1a.

Social consequences of neoliberal capitalism

• John Bellamy Foster, “The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and
Ecological Destruction”
• Alan Sears, "Queer in a Lean World"
• Kevin Pyle and Craig Gilmore, “Prison Town: Paying the Price”
• Michael Zweig, “Six Points on Class”
• David Bacon, “The Political Economy of Migration”
1b. October 10, 2010: Understanding capitalist exploitation & crisis
• Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, and Greg Albo, “Capitalist Crisis, Radical
Renewal?” [2010]
• Ernest Mandel, "General approach and influence to Marx’s Economic
Theory" [1970s]
• Ernest Mandel, "Marx’s Labour Theory of Value" [1970s]
• Ernest Mandel, "The Laws of Motion of the Capitalist Mode of
Production" [1970s]
• Charlie Post, "Exploring the Roots of the Crisis" [2008]
2. October 24, 2010: What kind of socialism do we want?
• Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s” [1984]
• David McNally, Johanna Brenner, “Socialism From Below” [2000s]
• Robin Kelley, “‘The Negro Question’- Red Dreams of Black Liberation"
[2003]
• Nancy Holmstrom, “The Socialist Feminist Project” [2003]
3. November 7, 2010: Reform and revolution, dynamics of social
change
1. Peter Camejo, "How to Make a Revolution in the United
States" [1970]
2. Robert Brenner, “The Problem of Reformism” [1991]
3. Sol Dollinger, chapters Not Automatic: Women and the
Left in the Forging of the Autoworkers Union [2000]
4. Dianne Feeley, “Labor’s Disaster at American Axle”
[2008]
4. November 21, 2010: Socialist activism and organization
• Solidarity, "Regroupment and Renewal of a US Left" [2008]
• Solidarity, excerpts from "Founding Statement" [1986]
• Freedom Road Socialist Organization, “Unity Statement” [1992]
• Jo Freeman, “The Tyranny of Structurelessness” [1970]
• David Finkel, “Then and Now: Another Look at ‘What is to be Done?’”
[1982]
5. December 5, 2010: The Democratic and Republican parties and
independent political action.
• Joanna Misnik, excerpts from "The Rainbow and the Democratic Party:
New Politics Or Old?" [1988]
• Bill Fletcher and Danny Glover, "Visualizing a Neo-Rainbow" [2004]
• Peter Camejo, "The Avocado Declaration" [2004]
• Mike Davis, excerpts from "Obama at Manassas" [2008]
6a. December 19, 2010: Race, national oppression, and self-determination
• Cynthia Kaufman, “Theorizing and Fighting Racism” [2003]
 • Jeff Corntassel, “To Be Ungovernable” [2006]
• Glen Ford, "The Black Struggle Under Obama" [2009]
• Robert Allen, “The Social Context of Black Power” [1969]
• Adolph Reed, “Tokens of the White Left” [2000]
6b. January 2, 2010: Race, national oppression, and self-determination
• Betsy Esch and David Roediger, “One Symptom of Originality: Race
and the Management of Labour in the History of the United States”
[2009]
• Bob Wing, "Crossing Race and Nationality: The Racial Formation of
Asian Americans 1852-1965" [2005]
• Mike Davis, “Buscando America” [2000]
• Elizabeth Martinez, “Seeing more than Black and White” [1994]
• Kim Moody, "Harvest of Empire, Immigrant Workers in the US" [2007]
7. January 16, 2010: Challenges for the labor movement
• Mark Brenner, “After a Year of Disappointment and Defeats, Where are
the Pitchforks?” [2010]
• Lee Sustar, "US Labor in the Crisis: Resistance or Retreat?" [2009]
• Erin Small, “Feminism At Work” [2007]
• Steve Downs, “Book Review: Solidarity Divided” [2009]
• Jane Slaughter and Mark Brenner, "The Lay of the Land for Labor"
[2008]
• Dianne Feeley, "Labor's Disaster at American Axle" [2008]
8a. January 30, 2010: Feminism, identity, and women’s self-organization.
• bell hooks, “Sisterhood: Practical Solidarity Among Women" [1984]
• bell hooks, “Men: Comrades in Struggle” [1984]
• Sheila Rowbotham, "What do Women Want?" [1993]
• Sheila Rowbotham, "Women, Power, and Politics" [1993]
• Sheila Rowbotham, "Origins of Women's Liberation in Many Countries"
[1993]
8b. February 13, 2010: Feminism, identity, and women’s self-organization.
• Sheila Rowbotham, "Personal Politics: Changing Politics Through
Action" [1993]
• Sheila Rowbotham, "Knots: Theoretical Debates" [1993]
• Sheila Rowbotham, "The Protests Without a Name: Women in
Collective Action" [1993]
• Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Collective
Statement” [1977]
9. February 27, 2010: Gender oppression and sexual liberation, LGBTQ
identity and social movement.
• Chloe Tribich, "Gay Marriage: End of the World?" [2010]
• Peter Drucker, "The New Sexual Radicalism" [2010]
• 15th World Congress of the Fourth International, "On Lesbian/Gay
Liberation" [2003]
• Donna Cartwright: "Transgender Activism After Falls City" [2000]
• Daisy Hernandez: "Becoming a Black Man" [2008]
10. March 13, 2010: Imperialism, and internationalism
• Ellen Meiksins Wood, chapters from "Empire of Capital" [2005]
 • Isaac Deutscher, "Internationals and Internationalism" [1971]
• Salvatore Cannavo, “The International Becomes a Perspective” [2010]
• John Bellamy Foster, foreword to “Latin America & Twenty-First
Century Socialism: Inventing to Avoid Mistakes” [2010]
• Olivier Bonfond, Eric Toussaint, “Will Capitalism Absorb the World
Social Forum?" [2010]
11. March 27, 2010: 21st century socialism
• Joanna Misnik, “The Future of Socialism: Under Construction” [1991]
• David McNally “Building Toward the Next New Left” [2008]
• Marta Harnecker, "Programmatic Crisis & the Crisis of Credibility"
[2007]
• Marta Harnecker, "The Organic Crisis" [2007]
• Marta Harnecker, "The Theory Underlying this Concept of Party" [2007]
• Marta Harnecker, "Politics as the Art of Making the Impossible Possible"
[2007]
• Marta Harnecker, "Why We Need a Political Organization” [2007]
Peter Camejo, “Liberalism, Ultraleftism or Mass
Action”
The purpose of this meeting is to have a discussion about the present
political conjuncture in this country following the May events, how we
have to relate to what is happening, and what we have to do to build
the antiwar movement and the revolutionary movement.

The main questions I want to deal with are some of the arguments
being raised within the radical movement against the orientation
projected by the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist
Alliance. I want to try to deal with these arguments in a theoretical
way. That is, deal with what is basically behind the differences that
now exist in the radical movement and what they represent in terms of
the problems before the left in the United States.

I want to start by talking about Cambodia. If you read the newspapers

of the last few days you will notice that there’s a very interesting thing
happening in Cambodia. The papers say that the guerrillas are winning
ground. Now, you have to be very careful whenever the American
papers say that the communists are winning, because sometimes that
is done simply to justify sending more troops or more arms.

But when the papers start saying it every day, over and over again,
and then they start telling you what areas the communists have
conquered, after a while you begin to suspect that it’s true. And I’m
really getting very suspicious that the people in Cambodia are starting
to win.

But, there’s more to it than just that. There’s something else

happening. The United States is not sending in any troops to stop their
advance. Well, you may say: “obviously, we all know about that.”
Nixon says the US isn’t sending any more troops. The troops are
supposed to be withdrawn from Cambodia by the end of June.

But Nixon is pulling them out just when the United States is losing in
Cambodia!
Now, that’s very unusual. We have to stop and think: what’s stopping
the United States from sending hundreds of thousands of troops into
Cambodia right now, to take over the capital and secure all those little
towns and cities and roads and everything else they claim they’re
losing? They certainly don’t want to lose Cambodia. Nixon has the
airplanes, he has the ships. What’s stopping him? Russian troops?
Chinese troops? Who’s in the way?
If you can’t answer that question, you can’t understand either what is
happening in this country or what has to be done. Because if you want
to deal with politics, you have to understand that there’s some real
force stopping the war-makers. It’s not just some psychological quirk of
Nixon. And it’s not because of some resolution that’s being debated by
the Senate. The power of a class, like the American ruling class, is not
determined by some kind of legal paper. It’s determined by a
relationship of certain forces. In other words, there’s a certain power
that is stopping them from going full steam ahead with the war. What
is that power?

Many of the so-called radicals, or people who call themselves radicals,

can’t answer this question. Some of them used to say that the reason
the United States is not doing more in Vietnam, and is actually starting
to withdraw some troops, is because the US has lost the war.
Remember that explanation? These radicals used to keep announcing
that the NLF had won. I’ve always asked them to notify the NLF about
this, since the NLF undoubtedly isn’t aware of it. You don’t say you’ve
won a war when there are still 500,000 enemy troops occupying all
your major cities.

The fact is, the United States has not lost the war militarily. The United
States could put millions more soldiers into Vietnam from a military
standpoint.

The US had an army of 15 million in the Second World War, with a

population then of some 140 million. With the present population of
220 million, the US could put an army of 22 to 24 million in the field
now if it wanted to mobilize on the scale it did for World War II. Which
means it could put 10 million into Vietnam.

And it would be economically possible too, if the government was

willing to pay the price, in terms of the standard of living of the
American people, that it paid in the Second World War.

That is, there is nothing militarily stopping them from escalating. The
national liberation forces of Indochina couldn’t physically stop them
from landing two, three, or five million soldiers.

It’s true that one thing the US has to consider in deciding whether or
not to send more troops is how China and the USSR would respond to
such an escalation. That is a real consideration, because China and the
Soviet Union represent real powers.

Up until now, however, all the Chinese have done when the US staged
major escalations is issue their 1829th “final warning”, saying that
they take it very seriously and that the US will have to be responsible
for the consequences. The Russians have also put out their “warnings”,
different only in their wording.

So the restraint on the US government is not mainly due to a direct or

immediate fear of China and Russia. That’s one consideration based on
real power, but it is not the decisive consideration at this moment
because the US has already had a higher number of troops in Vietnam
than they have right now. And they’ve bombed further and more
intensively than they are right now.

What’s stopping them from moving right now into Cambodia?

Another explanation advanced by some is that the ruling class is

reforming itself, changing its mind about how imperialist to be. But
that’s not what is happening at all. The American ruling class from
McGovern and Kennedy right on down to Nixon would love to have a
free hand, a situation where it would be acceptable to send however
many soldiers would be necessary to take control of Cambodia and
“secure” Vietnam. The war makers haven’t had any change of heart.

The real explanation is that the masses of people in this country have
become a force that enters into the balance on a world scale. There is
a change taking place in the consciousness of the people of the United
States, and this change is altering the relationship of forces. An
understanding of this fact is crucial for deciding our strategy and
tactics. You can’t work out tactics for how to affect the course of the
war unless you understand what is affecting it at this very moment.

Failure to understand this leads to all types of dreams, schemes and

fantasies which I’m going to discuss.

But first let’s consider why this is true. Why is it that the antiwar
consciousness of the masses of people can be such a powerful force
affecting what the government can do? The reason is very simply this:
contrary to what many people in the radical movement say, the
masses of people have different interests than the ruling class and
they have independent power.

The ruling class can, of course, influence the working class — through
the leadership of the trade unions for instance. But the potential power
of the working class, that independent power which was concretely
reflected in the postal workers strike and the GE [General Electric]
strike, is a power which is so strong that the ruling class has to
seriously reckon with it in figuring out its strategy.
The working class in this country, if it so chose, could physically end
the war in Vietnam. That’s a pretty fantastic power. Students cannot
end it by themselves. Soldiers could conceivably end it, but you can’t
consider the GIs in isolation from the rest of society.
There’s a general shift taking place in which masses of workers are
becoming more and more sympathetic to appeals to stop the war.

Now people say: “What do you mean? There’s no sign of that. How
many workers have gone on strike against the war? How many workers
have thrown their bodies in the way of tanks? How many workers have
burnt their draft cards, or even joined a demonstration?”

Such arguments are used to “prove” that mass antiwar sentiment

obviously can’t be the power restraining the war-makers. But if you
look at it this way you’re forgetting how this society functions.

You see, if you walk into a store that’s selling refrigerators, there’s
nobody in that store to stop you from wheeling out a refrigerator. How
many guards do they have at the door? Probably zero. They have some
salesman who walks up to you. It wouldn’t take much to get him out of
the way. You could wheel out four or five of them.

Now, the reason you don’t go wheeling refrigerators out of stores

every day of the week is because there’s a certain power ensuring that
that refrigerator stays inside the store unless they get money for it.
There are things like the police, the courts, and jails behind it. But this
power isn’t apparent when you look at the refrigerator and at the little
salesman saying: “You’d better not take that.”

In a similar way, when a union bureaucrat gets up at a rally and says,

“You’d better stop the war”, it isn’t some helpless little guy on the
street talking. There’s a lot of power behind that plea.

If you don’t understand the relationships which exist in this society,

because they’re not apparent at first sight, you can make some tragic
errors.

The working class and the oppressed nationalities are mass social
layers, and they can only realize their potential power when they
organize as a massive social force. The ruling class can deal with any
one individual or any small group; it’s only masses that can stand in
their way. So the potential power of the working class to stop the war
is a big threat.

Now, the people who run this country are not stupid. They are not
going to continue blindly along a course when they know there are
dangers ahead. No one has to go up to Nixon or Kennedy and say: “If
the mood that exists among students were to spread to the workers,
and instead of a general student strike there was a general strike of
the working class, well, then you would lose more than Vietnam and
Cambodia.”

No one has to tell them that. They know that. And that’s why they
don’t just keep pushing ahead, saying to hell with the students and
workers, send in another million soldiers and invade Cambodia. Send
troops into Cuba, send them into Indonesia and into China. Drop the
bomb on China.

They know better than to just keep pushing ahead. What they have to
do is get rid of that danger, the danger that actions will bring a
response from the masses who actually have power to stop them.
They’re not so stupid as to just go blindly forward. Because where
there’s real power, and real stakes, people don’t play games.

You see, you can take 200 or 300, or even a few thousand people and
fight in the streets, throwing rocks at windows, and putting on a big
show. You can play revolution, not make revolution. But when you’re
talking about 15 million workers who control basic industry in this
country, you don’t play games. Because they don’t run around
throwing things at windows. They do things like stop production,
period.

The postmen, for instance — all they had to do to tie up the economy
was to go home. That’s all. Just go home. That’s power.

A question that’s very important in this relationship of forces I’ve been

speaking of is the question of who’s got the majority, Nixon or the
antiwar movement. The polls are going wild trying to establish this or
that, and there are demonstrations and claims and counterclaims back
and forth.

But what the liberals and the ultra lefts don’t understand is that what
the majority thinks can be decisive. Such things as where the troops
can be sent and whether bullets can be fired or not, can be determined
by what the mass of the people think. Because their ability to resist,
and the potential, the danger of their resistance, is dependent on what
they think.

The May events

Now in May we witnessed the general student strike. We should look

carefully at what the government’s policy, the ruling class’s policy, was
toward this upsurge because it’s instructive.

The answer to the antiwar upswing in the fall was Nixon’s claim to
have a “silent majority” behind him. That was the gist of the
propaganda campaign by the ruling class to try to minimize the impact
of the demonstrations on October 15 and November 15.
Then came the general student strike of May, and the massive
increase in conscious hostility towards the war in Vietnam, and the
invasion of Cambodia.

This strike swept the United States like an ocean wave. It was clear
that this time the student-based protest reflected the thinking of
millions and millions of Americans, including huge sections of the
working class. This time when the students came out, they all came
out. When virtually 98% of the student body is striking in many schools
and three-quarters of them are showing up for the mass strike
meetings, you know that the movement reflects moods prevalent in
the entire population. They are being expressed visually by the student
layer.

What was the response to this upsurge by the ruling class? The
number one point which they understood perfectly was that decisive
power does not lie within the student movement, but that the student
movement is a direct danger because it can act as a catalyst,
spreading ideas and setting other forces into motion.

If you were to look at the students in isolation, you would say they
don’t have any real power. But put the students into the actual
network of society — the interrelationship with their parents, the
interrelationship with society as a whole, the interrelationship between
each university and other universities and schools and the community
around it — and the ruling class can see an immediate threat.

The goal of the ruling class was to prevent this strike — this infection,
as they saw it — from spreading beyond the campus throughout the
population as a whole.

They saw the student strike taking place, and they didn’t want it to
spread because they saw that the student strike was starting to
weaken the fibers of this class society, and that if workers got involved
in this movement and it began to spread, this whole society might be
torn apart. So they were consciously trying to save their system, which
they think is the most wonderful thing of all creation.

What did they say in the newspapers? “It’s terrible. America is divided.
We have to come back together.” And then they started saying: “It’s
too bad that our children are this way.” You see, it’s just the kiddies.
It’s the generation gap. On television they say to the workers: “You’re
older, and this strike isn’t for you. It’s just our kids, and we’ve got to
try to understand them.”

Or: “It’s a white strike. It has nothing to do with black people. And it
certainly has nothing to do with unions or workers!” That’s the general
campaign they put on.
This campaign was expressed, for instance, by Roy Wilkins, who made
his famous statement about how the student strike has nothing to do
with black people. And also in the way the papers played up the May
20 pro-war demonstration in New York organized by the trade union
bureaucrats and the bosses.

The May 20 demonstration

I want to say a few things about that demonstration. There are very
few demonstrations that take place in the United States where people
are paid to show up. Well, these demonstrators were paid to come out.
They got a day’s pay only if they turned up. So this was a
demonstration financed by the bosses and organized by the trade
union bureaucracy for the purpose of trying to pose the working class
against the antiwar forces. They wanted to make a dichotomy between
the two because they understood the danger.

Of course, they had to pick a section of the working class from the
aristocracy of labor, among the most highly paid and conservative. But
I will make a prediction here that the trade union bureaucrats and the
ruling class will live to regret the day they called that demonstration.
Because those construction workers and other workers in New York
City realized something important in the course of that demonstration.
That is, they saw their own power.

Now, it’s a basic rule that you shouldn’t show people their own power
when you’re trying to rule them. But the ruling class was so desperate
that they had to do this.
The reason I say they’re going to regret that demonstration is that as
this inflation continues and real wages start dropping for construction
workers some are bound to get up in a union meeting and say: “Hey,
remember what we did a year ago? We all went out on that big
demonstration and threatened everybody in the world. Why don’t we
do that again demanding better pay? Why don’t we go down and beat
the hell out of the mayor?” If you’re a ruling class, it’s a very
dangerous thing to play with masses in motion.
In fact, we saw the response to this pro-war demonstration the very
next day, when trade unions organized their first antiwar
demonstration. What was new in May was not pro-war attitudes among
the trade unions but a split in the union movement with unions
breaking from Meany and declaring against the war. It’s very
dangerous for the ruling class to encourage any kind of mass
mobilizations of workers, because when they see how they can exert
their power through demonstrations they will begin demonstrating in
their own interests.

The general policy of the ruling class is to divide the movement, divide
the students from the workers and the blacks, and conquer it that way.
Keep it divided. Keep it from spreading until the spontaneous upsurge
and the student strike eventually cool off.

The ‘responsive’ image

Now, while the ruling class was trying to prevent the movement from
spreading, they launched a gigantic campaign to convince the students
that the government was listening to them, that the government was
responsive.

This was a very important aspect. They told the students over and over
again: “We are listening, we’re listening, we hear you, we hear you.”
More and more of the politicians announced that they were against the
war. Nixon said he’d get the troops out by the end of June. He even got
up at 5 am on May 9 to speak to the students, remember?
Meanwhile they were campaigning to tell all the young people: “Get
back into the system! This system works! Look, we’re listening.” They
launched a gigantic campaign to co-opt this movement, saying: “Come
back into the fold. Thank you so much for striking. Thank you, but now
we’re past that stage. We’re past demonstrating and striking. We’re
now at the stage for knocking at doors and getting votes for me, and
I’ve just discovered that I’m against the war. We’re all Americans;
we’re going to pull our country back together. Our system is very
responsive; it will correct itself.” That was the position they took.

Now, keeping this whole framework of the relationship of forces in

mind, let’s look at the various orientations that are being presented to
us for what to do next. There are basically three of them. One is what I
call liberalism. Another one is ultraleftism. The third one is what I call
independent mass action.

Orientation number one

First the liberal approach. Liberals reject the concept that there is a
relationship of forces between classes. They can’t understand it. If you
walk up to a liberal and say, “Right now the working class is protecting
your civil liberties”, he would break out laughing. He’d roll over on the
floor, saying: “What are you talking about? Meany’s for the war; the
unions never do anything!” They don’t understand the fact that the
American working class believes in its civil liberties. If the ruling class
tried suddenly to take all civil liberties away, the American people
could physically stop them.

So then you ask the liberal who is protecting his civil liberties? He will
say: “Well, it’s because our system allows it. Our system works to a
certain degree.” Since they have confidence that the system basically
works, the only problem is to find members of the ruling class who are
responsive and will help protect civil liberties, and get them in power.
They continuously look for a more liberal wing within the ruling class to
support.
They don’t at all see that the way to change society or affect the
course of events is to go to the masses. On the contrary, they accept
the general bourgeois ideology of deep cynicism toward the masses.
The average person in the street according to them is stupid. He can
be easily manipulated. “Look, the average person in the street believes
the politicians are corrupt, yet he votes for them every year. Isn’t that
true? Haw, haw, haw”, he says.

And all the liberal “intellectuals” read the New York Times, and they
say: “Look at what the masses read, the Daily News! How can you
possibly expect anybody who reads that paper to be an effective force
for social change?”

So the liberals don’t look to the masses. They look directly to the ruling
class and try to affect the course of events by relating to any
differences within the ruling class.
This ideology of liberalism, finding a politician who’s responsive,
represents the ideology of the overwhelming majority of the student
movement. Most students on the campus are suspicious because of
the war in Vietnam and because of the radicalization that’s affected
them. Nevertheless, they’re still willing to give the politicians — the
McGoverns, the McCarthys and the Kennedys — another chance.

Orientation number two

There’s another point of view, and that is ultraleftism. This represents

a small section of the student movement, but a much larger proportion
of those who call themselves radicals or socialists.

Now basically an ultraleft is a liberal that has gone through an

evolution. What happens is this. They start out as liberals, and
suddenly the war in Vietnam comes along. Now, what does a liberal
believe? He believes that the ruling class is basically responsive to his
needs. So he demonstrates.

You know, in the beginning when the antiwar movement first started
there were very few ultraleftists. Most of the ultraleftist leaders of
today were people who were organizing legal, peaceful demonstrations
back around 1965.

But after they called a few demonstrations against the war, they
noticed something was wrong. The ruling class was not being
responsive. Not only that, they understood for the first time that the US
was literally massacring the Vietnamese people. This frightened them.
It was as if you all of a sudden found out that your father was really the
Boston Strangler. That’s what it was like for these people. They were
liberals, who believed that Johnson was better than Goldwater, who
had worked and voted for him only to find out that he was the Boston
Strangler.

Now, since they had no confidence in the masses as an independent

force that could stop the ruling class, since they had no confidence
that the stupid worker was actually a force protecting their civil
liberties, they said: “Wait a minute. If the government is being run by
wild maniacs and butchers, what is stopping them from killing me
tomorrow?”
Then you started hearing them all talk about imminent fascism. The
underground papers discovered that there were concentration camp
sites in this country, and that some of them were being cleaned up and
gotten ready. They would say to each other: “See you next year in the
concentration camps.” This was a very common attitude, because they
couldn’t see any force around that was protecting their civil liberties.

Then what they began to develop was the thesis that civil liberties,
elections, courts, all bourgeois democratic forms are a gigantic put-on,
a fantastic manipulation. That it is all a ruling class trick. So, these
people concluded that the elections and civil liberties are unreal, and
the people who run the country could call them off tomorrow. Elections
and civil liberties, they said, “have nothing to do with reality”.

Then came the instant fascism theory. We are about to have fascism
any moment now. But this is a very confusing theory. Somehow the
rallies and demonstrations continue year after year. They don’t put us
in the concentration camps.

This theory is actually a mixture of deep cynicism, thinking that the

ruling class is all-powerful, but it always is combined with a last hope
that maybe they aren’t completely bad. Maybe there is still someone
who will listen.

Sometimes a liberal becomes frustrated not getting the ear of the

ruling class, and he concludes that he’s been using the wrong tactics.
So he adopts a lot of radical rhetoric. He says this ruling class is
apparently so thick headed that what we’ve got to do is really let loose
a temper tantrum to get its attention. The politicians won’t listen to
peaceful things, but if we go out and break windows then Kennedy will
say: “Oh, I guess there is a problem in this society. I didn’t realize it
when they were just demonstrating peacefully. I thought everything
was OK because they were in the system, but now they’re going
outside the system, they’re breaking windows, so we’ve got to hold
back.”

These liberal-ultraleftists think that’s what moves the ruling class.

Actually they come close to a correct theory when they say that if
people start leaving the system the ruling class will respond. But they
don’t believe that the masses can be won. They think it is enough for
them to leave the system themselves, small groups of people carrying
out direct confrontations.

For example, let me quote a thing from the New York Times that
illustrates how this type of idea develops. A girl from Kent [State
University], after the killings there, was asked what she thought could
be done about Cambodia and what she thought about the use of
violence. This was a person who is just radicalizing, a liberal, just
beginning to oppose the war.

She says: “I’m really dead set against violence. That’s also a cop out.
But it’s the only way to get the government’s attention. What you’re
doing is drawing their attention to you, by using the same methods
they use. I’m really against that. It’s horrible that the only way you can
get people to listen is to have four kids killed. There was really no
blow-up over Cambodia until four kids were killed. You can have all the
peace marches that were peaceful and quiet, and everyone would pat
you on the back and say ‘good little kids’, but nobody would do
anything.”

Now, what’s in her mind? She doesn’t see any independent, mass force
that’s standing in the way of the ruling class. She’s looking at the
ruling class and asking: “Are we affecting them or not? Are they being
responsive?” And if not, maybe the way to get them to pay attention is
to go out and break some windows and use violence. It’s a very natural
conclusion when you don’t understand that there’s a class struggle, a
class relationship of forces.
Having given up on the masses, the ultraleft super-revolutionaries are
really trying to influence the ruling class. A classical example of this
unity between the liberal and the ultraleft approach was the Chicago
demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Party convention. The leaders
of the demonstration came from the National Mobilization Committee.
They were revolutionary. Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Dave Dellinger and
Rennie Davis were on hand, and their rhetoric was as radical as you
can get.

But while the “militant” demonstrations were in process, Tom Hayden

and Rennie Davis were apparently closeted with McCarthy’s supporters
working out an agreement to help McCarthy.

According to an article in the Jan. 22, 1970 Washington Post: “[Sam]

Brown [Vietnam Moratorium Coordinator] said [Tom] Hayden
suggested … that if McCarthy appeared to have a good chance by
Monday or Tuesday — and if that chance might be hampered by public
activity [demonstrations] — then we could meet to decide whether to
go ahead with the public activity.” Hayden has never denied this
account.

Another example of this type of ultraleftism was a full-page ad which

appeared in the New York Times June 7. It was placed by the New
Mobe and signed by guess who? Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, et al.
This ad announces in big letters at the top of the page: “It’s 11:59.”
11:59 to what? It’s 11:59 to 1984. Fascism is due in one minute.
This is another thing that these ultraleft-upside-down-liberals have: the
panic button. Since they don’t see any countervailing force, they think
at any moment the whole country could just go BANG! At any moment
the ruling class can make a move to the right, and they don’t see any
way to stop it, so they throw in the towel, they just panic. The ad says:
“If you’re reading this — don’t kid yourself any longer. Big brother is
making his list. And you’re on it. Can we stop 1984? It’s 11:59 pm now.
The clock is ticking loudly. What in hell are we going to do about it?”

Well, what solution do these ultralefts have? What do they project

should be done to stop imminent fascism? In this ad they have a five
point program.

Number one, sit in at your congressman’s office. With just one minute
until 1984! Really effective! I guess their reasoning is that if you’re in
your congressman’s office when 1984 arrives at least maybe they’ll be
a little more lenient with you!

The second point is you should sit in at your draft board and turn in
your draft card.
Number three is a standard paragraph that you find in all the leaflets
put out by ultraleftists, which simply says: “Do something quick.”
“Organize antiwar actions where you work, each week. Interrupt the
work day for peace. Wear black armbands. Wear peace buttons. Hold a
discussion or teach-in. Have a work stoppage, a campus strike!”
Anything! Just do something, everybody! For Christ’s sake!

Point four, they announce a demonstration is going to be held on June

19 by the Black Panther Party.

And in point five they tell you about a conference in Milwaukee, but
they assure you it won’t be thousands of people; just several hundred
community activists will meet to plan future actions. I suppose this
future action will take place under fascism, unless they think two sit-
ins, a conference and a rally will stop fascism.

Anyway, that’s their program of action and their analysis of what to do,
because they believe the invasion of Cambodia isn’t a tactical move,
limited by a relationship of forces, but a deliberate and final plan. A
final solution has begun.

Now, you can see very clearly that there’s nothing very different about
this; it’s just classical stuff like Martin Luther King did: have a sit-in or
some sort of civil disobedience confrontation to try to affect the moral
conscience of the ruling class.

We’re not opposed to sit-ins per se; many of us in the SWP and YSA
have participated in sit-ins, such as during the early stages of the civil
rights movement. We’re not opposed to any specific tactic. But we look
at the whole political context, the relationship of forces, what is
possible, what potential exists for mass action, and we decide on that
basis what tactics we should use at the moment.

Orientation number three

Let me go on to the third choice: independent mass action. What I

mean here is a general strategy of trying to build movements which
reach out and bring masses into motion on issues where they are
willing to struggle against policies of the ruling class, and through their
involvement in action, deepen their understanding of those issues. This
is the fundamental strategy we’re after.

We’re not interested in moving 20 or 200 or several hundred

community organizers to engage in some sort of civil disobedience,
window trashing, or whatever. We say that is a dead end, because it
doesn’t relate to the power that can stop the war — the masses. You
can’t ask the 15 million trade unionists to sit in at a congressman’s
office. There just isn’t enough room. Of course, the ultralefts know that
15 million workers aren’t going to do that, so that call is clearly not
aimed at involving workers.

This is the key thing to understand about the ultraleftists. The actions
they propose are not aimed at the American people; they’re aimed at
those who have already radicalized. They know beforehand that
masses of people won’t respond to the tactics they propose.

They have not only given up on the masses but really have contempt
for them. Because on top of all this do you know what else the
ultralefts propose? They call for a general strike! They get up and say,
“General Strike”. Only they don’t have the slightest hope whatsoever
that it will come off.

Every last one of them who raises his hand to vote for a general strike
knows it’s not going to happen. So what the hell do they raise their
hands for? Because it’s part of the game. They play games, they play
revolution, because they have no hope. Just during the month of May
the New Mobe called not one but two general strikes. One for GIs and
one for workers.

That is the big difference between the perspective of the ultralefts and
our perspective, because we DO want a general strike. We DO want a
real strike. We do believe you can win the workers, so therefore we
don’t just raise our hands in games, we raise our hands for what really
can be done, for what can begin to move masses of people.

The independent mass action concept does not just mean

demonstrations against the war. It’s a general strategy with many
aspects to it.

One aspect is to build a mass independent black political party. It also

means, for instance, organizing to mobilize masses of women against
the institutions, social norms and practices that are used to oppress
them. It’s a strategy that calls for doing things like building the
Chicano Raza Unida Party, which is growing in the Southwest.

This is the concept of getting people into motion, into action. Not
talking down to them, but organizing actions which are able to give
expression to the mass opposition to the policies of the ruling class, at
the level of understanding that people have reached about what’s
happening in this society. It’s the concept of bringing masses into
motion, but at all times keeping the movement independent of the
ruling class.
Now, what is the best way we can implement this orientation at this
point? We follow a general organizational type strategy which is simply
this. You get the issues around which people are moving against the
government and create a unified movement around them, in order to
maximize the numbers that will come into motion.

This is the same strategy which is used by a union when it carries out a
strike. When a union calls a strike, it calls it on certain demands.
Higher pay, better working conditions, whatever the demands happen
to be for that struggle. If a majority of the workers agree, they take a
vote, and then everybody strikes together, and they put a very heavy
emphasis on keeping it together.

The workers don’t say: “Why don’t we also take a stand on the Arab
Israeli conflict? Or on housing, or on the last bill passed in Congress?”
as a prerequisite to participate in the strike.

You’ve got to deal with people where they’re at. When a woman comes
along and says, “I’m against the abortion laws; I want to see them
abolished”, and she wants to join a demonstration for free abortions on
demand, but she still has illusions about the war in Vietnam, still
supports Nixon, what is our attitude? Do we say: “You’re an imperialist
pig! Don’t you know what’s happening in Vietnam? You can’t go on this
demonstration. Keep away from us. We understand these things —
we’re the elite. We don’t want to taint ourselves by letting someone
who’s for the war in Vietnam join this demonstration.”

The way people radicalize

Our concept is to unite people in action around the issues on which

they’re moving. Not because we’re single-issue fetishists. Our aim, in
fact, is to move people around broader and broader issues, but we’ve
got to deal with reality, not with abstractions.

We advocate many things, but we try to put into practice those things
the masses are prepared for. We advocate general strikes, but we
don’t call them, because we’re not fools. We know there cannot be a
general strike, on any issue right now, given the present level of
consciousness. And you won’t get to the point where there can be
general strikes unless you put people in motion, precisely because
when they start to move on any one issue, whether women’s
liberation, the war or racial oppression, people begin to question the
whole society, and to see the interrelationship between the different
issues. In fact, it is the way people radicalize.
People don’t suddenly understand everything at once. Think about
your own political development. There’s always one issue or another,
depending on the objective conditions, which tends to wake a person
up. As we’ve said over and over again, at the present stage the most
effective weapon to stop the ruling class from moving to the right is to
get masses of people in motion. The most effective way to do this, at
this stage especially, is mass, peaceful, legal demonstrations in the
streets.

Now, if we want to build a movement against the Vietnam war, it can

not, by definition, be multi-issue. That’s like saying we want a single
issue movement that’s multi-issue. The “multi-issue” antiwar
movement is the trick which is the key to how the liberals and the
ultraleftists can get together organizationally, politically, socially, etc.
— get married, and live happily ever after.

The trick is to make the issues non-issues. Make them so nebulous that
they have nothing to do with concrete realities. Instead of
demonstrating to bring the troops home from Vietnam now, which is
very concrete, they call for “Stop imperialism”. Nothing like an
abstraction. Even Nixon can say: “I’m against imperialism too — that’s
what Britain and France and Holland did in the 18th and 19th
centuries.” But Nixon can’t say: “Bring all the troops home now.”

Or they say we should raise the demand “End racism”. Isn’t Nixon
willing to say “End racism”? Don’t black Democratic politicians say
“End racism”? So they make a real multi-issue program: end racism,
end repression, end imperialism, end male chauvinism.
What we want is to call for concrete demands and mobilize people to
win them. Demands like Get Out of Vietnam, or Black Control of the
Black Schools, or concrete campaigns around specific cases of
repression. But that’s not what the liberal-ultralefts do. What they call
a multi-issue program is a list of abstract reforms.

Slogans like end racism and end male chauvinism are not only abstract
in their political meaning, they are also abstract because the antiwar
movement cannot organize the struggle to win them. The antiwar
movement cannot replace or substitute for an independent black
liberation movement, or an independent women’s liberation
movement, for instance. Black people and women — not the antiwar
movement — must decide which concrete demands will best further
their struggle and how best to organize around them.

Many students may agree with the slogan End Racism, but how many
of them understand the right of black people to self-determination, the
need for an independent black political party, and the demand for
black control of the black community? PL-SDS, for instance, screams
“smash racism” — I mean screams — while they oppose black
nationalism, an independent black party, black studies programs, black
control of the black community, open admissions, etc.

The fact that many radicals do not understand black nationalism is

evident in the expectation that if the antiwar movement adopts the
slogan End Racism, then blacks will immediately begin to join the
movement. Blacks are going to be drawn to black organizations,
building a black leadership and formulating a program for their
liberation struggle.

If you have a program of a lot of reforms and abstractions, it means

that you can go right back to the liberal wing of the ruling class,
because that is just what their program is also. You can go right back
to Senator Kennedy, who can get up, as he did in his speech accepting
the Democratic Party nomination for Massachusetts senator, and come
out against racism, repression, poverty and many other things.

This is precisely the orientation of the Communist Party. Get the

antiwar movement to approve an abstract program which will be just
like the programs of the “peace politicians. Then there will be no
problem in getting the antiwar movement to support those good
Democrats.

If you look back to 1966 and 1968, you’ll notice that every election
year the antiwar coalitions split. Multi-issue groups were formed that
ended up supporting the Democrats, and the demonstrations got
smaller.

Now we’re going through the same process once again, but within a
different context. The great difference is that the depth of the antiwar
movement is qualitatively greater than it was in ’66 or ’68. Deep mass
antiwar sentiment exists, and it offers the possibility, even during an
election period, of building mass independent actions against the war,
and therefore actually holding back the war effort.

What’s happening right now is that the involvement of people in mass

actions is radicalizing them on other issues as well. The antiwar
movement, for example, has helped lay the basis for the tremendous
growth of the women’s liberation movement and it has created a
greater responsiveness to certain aspects of the black struggle. The
black struggle itself helped to inspire the antiwar movement.

A good example of this process was during the May strike movement.
Many students who helped build the antiwar universities became really
aware for the first time of the repression against the Black Panthers
and raised concrete demands to free the jailed Panthers.

At the University of California at Berkeley during the strike, a mass

meeting of 12,000 voted to set up a child-care centre on campus and
to institute a women’s studies program. Many campuses adopted and
attempted to institute concrete demands raised by the black students.
All types of radicalization took place within the context of the strikes.

Just think of a strike situation. When there is a strike for higher wages
where a big struggle takes place, masses come into motion and people
begin to question all types of things. What’s the response among the
workers, after a single-issue strike, to someone who says: “Look, none
of the Democrats and Republicans supported our strike. Yet we voted
for them last year.”

Obviously in the context of struggle many possibilities for radicalization

open up, and who is going to the masses with a concrete program of
action around all these issues? The YSA and SWP. Who’s pushing an
independent mass black political party? Who’s helping build a Chicano
party? Who’s building the women’s liberation movement? What other
organization is working in all these fields with the aim of mobilizing
masses in struggle against the ruling class?

Our Socialist Workers Party election campaigns are going to be very

much a part of this whole radicalization and especially of the antiwar
movement. The alternatives we create through our socialist election
campaigns are going to be a part of the antiwar movement, a part of
the whole context in which the antiwar struggle is taking place.

So we have to launch an offensive. The Socialist Workers Party

candidates are going to get a bigger hearing than ever before, because
there are now tens of thousands of young people who are looking for
antiwar candidates. Many of them, it’s true, will support “peace”
candidates from the Democratic or Republican Party, but with a certain
fear and suspicion. Many young people will start out supporting a
Democratic Party candidate, and when their candidate makes one slip
and takes a bad position they’ll quit the campaign and be ready to turn
to socialist candidates.

In our election campaigns we’ve got to emphasize that it’s not the
individual candidate that is decisive but his or her party and which
social layer the party serves. That is the real question: which social
layer, which class, rules? And the Socialist Workers Party campaigns
will be saying clearly: “Don’t vote for the parties of war! We in the
SWP, our program — not the Democrats’ — represents the interests of
the masses of people.”
Our campaigns speak for the full program necessary to mobilize people
in struggle to do away with war, poverty, racial oppression and the
oppression of women. They point the way to the goal of our struggle:
socialism.

But at the same time we will unite on any issue around which people
are willing to struggle against the ruling class, no matter what their
level of understanding of this society. This is the way to move masses
in this country, to build a revolutionary party, and not only play
but make a revolution.
Bob Brenner: The Problem of Reformism
I WAS ASKED to talk about the historical lessons of revolution in the
twentieth century. But since we are primarily interested in historical
lessons that are likely to be relevant to the twenty-first century, I think
it would be more to the point to consider the experience of reform and
reformism. Reformism is always with us, but it rarely announces its
presence and usually introduces itself by another name and in a
friendly fashion. Still, it is our main political competitor and we had
better understand it. To begin with, it should be clear that reformism
does not distinguish itself by a concern for reforms. Both
revolutionaries and reformists try to win reforms. Indeed as socialists,
we see the fight for reforms as our main business. But reformists are
also interested in winning reforms. In fact, to a very large extent,
reformists share our program, at least in words. They are for higher
wages, full employment, a better welfare state, stronger trade unions,
even a third party.

The inescapable fact is that, if we want to attract people to a

revolutionary socialist banner and away from reformism, it will not
generally be through outbidding reformists in terms of program. It will
be through our theory-our understanding of the world -and, most
important, through our method, our practice.

What distinguishes reformism on a day-to-day basis is its political

method and its theory, not its program. Schematically speaking,
reformists argue that although, left on its own, the capitalist economy
tends to crisis, state intervention can enable capitalism to achieve
long-term stability and growth. They argue, at the same time, that the
state is an instrument that can be used by any group, including the
working class, in its own interests.

Reformism's basic political method or strategy follows directly from

these premises. Working people and the oppressed can and should
devote themselves primarily to winning elections so as to gain control
of the state and thereby secure legislation to regulate capitalism and,
on that basis, to improve their working conditions and living standards.

The Paradox of Reformism

Marxists have, of course, always counterposed their own theories and
strategies to those of reformists. But, probably of equal importance in
combating reformism, revolutionaries have argued that both reformist
theory and reformist practice are best understood in terms of the
distinctive social forces on which reformism has historically based
itself-in particular, as rationalizations of the needs and interests of
trade union officials and parliamentary politicos, as well as middle-
class leaders of the movements of the oppressed.

Reformism's distinctive social basis is not simply of sociological

interest. It is the key to the central paradox that has defined, and
dogged, reformism since its origins as a self-defined movement within
the social democratic parties (evolutionary socialism) around 1900.
That is, the social forces at the heart of reformism and their
organizations are committed to political methods (as well as theories
to justify them) that end up preventing them from securing their own
reform goals-especially the electoral-legislative road and state-
regulated labor relations.

As a result, the achievement of major reforms throughout the

twentieth century has generally required not only breaking with, but
systematically struggling against, organized reformism, its chief
leaders and their organizations. This is because the winning of such
reforms has, in virtually every instance, required strategies and tactics
of which organized reformism did not approve because these
threatened their social position and interests-high levels of militant
mass action, large-scale defiance of the law, and the forging of
increasingly class-wide ties of active solidarity-between unionized and
un-unionized, employed and unemployed, and the like.

The Reformist View

The core proposition of the reformist world view is that, though prone
to crisis, the capitalist economy is, in the end subject to state
regulation. Reformists have argued-in various ways-that what makes
for crisis is unregulated class struggle. They have thus often contended
that capitalist crisis can arise from the "too great" exploitation of
workers by capitalists in the interests of increased profitability. This
causes problems for the system as a whole because it leads to
inadequate purchasing power on the part of working people, who
cannot buy back enough of what they produce. Insufficient demand
makes for “a crisis of underconsumption" - for example (according to
reformist theorists), the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Reformists have also argued that capitalist crisis can arise, on the
other hand, from "too strong" resistance by workers to capitalist
oppression on the shop floor. By blocking the introduction of innovative
technology or refusing to work harder, workers reduce productivity
growth (output/worker). This, in turn, means a slower growing pie,
reduced profitability, reduced investment, and ultimately a "supply-
side crisis" -for example (according to reformist theorists), the current
economic downturn beginning at the end of the 1960s.

It follows from this approach that, because crises are the unintended
result of unregulated class struggle, the state can secure economic
stability and growth precisely by intervening to regulate both the
distribution of income and capital labor relations on the shop floor. The
implication is that class struggle is not really necessary, for it is in the
long term interest of neither the capitalist class nor the working class,
if they can be made to coordinate their actions.

The State as Neutral Apparatus

The reformist theory of the state fits very well with its political
economy. In this view, the state is an autonomous apparatus of power,
in principle neutral, capable of being used by anyone. It follows that
workers and the oppressed should try to gain control of it for the
purpose of regulating the economy so as to secure economic stability
and growth and, on that basis, win reforms in their own material
interests.

Reformism's political strategy flows logically from its view of the

economy and the state. Workers and the oppressed should
concentrate on electing reformist politicos to office. Because state
intervention by a reformist government can secure long-term stability
and growth in the interests of capital, as well as labor, there is no
reason to believe that employers will stubbornly oppose a reformist
government.

Such a government can prevent crises of underconsumption by

implementing redistributive tax policies and prevent supply-side crises
by establishing state regulated worker-management commissions in
the interest of raising productivity. On the basis of a growing,
increasingly productive economy, the state can continually raise
spending on state services, while regulating collective bargaining so as
to insure fairness to all parties.

Reformists would maintain that workers need to remain organized and

vigilant–especially in their unions—and prepared to move against
rogue capitalists who won't be disciplined in the common interest:
ready to take strike action against employers who refuse to accept
mediation at the level of the firm or, in the worst ease, to rise en
masse against groups of reactionary capitalists who can't abide giving
over governmental power to the great majority and seek to subvert the
democratic order.

But presumably such battles would remain subordinate to the main

electoral/legislative struggle and become progressively less common
since reformist state policy would proceed in the interest not only of
workers and the oppressed, but of the employers, even if the latter did
not at first realize it.
Responding to Reformism
Revolutionaries have classically rejected the reformists' political
method of relying on the electoral/legislative process and state-
regulated collective bargaining for the simple reason that it can't work.

So long as capitalist property relations continue to prevail, the state

cannot be autonomous. This is not because the state is always directly
controlled by capitalists (social democratic and labor party
governments, for example, often are not). It is because whoever
controls the state is brutally limited in what they can do by the needs
of capitalist profitability ... and because, over any extended period, the
needs of capitalist profitability are very difficult to reconcile with
reforms in the interest of working people.

In a capitalist society, you can't get economic growth unless you can
get investment, and you can't get capitalists to invest unless they can
make what they judge to be an adequate rate of profit. Since high
levels of employment and increasing state services in the interest of
the working class (dependent upon taxation) are predicated upon
economic growth, even governments that want to further the interests
of the exploited and the oppressed-for example social democratic or
labor party governments-must make capitalist profitability in the
interest of economic growth their first priority.

The old saying that "What's good for General Motors is good for
everyone," unfortunately contains an important grain of truth, so long
as capitalist property relations continue in force.

This is not of course to deny that capitalist governments will ever make
reforms. Especially in periods of boom, when profitability is high,
capital and the state are often quite willing to grant improvements to
working people and the oppressed in the interests of uninterrupted
production and social order.

But in periods of downturn, when profitability is reduced and

competition intensifies, the cost of paying (via taxation) for such
reforms can endanger the very survival of firms and they are rarely
granted without very major struggles in the workplaces and in the
streets. Equally to the point, in such periods, governments of every
sort-whether representative of capital or labor--so long as they are
committed to capitalist property relationships, will end up attempting
to restore profitability by seeing to it that wages and social spending
are cut, that capitalists receive tax breaks, and so forth.

The Centrality of Crisis Theory

It should be evident why, for revolutionaries, so much is riding on their
contention that extended periods of crisis are built into capitalism.
From this standpoint, crises arise from capitalism's inherently anarchic
nature, which makes for a path of capital accumulation that is
eventually self-contradictory or self-undermining. Because by nature a
capitalist economy operates in an unplanned way, governments cannot
prevent crises.

This is not the place for an extended discussion of debates over crisis
theory. But one can at least point out that capitalist history has
vindicated an anti-reformist viewpoint. Since the later nineteenth
century, if not before, whatever type of governments have been in
power, long periods of capitalist boom (1850s-1870s, 1890s-1913, late
1940s-c.1970) have always been succeeded by long periods of
capitalist depression (1870s-1890s, 1919-1939,c.1970 to the present).
One of Ernest Mandel's fundamental contributions in recent years has
been to emphasize this pattern of capitalist development through long
waves of boom and downturn.

During the first two decades of the postwar period, it seemed that
reformism had finally vindicated its political worldview. There was
unprecedented boom, accompanied by-and seemingly caused by-the
application of Keynesian measures to subsidize demand, as well as the
growing government expenditures associated with the welfare state.
Every advanced capitalist economy experienced not only fast-rising
wages, but a significant expansion of social services in the interest of
the working class and the oppressed.

In the late '60s or early '70s, it thus appeared to many that the way to
insure continually improved conditions for working people was to
pursue "class struggle inside the state”-the electoral/legislative
victories of social democratic and labor parties (the Democratic party
in the United States).

But the next two decades entirely falsified this perspective. Declining
profitability brought a long-term crisis of growth and investment. Under
these conditions, one after another reformist government in power-the
Labor Party in the late '70s, the French and Spanish Socialist Parties in
the '80s, and the Swedish Social Democratic Party in the '80s-found
itself unable to restore prosperity through the usual methods of
subsidizing demand and concluded that it had little choice but to
increase profitability as the only way to increase investment and
restore growth.

As a result, virtually without exception, the reformist parties in power

not only failed to defend workers' wages or living standards against
employers' attack, but unleashed powerful austerity drives designed to
raise the rate of profit by cutting the welfare state and reducing the
power of the unions. There could be no more definitive disproof of
reformist economic theories and the notion of the autonomy of the
state. Precisely because the state could not prevent capitalist crisis, it
could not but reveal itself as supinely dependent upon capital.

Why Reformism Doesn't Reform

It remains to be asked why the reformist parties in power continued to
respect capitalist property rights and sought to restore capitalist
profits. Why didn't they instead seek to defend working class living and
working standards, if necessary by class struggle? In the event that
that approach led capitalists to abstain from investing or to capital
flight, why could they not then have nationalized industries and moved
toward socialism? We are back to the paradox of reformism.

The key is to be found in the peculiar social forces that dominate

reformist politics, above all the trade union officialdom and the social
democratic party politicos. What distinguishes these forces is that,
while they are dependent for their very existence on organizations
built out of the working class, they are not themselves part of the
working class.

Above all, they are off the shop floor. They find their material base,
their livelihood, in the trade union or party organization itself. It's not
just that they get their salaries from the trade union or political party,
although this is very important. The trade union or party defines their
whole way of life-what they do, whom they meet--as well as their
career trajectory.

As a result, the key to their survival, to the fluctuations in their

material and social position, is their place within the trade union or
party organization itself. So long as the organization is viable, they can
have a viable form of life and a reasonable career.

The gulf between the form of life of the rank and file worker and even
the low level paid official is thus enormous. The economic position-
wages, benefits, working conditions-of ordinary workers depends
directly on the course of the class struggle at the workplace and within
the industry. Successful class struggle is the only way for them to
defend their living standards.

The trade union official, in contrast, can generally do quite well even if
one defeat follows another in the class struggle, so long as the trade
union organization survives. It is true that in the very long run the very
survival of the trade union organization is dependent upon the class
struggle, but this is rarely a relevant factor. More to the point is the
fact that, in the short run, especially in periods of profitability crisis,
class struggle is probably the main threat to the viability of the
organization.

Since militant resistance to capital can provoke a response from capital

and the state that threaten the financial condition or the very
existence of the organization, the trade union officials generally seek
studiously to avoid it. The trade unions and reformist parties have
thus, historically, sought to ward off capital by coming to terms with it.

They have assured capital that they accept the capitalist property
system and the priority of profitability in the operation of the firm.
They have at the same time sought to make sure that workers, inside
or outside their organizations, do not adopt militant, illegal, and class-
wide forms of action that might appear too threatening to capital and
call forth a violent response.
Above all, with implacable class struggle ruled out as a means to win
reforms, trade union officials and parliamentary politicians have seen
the electoral/legislative road as the fundamental political strategy left
to them. Through the passive mobilization of an election campaign,
these forces thus hope to create the conditions for winning reforms,
while avoiding too much offending capital in the process.

This is not to adopt the absurd view that workers are generally
chomping at the bit to struggle and are only being back by their
misleaders. In fact, workers often are as conservative as their leaders,
or more so. The point is that, unlike the trade union or party officials,
rank and file workers cannot, over time, defend their interests without
class struggle.

Moreover, at those moments when workers do decide to take matters

into their own hands and attack the employers, the trade union
officials can be expected to constitute a barrier to their struggle, to
seek to detour or derail it.

Of course, trade union leaders and party officials are not in every case
averse to class struggle, and sometimes they even initiate it. The point
is simply that, because of their social position, they cannot be counted
on to resist. Therefore, no matter how radical the leaders' rhetoric, no
strategy should be based on the assumption that they will resist.

It is the fact that trade union officials and social democratic politicians
cannot be counted on to fight the class struggle because they have
major material interests that are endangered by confrontations with
the employers that provides the central justification for our strategy of
building rank and file organizations that are independent of the
officials (although they may work with them), as well as independent
working class parties.
Reformism Today and Regroupment
Understanding reformism is no mere academic exercise. It affects just
about every political initiative we take. This can be seen particularly
clearly with respect both to today's strategic tasks of bringing together
anti-reformist forces within a common organization (regroupment) and
that of creating a break from the Democratic Party.

Today, as for many years, Solidarity's best hope for regrouping with
organized (however loosely) left forces comes from those individuals
and groups which see themselves as opposed from the left to official
reformism. The fact remains that many of these leftists, explicitly or
implicitly, still identify with an approach to politics that may be roughly
termed "popular frontism."

Despite the fact that it was framed entirely outside the camp of
organized social democracy, popular frontism takes reformism to the
level of a system.

The Communist International first promulgated the idea of the popular

front in 1935 to complement the Soviet Union's foreign policy of
seeking an alliance with the "liberal" capitalist powers to defend
against Nazi expansionism (“collective security"). In this context, the
Communists internationally put forward the idea that it was possible
for the working class to forge a very broad alliance across classes, not
only with middle class liberals, but with an enlightened section of the
capitalist class, in the interest of democracy, civil liberties, and reform.

The conceptual basis for this view was that an enlightened section of
the capitalist class preferred a constitutional order to an authoritarian
one. In addition, enlightened capitalists were willing to countenance
greater government intervention and egalitarianism in order to create
the conditions for liberalism, as well as to insure social stability.

Like other reformist doctrines, the popular front based itself, in

economic terms, on an underconsumptionist theory of crisis.
Underconsumptionism was in fact receiving a wide hearing in liberal,
as well as radical-socialist, circles during the 1930s, receiving a
particularly strong boost with the promulgation and popularization of
Keynes' ideas. In the United States, the implication of the popular front
was to enter the Democratic Party. The Roosevelt administration,
containing as it did certain relatively progressive establishment types,
was seen as an archetypical representative of capitalism's enlightened
wing. And the imperative of working with the Democrats was very
much increased with the sudden rise of the labor movement as a
power in the land.

The Communists had originally been in the lead in organizing the CIO,
and had, in fact, spectacularly succeeded in auto largely by virtue of
their adoption, for a very brief but decisive period (1935-early 1937), of
a rank-and-file strategy much like that of Solidarity today. This strategy
had, at the start, found its parallel in Communist refusal to support
Roosevelt.

But by 1937, soon after the adoption of the popular front with its
implied imperative not to alienate the Roosevelt administration, the CP
had come to oppose labor militancy (sitdown strikes, wildcats) in the
interest of the classically social democratic policy of allying with the
“left" wing of the trade union officials.

The implication of this policy was to reject the notion that the labor
officialdom represented a distinct social layer that could be expected
to put the interests of its organizations ahead of the interests of the
rank and file-a notion that had been at the core of the politics of the
left-wing of pre-World War I social democracy (Luxemburg, Trotsky,
etc.) and of the Third International since the days of Lenin.

Instead, trade union officials ceased to be differentiated in social terms

from the rank and file and came to be distinguished (from one another)
by their political line alone (left, center, right).

This approach fit very well with the Communists' strategic objective of
getting the newly-emergent industrial unions to enter the Democratic
Party. Of course, much of the trade union officialdom was only too
happy to emphasize its political role inside the emergent reform wing
of the Democratic Party, especially in comparison with its much more
dangerous -economic role of organizing the membership to fight the
employers.

The dual policy of allying with the "left" officials inside the trade union
movement and working for reform through electoral/legislative means
within the Democratic Party (hopefully alongside the progressive trade
union leaders) has remained to this day powerfully attractive to much
of the left.

A Rank-and-File Perspective
In the trade unions during the 1970s, representatives of tendencies
that eventually ended up inside Solidarity were obliged to counterpose
the idea of the rank-and-file movement independent of the trade union
officials to the popular front idea of many leftists of supporting the
extant "progressive" leadership.

This meant, in the first place, countering the idea that the progressive
trade union officials would be obliged to move to the left and oppose
the employers, if only to defend their own organizations.
Revolutionaries contended that, on the contrary, precisely because of
the viciousness of the employers' offensive, trade union officials would
for the most part, be willing to make concessions in the interest of
avoiding confrontation with the employers. They would thereby allow
the bit-by-bit chipping away of the labor movement virtually
indefinitely.

The latter perspective has been more than borne out, as officials have
by and large sat on their hands as the concessions movement has
reached gale proportions and the proportion of workers in trade unions
dropped from 25-30% in the '60s to 10-15% today.

Equally to the point, revolutionaries in the trade union movement had

to counter the popular front idea that the trade union leaders were "to
the left of the rank and file." If you talked with many leftists in that
period, sooner or later you'd get the argument that the rank and file
were politically backward.

After all, many "progressive" trade union leaders opposed U.S.

intervention in Central America (and elsewhere) more firmly than did
the membership, stood much more clearly than did the membership
for extensions of the welfare state, and, even, in a number of cases,
came out for a labor party.

Our response to this argument was to contrast what "progressive"

trade union leaders are willing to do verbally, "politically,” where
relatively little is at stake, with what they are willing to do to fight the
bosses, where virtually everything may be at risk. It cost the well-
known head of the IAM William Winpisinger virtually nothing to be a
member of DSA and promulgate a virtually perfect social democratic
world view on such questions as the reconversion of the economy,
national health care, and the like.

But when it came to class struggle, we pointed out, Winpisinger not

only came out clearly against Teamsters for a Democratic Union, but
sent his machinists across the picket line in the crucial PATCO (air
controllers) strike.

Over the past decade or so, many leftists have broken with the Soviet
Union or China and become open to re examining their entire political
world view. But this does not mean that they automatically move in
our direction. For their popular front political strategy corresponds in
central ways with a still (relatively) powerful and coherent political
trend – i.e. social democratic reformism.

If we are to win over these comrades, we will have to demonstrate to

them, systematically and in detail, that their traditional popular front
strategy of working with the trade union "lefts" and penetrating the
Democratic Party is in fact self-defeating.

Independent Political Action

At various points in the election campaign, important elements within
the leaderships of the Black movement, the women's movement, and
even the labor movement proclaimed that they would like to see a
viable political alternative to the Democratic Party. Their statements of
intent seemed to make the IPA project suddenly much more real.
These people are indispensable, at this point, for any practical third
party effort for the simple reason that the great majority of Black,
women, and labor activists look to them, and no one else, for political
leadership. But are they serious about IPA?

In one sense, it is obvious that all these forces need independent

political action. The Democratic Party has long been seeking to do ever
more to improve capitalist profitability and progressively less in the
interest of workers, women, and oppressed minorities. It has therefore
been of decreasing use to the established leaderships of the union,
Black, and women's movements who, after all, work inside the party
primarily so that they can win something for their constituents.

The official leaderships of the movements would thus no doubt love to

have in existence a viable third party. But it is the paradox of their
social stratum and their reformist politics that they are unable to do
what is necessary to create the conditions in which such a party could
come into being.

It is difficult to see how these conditions could be achieved except

through the revitalization of the social movements, above all the labor
movement the growth of fighting militancy and fighting unity within
the union movement and beyond. Newly-dynamized mass movements
could provide the material base, so to speak, for the transformation of
political consciousness that could bring into being an electorally
successful third party. But such movements are just what the
established leaderships are afraid to create.

On the other hand, in the absence of a massive break in the activity

and consciousness of the mass movements, it makes absolutely no
sense to the established leaderships to break with the Democrats.
These elements take the electoral road extremely seriously; for it is the
main means for them to secure gains for their constituencies. And the
sine qua non for gains through the electoral road is all too self-evident:
it is electoral victory. Without electoral victory, nothing is possible.

The problem is that, for the foreseeable future, no third party would
have a chance to win. The political consciousness is not yet there.
Moreover, third parties are especially disadvantaged here by the
winner take all electoral system.

In this situation, the established leaderships of the trade union, Black,

and women's movement are in a double bind: they cannot break from
the Democrats until the conditions are present that can promise
electoral victory for a third party; but they cannot create the conditions
for a third party without forsaking, probably for a substantial period,
their established methods of winning gains via the electoral road.

It is, unfortunately, not at all surprising that the most serious

supporters of a break toward a third party within the established
leaderships of the movements-to be found within the women's
movement-showed themselves much less interested in "their own"
Twenty-first Century Party than with the Democratic Party candidacies
of Carole Moseley Braun, Barbara Boxer, and even Dianne Feinstein.
Just as any revival of the labor movement, the social movements, and
of the left will have to depend on a break from-and confrontation with-
the social and political forces that underpin reformism, so will the
project of building a new party to the left of the Democrats.
The Toledo Auto-Lite Strike, 1934
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep have fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.
Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy

By 1934, the worst Depression in United States history had entered its
fourth year. It was a period of tremendous hardship for working people.
Record unemployment and the resulting economic deprivation had
produced suffering and social dislocation on a scale hitherto
unimagined. The conditions for successful strike action in the
automobile industry could not have been less auspicious. Nevertheless,
against all the odds, in the spring of that year the workers at the
Electric Auto-Lite factory in Toledo, Ohio, won a historic partial victory
over the company, following a bruising six-day struggle that involved
hand-to-hand combat with the Ohio National Guard.

The ferocity of this struggle was a warning that the auto empire would
not surrender control without great sacrifice by the union workers. The
auto industrialists could rely on strong financial reserves, police forces,
private detective agencies, and the undisguised support of
government courts and committees, This formidable combination
confronted the newly organized Toledo auto union, which had emerged
when small groups of workers from City Auto Stamping, Bingham
Stamping, Dura, Spicer, and Logan Gear received a charter for federal
Local No. 18384 from the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The local
was at the forefront of historic strikes in 1934 that led to the founding
of the International Auto Workers Union (IAWU).
The auto industry had experienced sporadic labor conflicts throughout
the Depression, attended by wage reductions and speed-ups, the
notorious system introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Speed-ups
were a stopwatch timing method that increased productivity without
new mechanical processes, simply by increasing the assembly-line
speed with incremental adjustments.

Attempts to organize had occurred in six different states. In 1933,

Briggs, Motor Products, Murray Body, and Hudson had plant shutdowns
in Detroit; Fisher Body was struck in Flint; Nash and Seaman Body in
Wisconsin; General Motors in New York, Ohio, and California. The
immediate cause of the strikes was employees' resistance to the
efforts of the corporations to increase productivity beyond endurance.
The previous four years of the Depression had seen autoworkers'
wages severely reduced. Unfortunately the auto workers had no
experience of dealing with great corporate institutions: they lacked
direction, basic resources for sustaining pickets, knowledge of public
relations to counter hostile company propaganda, and awareness of
elementary procedures of negotiation.

The Lessons of the 1933 Briggs Strike

The Briggs strike of 1933 had exemplified these problems. As in most
of the strikes in that year of labor discontent, spontaneous action arose
when the corporation attempted to cut the wages of the hourly and
piece-rate workers. Six thousand workers marched out of the plant. An
inexperienced committee-which included members of the Socialist
Party (SP), the Proletarian Party, the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW), and the Communist Party (CP)-found it necessary to seek help
from the Automobile Workers Union (AWU), asking Phil Raymond, the
secretary, who had previous strike experience, to provide direction.

With the assistance of the AWU, Raymond directed the establishment

of the Briggs strike committees. The strikers demanded union
recognition, the restoration of the previous wage scale, and a more
tolerable line speed. The company's response was to withdraw the
wage, cuts but also to launch an attack on the Communist leaders of
the strike. Briggs had an easy target, linking the AWU with the Trade
Union Unity League (TUUL), which the Communist Party had
established in 1929 to help build unions in industries independent of
the AFL. Under unrelenting attack, the strike committee of twenty-five
requested the removal of Raymond and his CP assistants. After two
months the dispirited Briggs workers trickled back to work.

Briggs workers learned that accepting aid from the AWU cut them off
from the mainstream of the union movement in the United States,
which still flowed through the AFL, the country's major union. The AFL’s
strength resided in the craft unions, a fact that weakened their appeal
to the large concentration of autoworkers in factories where skilled
craft workers were only a small part of the workforce. In the few
instances where the auto workers established local unions-as they did
in Cleveland, Ohio; South Bend, Indiana; and Kenosha, Wisconsin, local
union leaders opposed AFL efforts to split the skilled workers into the
various crafts.

The AWU leadership stood for industrial unionism and counterposed

their program to that of the AFL, but the superiority of a program could
not overcome the prejudice of workers toward the leftwing leaders.
The average worker chose a union to deal with basic shop problems of
wages and working conditions. Redbaiting was a divisive attack by the
corporations that successfully divided the union ranks. Workers sought
a trusted, untainted political leadership. Some turned to company-
dominated unions, influenced by Father Charles E. Coughlin. The AWU
and the company unions remained paper organizations.

In the period following the 1929 stock-market crash, the record of

periodic rebellions reveals that labor did not accept the pain of wage
cuts, intensified speed-ups, and short hours in the industrial plants
without resistance. At this time, millions of workers wandered the
country in search of jobs. Their experiences on the road broadened
their political horizon so that many lost faith in the capitalist system.

In the subsequent period of the New Deal, the upturn in employment

and the policies of a reform government-introduced by political
representatives who feared the possible destruction of the capitalist
system and a redress of the balance between capital and labor-
inspired workers to seek change in the workplace itself.
Some of the strikes took place because the strikers incorrectly thought
the government had provided a legal basis in the National Recovery
Act (NRA) for workers to join unions of their own choice without
interference from industry employers. These autoworkers sought out
the AFL, even though AFL strength was in craft unionism and its
leadership under William Green was conservative. Although Green
spoke from a national pulpit for labor, in most of the country the AFL
had been reduced in size and influence; it nevertheless represented a
starting point for organization. As things developed, however, in
Detroit and other centers of the auto empire the Green representatives
led the auto industry to repeated defeats. The half-hearted assignment
of organizers by the AFL, failure to mobilize strike support, and the
policy of relying on government boards in union organization, were all
factors disarming the incipient movement to unionism in Detroit.

Federal Local No. 18384

Toledo, the center of an auto parts and glass industry, depended on
the larger auto companies for its prosperity. When the large companies
sneezed, the auto parts companies caught pneumonia. The largest
manufacturing company in Toledo, Willys-Overland, had employed
28,000 workers before the stock-market crash. In 1932 it closed its
doors. This in turn forced the closure of the Ohio Bond and Security
Bank: thousands of depositors lost their life savings.

The manager of the Ohio Bonds and Security Bank was one Clem
Miniger. It later emerged that before the default, key depositors from
the parts industry had shifted their funds to secure repositories. The
citizens of Toledo would subsequently vent their wrath on Miniger. The
violent middle-class reaction against the rich financier, an admired
figure before the Depression, illustrated the precipitous decline in the
reputation of the capitalist class nationwide. For decades the public
had believed that the prosperity of the country had been produced by
the captains of industry, and unlimited praise was heaped on the
Mellons, Duponts, Morgans, and Rockefellers. Following the credit
default and economic collapse, the rich—the mighty industrialists, the
millionaires, America’s sixty families—were seen as damaged goods.

Clem Miniger was also the head of the Electric Auto-Lite Company,
which, under his leadership, had become a major force in the parts
sector. The plant manufactured ignition, lighting, and electrical parts
systems for the auto industry and supplied Chrysler, Ford, Willys,
Packard, and Nash. It employed 1,800 men and women, with 400 in
the stamping division. A relation of interlocking ownership existed
between Auto-Lite, Bingham Tool and Stamping, and Logan Gear.
High unemployment in Ohio, at a record 37 percent, and in Toledo, at
80 percent, did not deter workers at the Electric Auto-Lite Company
from attempting to organize the company. To this end, they sought
help from the Central Labor Union (CLU) of the AFL, which represented
twenty-three different crafts. The action was initiated by Charles Rigby,
who was to play a central role in the strike, and several others working
in the punch press stamping department. Rigby and his committee
were told that Auto-Lite workers came under the jurisdiction of Federal
Labor Union No. 18384. (The AFL had chartered auto locals throughout
the country in federal locals to avoid conflict with the craft unions.) The
Toledo auto union charter covered Willys and five plants in the parts
industry.

Charles Rigby's father had idolized Eugene Victor Debs and brought his
son up to share his own socialist philosophy. Rigby joined the Industrial
Workers of the World when he worked on the Northwest railroad, and
gained an understanding of unionism. When he returned from his
travels around the country, Rigby went to work at Auto-Lite. He
convinced the union officers of Local No. 18384 that his committee in
the punch press stamping department occupied a strategic position at
Auto-Lite. A walkout of the four hundred press-stamping workers would
shut down the rest of the plant, which was dependent on his
department for parts. The officers of the local accepted his analysis
and during the next few months planned to shut four auto parts plants.
From August until the first strike, many secret meetings were held as
the insurgent group of unionists expanded their influence. Nearing the
moment of decision for strike action, they held public meetings that
attracted several hundred workers from the parts industry.

Rigby, the elected shop committee chairman, requested a meeting

with the management of Auto-Lite. He informed the company that the
union committee was requesting a meeting under the provisions of
Section 7(A) of the NRA, which guaranteed them the right of collective
bargaining. The committee presented management with the following
demands: union recognition, a 10 percent wage increase, seniority,
and the establishment of a regular bargaining procedure. The company
rejected the demands outright and informed the committee it had a
million-dollar fund to fight any attempt at unionization.

On February 23 the union stopped work at Auto-Lite, Bingham, Logan,

and Spicer, affecting four thousand workers. The strike was effective at
Bingham and Logan, but at Auto-Lite, in spite of a small picket line,
production continued without interruption. The union declared that
there would be no settlement at any of the plants until all of the
strikers were protected.

Federal mediators entered the dispute, proposing a 5 percent wage

increase. Auto-Lite, Bingham, Logan, and Spicer accepted the proposal
but refused to grant union recognition or seniority. In further
negotiations the mediators suggested holding the remaining issues in
abeyance for future negotiation. The union agreed to accept the
mediators' recommendation to return to work and negotiate the
outstanding issues on April 1, the understanding of the strike
committee being that the companies had agreed to adjudication on the
outstanding matters. The terms of the strike settlement, as reported to
the members, expressly included further negotiations on substantive
matters at a later date. The proposal to end the strike was submitted
by Thomas Ramsey, the local union business agent, to the membership
meeting. The union voted to return to work.

Bloody Confrontation
The record does not indicate whether the mediator actively misled the
strike committee. The fact is, nevertheless, that the inexperienced
union negotiators failed to get concrete agreement from the company
for more talks. The auto parts companies subsequently made it quite
clear they had no intention of bargaining further. Instead, they
prepared for another strike by hiring replacement workers and
purchasing a supply of tear gas. Local No. 18384 used the 35-day
period to enroll members. They were convinced they had won a victory
in the February strike. When the two sides met, the company ruled out
negotiations. In response, strike votes were carried at Bingham, Auto-
Lite, and Logan. Bingham struck on April 12, with an almost complete
shutdown of the plant. Auto-Lite struck the following day and several
hundred workers walked out, primarily the stamping department;
nevertheless the strike failed to close the factory, which kept working
with hired replacement workers. Logan walked out on April 17, with
less than a majority supporting the picket line.
The Auto-Lite strikers, reinforced by members in the parts industry,
and with support from the Unemployed League and the CP-led
Unemployed Councils, maintained picket lines around the plant. From
the beginning, the police attempted to prevent the pickets from
keeping scabs out of the factory. On May 3 Auto-Lite asked the Lucas
County Court for an injunction, which was granted by the Common
Pleas Judge, Roy R. Stuart. Stuart's injunction restricted the number of
pickets at Auto-Lite to twenty-five, and the same at Bingham. The
injunction also barred members of the Socialist Party, the Unemployed
League, and specific strikers and sympathizers from the picket line.
Sheriff David Krieger, a political ally of Auto-Lite boss Miniger, was
assigned to enforce the injunction. Both men were active in the
Republican Party.

Furthermore, Miniger had given financial support for the sheriff in his
campaign for office. Auto-Lite authorized Krieger to hire extra deputies,
and the company advanced money for their wages. These vigilante
deputies, dressed in street clothes, wore armbands and badges. James
Roland, a member of the Unemployed League, gave the following
account:

We, in Toledo, at least a small group of us, felt that unless the
Auto-Lite strike was a winning strike the labor movement would
be set back for quite a few years in Toledo. There was this strike
being conducted by Tom Ramsey for quite some time. A group of
us felt that it was a lost strike. So we decided to do something
about it. There were five of us who assumed leadership. I do not
say that we were elected, although there were probably about 25
or 30 people at a small meeting which we had to decide on what
we can do to change the situation at Auto-Lite regarding the
strike. It was decided at that small meeting, excluding Tom
Ramsey, of course, that five of us that would more or less
volunteer and we were acceptable to the small group there that
we would try to do something about violating the injunction
which was granted and which was killing the strike. So these five
people were Earl Stucker, from the Auto-Lite, Sam Poleck [sic—
Sam Pollock] and Ted Seamyer [sic—Ted Selander] at that time
were from the Unemployed League in Toledo, and I was from
Chevrolet. The five of us were trying to direct the strike and the
first thing we did was to violate the injunction.

On May 5, Sam Pollock, secretary of the Lucas County Unemployed

League, wrote to Judge Roy R. Stuart:

Honorable Judge Stuart,

On Monday morning May 7, at the Auto-Lite plant, the Lucas

 County Unemployed League, in protest of the injunction issued
by your court, will deliberately and specifically violate the
injunction enjoining us from sympathetically picketing peacefully
in support of the striking Auto Workers Federal Union.

We sincerely believe that this court intervention, preventing us

from picketing, is an abrogation of our constitutional liberties and
contravenes the spirit and the letter of Section 7a of the NRA.

Further, we believe that the spirit and intent of this arbitrary

injunction is another specific example of an organized movement
to curtail the rights of all workers to organize, strike and picket
peacefully.

Therefore, with full knowledge of the principles involved and the

possible consequences, we openly and publicly violate an
injunction which, in our opinion, is a suppressive act against all
workers.

Sincerely yours,
Lucas County Unemployed League
Anti-Injunction Committee
Sam Pollock, Sec'y

Thus, the day after the injunction, Louis Budenz, executive secretary of
the American Workers Party, Ted Selander, an officer of the Toledo
Unemployed League, and forty-six of the Auto-Lite strikers appeared
on the picket lines, calling for the resumption of mass picketing. They
were duly arrested for contempt of the injunction. They were defended
by Arthur Garfield Hayes of the American Civil Liberties Union of New
York and Edward Lamb, a prominent attorney from Toledo. Members of
the Unemployed League jammed the courtroom. Judge Stuart released
the defendants without a sentence and they returned to the picket
line. News broadcast on the radio that the union was fighting the
injunction traveled through the city. Thousands joined the pickets.
Each day the lines grew larger, from one thousand to ten thousand, as
Louis Budenz and A. J. Muste, founder and chairman of the American
Workers Party, addressed the pickets in front of the factory gates.

Auto-Lite exerted pressure on the sheriff to prevent the strikers from

harassing those crossing the picket line, Again, Budenz was arrested
along with many others. The court singled out Budenz, Selander,
Pollock, Rigby, Roland, and several others, Before sentence was
passed, the workers in the courtroom rose and told the judge: "We all
are guilty of the same offense," This action of solidarity by the union
members persuaded the judge to release the defendants, The court
was unable to handle mass arrests and in any case hesitant to inflame
further the growing strike movement.
On May 23, at the urging of the company to stop the harassing of
replacement workers, the ranks of deputies, scabs, and police tried
again to smash through the lines. The company police fired tear gas
from the roof of the four-story brick Auto-Lite plant and tossed down
metal generator brackets, which injured pickets. Clashes between
pickets and scabs grew more violent. Strikers invaded the parking lot
and overturned cars belonging to strikebreakers. Fights broke out
inside the plant in the early hours of the morning when the pickets
entered and engaged in hand-to-hand combat. The strikers broke
windows of the plant and threw the tear gas canisters back into the
plant. A picket line ten thousand strong ringed the plant and refused to
allow the scabs to leave. Office workers, management, and plant police
were also kept inside the plant until daybreak.

The New York Times filed the following report on these violent scenes
witnessed by its reporter:

The crowd had been assembling in territory adjacent to the

factory since noon. Piles of bricks and stones were assembled at
strategic places and a wagon load of bricks was trundled to a
point near the factory to provide further ammunition for the
strikers.

Suddenly a barrage of tear gas bombs was hurled from upper

factory windows. At the same time company employees armed
with iron bars and clubs dragged a fire hose into the street and
played water on the crowd.

On the evening of May 23, the sheriff made frantic calls to the
governor to have the National Guard rescue the imprisoned nonstrikers
and the security men, who were by then isolated on the fourth floor.
Shortly thereafter, the National Guard arrived at the plant, where they
set up gun emplacements and planned the release of the 1,500
trapped men and women.

The sheriff had advised the governor that Guardsmen living in nearby
counties should not be deployed. Thus, young recruits from counties
distant from Toledo made up the National Guard that night. Many
strikers were veterans of the First World War and had no fear of the
young men with rifles. The Guard tried to disperse the huge crowds on
Champlain and Chestnut streets. After each of the several charges the
pickets regrouped and advanced down Chestnut. Some National Guard
units wearing gas masks shot tear gas into the ranks of the strikers,
who immediately picked up the canisters and threw them back. A
filmed scene shows members of the Guard corps in a Kafkaesque rock-
throwing contest with the strikers. The battle lasted for two full days.

The Guard commander asked in due course for reinforcements: eight

rifle companies, three machine-gun units, and a medical unit.
Reinforced with his additional troops, he instructed the Guardsmen to
fix bayonets. The strikers and some ten thousand sympathetic
supporters gathered again. Orders to fire at the strikers were issued
following a two-hour barrage of tear gas. The commander later claimed
that he had issued instructions to fire over the heads of, and not into,
the crowd. Nevertheless, two strike sympathizers were killed and
thirty-five wounded. Later that afternoon the Guards again fired on the
strikers wounding many more.

The Threat of a General Strike

That night the Central Labor Union met to consider two issues: the
abrupt shift in the course of the Auto-Lite strike, and the refusal of
Toledo Edison Electric to bargain with the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers (IBEW), who were threatening a strike for union
recognition and a 20 percent wage increase. The IBEW was a craft
union and normally would not have considered acting in solidarity with
the Federal Workers Union. However, the strike at Auto-Lite, engaging
thousands of workers and the unemployed, had escalated to the point
where the face of unionism had changed in Toledo. Meanwhile, on the
bosses' side, the Merchants and Manufacturers Association and the
automobile industry leaders informed Miniger that he had their full
support in resisting unionization of the parts industry. The issue came
to a head when the twenty-three craft unions in the CLU, perceiving an
open-shop threat in Toledo, represented by the Auto-Lite strike,
reacted by voting for a general strike. A strike by the electrical workers
alone would bring the city to a standstill. The employers' intransigence
had escalated the strike to a dangerous and unanticipated level of
confrontation.

The same evening the CLU proposed to intervene in the strike, Charles
Taft, son of the former U.S. president, met with the Auto-Lite workers.
Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, had sent Taft to mediate. Taft
proposed that the disputed issues be sent to the Auto Labor Board in
Detroit for mediation. This proposal was rejected by a meeting of the
union, a defeat that Taft blamed on the influence of Rigby and his
committee. The union countered with a request for the National
Guard's removal and the shutdown of the plants. The Guard had
arrested Louis Budenz early in the week and Ted Selander on the
Saturday. Selander was held incommunicado; Muste's efforts to obtain
his release were refused. The government negotiators wanted the two
AWP leaders removed from the strike arena so that Taft and other
government mediators could advance new proposals to the less
experienced local union leaders.

Taft told A. J. Muste, syndicated columnist Heywood Broun, and E. R.

Lamb, attorney for Ted Selander, that the "strike should never have
been called” and claimed that it was the work of "outside agitators."
Similar sentiments appeared in the Toledo Bee, a Scripps-Howard
paper. The response of Muste and Lamb was to wire Roosevelt,
demanding the removal of Taft. Writing in the New Republic after the
strike, Muste underlined the bias of the special mediator selected by
Perkins: "Taft called all the newspapermen into his room, and in the
presence of Lamb and Muste, demanded that they suppress any
information about his antiunion statements. Heywood Broun refused to
be gagged."

Auto-Lite company negotiators grudgingly agreed to submit the

dispute to binding arbitration, but the idea was rejected by the union.
Too much blood had been spilled to make this a viable proposal.
Instead, in response to the growing pressure, the CLU voted for a
general strike, with representatives of 93 of the 103 unions present; of
these, 88 were in favor of the strike. The mediators, for their part, were
working around the clock to prevent such action, and Taft succeeded in
negotiating a temporary postponement. The picket line was quiet on
Friday, but on Saturday clashes again broke out. The National Guard
commander ordered all of the plants shut.

A Hard-won Victory
Throughout the strike, including the six-day period when the action
resembled a riot, the American Workers Party, led by Louis Budenz and
A. J. Muste, was passing out handbills to the strikers on the picket lines
and making speeches. The independent posture of the AWP enabled
the backers of Muste to find support in the Auto-Lite local, which had
like-thinking supporters in Charles Rigby and his committee. Obviously,
many others in the local were influenced by the political direction of
the AWP. Even the more conservative or nonpolitical leaders preferred
the radical ideas of the AWP to those of the Communist Party. The Auto
Workers Union opposition to the AFL compelled the leaders of the
Federal Workers Union to shun their offer of aid. However, members of
the Unemployed League were joined on the picket line by the CP-
dominated Unemployed Council, who were welcomed gratefully.

The strikers accepted the handbills passed out by the Muste supporters
but rejected those of the CP, although the messages of the two left-
wing organizations had a similar political content. The Muste/AWP
pamphlets make common ground with AFL Teamster strikes in
Minneapolis.

On to the general strike!

There must be no delay!
Every minute that action is delayed is a golden minute for
 Miniger, the bank robber, for the Toledo Edison, for the
Merchants and Manufacturers Association ...
On to the general strike! ...
The workers of Toledo realize, as their brothers in Minneapolis
realized, that there is strength for them only with their own class.
Even the president of the United States cannot or will not help ...
Man the picket lines at Bingham and Logan Gear Plants.
The militia must go!
Call the general strike!
No compromise settlement in the Auto-Lite strike!
Auto-Lite, Toledo Edison, all employers must recognize the right
of workers to organize.

Another handbill alerted the union to the dangers of mediation by the

Automobile Union Board, established in March by Roosevelt when
William Green of the AFL threatened a nationwide strike of the auto
industry. The two deaths and the wounding of pickets was seized upon
by the Muste forces to drive a wedge between the AFL and Roosevelt,
and to protest his appointment of the Auto Labor Board (ALB) to
resolve disputes between labor and the auto industry. The threat by
William Green of a general strike in auto expressed the unions'
dissatisfaction with the· procedures of the ALB in arranging votes that
included representatives of company unions. The threat by Green
evaporated after Roosevelt met with him to resolve the dispute. No
new procedures emerged from the meeting in Washington. Muste drew
the lesson for the autoworkers with a new handbill:

Firmness in dealing with the employers will not come from the
president or anyone else. Firmness must come from our own
ranks. The Detroit Labor Board and like agencies only let the
workers down.

With the plants closed, negotiations held off the threat of a general
strike. Meanwhile, Toledo Edison referred the recommended contract
proposals to City Service power system, which had a controlling
interest in Toledo Electric. They eventually conceded, granting union
recognition and a 20 percent wage increase. With the settlement of the
Edison strike, the threat of a general strike was removed.

The mediator moved swiftly to draft an Auto-Lite contract with Local

No. 18384, which called for the union to agree that the local and the
company union Auto Council share the benefits of the settlement. This
union compromise was then put to the union in Auto-Lite; it was
subsequently put to Toledo Chevrolet in 1935, and to Flint General
Motors in 1937. However, the auto industry refused to accept the
principle that majority rule in a strike meant the exclusion of company
union minority groups from the bargaining process. The recall of
workers applied first to all employees hired before the strike; the strike
replacement workers were called back after all the strikers had been
recalled. The fact that all the strikers were recalled without penalties
was vindication of the union's declaration of victory. The 5 percent
wage increase applied to all workers.

The Toledo Chevrolet Transmission Strike, 1935

Let no one underrate his own power, or imagine that one more or
less makes no difference. No one not even the weakest can be
dispensed with for furthering the advance of humanity. A
continual dropping hollows out the hardest stone. And many
drops make the brook and brooks make the stream, and streams
the great river whose majestic course can be stopped by no
object in nature!
August Bebel, Women under Socialism

Following the 1934 Auto-Lite strike, the Central Labor Union sought the
aid of the Unemployed League in two strikes. The combined force duly
achieved signed contracts at Armour and Swift and Larrowe Milling. In
February 1935, a committee representing the Buildings Trades Council,
Unemployed League, and the Workers Alliance embarked on mass
picketing of building-trades projects. The "March of Labor,” a concept
of Sam Pollock, brought the projects to a standstill and soon resulted in
victory for the building trades locals.

Organization of the eighteen auto parts plants had meanwhile brought

about structural and political change in the leadership of Local No.
18384. The enlarged executive committee of the local union expanded
to reflect the growth in membership. Future events would reveal the
committee to be more conservative than the founding group that
directed it in the Auto-Lite strike. Following the success in making
Toledo a union town, the remaining obstacle was the Chevrolet
Transmission Plant. It was recognized that a victory at the
Transmission Plant would require a herculean effort. With its deep
pockets, General Motors (GM) was one of the most powerful
corporations in the world, employing 191,000 in 1934 and handling a
payroll of $191 million.

Local union leaders had tracked the 1934 Cleveland Fisher Body Strike
against General Motors. The plant employed over eight thousand. This
strike precipitated similar actions at other GM plants; a few were led by
independent unions, but most were charted by the AFL. Workers from
Flint, Atlanta, Baltimore, Janesville, Tarrytown, and Kansas GM plants
walked off the job. Cleveland Fisher Body, with over 4,500 on the
picket line, attracted the most attention. AFL director William Collins
and his small staff, who represented locals in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin
and Michigan, were overstretched by the responsibility for auto
corporation plants spread over so many states. Logic therefore
dictated that Collins appeal to the Auto Labor Board (ALB) for aid in
arranging a central site for negotiations with GM.

General Motors accepted the proposal put forward by the Board.

Automobile production had increased substantially in 1934 and the
corporation was obviously anxious to end the strike. Nevertheless,
William Knudsen, president of Chevrolet, set conditions before
negotiations began, insisting that the striking workers return to work
before discussions started. He also informed the ALB that GM's policy
against the "closed shop" was inviolate; therefore negotiations had to
include all employee organizations, including the company-sponsored
unions. Furthermore, the unions were required to furnish a list of all
members so that the company could determine proportional
representation.

Union leaders derided the idea of company unions sitting at the

bargaining table with legitimate unions. The AFL insisted that this
would stack the table against the AFL because the company union
representative would side with the corporation. Knudsen set additional
ground rules: each plant had to meet with local management to settle
that plant's problems. The ALB sided with Knudsen. Collins capitulated
to the GM conditions and ordered the Cleveland workers back. Collins's
action dealt a body blow to the AFL union: the returning workers tore
up their union cards.

Elections and Strike Plans

To overcome the problem of company union representation at the
bargaining table the ALB ordered elections, with the plant divided into
districts. Workers had to run without a union designation. Since the
company arranged the elections in the plant, the use of foremen and
supervisors to influence balloting was a foregone conclusion. The AFL
denounced the ballot procedure and asked union supporters to boycott
the vote.

In more than half of the elections held between December 1934 and
April the following year, 200,000 ballots were cast. A total of 85
percent of these voted without listing an organizational affiliation-fewer
than 4 percent listed the AFL or company union. Analysis of the vote
pointed to despair on the part of the workers. Notwithstanding the
inordinate degree of pressure by the corporation to support the puppet
company union, the vote represented a defeat of company-sponsored
organization. Nevertheless, prospects were also bleak for the AFL, who
had boycotted the election.
At the request of the Toledo Chevrolet Transmission Plant
management, the ALB scheduled an election for April 9, 1935. General
Motors sought to capitalize on the union setback in the elections by
promoting the company union. Toledo Local No. 18384 voted to
contest the scheduled ALB election, a decision contrary to AFL policy.
In contrast to the disarray of the AFL in Detroit, the Toledo union
movement was riding a rising crest of union organization. Indeed,
within a year the AFL had consolidated its organization in the auto
parts industry and had also expanded significantly in the traditional
craft industries.

The local had a well-organized committee in Chevrolet, headed by 23-

year-old James Roland, a charter member of the local, holder of union
card no. 5 and a trustee of Local No. 18384 from its inception in 1933.
Roland had been a participant in the struggle to defeat the injunction
brought against the Auto-Lite strikers. He had in fact been fired before
the strike and appealed his discharge to the Automobile Labor Board.
His reputation soared following a brave and daring act described by Art
Preis, a participant in the Chevrolet strike activities:

One year ago Toledo Chevrolet officials were looking out of plant
windows, extremely irritated.

They were watching Jimmy Roland marching around the factory

gates with picket signs on his back. A one-man picket line around
a factory employing 2,500 men!

Brazen, insane, unprecedented—but successful. The regional

Labor Board decided in his favor…

So, Jimmy was rehired.

Roland had advised the ALB in advance of his intention to picket the
factory. The sign he carried asked for an immediate hearing by the
Labor Board. Two days later, Roland was told that a hearing would be
held. He abandoned picketing and in due course was granted an
appearance before the three-man Board headed by Leo Wolman
representing the public, Nicholas Kelly representing management, and
Richard Byrd representing labor. A month passed without word of a
decision. Roland again alerted the ALB to his intention to resume
picketing the plant. The next day, the ALB instructed Chevrolet to
return Roland to employment. Chevrolet put Roland in the accounts
payable department, far away from the production workers. He
remained in the front-office job even after his election as chairman of
the shop committee and of the strike committee. Serving on the shop
committee with Roland was Robert Travis-his first appearance in the
history of the auto union.
The decision by Local No. 18384 to contest the ALB election allowed
little time for preparations. They nominated business agent Fred
Schwake on the ballot in all eight districts. The union held a successful
meeting the night before the election and elected Roland chairman of
the nine-member strike committee. This committee also served as the
shop committee. The members voted the committee authorization to
call a strike. The AFL carried every district, with a vote of 1,300 votes
out of the

2,100 cast. The ALB scheduled a runoff vote; the union, however, acted
quickly to make this unnecessary. The union then met with
management and submitted demands for union recognition, seniority;
and a 10 percent wage increase.

The company, in the meantime, was making its intentions clear. As

Roland related in an interview in 1960:

To us it looked like they were preparing for a showdown strike

and were making preparations so that there could not be another
Auto-Lite ... they put up screens around all their windows, heavy
wire screens ... From all indications it looked as if they were
planning ... [to] make a long battle of it.

The shop committee tried to keep secret the final strike-date decision.
On April 22, GM sent in a special crew of negotiators headed by William
Knudsen, Charles Wetherald, and M. E. Coyle, who kept the strike
committee in session for twelve hours, considering the company's
counter-proposals. The union rejected GM's position; the decision was
made late that night to strike the following morning. Much to the
consternation of the committee, GM greeted the workers on the
morning shift with a handbill listing the company's proposals for a
settlement. The union leaders learned that a leak in their group had
made it possible for management to react overnight and embarrass
the committee. General Motors proposed the following: a 5 percent
increase in wages; rigid enforcement of the seniority rules established
by the government; each employee to be given access to his seniority
record; layoffs and rehiring according to seniority; meetings with
accredited representatives of employees to resolve remaining
grievances.

The company pointedly refused to concede to a "closed shop"; also

glaringly absent were union recognition and a signed contract. The
union responded three days later with the publication of Strike Truth,
co-edited by James Roland and Joseph Ditzel, with George Addes as
executive committee representative and Arthur Preis as associate
editor. The paper answered GM point for point, but focused on the
"closed shop":
 By the afternoon of that same day it slowly dawned upon the
management of Chevrolet that the "closed shop" was one of the
conditions not demanded by our union in this instance; and,
fearing lest further mention of it might put notions into our
heads, the company conspicuously refrained from including the
statement in its full page advertisements in the afternoon
papers.

The union paper hit hard at the ALB-sponsored election won by Local
No. 18384. The unsigned articles expressed the belief that organization
of the union in Chevrolet resulted from the company’s attempt, in
collusion with the ALB, to rig the election in favor of a company union.
The paper also called for a meeting to reject Chevrolet's counter-
proposals and told the members to bring a receipt showing union
membership to gain admission to the meeting.
In a sharp reversal of their policy -of abstention, AFL president William
Green and Francis Dillon (appointed National Representative to the
Automobile Industry by Green in October 1934 after the removal of
William Collins) endorsed the strike. The AFL officials warned that
neither the company nor the public realized how serious the situation
was in Toledo. Dillon indicated that conditions like those in Toledo
existed elsewhere and suggested that the strike might spread, even to
Detroit. The nine-man strike committee greeted the strikers, insisting
that their cause was just-"On to an Organized Auto Industry."

The about-face by Dillon and Green contrasted with the weak position
of the AFL in Detroit, where, lacking the organized force, the AFL
refused to challenge any of the auto companies for union
representation. In Toledo, of course, the local union, organized a year
earlier, was able to lend material support and the practical experience
it had gained in the Auto-Lite strike.

The prominent Chevrolet strike committee members and their political

orientation were described thus by Henry Kraus:

The Toledo Chevrolet strike was led by an extraordinary group of

radicals, who were in revolt throughout its duration against the
ultraconservative AFL officials, particularly Francis Dillon. Its
three outstanding leaders were James Roland, Robert Travis and
Joseph Ditzel. Roland was unquestionably a disciple of A. J.
Muste, cofounder of the American Workers Party, who was in
Toledo through that entire period. Ditzel was an active Socialist
Party member. Travis was unaffiliated despite later attempts to
link him at the time to the Communist Party by what one might
call "association by anticipation." I met Travis during the Chevy
strike (as I did Roland, Kenny Cole, and other Chevrolet leaders)
 and saw him two or three times, once in my home, in the period
directly following it. He never gave the slightest intimation that
he was a Communist nor that he was a Musteite, either, however
highly he praised Roland for his trade union know-how and guts.

The local strike committee led by Roland had no difficulties with Dillon
in the first days after the strike, but as the strike progressed their
perspectives diverged sharply. The committee's primary objective was
a signed contract with union recognition, never before granted by
General Motors. The strike committee, strongly influenced by Muste
believed it was the right of the local union committee to make the
decisions in the strike. This was an important lesson they had learned
in the Auto-Lite strike of the previous year.

Muste himself considered the greatest threat to the strike to be

internal—a view that influenced many strike leaders. Muste's record in
support of labor strikes, dating back to the famous Lawrence textile
strike of 1912, gave him stature in the strike. Muste opposed unions'
reliance on government institutions to help settle strikes.

Dillon shared the committee's objective regarding a contract. He,

however, came from the school of unionism that looked for help from
government agencies. He wanted the strike confined to Toledo; an
enlarged strike would create political and organizational difficulties'
and make maneuvering difficult. Dillon "declared in a statement that
once a strike conflagration started, you could never tell where it will
go.”

He worried, furthermore, that an enlarged strike would empty the

International's coffers.

Dillon asked the local to arrange a meeting to vote on the GM

proposals: this took place four days into the strike. In the meantime,
the company shut down the plant and made no effort to hire
replacement workers or to ship transmissions by railroad. The
company adamantly refused to meet with Dillon and the strike
committee until the workers returned to work, Art Preis, writing in the
New Militant, claimed that the Chevrolet strike committees publicity
matched that of the corporation. Every GM press release was answered
by the union. The publication of a strike newspaper was a first-time
event for a Toledo union. It was a major effort to counter the
propaganda of GM and the major newspapers.

Expanding the Strike

Without waiting for concurrence from Dillon, the strike committee sent
telegrams, signed by Roland, to all the federal AFL locals in General
Motors, asking them to strike for higher wages, seniority, and a signed
contract. The telegrams urged the locals to remain on strike until all
the demands were met and to inform Local No. 18384 of the results.
Members of the committee were divided into groups, which took the
strike message to other plants. The group that went to Detroit to
distribute Strike Truth were arrested by the Detroit police.

In Norwood, Ohio, Roland's reception was friendly, but the GM workers

there were hesitant to take action. He informed them they would be
shut down for lack of auto parts: "Why don't you go on strike so that
you are a part of it?" Two of the GM plants in Norwood were persuaded
to strike. Then Roland made three trips to Flint. On the first visit,
having been in town only two hours, he was arrested and put in jail.
The police had warrants for his arrest on charges of armed burglary.
Although they made no effort to make the charges stick, they
nevertheless threatened to hold him for thirty days unless he left town
immediately. On his second visit, he made speeches to groups of Buick
workers. Joe Ditzel was with him on these visits and recollects:

We wanted to expand the strike, and we even went up to Flint

and talked to the leadership up there about striking some of the
Flint plants. We met with their executive board up there. Later
we were told that most of those we were meeting with on the
executive board were stool pigeons. It was more or less a paper
organization. When we left Flint that night, we sent Jimmy Roland
out on the back roads back to town because we heard they were
going to waylay him and he would come to great bodily harm. I
know there were individuals around there looking for him then.
Something might have happened to him if he had not. It was a
member of the Teamsters Union who tipped us off to get him out
of town by the back roads so nobody would find him.

While Roland was carrying the message to the other GM plants in the
region, he came under attack within Local No. 18384. A campaign of
Red-baiting had begun after the arrival of Dillon. Fred Schwake, the
local business agent, was under pressure from Francis Dillon and T. N.
Taylor, representing William Green in Toledo. Local No. 18384, which
controlled the funds of the amalgamated local, made the decision to
cut off support for the publication of the Chevrolet strike bulletin. They
wanted Art Preis removed as associate editor. Furthermore, in local
meetings, conservatives in the amalgamated local made an effort to
control the influence of the Chevrolet strike committee. On one
occasion a small group of workers chased distributors of radical papers
from the picket lines. The attack was directed primarily against the
Communist Party. Art Preis wrote:

Members of the Workers Party reported these reactionary actions

to the Joint Action Committee, which immediately sent a strong
 protest to the strike committee and the union executive board.
The Workers Party members continued to distribute leaflets in
the name of our party, which were widely accepted by the
strikers and read with keen interest. The strikers shortly made a
distinction between W.P. literature and that of other groups ...

Meanwhile, General Motors took action in the second week of the strike
to set up a transmission line in Muncie, Indiana. Most workers were not
too concerned at this development: it would take months to bring a
new plant into operation. More disturbing to the Chevrolet workers was
GM's sponsorship of the company union, called the Independent
Workers Association (IWA). The IWA held a meeting, which was
attended by 1,600, the majority of whom approved the corporation's
proposals submitted to the Chevrolet workers on the morning of the
strike. The company union went further: it asked for a secret ballot of
Chevrolet workers on the proposals to end the strike. The IWA
concluded its meeting with a proposal to petition the government to
conduct such a ballot on what it termed the company's "strike
settlement concessions. "

The Workers Party handed out leaflets mocking this latest GM-
sponsored action:

Where does this so-called workers society hold its meeting? In

the Chamber of Commerce hall! In the stronghold of the bosses
and bankers! In that Chamber of Commerce which President
Roosevelt himself has just denounced and flayed as hopelessly
reactionary.

True, they could not have gotten a union hall for their anti-labor
meeting. But they chose the Chamber of Commerce as a
meeting place! Any doubt that this is nothing but a strike-
breaking, anti-union move has been removed.

The IWA soon announced the success of its petition campaign for a
government-backed ballot, claiming that over half the signatures were
from GM employees. Dillon urged the strike committee to accept the
IWA proposal but insisted the vote be conducted by the Department of
Labor. Roland’s strike committee acquiesced in this action;
nevertheless, it maintained that expansion of the strike was the surest
way to a successful conclusion.

The Chevrolet Transmission strike crippled GM plants in several cities,

as the plant was the source of gearboxes destined for Chevrolet and
Pontiac cars. The first plants affected were the assembly plants in
Atlanta, Kansas City, St Louis, and Janesville. The press reported
another half-dozen plants were in danger of closing. It was clear that
GM would suffer a major economic blow from the closure of the Flint
Buick Plant. Consequently Roland tried to convince the union workers
and their leaders to participate in the strike. He met with some
encouragement. The leaders reacted to the attempt to shift
transmission production to one of the plants in Pontiac, Michigan: the
union workers indicated that while the Chevrolet Transmission strike
was in progress they would not handle transmissions produced by a
scab plant in Michigan. Dillon, nevertheless, persuaded the Buick union
officials to refrain from taking action in support of Toledo until the
Department of Labor vote was held.

Betrayal
The Chevrolet strike committee concentrated on winning the vote
conducted by the government. Prior to the vote, the Workers Party
held a meeting attended by six hundred people. Muste, the main
speaker, attacked Dillon’s attempt to prevent the spread of the strike;
however, he also emphasized the need for a strong vote in support of
the AFL. As it turned out, the vote was a major victory for the AFL:
1,261 rejected the company’s proposal; 605 were in favor. This was in
sharp contrast to the response of the company union, which had
accepted the offer. General Motors agreed to meet with the union,
thereby reversing its previous stand of not negotiating with striking
workers. In this second round of talks, however, the corporation again
refused union recognition, though it made some small concessions.
The committee voted eight to one to reject GM’s terms.

Under pressure from Dillon, another membership meeting was called

for May 13 to vote on the new company proposal. Before the meeting,
the committee and Dillon had agreed that no public statement would
be made. Dillon, however, broke the agreement and issued a press
statement accepting the company’s proposal and suggesting that the
members of the strike committee were under the influence of "Reds."
The meeting at first refused to give Dillon the floor. A motion was
agreed that only strikers and members of the strike committee could
speak. Dillon threw a tantrum and stormed from the hall, yelling that
the charter of the local would be withdrawn. Writing soon after the
strike, Muste said:

Francis Dillon, leading A. F. of L. figure in the federal automobile

unions, was barred from speaking -last night, by unanimous vote,
at the meeting of Chevrolet strikers called to consider a
compromise settlement. Dillon had prevented the General
Motors workers in Flint from coming out in support of the Toledo
strikers and had even condoned their working on scab
transmissions. A chorus of boos shook the rafters as Dillon
stalked out of the hall and shouted that their A.F. of L. charter
was withdrawn and that, if a personal reference may be made,
 they could “let Muste run their union for them.”

The leaders of the local were in fear of Dillon's threat to withdraw their
charter. They pleaded with Roland to persuade the members to allow
Dillon to speak, Roland gave way and George Addes went to the hotel
to plead with Dillon to return to the meeting, assuring him that he
would be heard, Three times the meeting booed Dillon, but finally the
workers listened to his presentation for the acceptance of the GM
proposal. He was now backed by Fred Schwake, who had supported
the strike from the beginning, and who earlier in the day was reported
to have said that he would rather lose an arm than advise the men to
accept the company offer. Schwake's acceptance broke the united
front of the local leadership and opened the door to a yes vote, even
though Roland spoke against acceptance of the GM offer. Louis Stark,
labor reporter of the New York Times, noted:
Mr. Roland, disappointed with the vote to go back to work last
night, tried to stem the tide but in vain. Today he went to the
Chevrolet factory where same unauthorized pickets were
stationed and ordered them to disband.

Another meeting was held soon after the workers returned to work.
Leaders of the local and representatives of the Central Labor Body
denounced Dillon's role in the strike. A resolution passed by Local No.
18384 asked Green to remove Dillon, General Motors, like the other
auto corporations, recognized AFL locals without signing a contract.
The company union soon disappeared.

A series of small strikes subsequently facilitated the resolution of the

problems in the plant. Yet GM had the last word: within a year, the
company had transferred production to the Muncie plant, cutting the
Toledo workforce by half.

For all their weaknesses, the Toledo Chevrolet workers, led by a group
of class-conscious—indeed, Socialist—leaders, broke new ground. In
doing so, they set the stage for what would be the classic struggle of
the 1937 sitdown strikes. Auto workers owe a considerable debt of
gratitude to Roland, Ditzel, and Travis.
Dianne Feeley, “Labor's Disaster at American Axle”
THE 87-DAY STRIKE earlier this year at American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM)
ended in a rout that has devastating implications for the organized U.S. labor movement.
Begun on a snowy morning early February 26, the strike ended on May 22, a late spring
day just before the Memorial Day weekend.

The 3,650 AAM workers at the six plants in Michigan (Detroit and Three Rivers) and in
the Buffalo, New York area prepared themselves for the strike: most saved up for
months, showed up for picket duty dressed for the freezing winter weather, were
articulate on the picket lines about their demands and turned the union halls into
community centers.

They wanted to stop all traffic going into the plant, but were given bad advice by
representatives from the UAW International - not to stop either foremen or trucks from
entering and leaving. This strike, they were told, was an Unfair Labor Practice dispute,
and if you don't allow traffic in, the judge will rule against the union.

What was management demanding? For the first time in the auto industry, a profitable
company was demanding that the present work force take a permanent cut in pay, from
something like $28 an hour for production workers (with cost-of-living adjustment) to
$18 an hour. Skilled trades workers would see their wages lowered by $5 an hour. The
contract was rewritten with one concession following another. The only "attractive"
feature was the signing bonus and buyout money. The company wanted 2,000 to apply
for a buyout. (See box of contract "lowlights.")

The Empire Dauch Built

As one of the early GM spinoffs, American Axle has maintained its preferential deal with
General Motors, which buys 80% of its products. In 1994 Dick Dauch, a former GM,
Chrysler and Volkswagen executive, purchased five GM forge and axle plants with a
workforce of 7,500. He built the company into a successful driveline manufacturing
operation, upgrading plants and equipment.

Dauch also bought two companies, MSP in Oxford, MI and Colfor in Ohio. Although the
UAW represents those workers too, they have inferior contracts with wages set at $14 an
hour and benefits to match. Their International rep is not part of the union's AAM
department; their contracts expire at different times.

AAM now operates in 29 locations in 11 countries, including Mexico, Brazil, Poland,

India, China, and Thailand. Following the strike's settlement, AAM announced that 85%
of its new business would be made in non-U.S. operations. More than 50% of the
production will now be located outside the country, with 65-70% shipped back.
Clearly any successful strike strategy at the former GM plants would establish long-term
relationships with the unions at the MSP, Colfor and Mexican plants. But there is no
evidence that more than an 11th hour phone call was made. Production continued at these
plants throughout the strike, providing AAM customers with enough products to squeak
by. In fact the Guanajuato, Mexico plant increased daily production to 6,000 axles.
Rumor was that GM was footing the bill for the transportation costs.

A month into the strike, AAM management placed ads for new hires. The ads didn't list
rates or a start date; the company scheduled interviews off-site. When AAM asked the
Three River public schools if they could hold interviews there, community support for the
strikers nixed the request. Later the company asked if the police department would
accompany replacement workers if they were brought into the local airport; again the
request was turned aside.

In the Detroit area strikers closely followed AAM's attempt to hire a new work force.
They found out which high school the company was using for interviewing potential
employees and fed the information back to the UAW reps. Strikers wanted to put up a
picket in front of the school, but the reps didn't see that as a priority. Nonetheless a group
of strikers went out and picketed.

When a rumor surfaced that AAM might bring applicants onto its Detroit site, strikers
and supporters showed up early one Monday morning, stopping traffic in front of a plant
for 45 minutes, until police showed up to escort what turned out to be only foremen
reporting to work.

The Strike's Progress

Weekly checks were issued for union members who carried out picket
or kitchen duty. During that one- or two-day period almost
everyone came by to pick up the check. But with the exception
of the Three Rivers local, there was no space set aside for
strikers to discuss with officers and reps the strike's progress or
ways to increase the pressure on the company. However, UAW
autoworkers in the surrounding areas were able to express their
solidarity through the initiative of individual workers, who
collected money at plant gates and organized carpools to the
picket lines, as well as through the leadership of local UAW
officers.

Particularly over the Easter holiday, Chrysler locals organized a "picnic" at the Detroit
plants. They showed up with their barbeque pit, food and a bullhorn. Marching from one
plant gate to another, they held a rally in front of AAM's corporate headquarters and then
served lunch.

Community groups also demonstrated their support. In Detroit the Michigan Welfare
Rights Organization, Detroit Greens and MECAWI, a social justice/antiwar organization,
picketed weekly. Trucks and cars driving by honked their support.

During a lunch break at the April Labor Notes conference, about 250 participants packed
three buses and more than 30 cars, trucks and vans and drove across town to picket.
Strikers were overwhelmed to find out that workers from across the country, and indeed
international visitors from places such as Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China, Germany and
England wanted to learn about, and support, their struggle.

The UAW International set April 16th for a support rally to be held in Hart Plaza, in
downtown Detroit, near General Motors' headquarters. At that point, 30 GM plants had
idled shifts or been shut down completely by a lack of parts. These included six assembly
plants. Within a week, GM was going to run out of parts for its hot-selling Chevrolet
Malibu and Pontiac G6 sedans.

Thousands of leaflets were distributed and it seemed that workers throughout the region
were making plans to attend. But two days beforehand, the union cancelled the event.
Officials explained that the company led them to believe they were near to a settlement
and it would be diplomatic to cancel the event!

The following Sunday, at Local 235's monthly membership meeting, strikers packed the
hall and questioned the decision. They knew they needed to escalate the pressure on
AAM and GM. Given that the AAM stockholders' meeting was scheduled for the next
Thursday, they passed a motion to march to corporate headquarters two blocks away.
Those who held stock would go inside and confront management.

One international rep told me that hopefully the strike would be settled by Thursday so
we wouldn't need to demonstrate. That remark indicated the rep had no clue for how the
strike could be won - not through fancy footwork at the bargaining table but only if AAM
was completely shut down. During the strike AAM lost almost $370 million in sales
while GM lost $800 million in the first quarter and $1.8 billion in the second, but that
wasn't enough.

Two days before the stockholders' meeting, the company broke off negotiations. The
UAW International decided to build the strikers' march and rally by asking UAW
regional directors to get other locals to send delegations.

By noon the crowd in front of the Local 235 hall was so densely packed the local's
leadership decided to begin the march to corporate headquarters (aka "The Glass
House"). The marchers walked along the sidewalk and spilled into the street. For almost
three hours a crowd of 1,500 to 2,000 milled around, shutting down both corporate
entrances. Management called the police, who arrived within a half-hour with a riot
squad and a bus to begin a mass arrest.
Although militant, the strikers were in a light-hearted mood as they controlled all but a
small passageway through which stockholders entered under police escort. Over the
course of the whole afternoon only one striker, Ada Walker, was arrested - and it was
pretty clear the officer who arrested her was out of control. After he placed her in a police
car, he walked over to taunt those concerned about her arrest, telling them they ought to
go out and get a job!

Meanwhile, the media reported that inside the company's offices strikers, who were also
stockholders, told CEO Dick Dauch, without raising their voices, that the wage cuts he
was demanding would cost them their home and put their children's education in
jeopardy.

But the union did not follow up on the momentum unleashed that day.

The Union's Lack of Strategy

It's the UAW International that makes the decision to authorize a strike vote, and
negotiates the contract. It's clear they took the AAM workers out on strike without having
a strategy. They seemed to think that a profitable company with cash on hand would have
to negotiate a fair contract. But Dauch felt that if the UAW had negotiated concessions to
the Big Three, he had the right to demand the same.

Aside from assigning strikers to picket duty, the UAW had no plan for using the work
force. No committees were set up to secure provisions for the strike kitchen, help families
with special needs, or organize community and labor support.

Strikers wanted to follow supply trucks leaving the AAM plant, but beyond reporting
what they saw and where it went, the union squelched notions about what could be done.
But the purpose of a strike is to deprive the employer of production.

When a group decided to throw up an informational picket line at the plant processing
axles made by the AAM foremen, the assumption was that it was a non-union plant.
Through leafleting strikers found out that it was a UAW-organized shop and their
contract was up the next day! The workers were supportive of the AAM strike - in fact
they even had striker relatives.
When the information was brought back to the International rep assigned to work at the
local, he didn't see that there was anything to be done.

Clearly the UAW thought it could come up with a contract based on its ability to
negotiate with a profitable company. In 2008 they didn't think it necessary to organize a
contract campaign, mobilize the membership and cut off production. Instead of forcing
GM to place demands on AAM to settle, all UAW officials from President Ronald
Gettelfinger on down said they wanted to keep GM "out" of the negotiations.
But GM was backing Dauch. While more than 30 GM plants were forced shut, the
company hoarded parts and would plan production at one facility for a period of time,
then shut it down in order to start production somewhere else. In the end Dauch forced
GM to pony up $218 million to cover some of the early retirement buyouts.

The Information Meeting

Word began leaking out that there was a tentative contract. UAW International President
Gettelfinger told the press "It's not a good agreement, but at this juncture it's the best we
could do."

Meetings were called for Three Rivers, Detroit and Buffalo. As a retiree I was able to
attend the one at a public high school in Detroit. In addition to the officers of the two
AAM locals, Gettelfinger and Vice President Jimmy Settles, director of the UAW-AAM
department, participated in the discussion.

Former Local 235 President Wendy Thompson laid out a strategy for how the strike
could still be won:
• Remove all the concessions from the bargaining table.
• Demand that the UAW International tell GM they will not tolerate their accepting
scab parts from AAM. (This tactic was successfully used at Ford during a Johnson
Controls strike a few years ago.)
• Double the strike benefits to $400 a week so strikers would have the possibility of
holding out; organize an "adopt a worker" program with hardship cases,
particularly foreclosure, recommended by the benefit reps.
• Reschedule the Hart Plaza rally and build one in downtown Buffalo.
• Hold weekly rallies in front of AAM headquarters.
• Mobilize strikers and supporters to stop production of scab parts, using civil
disobedience tactics if necessary.
• Set up informational picket lines wherever scab parts are being delivered,
encouraging those workers to reject inferior materials.
• Set up community outreach to visit unions, churches and community
organizations to garner their active support.

The crowd roared its approval. One striker came to the front of the auditorium and
pointed to Gettelfinger, indicating that he should get up and answer her. He seemed glued
to the chair. Jimmy Settles finally spoke: “Wendy, you're right. In the perfect society
that's what should be done. But we live in America, with all these laws that are hostile to
working people….”

Here was Jimmy Settles, an African-American UAW International officer, saying that it
was impossible to fight against unjust laws. What had the civil rights movement been
able to accomplish by refusing to go along with unjust laws? Didn't the birth of the UAW
effectively begin with the sit-down strikes in Flint, Michigan and Andersonville, Indiana,
actions that were carried out in defiance of the law?

With that the inadequate sound system failed and the meeting came to an end.

Going Back

That was the day the strike collapsed. Local union officials told strikers to continue
picketing, but they never did at the Detroit plants. Over the next several days there were a
series of formal and informal meetings to discuss the contract. The writing was on the
wall: the UAW wasn't going to protect the strikers' jobs if there was a "no" vote, and you
could expect scabs bused in following day.

The majority of strikers felt they had two options: vote the contract up and apply for the
buyout or vote the contract up and feel lucky to still have a job.

At the Detroit Forge plant about 30% voted against the contract because they wanted to
be able to look at themselves in the mirror, but at that point in the strike they didn't
propose an alternative strategy.

Over 2,200 strikers have applied for the buyout. Some never went back into the plant;
others are working, waiting for their application to be approved. The Buffalo plant is
shut, two forge plants are closing at the end of the year and Three Rivers may be on the
chopping block next year. Meanwhile Dauch has opened a forging operation in Oxford,
MI, where the starting wage is $10 an hour.

Following the contract signing, Dauch was awarded an $8.5 million bonus, according to
AAM's press release, on the basis of the company's "strong financial performance in
2007, the structural transformation achieved under our new labor agreements with the
UAW and … Dauch's leadership role in these negotiations."

The work force knew why it was on strike and fought to win. In walking the picket lines,
strikers reached across the longstanding divisions of skilled trade vs. production, younger
and older workers, Blacks and whites, male and female. Strikers struck up new
friendships and there was a high level of unity.

Unfortunately that unity isn't particularly evident now that workers are back: One set of
workers is frustrated because it put in for the buyout but have to report to work everyday,
while the ones staying have seen their pay and benefits slashed and their working
conditions deteriorate.

Foremen have been instructed that employees are not supposed to sit during work time so
chairs and boxes have been eliminated, and even the picnic tables and benches set up in
the plants' rest areas are gone. One worker was written up for leaning against a wall.
Another rule is that workers are only supposed to talk with each other during break. One
afternoon, after lunch break, a whole assembly line reported back to work with their
mouths taped shut. That seems to indicate that no matter how defeated workers feel right
now, they still have a fighting spirit and a sense of collectivity.

This was a strike that could have been won, that had the power and militancy to be able
to force the employer to back down. Despite a militant workforce, the strike couldn't be
won without a strategy.