with all its splendid militancy it was essentially a defensive battle, which did not solve any of the basic problems but only gave the coal miners a brief respite before other harsher battles ensue.
The effect of the conservative policies carried out by frightened bureaucrats may best be seen as they affect the most progressive union in America, the United Automobile Workers (CIO). Before the auto workers’ union could make its major 1950 struggle against General Motors for a $125 a month pension plan and greater union security, it found itself engaged in a costly, devastating, and almost demoralizing strike against Chrysler, the outcome of which, no matter how successful in terms of immediate demands, can never make up for the great sacrifices of the ranks.
Yet in the middle of this kind of class struggle one finds the national CIO announcing that if is dropping the word “demand” from its lexicon. Hereafter its demands will be referred to as “proposals.” After all, the word “demand” may be found in the Communist Manifesto; if sounds radical; it may, you know, be un-American, and it implies that labor needs something so badly in this capitalist paradise that it must insist upon if.
What is involved, of course, in this announcement is the whole cringing and defeatist mentality of a timid bureaucracy frightened by the blows of a changing world. Another reflection of this is the positive hatred with which many CIO bureaucrats view Walter Reuther, who, although he does not act one whit different from the others, still insists on making a speech, now and then that suggests that perhaps this is not the best of all possible worlds, and his speeches are always referred to as “pie in the sky.”
Turning to the field of political action, it could hardly be expected that any trade-union bureaucracy as timid as the CIO and AFL are on the economic field, which is the heart of unionism, could be expected to act differently in terms of national politics. Almost everyone, including these same bureaucrats, will admit that the activities of the labor movement on the national political scene have resulted in one fiasco after another. The best way to keep an index on Congressional action these days is to list any important CIO or AFL legislative program, and one can safely assume that Congress did not pass and will not pass that bill in the coming period. The repeal of the Taft-Hartley Law and the shelving of civil rights legislation are two cases in point.
It is thus that in sheer self-defense the bureaucracies are beginning to move closer together, and this explains the recent CIO, AFL and UMW maneuvers on the question of labor unity. Fear, pot a feeling of strength, is driving them together.
What lessons should be learned from the dumping of the Fair Deal program into the Congressional ashcan, from the political fiascos of the labor movement and front the costly and debilitating strike struggles which bring such relatively small results? CIO President Philip Murray informed the world, including his cohort Walter Reuther, in a recent issue of the New Republic, what conclusion he drew. Murray said he simply could not conceive of the Democratic Party not doing its job (all the facts of life to the contrary) and therefore any suggestion of a third party based on labor was simply a trick playing into the hands of general reaction.
Thus we find, with the 1950 elections before us, not one important section of the official labor movement speaking in terms of any independent political action which might turn the reactionary tide. Few others than the Independent Socialists and other political groups are keeping alive the idea of a labor party.
In the face of this political bankruptcy, is it a wonder that the “hopelessly inadequate” (to use Walter Reuther’s phrase) Harry Truman feels more confident these days? Why not? The more he disregards labor leaders the more servile they become. The American labor bureaucracy simply keeps silent on many issues which affect the interests of the rank and file because they fear to jeopardize their relationship with Truman. The fantastic and costly military budget is an example. As for foreign policy, what can one find? At a time when the world labor movement looks for aid against-Stalinist totalitarianism, all they get from American labor leaders is a “me too” to every Wall Street imperialist policy.
The whole spectacle would be pitiful if it were not so tragic, for it is the rank and file that suffers from the blunders and mistakes, of the leadership.
There is only one field in which the top leaders may honestly state that they are achieving real success, and that is in consolidating their bureaucratic grip over the rank and file. The AFL today has an aristocracy of labor bureaucrats undreamed of before. Just one little illustration of the AFL trend: Recently a teamsters’ local union with 6,000 members published its yearly financial report. The executive director of this union alone received $55,000 a year in salary.
In the CIO bureaucratization took a more dramatic and brutal form because of the problem of Stalinism. The expulsion of the Stalinist-controlled unions was prepared by revising the CIO constitution into a bureaucratic structure which gives it a discipline that only monolithic political parties have thus far insisted upon. Official policy in the CIO now tends to have the same general significance that “party line” has been to the Stalinists and for which they were ridiculed by these same CIO bureaucrats and for which unions under their control were expelled.
Three illustrations of the crude bureaucratization that is engulfing the CIO come to mind, besides the wholesale expulsions resulting from the 1949 CIO convention in Cleveland. Joseph Curran’s combined police regime and strong-arm methods have struck nearly fatal blows to the splendid tradition of democracy in the National Maritime Union. The devastating biographical sketch of Michael Quill that recently appeared in the N.Y. Times Magazine speaks for itself as a commentary on the fate of union democracy in the Transport Workers Union.
A third illustration indicates how difficult it is to stop the trend once it begins. By the time this article appears George Baldanzi, executive vice-president of the Textile Workers Union, will be fighting desperately to remain in his union. Why? Is he a Stalinist or perhaps a socialist or an independent radical who disagrees with “CIO policy”? Nothing as serious as that. Emil Rieve, president and boss of the textile union, proposes to expel Baldanzi “because we don’t get along and can't work together.”
And there is evidently not a single public protest from one single CIO leader against this enervating trend. How safe is the struggle for democracy in the hands of a union bureaucracy which includes Currans, Quills and Rieves and is dominated by a Murray?
Nothing better suggests the power and almost limitless vitality of the American working class than its demonstrations at every possible opportunity of its willingness to fight and to sacrifice for a better world. The steel workers struck for six weeks. The saga of the coal miners’ struggle tells itself. At Chrysler, in spite of a policy of no picket lines and of confusion and blundering at the top, the auto workers stand solidly together for nearly four months!
What is lacking, what is needed, what is wrong, is the leadership. Labor’s record for 1949–50 stands as a wholesale indictment of the bureaucracy. And candor compels us to state bluntly that in the coming period no effective new leadership to challenge the old appears likely to arise. It is at this point, of course, that many socialists, understanding the real situation, become ex-socialists; ex-socialists become Democrats; and the Walter Reuthers are privately grateful that they chose to play it safe and keep their position.
The very urgency of the problems, the failure of the present labor leadership, and the need for a new force in the union movement giving direction to the ceaseless struggle of the workers dictates the future role and outlines the significance of fhe Independent Socialist League!
To exist, to be an example of a different set of ideas, of a different way out than the old hopeless and futile methods, are reasons alone that justify the functioning of the Independent Socialists in the union movement as well as in society in general.
Where can labor find the idea for its own political and organizational independence from the capitalist parties and their society except from the Independent Socialists? What other hope exists – outside of the terrible Stalinist totalitarian anti-capitalism – for the anti-capitalist feelings of the workers?
The main stress of the union work of Independent Socialists in this period is political. The day-to-day tasks remain important but are not decisive in the kind of period in which the labor unions find themselves today. Of course there will be many different forms of revolt within the unions against the growing bureaucratization and the impotence of the top leaders to “bring home the bacon.” The ranks will not act in shrewd, clever fashion, with assurances of success in the struggle against the bureaucrats. But in all instances, the Independent Socialists have an important role to play, not as trade-union leaders primarily, but above all, as socialist educators, who tie together the struggle for union democracy with labor’s general political independence and its historic place in a new society.
No struggle for socialism has any meaning without being a struggle for democracy, and no struggle for democracy is significant and lasting unless it combines with it the long-range struggle for socialism, the only form of workers’ democracy compatible with the industrialized world in which we live today.
At protagonists for this basic concept, the Independent Socialists in day-to-day struggle and by all their activities, as well as the organization which symbolizes the fight for socialism, the Independent Socialist League, take on their most important job.
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