From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com   
      
   On Walter Reuther: Legends and Lessons   
   — Michael Goldfield   
   The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit:   
   Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor   
   by Nelson Lichtenstein   
   New York, Basic Books, 1995, 575 pages, $35 hardcover.   
      
   IT HAS BEEN over a year since a coalition of most public sector unions and   
   some industrial unions elected former Service Employees International Union   
   (SEIU) President John Sweeney and his slate as the new leadership of the   
   AFL-CIO. In so doing, they    
   overthrew the old-line craft-centered leadership of former President Lane   
   Kirkland.   
      
   These changes in leadership represent not merely a change in constituency, but   
   also in style. They have also placed the question of a revitalized labor   
   movement in the air in a way that it has not been for decades. It thus   
   behooves those of us who have    
   been critical of the established union leadership to be clear on what a   
   minimal strategy for labor union renewal would look like.   
      
   Some of the lessons of what to do and what not to do can in part be found by   
   analyzing other waves of labor organizing, especially the struggles of the   
   1930s and 1940s which led to the formation of industrial unions. Much, of   
   course, has changed since    
   that time; the specific characteristics of the present conjuncture are   
   important to recognize. We now live in a much more global economy; the   
   developed economies are in the midst of a decades-long stagnation after a   
   lengthy post-World War Il boom.   
      
   The economic structure of the domestic economy has likewise changed   
   substantially—service industries have risen in the proportion of workers   
   they employ, while manufacturing has declined; shifts have taken place by   
   region, education, and occupational    
   structure. The composition of the workforce is more heavily female and   
   non-white. Yet much remains the same, as capitalists supported by the   
   government still attempt to extract more profits from the labor of large   
   numbers of workers, while shifting as    
   much as possible the burdens of life onto the unemployed and increasingly   
   nonunion workers.   
      
   Thus, the lessons of the past still have some relevance. Much of the debate on   
   the left about the 1930s and 1940s concerns the viability of the strategies   
   and practices of various left groups and individuals, the Communist Party, the   
   Socialist Workers    
   Party, the Workers Party, the Socialist Party, the perspectives of individual   
   radicals including A.J. Muste, Ralph Helstein, and Myles Horton.   
      
   The principles that many of us look to, if not their exact meaning and   
   implementation, are easily summarized as 1) tactics of mass mobilization, the   
   development of union democracy; 2) commitments to broad working-class   
   solidarity along at least three    
   important dimensions: racial egalitarianism, perhaps the defining feature of   
   what is progressive in this country; equality of the sexes, a principle more   
   prominent now than a half century ago; international solidarity which   
   necessitates a break with U.S.    
   foreign policy, its interventions, its occupations, its opposition to popular   
   struggles, its support for repressive regimes; and, of course, support for   
   struggles abroad; 3) working-class organizations independent of the government   
   (be they regulatory    
   agencies, the police and security apparatus, or labor boards) and the   
   companies; 4) political action, independent of corporate-controlled parties,   
   including the Democrats.   
      
   Each of the forces and groups during the 1930s and 1940s had certain strengths   
   and weaknesses by these criteria. The most important of these groups to   
   understand is the Communist Party, which as the Trotskyist leader James P.   
   Cannon notes, "entered the    
   thirties-the period of great radical revival-as the dominating center of   
   American radicalism. It had no serious contenders." (Cannon, 1979:93)   
      
   The Communist Party (CP) was the largest, most influential group, and had the   
   biggest impact on the character of the labor movement, and it makes no sense   
   to talk generally of the left or to exaggerate the influence and possibilities   
   of other groups.   
      
   The CP, however, was also the most contradictory of all left groups. Buffeted   
   by their role in defending and deferring to the twists and turns of the Soviet   
   regime (playing the role of "border guards" to use Trotsky’s poignant term),   
   the CP was often    
   uncritical in its support for President Roosevelt and at most times vehemently   
   opposed to third party efforts. During World War Il, they were in most   
   places-although, as recent scholarship now shows, not all-opposed to   
   rank-and-file militancy.   
      
   At other times, however, they were often at the forefront of mass   
   mobilizations and the use of innovative, militant tactics.* Their commitment   
   to defending the rights of African-American workers and their successful,   
   often herculean, efforts at building    
   the most racially egalitarian organizations put them far ahead of other left   
   groups on this score, winning them overwhelming support of Black workers in   
   virtually every union. Although the CP had its blemishes, in comparison, most   
   left groups were, to    
   put it politely, racially obtuse. And given the centrality of racial issues to   
   U.S. life and working-class strategy, it behooves us not to belittle this   
   aspect of the CP, and the degree to which we can learn from their efforts.   
      
   The Communists, as the dominant left group, set the tone of struggle and   
   debate within the CIO left. The Trotskyists remained a politically unified   
   tendency with a loyal group of followers, engaging in certain exemplary   
   struggles (of which the    
   Minneapolis Teamster organizing was the most important) and providing a   
   powerful critique of the CP from the left. Still, the withering opposition   
   they faced from the CP made it difficult to achieve sustained growth and gain   
   significant working class    
   leadership except during some brief periods or in certain local struggles.   
      
   The extreme antagonism the Trotskyists faced from the CP, however, combined   
   with a lack of appreciation for the importance of the race question,   
   occasionally led them into dubious political activities, of which their   
   support for the hard-core racist    
   sailors union (SIU-SUP) against the racially progressive, CP-led maritime   
   union (NMU) was perhaps the worst.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)