The Militant - December 22, 2008 -- Roosevelt’s 1930s ‘New Deal’ and drive toward war

Vol. 72/No. 50 December 22, 2008

Roosevelt’s 1930s ‘New Deal’ and drive toward war
(Books of the Month column)

Below is an excerpt from Teamster Bureaucracy by Farrell Dobbs, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for December. The book is the concluding volume of a series that includes Teamster Rebellion, Teamster Power, and Teamster Politics. The books tell the story of strikes, organizing drives, and political campaigns in the 1930s that transformed the Teamsters union in Minnesota and much of the Midwest into a fighting industrial union movement. Teamster Bureaucracy describes the trade union campaign initiated by the Minneapolis Teamsters against imperialist war. It also takes up the drive by the capitalist rulers backed by top layers of the union officialdom to frame up and imprison 18 leaders of Teamsters Local 544 and the Socialist Workers Party in a 1941 sedition trial. The excerpt below is from the chapter “'Let the people vote on war.’” Copyright © 1977 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY FARRELL DOBBS
Shortly after the 1936 elections, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began a rightward shift in policy—a step that was to have profound effects upon the Minnesota labor movement. There were two basic aspects to the turn. He backed off from earlier promises to concentrate on social reforms in this country and centered his attention, instead, on “defense of American interests” abroad. This change in emphasis was designed to further a deliberate and disguised imperialist plan, the essence of which may be perceived through a brief look at preceding developments.

When Roosevelt first took office in 1933, the country was caught in the paralyzing grip of a deep economic depression. The resulting hardships caused rebellious moods to grow in intensity among the workers and small farmers. So extensive was the mass discontent, in fact, that the capitalists became worried about the danger that a revolutionary situation might emerge.

To get out of this bind, the boss class acquiesced in a promise by the incoming president to give the “ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed” of the nation a “New Deal.” His program, however, consisted primarily of increased government spending to “prime the economic pumps,” along with “fair-trade” regulations devised to raise prices and increase profit-taking.

Just enough social concessions were added to revive faith among workers and farmers that their problems could be taken care of through repair of the capitalist system. In that connection, especially, the aims of the New Deal were supported by the trade union bureaucracy, the social democrats and—beginning in 1935—the Communist Party.

As a consequence of those combined factors, the labor upsurge was confined to struggles at the trade union level; the workers were blocked from taking the road of independent political action and forming their own party; and the capitalist ruling class kept a firm hold on the reins of government.

In one respect, though, the “miracle” of the New Deal remained flawed. It had failed to overcome the economic crisis. Although a limited industrial recovery had temporarily developed in response to “pump-priming” measures and an upturn in the world economy, contradictions inherent in the capitalist system continued to operate in a manner that brought another deep slump, beginning in 1937. That trend made it imperative for ruling-class strategists to seek other ways of propping up their outlived system. So they resorted to a method that could be incorporated into plans for the solution of yet another problem they faced—in the international arena.

Imperialist rivals were encroaching upon territories abroad which this country’s ruling class, with its global interests, had staked out for exploitation. Among those competing governmental gangs, two loomed as the most formidable opponents of their Wall Street counterparts. One operated from within Hitlerite Germany; the other had its base in Japan, where a militarist regime held power. Both had their eyes on the superprofits United States banking combines and monopoly corporations were raking in from foreign holdings; Germany and Japan were out to grab a larger piece of the action.

It was in this rivalry between imperialist cutthroats that Roosevelt was dedicating himself to the protection of “American interests.” But that wasn’t what he talked about during the 1936 elections. Instead, he campaigned on the basis of his phony image, built up during his first term, as a champion of the exploited masses. Then, after being returned to office, he began to apply his real line in foreign policy. Budgetary provisions were made for increased military spending, using the argument that such action would expand industrial hiring and reduce the jobless rolls. At the same time Washington employed every available propaganda device in an effort to justify the handling of foreign affairs in a manner that led toward war.

At that point General Drivers Local 544, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, set out to organize trade union opposition to Roosevelt’s preparations for use of the workers as imperialist cannon fodder. Local 544, an affiliate of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, AFL, was led by Trotskyist militants. They were revolutionary socialists, whose training and experience enabled them to grasp the real meaning of the scheme being cooked up in Washington.

The leaders of Local 544 were also seasoned campaigners, well versed in the organization of mass actions. Thus it was apparent to them that the first task was to alert the union ranks to the dangers arising from the new course taken by the White House and to explain why the workers’ vital interests were threatened. Only in that way could the necessary forces be drawn together to launch a broad protest movement.

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