>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>
>>And then the Red Purge came.... The Popular Front pushed the rhetoric
>>of Americanism to the Left as far as it could go, but by doing so, it
>>made stronger the very petard by which it got hoisted when political
>>winds changed with the defeat of Axis powers and the beginning of the
>>Cold War...Communists got labeled un-American and
>>purged out of institutions such as industrial unions that they had
>>worked hard to create.
>
>The Communists got purged out of the labor movement because they lost their
>mass base and support, largely because they so slavishly following Stalin's
>pro-war line that they sided against rank-and-file activists during World War
>II and supported the no-strike pledge didactically. In the UAW, the
>Reutherites made their gains during the war by siding with rank-and-file
>activists for wage increases and against employer profiteering, while the
>Communists destroyed their credibility by siding with the employers on the
>issue of the no-strike pledge.
>
>It was an epically mis-guided decision, where the Communists sacrificed their
>workplace credibility on behalf of the Soviet Union. Many workers saw in
>practice that their interests would be sacrificed by the Communists for the
>interests of the Soviet Union, so they had little problem believing
>anti-communist propaganda after the war. And since the Communists lost their
>base in the unions through their actions, they were easy to purge by rivals
>like the Reutherites.
Nelson Lichtenstein's _Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II_ is a good work, and I'd recommend it highly (visit <http://uk.cambridge.org/history/catalogue/0521335736/default.htm> for more info on the book). Here's an excerpt from a review of _Labor's War at Home_:
***** A series of events in 1941 led to "responsible unionism," a term Lichtenstein employed to characterize the swing of the labor movement to an increasingly moderate stance. Early in the year, several CIO-organized strikes endangered the Roosevelt administration's mobilization effort. In response, the government stepped up its pressure on CIO leadership to restrain strike activity, tone down its economic demands, and refer all industrial disputes to the new National Defense Mediation board. In June of 1941, the Roosevelt administration demonstrated its willingness to enforce that policy when it used military force to break a strike of a Communist-led United Auto Workers aircraft local and encourage the influence of national UAW leaders who were more politically compliant. Lichtenstein characterized the suppression of this strike as a turning point in defense-era labor relations. Afterward, most unions in effect enforced a no-strike pledge. For their cooperation, union leaders demanded some form of government-enforced union security for the extent of the war.
<http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/brundage/20thcentury_grad_course/lichtenstein_review.html> *****
To turn to a section titled "Debate over the No-Strike Pledge" in _Labor's War at Home_ itself, Lichtenstein writes:
***** When the UAW assembled for its annual convention in Grand Rapids in September 1944, the no-strike pledge held center stage as the only real item on the union's agenda save, of course, the annual contest for office. Three resolutions on the pledge confronted the 2,400 delegates: a majority position, backed by most of the leadership and the Communists, reaffirming the pledge for the duration; a separate Reuther caucus resolution proposing that after the defeat of Germany, strikes might be selectively authorized in factories converted to civilian production; and a "superminority" plank sponsored by the Rank and File group that simply revoked the pledge immediately, subject to later ratification by a union-wide referendum.
In a two-day debate that captured the attention of the nation, [Walter] Reuther's effort once again to straddle the fence between left and right utterly collapsed. Both conservatives and radicals easily slashed away at his proposal, for it rested on the false distinction between civilian and military production, long recognized by labor as invalid in a total war, and on the mistaken belief that a smooth and early conversion to civilian production was about to begin. With many of his usual supporters deserting him, Reuther found his plan hooted down by the convention in a voice vote. At the nadir of his fortunes in the wartime UAW, Reuther lost the first vice-presidency to Richard Frankenstein two days later. He barely retained a top post in the union by defeating one-time ally Richard Leonard in another vice-presidential ballot, and then only with the help of the CIO's Allen Haywood and Sidney Hillman, who intervened directly at the convention to maintain the status quo in the UAW hierarchy.
The real debate lay between those who favored and those who opposed outright revocation of the no-strike pledge. Just back from the war front in France, R.J. Thomas once more justified the pledge on patriotic grounds, whereas Philip Murray, in an extraordinary appeal to UAW delegates, laid special emphasis upon the need to retain the strike prohibition in order to ensure Roosevelt's reelection. But the unreflective call to support patriotically the commander-in-chief had worn thin by late 1944. When some UAW officers made ready to bring wounded war veterans to the microphones in their support, leaders of the Rank and File caucus threatened to bring their own recently hospitalized servicemen to the convention floor. Both sides agreed to forego this macabre confrontation.
When the votes were counted, the superminority resolution revoking the pledge took 37 percent of the vote, chiefly from the older locals in Detroit, Flint, and Chicago. But backers of the pledge also failed to win a majority, so the UAW now found itself with no formal position on this crucial issue. In the ensuing confusion, Victor Reuther and the leaders of the Rank and File caucus worked out an interim compromise. The strike pledge would be reaffirmed, but only until a union-wide referendum after the national elections resolved the issue. In the meantime, UAW officers were barred from the use of union funds, facilities, or personnel to campaign for their point of view....
Despite all this activity [the pro-pledge leaders soliciting supportive views from Popular Front liberals, organizing a "Committee to Uphold the No-Strike Pledge, etc., the anti-pledge Rank and File caucus holding city-wide meetings, publishing newssheets, etc.], the referendum failed to excite union ranks. Delays in the actual balloting proved frustrating, and the final turnout disappointed both sides in the contest. When the postcard ballots were finally tallied in March 1945, less than 300,000 had voted, about 30 percent of the union membership. Supporters of the pledge took a two-to-one lead over their opponents, although the contest was closer in Flint and Detroit, where antipledge votes reached almost 45 percent of all those cast.
The referendum lost, but the wildcat strikes continued....
(Nelson Lichtenstein, _Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II_, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982, pp. 195-196) *****
A fascinating piece of history, but the no-strike pledge explains neither the downfalls of Communists (who supported the no-strike pledge) and Worker's Party members (who, according to Lichtenstein, "provided much of the [anti-pledge Rank and File] caucus's organizational backbone," p. 194) during the Red Purge and beyond; nor the consolidated hegemony of the pro-pledge union leaders and the Reuthers (who tried to straddle the fence on the issue, while disciplining wildcats) after the downfalls of the Communist and non-Communist revolutionary Left.
> >While you contrast the Old and New Lefts, they had at least one thing
>>in common: both were unable to withstand the counter-offensive from
>>the Right. In both cases the Left couldn't create a new hegemonic
>>bloc on its own terms, though American leftists, old and new, made
>>valuable contributions to struggles at home and abroad that we should
>>not forget.
>
>The New Left wasn't destroyed by the Right-- it collapsed of its own
>infighting. Sure COINTELPRO contributed, but the 70s and even the 80s was
>not McCarthyism. The Right were just smarter organizers.
"Infighting" often had roots in substantive issues -- for instance, union control versus community control, intertwined with questions of race, class, intra-race and intra-class stratifications, etc. in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville affair in New York City. To take another example, shortly after Bayard Rustin published "From Protest to Politics," claiming that the 1964 election was "a turning point in American history" and "a reaction against 'Goldwaterism'" and that therefore the movement should change its tactics, going through "'normal' political channels," Watts and other ghettos erupted in riots, burying Rustin's dream of a liberal majority (Peter B. Levy, _The New Left and Labor in the 1960s_, Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1994, pp. 66-67). And we haven't even begun to discuss the limits on politics under capitalism placed by the need to keep up profit rates.
> >Leftists can help ordinary Americans make this
>>crucial decision by telling them the truth. The decision, however,
> >is for them to make. We ought to respect the intelligence of
>>Americans, rather than treating them as if they were children or
>>consumers to be brainwashed by clever marketing.
>
>What "truth"? Many people around the world welcome the US empire-- this is
>not a country against country division, but a division that divides classes
>within countries around the world.
That is exactly the truth that people need to know. Who (classes, class fractions, ethnic groups, fractions of ethnic groups, etc.) support and are supported by the American Empire? What happens to erstwhile allies of the American Empire when the former's interests diverge from the latter's? Who benefits from the SAPs and who doesn't? Etc. -- Yoshie
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