James R. Prickett

Anti-Communism and Labor History

(Originally published in Industrial Relations, 13 (October, 1974), 219-227.

MANY LABOR ECONOMISTS, historians, and political scientists who have written about Communists in the labor movement have made two assumptions. First, they have assumed that Communists were unique among workers, union officials, and labor organizers in that they were not interested in building strong unions which could win better working conditions and higher wages for themselves and other workers. It has even been argued that "once taken over by the Communists, a trade union ceases to be a trade union, for all that it may retain the charter and outward appearance of a trade union." 1 Second, they have assumed that whatever influence individual Communists or the Communist movement attained in the labor movement must have been due to deception and manipulation. These two assumptions have led to the conclusion that the expulsion of Communists from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) returned the CIO to the path of genuine trade unionism and that the anti-Communist victories in various CIO affiliates restored democratic unionism to a grateful membership.

Actually, the unions led or influenced by Communists were, if anything, more democratic than the strongly anti-Communist unions. Particularly striking, as the discussion of the national maritime Union later in this article reveals, was the frequent decline in union democracy when an anti-Communist administration defeated a pro-Communist one. Anti-Communist scholars – and this is the major point of this paper – have been so constrained by their basic anti-Communist framework that they have been unable to concede, much less explain, this decline in union democracy. In this note, I would like to explore several selected issues dealing with the treatment of Communists in the labor history literature. / 220 /

Doublethink

Perhaps the key element of the anti-Communist framework is the pervasive and curious vocabulary in which commonplace activities engaged in by all political individuals, Communist and non-Communist alike, are described in quite different terms. For example, non-Communists win union elections, but Communists "capture" a union. Non-Communists join unions; Communists "infiltrate" or "invade" them. 2 A non-Communist states his or her position; a Communist "peddles the straight party line." 3 Non-Communists influence or lead groups; Communists dominate them. 4 A non-Communist political party passes resolutions or makes decisions, but a Communist party invariably issues ‘directives." 5 One sentence, taken virtually at random from an anti-Communist essay, employs several of these themes: "In 1935, according to a variety of witnesses, the party dispatched an agent named Jeff Kibre to organize the infiltration of the talent and technical unions." 6 The key phrase of the sentence is, of course, "the party dispatched," which conveys the image of the Communist Party as a huge machine in which human beings are processed, but each phrase conveys a distinct anti-Communist image. 7

When Communists perform good, constructive trade union work, it is simply assumed that this work is little more than a camouflage for other, less admirable, purposes. As Jensen has argued: / 221 /

They [the Communists] often pushed grievances energetically to foster the belief that collective bargaining and the workers’ interests were their chief … objectives. The militant emphasis upon collective bargaining was a camouflage for gaining freedom to pursue other objectives as it suited them. A penetrating look reveals that control of the organization … was their primary goal. … Policy formation was, of course, not enough. The union had to be built. What better way to achieve control that to build local unions and hand-pick and control the local officers? 8

There is, of course, no way to empirically test Jensen’s argument, since the actual behavior of Communists is seen as nothing but camouflage hiding their real (and assumed) objectives. In Jensen’s view, a Communist organizer who spent several years organizing workers in a basic industry, risking, as many did, physical assault and even death, could be shown to have been uninterested in organizing workers if he so much as made a single speech at a union meeting in support of any one of the positions of the Communist Party.

Criticisms of Communists

When stated explicitly, many criticisms of the Communists appear ludicrous or vicious, or both. The preoccupation of southern racists with possible interracial sex in the Communist movement is well known. Less well known, perhaps, is the fascination the topic holds for northern social scientists. Using a somewhat subtler style, Glazer explored a favorite theme of southern conservatives: "In the party, Negro members were treated with more than equality, and white female party members went out of their way to demonstrate how serious Communists were in eliminating all social barriers between the two races." 9 Communists are pictured as moral mon-/ 222 / sters who are never quite so happy as when reading about the lynching of a black man. As Record put it, "What more welcome event could occur for such [Communist] propagandists than a lynching in Georgia, legal or otherwise?" 10 A rather common assumption appears to be that it is perfectly all right to destroy a movement or an organization in order to rid it of Communists:

Today this union [the International ladies Garment Workers’ Union] is safe from Communist disruption. The issue was fought through to a finish, mostly because its outstanding leaders had had a long experience in appraising and dealing with factional feuds and were quick to recognize the menacing proportions of Bolshevism… And though after the struggle the International was almost gone, what was left of it was healthy and progressive. 11

That the [Communist] party was willing, even during this united front period … to infiltrate and even destroy [Negro organizations] was evidenced in the Workers’ Councils of the N.U.L. [National Urban League]. Lester Granger later described what happened: "That [Workers’ Council] was an ideal organization for the Communists to capture. They grabbed one in New York City, we had to kill it off. They grabbed another in Pennsylvania, and we had to kill that off. 12

Stolberg and Record are describing, with considerable approval, the destruction of organizations by anti-Communists simply because the Communists have attained positions of leadership in those organizations. Similarly, Jensen, quoted above, described with considerable disapproval the building of a union by the Communists. The sincerity of these scholars is not at issue. There is little doubt that Record believes that black workers in New York were better off without any workers’ council than they would be with one led by the Communists, or that Stolberg believes that a weak union of 30,000 members with anti-Communist leadership is preferable to a stronger union of 90,000 workers in which the Communists share leadership. 13 But sincerity is no substitute for judgment. If anti-Communists are unable to be critical of an anti-Communist purge which loses or forces out two-thirds of a union’s membership, they are probably unable to be critical of any anti-Communist drive. A closer look at the treatment of the controversies over communism in CIO unions reveals a number of serious distortions growing out of the uncritical support given to anti-Communist unionists. / 223 /

Walter Reuther and Joseph Curran

In their influential study, the UAW and Walter Reuther, Howe and Widick argue that Reuther’s victory in the UAW can be traced to the rise of a democratic, rank-and-file movement ‘against the evils of Stalinism." 14 To minimize Reuther’s consistent support of measures designed to curtail the political rights of Communists within the UAW, Howe and Widick fabricate an incident in which the Communists were more undemocratic than Reuther:

The Stalinists tried to counter Reuther’s resolution by introducing a motion to bar socialists as well as communists from UAW office, but this silly maneuver failed. Actually, their motion was a stupid blunder. … By countering the possible anti-democratic implications of Reuther’s proposal with an even less democratic motion, they simply proved that Reuther’s characterization of them had been accurate. 15

The anti-Socialist, anti-Communist resolution to which Howe and Widick refer was actually prepared by a group of unionists opposed to both the Communists and the Socialists, and the Communists spoke against both resolutions at the UAW convention. 16

Since Reuther was possibly the most liberal and attractive of the anti-Communists within the CIO, it is not hard to understand the support given him by anti-Communist scholars. More difficult to understand is the consistent support of liberal anti-Communists for Joseph Curran’s anti-Communist campaign in the National maritime Union (NMU). A number of studies have painted Curran’s victory in the NMU as a victory for rank-and-file democracy which "returned" the union to the membership after it had been "captured" by the Communists. 17 In fact, Curran was more committed to union democracy during his pro-Communist years than he was when he became / 224 / an anti-Communist union leader. During his campaign against the Communi8sts, Curran assured NMU members that he could continue to respect the rights of all union members. In his weekly column in the union newspaper, Curran wrote, "it is not the intention nor the objective of the rank and file committee [the Curran caucus] to eliminate from the Union members because of … political belief, although the Communists in the Union attempt to confuse you, the membership, into believing those things." 18 Again and again, Curran, insisted, "I am against, and will always be against, any type of repression, discrimination, or any brand of witchhunt." 19

Only after incomplete election returns indicated that Curran’s caucus would win a sweeping victory did he introduce the idea of expulsion: "the [Communist] party officials know that they are on their way … out of the Union because of their crimes against the membership." 20 Since NMU workers strongly opposed political expulsions, Curran promised that no one would be tried simply for being a member of the Communist Party. "Only those who violated the constitution" or had committed "crimes against the membership" were to be subjected to expulsion. 21 Yet a complete list of the charges against expelled members reveals that Communism was clearly the key factor. Here are a few sample charges:

Making false statements against the Port of Houston, the Trial Committee, and the membership; bringing the Union into ill repute through his misconduct; belonging to a radical organization that is dedicated not only to overthrow the constitutional rights of this Union, but also the democracy in which we believe.

Distributing subversive literature for the sole and deliberate purpose of creating disruption in the Union hall.

Anti-Union activity; being aboard ship without being cleared through the Union hall, for the purpose of distributing leaflets put out by members of the Communist Party to be used for confusing and disrupting the membership. 22

Ostensibly nonpolitical charges had political overtones. One seaman was charged with missing a ship and causing it to sail short-handed. The usual penalty for that offense was a $35 fine, but since this was "the same Boehm who was a member of the Communist Party," the committee recommended / 225 / expulsion from the union. 23 By the 1949 NMU convention, an estimated 500 seamen had been expelled from the Union, 24 and several times that number were expelled in the years following the convention. A recent article in The Nation described the fate of the latest opposition leader in the NMU, James M. Morrissey:

His program asks for a return of the NMU to democracy through rank and file control, and his openly declared strategy during the summer was that the opposition should organize for the NMU 14th National Convention, then two months away.

On September 14, two weeks before the convention, Morrissey was attacked by three large men with lead pipes who beat him and broke his skull. He had just left NMU national Headquarters, the Joseph Curran building in New York. 25

Armed with information about the actual aftermath of Curran’s victory, one can reread the anti-Communist accounts profitably. The first observation is that nowhere in any of the accounts is there any specific information about undemocratic activity on the part of the Communists. In fact, it rapidly becomes clear that the Communists were consistent democrats. One anti-Communist has suggested that "seldom has so meticulous an adherence to the outer forms of democracy so thoroughly violated its spirit and intent." 26 When Curran was part of a Communist –dominated union leadership, his opponents were able to publish anti-Curran and anti-Communist letters in the Pilot (the union newspaper). Opponents of the union leadership and of the Communist Party were not subject to expulsions. The crimes of which the Comm8unists have been accused are fairly trivial: know parliamentary procedure, staying ‘all night" at union meetings, and serving on co9nvention committees. 27 The second observation is that the indifference of anti-Communists to Curran’s later tactics contrasts sharply with their indignant response to the Communists.

Socialists vs. Communists

Discussions of the conflict between the Socialist leadership and the rank-and-file oppositions in which the Communists were prominent all obscure (but cannot really hide) the majorities which those oppositions won and the methods used to prevent them from coming to power. For example, / 226 / all students of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) know that, as Schneider noted, "the anti-administration forces, though outvoted in the [1925 ILGWU] convention, actually represented a majority of the members of the International." 28 Yet Schneider is the only one to state this clearly. Laslett simply said that the administration retained the presidency in a "relatively close contest," and How and Coser noted that the administration defeated the left by the "unimpressive margin of 158 to 110." 29 Epstein came closer to the truth when he wrote that "the left delegates… from the majority of the important locals" were outvoted "largely by delegates from small locals –many of them in semi-existence –garnered throughout the country." 30 Nor are historians at all critical of the consequences of the administration’s victory. The loss of two-thirds of the union’s membership is seen as a reasonable price to pay to defeat the Communists.

Throughout the discussion of the controversy, it is simply assumed that the Socialist leaders of the garment unions were high-minded democrats and that their Communist opponents were unprincipled totalitarians. Contemporaries knew better. Explaining his reluctance to run for alderman in New York, Norman Thomas pointed out that "the political campaign next fall cannot be separated from internal labor controversy" inside the garment unions. As Thomas saw it, there were two major problems. First, most workers in New York supported the Communist-led oppositions rather than the Socialist trade union leaderships. He indicated that "it is not occasional Communist hecklers that I mind but the general feeling of the district." Second, Thomas could not support the Socialist leaders uncritically. He thought that many of them were ‘associated with strong armed methods of labor organization which are absolutely fatal in the long run to the Socialist idealism to which we must appeal to defeat Tammany Hall." Thomas made these criticism privately since any "public criticisms would tend to play into the hands of the lefts." 31

The attitudes of the Socialist Party in the twenties, as Thomas described them, were remarkably similar to the attitudes of liberal labor historians in the fifties. Thomas complained that the "one issue on which a great many / 227 / of our comrades tend to arouse themselves, the one thing that brings into their eyes the old light of battle, is their hatred of Communism." The Jewish Daily Forward and "a considerable element in the party" would support "any crook, any incompetent in power in the ILGWU or the Furriers who shouted right wing slogans." 32 Not all the leaders in the garment unions supported by the Socialists were gangsters or incompetents, by any means. But Socialists did consciously ally with gangsters to defeat the Communists.

Conclusions

None of the above criticisms is meant to suggest that the Communists were above criticism or that they did not make some extremely questionable alliances themselves. What it does suggest is that our notion of the factional struggles inside CIO unions is highly distorted. These distortions flow from a notion which I think must be discarded; namely, that Communists are somehow external to the working class movement. The current weakness of Communism in the American working class should not obscure the fact that the Communist movement was the major expression of working class radicalism for the second quarter of the twentieth century. As even their bitterest enemies within the movement would concede, many Communists dedicated (and sometimes lost) their lives working to build the CIO unions in basic industry. The assumption has been that these men and women were nothing more than extensions of Daily Worker editorials or, in the more dramatic phrase, agents of a foreign power. In fact, they were among the most active working class militants during a period of intense and militant working class struggle. While there is no need to canonize them, there is a need to take them seriously as workers, as organizers, and as Communists.

Notes

1 Max M. Kampelman. The Communist Party vs. the CIO: A Study in Power Politics.(New York: Praeger, 1957), p. 249.

2 Most readers will be familiar with this sort of rhetoric, but one example will be given for those who are not. On three pages of Taft’s essay on "Radicalism in American Labor," the word "capture" appears five times. In the same essay, Taft indicates that Communists can invade organizations to which they already belong: "The Communists operating through the Trade union Educational League planned to invade all unions, but the affiliation of the adherents determined which unions were to feel the brunt of the pressure." Philip Taft, The Structure and Government of Labor Unions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), pp. 5, 8-9, 10-11.

3 David Shannon wrote that ‘the well known radio news commentator Johannes Steel … was invited to speak at I.W.O. conventions, where he peddled the straight party line." Shannon would never say that anyone peddled the Democratic Party line or the liberal line; this rhetoric is reserved for those branded as Communists. David A. Shannon, the Decline of American Communism: A History of the Communist Party of the United States Since 1945 (New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1959), pp. 115-116.

4 In one paragraph, Taft uses the phrase "Communist domination" four times. Taft, op. cit., p. 14. Incidentally, the phrase "Communist domination" appears twelve times in the essay, while the term "Communist-led" never appears.

5 Jack Barbash, The Practice of Unionism (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956), p. 324.

6 John Hutchinson, "{Trade Unionism and the Communists: American and International Experiences," in William Peterson, ed., the Realities of World Communism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p.171.

7 This sentence deserves a close examination:

"In 1935." This phrase appears reasonably straightforward, although it has, as we shall see, some anti-Communist overtones.

"according to a variety of witnesses." The term "witnesses" is chosen rather than "sources" to convey the image of a criminal court proceeding. Note also that the witnesses are not identified.

"the Party dispatched." As noted above, this portrays the Party as a vast machine in which individual people are mere parts to be processed and dispatched. It implies, of course, that the man being ‘dispatched" had no part in the decision.

"an agent named Jeff Kibre." If Kibre had belonged to any other political group, he would be called an organizer rather than an agent.

"to organize the infiltration of the talent and technical unions." The key word here is infiltration: a Communist, no matter where he or she comes from, is always an infiltrator. Actually, Kibre had been in Hollywood since the late twenties. Moreover, he did not plan to bring Communists into the unions but to win those already in the unions to aspects of the Communist program.

This brings us back to "in 1935." Since Kibre had been in Hollywood prior to 1935, the phrase "in 1935" coupled with "the Party dispatched" is also anti-Communist.

8 Vernon H. Jensen, Nonferrous Metals Industry Unionism, 1932-1`954: A Study of Leadership Controversy (Ithaca: new York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, 1954), pp. 296-297.

9 Nathan Glazer, The Social Basis of American Communism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), p. 171 Glazer continued in the next sentence: "The slightest hesitation in social relations with Negro party members, and indeed, some felt, in sexual relations, made a member suspect and might lead to denunciation." The notion (no documentation is given, incidentally) that the Communist Party forced white women to sleep with black men (or any woman with any man) is sexist as well as racist and anti-Communist.

10 Wilson Record, the Negro and the Communist Party (New York: Atheneum, 1951, 1971), p. 259.

11 Benjamin Stolberg, Tailor’s Progress: The Story of a Famous Union and the Men Who Made It (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1944), pp. 108-109.

12 Record, op. cit., pp. 147-148.

13 For membership figures, see American Labor Year Book (New York: Labor Research Department, Rand School of Social Science, 1929), p.115.

14 Irving Howe and B.J. Widick, the UAW and Walter Reuther (New York: Random House, 1949), passim; see, also, Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American Communist Party: A Critical History (New York: Praeger, 1962), pp. 458-459.

15 Howe and Widick, op. cit., p. 80.

16 For a Communist speech against both resolutions, see International Union, United Automobile, Aircraft, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, Proceedings of the Sixth Convention (1941), pp. 702-703; for the speeches of those in favor of the anti-Socialist amendment, see ibid., pp. 692, 700, 703-704, 706.

17 For studies maintaining this position, see Joseph Goldberg, The Maritime Story: A Study in Labor-Management Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960); Jack Barbash, The Practice of Unionism (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956), pp. 361-363; Taft, op. Cit., pp. 198-205; Howe and Coser, op. Cit.,, pp. 378-379, 459-462; Murray Kempton, Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955), pp. 86-104; Philip Selznick, The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1960), pp. 184-196.

18 NMU Pilot (New York), January 9, 1948.

19 Quoted in M. A. Verick, "Rebel Voices in the NMU," New Politics, V (Summer, 1966), 33.

20 NMU Pilot, July 16, 1948.

21 Ibid.,, July 30, 1948.

22 National Maritime Union of America, Proceedings of the Seventh Convention (1949), pp. 529, 535, 560. These are complete lists of the charges leveled against three NMU members, not excerpts from the charges.

23 Ibid., p. 528.

24 Ibid., pp. 349, 364.

25 Dorian J. Fliegel, "Curran’s NMU: Headquarters vs. the Men at Sea," The Nation, CCV (January 30, 1967), 144.

26 Howe and Coser, op. cit., p. 383.

27 Curran’s charges are quoted in Kampelman, op. cit., pp. 83-84.

28 David M. Schneider, The Worker’s (Communist) Party and the American Trade Unions (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1928), p. 95.

29 John H. M. Laslett, Labor and the Left: A Study of Socialist and Radical Influences in the American Labor Movement, 1881-1924 (New York: Basic Books, 1970), p. 129; Howe and Coser, op. cit., p. 248.

30 Melech Epstein, Jewish Labor in U.S.A., 1914-1952: An Industrial, Political, and Cultural History of the Jewish Labor Movement (New York: Trade Union Sponsoring Committee, 1953), p. 142.

31 Norman Thomas to Morris Hillquit, June 14, 1927, Morris Hillquit Papers (microform edition), State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1969.

32 Thomas to Hillquit, December 21, 1926.