The Militant - March 8, 2004 -- Leadership crisis sapped ’30s labor revolt

Vol. 68/No. 9 March 8, 2004

Leadership crisis sapped ’30s labor revolt
(Books of the Month column)

Printed below is an excerpt from the afterword by Farrell Dobbs to Teamster Bureaucracy, one of Pathfinder’s February Books of the Month. The book is the last in Dobbs’s four-volume series chronicling the 1930s strikes, organizing drives, and political campaigns that transformed the Teamsters union in much of the Midwest into a fighting social movement. The author, who went on to become national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, was a central actor in these events, serving as secretary-treasurer of Teamster Local 544 in Minneapolis and as a general organizer for the union.

The first volume, Teamster Rebellion, describes the 1934 strikes that built the union movement in Minneapolis and helped pave the way for the CIO. Teamster Power tells of the Teamsters’ subsequent 11-state over-the-road organizing drive. Teamster Politics recounts the union’s response to FBI frame-ups, fascist probes, and ruling-class preparations to enter World War II.

Teamster Bureaucracy tells how the Minneapolis Teamsters, led by revolutionary socialists—referred to here as Trotskyists—fought to preserve their union’s gains against President Franklin Roosevelt’s Justice Department and FBI, state and city police and politicians, and the pro-war and anticommunist bureaucracy of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Copyright © 1977 by Pathfinder Press. Printed by permission.

*****
BY FARRELL DOBBS
With the Trotskyists thus constituting the dominant force in the radical movement locally, it was possible for us to play a decisive role in the broad ranks of labor. We mobilized the trucking workers of the city for action on the basis of our class-struggle line. Both the local AFL officialdom and the IBT bureaucracy were outflanked through development of the combat momentum needed for the union ranks to brush aside all internal obstacles standing in their way. The trucking employers were defeated in battle, and a strong Teamster organization was consolidated in Minneapolis. After that our class-struggle course was extended into the surrounding area by means of a campaign to unionize over-the-road drivers. On the electoral plane, when the Stalinists and right-wingers made a shambles of the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota we pushed for reorganization of independent mass political action, by steps that could lead to the development of a labor party based on and controlled by the trade unions.

Those accomplishments were made possible through the interplay of two basic factors. One of these was the skillful and considerate leadership of the workers by revolutionary socialists. The other was our championing of trade union democracy. Full membership participation was encouraged in the organization’s internal affairs. Freedom to express all points of view was upheld, as was the workers’ right to set policy by majority vote.

As successes in the fight against the employers were achieved through this combination of able leadership and internal union democracy, the workers acquired increasing awareness of their great strength in class unity. They also began to get a better notion of what was needed to defend their interests. But variations existed in their grasp of class relations under capitalism and of the bosses’ inherent antagonism to organized labor. Perceptions of that basic issue ranged from only elementary trade union consciousness in most instances, across intermediate stages of class-struggle understanding reached by more limited numbers, to attainment of a revolutionary socialist outlook by a few. This unevenness in levels of development presented no serious obstacle to progress, however, so long as labor generally remained in a state of upsurge. Workers who had become more advanced could take advantage of the existing struggle momentum to activate their lagging comrades. Step by well-timed step, in accord with the pace of events, effective forces could thereby be mobilized for action in the trade union and political spheres….

Nationally, the relationship of forces on the left was unfavorable to the Trotskyists during the 1930s. We were a small propaganda group. Our activities had to center on assembling the initial cadres for the reconstruction of a revolutionary socialist party in the aftermath of the Stalinization of the Communist Party. The advantageous position of the Minneapolis comrades was, therefore, unique. Elsewhere in the country our movement did not have the required strength and opportunity to play a leading role in labor struggles to the extent that we found possible in the Teamsters.-…

The misleaders were able to prevent the labor upsurge from going beyond the unionization of the unorganized mass production workers into the CIO, although much more was possible at the height of its energies. They managed to tie the new industrial union movement to the Democratic Party, beginning with the 1936 national elections, thereby keeping the workers mired in capitalist politics. By mid-1937, class-collaborationist norms were reestablished to a large extent in setting trade union policy. Reliance on help from the Roosevelt administration was substituted for use of the union’s full power and a staggering setback resulted for the CIO with the defeat of the Little Steel strike.

Because of those leadership defaults the combat momentum of the insurgent masses was crippled and eventually broken. Even though strikes continued to occur episodically, the tide of battle had turned. A change in mood came over the union ranks. Militants found it more and more difficult to draw reluctant elements into action. Cautious attitudes became more pronounced, and a more conservative climate developed. To an increasing extent the best fighters found themselves swimming against the stream, except during those interludes when new struggles flared up briefly….

Roosevelt took advantage of the opportunity provided by these developments to implement the imperialists’ key objective at the time. He lined up the labor bureaucracy in support of preparations for war, and, as a necessary corollary, he launched a witch-hunt against militants who resisted his foreign policy. This was made all the easier for him by labor’s previous failure to take the independent political road, which left the capitalists in unchallenged control of the government. He had a free hand to use a wide range of repressive devices, including assignment of the FBI to a primary role as political police.

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