p The first half of the 1960s was rich in events, many of which had a direct influence on the labor movement. With the development of state-monopoly capitalism, the polarization of class forces increased. The ultra-right circles of the monopoly bourgeoisie were demanding a more aggressive foreign policy course, irreconcilable struggle against any opposition to such a course, and the use of repressive measures against the Communist Party, the labor unions and the Negro movement. They objected to the increasing role of the government in the economic life of the country, assessing this process as a tendency toward totalitarian power and the implantation of socialism.
p The new Democratic administration was trying to speed up production growth, improve the balance of payments and stabilize prices. It intended to use tax policy and measures to hold down the growth of wages as an incentive for the monopolies to expand production. The recurring recessions, the low industrial growth rate and high unemployment were causing serious alarm in government spheres.
p The moderates in the monopoly bourgeoisie regarded government interference in the economy as a necessary measure in view of the increasingly sharp class struggle. Although they were not satisfied with the price stabilization policy, they gave their full backing to government regulation of labor relations. In this sphere, government agencies acted not as “neutral mediators" in a bilateral dispute, but as a third side, 425 ostensibly representing the interests of the public, with its own demands and conditions. The government played the role of defender of a “public” that was without class features, opposing its interests (the so-called public interest) to the demands of the workers in order to limit the strength and possibilities of the labor unions in their negotiations with employers. [425•1 It also tried to limit, and wherever possible to bring to naught, strikes in the leading industries, by forcing the unions to seek peaceful settlement of disputes.
p The struggle for power between the political parties, in which ultra-right elements—irreconcilable enemies of the working class—had become active, inevitably drew the unions into politics. The policies of state-monopoly capitalism intensified the demarcation of class forces, which brought the political and the economic aspects in the working-class struggle closer together.
p The developing situation in the class struggle forced the unions to rouse the masses of organized workers to political activity—something they had formerly doggedly tried to suppress.
p The presidential election of 1960 was of great importance to the American people. The domestic and foreign policies of the Eisenhower administration affected the vital interests of the basic mass of the population. The working people were bearing the greatest burdens.
p This tended to give the edge in the election race to the Democratic Party, which sought in every way to dissociate itself from the Eisenhower administration’s obvious failures. However, holding a majority in Congress, the Democratic Party carried a full share of responsibility for the political course of the nation.
p The AFL-CIO decided without any hesitation to support the Democratic Party and its candidate for President, Senator John F. Kennedy, a career politician and son of a Boston millionaire. This decision was adopted by the overwhelming majority of the General Board, of which the principal officer of each affiliated national and international union was a member. The 426 independent United Electrical Workers and the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union announced that they would support neither Kennedy nor Nixon.
p The ALF-CIO leadership attached tremendous importance to the participation of the labor unions in the election campaign, considering this to be task No. 1. The executive council sent a memorandum to the Democratic Party platform committee, in which it presented its position on domestic and foreign policy issues. Unlike a number of other statements and declarations, this document presented the demands of the workers in an objective light. The federation expressed concern about the stagnating economy, the growth of unemployment, and the insecurity of the great mass of workers’ families. It noted that employers were automating production in order to reduce employment. In 1953, the then existing unemployment rate of 2.7 per cent was considered normal. By 1960, it had grown to 5 per cent, which was now also called “normal unemployment". [426•1
p The low economic growth rate in the 1950s adversely affected the working people’s condition. “Let us remember,” the unions pointed out, “that we have not abolished poverty in this country. We still have over seven million families and single individuals whose total income is less than $2,000 a year; and almost three million whose income is less than $1,000. Those are shameful figures for America in I960." [426•2 The federation suggested raising the minimum wage from $1.00 to $ 1.25 an hour, and to extend it to a larger segment of low-paid employees. It raised the question of shortening the workweek. The existing 40-hour week established more than 20 years earlier, the document said, should be updated as rapidly as possible to provide for a standard 7-hour day, 35-hour week. [426•3 It urged increasing unemployment benefits to two-thirds of a worker’s wage, and making them payable for 39 weeks.
p In early I960, the top AFL-CIO officials were still speaking against normalization of Soviet-American relations. In April of that year, on the eve of a meeting of heads of government in 427 Paris, the executive council called a conference in New York on foreign policy issues. Among the speakers there was Assistant Secretary of State Douglas Dillon, a spokesman for the interests of the Rockefeller monopoly. The blatant propaganda of intolerance toward a policy of international cooperation and peace in his speech embarrassed even some of Meany’s tested associates, while others of their colleagues quite frankly doubted the correctness of this course. Al Hartnett, secretarytreasurer of the International Union of Electrical Workers, came out for establishing ties with Soviet trade unions, explaining that “there is no better way to improve an understanding between peoples than by direct contacts". [427•1 Victor Reuther, a member of the AFL-CIO’s international affairs department, shared this view. He said the slogans of anti-communism did not bring “influence”, and deplored the fact that, while the United States itself won its independence in revolution, “when revolutions of this character take place in other parts of the world we are frightened”. He recalled that “we were silent when Batista was oppressing the people". [427•2
p For all the eagerness of the federation’s leaders to demonstrate labor union unity on foreign policy issues, they were unable to bring this off. In this connection, The New York Times remarked that despite the surface politeness of the debate it revealed the same deep differences as those causing a split among the UN member-countries. The disruption of the summit conference in Paris drew protests from some labor unions. President of Ford Local 600 of the UAW Carl Stellate, for example, urged the people to call on Congress and the President to initiate a policy designed to bring about a speedy resumption of the conference. [427•3
p Taking into consideration the discontent in the unions, the AFL-CIO leadership felt obliged to state in its recommendations to the Democratic Party platform committee: “There must be no limit to our patience and persistence in seeking just and peaceful settlements of issues. In this spirit, our country 428 should ... always keep open the door to negotiations with Moscow.” [428•1
p The Democratic Party and Kennedy built their election campaign with an eye to winning the support of labor. They generously dispensed promises to the workers as they heaped criticism on the domestic and foreign policies of the Republicans. Applying the motto that “the people must know the truth”, Kennedy did not back away from the bitter truth about stagnation in the economy, chronic unemployment and the plight of the working people, particularly since he could put the whole blame for these ailments onto the Republicans. At a meeting in Detroit, Kennedy told workers: “Their slogan is ’You never had it so good.’ But let them tell that to the 4,000,000 people who are out of work, to the 3,000,000 Americans who must work part time. Let them tell that to those who farm our farms in our depressed areas, in our deserted textile and coal towns." [428•2
p Giving wide publicity to such statements by the Democratic candidate, the labor leaders declared that “the election of John F.Kennedy and Lyndon B.Johnson as President and VicePresident, respectively, is in the best interests of the United States and of the labor movement; and we urge our members to give them full and unstinting support". [428•3 The platforms of the two parties were compared in this appeal. The Republicans, it said, promised “diligent administration of both the Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin Acts”, while “the Democratic platform unequivocally pledges repeal of anti-labor and restrictive provisions of both acts, as well as adoption of an affirmative labor policy". [428•4 The Democrats also pledged to repeal Section 14 (b) of the Taft-Hartley Act under which the states were allowed to pass “right-to-work” laws. The Democratic platform said: “Millions of workers just now seeking to organize are blocked by Federally authorized ‘right-to-work’ laws, unreasonable limitations on the right to picket, and other hampering legislative and administrative provisions." [428•5
429p The Democrats supported labor’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour and to have it extended to new categories of working people. According to labor data, more than 20 million low-paid workers were not yet covered by the minimum wage law. The Democrats promised improvements in unemployment benefits, saying that “we will establish uniform minimum standards throughout the nation for coverage, duration, and amount of unemployment insurance benefits". [429•1 But this was just an election promise, action on which was put off every time the Democrats came to power.
p As for Negro civil rights, the top labor leaders did not believe in the promises of either the Republicans or Democrats. Both parties were split on this question, the AFL-CIO message said. Only one-third of the Republicans in Congress usually voted in support of civil rights bills. The rest “could consistently be found voting with the Southern Democrats, just as the Dixiecrat bloc voted with the GOP on economic issues". [429•2
p As noted earlier, in some elections the unions succeeded in getting confirmed enemies of labor defeated at the polls, and in electing, as happened in 1958, a majority of labor’s “friends” to Congress. However, this did not alter the attitude of Congress toward them. During the first session of the 86th Congress in 1959, for instance, the anti-labor Landrum-Griffin Act was passed. During the second session in 1960, a number of bills connected with the needs of working people were defeated. An AFL-CIO pamphlet on the 86th Congress said that no Congress had ever rejected so many ppsitive bills as did the legislators of the 86th Congress, and that the coalition of Republicans and Dixiecrats, ignoring the will of the majority, had turned Congress into a funeral parlor for bills on aid to depressed areas, schools, civil rights, housing and many other measures.
p Comparing the platforms of the Republicans and Democrats, the leadership of the AFL-CIO could reveal nothing else but bipartisan unity with respect to foreign policy principles and militarization. [429•3 The only difference was that the 430 Democrats criticized the Republicans for slackening the pace of militarization. The Democratic platform said: “When the Democratic Administration left office in 1953, the United States was the pre-eminent power in the world. The Republican Administration has lost that position of pre-eminence." [430•1 The Democrats promised to “re-establish” US military strength, and to step up defense programs which they said were “now slowed down, terminated, suspended, or neglected for lack of budgetary support". [430•2 Undoubtedly, the weakest part of the Democratic platform in the eyes of millions of voters was its foreign policy plank.
p Making a choice between the two bourgeois parties was particularly hard for Negro voters. At one time, in line with a tradition associated with Lincoln, Negroes had counted themselves as Republicans, and looked upon a Negro Democrat as a traitor. Beginning with the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, however, a considerable proportion of the Negro population began to support the Democratic Party.
p In the South, Negroes were in actual fact deprived of the right to vote, despite the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of his race or color, and authorizes Congress to enact appropriate legislation to enforce this provision.
p But now, the southern racists felt that even the tested means of intimidation and violence were not enough to halt the growing pressure of the Negroes. Some states introduced a complicated system of “literacy” tests at the time of voter registration. In Georgia, where Negroes made up almost half of the voters, a law was passed, under which Negroes who wanted to register had to answer thirty questions. In Mississippi, 98.4 per cent of the Negroes of voting age were denied the right to vote.
p However, in the northern and western states, where the Negro population had grown rapidly as a result of migration from the South, opportunities for Negroes to take part in elections increased considerably. On the eve of the presidential 431 election, a civil rights bill was introduced in Congress at the initiative of the Eisenhower administration. It provided for the elimination of discrimination in voting rights, education and employment. In response, the Democrats introduced more than one hundred compromise civil rights bills. The debate that ensued paralyzed the work of Congress, especially when the Dixiecrats resorted to the filibuster. From February 29, the Senate was kept in session round the clock, during which time the opponents of the bill were obliged to provide a steady stream of speakers, and their supporters, to guarantee a quorum.
p For two months running the racist filibusters replaced each other on the floor of the Senate, beating all records for duration of obstruction. The result of this prolonged “debate” was a civil rights law in which not a trace of what the administration proposed remained. Even so, on May 6, 1960, President Eisenhower signed this law, apparently feeling that the goal had been achieved. The American press spoke of the unseemliness of this game the Democrats and Republicans were playing with the vital interests of the Negro people.
p The new law concerned only the voting rights of Negroes; however, it did not guarantee them these rights. To win them, the Negro had to go through a whole labyrinth of courts. And even so, the last word remained with the local authorities, who could say that any given Negro did not meet the requirements of the State Constitution. Negro organizations called the law a swindle. Martin Luther King declared that both the Democrats and the Republicans were playing the hypocrite in the civil rights question.
p The Communist Party of the United States participated in the election campaign as far as it could. On.August 8, 1960, the National Committee published its election platform. It said that the party would have preferred to put up its own candidates for president and vice-president, but “that is not possible, only because of a whole series of restrictive laws—laws which violate our nation’s Constitution and its Bill of Rights". [431•1 The Communist Party announced that it would not give any support to candidates of the bourgeois parties who 432 stood on positions of the cold war, the arms race and anti-communism.
p The Communists acknowledged the fact that the majority of the nation’s workers supported the bourgeois parties; therefore, they felt that it would be unrealistic to boycott the elections since it “would not be understood by the broad masses". [432•1 The party rejected this tactic, but continued patiently and persistently to promote the ideas of independent political action by organized workers. [432•2
p On the whole, however, as in preceding years, the Communist Party had little influence on the course of the 1960 election race, for the means it had at its disposal for conducting a campaign were extremely limited.
p The 1960 elections brought victory to the Democratic Party. Its candidate John F. Kennedy became President of the United States. Three factors played the principal role in Kennedy’s victory: the active support of organized labor, a high percentage of the Negro vote, and the common desire of a broad cross-section of the American people for a change in administration and policy. However, the Democratic victory was a narrow one. The presidential votes were almost equally divided, with an edge of only one-half of one per cent sending Kennedy to the White House. Losing 22 seats in the House of Representatives, the Democrats retained 261 to the Republicans’ 176. In the Senate, the figures were 64 and 36.
p The labor unions expended no little effort in 1960 to strengthen the positions of the liberal-minded members of Congress. Of the 34 candidates running for the Senate, they supported 30 and succeeded in electing 18. Of the 437 candidates running for the House of Representatives, labor supported 337 and elected 187. As a result, as the AFL-CIO leadership conceded, “the composition of the new Senate in terms of liberals vs. conservatives remained basically unchanged". [432•3
p Thus, the first half of the 1960s was linked with the return of the Democratic Party to power. As for the top labor leadership, 433 it was satisfied with the results of the elections. It lauded its own “correct line" in the elections, regarding the Democrats’ coming to power as its own victory.
p President Kennedy’s labor policy placed the labor leaders into a difficult position. They did not’wish to quarrel with the Democratic administration, but pressure from below forced them to make at least a show of opposition. This concerned above all the persistent demands of the workers for a shorter workweek as a means of combatting unemployment. This, of course, would inevitably lead to greater wage and salary outlays, a prospect that evoked irreconcilable opposition on the part of employers. Nor did the Democratic Party sidestep the issue; even during the election campaign it seriously objected to any reduction of the workweek. Later, it went even further, insisting on limiting the growth of wages.
p This trend found practical expression in the “productivity formula" advanced by the President and his economic advisors. Under this formula, wages should not rise at a rate exceeding the average rate of productivity growth for industry as a whole. According to the estimates of the economic advisors, this stood at about 2.5 to 3 per cent per year. The unions were strongly urged to stay within the bounds of the “productivity formula"—in other words, to limit their demands for wage increases to 2 to 3 per cent, including also all fringe benefits. The employers in turn were asked to maintain price stability. The interests of the monopolies did not suffer, for prices continued to rise. The workers, however, ran into new difficulties.
p The progressive forces in the movement for a shorter workweek saw the chance to activate the masses of workers. A Communist Party statement noted that “American workers face a threat to their most fundamental right—the right to a job. Millions of jobs have already disappeared.... Automation, modernization of equipment, corporation mergers, speedup, increased big business investments in manufacturing plants abroad—all have devoured jobs.... The most fundamental issue confronting American labor today is job security." [433•1
434p The proceedings of labor union conventions and conferences in the early 1960s showed how vitally important the problem of job security had become for Americans of the most diverse occupations and trades. Delegates at the United Steelworkers’ convention in September 1960 were concerned most of all about unemployment, automation, and the need for a shorter workweek. They pointed out that automatic machines by themselves were worthless if people could not buy what the machines produced. But the monopolies had their own calculations: the more workers a machine replaced, the more profitable it was. As a result of this kind of arithmetic, over 150,000 Steelworkers were thrown out of work. As a means of solving the problem, many delegates demanded a 32-hour workweek without a reduction in pay.
p The Harvester United Auto Workers Council declared in March 1961 that “the shorter workweek is the most important contractual demand and should be given first priority". [434•1
p At the UAW convention in April 1961, delegates insisted that the demand for a shorter workweek be uppermost in negotiations with the automobile magnates. A delegate from General Motors Local 544 in Pittsburgh charged that the UAW was getting “wishy-washy” and lacked a strong position for negotiations. But, he said, “now is the time to get some of the fat off the GM turkey". [434•2 John Devito, president of GM Local 45 of Cleveland and the national leader of the 30-40-60 campaign [434•3 in the UAW, told the convention that his local was ready to put up a fight. “We want to fight GM as a target,” he said. “GM can afford it.” UAW vice-president Leonard Woodcock assessed the convention’s demand for a shorter workweek as a historic turn, “putting a stop to the retreat that the labor movement has been going through these last five years". [434•4 As for Walter Reuther, he was against including the demand for a shorter workweek in the draft contract. Instead, he proposed a compromise “flexible workweek" formula. [434•5
435p Carl Stellate, president of the large Ford Local 600 in Detroit, described this proposal as an attempt to split the convention. He proposed declaring a one-hour strike as a sign of the unions’ determination to fight for a shorter workweek. The convention disagreed with Reuther’s arguments and included the 30-40 demand in the draft contract.
p The transport workers’, butchers’, communications workers’ and packinghouse workers’ unions also passed resolutions to fight for a shorter workweek. With this wave of activity came sharp criticism of the top leadership of the AFL-CIO. Joseph Beirne, an AFL-CIO vice-president and president of the Communications Association of America, told the convention: “I must tell you, with regret and sadness, that the AFL-CIO seems ill-prepared for these ’challenging years ahead’. Simply stated, the leadership of the AFL-CIO has become neutralized under the dead-weight pressure of retrogression and bitter, conflicting jurisdictional interests." [435•1 Michael Quill, president of the Transport Workers Union, uttered many bitter truths about the AFL-CIO leadership at a convention of his union. He charged, among other things, that the labor leaders had been slow in recognizing the dangerous consequences of automation and failed to work out an effective fight to meet them. The TWU’s goal, he said, was the 32-hour, four-day week, as an answer to automation. [435•2
p Quill continued his criticism in a letter to Meany, in which he said that all of the problems that had divided the AFL and CIO and brought them into conflict before their merger remained unresolved. In the six years since the merger almost nothing had been done to overcome racial discrimination in the labor movement or to organize the unorganized.
p There was increasing criticism also from the industrial unions, in particular at the AFL-CIO convention in December 1961, in Miami Beach, Florida. In his speech at the convention Meany responded to his critics with frenzied attacks against “world Communism" and apology of the policies of the monopoly bourgeoisie. He urged cooperation between labor 436 labor and management, and expressed amazement that anyone in the unions could think differently. [436•1
p The main thing hi the tactics of the top labor bosses was to skirt major issues that could aggravate the class struggle. They were willing to back resolutions deploring the hostile attitude taken by the monopolies and the government toward labor, but in practice they led the working class away from the burning issues of the times.
p Noting that “America’s organized workers had high hopes that the merger of the AFL and CIO six years ago would bring about new forward motion”, a resolution submitted by the industrial union department for the consideration of the convention deplored the fact that, actually, “there has been little forward motion in the field of labor organization". [436•2 In his speech, Reuther said: “The rank and file were ready to march, but we did not lead them." [436•3 “Either we grow and march forward,” he warned, “or we stagnate and we slip back." [436•4 Reuther proposed creating a fund for organizing the unorganized, and pledged on behalf of his union a contribution of $1,000,000.
p Representatives of the industrial unions displayed the greatest activity at the convention as they rocked the cumbersome bureaucratic machine of the federation leadership. Thev introduced resolutions on such urgent subjects as organizing the unorganized, civil rights, reducing the workweek, and repealing the anti-labor Landrum-Griffin Act. The delegation from the woodworkers’ union introduced a resolution on disarmament. The transport workers proposed that the federation’s decision to expel from the AFL-CIO two million organized workers on charges of corruption be put down as a mistake. In particular, the expulsion of the teamsters’ union, in Michael Quill’s opinion, was a deal between the AFL-CIO leadership, the McClellan Committee and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. [436•5
437p The National Maritime Union of America supported the transport workers as it registered a protest against attempts to split the teamsters’ union. Joseph Curran said: “We are in favor of organizing the unorganized. But I will oppose ... any attempt to disorganize the already organized. I think our main enemies are the employers. Our main enemies are the Goldwaters. ...We have enough of them, for .God’s sake, today. Let’s not make more enemies simply because the label is not the label that we choose to suit ourselves.” [437•1
p The convention devoted much attention to the problem of automation. The facts in the matter were obvious and did not generate debate, and even the leadership of the federation did not display its usual tendency to soft-pedal the issue. A resolution was passed that said: “Radical innovations continue to affect the jobs of today’s workers and threaten job opportunities tomorrow. Despite greater understanding of automation’s meaning and some efforts to meet its impact, the nation has developed neither the economic nor the social programs necessary to insure automation’s promise and to solve its problems." [437•2
p The resolution said further: “The Fifties taught America some automation lessons: As the vast new technology swept through basic industries, millions of workers in mining, railroads and manufacturing found their jobs destroyed and no new jobs in sight. Toward the end of the 1950s, another fact became clear: no part of America’s working life was immune to automation’s effects." [437•3
p President John F. Kennedy spoke at the AFL-CIO convention. He dwelled on the difficulties the youth of the nation faced, noting that “today there are already one million young Americans under the age of 25 who are both out of school and out of work. Millions of others are leaving school before completing their educations, destined to fall into a pattern of being untrained, unskilled, and eventually and frequently unemployed." [437•4 He also stressed the importance of foreign 438 trade and a favorable balance of payments for preserving the military strategic positions of the United States in Western Europe and other parts of the world.
p Expanding foreign markets, the President argued, was in the interests above all of American workers, since part of the nation’s capital was flowing out of the country and American companies were building their enterprises in Western Europe, thereby increasing unemployment in the United States. “Are we going to export our goods, our crops, or are we going to export our capital?” [438•1 That, in the President’s view, was the dilemma with respect to foreign markets. To resolve it, American workers would have to make sacrifices. “I am hopeful,” he said, “...that those of you who are in the area of wage negotiations will recognize the desirability of maintaining as stable prices as possible." [438•2 The monopolies, inflating prices in their quest for profit, always put the blame for high prices on the worker and his allegedly excessive demands for higher wages. Thus, price stabilization meant nothing other than wage stabilization, or, in other words, a wage freeze.
p The top labor leaders were quick to approve Kennedy’s appeal for sacrifices on the part of the workers. “Don’t worry about us,” Meany declared. “We will cooperate 1,000 per cent." [438•3 But many delegates at the convention did not share this sentiment. A resolution on wages unanimously adopted by the convention said that the unions will work for higher wages. In the debate on a resolution on foreign trade, delegates from a number of unions voiced serious objections to the President’s foreign trade plans, citing the heavy consequences for workers of an increasing influx of imported goods. Enoch Rust of the United Glass and Ceramic Workers of North America took the floor, saying, “I arise in objection to many parts of this resolution.” Further, he cited the example of how in Chicago one local union alone lost 20,000 members because the company began to import certain parts of its production output from abroad. [438•4
439p Two things became clear at this convention: one was that the top leadership was sticking to its old tactic of “reasonable passiveness" with respect to the acute problems facing the labor movement, and the other was that there was growing dissatisfaction with this tactic on the part of the industrial unions. The overt opportunism of Meany and his myrmidons had become so odious that it was out of keeping with the moderate conciliatory course the leaders of these unions followed.
p In August 1962, under pressure from the industrial unions, the AFL-CIO executive council decided to launch a broad campaign for the 35-hour workweek. Its resolution said: “The time has come for a basic change in the fundamental terms of employment in the United States.” [439•1 The leadership announced at a press conference that the “talking stage" for the 35-hour week was over, and that from then on the AFL-CIO was going to fight on this issue with funds and forces both in Congress and in negotiations. [439•2 It should be borne in mind, however, that a great chasm lay between the federation’s resolutions and their implementation. Much more important was the fact that this forced resolution reflected an upsurge of activity on the part of labor’s rank and file. That is why the Communist Party of the USA attached great importance to it. In this regard, a Communist Party statement said: “The growing struggles for the right to work and live led to the historic decision of the AFL-CIO Executive Council on August 13, 1962 to launch a national campaign for a 35-hour week with no reduction in weekly pay. This campaign can present the first major defense of labor’s right to work since the 1930s." [439•3
p But there was no unity in labor’s actions. The initiative of union locals was stifled by the top leadership. The opposition put up by individual leaders at conventions and conferences did not bring about any noticeable change in the policies of the labor union elite. For that matter, these opposition leaders themselves turned off onto the well-worn path of compromises 440 and concessions whenever they got involved in a strike action. The real worth of convention and conference resolutions and the tactics of the labor leaders was given the surest test in the strike struggle.
p The strike movement in the first half of the 1960s unfolded in the midst of a changing economic situation.
p The fourth recession after World War II began in May 1960 and lasted about eight months. Overall industrial production fell by 8 per cent. As in earlier years, this recession affected basically the heavy industry. Durable goods production, in particular, fell by 13.6 per cent. [440•1 The steel, automobile and coal industries suffered most of all, while the chemical and power industries increased production by 7 to 8 per cent. Recovery began in early 1961, and in August production reached the pre-recession level, although enterprises producing durable commodities pulled out of the recession only in October. [440•2 On the whole, production grew by 7.6 per cent in 1962. [440•3
p After a brief decline in 1963, the growth rate was restored in 1964.
p In the five years from 1960 through 1964, US industrial production rose 21.4 per cent, or an average of 4.3 per cent per year, [440•4 which was higher than the average annual growth (2.5 per cent) of the preceding seven years. Among the factors contributing to the upturn were increased government investment, the total sum of which for 1961-1963 was $10 billion, and a higher volume of housing construction.
p The inflow of private capital into industry increased. This was stimulated by various incentive measures undertaken by the government and, what was most important, direct and indirect tax relief to corporations. Investment in new production and equipment over the five years grew by 26 per cent, and in 1964 amounted to $44.9 billion. [440•5 The corporations were making record profits (in 1964 alone they went up 14 per cent). [440•6 Industrial recovery, however, did not bring 441 unemployment down. It is significant that while industrial production had increased more than 20 per cent over the five years, unemployment remained unchanged (in 1964 there were 3.9 million unemployed—as many as in I960). [441•1 The high unemployment rate in the early 1960s had a certain restraining effect on the strike struggle.
p Serious barriers to the strike movement were created by the government’s policy of active interference in labor disputes and its attempts to rule out or curb strikes in the basic industries.
p The Kennedy administration urged the unions to show moderation and restraint in their wages-and-hours demands. The union leaders tried to maneuver between the demands of the workers and the policy of the government. On the one hand, they worked to maintain good relations with the White House and, on the other, tried to avoid stimulating sharp opposition in the unions. But not all of them managed to keep their footing on this slippery platform. Even James Carey (International Electrical Workers Union) and David McDonald (United Steelworkers), well experienced in the policy of class collaboration, were voted out of office by the members of their unions in late 1964.
The strike struggle went on in those years under difficult circumstances in which intensified development of technology was attended by an especially high level of long-term unemployment. The problem of employment and the struggle for jobs assumed exceptional and vital importance for wage earners. As can be seen from the table, there was no significant change in the number of strikes, but the number of workers involved dropped markedly in 1962 and 1963, to rise again in 1964. [441•2
Number of stoppages Workers involved (thousands) Man-days idle (millions) 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 3,333 3,367 3,614 3,320 3,655 3,860 1,320 1,450 1,230 941 1,640 1,480 19.1 16.3 18.6 16.0 22.9 23.3 442p Rising to struggle were construction workers, seamen, longshoremen, railroad workers, auto workers, missile plant workers, commercial airline personnel, typographical workers and others.
p The electrical workers had to operate under the difficult conditions of a split into two unions and the mutual animosity of their leaders. The demands of the United Electrical Workers (UEW) headed by Albert Fitzgerald, independent since its expulsion from the CIO, were frustrated by the conciliatory activity of the leaders of the AFL-CIO affiliate, the International Union of Electrical Workers (-IUE), particularly its president, James Carey. In August 1955, the IUE signed a five-year contract with General Electric under which the workers received a pay raise but no supplementary unemployment benefits. The independent UEW rejected this kind of contract, but a single-handed struggle had no prospect of success. For five years the electrical workers in accordance with the contract refrained from striking, incurring serious losses in wages and other benefits. In 1960, as the contract neared expiration, the IUE began negotiations for a new contract with General Electric and Westinghouse, endeavoring to win concessions from them without a strike. One of its demands was for supplementary unemployment benefits.
p A UEW conference held on March 20, in Washington, sharply criticized the conciliatory policy of the IUE leadership. The conference noted that the consequences of the five-year contract, which had “resulted from a deal between IUE Pres. James Carey and GE’s Vice-Pres. Boulware”, were that “wages in this industry have fallen behind in relationship to other industries and important contract protections have been eroded”. [442•1 Thus, wages were kept down even though company profits were at a high level. For example, GE’s profits per worker went up from $2,463 in 1955 to $4,518 in 1959. The profit per worker made by Westinghouse had doubled in that same period. At the same time, the number of production workers had been cut by 40,000. As stressed in a conference 443 resolution, in conditions of automation organized workers had to seek a reduction of the workweek with no reduction in weekly pay, because all other means already tried by the unions—supplementary unemployment benefits, for example—did not solve the problem. In 1955, when the United Auto Workers first won supplementary unemployment insurance benefits, there were 760,000 men in production. Five years later, 150,000 workers were jobless. The same situation was observed in the steel industry. In signing the contract with the steel companies in early 1960, McDonald declared that supplementary unemployment benefits “cannot solve the basic problem of chronic unemployment in major industries”. [443•1
p The UEW, consequently, came out with the demand for a reduction of the workweek to 35 hours with no reduction in weekly take-home pay. It also sought to have employers agree that when they relocated their plants to other parts of the country, they would guarantee jobs to union members with retention of seniority. The unions could win these demands only by acting in unison. But it was just this kind of unity that Carey would not agree to, although Fitzgerald twice made proposals of this nature to him. [443•2
p General Electric and Westinghouse skilfully capitalized on the discord between the unions. They tried to impose a three-year contract giving a 17-cent-an-hour wage raise, but on the condition that the sliding scale based on the cost of living index be cancelled. [443•3 Under the previous contract the workers received a wage increase of 32 cents an hour, plus an additional 10 cents an hour according to the sliding scale.
p Turning down the demand for supplementary unemployment benefits, GE and Westinghouse offered their own, substantially curtailed, program of unemployment relief. A worker laid off from a GE enterprise would begin to receive benefits from the company only after he had exhausted the state benefits due him, which amounted to no more than 30 444 per cent of his wages. Moreover, he would have to have at least three years of service with the company to qualify.
p The companies also agreed to a shorter workweek, but on the condition that the weekly pay would be cut, something that was already being practised by some enterprises. The UEW rejected the company’s proposal. On September 27, Fitzgerald made his second offer to Carey to combine efforts, but received no reply. [444•1
p It was obvious that a struggle in which each union acted alone was bound to fail since neither union had a majority of workers at the companies’ enterprises.
p On October 7, 1960, the AFL-CIO IUE called a strike without adequate preparation. There was no organization or unity among the workers. Some locals continued to work, while the strikers looked on with bitterness as their fellow-workers crossed the picket lines. The plants continued to operate, and the pickets were clubbed and arrested by the police. The workers fought staunchly, but to no avail. On October 27, Carey capitulated and accepted the company’s terms. [444•2
p On January 10, 1961, the ferry and tug boat workers in New York harbor went out on strike. The railroad companies that owned the tug boats had decided to reduce the size of the crews on the vessels. Each steam-propelled tug boat used to have a crew of seven. With the introduction of diesel engines, the crew was reduced to five. Now the companies were insisting on cutting it to three, saying that actually the captain alone was all that was needed to operate a tug. The result was a bitter strike. “I’ve been with the New York Central for 36 years,” said deck hand John Creeter. “If we don’t win this strike, I’m out on the street." [444•3 The strikers picketed the port and central railroad station of New York. The teamsters, longshoremen and railroad workers supported them. Traffic on eleven railroads came to a standstill. Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York declared on January 20 that the consequences of the strike could prove to be critical.
p Arthur Goldberg, who had just been appointed Secretary of 445 Labor, went to New York personally to save the situation. Together with Governor Rockefeller he persuaded the railroad companies to postpone their contemplated layoffs for a year. On these conditions the strike was terminated on January 23. In a commentary on the strike, the Look magazine noted that “this seemingly minor labor dispute soon partially paralyzed one of the world’s greatest cities. It also served as an ominous warning of the arrival of the Second Industrial Revolution”. The main cause of strikes in the future, it predicted, would be fear of automation. “Not wages, but fear of being thrown out of work by machines, will cause future strikes.” [445•1
p The Department of Labor’s tactic in this strike was used in other cases as well. Its main aim was to quash the dispute in each instance by postponing the settlement of acute issues concerning employment, and then, with the help of arbitration bodies, to push through the demands of the companies.
p The manner in which a dispute on the railroads was handled was a good example of this. In late 1960, the railroad companies launched a campaign to discharge 80,000 employees who had become “redundant” because of automation. The resulting conflict threatened to develop into a nationwide railroad strike. A commission was appointed to look into the causes of the dispute. In February 1962, it reported its findings to President Kennedy and recommended that the companies be permitted to eliminate unneeded jobs. The unions took the matter to court. The US Supreme Court upheld the decision of the commission and acknowledged the right of the owners to alter working conditions at their discretion. The workers began to prepare for a strike, setting August 29, 1963 as the deadline. At that point the legislature came to the aid of the companies. Congress hastily passed a law—which the President immediately signed—banning the strike for 180 days and introducing compulsory arbitration. [445•2 .Thus, the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government demonstrated their complete unanimity with the monopolies.
p The administration created a National Council of 446 Labor-Management Advisors, which included Meany, Reuther, McDonald and representatives of the monopolies and the public. Its function was to discuss certain aspects of labor relations and work out recommendations for the President on ways of averting strikes.
p The contract between the U AW and General Motors expired on August 31, 1961. Negotiations for a new contract had begun two months prior to that date. Considering the militant mood of the delegates at the union’s convention, Reuther could have demanded a reduction of the workweek. This alone would have created no less than 60,000 new jobs, while the elimination of overtime work, which the workers were also demanding, would have added another 24,000. But the union leadership sought a peaceful settlement to the prejudice of the workers’ demands.
p General Motors agreed to sign a contract containing only the general economic terms found in previous contracts. In particular, it provided for raising wages by 2.5 per cent in accordance with the growth of productivity, which was rising an average of 3.5 per cent, and extending the duration of supplementary unemployment benefits to 52 weeks. The company assumed the costs of a medical care plan for the workers and their families. The pension fund was increased, and the company would pay 50 per cent of the medical expenses of retired workers.
p On August 6, the union leadership approved the three-year contract. All that was needed now was its endorsement by the union locals. However, the workers demanded more radical measures against the speedup system. A union conference unanimously registered a vigorous protest against all forms of speedup.
p Some 15,000 complaints from workers about the bad working conditions and excessive workloads had piled up in the offices of the GM administration. But the new contract made no mention of these demands. This caused widespread dissatisfaction among the workers, and on September 11 union locals at the company’s plants declared a work stoppage. Over 250,000 workers took part in the strike. The company refused to make any changes in working conditions. The strike threatened to become a drawn-out affair. At a hastily called 447 448 meeting of the union’s executive committee, Reuther pushed through a resolution to terminate the strike. However, the leaders of the locals decided to continue it. Reuther faced an open revolt in the union. He demanded that all the recalcitrant local leaders come immediately to Detroit in order, with his personal participation, to settle relations with the company. Anyone who did not comply stood to lose his post. The strike was broken, and the workers returned to work on September 26.
p The contract with General Motors served as a model for other automobile companies. The Ford workers, however, refused to recognize it. On October 3, work stopped at 85 Ford plants in a strike involving 120,000 workers demanding better working conditions. The fact that the GM strike.had been frustrated weakened the position of the striking Ford workers. As a result, they managed to win only partial concessions.
p The strike in the automobile industry put the Kennedy administration on the alert. At the same time, a serious dispute was brewing in the steel industry, where the collective bargaining contract was due to expire in June 1962. In January, the President invited representatives of United States Steel and the steelworkers’ union to the White House, where he urged them to begin negotiations immediately, setting these conditions: the union should limit its demands for higher wages, and the companies should not raise steel prices.
p Negotiations began on February 14, but two weeks later they came to an impasse because, the union declared, there was no basis for agreement. But at the President’s insistence, the negotiations were resumed. [448•1 McDonald yielded one position after another, forgetting as he did so the demand for a reduction of the workweek. For the sake of a peaceful settlement, the union refrained from demanding a wage boost. All that remained of the vast program with which McDonald had come to the negotiating table were provisions that placed no burden on the corporations. The new contract was signed on March 31, three months before the old contract expired. The workers got somewhat higher supplementary unemployment benefits and longer vacations, depending on 449 seniority. They were to be compensated for a short workweek on the basis of only 32 hours a week instead of the standard 40, which testified to only partial employment in the steel industry. After the contract—under which the steelworkers got no wage increase whatsoever—was signed, the corporations immediately announced a price increase for steel.
p Among the other examples of the strike struggle during those years we shall discuss two large worker actions—one by longshoremen and the other by printers. On October 1, 1962, more than 70,000 East Coast longshoremen went out on strike, bringing business life in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico ports to a standstill. The struggle for jobs had become a vital matter for the dock workers as well. The automation of loading operations had reduced manpower needs. The shipowners were now demanding a reduction in the size of work crews from 20 to 16 men, and were contemplating to bring it down eventually to 3 or 4. A leaflet put out by the union said: “Automation is responsible for most strikes in every major industry, including newspaper and longshore, and also responsible for a sizeable share of the 5,500,000 unemployment throughout the country. Why are most workers, especially we longshoremen, afraid of automation? Isn’t it supposed to bring benefits to society as a whole? As longshoremen, speaking from where we stand, our answer is: It Should, But It Hasn’t!" [449•1
p On the fourth day of the strike, the Taft-Hartley Act was invoked, forcing the men to return to work. This was the fifth time this law was used against the longshoremen. The 80-day “cooling off" period ended on December 23, whereupon the dock workers again struck. They were demanding a reduction of the workday from 8 to 6 hours in order to save jobs.
p The shipowners bluntly turned down all the strikers’ demands, all the while hoping that a new law banning strikes would be passed. But the Kennedy administration, reluctant to risk its prestige, refrained from extreme measures. To settle the dispute, the President appointed a three-member commission headed by Senator Wayne Morse (Oregon), who was popular among the unions. It made this recommendation: not to reduce the size of crews for two years, increase the dock 450 workers’ wages by 39 cents an hour, and increase the pension fund. The commission emphasized the need to accept these proposals, otherwise the question would be turned over to Congress for consideration. The union accepted them, and on January 25, 1963 the strike ended.
p On December 7, 1962, publication of the major newspapers in New York ceased when 3,000 printers went on strike against The New York Times, New York Journal-American, Daily News, and New York World Telegram and Sun. The big press united against the strikers. In solidarity with Hearst and ScrippsHoward, five newspapers, including the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Post, declared a lockout, as a result of which 17,000 workers were rendered jobless.
p The struggle intensified; the demands of the printers for a reduction of the workweek to 35 hours and for limits to automation were turned down. A representative of the newspaper trusts stated before a congressional committee that the daily newspapers alone spent more than $100 million a year on modernizing printing equipment. The strike went on against a background of provocations and blackmail on the part of the newspaper publishers, who were trying to split the ranks of the strikers. Federal and state officials were also applying pressure. Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz (who replaced Goldberg after his appointment to the Supreme Court), Governor Rockefeller and Mayor Wagner of New York City decided to create an arbitration board in which representatives of the public would take part. Appointed to head the board was ex-judge Harold Medina, the man who had presided over the trial of eleven Communist Party leaders in Foley Square. The unions refused to have anything to do with a board so obviously rigged against them, so the arbitration undertaking fell through.
p The newspaper magnates were unable to break the resistance of the strikers. With broad labor solidarity and help from other unions, the printers held out. New York was without newspapers for 114 days in what turned out to be the longest strike in the history of the printers’ struggle. It ended on March 31, 1963 in a victory for the workers. They won a 35-hour workweek, an $8.00 a week wage increase, and limitations on the use of automated devices.
451p Thus, in this period, technological progress brought in its wake unemployment and intensification of labor. The workers sought protection against unemployment and growing exploitation as well as an earlier retirement age, longer paid vacations, unemployment benefits and elimination of overtime work. And with increasing persistence they sought a reduction of the workweek with no loss in weekly take-home pay.
p What were the results of the strike movement in the 1950s and first half of the 1960s?
p Workers cannot, of course, break out of the vise of capitalist exploitation by means of strikes alone. Lenin frequently emphasized that “strikes are one of the ways in which the working class struggles for its emancipation, but they are not the only way; and if the workers do not turn their attention to other means of conducting the struggle, they will slow down the growth and the successes of the working class". [451•1 In the course of the strike movement in the United States, it was not very often that voices of protest against anti-labor legislation were raised. The Communist Party and progressive unions called for struggle with this evil, but the top leadership of the biggest unions pursued a policy of conciliation and compromise, as a result of which the working class was confronted with a whole system of anti-labor legislation.
p The strike movement was unable to prevent the bourgeois state from effectively interfering in industrial labor relations in favor of the employers. Labor’s political activity remained inadequate as the unions continued to wage a struggle mainly in the economic sphere. However, in this aspect, striking workers were unbending and did not relinquish their class positions. They stood up doggedly for their economic demands and scored successes, although the opportunism of the union leadership often cost them dearly.
Wages grew, but to a smaller extent than in preceding years. Thus, the average nominal wage in the period 1950-1954 went up by 23.2 per cent, in 1955-1959 by 16.5 per cent, and in 1960-1964 by 14.7 per cent. [451•2 Contributing to the decline in the 452 rate of wage increases was a growth in the proportion of workers whose wages did not go up at all. Wages remained unchanged for 12 per cent of the organized workers in 1959, and for 27 per cent in 1962. Among unorganized workers, the figures were 41 per cent in 1960, and 47.1 per cent in 1962. [452•1 Table 7 gives a general picture of the changes in nominal wages for various categories of wage and salary workers. (1960-64). [452•2 :
Table 7 Number Weekly Wage Wage Employed in 1964 Increase Since (thousands) (dollars) 1960 (%) Construction Mining Transportation and Public Utilities Manufacturing Trade (Wholesale and Retail) Services 3,033 0,634 3,914 17,036 11,863 8,304 132.06 118.01 121.80 102.97 79.87 48.64 17.1 12.0 12.0 14.7 4.0 5.7p Table 7 shows that the highest weekly wages were in construction, mining and transportation, where the increase over 1960 amounted to 17 and 12 per cent. The figures also indicate large wage differentiation. The lowest wages were in wholesale and retail trade and in the services field, where workers received from two-thirds to one-half the wage in industry and transportation, although they comprised 35.3 per cent of the total employed. Their percentage wage increase for the years indicated was also two to three times lower.
Nominal wages give only a relative picture of the working people’s living conditions. The changes in real wages are shown in Table 8 (in 1957-1959 dollars) [452•3 :
453 Average Weekly Wage (dollars) Table 8 % Increase or Decrease over 1959 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 78.23 77.70 78.87 81.15 82.08 85.27 -0.7 +0.9 + 3.8 + 4.7 + 9.0p Between 1959 and 1964, the industrial workers’ real wages increased by $7.04 a week, or by 9 per cent. As seen from Table 9, the workers were most successful in 1964, when the wage increase in that one year was greater than in all four preceding years. This reflected the fact that in 1964 there were more strikes; workers had taken advantage of the industrial upturn to fight for a higher wage level.
p By 1961, the law providing for a $1.00-an-hour minimum wage embraced 24 million of the ’50 million wage earners employed in production. It did not extend to wage earners in the services, retail trade, agriculture, the merchant marine and some other categories. The $1.25-an-hour-minimum-wage law went into effect from September 1961 in two phases: $1.15 from September 1961, and $1.25 from September 1963. Thus, the official minimum hourly wage was raised from 40 cents under the 1938 law to $1.25 under the law of 1961, or from $832 to $2,600 a year. The threefold increase in the minimum wage and the increase in the number of workers to whom it applied—from 13 million in 1940-1941 to 24 million in 1961—were the consequence of twenty-three years of hard struggle by the militant forces of the working class. The 1961 law included about 3.6 million new workers, basically in retail trade. However, about 22 million of the lowest paid workers in the services field, agriculture and other areas were still not covered.
p Unemployment remained a serious problem. The number of unemployed went up from 3.9 million in 1960 to 4.2 million in 1963, comprising 5.7 per cent of the nation’s labor force. [453•1 In 454 mining the unemployment rate was 8.4 per cent, in construction 12, and in manufacturing 5.8 per cent. [454•1 Joblessness among youth was particularly high. Hardest hit by unemployment were Negro workers, who in that year made up 11 per cent of the labor force but 22 per cent of the unemployed. [454•2
p As we have seen earlier, the mass movement of unemployed reached its peak in strength and organization during the world economic crisis of the 1930s, when the strike struggle, on the contrary, declined. In other periods, the unemployed movement was incomparably weaker and less effective. Finding himself jobless, the worker lost his ties with the union, while the latter continued to devote most of its attention to the struggle of employed workers. Because of the continuing industrial upswing in the postwar period, an unemployed person could eventually find a job, and when he did, he lost interest in the unemployed movement. For this reason the unemployed movement was naturally sporadic and spontaneous. With respect to helping the unemployed, the unions limited themselves primarily to conducting national unemployed conferences, introducing bills on unemployment benefits in Congress, and publishing educational materials in the labor press.
p The 1935 social security law had inaugurated a system of government social insurance which was to figure as an important factor in the life of the unemployed ever since. The monopolies and reactionary members of Congress repeatedly raised the question of cancelling or reducing the scale of assistance, seeking to put the whole burden of expenses for social insurance on the workers themselves. Although these attempts created serious obstacles to the development of social security in the country, they could not abolish it, and the working class, through its many years of struggle, achieved substantial results in this area as well.
p In March 1961, Congress adopted another temporary federal program of additional benefits to the unemployed. It provided for the payment of extended benefits to individuals who exhausted their regular benefits during the current 455 recession period. In February 1961, more than 600,000 unemployed had already exhausted their regular benefits, and another 3.4 million were close to it. The President’s economic advisors and the government regarded unemployment benefits above all as an anti-recession measure.
p However, the administration’s efforts to get a law passed that would establish a federal minimum for benefits paid, as Kennedy had promised during the election campaign, or at least to extend for another year the temporary additional unemployment benefits, were fruitless. The 87th Congress finished its work without passing a bill to extend the temporary program to 1962-1963.
p Congress did, however, pass a law providing for assistance to economically depressed areas that had lost industry and where chronic unemployment had developed. Employers were promised certain advantages if they invested capital in these areas. But the corporations were least of all interested in this. Citing the high wages established by the unions as their reason, they relocated their enterprises and capital from the old industrial centers to areas, primarily in the southern states, where they could find cheap and unorganized labor. Spokesmen for the monopolies maintained that the only thing that could stop or slow this process was reduction of wages. During the debate on the bill for assistance to depressed areas, Reuther remarked that some people were beginning to wonder, “Isn’t there something basically wrong with an economic system that can’t provide employment opportunities for millions of its citizens?" [455•1
p Chronic unemployment was only one of the factors exerting pressure on the living conditions of American working people. Another factor had to do with the weakening of US positions in international trade. The West European countries in the European Economic Community and Japan had become formidable competitors of the United States. This was the result of intensified modernization of production in those countries and the existence of cheaper labor there than in the United States. Citing these facts, the American monopolies applied greater pressure on labor, demanding at least a wage 456 freeze. At the same time, in their pursuit of cheap labor, they increased the export of capital from the United States. These moves by big capital drew sharp criticism from labor leaders.
p As we have seen, whatever improvements in the economic status of American workers there may have been, they came only as a result of tense struggle. Were it not for this struggle, the living standards of the great mass of workers would have been kept at rock bottom. Even so, the individual worker is still never free of this danger. Lack of necessary skills, loss of work, a long illness, racial discrimination and many other factors operate to lower the standard of living of a significant proportion of the working class.
p The Negro working people, subjected to the greatest exploitation, are in a particularly difficult situation.
p The united forces of reaction dealt a heavy blow to bourgeois-democratic freedoms after World War II. The already curtailed rights of the Negro population of the United States were subjected to further restrictions, especially in the southern states. The racists of the South had not departed very far from their slaveowning ancestors in their attitude toward the Negro people. They still tried to hold the Black American in a state of fear and obedience before the white master with bullets and bombs. However, this was no longer that emotional racism that used to throw the white racist into a frenzy at just the sight of black skin. Along with the radical changes in the social structure of the Negro people there also occurred a change in the social and political basis of racial discrimination.
p In the 1960s, Negroes made up about eleven per cent of the total population of the United States, but they comprised a considerably higher proportion of the working class. For example, they made up 25 per cent of the unskilled laborers in industry. The chief exploiter of cheap Negro labor was the factory or mine owner. He reaped the fruits of discrimination, deriving big profits from it. The interests of the monopolies and the racists were closely intertwined; racism became an important instrument of monopoly capital.
p The proletarianization of the American Negroes also had an impact on their struggle for civil rights. That struggle assumed a more definite class character; it was “a specialized part of the 457 general struggle of the working class against deprivation and class exploitation and oppression". [457•1
p A clear account of the American Negro’s abridged economic and political rights may be found in works by the American progressive historian Herbert Aptheker. “In this connection,” he writes, “it is important to observe that while capitalist prosperity has improved to a degree the absolute living conditions of large numbers of Negro people, the latest government figures still place the average annual income of Negro families at $2,711, which is about half the figure required for a ’minimum standard of decency’." [457•2 Discrimination against Negroes in hiring continued to flourish. Negro unemployment was double white unemployment. As concerns the earnings of Negro workers, while the average income of Negro families in 1950 was 54 per cent of that of white families, by the end of the 1950s it barely reached 51 percent. [457•3
p The 1960s saw a massive upsurge in the Negro movement against discrimination and jimcrowism. “Invariably,” Aptheker notes, “these high points of struggle evoked expressions of alarm and puzzlement, and regret that the ’Old Time Negro’—concocted in the master’s dreams—had disappeared." [457•4
p In February 1960, Negro students in North Carolina launched a movement for equal service in restaurants, cafeterias and snack-bars. Conducted in the form of sit-ins, it soon spread to most of the cities in the South. Local state officials took repressive measures against the participants. Expressing the sentiments of the Negro people, the leaders of the movement declared that if necessary, Negroes would “turn the jails into bastions of freedom”.
p The sit-ins became organized actions. In April 1960, two hundred delegates from 53 colleges met in Raleigh, North Carolina, and decided to set up a coordinating center for the Negro student movement. The conference called for more effective forms of protest, such as a mass boycott of all retail establishments in which segregation existed. This boycott, the 458 business press noted, “has frightening ramifications.... It has now become an economic situation affecting the entire community, the whole city, and the whole country.” [458•1 Negro youth were supported by the National Student Association that organized meetings, demonstrations and picket lines in front of stores in New York, Cleveland and many other cities. The Negroes achieved some results through the sit-ins and the boycott. In a number of cities in the South owners of shops and lunch counters, fearing bankruptcy, abandoned discrimination.
p May 1961 saw a new wave of the Negro anti-discrimination movement. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a student organization, launched what came to be called “Freedom Rides" of Negroes and whites together on buses in the southern states. In Alabama, the Freedom Riders were subjected to brutality and mass arrests. [458•2
p A number of trade unions supported the Freedom Rides. A conference of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen condemned the reprisals against the Negro people in Alabama. [458•3 The AFL-CIO leadership declared the acts of violence against Negroes unlawful and immoral. However, this was merely moral support, and only in particular cases, and therefore rather insignificant. The reason for this was that the unions themselves were infected with sentiments of white chauvinism, and some of them openly pursued a policy of discrimination.
p In May 1960, at the initiative of Negro trade unions 800 delegates from 18 states gathered in convention in Detroit to found a Negro labor organization called the Negro American Labor Council. A. Philip Randolph was elected its president. The purpose of the new organization, he said, was not to create a “black federation of labor" but to bring down racial barriers. In 1961, two national conferences were held in which Negro organizations took part. One, held in Washington in February, was attended by more than 700 union representatives. The conference adopted a program of struggle against 459 discrimination in the labor movement, in industry and in government institutions. [459•1 The conference in June considered the question of struggle against unemployment. Its participants emphasized that automation worsened the plight of Negro workers.
p The AFL-CIO leadership’s policy on the Negro question was severely criticized. Randolph called for a discussion of the situation in the AFL-CIO executive council. “There is a crisis of confidence between the leaders of Negroes and labor,” he wrote. “Since the Negro community and the labor community have common interests and common enemies, and should have common objectives, this crisis of confidence between these basic communities constitutes a grave danger to the cause of the Negro and labor." [459•2
p In 1963, the struggle of the Negro people was particularly sharp in Birmingham, Alabama, which for a long time had been considered an impregnable citadel of racism, a kingdom 460 of fear and terror. In May 1963, the city was rocked by mass civil rights demonstrations in which over 40,000 people took part. The city’s entire Negro population (about 90,000) boycotted stores owned by racists. The peaceful demonstrators were attacked and beaten, and hundreds were arrested by policemen who used fire hoses and police dogs against them.
p The Birmingham events evoked a huge wave of protest. Members of the academic community and students became increasingly involved in the struggle against racism, which trampled underfoot every concept of democracy, threatening Black and white Americans alike. On June 23, about 100,000 people, both Black and white and including representatives of many unions, demonstrated in the streets of Detroit. Elsewhere, 10,000 persons took part in a demonstration in Boston, 15,000 in Cleveland, 11,000 in New York, 70,000 in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and 50,000 in Chicago. This massiveness imparted new qualities to the civil rights movement which the American press was inclined to assess as a “Negro revolution”.
p The Kennedy administration made some moves against discrimination. In February 1963, it urged Congress to pass a more effective right-to-vote law and to deny federal aid to non-integrated schools. But it skirted such vital questions for Negroes as the equal right to work, opportunity to acquire skills, and equal pay for equal work. The half-measures did not satisfy the Negroes. The leaders of the Negro movement accused the federal government of being passive in the matter of eliminating discrimination and of failing to protect the Negro population from racist terror. “The United States Government,” one of them said, “which can regulate the contents of a pill, apparently is powerless to prevent the physical abuse of citizens within its borders.” [460•1
p The Birmingham events and the approaching presidential election compelled the Kennedy administration to define its position on the Negro question. On June 12, the President, in a radio and television address to the nation, painted a realistic picture of how the American Negroes were being deprived of their civil and political rights. “We face ... a moral crisis as a 461 country and a people,” the President said. “It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in the Congress, in your state and local legislative body, and above all, in all our daily lives. Those who do nothing are inviting shame, as well as violence." [461•1 A few hours after Kennedy’s address, Medgar Evers, a prominent Negro leader, was murdered in Jackson, Mississippi.
p In July, Kennedy sent a message to Congress urging that it pass a civil rights bill in 1963. He said that if Congress did not guarantee the civil rights of Negroes, they could not be expected to slacken the struggle. On the contrary, he foresaw an intensification and further aggravation of that struggle.
p The growth of the Negro people’s awareness was manifested, in particular, in a mass march on Washington on August 28, 1963. Thousands of people streamed to the capital 462 from all parts of the country. Black and white citizens marched side by side. More than 50,000 members of every kind of trade union were present. The racists tried to frighten the residents of the capital by calling the march an “invasion of huge crowds of Blacks”. Radio and television broadcasts warned Washingtonians not to leave their homes, and urged them to lock their doors and turn the capital into a ghost town. But the excellent organization and discipline of the marchers nullified the fabrications of the rightists. It was a peaceful march; the demonstrators marched singing spirituals, and in no way did they disrupt public order. One newspaper account said: “The power of this demonstration was felt by all the observers, and the root of this power was conspicuously the personal involvement of each individual who had traveled here from his home to demonstrate." [462•1
p Martin Luther King declared that “1963 is not an end but a beginning.... There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwind of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until this bright day of justice emerges." [462•2 Subsequent years confirmed the truth of these words. Soviet historian Timur Timofeyev noted, “The actions of the Negro masses between 1964 and 1966 in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities were not merely ‘race riots’ as the bourgeois press tried to portray them. They were more like social explosions." [462•3 The philosophy of passive resistance increasingly came into conflict with reality. Prayers did not save the Negroes from clubs, whips and bullets. They were subjected to racist terror even in churches. On September 22, 1963, racists in Birmingham blew up a Baptist church during a service. Four Negro girls were killed and many others in the congregation were seriously wounded. [462•4
p Condemnations of racism and the jimcrow policies pursued by state governments were voiced by a number of church organisations. In December 1963, the National Council of 463 Churches of Christ adopted a resolution denouncing racist persecution. However, in the spring of 1964, in contrast to that resolution, the Southern Baptist Convention, under pressure from racist elements, adopted a declaration which said that the question of granting civil rights to Blacks should be handled individually in each particular case.
p The position taken by the labor leaders was subjected to increasing criticism in the Negro movement. The tendency displayed by Meany and his associates to stand aloof, their passiveness in the matter of abolishing discrimination in the unions, generated Negro bitterness, discontent and protest. Negro workers persistently sought support from their class brothers, but they frequently encountered indifference, and in some unions out-and-out ill will. It is a commonly known fact that in the industrial centers of the South, Negro workers were only marginally organized into unions and hence were left to the mercy of the employers. We mentioned earlier that the hopes that the AFL-CIO would carry out its many promises to launch an organizing drive in the South were never justified. The labor leaders readily went to fancy resorts in Florida and organized AFL-CIO conventions and meetings of the executive council there, but never ventured to go to turbulent Birmingham.
p The AFL-CIO leaders cannot be accused of ignoring the Negro question at conventions of the federation. No few resolutions were also passed at conventions of the various affiliated unions. However, all of them were remarkably alike, and their stereotyped rhetoric could serve only as a justification for the inactivity of the union leaders. It was no accident that there was mounting criticism of the position of the federation’s leadership by Negro organizations both within and outside the AFL-CIO. At the fifth AFL-CIO convention, which opened on November 14, 1963 in New York, accusations were levelled at the labor leadership. At previous conventions it had vigorously blocked attempts by the Negro member of the executive council, A. Philip Randolph, to initiate debate on the Negro question; this time it could do nothing to stop it. Debate on five draft civil rights resolutions took up an entire day of the convention.
p Randolph spoke of the economic plight of Negroes, about 464 the tactics of their struggle, and their attitude to labor unions. He stressed that Negroes were going through a serious economic crisis. They could see that social and economic progress was not improving their lot. Automation was sharply reducing the need for unskilled workers, the category made up largely of Negroes.
p He drew attention to the fact that many white Americans were frightened by the militant spirit of the Negro movement. But this, he said, should not worry the unions; Negroes owed a lot to the American labor movement and were learning how to struggle from examples drawn from its history. Negroes used the sit-down strike tactic of the 1930s in their mass sit-ins protesting oppression and deprivation of rights.
p For the first time at any AFL-CIO convention, the leadership decided to give the delegates an account of what it was doing to combat discrimination in the unions. The report was presented by secretary-treasurer Schnitzler. He announced that segregation no longer existed in 111 of the 130 unions in the federation. However, discrimination was still practised in 172 locals of 19 international unions. He noted that until recently only whites could belong to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. In July 1963, a convention of that union removed the restrictive clause from its constitution, but so far no Negroes had been taken in.
p But all this did not eliminate the passiveness and sluggishness of the union leaders in the struggle for civil rights. Cleveland Robinson of the wholesale and retail workers union questioned even the modest advances in the fight against discrimination of which Schnitzler had spoken. He said that solemn promises by unions to abolish inequality between Negroes and white workers meant nothing, for they were covered by a mask of hypocrisy, and unless this mask was torn off everything would stay as it was. Robinson levelled sharp criticism at the labor leadership. The Negro community, he said, had always supported the labor movement; the unions, however, were betraying the Negro workers. In the Negro civil rights march on Washington, the workers’ columns were headed by clergymen and many figures from civil rights organizations. But where, asked Robinson, were the AFL-CIO officers?
465p Leo Smith of the International Union of Electrical Workers said that Negroes were fed up with the inactivity and indecisiveness of the union leaders. They needed jobs and freedom, he said, and they needed them now.
p Meany was compelled to admit, however cautiously, that it was only in the summer of 1963 that the federation had begun to show somewhat greater activity than in the past.
p The indignation that the Negroes cast upon the stagnant waters of the trade union bureaucracy was in itself a definite change for the better. At this large trade union forum they exposed the sanctimoniousness and hypocrisy of the top union officialdom. But the cumbersome machinery of the federation went its usual way. All the sharp edges in the resolution on civil rights were carefully filed down. Not a word about the privations of the Negro people, about their lack of rights and merciless exploitation, not a word about the brutal racist terror, no one condemned, no one offended. The resolution said that equal job opportunities did not exist not only because of discrimination on the part of many employers and some trade unions, but also because the workers did not have enough education and training.
p The composite resolution abounded in problems and calls for Congress and the administration to solve them. Two basic tasks stood before the labor unions: first, to abolish discrimination in their own ranks, and second, to cooperate with their neighbors in the leading communities in order to ensure the full right of citizenship for every American.
p From the end of the 1950s, ultra-reactionary, profascist elements in the United States became markedly more active. They proclaimed Senator McCarthy their ideological mentor and a model to pattern on. The movement of the ultra-rightists made McCarthyism even more dangerous because it absorbed all the extreme reactionary trends.
p American sources did not give an exact idea of how many ultra-right organizations there were. One, for example, said: “A score or more of Rightist groups are now vying with one another for supremacy.” [465•1 Others named no less than one 466 thousand organizations which regularly published and distributed large quantities of anti-communist literature. In any case, reports of the more active organizations, such as the John Birch Society and the Anti-Communist Christian Crusade, could often be found on the pages of the American press.
p The John Birch Society [466•1 appeared on the scene in late 1958. Its founder was Robert Welch, owner of a big confectionary business in Boston, and former vice-president of the National Association of Manufacturers. The society was headed by a national council composed of 25 members, 16 of whom represented major corporations. Membership dues in the society were $24 a year for men and $12 for women. However, besides these funds, as noted at a convention of the International Union of Electrical Workers in 1962, 50 leading groups of ultra-rightists received no less than $20 million a year from representatives of various monopolies.
p Robert Welch did not tolerate even the semblance of democracy in his organization; he was an advocate of a rigid dictatorship. “The John Birch Society,” he declared, “is to be a monolithic body. Democracy is merely a deceptive phrase, a weapon of demagoguery, and a perennial fraud." [466•2 Coming to the fore in 1961 as a leading figure among the Birchists was retired General Edwin Walker. As commander of the 24th Infantry Division in West Germany, Walker had engaged in energetic political activity. He had supplied the army with anti-communist literature put out by ultra-right organizations, and openly labelled Democratic and Republican party leaders, including Eisenhower, as traitors. [466•3 In October 1962, the general demonstrated his military valor in the town of Oxford, Mississippi. Heading an unruly mob of racists armed with rocks, chains and incendiary bombs, he attacked soldiers and police guarding a lone Negro who had dared cross the threshold of the state university there.
p Working in close cooperation with the Birchists in some western and southern states was a profascist organization 467 called the Anti-Communist Christian Crusade. Supported by the Catholic Church, that organization engaged in vicious anti-communist propaganda and the distribution of fascist literature. Also associated with the Birchists was a paramilitary organization called the Minutemen, [467•1 which emerged in late 1961. Its leader, Robert DePugh, an active member of the John Birch Society, got his training in the Anti-Communist Christian Crusade organization. The Minutemen were well armed, and their units held regular military exercises in Texas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and other states.
p What political objectives did the American ultra-right pursue? They were partially stated in their own publications, such as Robert Welch’s The Blue Book. To a larger extent, these aims were revealed in commentaries appearing in the American press. Some observers wrote about them with gratification, others with alarm. Continuing McCarthy’s fabrications, the ultra-rightists saw a communist plot in everything; to them, it was ubiquitous, penetrating all American institutions and influencing every aspect of American life.
p The revival of McCarthyism on an even broader base stemmed from a number of causes directly related to the weakening of American imperialism’s foreign policy positions, the crisis of its cold war policy, and the growth of opposition to the imperialist course within the country. The upsurge of the Negro movement stirred the racists—to whom the ultra-right organizations gave their full support—to greater activity. The extremists created profascist leagues, societies, committees and crusades.
p The extremism of the ultra-rightists in foreign policy questions and their uncompromising anti-labor and racist position brought forth an increasingly sharp rebuff from the leaders of the labor unions. At their conventions and conferences and in the labor press, many unions pointed to the growing danger that extreme reactionaries posed to the democratic movement. At a convention of the steelworkers’ union, McDonald warned that if the monopolies succeeded in destroying the organized labor movement, as they would so 468 much like to do, there would be only one choice—“the John Birch Society or a police state". [468•1
p The UAW noted at its convention in 1962 that organizations of ultra-rightists were reviving McCarthyism in its most dangerous form. The ultra-rightists had their sympathizers in the armed forces, and influential people in big business liberally supplied them with funds. Therefore, the union felt, the right extremists posed a considerably greater threat to the nation than McCarthyism did in the past. Their aim was to suppress and smash the unions and destroy democracy. In a resolution on civil liberties, the union condemned the repressive actions against the Communist Party and deplored the anti-Communist laws.
p At a convention of the International Union of Electrical Workers it was stressed that the upsurge in the activity of reactionary organizations created a new situation for the labor movement in America, and caused alarm among labor. The union saw a definite connection between intensified anti-labor policies and the participation of representatives of big business in the ultra-right movement. As pointed out in the executive committee report, 16 officials of major corporations, including six from General Electric, were active in the leadership of the John Birch Society alone. [468•2
p The serious danger that the ultra-rightists posed to the labor movement was also brought out at conventions of Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Ladies Garment Workers and other unions.
p The AFL-CIO leaders were very cautious with respect to the ultra-rightists. More than anything they were afraid lest the Birchists label them Communist sympathizers. But at the same time they could not remain silent, because in many unions the question of the profascist danger was being raised with increasing urgency. In late April 1963, the AFL-CIO held a two-day conference in Los Angeles, where the leaders lashed out against “communism and the radical right”. In his address, Meany asserted that the unions were threatened both from the 469 right and the left, and sounded the alarm against the “twin evils”. However, he considered communism to be “the most serious threat to this country". [469•1 Governor Pat Brown of California did not agree with this view. In his speech at the conference he said that while the left “faded to a whisper”, up and down California “the voice of the far right sounds harsh and strident, and it is the right-wing radicals who dominate the extreme scene". [469•2
p However, a special pamphlet,which the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education distributed to the unions in May 1963, was even more specific: “A new and ominous challenge confronts American trade unions and threatens their security. Everywhere the forces of the right wing are churning distrust of free democratic institutions, unions among them.....No community escapes right-wing activity whether open or secret. Begin now in your community to establish a coordinating committee to combat the right wing." [469•3
p Repressive actions against the Communist Party were one of the consequences of the increased influence the ultra-rightists had on the government apparatus. On June 5, 1961, the Supreme Court ruled that the McCarran-Wood Act of 1950 was constitutional. Under the decision, the Communist Party was to register with the Department of Justice as an agent of a foreign power and to supply the Department of Justice with the names of its officers and members. In another decision, the Supreme Court ruled that it was “a federal crime to be an active and knowing member of a party advocating violent overthrow of the Government". [469•4 The court adopted the decision by a majority of one vote, five to four. Justice Hugo Black, a co-author of the liberal Black-Connery Act of 1938 (the Fair Employment Practices Act), voted against requiring the Communist Party to register.
p The Communist Party asked the Supreme Court to reconsider the case, but the request was denied. On October 9, 1961, the decision was reconfirmed. Shortly thereafter, the 470 Communist Party published a statement which said: “The refusal by the Supreme Court to rehear argument on the antidemocratic McCarran Act will not halt the Communist Party in its continuing struggle to defend the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.... The Communist Party is confident that once the American people realize that there is not a single person in this nation who cannot be jailed under this act if he voices opposition to the war and anti-democratic policies of the reactionaries, they will rally to the struggle against this infamous act.” [470•1
p The Department of Justice set different deadlines for the party as a whole and its leaders to register. It was also announced that non-compliance with the registration order carried penalties of five years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. Nonetheless, the Communists refused to comply. Leading party figures were again subjected to persecution. Some state legislatures enacted laws banning Communist Party organizations and depriving them of the right to take part in elections.
p On December 1,1961, a Grand Jury in Washington indicted the party with violation of the McCarran Act for not registering as an agent of a foreign power. On March 15, 1962, this charge was made individually against Gus Hall and Benjamin Davis. They were arrested and then released on $5,000 bail pending their trial. Each faced a possible sentence of 30 years’ imprisonment and $600,000 fine.
The repressive measures against the Communist Party drew protests from progressive organizations. A two-day conference in defense of democratic rights was held in New York on September 23 and 24, 1961, in which 155 public figures took part. On October 10, 1961, more than 300 professors, lawyers, doctors, journalists and people in the arts signed a letter to President Kennedy condemning the persecution of the Communist Party and saying that the Supreme Court decision paved the way for more repression and the suppression of any opposition. The National Association for Democratic Rights and the Citizens to Preserve American Freedoms Committee came out actively in defense of the Communist Party. However, only a few unions had the courage to openly 471 condemn such reactionary laws as the McCarran Act. Among the few were the United Auto Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.
p Student youth reacted differently. Showing increasing interest in progressive ideas, they wanted to hear about communism from the Communists themselves. Reactionary elements, however, violently opposed this idea. They picketed universities where Communist Party leaders were speaking, broke up lectures and engineered disturbances, openly threatening the Communists with physical violence. Men from the Christian Crusade with threats and blackmail tried to keep Gus Hall from speaking at the universities of Wisconsin, California, Washington and Oregon. Hall recalled later, “There were many threats, including bomb threats. I was hung twice, in effigy, it is true. Once in Portland and once in Los Angeles.” [471•1 Communist speakers were banned in some universities, but even so, vigorous actions by student organizations nullified the bans.
p Flinging a bold challenge to reaction, some figures in the arts, literature and science joined the ranks of the Communist Party. It will be recalled that not long before his death in 1945, the world-famous progressive writer Theodore Dreiser joined the party. This step was the logical result of his entire life and literary work. Equally as bright an example of ideological 472 conviction, humanism, courage and devotion to the cause of progress was the decision to join the Communist Party made in October 1961 by the renowned public figure and scholar, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois.
p Just at a time when American reaction was hoping to put an end to the Communist Party Dr. Du Bois made this statement: “On this first day of October, 1961, I am applying for admission to membership in the Communist Party of the United States.... Today I have reached a firm conclusion:
p “Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to selfdestruction....
p “Communism—the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute—this is the only way of human life.... In the end Communism will triumph. I want to help to bring that day.” [472•1 In his reply, General Secretary of the Communist Party Gus Hall welcomed this courageous step: “You have chosen to join our Party precisely at the time when with brazen effrontery to the trends of the times, the most backward ultra-reactionary forces in our country’s national life have temporarily dragooned the Supreme Court’s majority into upholding the most flagrantly un-Constitutional thought-control laws—the McCarran Act and Smith Act, designed to muzzle free speech, ban freedom of association, persecute Communists and suppress our Party.... In joining the Communist Party, you have made that association which was clearly indicated by the very logic of your life.
p “Dear Dr. Du Bois, welcome into the membership of our Party!" [472•2
p In those hard days of struggle, the party suffered two great losses. On February 2, 1961, Party Chairman Eugene Dennis died. A courageous fighter for the cause of the working class, he had held the post of General Secretary from 1948 to 1959. On September 1, 1961, honorary chairman of the CP USA William Foster, an outstanding figure in the international and American labor and Communist movements, died after a long illness.
473p Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was elected chairman of the Communist Party.
p In its struggle against the Communist Party, American reaction relied quite a bit on revisionists and opportunists in the party, who usually stepped up their activity whenever the party was going through a difficult period and sought to shatter it from within. After the Supreme Court decision of June 1961, a group united around Milt Rosen began an open factional struggle to liquidate the party on the pretext that its disbandment would “weaken” the anti-Communist hysteria and “save” the liberals. In December 1961, this group was expelled from the party; the Communists expressed firm determination to preserve unity.
p Under the guise of observing the standards of justice, the Department of Justice postponed the trial of the Communist Party several times. The authorities were clearly in no hurry, trying in the meantime to build up the anti-Communist campaign as much as possible in preparation for a broad offensive against progressive organizations. Besides Hall and Benjamin Davis, the Department of Justice had prepared indictments against another ten party members. The Subversive Activities Control Board, in turn, was demanding registration of such organizations as the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. Among the other organizations was the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, which was declared to be an organization “infiltrated by Communists" and subject to prosecution under the McCarran-Wood Act.
p On December 11, 1962, the district court in Washington fined the Communist Party $120,000 for failing to register, thus applying only one of the punishments provided for by the McCarran Act. This enabled the party to continue its struggle for legal existence. On December 17, 1963, the Court of Appeals in Washington cancelled the fine as violative of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The decision noted that the Department of Justice could seek only voluntary registration. True, it still had the right to bring other actions against the Communist Party. On June 18, 1964, the Supreme Court also ruled that compulsory registration was unlawful. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn wrote that “the Communist Party won a 474 significant victory in the US Supreme Court on June 18th, in its fourteen-year-old battle against the McCarran Act". [474•1
p The courts also struck down the provision of the anti-labor Landrum-Griffin Act prohibiting Communists from holding office in a labor union. In February 1962, Archie Brown, a Communist who had been elected to the executive committee of a local of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, was brought before a federal court. Under the Landrum-Griffin law the court sentenced him to six months’ imprisonment. With the support of the union, Brown courageously stood up for his rights. In October 1963, a Court of Appeals agreed to review his case, and in June 1964 reversed the decision of the Federal Court as violating the Constitution. On June 22, 1964, the Supreme Court ruled that the clause in the McCarran-Wood Act forbidding the issuance of passports for travel abroad to Communist Party members was unconstitutional.
p What was it that prompted these actions by the courts, which had earlier sent Communists to jail ignoring the Constitution and elementary standards of justice? The cause lay in the sentiments of the broad masses of Americans, including intellectuals, who felt serious anxiety for the fate of American democracy in the face of frenzied profascist reaction. The answer should also be sought in the maneuvers of the judiciary which, alternately increasing and weakening the repressive measures against the Communists, were making a show of democracy and at the same time exhausting the Communist Party with continual legal actions.
p The Communist Party reacted sharply to all major events of US domestic and foreign affairs. Using what means of mass communication it had at its disposal, it exposed the aggressive actions of American imperialism, specifically the subversive actions against revolutionary Cuba, the military intervention in South Vietnam, and provocations in West Berlin.
p After the failure in April 1961 of American plans with respect to Cuba, the ultra-rightists increased their pressure on the government, resorting to open incitement and blackmail. This made President Kennedy refer publicly to “those self-appointed generals and admirals who want to send 475 someone else’s sons to war and consistently voted against the instruments of peace”. However, on October 22, 1962, the US government proclaimed a military blockade of Cuba and put the world on the brink of thermonuclear war. The right extremists were demanding that the United States immediately step over the brink.
p In these circumstances, the Communist Party of the USA called for organized actions in defense of peace. [475•1 The progressive forces in America realized the danger of the US policy in the Caribbean. On October 27, more than 2,000 Americans picketed the White House with posters reading “Negotiations, Not Destruction" and “No to War Against Cuba”. The peaceful settlement of the Cuban crisis threw the ultra-rightists into a frenzy. In Congress they demanded an investigation of the administration’s actions and removal from the White House of those presidential advisors who persistently recommended a “soft” line with respect to communism.
p Increasingly, Kennedy came to understand the need for a change in policy. In his famous speech at Washington University on June 9, 1963, the President called for a re-examination of the cold war policy. He said:
p “Let us re-examine our attitude towards the cold war, remembering we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last eighteen years been different." [475•2
p The signing in 1963 by the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union of the nuclear test ban treaty in Moscow testified to the possibilities of practical steps on the part of the Kennedy administration towards the relaxation of international tension. Active representatives of the ultra-rightists in Congress—such as Senator Barry Goldwater (Rep., Arizona), Democrats Richard Russell (Georgia), John Stennis and James Eastland (Mississippi), Harry Byrd (Virginia) and Strom Thurmond (North Carolina)—sought in vain to prevent ratification of the Moscow Treaty.
476p Most of the labor unions came out in support of the Moscow Treaty. Many wrote to Congress urging its ratification. The Clothing Workers sent letters to every senator, saying: “The people of the world are grateful to the US, Britain and the Soviet Union for this test ban because it will, first of all, put an end to the contamination of the atmosphere by the radioactive fall-out.
p “But what is even more important, in the long run, is that this represents the first affirmative step towards disarmament that our country and Russia have taken since the end of World War II signaled the start of Cold War I. And total disarmament is the most effective guarantee of peace.” [476•1
p The AFL-CIO leadership did not stand aloof. The executive council expressed approval of the Moscow Treaty, regarding it “as the first step towards the possible limitation or reduction of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction". [476•2 A message to the Senate said: “The AFL-CIO Executive Council strongly urges the US Senate to ratify the limited test-ban treaty agreed upon in the Anglo-American negotiations with the Soviet Union." [476•3
p The Senate ratified the treaty, which meant a heavy defeat for the reactionary coalition of Dixiecrats and Goldwater Republicans. The extreme racism of the southern Democrats, their association with profascist organizations and their complete unity with the ultra-rightist Republicans created a real threat of a split in the Democratic Party. The approaching 1964 presidential election prompted Kennedy to seek a compromise with the Dixiecrats in order to ensure voter support in the southern states.
p The trip made with this aim to Dallas, Texas, one of the main centers of the American ultra-right, proved fatal to Kennedy. On the eve of his arrival there, an atmosphere of hostility to the President and his policies prevailed in the press of Texas and other southern states. There were also calls for terrorist acts.
p On November 22, 1963, as he rode in a motorcade through 477 downtown Dallas on his way from the airport to the hotel where he was to deliver a speech, the President of the United States was shot and fatally wounded. Half an hour later he died in a local hospital. The anti-Communists could not miss the opportunity to use the President’s tragic death for their own purposes. The John Birch Society published a lengthy statement in The New York Times on December 15, under the heading, “The Time Has Come”, with a provocative call for Americans to begin a decisive drive against communism. [477•1
p The profascist danger from the ultra-rightists stirred the unions to political activity. For all their anti-communism, the union leaders understood that they could not evade struggle against the ultra-rightists without risking ending up in the same camp with the open and irreconcilable enemies of labor. The extreme reactionary wing of the bourgeoisie was making a bid for power under the Republican Party banner. This forced the unions to turn to the Democrats and to enter the election struggle in a more organized way.
p Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, who under the Constitution became President of the United States, promised to continue John F. Kennedy’s course in domestic and foreign policies. A number of bills (on tax reduction, Negro civil rights, medical aid for the aged, and others) to which Kennedy had given strong support became part of the new administration’s program. These bills differed in their economic and political significance. The administration regarded tax reduction as a radical anti-recession measure to stimulate the economy; it was assumed that it would encourage the monopolies to increase investment in new production, and enable consumers to buy more goods. Preference was given to corporations and people in the high income brackets, thus making it easier to get the bill through Congress.
p On February 26, 1964, Johnson signed the bill providing for a tax reduction of $11.5 billion. Reductions amounted to from 2 to 1.6 per cent on incomes ranging from $3,000 to $5,000, and 16 per cent on incomes of $200,000. [477•2 For low-paid workers, rising prices made a big dent in the small savings they 478 derived from the tax cut. Nonetheless, this concentrated (during 1964) ten-billion-dollar investment in the economy was expected to “have a significant impact on markets". [478•1
p A stubborn struggle both within and outside Congress took place over the civil rights bill. For the Johnson administration, the immediate passage of this bill was important from the standpoint of the 1964 presidential election campaign and the drive to win the Negro vote. But that was not all, for the ruling circles were pursuing broader political objectives as well. They were alarmed about the ever growing scope of the Black movement and the support it was getting from the labor unions, the intellectuals and church organizations. To take the edge off the struggle by legislative action was a matter the Democratic administration felt could not be put off. The passage of the civil rights law was regarded as an unavoidable measure.
p The Dixiecrats and the ultra-right wing of the Republicans did everything they could to kill the bill. They introduced more than a hundred amendments which would have reduced it to empty declarations. When these amendments were rejected and the House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 290 to 130, [478•2 the Dixiecrats in the Senate resorted to their tested obstructionist practices.
p On June 19, the Senate passed the bill by a vote of 73 to 27, whereupon President Johnson signed it into law. The 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination in voter registration and in public accommodations such as hotels, restaurants and bars, libraries, theaters, recreation parks, swimming pools and sports grounds. It made it unlawful for employers to discriminate against Blacks in employment opportunities and for unions to discriminate against them in admitting them to membership. The law authorized the national government to bring suits to desegregate public facilities and schools.
p Black leaders, Martin Luther King among them, expressed their satisfaction with this law. However, the Black organizations did not have any illusions that the civil rights struggle 479 could be slackened now that the law was passed. Bitter experience had taught them how long and arduous was the road from laws and declarations to their implementation in anything concerning Blacks in America. The leader of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins, said that Black demonstrations would continue and that the militancy of the Black movement would not weaken. Indeed, stark reality was soon to dampen the enthusiasm over the passage of the civil rights law. One week later, racists in Mississippi brutally killed three civil rights fighters. [479•1
p The terror and violence in the South and the frankly racist stand of the ultra-rightists in the Republican Party (Barry Goldwater voted against the civil rights bill) left the Blacks no other alternative than to rely on the Democratic administration.
p The attention of the Black and low-income white population was drawn to President Johnson’s war-on-poverty program, which he outlined in a special message to Congress in March 1964. It proposed that $962,500,000, or about one per cent of the federal budget, be allocated for the struggle against poverty, this against the background of $62.6 billion, or more than 62 per cent, in military appropriations. This correlation itself showed that the administration was embarking with very meager supplies on a campaign against poverty. According to the President’s official estimate, 20 per cent of all American families, or about 35,000,000 persons, were living in poverty.
p However, progressive economists felt that it would be wrong to dismiss the whole program as social demagoguery. [479•2 By declaring war on poverty in their own interests, the powersthat-be willy-nilly opened the way to American working people for active struggle to improve their living conditions and for a real, and not a sham, war on poverty.
p The Democrats widely publicized the measures taken by the 480 Johnson administration. They were counting on winning the labor and Negro vote, which in itself would give them a solid basis for victory. These calculations were reinforced after the extreme right wing took over the leadership of the Republican Party, and Barry Goldwater—a millionaire, retired general, racist and irreconcilable enemy of labor—became the Republican Party’s candidate for President.
p Goldwater’s election platform, adopted by the Republican convention in San Francisco in June 1964, as well as the many statements he made during the campaign, left no doubt in the minds of most voters as to his aims and methods. Goldwater intended to step up the struggle against communism and pursue a policy of diktat and ultimatum with respect to the socialist countries. He promised to achieve victory in South Vietnam by any means, and to strike a blow to the Cuban revolution.
p Goldwater considered the Democratic administration’s exercises in reformism (in the sphere of unemployment relief, the fight against poverty, medical assistance to the aged, etc.) to be dangerous. He insisted on reducing the role of the federal government to a minimum, came out against government interference in the economy and against reforms, and demanded that employers be given complete freedom in handling economic problems and labor relations.
p In the Negro question, the Republican candidate looked for support from racist elements among the white voters and among those blue- and white-collar workers who feared Negro competition on the job market.
p The AFL-CIO sent both parties its proposals, primarily in the economic field.
p The main point in the AFL-CIO program concerned jobs and unemployment. It noted that nine million persons had entered the labor market between 1953 and 1963, but only 6.6 million were able to find jobs, and only 3.1 million worked a full workweek. To increase employment, the unions proposed cutting the workweek from 40 to 35 hours with no reduction in weekly pay, reducing overtime work and setting a double time rate of pay for overtime. They also urged expanding public works and allocating larger sums of federal money for retraining workers to meet the requirements of automation.
481p The unions considered it necessary to reduce taxes on low incomes and to raise the minimum wage from $1.25 to $2.00 an hour. They also demanded an increase in unemployment benefits and extension of their duration, and the establishment through legislation binding on all states of a uniform minimum for unemployment benefits. The unions gave their approval to the civil rights law of 1964 and called for effective federal measures to implement it.
p The AFL-CIO program also touched on foreign policy questions. Here, the labor bureaucracy continued to hold to its former positions of supporting anti-communism and aggression. It insisted on an all-out buildup of the nation’s military strength, and came out against the desire of some business circles to expand economic relations with the socialist countries.
p The Republican Party mostly ignored the demands of labor in domestic policy, but the Democratic Party used them extensively in its election platform. The extremism of the Republican candidate helped the Democrats, since the attention of the majority of voters was focussed mainly on the danger from the ultra-rightists.
p Against this background, the position of the Democratic Party looked preferable, and its vague hints about pursuing a policy of peace and showing “flexibility” in relations with the socialist countries seemed reassuring. On the other hand, Johnson’s promise to expand US commitments in Asia and other parts of the world fully met the interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie. In any case, representatives of a number of major monopolies (Henry Ford, Jr., banker Thomas Lament, industrialist Edgar Kaiser, and others) actively supported Johnson and set up a committee to back his election.
p For their part, the nation’s labor leaders stressed the importance and necessity of political activity, and called on the rank and file to take an active part in politics. A resolution adopted by a convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, for example, said that labor could and should play a decisive role in the political life of the country. A resolution of the steelworkers’ convention implied that the very fate of the union was dependent upon the political situation, for the activity of the union and of the entire labor movement could be 482 paralyzed by the election to high office of people devoted to the monopolies.
p The unions aimed their main blows in the election struggle against the extremists. And it was not only the major organizations of industrial workers who were active, but also smaller unions that ordinarily kept out of politics. The United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers, whose membership consisted mainly of women, noted the “extraordinary danger" of the extremists and called upon its members to give a vigorous rebuff to reaction. The Insurance Workers of America, which said that it usually tried to stay out of political campaigns, considered struggle against the extremists to be a vital necessity.
p The unions did not overlook the mainspring of the ultra-right movement, the monopolies, who directed and lent strength to that movement. Publications put out by the Committee on Political Education (COPE) observed that the rightist elements enjoyed impressive support from big monopolies and banks. Their leaders, it was noted, were closely connected with the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce. Their chief aims were to undermine the effectiveness of labor unions, abolish the union shop, which the NAM described as “compulsory unionism”, and to spread the anti-labor “right-to-work” laws throughout the country.
p In 1961, the Chamber of Commerce had established a special committee for “free unionism" to stimulate the movement aimed at abolishing the union shop wherever it existed, which was tantamount to abolishing unions.
p Goldwater took his place in this concentrated campaign against organized labor. He asserted that the growing power of the unions posed a mortal danger to the economy.
p In the elections on November 3, 1964, the Republican Party was defeated. Its presidential candidate Goldwater carried only five southern states, and won a total of 27,176,873 votes (38.5 per cent). Democrat Lyndon Johnson received 43,128,958 votes, or 61 per cent.
p The Democrats strengthened their position in Congress. They won 295 seats in the House of Representatives, to the Republicans’ 140, and 68 in the Senate, to the Republicans’ 32.
483 484p But Goldwater’s defeat did not mean the end of the ultra-right movement. The Communist press wrote: “The November 3rd election was only the first major battle with the ultra-Right, not the decisive nor final one.” [484•1
p Having received the support of 27,000,000 Americans, the extremists had no intention of giving up the struggle. However, the destiny of the Republican Party was a subject of great concern to the monopoly bourgeoisie. The Republicans had not faced such a profound crisis for a long time. The smashing defeat they suffered at the polls showed that the bourgeois parties could not expect success if they came out with a narrow class-biased and bluntly imperialist program.
p The Democratic Party’s overall position was stronger. The Democrats received 74 per cent of the votes in the major northern cities (as compared with 62 per cent in 1960), and 61 per cent in the industrial centers of the West (as compared with 52 per cent in 1960). The picture in the industrial regions of the South was different. There, the Democrats’ positions proved to be weaker—they won only 47 per cent of the votes, showing no gain in strength over I960. [484•2 They did win most of the Black vote, however.
p Those monopoly bourgeoisie circles that placed their stakes on President Johnson took the Democratic victory as their own. They did not object to some social reforms to avoid an intensification of the class struggle, but at the same time opposed such major labor demands as reducing the workweek, raising the minimum wage and increasing unemployment benefits. They did not support Goldwater’s extremist policies, but at the same time did not oppose the cold war and the arms race. They were perfectly satisfied with the “limited war" in Vietnam and US colonialist policies in Latin America.
On the whole, labor supported the bourgeois parties, thus remaining within the two-party system. But in fighting the ultra-right enemies of the working class, the unions became more active politically. As a result of increasingly sharp class conflicts, organized workers felt a growing urge toward independent political action.
Notes
[425•1] Lloyd Ulman, The Labor Policy of the Kennedy Administration, Berkeley, California, 1963, p. 1.
[426•1] AFL-CIO News, July 9, 1960.
[426•2] Ibid
[426•3] Ibid.
[427•1] The Worker, April 24, 1960.
[427•2] Ibid.
[427•3] The Worker, The Midwest Edition, June 5, 1960.
[428•1] AFL-CIO News, July 9, 1960.
[428•2] The New York Times, September 6, 1960.
[428•3] AFL-CIO News, July 9, 1960.
[428•4] Ibid.
[428•5] Congressional Digest, October 1960, p. 245.
[429•1] Ibid.
[429•2] AFL-CIO News, October 1, 1960.
[429•3] Ibid., September 3, 1960.
[430•1] Congressional Digest, October 1960, p. 237.
[430•2] Ibid.
[431•1] Political Affairs, September 1960, p. 25.
[432•1] Political Affairs, September 1960, p. 23.
[432•2] Ibid., p. 24.
[432•3] AFL-CIO News, November 12, 1960.
[433•1] Political Affairs, December 1962, pp. 7, 8.
[434•1] The Worker, The Midwest Edition, March 26, 1961.
[434•2] Ibid., May 7, 1961.
[434•3] Reduction of the workweek to 30 hours while keeping wages at the 40-hour workweek level; and retirement on pension at age 60 instead of 65.
[434•4] The Worker, The Midwest Edition, May 7, 1961.
[434•5] Reduction of the workweek when unemployment increases, and a return to the 40-hour week when it falls.
[435•1] The Worker, July 2, 1961.
[435•2] Ibid, October 15, 1961.
[436•1] See Proceedings of the Fourth Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, Washington, 1961.
[436•2] Ibid., p. 185.
[436•3] Ibid., p. 193.
[436•4] Ibid., p. 192.
[436•5] Ibid., pp. 201-02.
[437•1] Ibid., p. 204.
[437•2] Ibid., p. 433.
[437•3] Ibid., p. 434.
[437•4] Ibid., p. 53.
[438•1] Proceedings of the Fourth Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, p. 56.
[438•2] Ibid., p. 57.
[438•3] Ibid, p. 58.
[438•4] Ibid, pp. 271-74.
[439•1] The Worker, August 19, 1962.
[439•2] Ibid.
[439•3] Political Affairs, December 1962, p. 7.
[440•1] Survey of Current Business, December 1961, p. S-3; April 1963, p. S-3.
[440•2] Ibid., December 1961, p. S-3, December 1962, p. S-3.
[440•3] Ibid, April 1963, p. S-3.
[440•4] Ibid, August 1965, p. S-3.
[440•5] Ibid, p. S-2.
[440•6] Ibid, p. S-l.
[441•1] Monthly Labor Review, August 1965, p. 1047.
[441•2] Ibid, August 1963, p. 1014; May 1964, p. 624; August 1965, p. 1047.
[442•1] United Electric News (later referred to here as UE News), April 4, 1960.
[443•1] UE News, August 29, 1960.
[443•2] Ibid.
[443•3] Ibid., September 12, 1960.
[444•1] UE News, October 10, 1962.
[444•2] Ibid., November 7, 1960.
[444•3] Look, April 25, 1961, p. 70.
[445•1] Ibid., pp. 69, 70.
[445•2] Congressional Digest, November 1963, p. 257.
[448•1] See Steel Labor, April 1962, p. 2.
[449•1] The Worker, January 20, 1963.
[451•1] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 318.
[451•2] Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1962, p. 220; Monthly Labor Review, May 1964. p. 617.
[452•1] Monthly Labor Review, May 1964.
[452•2] Employment and Earnings, Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 1964, p. XIII; Survey of Current Business, May 1964, pp. S-14, S-15; Monthly Labor Review, August 1965, p. 1036.
[452•3] Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1962, p. 230; Monthly Labor Review, May 1964, p. 617; August 1965, p. 1040.
[453•1] Survey of Current Business, April 1963, p. S-13.
[454•1] Survey of Current Business, April 1963, p. S-13.
[454•2] Monthly Labnr Review, March 1963, p. 252.
[455•1] Congressional Digest, April 1961, p. 126.
[457•1] Political Affairs, November 1963, p. 19.
[457•2] Herbert Aptheker, The Negro Today, New York, 1962, p. 11.
[457•3] Ibid.
[457•4] Ibid, p. 12.
[458•1] Business Week, April 23, 1960, p. 31.
[458•2] The Crisis, June-July 1961, p. 325.
[458•3] The Worker, May 28, 1961.
[459•1] Ibid., April 30, 1961.
[459•2] Ibid., July 2, 1961.
[460•1] Political Affairs, October 1963, p. 29.
[461•1] The Worker, June 16, 1963.
[462•1] New York Herald Tribune, August 29, 1963.
[462•2] Political Affairs, October 1963, p. 25.
[462•3] T. TnMO<j>eeB, TIpoAemapunm npomua MOHOHOJIUU, Moscow, 1967, p. 315.
[462•4] The Crisis, November 1963, p. 553.
[465•1] The New York Times Magazine, November 26, 1961, p. 132.
[466•1] John Birch was an American intelligence officer operating in China after World War II (see: Gene Grove, Inside the John Birch Society, New York, 1961).
[466•2] The New York Times Magazine, November 26, 1961, p. 131.
[466•3] Mark Sherwin, The Extremists, New York, 1963, pp. 128-33.
[467•1] In 1775, the first Americans to take up arms against British colonial rule were called minutemen.
[468•1] Minutes of the Proceedings, Eleventh Constitutional Convention of the United Steelworkers of America, September 1962, p. 14.
[468•2] Wth Constitutional Convention IUE-AFL-CIO, September 1962, p. 7.
[469•1] The Worker, May 12, 1963.
[469•2] Ibid.
[469•3] Ibid.
[469•4] U.S. News & World Report, June 19, 1961, p. 42.
[470•1] Political Affairs, November 1961, pp. 1, 2.
[471•1] Ibid., April 1962, p. 8.
[472•1] Political Affairs, December 1961, p. 10.
[472•2] Ibid., p. 12.
[474•1] Political Affairs, July 1964, p. 16.
[475•1] The Worker, October 28, 1962.
[475•2] Ibid, June 16, 1963.
[476•1] The Worker, August 25, 1963.
[476•2] Ibid.
[476•3] Ibid.
[477•1] See The New York Times, December 15, 1963.
[477•2] The Worker. March 15, 1964.
[478•1] The Worker, March 15, 1964.
[478•2] In the House of Representatives, 152 Democrats and 138 Republicans voted for the bill, and 98 Democrats voted against it.
[479•1] The NAACP convention vainly appealed to President Johnson to use his full authority to protect the lives and liberties of the citizens of the state of Mississippi (The Worker, June 30, 1964).
[479•2] Hyman Lumer, “President Johnson’s Economic Program”, Political Affairs, March 1964, p. 12.
[484•1] Political Affairs, December 1964, p. 2.
[484•2] U.S. News & World Report, November 16, 1964, p. 40.
| < | > | ||
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| <<< |
CHAPTER XIV
-- US UNIONS
AND THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR MOVEMENT, 1945--1965 |
CHAPTER XVI
-- ON THE HISTORIOGRAPHY
OF THE US LABOR MOVEMENT |
>>> |