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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 56, 23 December 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
On my recent tour through the country I gathered impressions of a multicolored variety. In the first place one cannot fail to notice that after deceptive glamour of the early appearance of the New Deal the same old desolate appearance of the crisis has returned. One does not encounter so much the traditional nuisance, the traveling salesman, but the endlessly long freight trains still carry their loads of unemployed workers and homeless tramping youth roving from place to place in quest of some new way of getting by. The aristocratic appearing New England towns radiate the screaming colors of the blue eagle signs, proceeding westward, however, these become rather scarce. Here and there emerge little “Buy Now” parades. But the attempts to stage them gaily fall flat. The throbbing hubbub of a busy industry is absent. Within the forest of smoke stacks in the Pittsburgh and Gary steel regions only a few belch forth their pallid clouds, in Buffalo and Niagara Falls, however, the war industries and allied chemical industries are running full blast.
Here one of our comrades told me of his work in one of the plants producing the means of chemical warfare for Uncle Sam. “Three days of work in one stretch is all a man can stand”, he said. “After that must follow at least two days in a completely darkened room to avoid instant blindness.” But jobs are scarce today. Yet the lifetime of a worker in such an industry is exceedingly brief. The eyesight gives out. Such are some of the blessings of modern capitalism.
But all is supposed to be well with the New Deal policy, although the defenders of its redeeming features, as a means of recovery, say it is at its cross roads. This is true in more than one sense. “Oh, yes”, they agree – both supporters and opponents among the agents of privilege – “its social relation features are of positive significance”.
They mean by that the code and arbitration board regulations which represent the attempts to tie the workers within definite bonds of collaboration with capital, entirely to the latter’s advantage. That aspect has not yet become clear to the workers in general. But it is noticeable throughout, and more apparent as one reaches westward, that of the former implicit confidence in the NRA, which made it synonymous with recovery, with jobs, there is at least only a thin veneer left. What stands out the more clearly is the readiness to organize and the direct response from the workers to organization efforts.
The first big “recovery” strike wave had just about reached its ebb when my tour began. Organization activities were no longer at their former height but neither had they entirely petered out with the blasting of the recovery illusions. The truth is that the overwhelming numbers surging towards the existing unions, and decidedly towards the conservative unions, represented the instinctive mass reaction to the opportunities afforded by the NRA collective bargaining clause, supplemented by the heavily increasing economic pressure upon them. It came about with such a rush that the A.F. of L. leaders were taken by surprise. In fact it was not at all due to any aggressive action on their part. They served as an impediment, gladly collecting the imitation fees which came rolling in but resisting and sabotaging organization at every step.
In Kansas City, for example, one of our comrades began to undertake organization in a plant of industrial mass production. He collected an imposing list of applicants but found it impossible to pry the trades and labor council loose. He could get no attention from that outfit so entirely oblivious to interests of expansion and growth. What could one expect then from the higher circles of the heirarchy? It is true that the gluttonous mandarins heading the New York garment workers union had a special interest in organizing the whole industry as a means of wiping out the T.U.U.L. union in the field. But elsewhere no such competition existed as a serious factor, and their worthy associates did their level best to drive the workers back from struggle for union organization and for union recognition.
That was the case with the Fayette County coke miners in their strike against the steel subsidiary of H.C. Frick and Company. Several times the glib-tongued, expert horse-traders in the class collaboration field, from John L. Lewis downward, pleaded with these miners to return to work and to trust to them and to Mr. Roosevelt to preserve the interests of union organisation. But the miners stuck to their own rights and made their own fight for a union, and at that for the very union headed by Lewis and the others. Not that the miners were fooled by this gentry. On the contrary. When William Feeney came on October 3, to address a meeting near Uniontown of 15,000 strikers he was greeted with the shouts “You sold us out in 1922”, “Throw him out.” He was unable to speak and left the meeting.
Even this very early stage of the “new deal” for the workers heralded the coming deep conflicts between the rank and file and the reactionary union leadership. The distribution of the roles in this case showed the miners defending the principles of unionism against the officials of the very union involved. It may be argued that this is not a new phenomena in American labor history. That is true. But by occurring at this time it has a special significance for the future. Today the NRA class collaboration machinery is based upon arbitration boards which tomorrow will be turned into means of suppression of strikes and, thereby, suppression of the very life of the trade unions. With this machinery the union officials remain sewed up, for today and tomorrow, because they are agents of capitalism. And with this the rank and file interests will come into ever more decisive conflict. It is from conditions such as these that the coming great labor struggles will find their reflex within the unions in serious revolts against the reactionary policies and against the officialdom. Thereby the path will be prepared for a new unionism.
That this path will not be found through the T.U.U.L. unions under control of Stalinism is only further verified by the most recent experiences. Today one can find no trace whatever of the National Miners’ Union in the important fields going as far west as Illinois. The thousands of miners of Pennsylvania and Ohio, who two years ago struck under the banner of the T.U.U.L. union, were this time striking, and just as militantly, under the banner of the A.F. of L. striking for the rights of union recognition which the NRA was supposed to grant.
With the NRA came the rising curve of commodity prices the effects of which are felt very directly. “The NRA is just so much bunk”, has now become a quite common expression, not only amongst those who still tramp the streets in vain search for jobs, but amongst the employed as well. For them the low wage standard resulting from the crisis is a serious reality. It is difficult to make ends meet. A grim determination is beginning to make its appearance within their ranks. One feels perceptibly that the present lull after the first strike wave is the calm before the next storm sure to break soon with the force of a hurricane.
And the unemployed? Amongst them are many signs of a sluggish adaptation to the low subsistence level afforded by the miserable relief rations. But these do not predominate. Most of the various mutual self-help enterprises, based upon begging and upon barter of labor for goods, which flourished for a time in several smaller cities, could not survive the realities of class society. Instead relief work, or “working for the city”, as it is called by some who hope to invest it with a non-existing dignity, is becoming a regular institution in many cities. It means to do regular work for a relief pittance either, in cash or in groceries bearing no semblance to a wage. And often it is on such projects that regular wage labor is directly eliminated. Yet it becomes compulsory for those who need the grocery basket.
In spite of all this there is no sign anywhere today of an all-embracing unemployment movement. What exists is only the isolated local groupings; and of them there are few. In Minneapolis the Left Opposition has infused new life into the unemployed movement. In Chicago one finds still the Workers’ League and locals affiliated to the Borders Committee. On a whole the issues of the unemployed receded into the background for a time with the advent of the NRA ballyhoo. The movement, such as it was, experienced a decline. But that does not tell the whole story.
Alongside of the decline is recorded the failure of the movement or the tendencies within, mainly those of the official Communist party and of the social reformists, to at any time seriously aim for the indispensable united front. From this the movement is now suffering the consequences. The Unemployed Councils, directed by the official party, which first emerged with the powerful spontaneous demonstrations, with the auspicious opportunity, during the early part of the crisis, have either entirely vanished or, what amounts to the same thing, lead a purely paper existence.
In general the decline and the sinking into disrepute of the official party is so outstanding as to be catastrophic. In city after city, not in the least in the mining and steel regions, I made the same observation. The official party is discredited to the extent of reflecting unfavorably upon the ideas of Communism in general. Again and again I would hear reports of workers saying, “I am through with Communist Party”, or, “I quit the Daily Worker some time ago.” How clearly did this illustrate the reactions thousands of workers who have been repelled by the emasculated party of Stalinism. For the Left Opposition this means more emphasis on the duty to build anew a revolutionary party in the United States. Our part in this task will be reported in another article.
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