Vol. 75/No. 14      April 11, 2011

Below is an excerpt from Teamster Politics by Farrell Dobbs, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for April. The book examines how a class-struggle union leadership in the 1930s fought for independent working-class political action. The piece below describes how the bosses sow dissension along race, sex, and job skills lines to keep workers divided. But as conditions worsen and discontent mounts, workers seek out ways to use union power to defend themselves effectively as a class. Copyright © 1975 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY FARRELL DOBBS  
Under the present system, workers are conditioned from childhood to accept capitalist exploitation as something decreed by natural law. Indoctrination of this kind begins within the family, where the young are influenced by their brainwashed elders. From there the process is taken over by the propaganda media—schools, churches, television, radio, newspapers, and other sources of misinformation and manipulation.

As young workers enter the labor force they are subjected to refinements in ruling class doctrine. Without capitalist employers, they are told, there would be no jobs; so those benefactors deserve unswerving loyalty from their employees in order to promote the “common good.” It is also stressed that the bosses got where they are by practicing rugged individualism. That preachment is intended to encourage the workers to do likewise if they hope to get ahead. The norm for personal conduct thus becomes: don’t think about others, just take care of yourself.

As another means of dividing labor’s ranks, use is made of factors serving to demarcate one group of workers from another. Skin color, ethnic background, sex, religion—anything that will help to sow dissension between groupings—is turned to capitalist advantage… .

Individuals in the more favored groupings are likely to get the better paying, skilled jobs. Those in the less favored categories, more or less in descending order, are next in line for the unskilled work and, after that, the menial tasks. For people at the bottom of this preferential sequence, the situation can be summed up in the phrase: last to be hired, first to be fired. Through such patterns of discrimination the bosses are able to pit one category of workers against another—skilled versus unskilled, to cite a single example.

Relative economic privilege thus takes its place alongside race and sex bias as a device for splitting the working class so as to minimize organized resistance to capitalist exploitation.

Life on the job being what it is, however, other factors intrude to cause difficulties for the ruling class. Motivated by what is delicately called “the profit incentive,” capitalists develop insatiable greed. Lust for private gain makes them strive to hold down wages, extend the hours of labor, disregard health and safety hazards, and impose poor job conditions. As a result, workers are constantly reminded through daily experience that they have problems in common as a class, and that collective action is needed to obtain redress of their grievances against the bosses.

This clash of class interests is what gave rise to trade unions on a world scale; because of the elementary level of class consciousness involved, these formations, as a rule, originated and developed as a movement for economic and social reform under capitalism… .

Mounting discontent leads the workers into a search for some way to defend themselves effectively as a class. Divisive walls—built of self-centeredness, prejudice, special interests, class collaboration, and lying capitalist propaganda—begin to crumble. New potential develops for strengthening labor solidarity, elevating class consciousness, and raising the anticapitalist struggle to a higher plane.

A dramatic change of that nature took place in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash, which heralded the onset of severe economic depression. As the slump deepened, millions lost their jobs. Earnings were slashed for those who still had employment. Working conditions went from bad to worse, as did living standards in general.

At first the workers accepted these blows in a more or less passive manner. They had been stunned by the economic debacle and it took time to recover from the shock effect. Then, when they did begin a quest for ways to defend themselves, only scant means were at hand. Less than three million were organized into the AFL, mainly workers in skilled trades. The great bulk of the working class, especially in basic industry, was not unionized at all. On top of that, the AFL bureaucrats showed no real concern about the plight of the unorganized, whether employed or unemployed. In short, labor was caught in a crisis of organization and leadership.

But limited patterns of struggle gradually began to emerge, characterized by ups and downs in scope and tempo. In the initial stage the actions centered mainly on protest demonstrations by the unemployed. Then, during 1933, strikes broke out here and there in industry, the biggest one being conducted by textile workers. These walkouts resulted from the interaction of two basic factors: the workers’ determination to regain ground they had lost in the depression and their rising confidence—stimulated by partial economic recovery under the New Deal—that their objective could be attained.

Developments of this kind were viewed by the AFL business unionists as a threat to their class-collaborationist line rather than as an opportunity to strengthen organized labor. So those worthies helped government mediators snooker rebellious workers into formal agreements with the bosses that brought precious few gains to the union rank and file.

But sellouts engineered in that way could not be made to stick very long. Combative moods among the workers continued to grow in intensity, and within the unions radicals were able to increase their leadership authority. As a result, miniature civil wars were fought in 1934 by Minneapolis truck drivers, San Francisco longshoremen, and Toledo auto workers. In each case, labor emerged victorious. Inspired by proof that strikes conducted militantly could be won, the main detachments of the working class in basic industry began to move toward action against the monopoly corporations.  
 
 
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