During the early stages of the Spanish Civil War, Spanish anarchists and socialists set up an economy in Loyalist Spain that very closely resembled the type of industrial organization advocated by the Industrial Workers of the World. It was also believed by many that this worker-controlled revolution might spell the death knell to fascism and Nazism, and usher in new day for the workers living in a worldwide depression. One of these people was Buenaventura Durruti. In a 1936 interview with world famous journalist Pierre van Paassen, anarcho-syndicalist leader and Spanish Loyalist general Durruti said:

“We are giving Hitler and Mussolini far more worry with our revolution than the whole Red Army of Russia. We are setting an example to the German and Italian working class on how to deal with Fascism.”

Durruti may have been overly optimistic about the abilities of the Spanish anarchist militias (which were more than most excellent) vis-à-vis the Soviet Russian Red Army. After all, the Red Army of Soviet Russia performed very well during World War II—what Russians call the “Great Patriotic War.” But the Spanish Loyalists did have many surprising successes.

As told by Spanish anarchist survivors of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) in the Spanish documentary “Living Utopia,” the beginning of the Spanish Revolution ignited on July 19, 1936. Juan García Oliver, Spanish anarchist leader and Minister of Justice in the popular front government, at an early stage of the Spanish Civil War, made the remarkable point that this was the first time the people defeated the army.

But the background of the revolution goes back to at least the year 1868, with the beginning of the anarchist movement in Spain. The anarchists were the most important component in Loyalist Spain, but by no means, the only one. The ability of the anarchists to quickly and spontaneously resist the fascist military rebellion in late July 1936, together with the ability to take over industry and form effective agricultural communes, goes back three generations. The best history of this appears in “The Spanish Anarchists” by Murray Bookchin.

The anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) trade unions and Spanish socialist trade unions were in the vanguard of the resistance to the fascist rebellion, but other groups included the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Workers Party of Marxist Unification, or POUM), the Catholic Basque region, other socialist groups and the Republican Action Party.

In his book “Homage to Catalonia,” published in April 1938, George Orwell wrote that when he arrived in Barcelona, Catalonia, in Loyalist Spain, in late December 1936, he witnessed a true workers’ society. The anarchists were in control of Barcelona. “The working class was in the saddle.” Also in “Homage to Catalonia,” Orwell described there was almost complete equality in the POUM militia, in which he served. The motivations of fear of the boss and bourgeois competitiveness were absent. This was the beginning of the turning point of his life. Among his observations were:

“In the Barbers’ shops were Anarchist notices (the Barbers were … Anarchists)…explaining that the barbers were no longer slaves.”

In describing life in the POUM militias, in “Homage to Catalonia” on the Aragon Front in 1937, Orwell said, “One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word ‘comrade’ stood for comradeship… One had breathed the air of equality.”

In New York, the anarchist youth group, Vanguard, in addition to publishing their own magazine, Vanguard, published a monthly newspaper called Spanish Revolution. Herbert Mailer, a prominent Wobbly labor activist was also involved with Spanish Revolution.

In the first issue of Spanish Revolution (Vol. 1, No.1 August 19, 1936); the lead item identified, “From the Press Service of the CNT and the FAI [Federación Anarquista Ibérica]” dated in Barcelona, Spain, on July 24, 1936:

“At the price of bloody battles and sorrowful losses, the Catalon capital has reconquered its title of Red Barcelona. It was a spontaneous popular uprising which answered the first onslaught of the Fascists. The city, deserted in the early morning hours, suddenly awoke as if by magic drum call; the people seemed to rise from the pavements. The armories were seized and in a flash almost everybody was armed.

“The groups of the CNT and the FAI with the help of various workers’ parties and organizations marched resolutely against the Fascists whose aim was to take possession of the strategic points of the city. The latter employed military experts and war technicians, using cannons and machine guns, and though in the minority, they did succeed in delivering death ‘scientifically.’ But nothing could check the popular surge. The hatred against Fascism wrought miracles; party differences and political quarrels disappeared before a ‘popular front,’ not the one which arose from the elections, but the popular front spontaneously created in the streets” (emphasis in the original).

As Spanish Revolution reported, party and labor union-based militias were quickly raised in Catalonia. Most of these volunteers were from the CNT-FAI (about 13,000) followed by the POUM, then the Unión General de Trabajadores (General Union of Workers, or UGT) and other groups. Many women also served in the militias, and were involved in the street fighting when the fascists were beaten down in the cities.

The CNT and FAI were anarchist organizations, the first being a trade union, and the second, a political group, aimed at maintaining the purity of Spanish and Portuguese anarchism. There was also the anarchist Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores (the International Workers Association, or AIT). According to the Spanish documentary “Living Utopia,” a member of the FAI could not have been married in the Catholic church, must not have served in the military, must—if affordable—have sent their children to a Ferrer Modern School, and must not have had any addiction to alcohol or cigarettes, or other substance, and had to be in a faithful relationship.

When the fascist generals rebelled against the Spanish Republican government, three things happened that they did not count on:

First, the Spanish Navy remained loyal to the Loyalist Spain. Second, the Catholic Basque region remained loyal to the government. There was also a considerable presence of anarchist and socialist organizing in the Basque. Catholic priests in the Basque had organized labor unions.

Third, there was a massive spontaneous popular resistance. This resistance resulted in a far-reaching revolution, which went further in Catalonia than in some other parts of Spain. Spanish Revolution was devoted to this revolution. Spanish Revolution described the spontaneous resistance in certain parts of the country.

There were many far-reaching elements of social and economic revolution in anarchistic Catalonia. For example Spanish Revolution reported, “Libertarian Youth Organize the People’s Univ. of Barcelona.”

There was a “Committee to Aid Fascist Victims.” Workers had taken over factories. Peasants had taken over estates and farms. All this was reported in Spanish Revolution.

There were many foreign volunteers who came to Spain to either defend democracy or to support the revolution, but in all cases to fight against fascism. Of course, there was the communist-sponsored International Brigade, the Independent Labour Party contingent, and anarchist volunteers, but much less-known are the number of IWW members who volunteered and fought for Revolutionary Loyalist Spain.

To quote from the Wobbly book “Rebel Voices” published by Charles H. Keer Publishers:

“During the Spanish Civil War, the IWW had an assessment for the support of the [anarchist] CNT and maintained friendly relations with anarchist International Workingmen’s Association. Many IWW fought with CNT forces.”

Following this introductory statement on page 378, there is a moving article by Wobbly Raymond Galstad describing his experience during the Spanish Civil War.

Recently, the Industrial Worker had an article titled “IWW Members Who Fought In The Spanish Civil War” by Matt White (November 2013 IW, page 9). Nine of many Wobblies who fought in the Spanish Civil War were profiled. As this article made clear, IWW members fought with comrades in both the Lincoln Battalion (part of the International Brigade) and with anarchist CNT forces.

In addition to fighting, according to Allen Guttmann, author of the book “The Wound In The Heard: America and the Spanish Civil War” (1962, Free Press of Glencoe), “The Industrial Worker, a publication of the IWW, which gave its eager support to the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists, reprinted dispatches from CNT publications, and exposed the illegal shipment by Texaco, of oil to General Franco.” In the endnotes Guttmann cites the Industrial Worker of May 22, 1937.

Carlo Tresca, who was a Wobbly involved with major Wobbly strikes including the 1913 Paterson silk strike, and published an Italian-language anarchist newspaper, raised money for the Spanish anarchists and gave speeches on their behalf.

In addition to fighting in the Spanish Civil War, raising money for revolutionary Spain, and reporting on Wobblies in Spain, Wobblies also sought to preserve the history of Spain’s syndicalistic revolution. Sam Dolgoff, who since his teenage years was a Wobbly and lifelong anarchist of the anarcho-syndicalist persuasion, published the book “The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-management in the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939” (published by Black Rose Books Ltd.). Thus we see that the commitment of Wobblies to the workers revolution in Spain included the dissemination of information for historical memory and lessons for the future.

The extent of this workers revolution is proven by the following, as reported in Spanish Revolution:

“The English consulate in Barcelona has sent a list of all its citizens residing in Spain so that the necessary measures might be taken for their security and eventual return. To whom has the English consulate sent these lists? To the official authority which is in Barcelona, the Catalonia government? On the country, the lists were officially sent…to a committee of the CNT.”

But revolution and war were occurring in other parts of the Spain. Let us look at what this first issue of Spanish Revolution says about the struggle in Valencia. On page 4 of the first issue, headlined, “Victory In Valencia,” and datelined “Valencia, Spain (FP)—(By airplane to Paris)” I do not know who wrote this report about Valencia. The story went on to say:

“For a week the tension in Valencia was so great that nobody slept or went home. The workers camped in the streets.

“The civil authorities had refused to open the arsenals and arm the people as Madrid had ordered. At the end of the town, across the river, three regiments of soldiers were confined to the barracks. They gave no sign of sympathy. But their officers were known to be adherents to the fascist rebellion. Any moment it was feared that the troops march in, and occupy the town, and set up a white terror. The workers covered the city with barricades in anticipation of a fierce struggle. They were going to receive the military with cobblestones and kitchen knives and with their bare hands if need be.

“The colonel commanding the regiment called his men in the square of the barracks. ‘We will occupy Valencia this morning’ he said. ‘Tomorrow we will take Madrid.’”

After speaking, “A sergeant named Jose Fabra…killed him. A moment later all the officers” were killed. The soldiers left the fortress and distributed arms to the people. “Fascists in the city began to fire on the loyalists from roof tops.” But the revolutionary forces triumphed in Valencia in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War.

Spanish Revolution published an appeal “TO THE WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES.” They noted that a cable to The Nation which confirmed the reports.

There was a new system of fighting crime. There were civilian patrols. Defendants in criminal cases could be represented by a lawyer or a non-lawyer. People employed in nursing homes were chosen on the basis of their compassion. Workers and peasants controlled most of Catalonia. Businesses where the boss was not pro-fascist were usually not seized. Also, the British government delivered a list of businesses to the CNT-FAI that where not to be touched.

Michael Shelden discovered and wrote in “Orwell: The Authorized Biography” that Orwell’s serving in the POUM militia during the Spanish Civil War was used for recruiting purposed by an organ of the British Independent Labour Party.

A number of members of the Industrial Workers of the World fought on behalf of the Spanish Loyalists, that is on behalf of the Spanish revolution. In what George Orwell said, in his essay “Looking Back On The Spanish War,” this was essentially a class war.

Sadly this revolution was betrayed by the Soviet Union and defeated by Franco’s forces, with German and Italian weapons and manpower. One of the ironies of the Spanish Civil War was that the Spanish anarchists welcomed the Republic in 1931, and would have been willing to live under a republican form of government. But once the fascist rebellion had started, the response was the Spanish revolution.

Many books have been written on the Spanish Civil War, but few on the Spanish revolution that happened at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

In late November 1936 Durruti was killed in the frontlines. The New York Times reported that there were at least 500,000 in Durruti’s funeral precession. Emma Goldman believed that his ideas and ideals lived on. The survivors of the Spanish Revolution said in the Spanish documentary “Living Utopia” that they were fortunate to have lived through that revolution.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

On May 3, 1886, union members at the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago, who had been locked out, confronted strikebreakers as they left the plant. A firefight broke out involving the police, and strikers were killed. In response a protest rally was called at a downtown open area called The Haymarket. The rally was peaceful, but as the meeting was coming to an end someone threw a bomb and seven policemen died. After a dramatic trial and unsuccessful appeals, four so-called “anarchists” were hanged.

This story became familiar to workingclass movements all over the world. May 1 became international May Day. In Mexico City, it has been a tradition that every May Day translated excerpts from the last words of two of the executed men, Albert Parsons and August Spies, are read aloud to huge crowds in the central public square, or zocalo.

An excellent recent book by James Green, entitled “Death in the Haymarket,” tells the story in more detail. Perhaps you, like myself, will be most moved by the fact that Parsons escaped the police dragnet, made his way to Wisconsin, changed his appearance, and then…came back to Chicago, walking into the courtroom so as to share the fate of his comrades.

Another General Strike?

There is a live possibility that within the year 2014 there will be another general strike in the United States.

It would not be a strike of the entire working-class. But it would be a strike, in many parts of the country, by prisoners, among them prisoners in “supermax” (highest security) prisons serving indefinite sentences in solitary confinement.

A statement circulated last fall by prisoners at the Pelican Bay supermax in California declared that they were “members of the working-class poor, warehoused in prisons.” A dramatic example of the spreading insurgency is the hunger strike and court victory of Hispanic workers detained for deportation at the federal facility in Tacoma, Wash.

This movement is taking shape spontaneously, from below. Some general features can be discerned:

1) When will it occur? It seems clear that activity will occur in the period between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Sept. 9 is the 43rd anniversary of the Attica uprising. Oct. 27 is the anniversary of the date on which the lockdown at Marion penitentiary in Illinois was made permanent. A major support network has called for action throughout the month of October concerning “mass incarceration.” Within this general framework, it doesn’t really matter if different groups do different things on different days.

2) What are the general demands? Will there also be local demands? Will everyone be expected to hunger strike? “Stop mass incarceration” will surely be one general demand. “No solitary confinement longer than 15 days” is likely to be another. In addition, every group will presumably have demands specific to its situation. Thus at Menard, Ill., prisoners want to know why they are being placed in administrative detention and how long it will last.

Critically, whatever prisoners initiate will not be limited to the liberal strategy of prohibiting solitary confinement for juveniles, pregnant women, and prisoners who are mentally challenged. It will insist that all human beings, no matter how resilient, are damaged when they are cut off from other persons. It will seek to end solitary confinement for everyone.

A hunger strike has been the strategy of choice for many insurgent prisoners in recent years. But one assumes that groups and individuals may choose any non-violent approach

3) What about divisions among prisoners of different ethnic and racial groups? A great achievement of the initial struggles in Ohio, California, and Illinois during the past few years is that prisoners have set all such differences aside in the interest of solidarity. A small but successful hunger strike by three members of the Lucasville Five in Ohio involved a Sunni Muslim imam, a longtime leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, and an unaffiliated African American. In 2013, representatives on the Pelican Bay Short Corridor of African Americans, Caucasian, Southern Californian and Northern Californian Hispanics declared a truce and invited groups on the street to join them in doing so.

4) What about nonviolence? Without any exception known to me, all the prisoner movements of recent years, whatever the issue or location within the United States, have insisted on non-violence. This is a strategy dictated by circumstances. Before Nelson Mandela was imprisoned he was in charge of preparations by the African National Congress for guerrilla warfare against the apartheid government of South Africa. On Robben Island there was no opportunity to organize armed insurrection and Mandela became a legendary advocate of mass non-violent resistance. Similarly, as David Shulman writes in The New York Review of Books for April 24, 2014, in Palestine “anyone who knows the Palestinian grassroots activists…knows that the dream of mass Gandhian-style action is their great hope.”

From the Bottom Up

The key thing to remember, and hold on to, is that general strikes are not “organized.” The people themselves, in their infinite variety, make them happen.

In the Russian Revolution of 1905, as described by Rosa Luxemburg in her book “The Mass Strike,” workers themselves in city after city across the vastness of Russia, with quite different issues serving as sparks of rebellion in different places, turned Russian society upside down.

It can happen in the United States as well. When campesinos in the fields of California in 1970 decided to throw their support to the United Farm Workers of America (rather than the Teamsters), Marshall Ganz says it was “one of those moments”:

“Really, it was a general strike, from north of Watsonville all the way south to below King City, a coastal area of about 120 miles. Companies were going on strike that we didn’t know existed. People would come and say, ‘We’re the brussel sprouts workers. Help us strike.’ ‘We’re the radish workers.’ It was led by committees of workers, and we were trying to coordinate it as best we could.”

How ironic it would be if the men and women scorned by society as “the worst of the worst,” and even by some radicals as a “Lumpenproletariat,” were to lead the way toward rediscovery of the only force that can truly transform this brutal capitalist world: the spirit of solidarity.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

For more than 50 years, Staughton Lynd has been a leading radical in the United States. He was an engaged supporter of the Black Liberation Movement in the Deep South in the early 1960s, most notably as coordinator of the Freedom Schools during Mississippi Summer in 1964. He was an active opponent of U.S. aggression in Indochina, including as chairperson of the first national demonstration against the war in Vietnam in April 1965. In recent decades, Lynd hasbeen an attorney representing prisoners, particularly at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, and has written a book, a play and numerous articles about the 1993 uprising at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Since the late 1960s, Lynd has also been deeply involved in the labor movement as an activist, attorney and prolific writer. Inspired by Marty Glaberman, Stan Weir and Ed Mann, Lynd has been a passionate and prolific proponent of decentralized, rank-and-file driven unionism. In November 2014, Haymarket Books will publish a book by Lynd entitled “Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below.” A new edition of his book “Solidarity Unionism: Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below” with an introduction by radical labor scholar and activist Immanuel Ness will be published by PM Press in the spring of 2015.

Andy Piascik (AP): What is your general view of the state of organized labor in the United States today?

Staughton Lynd (SL): My general view, like that of everyone else, is that the labor movement is in catastrophic decline. My particular view is that the reason for this decline is not the Supreme Court, or the McCarthy period, or anything that might be remedied by changing the top leadership of unions, but the model of trade union organizing that has existed in all CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations] unions since 1935. The critical elements of this model are: 1) exclusive representation of a bargaining unit by a single union; 2) the dues check-off, whereby the employer deducts dues for the union from the paycheck of every member of the bargaining unit; 3) a clause prohibiting strikes and slowdowns for the duration of the contract; and 4) a “management prerogatives” clause giving the employer the right to make investment decisions unilaterally.

In combination, these clauses in the typical CIO contract give the employer the right to close the plant and prevent the workers from doing anything about it. So long as collective bargaining agreements conform to this template, the election of a Miller, a Sadlowski, a Carey, a Sweeney or a Trumka will not bring about fundamental change.

AP: You have written extensively about the working-class upheaval of the 1930s, both the early years of the decade and the formation of the CIO. How and why was the CIO consolidated as a top-down organization?

SL: It tends to be forgotten that the CIO was created by John L. Lewis. There is now a significant body of scholarship to the effect that 1) Lewis centralized the administration of the UMW [United Mine Workers of America] so as to minimize the traditional influence of local unions and ran the national union in an altogether high-handed manner; 2) Lewis went out of his way to assure the business community that if they bargained with the CIO such phenomena as wildcat strikes would become a thing of the past; 3) many liberals and radicals such as Roger Baldwin of the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] opposed the Wagner Act, believing correctly that the result would be exactly what has occurred and that alternatives such as the Progressive Miners in southern Illinois would be steamrollered; and 4) contrary to popular belief, the revival of unionism among miners began from below beforethe passage of the National Recovery Act with its Section 7 during the spring of 1933 and the long-lasting miners’ strike the following summer was created and persisted in by rank-and-file miners despite endless attempts by Lewis and his lieutenant Philip Murray to settle it from above.

AP: You consistently underscore the importance of local initiatives. What do such initiatives look like in practice and why might they be more fruitful than national reform campaigns?

SL: At first glance any imaginable agglomeration of local groups appears helpless in contrast to gigantic international corporations. Indeed, in my early struggles with this dilemma, I highlighted the absence in the steel industry in the 1930s of effective coordination between new local unions improvised by the rank and file in a variety of locations.

The same problem presents itself today as low-wage workers in a variety of communities are simultaneously assisted, but also managed, by existing national unions like the UFCW [United Food and Commercial Workers] and SEIU [Service Employees International Union]. For the moment, the unions say they only want to help these workers win specific demands through direct action. Down the road, however, these same unions may seek to make local direct actions serve as stepping stones to their familiar objective: exclusive bargaining status, complete with dues check-off and no-strike clause[s].

I have come to feel that the sense of helplessness experienced by local groups may be exaggerated, even illusory. In a single workplace, workers in a particular strategic unit or department may be able to bring the entire enterprise to a halt. Vicki Starr (a.k.a. Stella Nowicki) described how this was true when the “beef kill” stopped work in the Chicago stockyards in the 1930s (“Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers,” Haymarket Books, 2012).

Something like that occurred at the giant Walmart warehouse in Elwood, Ill., near Chicago, two years ago. That particular warehouse handled most of the products flowing into the multitudinous Walmart distribution points throughout the United States. So severe was the disruption caused when these particular workers walked out for a couple of weeks over local grievances that the company not only granted some of their demands but also welcomed them back to work and paid back pay for the time they were on strike! Thus even when confronted with the challenge of national coordination, inquiry circles back to the willingness of small groups of workers in particular critical segments of the production or distribution process to stop work.

Energy should go into building strong nuclei of self-activity on the workplace floor. Stan Weir called such entities “informal work groups.” He was convinced that such groupings come into being wherever humans bring work together and develop leadership of a sort from below, as needed. Energy should not go into electing new top officials.

AP: Would you elaborate on the drawbacks of the “exclusive representation” stipulation in the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act]?

SL: There are at least three or four drawbacks to the idea of exclusive representation:

1) The initial contact between a union organizer and a group of workers involves activities meaningless in themselves, such as collecting signatures on cards or petitions which are then forwarded to the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board]. The obvious alternative is to build solidarity, what Stan Weir called creating a “family at work,” by means of small direct actions.

2) Once a union is successful in winning a representation election pursuant to Section 9 of the NLRA (now LMRA [Labor Management Relations Act]), it becomes extremely difficult for a group of workers to “decertify,” that is, to choose another union to represent them. In contrast, in Nicaragua during the 1980s, a union was selected only for the duration of a single contract, at the expiration of which there was a new election to choose a union to negotiate the next contract.

3) Self-evidently, the Section 9 process made it seem impossible for a minority of workers to do anything meaningful until it became a majority. As everyone knows this need not be the case, in a workplace or any other setting. The idea of “minority” or “members-only” unionism has accordingly been gaining ground. Its leading exponent is Professor Charles Morris, who argues that under the NLRA as originally conceived, the employer had a legal obligation to bargain with any group of workers, even if was not a majority (“The Blue Eagle at Work: Reclaiming Democratic Rights in the Workplace,” ILR Press, 2005). Thus a group in a particular department that was strategic in the enterprise could successfully bargain for better terms for itself. If successful, other workers would be drawn to join the union.

The main problem with Professor Morris’ perspective is that he makes it quite clear that bargaining status for a minority union is only a stepping stone to becoming an exclusive representative. It is my understanding that in many European countries there can be many minority unions, each aligned with a different national political tendency. Such unions may join together for bargaining purposes.

4) I think the right has a point when it says that existing law and practice strips away the dimension of voluntariness from union membership.

AP: How about automatic dues check-off? It’s taken almost as gospel among progressives and radicals, not just bureaucrats, that it’s essential to the survival of unions.

SL: When Alice and I did interviews for what became “Rank and File,” roughly in 1970, weasked: What do you think is the main reason for the failure of CIO unionism to fulfill its promise? The answer that received more support than any other was, “The dues check-off.”

Sylvia Woods said that in her UAW [United Automobile Workers] local at Bendix during World War II, they deliberately did not seek the check-off because what happens when you have it is: everybody sits on their duffs and nobody does anything (“Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers,” Haymarket Books, 2012). The argument for dues check-off is inseparable from the argument for exclusive bargaining status. If you believe that a voluntary minority can accomplish more than an involuntary majority, the check-off recedes in importance.

Moreover, absent the check-off there is of necessity a greater tendency for activists to stay in the workplace rather than seeking a desk at “union headquarters” in a separate building.

AP: Given the severe constraints of no-strike and management prerogative clauses, why is there virtually no discussion even among rank-and-file oriented unionists of the need to get rid of or even modify them?

SL: I have asked myself this question over the years. I believe that the Wagner Act is Exhibit 1 for many radicals and liberals looking back on the successes and failures of the New Deal and of their own lives. I think of my own father, Robert S. Lynd. As a member of the governing board of the 20th Century Fund in the 1930s, he critiqued the Wagner Act for mistakenly presuming that the act would equalize the bargaining power of management and labor. Yet at a UAW educational conference after World War II, my dad delivered a speech that was well-received by the delegates and, according to Victor Reuther, reprinted as a pamphlet by the UAW because of insistent rank-and-file demand. Therein my father said that organized labor was the only force big enough to counter big business and that the country would move toward socialism or fascism depending on the outcome of this confrontation.

Roger Baldwin of the ACLU, on the other hand, opposed the Wagner Act because he saw how Lewis would use the mechanism of exclusive representation to squeeze the life out of the Progressive Miners in southern Illinois, the union actually preferred by the membership. See Cletus Daniels’ book on the ACLU in the 1930s (“The ACLU and the Wagner Act: An Inquiry Into the Depression-Era Crisis of American Liberalism,” ILR Press, 1980).

It is always easier to blame someone for the failure of a cherished remedy to deliver a solution than it is to critique the remedy itself. It is especially puzzling that folk on the left have been so insensitive to the dictatorial heavy hand that John L. Lewis laid on dissidents within his own union, and on naysayers within nascent CIO unions. When an initial convention of the UAW voted not to support [Franklin D.] Roosevelt in 1936 and to look toward a new labor party, Lewis prevailed through UAW President Homer Martin and CIO staff man Adolph Germer to have that vote reversed.

In truth, we live through the cycle of over-adulation of a leader, followed by disillusion with his or her performance, over and over. Labor historians and union staffers sequentially idolize Lewis, Reuther and Murray, followed by Arnold Miller, Sadlowski, Sweeney, Carey, Trumka and others, only to recognize when the smoke clears that the structure of unionism in the United States has not changed…but to go looking for another maximum leader! As we sang in the 1960s, “When will they ever learn?”

AP: What experiences did you have with unions that led you to your present conclusions?

SL: Let me describe three experiences:

1) Around 1969 or 1970, while still living in Chicago, I attended with some friends a Labor Against The War gathering at the hall of Harold Gibbons’ Teamsters local in St. Louis. The occasion was sponsored and steered by top national officers such as the Foners, Emil Mazey, Jerry Wurf, and as it turned out, Harry Bridges. The labor movement was five years late in opposing the Vietnam War, leaders like Walter Reuther having supported the war, but the occasion was promising. I found myself attending a rank-and-file caucus. We offered a motion from the floor that there be a single day on which workers all over the country would protest the war in whatever manner suited their circumstances (extended lunch hours, leafleting, local union resolution, press conference, etc.). His voice dripping with sarcasm, Mazey invited delegates to vote on this crazy idea. The resolution passed by about three-to-one. So the apparatchiks canvassed over lunch and brought on Harry Bridges in the afternoon to ask the delegates to withdraw their approval. They did.

2) In Youngstown, the national office of the United Steelworkers refused to support a campaign against the steel mill shutdowns. Their advice was to be concerned about benefits: what Ed Mann and John Barbero derisively called “funeral arrangements.” The national union red-baited Gar Alperovitz and myself. We were defended by the Catholic bishop of the Youngstown diocese, Father James Malone. After our spirited campaign but courtroom defeat in district court, the Steelworkers refused to file even a friend of the court brief in support of our appeal to the federal Sixth Circuit. Now the national union makes happy talk about worker buyouts, more than 30 years too late.

3) Packard Electric, now known as Delphi Packard, had about 12,000 employees when we moved to Youngstown in 1976. Along with or next to GM [General Motors] Lordstown, it was the largest employer in the Youngstown area. The local had originally been part of the UE [United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America] and there was a clause in the local union constitution to the effect that any contract amendment had to be approved in a membership referendum. When the local violated this clause by agreeing to new language permitting 10- or 12-hour days without membership approval, we went to federal court and won. The company and union pushed through an approval process in a fog of misleading propaganda that we were unable to rebut. There are now less than 1,000 workers for Delphi in Youngstown and over 40,000 in Mexico. The national leadership of these mainstream unions was simply endlessly behind the curve of membership sentiment.

AP: You mentioned the unsuccessful efforts by steelworkers to take over control of closed mills in Youngstown 35 years ago. In many places, perhaps most notably Argentina, as well as at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, such efforts have been quite successful. Is assuming control of shuttered workplaces something unions, together with communities and local officials, should be attempting to do more of, and if so, how might it most effectively be done?

SL: This is the problem that in Youngstown and Pittsburgh we called, “socialism in one steel mill.” Historically, most single distressed companies that have attempted worker or worker-community ownership have either failed or over time become capitalist enterprises again. One runs into a variety of problems.

In Youngstown, we felt it would be a cruel temporary solution simply to buy any of the closed mills without modernizing them. Mere purchase might have cost $20 million. Necessary modernization to replace antiquated open hearths would have cost an additional sum of about $200 million, 10 times as much. This was at a time when the guaranteed loan fund, created by the U.S. government to assist the industry throughout the country, was only $100 million. In arrangements for worker “ownership” as at Weirton Steel, the new start-up capital was often derived by cutting workers’ wages and substituting common stock of the company. Pension experts specifically warn against a pension portfolio overly emphasizing any one company. Note, too, that Weirton was advised by Lazard Freres (head of a global financial and advisory firm headquartered in New York specializing in investment banking and asset management), and that while workers held a majority of the common stock, they were not permitted to fill a majority of the seats on the board of directors of the “worker-owned” company.

In a worker-owned meatpacking plant, the union president became a member of the board of directors. Only in retrospect did it become clear that the arrangement created a conflict of interest.

Note, too, that it is not clear to me that Republic Windows and Doors has been successful. I believe it has passed through a number of ownership arrangements.

I think there is no substitute for public ownership of the “commanding heights” of the economy. In the midst of our Youngstown struggle, representatives of Swedish metalworkers visited us. It was like a fairy story! In Sweden, when a plant was scheduled to close, printouts of available jobs were posted every day on the shop floor. Each worker received a year’s severance pay, and husband and wife were financed by the government to make a trip to a possible new job site. And public assistance went beyond “benefits.” Sweden had three separate steel mills: one in the far north, where iron was abundant; one inland, where the steel was poured; and one on the seacoast. Our visitors told us that the government insisted that they be combined into a single company.

I worked more than 15 years for a public enterprise, Legal Services, which provided legal assistance to persons who could not afford a private attorney. It was a highly decentralized operation, and it worked. I remain, as I have been for the last 70 years, a socialist.

AP: You participated in Occupy Youngstown and have drawn parallels between the Occupy phenomenon and youth-led revolts in 1905 Russia and 1956 Hungary that were joined by workers and became general insurrections. How is this different from traditional views of revolutionary change and how might it apply to the United States specifically, and the anti-austerity, anti-imperialist movements around the world in general?

SL: There are different groups and subgroups in any imaginable Rainbow Coalition for fundamental change. After a good deal of thought, I believe that neither soldiers nor prisoners can be the basic force for such change. The reason is that neither group is permanent. Prisoners are released one by one onto the street and usually go back to the old neighborhood. They struggle to survive and not to be again imprisoned. Soldiers, too, hopefully come home.

Students are a distinct group but they, too, are temporary. At Oberlin College, students concerned about criminal justice kept that concern alive for two or three student generations, but then it lapsed. Thus one comes back in the end to workers. Here also there are divisions and subgroups. Stan Weir used to emphasize how disruptive it was for the informal shop-floor networks formed during the 1930s when conscription for World War II picked them off, one by one, and broke up the subgroups. Adjunct professors represent a potential for change that has not yet organized itself whereas tenured full professors are unlikely to be helpful, at least in significant numbers.

There is a potential for transformative change within the working class, and, I conclude, only there. Manny Ness says that most fulltime workers are now in the Global South, and, as in India and South Africa, have been driven to open revolt, not only against employers but against do-nothing hierarchical unions.

Especially in an economy like that of the United States, stripped of manufacturing, “workers” need to be broadly defined. Moreover, it obviously will make a great deal of difference whether workers are encouraged to focus on individual material benefit, or, in solidarity, on common interests.

As women come into the workforce more fully and into positions of leadership, I believe that solidarity will be nurtured.

AP: You’ve written extensively about “accompaniment” as well as about your decision in the 1970s to “accompany” as an attorney, historian and writer rather than get a mill or factory job. Could you talk a bit about what accompaniment means and what you would suggest to a recent college graduate or professional who wants to support the kind of working-class movement we’ve been discussing?

SL: I continue to believe (see the conclusion of my book “Accompanying: Pathways to Social Change,” PM Press, 2013) that persons with college degrees can make their best contribution not as manual workers but as the kind of professional they have been trained to become, in daily contact with, and support of, other kinds of workers. Instead of pursuing a professional career in an academic or upper-middle-income setting, a person who acquires credentials to practice as a useful sort of professional—teacher, doctor or nurse, lawyer—should consider locating and putting down roots at an address that gives poor and working people easy access to him or her. Perhaps I can best explain what I mean by describing my own experience.

After I got graduate degrees in history, my first teaching job was at Spelman College, a school for African American young women (who included future Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Alice Walker). We lived on campus, around the corner from Howard Zinn and his family. As a result, I was able to hold an honors seminar in our living room. It would have been difficult, in the segregated Atlanta of the 1960s, to do so off-campus.

While I was in Mississippi, as coordinator of the Freedom Schools in the summer of 1964, before starting to teach at Yale, my wife Alice found an apartment for us in New Haven, in a moderate-income downtown neighborhood near a good public school. Members of the Yale faculty asked her, “Why would you want to live so close to the university that it will be easy for students to visit you?”

Of course accompaniment is not just a question of where you live, but of whom you serve. I was fired by the main unionside law firm in Youngstown for assisting individual workers who were at odds with the unions who were the firm’s main clients. When “Labor Law for the Rank and Filer” was published, Alice and I debated whether to give a copy of the book to the boss. We decided to do so. I was fired at 10 a.m. the next morning.

Fortunately, I had already become a member of the board of directors of the local Legal Services office. I called the executive director, and within a week of my discharge, I was practicing employment law as a Legal Services attorney. From time to time, local lawyers at private firms would ask me when I would be moving on to the “real” practice of law. I responded that I was happy as a pig in mud at Legal Services.

Since retirement, Alice and I have been volunteer attorneys for the ACLU of Ohio. From 1978 to the present moment, 36 years, I have been able to practice law for needy clients whom the Legal Services office or ACLU served without charge!

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

Originally posted: April 1, 2014 atZnet
Also appeared in the Industrial Worker (May 2014)