jeudi 29 décembre 2016
mardi 27 décembre 2016
Aleppo: a paradise to be for the
Syrian people
A sour and
humiliating defeat for US imperialism
By Daniel
Paquet dpaquet1871@gmail.com
The right and
far-right are completely abashed. They,
with the terrorists formed in the West (Daesh, in Arabic), lost a dramatic war
against the Syrian government and foremost the peaceful people of this country. They lost grip of Aleppo, the largest city in
Syria.
“We may be
returning to that earlier (Western invasion, -Ed.), multipolar world. China is now a superpower, and just starting
to test its new muscle. Russia is newly
aggressive. “[1]
We should
underline that “the Canadian financial system could be exposed to stress
emanating from China and other emerging-market economies (EMEs). A disorderly depreciation of EME currencies,
for example, could lead to the default of corporate or sovereign debt denominated
in US dollars, which would weigh on global economic growth and trade. A resulting further reduction in commodity
prices could lead to significant volatility across financial markets, which
would spill over to the Canadian economy and financial system. This risk continues to be rated as
‘elevated.’ Considerable uncertainty remains
around the structural transformation of China’s economy and financial
system. Chinese economy growth continues
to slow modestly toward a more sustainable pace, but activity is still being buoyed
by high and growing leverage. High indebtedness
is a vulnerability, particularly if growth were to weaken more quickly than
expected or interest rates were to rise sharply. In particular, high corporate leverage in
China, especially in uncompetitive industries such as steel and coal, may
complicate the transformation of China’s economy and financial sector. The nature of and interlinkages between the
banking and shadow banking systems are also becoming more complex and opaque,
increasing the underlying credit risk.
The renewed strength of the US dollar could prove problematic for
emerging markets. It could cause stress
for firms with large unhedged US-dollar debts or lead to disorderly capital
outflows from these countries. There is
evidence, however that firms have begun to reduce their exposure to currency
risk.” [2]
In fact, we
need to make such a difference between and EMEs since Arab countries for
example are already engaged in capitalist development since years, especially
because of their fossil resources (oil).
“In the
Middle East, regional powers, like Turkey and Iran, have increasing influence –
Iran may hold more say in Syria than any other country. Relatively speaking, America is no longer
nearly as powerful as it appeared to be after 1989. (…) The Obama
administration’s reluctance to bomb the Assad regime, or to impose a no-fly zone
early in the Syrian Arab Spring, reflects not just reluctance about risking
conflict with Moscow or Tehran. It also reflects American’s earlier Middle
Eastern disasters. Those calling on
America to intervene militarily in a Mideast crisis forget that America’s
recent Mideast interventions have all ended very badly.”[3]
“The
decision by the United States (and Canada) to avoid a full-scale military
intervention in Syria in 2012 and 2013 was based largely on recent precedent:
The long-term invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were
catastrophic failures, leaving little appetite for another. But why … didn’t we lend our military
strength to unseat Mf. Al-Assad? The answer,
by then, is Libya. The same thing was
done there in 2011, when NATO forces lent air support to the popular move to
overthrow their own dictator (sic) - and now look at the place. - A disaster.”[4]
“Mr.
Trump’s approach to Iran is at the heart of these conflicting prophesies. The incoming president is likely to support,
or at least tolerate, even greater Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war
on behalf of the Alwayite regime led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But Iran also supports the Syrian strongman,
and with each victory by the regime, Tehran’ influence grows. Yet Mr. Trump is
strongly anti-Iran. He has called the
agreement negotiated by the Obama administration and Tehran to put its nuclear
weapons program on hold ‘disastrous, ‘and vowed to rip it up, which would alarm
allies who value the respite, even it if is temporary, from the prospect of a
nuclear-armed Iran.”[5]
How are the
Russian authorities the future US Trump administration?
“Speaking
at his annual news conference in Moscow, the Russian President said earlier
comments he had made about his country’s own military modernization had been misunderstood
in the United States, and that he accepted that the U.S. military not Russia’s,
was the most powerful in the world. (…)
‘(We are talking about) a party which has clearly forgotten the original
meaning of its own name. They (the
Democrats) are losing on all fronts and looking elsewhere for things to blame.
In my view this how shall I say it, degrades their own dignity. You have to know how to lose with dignity.”[6]
In general,
mass media capture any word or image that serves their gold and forget about
the crux of the matter.
“Fully
aware that a new world was taking shape, journalists wondered how best to cover
what others referred to as a war, even if it might not actually be one. Did the astonishing development of social
media and omnipresent round-the-clock news channels mean that their trade
should adopt new practices, subject to new rules? Regarding photographs videos,
what could or should they show? (…) Religion
has supplanted ideology. Terrorists have mastered the art of using the media:
not only do they manipulate them; they also want to feature there, as heroes.
(…) Thirty years ago, semiologist Daniel
Dayan said there was a clear division of labour between terrorists and the
media: one perpetrated acts of violence,
the other reported them, one directed the production, and the other held the
camera. But then terrorists started
producing their own pictures, particularly all these video recorded by suicide
bombers before going into action. Now
terrorists reckon to supply the media with turnkey events. They are no longer prepared to allow an
independent body to show their act. (Head of adolescent psychiatry at Cochin
hospital in Paris, Marie-Rose Moro, concluded that) the situation is rather
different for young women, ‘ In general they are better at putting words on
things than boys, Moro explains, They find
it a lot easier to talk about a traumatic picture, as if they wanted to
protect themselves with words. In
psychiatric terms I would say that the boys are much more alexithymic, that the
girls: they find it much harder to
identify, differentiate and express their emotions.”[7]
Terrorists
destabilize psychologist weak people in the Western world; and they also
destroy treasures accumulated by mankind since centuries.
“Worlds
collided peacefully in the covered market that was Aleppo’s beating heart for
centuries as trade routes linking Europe, Asia and Africa met in the Souq
al-Madina, a warren of shops and narrow alleyways that made Syria’s largest
city rich and vibrant. (…) Apartment
blocks and markets in a city that is more than 7,000 old have been shattered by
artillery fire. (…) Prior to the fighting, Aleppo had long been a meeting
point, bridging the seas with the deserts, as well as joining together
Christians, Muslims and Jews.”[8]
“Russia has
played a key role in helping the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
reconquer the (terrorist, - Ed.) controlled parts of Aleppo). In Moscow, Lt.Gen.Rudskoi said 9,560 people
had been transported out of eastern Aleppo in 15 convoys while more than 3,400
insurgents ‘of moderate opposition’ had surrendered.”[9]
“Mr. Trump’s
approach to Iran is at the heart of these conflicting prophesies. The incoming president is likely to support,
or at least tolerate, even greater Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war
on behalf of the Alawite regime led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But Iran also supports the Syrian strongman, and
with each victory by the regime, Tehran’s influence grows. Yet Mr. Trump is strongly anti-Iranian. He has called the agreement negotiated by the
Obama administration and Tehran to put its nuclear weapons program on hold
‘disastrous,’ and vowed to rip it up, which would alarm allies who value the respite,
even if it is temporary from the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.”[10]
“It would be naïve to suppose that a rule of
this sort would have the slightest impact on the intensity of terror (French
jihad expert David Thompson) says Jihadists totally reject convention
media. They operate through a parallel
media circuit on the net which I call the ‘jihadosphere’. Processes of posthumous glorification of
terrorists certainly occur in these circles, but the hero-making goes on,
regardless of whether media broadcast a person’s photo or name.”[11]
Archives: La Vie
Réelle www.laviereelle.blogspot.com
Pour la KOMINTERN now ! www.pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com
Communist
News : www.dpaquet1871.blogspot.com
La Nouvelle Vie
Réelle : www.lnvr.blogspot.com
[1] Editorial, Aleppo and
the return of history, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday,
December 17, 2016, page F6
[2] Bank of
Canada, Assessment of vulnerability and
Risks, Financial System Review, Ottawa, December 2016, page 16
[3] Ibidem, Editorial, page F6
[4] Saunders, Doug, The fall of
Aleppo: Four sobering lessons, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday,
December 17, 2016, page F7
[5] Ibbitson, John, Trump has
proved volatile on Middle East, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday,
December 17, 2016, page A6
[6] Osborn, Andrew; Soldatkin, Vladimir (Moscow), Putin plays down U.S. threat to Russia, The Globe and Mail,
December 24, 2016, page A14
[7] Le Monde, The power of image and the terrible power of
terrorism, The Guardian Weekly, London, 16.12.16, page 44
[8] Givannetti,
Justin, What the world lost by ignoring
Aleppo, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday 17, 2016, page A8
[9] Tu Thanh
Ha, Aleppo braces for final reckoning,
The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday, December 17, 2016, page A14
[10] Ibbitson, John, Trump has
proved volatile on Middle East, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Saturday,
December 17, 2016, page A6
[11] Ibidem, The power of image and the terrible power of
terrorism, page 45
Chapter Seventeen: A.F. of L. Class Collaboration During the Coolidge "Prosperity" (1923-1929)
17. A.F. of L. Class Collaboration During the Coolidge "Prosperity" (1923-1929)
The period from early 1923 through most of 1929 was one of industrial expansion and capitalist prosperity for the United States. With ups and downs, the "prosperity" lasted practically all through the presidency of the Yankee skinflint and police strikebreaker, Calvin Coolidge, as well as during some six months of the term of the "great engineer," Herbert Hoover, imperialist exploiter of colonial peoples. It was a time of speculation and capitalist arrogance, until finally, in October 1929, the whole dizzy economic edifice went crumbling like a house of cards in the greatest economic crisis in the history of world capitalism.
American industry, fed by the red blood of war, increased its production from 1913 to 1929 by 70 percent.1 "By 1928 the total volume of (U.S.) production exceeded the production of the whole of Europe."2 The production of passenger automobiles, the bonanza industry, went up from 895,930 in 1915 to 4,587,400 in 1920, and trucks from 74,000 to 771,000. The production of gasoline increased by 300 percent. During this whole period monopoly flourished, the trustification of industry developed at a rapid speed, and the number of blood-nourished millionaires multiplied. Never before had the world seen the like of this saturnalia of capitalist profit-making. But the living standards of the workers lagged.
Various factors combined to create the Coolidge post-war boom. Among these were the American capital export of $20 billion in war and post-war loans to finance Europe's war and to rebuild its shattered industries; the capture of world markets by the United States from the crippled European powers; the introduction of an intense speed-up, or "rationalization" of industry in the home country; the growth of a huge installment-buying system; the industrialization of the South; the expansion of the automobile industry; and the wide extension of luxury industries. The whole fevered development was based upon the destruction wrought by World War I. This great war not only tremendously enriched the United States and made it far and away the wealthiest capitalist country, but it also demonstrated that the world capitalist system, including the United States, was sinking into an incurable general crisis, and that in order to keep going even temporarily, it required the fatal stimulant of war.
During the Coolidge "prosperity" period American imperialism was aggressively expansionist and reactionary. Its general predatory spirit was exemplified by the huge growth of military and naval armaments, repeated armed invasions of Caribbean and Central American countries, systematic penetration of Germany through the Dawes and Young plans, violent hostility toward the Soviet Union, and inroads upon China through the device of the "Open Door" policy. It was characterized by such developments on the home front as the passage of reactionary legislation to curb union labor, the systematic encouragement of company unionism, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the continued imprisonment of Mooney and Billings, the unchecked outrage of lynching in the South, the Teapot Dome scandal, the Scopes anti-evolution trial, and the like.
THE SPEED-UP, OR "RATIONALIZATION," DRIVE
The central economic aim of the big capitalists in the United States during this period was to speed up the workers in production, to exploit them to the limit of their endurance. To exploit the workers more intensively is, of course, always the objective of the capitalists; but this was especially the case during the Coolidge years. Their aim was to satisfy the commodity-hungry post-war world markets, with a minimum of new capital investment—the demand for capital export to Europe being very heavy. Hence the speed up or "rationalization of industry," as they called it, became a fetish with the American capitalists during these years.
The heart of the rationalization of industry was the system of mass production. With the assembly line as its characteristic feature, and the reduction of innumerable skilled jobs to the common denominator of the line, this changed the whole lay-out of the plant. This system, stimulated by World War I, was the basis for the eventual great increase in the productivity of American industry. During the 1920's the capitalists strove to drive the workers even faster and to make them helpless in the mass production system.
But to enforce their speed-up of the workers, it was necessary for the employers to break the latter's resistance to being thus ruthlessly driven. Here the conservative trade union leadership came into the picture, as willing servants of the employers. The top A.F. of L. and Railroad Brotherhood leaders had rallied their membership for the employers' imperialist World War I and shamelessly sabotaged the workers' resistance during the big union-smashing drive of the bosses after the war had been won. Now they could be depended upon to perform this new speed-up task for their masters, the employers—and they did just that.
The conservative union leaders were not only willing but eager to carry out the bosses' plans for the "rationalization" of industry. What happened to the workers' living standards in the meantime was not of primary concern to them. These labor bureaucrats were frightened by the serious defeats the unions had suffered during the post-war offensive of the capitalists and by the growth of radical sentiment among the rank-and-file workers. And so the only condition they laid down to the arrogant employers was that they be allowed to maintain some sort of dues-paying mass unions, however enfeebled, that would suffice to pay their over-swollen salaries, not to mention their other financial perquisites.
To this end, the conservative union leaders were ready to go far in the direction of company unionism, and they did. William Green, who succeeded Gompers as the head of the A.F. of L. in 1924, made this willingness very clear in a number of the most servile speeches ever delivered by a labor leader in the United States. He placed the unions of the workers at the disposal of the bosses in the latter's speed-up plans. The Executive Council's report to the A.F. of L. convention of 1927 showed how far the labor bureaucrats were going toward company-unionizing the trade unions. It declared that "there is nothing that the company union can do within the single company that the trade union cannot develop the machinery for doing and accomplish more effectively. Union-management co-operation ... is much more fundamental and effective than employee representation plans for co-operation with management."
Some sections of big, open-shop capital became interested in these offers of the A.F. of L. leaders to have the craft unions "do better" the functions of the company unions than the company unions themselves. William Green reported to the Executive Council, in January 1927. that "the General Motors Company was prepared to agree to the organization of some of its big plants as an experiment in union-management co-operation, provided that there would be no jurisdictional fights." 3 But the 19 unions claiming jurisdiction over the automobile workers could not agree among themselves as to which should get the workers. With the characteristic stupidity of craft unionism, they preferred see the basic industries remain unorganized than to surrender their rival paper claims over the workers. Therefore the whole scheme fell through. Lorwin says that other big concerns besides General Motors were also interested in Green's plans to company-unionize the American labor movement.
THE UNIONS AS SPEED-UP AGENCIES OF THE BOSSES
The new orientation of the labor bureaucracy toward intensified class collaboration for the speed-up began to manifest itself in the form of the so-called Baltimore and Ohio plan, a scheme for more intensive production, devised by the efficiency experts of that railroad. It was forced upon the defeated shopmen on several roads at the end of their ill-fated strike of 1922. The essence of the B. & O. plan was that if the workers would agree with the bosses to turn out more work they would thereby automatically reap real advantages in the shape of increased wages and more continuous employment.
With the top labor officials bankrupt after the big post-war drive of the employers against the unions, the A.F. of L. convention of 1923 grasped at the B. & O. plan, or union-management co-operation scheme, as manna miraculously fallen from heaven. It offered a way to preserve some semblance of mass organization and it gave them a sort of program to take to the workers, so they made the most of it. The convention, composed almost exclusively of high union officials, hailed the plan as a turning point for the labor movement and the United States. Two years later the 1925 convention of the A.F. of L. developed the plan in great detail as the "new wage policy."
Not content with offering to co-operate with the capitalists for more production, the trade union leaders went into the speed-up business themselves. They put efficiency engineers on the union payrolls and had them devise plans for increasing production. These schemes they then proceeded to force upon the workers and also offered them, free of charge, to the employers. Many labor organizations followed such practices. Indeed, unions that did not do so were looked upon by the bureaucrats as backward and unprogressive. So low had the trade union leadership fallen that it had actually transformed the unions from fighting organizations, designed to protect the workers' interests, into parts of the employers' producing mechanism. Union-management co-operation thus went far beyond even the rosiest dreams of the classical industrial efficiency expert, Frederick Taylor. Before World War I, Taylor's speed-up devices had been condemned with bell, book, and candle by the labor officialdom as the death of all trade unionism; but now these same leaders accepted Taylor's ideas as the gospel of organized labor.
The erstwhile "progressive" or center group in the labor movement vied with the right-wing labor leadership in its enthusiasm for union-management co-operation. The Socialists, too, grabbed it hook, line, and sinker. In fact, in no unions in this country was the speed-up system so highly developed as in the supposedly socialistic needle trades unions. They had complete sets of efficiency engineers, standards of production, and all the rest of the speed-up plans. Leo Wolman, research director of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, thus explained the role of labor unions in this period: "The primary aim of the labor union is to co-operate with the manufacturer to produce more efficient conditions of production that will be of mutual advantage. In some cases labor unions will even lend money to worthy manufacturers to tide them over periods of distress."
FORD VERSUS MARX
In order to drive ahead with the speed-up, "rationalization" plans and to demoralize the labor movement still further, blatant American imperialism put forth during the Coolidge period a whole series of "prosperity illusions" designed to befuddle and confuse the workers. Never in the whole history of American capitalism did the bosses give birth to so many glowingly Utopian ideas of social progress as in the hectic boom times of the 1920's.
For example, Thomas N. Carver, Harvard professor of political economy, came out with a glittering theory to the effect that the workers, because of mass production and the speed-up, not only could become but were becoming capitalists by buying up industrial stocks. 4 "The only revolution now under way," said he, "is in the United States. It is a revolution that is to wipe out the distinction between laborers and capitalists by making laborers their own capitalists and by compelling most capitalists to become laborers of one kind or another." He stated that the savings of the workers were so great that "Any day the laborers decide to do so, they can divert a few billions of savings to the purchase of common stock of industrial corporations, railroads, and public service companies, and actually control considerable numbers of them." Thus, said he, "If the railroad employees would merely save the increase which they had recently received in wages, it would give them $625,000,000 a year for investment. On this basis, if they bought railroad stocks at par, they could, by investing all their savings and dividends in railroad stocks, buy $3,490,000,000 in five years. This would give them a substantial majority of all the outstanding stocks." But how the workers were to eat in the meantime, Carver did not say.
Professor Tugwell of Columbia, in his book, Industry's Coming of Age, developed the perspective that capitalism—monopolized industries and all—was gradually becoming "socialized," with the private ownership feature tending to atrophy and die out. Gillette, the safety razor magnate, in his book, The People's Corporation, painted a capitalist-"Socialist" Utopia, which the people were gradually creating by buying industrial stocks, a plan akin to Carver's. Foster and Catchings, forerunners of John Maynard Keynes, elaborated plans for "financing the buyer" which supposedly would eliminate economic crises and bring prosperity for all. Stuart Chase, an erstwhile Socialist, pictured a new and glowing mass prosperity inherent in the simple plan of abolishing waste in industry by applying more scientific production methods. Whiting Williams, Mac-Kenzie King, Glen Plumb, Thorstein Veblen, and many others added their voices to the chorus of capitalist economists and industrialists who were about to create a world of plenty for all. It was in this spirit that Herbert Hoover, who was Secretary of Commerce under Coolidge and one of this school of economists, assured the people after his election, in November 1928, that the United States was then on the verge of abolishing poverty. All this demagogy, of course, was but the delirium of optimism (in an extreme degree) always felt by the capitalists when their economic system is in the boom phase of its cycle.
The substance of what all these exuberant boosters of American capitalism were saying was that capitalism in this country, by the natural processes of its evolution, was turning into socialism, if not something far superior. Capitalism in the United States, distinct from that in Europe, had overcome its internal contradictions, had "come of age," was being democratized, and had entered upon an endless upward spiral of development and mass prosperity. It was a sort of "capitalist efficiency socialism." The "New Capitalism," they called it. As these soothsayers would have it, Henry Ford had superseded Karl Marx.
During these hectic years the capitalists of Europe and elsewhere looked with envy and admiration upon the United States, where the capitalists by the magic of mass production and the speed-up had apparently tamed the labor movement and solved all economic problems. In the forefront of these foreign admirers of American monopoly capitalism and imperialism were the Social-Democrats of Europe. Rudolph Hilferd-ing, leading theoretician of German Social-Democracy, said at the Kiel 1927 convention of that party, "We are in a period of capitalism which in the main has overcome the era of free competition and the sway of the blind forces of the market and we are coming to a capitalist organized economy." Karl Kautsky also supported this line. The Social-Democrats outdid each other in praise of the new American mass production and intensified class collaboration, and they sought eagerly to introduce these things into their own countries. In the United States, so they believed, all their Bernsteinian dreams of capitalism turning into "socialism" were coming true.
"THE HIGHER STRATEGY OF LABOR"
The upper officials of the A.F. of L. and the Railroad Brotherhoods fell right in with this campaign of ideologically poisoning the working class, even as they had fully accepted the speed-up program which was the basis for the great flood of capitalist demagogy about everlasting "prosperity." William Green, an apt pupil of Gompers, arch-reactionary and labor sponsor of capitalism, took the lead in pledging loyalty to the capitalist system and in excoriating everything radical or revolutionary. H. V. Boswell, head of the Locomotive Engineers Bank of New York, also expressed the current bureaucratic opinion when he said: "Who wants to be a bolshevik when he can be a capitalist instead? We have shown how to mix oil and water; how to reconcile capital and labor. Instead of standing on a street corner soapbox, screaming with rage because the capitalists own real estate, bank accounts, and automobiles, the engineer has turned in and become a capitalist himself." 5
To carry out their new speed-up, get-rich-quick orientation, the labor bureaucrats, upon Carver's suggestion, worked out what they grandiloquently called "the higher strategy of labor." Matthew Woll, in Iron Age, thus expressed his idea of this newfangled term: "In its early struggles labor sought to retard, to limit, to embarrass production to obtain that which it desired. Now it seeks the confidence that it is a preserver and developer of an economic, industrial, and social order in which workers, employers, and the public may all benefit." And Warren S. Stone, "progressive" president of the Locomotive Engineers, explained it thus: "Organized labor in the United States has gone through three cycles. . . . The first was the period during which class consciousness was being aroused. . . . The second was the defensive struggle for the principle of collective bargaining. . . . The third cycle or phase lies in constructive development toward a system of co-operation rather than war." 6
The plain English of all this blather was that the "new wage policy" and "the higher strategy of labor" amounted to a speed-up, no-strike policy. That is, the workers were to produce to the limit and then trust to the "intelligent" capitalists to reward them adequately in friendly conferences with the union leaders. Consequently, the number of strikes and strikers toboganned. In 1932 the total number of strikers was 1,612,562, but by 1929 this had fallen to only 230,463. 7 The workers' living and working standards suffered accordingly.
Along with Wall Street's no-strike policy, dolled up as "the higher strategy of labor," the top labor leadership also accepted the current bourgeois propaganda about the tremendous savings of the workers, and they plunged into business in a big way. During the early twenties they set up a whole maze of labor banks, insurance companies, investment concerns, and the like, more than one of which operated upon a non-union basis. This was "trade union capitalism," as Communists called it. The unions went in especially for labor banking. The international union or important central labor body that did not support labor banking was considered very much behind the times. All told, at the height of this craze, in 1925, there were 36 labor banks, with total resources of $126,356,944. Outstanding leaders in this banking movement were the Locomotive Engineers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.
DEGENERATION OF THE LABOR BUREAUCRACY
The top leadership of the American Federation of Labor and the Railroad Brotherhoods, ever since the 1890's, had been noted for its corruption by capitalist influences, its almost total lack of working class integrity. The characteristic A.F. of L. leader of the period (with many honorable exceptions, of course) was one who was devoted to the perpetuation of capitalism, was an inveterate enemy of all radicalism, and looked upon trade union leadership as an easy way of making a good living. Top jobs in the unions were rich sinecures, to be grabbed and held by any means possible. Such posts, among their numerous financial advantages for their holders, provided many opportunities for union leaders to milk employers who wanted guarantees against strikes, and also opportunities for these leaders to develop remunerative alliances with the Republican and Democratic parties. The welfare of the workers who made up the unions was a matter of but secondary consideration. The marvel was how the labor movement could exist at all, much less make real progress, with such a corrupt top leadership.
During World War I, the post-war offensive, and the Coolidge "prosperity" period, the corrupting capitalist influences upon the labor bureaucracy were particularly strong, and the leaders' morale sank visibly under the pressure. Many of the officials became rich from the plentiful sources of graft open to them. John Mitchell, former president of the United Mine Workers and first Vice-President of the A.F. of L., was a characteristic figure, a real capitalist.
When he died in 1919 his wealth totaled $244,295, including investments in many capitalist concerns—coal mines, Armour & Co., the B. & O., the New York Central, the Rock Island—all companies that were noted for their labor-crushing activities. George L. Berry, head of the Printing Pressmen and long an honored figure in the A.F. of L. hierarchy, acquired a million dollars or more by his various brands of skulduggery. There were many like him in the various unions. Dozens of labor leaders were taken over by the capitalists and used as "personnel directors"—as strike-preventers—in their industries.
Corruption was most rampant in the building trades, which formed the backbone of the A.F. of L. during these times. There real gangsterism prevailed. Many building trades leaders sold "strike insurance" freely to the employers and robbed their membership by every known device. Numbers of them also were directly tied up with the underworld during the period of prohibition. They ruled the unions by force and, fighting for control, they periodically carried on murderous gun battles with each other. A star product of this Gompers unionism was Robert P. Brindell of New York, who was credited with amassing a million dollars in the two years before he was exposed by the Lockwood Committee in 1920. Another was Simon O'Donnell, wartime head of the Building Trades Council of Chicago, who was given a spectacular funeral, gangster fashion, with a $10,000 coffin, when he died in 1927. Still another was the notorious "Big Tim" Murphy, also of the Chicago Building Trades. Murphy, who was finally killed in a gangster war, expressed the characteristic A.F. of L. philosophy of labor leadership as follows: "I'm still pretty much of a kid, but I made a millon and spent a million, and I figure I'll make another million before they plant me." 8
The bosses cultivated this corrupt type of leadership, even though occasionally, to discredit the unions, they would send one or two crooked union officials to jail after a spectacular trial. As for the A.F. of L. Executive Council, it did precisely nothing to eliminate the gangsterism and corruption. On the contrary, the Mitchells, Berrys, Brindells, O'Don-nells, and many more of the like were for decades dominant figures in the A.F. of L. Some of them enjoyed honored seats in the Executive Council itself, and generally they crowded the A.F. of L. conventions, voting down all "red" proposals. This was the kind of labor leadership that so ruthlessly rejected amalgamation, a labor party, and Soviet recognition at the 1923 convention of the A.F. of L., even though the bulk of the organized workers had demanded these policies. It was such labor leaders, too, who were ardent supporters of the Gompers clique in office, and defenders of the "new wage policy," "the higher strategy of labor," "trade union capitalism," and militant struggle against the left wing, during the Coolidge boom period of 1923-1929.
THE BILL OF RECKONING
The intensified class collaboration carried on by the conservative upper leadership of the trade unions during the Coolidge period had a number of very harmful effects upon the workers and their unions. For one thing, the acceptance and propagation by the union leaders of prosperity illusions, put out by the employers, were demoralizing ideologically to the workers. Especially confusing was the boundless flood of propaganda to the effect that economic crises were now a thing of the past in the United States. It left the workers quite unprepared for the economic holocaust that struck in October 1929. The top trade union leaders, deceived by their own propaganda, were even less ready for the great economic breakdown than the workers themselves when it finally came.
The bosses' speed-up program, popularized among the workers by the trade union leaders under the name of the "new wage policy" and "the higher strategy of labor," also operated to the detriment of the working and living standards of the workers. This no-strike policy took all the fight out of the unions. Never in the life of the modern American labor movement was its morale so low as during the Coolidge period of intensified class collaboration. Taking advantage of the cultivated inertia of the unions, the employers naturally grabbed unto themselves all the advantages of the increased production which they were able to wring from the workers under the very convenient plan of union-management co-operation.
There was also a general worsening of conditions in the shops during this period. With the class vigilance of the unions weakened by the pest of class collaboration, the bosses were able, under the sacred sign of industrial efficiency, to strip the workers of many hard-won labor conditions. In a period of industrial activity, when the workers possessed a maximum of latent power with which to improve their wage rates, the employers kept wages down. From 1923 to 1929, although output in industry increased no less than 29 percent per worker and profits doubled and tripled, the workers' wages advanced little, if at all. Wage increases, coming mostly from overtime work, went mainly to the skilled workers, with the wage conditions of the masses of semi-skilled and unskilled either stagnant or declining. The top union officials, now blossoming forth as bankers and industrialists, had little time to waste upon such minor matters as protecting the workers' standards.
The class collaboration policies of the union leaders also had deleterious effects upon the growth of the unions. The Coolidge boom years, although accompanied by considerable unemployment, constituted a period of high industrial activity that should have provided a big increase in union membership. But the unions actually declined numerically during these years. Thus in 1922 the A.F. of L. had 3,195,635 members, whereas in 1929, after several years' dose of "union-management co-operation," the number had fallen to 2,933,545, a l°ss °f 262,090 members. Actually the loss was much greater, as many unions, despite membership decreases, continued for internal political reasons to pay their earlier, top-figure per capita tax to the A.F. of L. For example, in 1928 the U.M.W.A. paid on 400,000 members, as in 1920, but in the meantime it had lost about 200,000 dues-paying members. The 1923-29 period was the first time in labor history that the trade unions failed to grow substantially during a long period of "prosperity."
To make the "new capitalism" policies still more bankrupt, the union leaders made ducks and drakes of the millions of dollars that the workers had so trustingly placed in their hands through the many labor banks and other financial and industrial concerns organized during the epidemic of "trade union capitalism." The whole shaky structure soon collapsed, with losses to the workers of huge sums of money. This financial debacle was brought about by wild speculations in Florida, and by general recklessness and incompetence. Speaking of the breakdown of the Locomotive Engineers' big string of banks, Perlman and Taft say, "On the larger issue of redirecting capitalism the movement for labor banks, as shown by the engineers' fiasco, was little more rational than the children's crusade against the Saracens." 9 The number of labor banks fell off rapidly, in the midst of the growing scandal. By 1932 their number was reduced to seven, and now there are only four of them left. This was the unhappy ending of Professor Carver's scheme for the workers to buy out capitalism—as executed by the capitalist-minded reactionaries heading the A.F. of L. and Railroad Brotherhoods.
17. A.F. of L. Class Collaboration During the Coolidge "Prosperity" (1923-1929)
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| The Foster/Gitlow Communist Party Presidential ticket of 1928. Gitlow would later leave the Party and became conservative and anti-Communist. |
American industry, fed by the red blood of war, increased its production from 1913 to 1929 by 70 percent.1 "By 1928 the total volume of (U.S.) production exceeded the production of the whole of Europe."2 The production of passenger automobiles, the bonanza industry, went up from 895,930 in 1915 to 4,587,400 in 1920, and trucks from 74,000 to 771,000. The production of gasoline increased by 300 percent. During this whole period monopoly flourished, the trustification of industry developed at a rapid speed, and the number of blood-nourished millionaires multiplied. Never before had the world seen the like of this saturnalia of capitalist profit-making. But the living standards of the workers lagged.
Various factors combined to create the Coolidge post-war boom. Among these were the American capital export of $20 billion in war and post-war loans to finance Europe's war and to rebuild its shattered industries; the capture of world markets by the United States from the crippled European powers; the introduction of an intense speed-up, or "rationalization" of industry in the home country; the growth of a huge installment-buying system; the industrialization of the South; the expansion of the automobile industry; and the wide extension of luxury industries. The whole fevered development was based upon the destruction wrought by World War I. This great war not only tremendously enriched the United States and made it far and away the wealthiest capitalist country, but it also demonstrated that the world capitalist system, including the United States, was sinking into an incurable general crisis, and that in order to keep going even temporarily, it required the fatal stimulant of war.
During the Coolidge "prosperity" period American imperialism was aggressively expansionist and reactionary. Its general predatory spirit was exemplified by the huge growth of military and naval armaments, repeated armed invasions of Caribbean and Central American countries, systematic penetration of Germany through the Dawes and Young plans, violent hostility toward the Soviet Union, and inroads upon China through the device of the "Open Door" policy. It was characterized by such developments on the home front as the passage of reactionary legislation to curb union labor, the systematic encouragement of company unionism, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the continued imprisonment of Mooney and Billings, the unchecked outrage of lynching in the South, the Teapot Dome scandal, the Scopes anti-evolution trial, and the like.
THE SPEED-UP, OR "RATIONALIZATION," DRIVE
The central economic aim of the big capitalists in the United States during this period was to speed up the workers in production, to exploit them to the limit of their endurance. To exploit the workers more intensively is, of course, always the objective of the capitalists; but this was especially the case during the Coolidge years. Their aim was to satisfy the commodity-hungry post-war world markets, with a minimum of new capital investment—the demand for capital export to Europe being very heavy. Hence the speed up or "rationalization of industry," as they called it, became a fetish with the American capitalists during these years.
The heart of the rationalization of industry was the system of mass production. With the assembly line as its characteristic feature, and the reduction of innumerable skilled jobs to the common denominator of the line, this changed the whole lay-out of the plant. This system, stimulated by World War I, was the basis for the eventual great increase in the productivity of American industry. During the 1920's the capitalists strove to drive the workers even faster and to make them helpless in the mass production system.
But to enforce their speed-up of the workers, it was necessary for the employers to break the latter's resistance to being thus ruthlessly driven. Here the conservative trade union leadership came into the picture, as willing servants of the employers. The top A.F. of L. and Railroad Brotherhood leaders had rallied their membership for the employers' imperialist World War I and shamelessly sabotaged the workers' resistance during the big union-smashing drive of the bosses after the war had been won. Now they could be depended upon to perform this new speed-up task for their masters, the employers—and they did just that.
The conservative union leaders were not only willing but eager to carry out the bosses' plans for the "rationalization" of industry. What happened to the workers' living standards in the meantime was not of primary concern to them. These labor bureaucrats were frightened by the serious defeats the unions had suffered during the post-war offensive of the capitalists and by the growth of radical sentiment among the rank-and-file workers. And so the only condition they laid down to the arrogant employers was that they be allowed to maintain some sort of dues-paying mass unions, however enfeebled, that would suffice to pay their over-swollen salaries, not to mention their other financial perquisites.
To this end, the conservative union leaders were ready to go far in the direction of company unionism, and they did. William Green, who succeeded Gompers as the head of the A.F. of L. in 1924, made this willingness very clear in a number of the most servile speeches ever delivered by a labor leader in the United States. He placed the unions of the workers at the disposal of the bosses in the latter's speed-up plans. The Executive Council's report to the A.F. of L. convention of 1927 showed how far the labor bureaucrats were going toward company-unionizing the trade unions. It declared that "there is nothing that the company union can do within the single company that the trade union cannot develop the machinery for doing and accomplish more effectively. Union-management co-operation ... is much more fundamental and effective than employee representation plans for co-operation with management."
Some sections of big, open-shop capital became interested in these offers of the A.F. of L. leaders to have the craft unions "do better" the functions of the company unions than the company unions themselves. William Green reported to the Executive Council, in January 1927. that "the General Motors Company was prepared to agree to the organization of some of its big plants as an experiment in union-management co-operation, provided that there would be no jurisdictional fights." 3 But the 19 unions claiming jurisdiction over the automobile workers could not agree among themselves as to which should get the workers. With the characteristic stupidity of craft unionism, they preferred see the basic industries remain unorganized than to surrender their rival paper claims over the workers. Therefore the whole scheme fell through. Lorwin says that other big concerns besides General Motors were also interested in Green's plans to company-unionize the American labor movement.
THE UNIONS AS SPEED-UP AGENCIES OF THE BOSSES
The new orientation of the labor bureaucracy toward intensified class collaboration for the speed-up began to manifest itself in the form of the so-called Baltimore and Ohio plan, a scheme for more intensive production, devised by the efficiency experts of that railroad. It was forced upon the defeated shopmen on several roads at the end of their ill-fated strike of 1922. The essence of the B. & O. plan was that if the workers would agree with the bosses to turn out more work they would thereby automatically reap real advantages in the shape of increased wages and more continuous employment.
With the top labor officials bankrupt after the big post-war drive of the employers against the unions, the A.F. of L. convention of 1923 grasped at the B. & O. plan, or union-management co-operation scheme, as manna miraculously fallen from heaven. It offered a way to preserve some semblance of mass organization and it gave them a sort of program to take to the workers, so they made the most of it. The convention, composed almost exclusively of high union officials, hailed the plan as a turning point for the labor movement and the United States. Two years later the 1925 convention of the A.F. of L. developed the plan in great detail as the "new wage policy."
Not content with offering to co-operate with the capitalists for more production, the trade union leaders went into the speed-up business themselves. They put efficiency engineers on the union payrolls and had them devise plans for increasing production. These schemes they then proceeded to force upon the workers and also offered them, free of charge, to the employers. Many labor organizations followed such practices. Indeed, unions that did not do so were looked upon by the bureaucrats as backward and unprogressive. So low had the trade union leadership fallen that it had actually transformed the unions from fighting organizations, designed to protect the workers' interests, into parts of the employers' producing mechanism. Union-management co-operation thus went far beyond even the rosiest dreams of the classical industrial efficiency expert, Frederick Taylor. Before World War I, Taylor's speed-up devices had been condemned with bell, book, and candle by the labor officialdom as the death of all trade unionism; but now these same leaders accepted Taylor's ideas as the gospel of organized labor.
The erstwhile "progressive" or center group in the labor movement vied with the right-wing labor leadership in its enthusiasm for union-management co-operation. The Socialists, too, grabbed it hook, line, and sinker. In fact, in no unions in this country was the speed-up system so highly developed as in the supposedly socialistic needle trades unions. They had complete sets of efficiency engineers, standards of production, and all the rest of the speed-up plans. Leo Wolman, research director of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, thus explained the role of labor unions in this period: "The primary aim of the labor union is to co-operate with the manufacturer to produce more efficient conditions of production that will be of mutual advantage. In some cases labor unions will even lend money to worthy manufacturers to tide them over periods of distress."
FORD VERSUS MARX
In order to drive ahead with the speed-up, "rationalization" plans and to demoralize the labor movement still further, blatant American imperialism put forth during the Coolidge period a whole series of "prosperity illusions" designed to befuddle and confuse the workers. Never in the whole history of American capitalism did the bosses give birth to so many glowingly Utopian ideas of social progress as in the hectic boom times of the 1920's.
For example, Thomas N. Carver, Harvard professor of political economy, came out with a glittering theory to the effect that the workers, because of mass production and the speed-up, not only could become but were becoming capitalists by buying up industrial stocks. 4 "The only revolution now under way," said he, "is in the United States. It is a revolution that is to wipe out the distinction between laborers and capitalists by making laborers their own capitalists and by compelling most capitalists to become laborers of one kind or another." He stated that the savings of the workers were so great that "Any day the laborers decide to do so, they can divert a few billions of savings to the purchase of common stock of industrial corporations, railroads, and public service companies, and actually control considerable numbers of them." Thus, said he, "If the railroad employees would merely save the increase which they had recently received in wages, it would give them $625,000,000 a year for investment. On this basis, if they bought railroad stocks at par, they could, by investing all their savings and dividends in railroad stocks, buy $3,490,000,000 in five years. This would give them a substantial majority of all the outstanding stocks." But how the workers were to eat in the meantime, Carver did not say.
Professor Tugwell of Columbia, in his book, Industry's Coming of Age, developed the perspective that capitalism—monopolized industries and all—was gradually becoming "socialized," with the private ownership feature tending to atrophy and die out. Gillette, the safety razor magnate, in his book, The People's Corporation, painted a capitalist-"Socialist" Utopia, which the people were gradually creating by buying industrial stocks, a plan akin to Carver's. Foster and Catchings, forerunners of John Maynard Keynes, elaborated plans for "financing the buyer" which supposedly would eliminate economic crises and bring prosperity for all. Stuart Chase, an erstwhile Socialist, pictured a new and glowing mass prosperity inherent in the simple plan of abolishing waste in industry by applying more scientific production methods. Whiting Williams, Mac-Kenzie King, Glen Plumb, Thorstein Veblen, and many others added their voices to the chorus of capitalist economists and industrialists who were about to create a world of plenty for all. It was in this spirit that Herbert Hoover, who was Secretary of Commerce under Coolidge and one of this school of economists, assured the people after his election, in November 1928, that the United States was then on the verge of abolishing poverty. All this demagogy, of course, was but the delirium of optimism (in an extreme degree) always felt by the capitalists when their economic system is in the boom phase of its cycle.
The substance of what all these exuberant boosters of American capitalism were saying was that capitalism in this country, by the natural processes of its evolution, was turning into socialism, if not something far superior. Capitalism in the United States, distinct from that in Europe, had overcome its internal contradictions, had "come of age," was being democratized, and had entered upon an endless upward spiral of development and mass prosperity. It was a sort of "capitalist efficiency socialism." The "New Capitalism," they called it. As these soothsayers would have it, Henry Ford had superseded Karl Marx.
During these hectic years the capitalists of Europe and elsewhere looked with envy and admiration upon the United States, where the capitalists by the magic of mass production and the speed-up had apparently tamed the labor movement and solved all economic problems. In the forefront of these foreign admirers of American monopoly capitalism and imperialism were the Social-Democrats of Europe. Rudolph Hilferd-ing, leading theoretician of German Social-Democracy, said at the Kiel 1927 convention of that party, "We are in a period of capitalism which in the main has overcome the era of free competition and the sway of the blind forces of the market and we are coming to a capitalist organized economy." Karl Kautsky also supported this line. The Social-Democrats outdid each other in praise of the new American mass production and intensified class collaboration, and they sought eagerly to introduce these things into their own countries. In the United States, so they believed, all their Bernsteinian dreams of capitalism turning into "socialism" were coming true.
"THE HIGHER STRATEGY OF LABOR"
The upper officials of the A.F. of L. and the Railroad Brotherhoods fell right in with this campaign of ideologically poisoning the working class, even as they had fully accepted the speed-up program which was the basis for the great flood of capitalist demagogy about everlasting "prosperity." William Green, an apt pupil of Gompers, arch-reactionary and labor sponsor of capitalism, took the lead in pledging loyalty to the capitalist system and in excoriating everything radical or revolutionary. H. V. Boswell, head of the Locomotive Engineers Bank of New York, also expressed the current bureaucratic opinion when he said: "Who wants to be a bolshevik when he can be a capitalist instead? We have shown how to mix oil and water; how to reconcile capital and labor. Instead of standing on a street corner soapbox, screaming with rage because the capitalists own real estate, bank accounts, and automobiles, the engineer has turned in and become a capitalist himself." 5
To carry out their new speed-up, get-rich-quick orientation, the labor bureaucrats, upon Carver's suggestion, worked out what they grandiloquently called "the higher strategy of labor." Matthew Woll, in Iron Age, thus expressed his idea of this newfangled term: "In its early struggles labor sought to retard, to limit, to embarrass production to obtain that which it desired. Now it seeks the confidence that it is a preserver and developer of an economic, industrial, and social order in which workers, employers, and the public may all benefit." And Warren S. Stone, "progressive" president of the Locomotive Engineers, explained it thus: "Organized labor in the United States has gone through three cycles. . . . The first was the period during which class consciousness was being aroused. . . . The second was the defensive struggle for the principle of collective bargaining. . . . The third cycle or phase lies in constructive development toward a system of co-operation rather than war." 6
The plain English of all this blather was that the "new wage policy" and "the higher strategy of labor" amounted to a speed-up, no-strike policy. That is, the workers were to produce to the limit and then trust to the "intelligent" capitalists to reward them adequately in friendly conferences with the union leaders. Consequently, the number of strikes and strikers toboganned. In 1932 the total number of strikers was 1,612,562, but by 1929 this had fallen to only 230,463. 7 The workers' living and working standards suffered accordingly.
Along with Wall Street's no-strike policy, dolled up as "the higher strategy of labor," the top labor leadership also accepted the current bourgeois propaganda about the tremendous savings of the workers, and they plunged into business in a big way. During the early twenties they set up a whole maze of labor banks, insurance companies, investment concerns, and the like, more than one of which operated upon a non-union basis. This was "trade union capitalism," as Communists called it. The unions went in especially for labor banking. The international union or important central labor body that did not support labor banking was considered very much behind the times. All told, at the height of this craze, in 1925, there were 36 labor banks, with total resources of $126,356,944. Outstanding leaders in this banking movement were the Locomotive Engineers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.
DEGENERATION OF THE LABOR BUREAUCRACY
The top leadership of the American Federation of Labor and the Railroad Brotherhoods, ever since the 1890's, had been noted for its corruption by capitalist influences, its almost total lack of working class integrity. The characteristic A.F. of L. leader of the period (with many honorable exceptions, of course) was one who was devoted to the perpetuation of capitalism, was an inveterate enemy of all radicalism, and looked upon trade union leadership as an easy way of making a good living. Top jobs in the unions were rich sinecures, to be grabbed and held by any means possible. Such posts, among their numerous financial advantages for their holders, provided many opportunities for union leaders to milk employers who wanted guarantees against strikes, and also opportunities for these leaders to develop remunerative alliances with the Republican and Democratic parties. The welfare of the workers who made up the unions was a matter of but secondary consideration. The marvel was how the labor movement could exist at all, much less make real progress, with such a corrupt top leadership.
During World War I, the post-war offensive, and the Coolidge "prosperity" period, the corrupting capitalist influences upon the labor bureaucracy were particularly strong, and the leaders' morale sank visibly under the pressure. Many of the officials became rich from the plentiful sources of graft open to them. John Mitchell, former president of the United Mine Workers and first Vice-President of the A.F. of L., was a characteristic figure, a real capitalist.
When he died in 1919 his wealth totaled $244,295, including investments in many capitalist concerns—coal mines, Armour & Co., the B. & O., the New York Central, the Rock Island—all companies that were noted for their labor-crushing activities. George L. Berry, head of the Printing Pressmen and long an honored figure in the A.F. of L. hierarchy, acquired a million dollars or more by his various brands of skulduggery. There were many like him in the various unions. Dozens of labor leaders were taken over by the capitalists and used as "personnel directors"—as strike-preventers—in their industries.
Corruption was most rampant in the building trades, which formed the backbone of the A.F. of L. during these times. There real gangsterism prevailed. Many building trades leaders sold "strike insurance" freely to the employers and robbed their membership by every known device. Numbers of them also were directly tied up with the underworld during the period of prohibition. They ruled the unions by force and, fighting for control, they periodically carried on murderous gun battles with each other. A star product of this Gompers unionism was Robert P. Brindell of New York, who was credited with amassing a million dollars in the two years before he was exposed by the Lockwood Committee in 1920. Another was Simon O'Donnell, wartime head of the Building Trades Council of Chicago, who was given a spectacular funeral, gangster fashion, with a $10,000 coffin, when he died in 1927. Still another was the notorious "Big Tim" Murphy, also of the Chicago Building Trades. Murphy, who was finally killed in a gangster war, expressed the characteristic A.F. of L. philosophy of labor leadership as follows: "I'm still pretty much of a kid, but I made a millon and spent a million, and I figure I'll make another million before they plant me." 8
The bosses cultivated this corrupt type of leadership, even though occasionally, to discredit the unions, they would send one or two crooked union officials to jail after a spectacular trial. As for the A.F. of L. Executive Council, it did precisely nothing to eliminate the gangsterism and corruption. On the contrary, the Mitchells, Berrys, Brindells, O'Don-nells, and many more of the like were for decades dominant figures in the A.F. of L. Some of them enjoyed honored seats in the Executive Council itself, and generally they crowded the A.F. of L. conventions, voting down all "red" proposals. This was the kind of labor leadership that so ruthlessly rejected amalgamation, a labor party, and Soviet recognition at the 1923 convention of the A.F. of L., even though the bulk of the organized workers had demanded these policies. It was such labor leaders, too, who were ardent supporters of the Gompers clique in office, and defenders of the "new wage policy," "the higher strategy of labor," "trade union capitalism," and militant struggle against the left wing, during the Coolidge boom period of 1923-1929.
THE BILL OF RECKONING
The intensified class collaboration carried on by the conservative upper leadership of the trade unions during the Coolidge period had a number of very harmful effects upon the workers and their unions. For one thing, the acceptance and propagation by the union leaders of prosperity illusions, put out by the employers, were demoralizing ideologically to the workers. Especially confusing was the boundless flood of propaganda to the effect that economic crises were now a thing of the past in the United States. It left the workers quite unprepared for the economic holocaust that struck in October 1929. The top trade union leaders, deceived by their own propaganda, were even less ready for the great economic breakdown than the workers themselves when it finally came.
The bosses' speed-up program, popularized among the workers by the trade union leaders under the name of the "new wage policy" and "the higher strategy of labor," also operated to the detriment of the working and living standards of the workers. This no-strike policy took all the fight out of the unions. Never in the life of the modern American labor movement was its morale so low as during the Coolidge period of intensified class collaboration. Taking advantage of the cultivated inertia of the unions, the employers naturally grabbed unto themselves all the advantages of the increased production which they were able to wring from the workers under the very convenient plan of union-management co-operation.
There was also a general worsening of conditions in the shops during this period. With the class vigilance of the unions weakened by the pest of class collaboration, the bosses were able, under the sacred sign of industrial efficiency, to strip the workers of many hard-won labor conditions. In a period of industrial activity, when the workers possessed a maximum of latent power with which to improve their wage rates, the employers kept wages down. From 1923 to 1929, although output in industry increased no less than 29 percent per worker and profits doubled and tripled, the workers' wages advanced little, if at all. Wage increases, coming mostly from overtime work, went mainly to the skilled workers, with the wage conditions of the masses of semi-skilled and unskilled either stagnant or declining. The top union officials, now blossoming forth as bankers and industrialists, had little time to waste upon such minor matters as protecting the workers' standards.
The class collaboration policies of the union leaders also had deleterious effects upon the growth of the unions. The Coolidge boom years, although accompanied by considerable unemployment, constituted a period of high industrial activity that should have provided a big increase in union membership. But the unions actually declined numerically during these years. Thus in 1922 the A.F. of L. had 3,195,635 members, whereas in 1929, after several years' dose of "union-management co-operation," the number had fallen to 2,933,545, a l°ss °f 262,090 members. Actually the loss was much greater, as many unions, despite membership decreases, continued for internal political reasons to pay their earlier, top-figure per capita tax to the A.F. of L. For example, in 1928 the U.M.W.A. paid on 400,000 members, as in 1920, but in the meantime it had lost about 200,000 dues-paying members. The 1923-29 period was the first time in labor history that the trade unions failed to grow substantially during a long period of "prosperity."
To make the "new capitalism" policies still more bankrupt, the union leaders made ducks and drakes of the millions of dollars that the workers had so trustingly placed in their hands through the many labor banks and other financial and industrial concerns organized during the epidemic of "trade union capitalism." The whole shaky structure soon collapsed, with losses to the workers of huge sums of money. This financial debacle was brought about by wild speculations in Florida, and by general recklessness and incompetence. Speaking of the breakdown of the Locomotive Engineers' big string of banks, Perlman and Taft say, "On the larger issue of redirecting capitalism the movement for labor banks, as shown by the engineers' fiasco, was little more rational than the children's crusade against the Saracens." 9 The number of labor banks fell off rapidly, in the midst of the growing scandal. By 1932 their number was reduced to seven, and now there are only four of them left. This was the unhappy ending of Professor Carver's scheme for the workers to buy out capitalism—as executed by the capitalist-minded reactionaries heading the A.F. of L. and Railroad Brotherhoods.
1 James S. Allen, World Monopoly and Peace, p. 120, N. Y., 1946.
2 F. Sternberg, The Coming Crisis, p. 119, N. Y., 1947.
3 Lorwin, The American Federation of Labor, p. 246.
4. T. N. Carver, The Present Economic Revolution in the United States, pp. 9, 94, 124, Boston, 1925.
5 Cited in Bimba, History of the American Working Class, p. 347.
6 Cited in World's Work, Nov. 1924.
7 American Labor Year Book, 1929, p. 135.
8 William Z. Foster, Misleaders of Labor, Chicago, 1927.
9 Perlman and Taft, History of Labor in the U.S., Vol. 4, p. 578.
dimanche 25 décembre 2016
Chapter Sixteen: Toward Negro-White Labor Solidarity (1919-1924)
16. Toward Negro-White Labor Solidarity (1919-1924)
One of the most important developments of the World War I and post-war period was the beginning of an active co-operation between the Negro people and the labor movement. A number of factors combined to produce this most significant movement. Not the least of these factors was the educational work of the Workers Party, and a more correct attitude toward the Negro question on the part of the broad left wing of the labor movement. An important element, too, was the growth of a substantial body of Negro workers in the North.
During the period from 1910 to 1920 there was a migration of well onto a million Negroes from the South to the North. Conditions were so terrible for the Negro people in the southern states that they sought in great masses to escape from them by fleeing north where, however, things were not radically better. The Negro population during these years increased in New York by 66 percent, in Chicago by 148 percent, in Detroit by 611 percent, and in other cities similarly. The Negro migrants flocked into the industries—such as were open to them. The existing body of Negro wage workers was greatly increased. According to the federal census figures, the number of Negro workers in manufacturing industries rose from 631,280 in 1910 to 886,870 in 1920, a 40 percent increase. The principal industrial strongholds of the Negro workers in 1920 were in steel—17 percent, meat-packing—15 percent, railroads—8 percent, and coal mining—7 percent. The growth of the Negro proletariat was one of the most significant political features of this general period.
The Negro people suffered most in the wave of reaction unleashed by the capitalists during and after the war. The lynchers were abroad with gun and torch and rope. Not a week passed but sadistic lynch horrors were splashed in the newspapers. In 1917 at least 38 Negroes were lynched; in 1918 the number went up to 58, and in 1919 to 70. In the 45 years from 1885 to 1930 there were 3,256 lynchings, or an average of 73 per year. "Race riots" were precipitated by the employers and their lackeys in scores of towns and cities, including Chicago, Detroit, East St. Louis, and Washington. The Ku Klux Klan, huge in size and bold and ruthless, attacked the Negro people, the foreign-born, and the Communists as its main targets. The Klan invaded many northern states and insolently announced that it would eventually seize control of the national government.
But the lynchers and white supremacists unexpectedly encountered a very militant Negro people, who frequently fought arms-in-hand against their persecutors. In the great East St. Louis riot of July 1917, which cost 40 lives, many of those who perished were whites. The same was true of the 13-day riot in Chicago in July 1919, where, with 13 officially listed as dead, the Negroes successfully defended themselves from the lynch mobs. In Elaine County, Arkansas, an estimated 100 Negro sharecroppers were butchered by armed thugs in a bitter battle. Illustrating the Negro people's militant spirit, in September 1917, a Negro regiment in Houston, Texas, goaded beyond endurance by attacks of the Jim Crowers, defended itself, killing 17 attackers. The fact that 13 Negroes were hanged for this affair and 41 imprisoned for life did not quell the fighting spirit of the Negro people.
The sharp spirit of resistance of the Negro masses was akin to the militant mood generally of the workers during this period. And much of it was to be attributed to the fighting line of the Workers Party, although it also had other sources. The Negro people were outraged and aroused by the brutal regime of Jim Crow and persecution under which they lived. In France, too, the Negro troops, themselves segregated into Jim Crow regiments, had been received by the masses of the people with far more of a spirit of fraternity than they had ever known in the United States. Hence, when the soldiers returned home they were resolved not to submit to the monstrous Jim Crow spirit prevailing in both North and South. Also, very important in producing militancy among the Negro masses was the stimulating example of the great Russian Revolution. In the U.S.S.R., the American Negro people, as well as the oppressed nations all over the world, saw before their eyes the tremendous example of the many peoples who make up the Soviet Union living together in harmony and equality. Soviet influence upon American Negroes in this respect has been far greater than is generally recognized.
THE GARVEY MOVEMENT
The first important step taken by the harassed Negro people in an organized manner to defend themselves during the war and post-war years was the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the so-called Garvey movement. Its founder, Marcus Garvey, a brilliant Negro leader, born in Jamaica in 1887, was originally a printer and editor. He launched his movement in the British West Indies in 1914, and it was designed to appeal to the Negro peoples of the world. Garvey came to the United States in 1917, establishing the first section of the U.N.I.A. in New York during that year. The movement showed vitality, grew rapidly, and it held its first organized national convention in 1920.
During the initial stages of his movement, Garvey, in line with the militant spirit of the American Negro people, developed a bitter bill of grievances. Among these, as he outlined them in 1920, were inequality in wages of Negro and white workers, exclusion from trade unions, deprivation of land, taxation without representation, unjust military service, Jim Crow laws, and lynching. The U.N.I.A. demanded "complete control of our social institutions without interference by any alien race or races." It originally favored the U.S.S.R., supported self-determination of peoples, and repudiated the League of Nations because "it seeks to deprive Negroes of their liberty." It declared also that "the Negro should adopt every means to protect himself against barbarous practices inflicted upon him because of color."
Garvey had no faith in the possibilities of Negroes securing just treatment in any country, including the United States, where they constitute a minority. Although his program stimulated the American Negro people to fight gross injustices, Garvey's real objective was eventually to get the Negro masses to return to their original homeland. "Back to Africa" was his central slogan.
The Negroes of the United States joined the Garvey movement in substantial numbers. During the early 1920's, the U.N.I.A. claimed half a million members, and it was by far the largest Negro political organization in the country. Negro militants were attracted to the movement chiefly, however, because of its fighting spirit, but without attaching basic importance to its "Back to Africa," "Negro-Zionist" aspect. The Negro masses, Americans of many generations standing, were obviously determined to fight for their rights in the land of their birth. The "Back to Africa" slogan was purely Utopian.
Soon the U.N.I.A., opportunistically led by Garvey and his group, began to yield to reactionary capitalist pressures and to shed its early radicalism. As Robert Minor describes it, "By a process of elimination, all demands which were offensive to the ruling class were dropped one by one, and the organization settled down to a policy of disclaiming every idea whatever of demanding any rights for the Negro people in the United States—the policy of declaring that the Universal Negro Improvement Association was . . . trying only to construct an organization of a 'home for the Negro people in Africa.1 Eventually its policy degenerated to the point where the organization quit real fighting for equality for the Negro in this county. This reactionary line eventually killed the Universal Negro Improvement Association among the Negro people.
From 1921 on the main activities of the U.N.LA. leaders were centered around selling stock in the Black Star Line of steamships, which was to render a triangular service between the West Indies, Africa, and New York. About $500,000 was collected for this purpose. The steamship line not materializing, however, Garvey was arrested by the federal government, convicted, and sent to Atlanta federal penitentiary in 1925 for two years. The big movement which he had built, torn with factionalism during his imprisonment, gradually fell to pieces. As Harry Haywood points out in his book, however, the disintegrated Garvey movement left many small organizations behind it.2
The central political significance of the Garvey movement was its national content. Garvey cultivated a national spirit, although it was a bourgeois nationalism, among the Negro people of the United States. His movement, being basically Utopian, could not serve the aspirations of the Negro people, but it did help to raise them to a new level of unity and consciousness. The Negro national spirit vaguely voiced by Garvey reached its full development in present-day Communist policy, which is based upon the reality that the Negro people in this country constitute an oppressed nation.
The Workers Party generally adopted a friendly, although critical, attitude toward the Garvey movement. In 1924 the Central Committee sent a letter to the U.N.LA., offering the support of the Workers Party and urging co-operation between Negroes and whites. In this letter, however, the Party still handled the question, not from a national but from a class and race standpoint. 3
ATTEMPTS TO DIVIDE NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS
Employers have long used the policy toward their workers of divide and rule. They have systematically played off one group against another, to the detriment of all: native-born against immigrants, men against women, skilled against unskilled, members of one nation or religion against those of another. Negro workers have been especially the victims of this disruptive policy. For many years the employers made it impossible for Negroes to work in various industries—steel, auto, rubber, textile, lumber, electrical, etc., or to secure jobs at skilled trades, unless they would agree in practice to take the jobs of striking white workers. The heart of the Communists' policies has always been to combat and defeat these divisive tactics of the employers.
The conservative trade union leaders, however, as lieutenants of capital in the ranks of the workers—and particularly the Gompers clique of bureaucrats—went right along with the infamous anti-Negro policy of the employers. Themselves experts at discriminating against various sections of the working class—against women, young workers, the unskilled, and the unemployed—these labor officials practiced the worst exclusionism against Negro workers. They did their utmost to prevent Negroes from getting a foothold anywhere in the industries, especially in the skilled trades. Dozens of trade unions cynically barred Negro workers from membership by constitutional provisions, while many more excluded them in practice. These treacherous policies were made all the more disgraceful by the hypocritical official pretenses of the A.F. of L. to organize all workers, "regardless of race, creed, or color," while its leaders refused to stir in order to compel its affiliated unions to admit Negroes into the industries and the unions. The anti-Negro policies of the Gompers clique constitute the most shameful of all the disgraceful pages in the history of these misleaders of labor. The essence of the latter's position, like that of the employers, was that if the Negro workers were to get into the industries, and particularly the skilled trades, it could only be by taking strikers' jobs. And the tragedy was that such reactionary policies of the union leaders had a certain amount of support from the more backward and chauvinistic sections of the white workers.
To make the position of the Negro workers still more difficult, some of their own people to whom they then looked for leadership—conservative petty-bourgeois elements, who were outraged by the shocking conditions of discrimination practiced against Negroes in the industries and the unions—also took a position that the only way the Negro worker could get into industry and skilled work was by disregarding the unions. Spero and Harris give many examples of this attitude, which was sharply marked during the World War I period. 4 Booker T. Washington saw no hope in trade unionism for the Negro worker. Nor did Garvey. The latter's attitude, say the above-mentioned writers, was that the Negro should "beware of the labor movement in all its forms." Kelly Miller, a Negro professor at Harvard, dealing with the Negro and trade unionism, said, "Whatever good or evil the future may hold for him, today's wisdom heedless of logical consistency demands that he stand shoulder to shoulder with the captains of industry." There was also anti-trade union sentiment in such organizations as the Urban League and the N.A.A.C.P. a quarter of a century ago. And every practical trade union organizer of those days knew that a number of the Negro petty-bourgeois leaders, sickened by the Jim Crow policies of many trade unions, were sure to take a stand advising the Negro workers to have nothing to do with the labor movement. Cayton and Mitchell say, "Toward the labor movement the Negro upper class has generally been antagonistic." 5 Many of these intellectuals, too, precisely because of their weak class position in relation to the white bourgeoisie, tended to sell out the interests of the workers to the latter.
GROWING UNITY BETWEEN NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS
It is to the great honor of the Negro workers that they have been able largely to win their way into the unions and industries and to create, during our years, a body of almost one million solid trade unionists from their ranks. And they have accomplished this in spite of the Jim Crow policies of the employers and their lackey trade union leaders, as well as the unwise advice of many petty-bourgeois Negro leaders. Of course, some Negro workers were misused as strikebreakers in the post-World War I years, but this development has geen grossly exaggerated by enemies of the Negro people. Strikebreaking was far more prevalent among the whites. For every Negro strikebreaker there were scores of white ones.
The solidarity between Negro and white workers was greatly increased during the World War I period. This was the work of the most advanced elements among the Negroes and the left-wing whites, and it was accomplished in the face of strong opposition from the forces described above. The Communist Party is particularly proud of the fact that it was a dynamic factor in this whole crucial development.
The first major concrete step in developing Negro-white trade union co-operation during this period was in the big meat-packing organizing campaign and strike movement of 1917-18, which we have outlined in Chapter 9. This key movement was led by William Z. Foster and J. W. Johnstone, who eventually became Communists. The unionizing drive succeeded in bringing into the labor organizations some 20,000 Negro workers, out of a total of about 200,000 workers organized all over the country. This achievement surpassed anything that had previously been accomplished by labor unions friendly to Negroes, such as the I.W.W., Miners, Longshoremen, and others. It is today a cherished tradition of the Communist Party.
The packinghouse success was all the more significant because it was achieved in the face of powerful opposition not only from the packers' trust and the Jim Crow leaders of the A.F. of L., but also because it had to counter a strong resistance on the part of many Negro petty-bourgeois intellectuals. The latter, judging from past experiences, feared that the packinghouse union campaign would be only another trap for the Negro workers. Many also feared to lose their own leadership among the Negro masses to the unions. But the strong proletarian sentiments of the workers overcame all this opposition and led them to grasp in friendly solidarity the hands of the white workers outstretched to them.
The newly-developed solidarity of Negro and white workers in the packing industry had a real test of fire during the severe Chicago "race riots" of July 1919. This anti-Negro pogrom was organized by agents of the packers, who above all wanted to force the Negroes out of the unions and to drive a wedge between the Negro and white workers in their plants. The Chicago Stockyards Labor Council, then headed by T. W. Johnstone (Foster having left the packing industry to work in steel), saw the storm coming and mobilized the union membership to head it off. On July 6th a big parade of white and Negro packinghouse workers marched through the Negro districts of the South Side of Chi-go, in an effort to allay the grave tension. Nevertheless, on July 27th, a result of direct provocation by packer-organized hoodlums, the storm burst. Virtual civil war raged for two weeks in the whole area, with ,000 police and soldiers mobilized to intimidate the Negro people, meanwhile, 30,000 white stockyards union workers met, protested, pledged solidarity with their Negro brother workers, and demanded the withdrawal of the armed forces, which had done most of the killing. The splendid stand of the Stockyards Labor Council during this crisis, and specially of Jack Johnstone, stands forth as one of the very finest events the history of the American labor movement. It did much to cement Negro-white labor solidarity over the country. 6
A second basic development in this general period, making for Negro-white labor solidarity, was the wartime growth of The Messenger group New York Negro workers and intellectuals. In Chapter 12 we have fetched an outline of this important movement. Its main significance, particularly with regard to Negro-white labor co-operation, rested in the fact that it challenged current Negro petty-bourgeois opinion that trade unionism was injurious to the Negro workers and it boldly urged Negroes to get into the unions. The group tirelessly exposed the indignities and injuries inflicted by the A.F. of L. Jim Crow system and demanded the admission of Negro workers into all unions on the basis of full equality. Besides, it displayed initiative in organizing Negro workers those callings where they predominated in the working force.
The Messenger group, in whose early and best stages pioneer Negro Communists played a decisive part, gave birth to a whole series of constructive activities and organizations, which we can only list here. It created several papers besides The Messenger itself, including The Crusader, The Challenge and The Emancipator. Among the labor organizations growing out of this group's activities were the United Brotherhood of Elevator and Switchboard Operators, National Brotherhood Workers of America, National Association for the Promotion of Labor Unionism among Negroes, the proposed United Negro Trades, the Brotherhood of Dining Car Employees, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The broad Messenger group was also the source of several general Negro organizations of political protest and activity, among them the Friends of Negro Freedom and the African Blood Brotherhood. 7
The Messenger group, particularly in its earlier phases, was essentially a radical, left-wing body. It sounded a high note of fighting militancy for the Negro people, in a period of hysteria when they were being fiercely attacked by capitalist reaction. The "New Negro" of the Messenger conception was one who was quite willing to die if need be in defense of himself, his family, and his political rights. He demanded "the full product of his toil." His immediate aim was "more wages, shorter hours and better housing conditions." He stood for "absolute social equality, education, physical action in self defense, freedom of speech, press and assembly, and the right of Russia to self-determination." 8 The Messenger was one of the very few Negro papers that opposed World War I. The F.B.I., distorting the paper's militancy, stated that "This magazine threw all discretion to the winds and became the exponent of open defiance and sedition." 9 Such militancy was eventually ironed out, however, by Randolph and his associates in pushing The Messenger into the typical right-wing Socialist position. Pressure from The Messenger group and from the Communist Party was largely responsible, during the early 1920's, for the more favorable position on trade unionism for Negro workers taken by the N.A.A.C.P. and the Urban League.
The appearance of the Communist Party upon the political scene, after 1919, raised the whole struggle of the Negro people to a higher level in their fight for fundamental human rights. The Communists in particular strengthened the basic tendency of the Negro masses, the white workers, and progressives generally to work together for the promotion of their common interests. With their customary thoroughness and militancy, the Communists quickly overcame the crass neglect and misunderstanding of the Negro question which had been such a marked weakness in the policies of the Socialist Labor and Socialist parties for the previous forty years, and they made the fight for Negro rights a burning issue throughout the labor movement.
Already during the period of 1920-1921 the Party had increasingly recognized the significance of the Negro question. When the Workers Party was organized at the end of 1921 and brought the Communist movement into legality, it took a better position regarding the Negro people. As remarked earlier, the convention resolution then adopted was the most advanced ever written on the Negro question by any working class party in the United States. At its 1922 convention, the Workers Party re-stressed the Negro question, adopting a program of full support to the fight of the Negro people for economic, political, and social equality, and waging a fight against white chauvinism and for unity in the struggle against capitalism.
The T.U.E.L. in its mass campaigns during the early 1920's also gave encouragement and support to the general movement of the Negro people. In the national elections of 1924, William Z. Foster, presidential candidate of the Workers Party, presented the Communist program on the Negro question in many cities of the Deep South. And from those years right down to the present time there has been no convention or mass campaign of the Communist Party in which the Negro question has not been in the front line of consideration.
Five specific features may be singled out as characterizing the Communist fight on the Negro question, initiated during these early years. First, the Communists understood the key significance to the Negro people of a place in industry and in the unions, and they fought relentlessly to break down every barrier in this respect. Second, there was the special stress that the Communists laid upon the vital issue of social equality. Other movements which had given some co-operation to the Negro masses in their fight for justice almost always dodged and hedged on the matter of social equality. But not the Communists. In their programs and in the life of the Party, they saw in the fight for social equality a basic aspect of the whole struggle of the Negro people. Third, from the outset the Communists also realized the basic need to fight against white chauvinism (white supremacist ideology), not only in the ranks of the established enemy, but also among the white workers, even among those politically well developed. The importance of this position may be realized when one looks back at the outrageously chauvinistic material that formerly appeared unchallenged in the press of the Socialist Party. The fight against this insidious white chauvinism, in the midst of the Communists themselves, has gone on with increasing clarity and vigor ever since. Fourth, the Communists made clear the enormous political significance to white workers of the fight for Negro rights. They knocked on the head the current idea that support of the Negro people was only a sort of generous gesture of solidarity, and made it clear that the white workers could not win their fight without the co-operation of the Negroes. They demonstrated the fact that the Negro people constituted a powerful constructive force which imperatively had to be linked up with that of the whites. And fifth, whereas in the past most forces in the labor movement who were sympathetic to the Negroes' cause at best gave it only a sort of lip service, the Communists, realizing the tremendous importance of the Negro question, have always placed it high on their program and given it all possible support and emphasis. The Party in these years, however, had not yet come to understand the Negro question as a national question.
A NEW STAGE IN THE NEGRO PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT
The foregoing policies the Communists practiced over the years in all their activities on the Negro question, in such bodies as the American Negro Labor Congress, the trade unions, and many other organizations and movements. These Communist activities were a major factor in raising the Negro people's struggle to a higher political level.
The general developments listed above produced marked constructive effects upon the liberation movement of the Negro people. The first of these effects was the beginning of a break-down in the previous isolation of the Negro movement. The isolation of the Negro people had been most sharply cultivated by the Garvey movement, which not only discounted all hope of co-operation with whites, but even proposed that the Negroes should leave this country altogether. However, finding new allies among the white left-wing forces and the broad labor movement, the Negro people, in line with their stand in previous decades of struggle, gradually abandoned the Garveyite idea that they had to make their fight alone. More and more they took their proper place in the front ranks of the broad progressive, democratic forces of the United States.
The second important development in the Negro national movement during the period, arising from the causes with which we have been dealing, was the strengthening of the role of the Negro proletariat in the liberation movement. Not only did the workers become more important because of their growth numerically, but they also played more of the part of leaders of the Negro people. This was a consideration of major importance; for among the Negro people as well as among the American people in general, only the proletariat can successfully lead the toiling masses to freedom.
The third important development in the Negro movement in this period was the acceleration of the growth of Communist influence among the Negro masses. The Communists, who all over the world stand at the head of the fighting working class and the oppressed colonial peoples, were particularly fitted to convey a new strength and leadership to the Negro movement in the United States. In the ensuing years they were to demonstrate this fact very clearly.
16. Toward Negro-White Labor Solidarity (1919-1924)
 |
| At this time the Party was in the center of the struggle to smash Jim Crow unionism, long a cancer in the working class development in the US. |
During the period from 1910 to 1920 there was a migration of well onto a million Negroes from the South to the North. Conditions were so terrible for the Negro people in the southern states that they sought in great masses to escape from them by fleeing north where, however, things were not radically better. The Negro population during these years increased in New York by 66 percent, in Chicago by 148 percent, in Detroit by 611 percent, and in other cities similarly. The Negro migrants flocked into the industries—such as were open to them. The existing body of Negro wage workers was greatly increased. According to the federal census figures, the number of Negro workers in manufacturing industries rose from 631,280 in 1910 to 886,870 in 1920, a 40 percent increase. The principal industrial strongholds of the Negro workers in 1920 were in steel—17 percent, meat-packing—15 percent, railroads—8 percent, and coal mining—7 percent. The growth of the Negro proletariat was one of the most significant political features of this general period.
The Negro people suffered most in the wave of reaction unleashed by the capitalists during and after the war. The lynchers were abroad with gun and torch and rope. Not a week passed but sadistic lynch horrors were splashed in the newspapers. In 1917 at least 38 Negroes were lynched; in 1918 the number went up to 58, and in 1919 to 70. In the 45 years from 1885 to 1930 there were 3,256 lynchings, or an average of 73 per year. "Race riots" were precipitated by the employers and their lackeys in scores of towns and cities, including Chicago, Detroit, East St. Louis, and Washington. The Ku Klux Klan, huge in size and bold and ruthless, attacked the Negro people, the foreign-born, and the Communists as its main targets. The Klan invaded many northern states and insolently announced that it would eventually seize control of the national government.
But the lynchers and white supremacists unexpectedly encountered a very militant Negro people, who frequently fought arms-in-hand against their persecutors. In the great East St. Louis riot of July 1917, which cost 40 lives, many of those who perished were whites. The same was true of the 13-day riot in Chicago in July 1919, where, with 13 officially listed as dead, the Negroes successfully defended themselves from the lynch mobs. In Elaine County, Arkansas, an estimated 100 Negro sharecroppers were butchered by armed thugs in a bitter battle. Illustrating the Negro people's militant spirit, in September 1917, a Negro regiment in Houston, Texas, goaded beyond endurance by attacks of the Jim Crowers, defended itself, killing 17 attackers. The fact that 13 Negroes were hanged for this affair and 41 imprisoned for life did not quell the fighting spirit of the Negro people.
The sharp spirit of resistance of the Negro masses was akin to the militant mood generally of the workers during this period. And much of it was to be attributed to the fighting line of the Workers Party, although it also had other sources. The Negro people were outraged and aroused by the brutal regime of Jim Crow and persecution under which they lived. In France, too, the Negro troops, themselves segregated into Jim Crow regiments, had been received by the masses of the people with far more of a spirit of fraternity than they had ever known in the United States. Hence, when the soldiers returned home they were resolved not to submit to the monstrous Jim Crow spirit prevailing in both North and South. Also, very important in producing militancy among the Negro masses was the stimulating example of the great Russian Revolution. In the U.S.S.R., the American Negro people, as well as the oppressed nations all over the world, saw before their eyes the tremendous example of the many peoples who make up the Soviet Union living together in harmony and equality. Soviet influence upon American Negroes in this respect has been far greater than is generally recognized.
THE GARVEY MOVEMENT
The first important step taken by the harassed Negro people in an organized manner to defend themselves during the war and post-war years was the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the so-called Garvey movement. Its founder, Marcus Garvey, a brilliant Negro leader, born in Jamaica in 1887, was originally a printer and editor. He launched his movement in the British West Indies in 1914, and it was designed to appeal to the Negro peoples of the world. Garvey came to the United States in 1917, establishing the first section of the U.N.I.A. in New York during that year. The movement showed vitality, grew rapidly, and it held its first organized national convention in 1920.
During the initial stages of his movement, Garvey, in line with the militant spirit of the American Negro people, developed a bitter bill of grievances. Among these, as he outlined them in 1920, were inequality in wages of Negro and white workers, exclusion from trade unions, deprivation of land, taxation without representation, unjust military service, Jim Crow laws, and lynching. The U.N.I.A. demanded "complete control of our social institutions without interference by any alien race or races." It originally favored the U.S.S.R., supported self-determination of peoples, and repudiated the League of Nations because "it seeks to deprive Negroes of their liberty." It declared also that "the Negro should adopt every means to protect himself against barbarous practices inflicted upon him because of color."
Garvey had no faith in the possibilities of Negroes securing just treatment in any country, including the United States, where they constitute a minority. Although his program stimulated the American Negro people to fight gross injustices, Garvey's real objective was eventually to get the Negro masses to return to their original homeland. "Back to Africa" was his central slogan.
The Negroes of the United States joined the Garvey movement in substantial numbers. During the early 1920's, the U.N.I.A. claimed half a million members, and it was by far the largest Negro political organization in the country. Negro militants were attracted to the movement chiefly, however, because of its fighting spirit, but without attaching basic importance to its "Back to Africa," "Negro-Zionist" aspect. The Negro masses, Americans of many generations standing, were obviously determined to fight for their rights in the land of their birth. The "Back to Africa" slogan was purely Utopian.
Soon the U.N.I.A., opportunistically led by Garvey and his group, began to yield to reactionary capitalist pressures and to shed its early radicalism. As Robert Minor describes it, "By a process of elimination, all demands which were offensive to the ruling class were dropped one by one, and the organization settled down to a policy of disclaiming every idea whatever of demanding any rights for the Negro people in the United States—the policy of declaring that the Universal Negro Improvement Association was . . . trying only to construct an organization of a 'home for the Negro people in Africa.1 Eventually its policy degenerated to the point where the organization quit real fighting for equality for the Negro in this county. This reactionary line eventually killed the Universal Negro Improvement Association among the Negro people.
From 1921 on the main activities of the U.N.LA. leaders were centered around selling stock in the Black Star Line of steamships, which was to render a triangular service between the West Indies, Africa, and New York. About $500,000 was collected for this purpose. The steamship line not materializing, however, Garvey was arrested by the federal government, convicted, and sent to Atlanta federal penitentiary in 1925 for two years. The big movement which he had built, torn with factionalism during his imprisonment, gradually fell to pieces. As Harry Haywood points out in his book, however, the disintegrated Garvey movement left many small organizations behind it.2
The central political significance of the Garvey movement was its national content. Garvey cultivated a national spirit, although it was a bourgeois nationalism, among the Negro people of the United States. His movement, being basically Utopian, could not serve the aspirations of the Negro people, but it did help to raise them to a new level of unity and consciousness. The Negro national spirit vaguely voiced by Garvey reached its full development in present-day Communist policy, which is based upon the reality that the Negro people in this country constitute an oppressed nation.
The Workers Party generally adopted a friendly, although critical, attitude toward the Garvey movement. In 1924 the Central Committee sent a letter to the U.N.LA., offering the support of the Workers Party and urging co-operation between Negroes and whites. In this letter, however, the Party still handled the question, not from a national but from a class and race standpoint. 3
ATTEMPTS TO DIVIDE NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS
Employers have long used the policy toward their workers of divide and rule. They have systematically played off one group against another, to the detriment of all: native-born against immigrants, men against women, skilled against unskilled, members of one nation or religion against those of another. Negro workers have been especially the victims of this disruptive policy. For many years the employers made it impossible for Negroes to work in various industries—steel, auto, rubber, textile, lumber, electrical, etc., or to secure jobs at skilled trades, unless they would agree in practice to take the jobs of striking white workers. The heart of the Communists' policies has always been to combat and defeat these divisive tactics of the employers.
The conservative trade union leaders, however, as lieutenants of capital in the ranks of the workers—and particularly the Gompers clique of bureaucrats—went right along with the infamous anti-Negro policy of the employers. Themselves experts at discriminating against various sections of the working class—against women, young workers, the unskilled, and the unemployed—these labor officials practiced the worst exclusionism against Negro workers. They did their utmost to prevent Negroes from getting a foothold anywhere in the industries, especially in the skilled trades. Dozens of trade unions cynically barred Negro workers from membership by constitutional provisions, while many more excluded them in practice. These treacherous policies were made all the more disgraceful by the hypocritical official pretenses of the A.F. of L. to organize all workers, "regardless of race, creed, or color," while its leaders refused to stir in order to compel its affiliated unions to admit Negroes into the industries and the unions. The anti-Negro policies of the Gompers clique constitute the most shameful of all the disgraceful pages in the history of these misleaders of labor. The essence of the latter's position, like that of the employers, was that if the Negro workers were to get into the industries, and particularly the skilled trades, it could only be by taking strikers' jobs. And the tragedy was that such reactionary policies of the union leaders had a certain amount of support from the more backward and chauvinistic sections of the white workers.
To make the position of the Negro workers still more difficult, some of their own people to whom they then looked for leadership—conservative petty-bourgeois elements, who were outraged by the shocking conditions of discrimination practiced against Negroes in the industries and the unions—also took a position that the only way the Negro worker could get into industry and skilled work was by disregarding the unions. Spero and Harris give many examples of this attitude, which was sharply marked during the World War I period. 4 Booker T. Washington saw no hope in trade unionism for the Negro worker. Nor did Garvey. The latter's attitude, say the above-mentioned writers, was that the Negro should "beware of the labor movement in all its forms." Kelly Miller, a Negro professor at Harvard, dealing with the Negro and trade unionism, said, "Whatever good or evil the future may hold for him, today's wisdom heedless of logical consistency demands that he stand shoulder to shoulder with the captains of industry." There was also anti-trade union sentiment in such organizations as the Urban League and the N.A.A.C.P. a quarter of a century ago. And every practical trade union organizer of those days knew that a number of the Negro petty-bourgeois leaders, sickened by the Jim Crow policies of many trade unions, were sure to take a stand advising the Negro workers to have nothing to do with the labor movement. Cayton and Mitchell say, "Toward the labor movement the Negro upper class has generally been antagonistic." 5 Many of these intellectuals, too, precisely because of their weak class position in relation to the white bourgeoisie, tended to sell out the interests of the workers to the latter.
GROWING UNITY BETWEEN NEGRO AND WHITE WORKERS
It is to the great honor of the Negro workers that they have been able largely to win their way into the unions and industries and to create, during our years, a body of almost one million solid trade unionists from their ranks. And they have accomplished this in spite of the Jim Crow policies of the employers and their lackey trade union leaders, as well as the unwise advice of many petty-bourgeois Negro leaders. Of course, some Negro workers were misused as strikebreakers in the post-World War I years, but this development has geen grossly exaggerated by enemies of the Negro people. Strikebreaking was far more prevalent among the whites. For every Negro strikebreaker there were scores of white ones.
The solidarity between Negro and white workers was greatly increased during the World War I period. This was the work of the most advanced elements among the Negroes and the left-wing whites, and it was accomplished in the face of strong opposition from the forces described above. The Communist Party is particularly proud of the fact that it was a dynamic factor in this whole crucial development.
The first major concrete step in developing Negro-white trade union co-operation during this period was in the big meat-packing organizing campaign and strike movement of 1917-18, which we have outlined in Chapter 9. This key movement was led by William Z. Foster and J. W. Johnstone, who eventually became Communists. The unionizing drive succeeded in bringing into the labor organizations some 20,000 Negro workers, out of a total of about 200,000 workers organized all over the country. This achievement surpassed anything that had previously been accomplished by labor unions friendly to Negroes, such as the I.W.W., Miners, Longshoremen, and others. It is today a cherished tradition of the Communist Party.
The packinghouse success was all the more significant because it was achieved in the face of powerful opposition not only from the packers' trust and the Jim Crow leaders of the A.F. of L., but also because it had to counter a strong resistance on the part of many Negro petty-bourgeois intellectuals. The latter, judging from past experiences, feared that the packinghouse union campaign would be only another trap for the Negro workers. Many also feared to lose their own leadership among the Negro masses to the unions. But the strong proletarian sentiments of the workers overcame all this opposition and led them to grasp in friendly solidarity the hands of the white workers outstretched to them.
The newly-developed solidarity of Negro and white workers in the packing industry had a real test of fire during the severe Chicago "race riots" of July 1919. This anti-Negro pogrom was organized by agents of the packers, who above all wanted to force the Negroes out of the unions and to drive a wedge between the Negro and white workers in their plants. The Chicago Stockyards Labor Council, then headed by T. W. Johnstone (Foster having left the packing industry to work in steel), saw the storm coming and mobilized the union membership to head it off. On July 6th a big parade of white and Negro packinghouse workers marched through the Negro districts of the South Side of Chi-go, in an effort to allay the grave tension. Nevertheless, on July 27th, a result of direct provocation by packer-organized hoodlums, the storm burst. Virtual civil war raged for two weeks in the whole area, with ,000 police and soldiers mobilized to intimidate the Negro people, meanwhile, 30,000 white stockyards union workers met, protested, pledged solidarity with their Negro brother workers, and demanded the withdrawal of the armed forces, which had done most of the killing. The splendid stand of the Stockyards Labor Council during this crisis, and specially of Jack Johnstone, stands forth as one of the very finest events the history of the American labor movement. It did much to cement Negro-white labor solidarity over the country. 6
A second basic development in this general period, making for Negro-white labor solidarity, was the wartime growth of The Messenger group New York Negro workers and intellectuals. In Chapter 12 we have fetched an outline of this important movement. Its main significance, particularly with regard to Negro-white labor co-operation, rested in the fact that it challenged current Negro petty-bourgeois opinion that trade unionism was injurious to the Negro workers and it boldly urged Negroes to get into the unions. The group tirelessly exposed the indignities and injuries inflicted by the A.F. of L. Jim Crow system and demanded the admission of Negro workers into all unions on the basis of full equality. Besides, it displayed initiative in organizing Negro workers those callings where they predominated in the working force.
The Messenger group, in whose early and best stages pioneer Negro Communists played a decisive part, gave birth to a whole series of constructive activities and organizations, which we can only list here. It created several papers besides The Messenger itself, including The Crusader, The Challenge and The Emancipator. Among the labor organizations growing out of this group's activities were the United Brotherhood of Elevator and Switchboard Operators, National Brotherhood Workers of America, National Association for the Promotion of Labor Unionism among Negroes, the proposed United Negro Trades, the Brotherhood of Dining Car Employees, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The broad Messenger group was also the source of several general Negro organizations of political protest and activity, among them the Friends of Negro Freedom and the African Blood Brotherhood. 7
The Messenger group, particularly in its earlier phases, was essentially a radical, left-wing body. It sounded a high note of fighting militancy for the Negro people, in a period of hysteria when they were being fiercely attacked by capitalist reaction. The "New Negro" of the Messenger conception was one who was quite willing to die if need be in defense of himself, his family, and his political rights. He demanded "the full product of his toil." His immediate aim was "more wages, shorter hours and better housing conditions." He stood for "absolute social equality, education, physical action in self defense, freedom of speech, press and assembly, and the right of Russia to self-determination." 8 The Messenger was one of the very few Negro papers that opposed World War I. The F.B.I., distorting the paper's militancy, stated that "This magazine threw all discretion to the winds and became the exponent of open defiance and sedition." 9 Such militancy was eventually ironed out, however, by Randolph and his associates in pushing The Messenger into the typical right-wing Socialist position. Pressure from The Messenger group and from the Communist Party was largely responsible, during the early 1920's, for the more favorable position on trade unionism for Negro workers taken by the N.A.A.C.P. and the Urban League.
The appearance of the Communist Party upon the political scene, after 1919, raised the whole struggle of the Negro people to a higher level in their fight for fundamental human rights. The Communists in particular strengthened the basic tendency of the Negro masses, the white workers, and progressives generally to work together for the promotion of their common interests. With their customary thoroughness and militancy, the Communists quickly overcame the crass neglect and misunderstanding of the Negro question which had been such a marked weakness in the policies of the Socialist Labor and Socialist parties for the previous forty years, and they made the fight for Negro rights a burning issue throughout the labor movement.
Already during the period of 1920-1921 the Party had increasingly recognized the significance of the Negro question. When the Workers Party was organized at the end of 1921 and brought the Communist movement into legality, it took a better position regarding the Negro people. As remarked earlier, the convention resolution then adopted was the most advanced ever written on the Negro question by any working class party in the United States. At its 1922 convention, the Workers Party re-stressed the Negro question, adopting a program of full support to the fight of the Negro people for economic, political, and social equality, and waging a fight against white chauvinism and for unity in the struggle against capitalism.
The T.U.E.L. in its mass campaigns during the early 1920's also gave encouragement and support to the general movement of the Negro people. In the national elections of 1924, William Z. Foster, presidential candidate of the Workers Party, presented the Communist program on the Negro question in many cities of the Deep South. And from those years right down to the present time there has been no convention or mass campaign of the Communist Party in which the Negro question has not been in the front line of consideration.
Five specific features may be singled out as characterizing the Communist fight on the Negro question, initiated during these early years. First, the Communists understood the key significance to the Negro people of a place in industry and in the unions, and they fought relentlessly to break down every barrier in this respect. Second, there was the special stress that the Communists laid upon the vital issue of social equality. Other movements which had given some co-operation to the Negro masses in their fight for justice almost always dodged and hedged on the matter of social equality. But not the Communists. In their programs and in the life of the Party, they saw in the fight for social equality a basic aspect of the whole struggle of the Negro people. Third, from the outset the Communists also realized the basic need to fight against white chauvinism (white supremacist ideology), not only in the ranks of the established enemy, but also among the white workers, even among those politically well developed. The importance of this position may be realized when one looks back at the outrageously chauvinistic material that formerly appeared unchallenged in the press of the Socialist Party. The fight against this insidious white chauvinism, in the midst of the Communists themselves, has gone on with increasing clarity and vigor ever since. Fourth, the Communists made clear the enormous political significance to white workers of the fight for Negro rights. They knocked on the head the current idea that support of the Negro people was only a sort of generous gesture of solidarity, and made it clear that the white workers could not win their fight without the co-operation of the Negroes. They demonstrated the fact that the Negro people constituted a powerful constructive force which imperatively had to be linked up with that of the whites. And fifth, whereas in the past most forces in the labor movement who were sympathetic to the Negroes' cause at best gave it only a sort of lip service, the Communists, realizing the tremendous importance of the Negro question, have always placed it high on their program and given it all possible support and emphasis. The Party in these years, however, had not yet come to understand the Negro question as a national question.
A NEW STAGE IN THE NEGRO PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT
The foregoing policies the Communists practiced over the years in all their activities on the Negro question, in such bodies as the American Negro Labor Congress, the trade unions, and many other organizations and movements. These Communist activities were a major factor in raising the Negro people's struggle to a higher political level.
The general developments listed above produced marked constructive effects upon the liberation movement of the Negro people. The first of these effects was the beginning of a break-down in the previous isolation of the Negro movement. The isolation of the Negro people had been most sharply cultivated by the Garvey movement, which not only discounted all hope of co-operation with whites, but even proposed that the Negroes should leave this country altogether. However, finding new allies among the white left-wing forces and the broad labor movement, the Negro people, in line with their stand in previous decades of struggle, gradually abandoned the Garveyite idea that they had to make their fight alone. More and more they took their proper place in the front ranks of the broad progressive, democratic forces of the United States.
The second important development in the Negro national movement during the period, arising from the causes with which we have been dealing, was the strengthening of the role of the Negro proletariat in the liberation movement. Not only did the workers become more important because of their growth numerically, but they also played more of the part of leaders of the Negro people. This was a consideration of major importance; for among the Negro people as well as among the American people in general, only the proletariat can successfully lead the toiling masses to freedom.
The third important development in the Negro movement in this period was the acceleration of the growth of Communist influence among the Negro masses. The Communists, who all over the world stand at the head of the fighting working class and the oppressed colonial peoples, were particularly fitted to convey a new strength and leadership to the Negro movement in the United States. In the ensuing years they were to demonstrate this fact very clearly.
1 Robert Minor, in The Workers Monthly, Apr. 1926.
2 Haywood, Negro Liberation, p. 203.
3 Daily Worker, Aug. 5, 1924
4 S. D. Spero and A. L. Harris, The Black Worker, pp. 138-46, N. Y., 1931.
5 H. R. Cayton and G. S. Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions, p. 378, Chapel Hill, N. C, 1932.
6 The Communist, Jan. 1930.
7 Harry Haywood, unpublished manuscript.
8 The Messenger, Aug. 1920.
9 Max Lowenthal, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, p. 121, N. Y., 1950.
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