The American Worker - Paul Romano and Ria Stone

by Paul Romano and Ria Stone (1947)
Introduction by Martin Glaberman

Contents

Introduction
Preface

Part I: Life In The Factory

Introduction
I. The effects of production
II. A life-time transformed into working time
III. Since the war ended
IV. The inefficiency of the company
V. Management's organization and the workers' organization
VI. Strata among the workers
VII. The contradiction in the factory
Conclusion

Part II: The Reconstruction of Society

Introduction
I. The permanent revolution in the process of production
II. The human nature of industry
III. Class individual and social individual
IV. In society with other men
V. The crisis of the capitalists
VI. The workers critique of politics

Introduction to the 1972 edition - Martin Glaberman

The American Worker was first published in 1947, a quarter of a century ago. Its continued relevance is indicated by the fact that the section on life in the factory has been reprinted in several places in the last few years. It was written by a young worker in a General Motors plant in the East. For the auto industry in the immediate post--World War II years it was a rather small plant, employing only about 800 production workers. Yet so sensitive was Paul Romano's observation of life in production that it exposed social relations and physical facts that are still evident and still relevant.

A few years after The American Worker was written, the auto industry entered upon an intense period of automation (foreseen in this pamphlet) which altered many things in the way the industry (and work) was organized. Yet the basic conditions remain the same. Romano wrote (page 2) that "the factory worker lives and breathes dirt and oil. As machines are speeded up, the noise becomes greater, the strain greater, the labor greater, even though the process is simplified." After twenty-five years more of the UAW, its contracts, and its grievance procedure, those conditions remain essentially the same. On May 6, 1971, the Detroit Free Press reported testimony in the trial of James Johnson, a worker at the Eldon Ave. Axle Plant of the Chrysler Corporation, who was charged with killing two foremen and a worker at the plant. A union steward, John Moffett, "told of dangerous greasy floors, unprotected conveyors and dangerous aisles crowded with workers and hi-low trucks at the same time."

Romano says, "The machinery is speeded up to a high degree. As a result there are continuous breakdowns and a large crew of maintenance men is needed. The wanton use of machinery is everywhere apparent." (Page 12).

Writing of the problems that General Motors faced in its new Vega plant in Lordstown, Ohio, the Wall Street Journal noted on January 31, 1972: " 'If there was any one miscalculation in this plant, it would have to be the 100-car-per-hour speed,' says Mr. Anderson (a GM executive)... Equipment that works fine in other auto plants at speeds of 50 cars or 60 cars an hour tends to destroy itself at the faster pace here."

With renewed and growing interest in working class organizing, there is a special interest in Romano's perceptions of the attitude of workers to activists and radicals. "Most of these workers," he says (page 22), "feel that the union activist is in there for some reason. Union activity is out of the run of the average workers preoccupation. He believes, therefore, that anyone who engages in it more than the rest has a reason. He is distrustful, and would like to know what that reason is."

"Workers view radical parties this way: Members of a radical organization through various means acquire positions of union leadership. There they agitate, etc. The conception is that it all comes from above. As a result, a gulf arises between the professional radical workers and the rank and file." (Page 32.)

These perceptions have infinitely more validity today.

The pamphlet appears as two contributions side by side -- that of a worker and that of an intellectual. This was viewed at the time that the pamphlet was first published as a necessary weakness. The fusion of worker and intellectual into one totality (as in a popular working class press) had not been achieved by any Marxist group. But at the same time that The American Worker was evidence of that separation, it was also evidence of the attempt to overcome that separation, if only in the formal placing of two articles side by side.

Fundamental to The American Worker is the dialectical relationship between the two parts. Without the theoretical conceptions of Part II, there would not have been a Part I. Ria Stone wrote that "Today it is the American working class which provides the foundation for an analysis of the economic transition from capitalism to socialism, or the concrete demonstration of the new society developing within the old." (Page 43.) This was the view that led a Marxist group to seek out, to help record, and to publish the experience of a young worker with an acute perception of the world around him.

This was not done to provide justification for a party line or illustrations of the ideas of intellectuals. It was done because "That is what Marx conceived as socialism -- the actual appropriation by the workers in the productive material life, of their human capacities." (Page 65.) Neither essay stands alone. Neither is cause, neither is effect. They depend on each other. A theoretical framework to free the worker to express his deepest needs. The experience of workers to provide the basis for the continuing expansion and development of theory, that is, of the continuing analysis of capitalist society and the socialist revolution being created within it.

The original publishing group that produced The American Worker was the Johnson-Forest Tendency, a group deriving from the theoretical conceptions of the West Indian Marxist, C. L. R. James. In its later forms as the Correspondence Publishing Committee and as Facing Reality, this tendency has for thirty years made a continuing contribution to the development of a viable Marxism relevant to revolutionaries in American society.

Although Facing Reality was dissolved in 1970, this reprint is being undertaken to make this material available to those who continue to be concerned with a fundamental aspect of the modern industrial world.

Text from www.prole.info, slightly edited by libcom.org for accuracy

Libcom also hosts:

• Introduction to L’ouvrier américain (1949) - English langauge translation of an introduction by Social­isme ou Bar­barie.
• Introduction to L’operaio americano (1954) - English langauge translation of an introduction by Battaglia Comu­nista.