p In the early 1960s, the US labour movement entered a new period of its development, a period, as described by Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USA, "of mass discontent and mass probing, when injustices and inequities are challenged, when old concepts, old alliances and accepted practices no longer meet the needs of the rising struggles pressuring for change.”  [7•1 

p The serious economic and political difficulties which American imperialism had run into in the preceding two decades created additional possibilities for the labour movement. Structural changes in the economy, the consequences of the scientific and technological revolution, the relative weakening of US positions in world industrial production, trade and monetary reserves, the altered international situation and the successes scored by the socialist countries—all these factors tended to aggravate the social antagonisms within the country and had impetus to an upsurge in the class struggle, introducing into it certain new features.

p Mass struggle in recent years has moved along four basic lines: for equality and civil rights for the black people; for peace and against the government’s aggressive foreign policy; for democracy; for the vital interests and rights of the working class. These mass movements, which have been unfolding since the early 1960s against a background of a 8 noticeably heightened offensive against broad segments of the working people by the monopolies, determine the specific character of the present period in the labour movement.

p This book is devoted to a study of present developments in the US labour movement; it examines above all the present status of working people in the United States and the major aspects of the struggle of the working class to defend its economic interests and rights. Considerable attention is given to government labour policy under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, and the attitudes and reactions of labour unions to that policy. An examination is made of new trends in the progressive development of the trade union movement and the growth of union activity after the period of stagnation in which the American trade union movement found itself in the 1950s. Special attention is given to the strike movement and its specific features.

As noted in the documents of the Communist Party of the USA, the qualitative changes in the mass struggle of working people in the 1960s have made practicable the aspiration of the great mass of rank-and-file union members to transform the organised labour movement into an instrument of class struggle capable of dealing with today’s problems. The period under consideration contains much that is important for assessing the possibilities and future prospects of the working people’s struggle against the power of the monopolies, the struggle for a democratic renovation of American society and the struggle for socialism.