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Nathan Newman:
>As to the idea that the 1930s was a "working class mobilization", which came
>first, the organization or the mobilization? The early 30s had sporadic,
even
>impressive individual political fights, but it's hard to chalk it up as so
>impressive. Between 1929 and 1934 - five long years of misery and poverty -
>there was surprisingly little mobilization.
Louis siad
-This is historically inaccurate. The big CIO sit-down strikes occurred -before the Popular Front turn. What did happen, and this has some bearing -on the recent UPS success, is that the bosses started hiring again and the -workers had more leverage in waging strikes, beginning in 1934.
Those objective changes mattered, but the big CIO sit-down strikes did not happen until 1936 and 1937- which was after the Popular Front turn. There were some impressive individual strikes in 1934, but they were isolated and most (except for the San Francisco longshore strike and the Minneapolis Teamsters) were unsuccessful.
The CIO organizing drive was incredibly impressive in its bringing together every spare leftist from the IWW, CP, Socialist Party etc. with militant unionists like John Lewis. Step-by-step, industry-by-industry, they launched comprehensive full-out assaults that energized the whole working class.
Organization does matter historically and talking about "the period" and timing of history is usually an excuse for ignoring our failures to organize. All the leftwing crazies who went into the workplace in the 1970s failed because their organizations were small and isolated; they were there to agitate not to organize.
The IS was effective in the Teamsters because they were there to organize. They built the TDU as an organization for the long haul that would change the culture of the Teamsters. They were not agitating a political line but building a counter-hegemonic cultural force within the union.
--Nathan