High points of labor radicalism in the U.S -Help

[G4b3n]

Hey guys,

I am writing a paper about the affects of radicalism on the U.S labor movement from the 1920s to the late 1930s. I am beginning with the Seattle General Strike of 1919, the first strike to really take on a radical character unique to prior U.S labor history.

I am asking for help in a few departments.

*Other significant strikes for low skilled workers, or ones in which the AFL and skilled unions sympathized with.

*Good online sources that contain primary documents of the era, I have been combing through Marxists.org but I need a greater verity. Or just the names of primary sources, I have access to a lot of educational databases I can probably find them.


The idea of the paper is to counter many bourgeois labor historians who claim that radicals hindered organizing in the 20s and 30s. My professor has Marxist sympathies but it is very critical of the organizing history so I need sources that bourgeois historians would accept as legitimate or "unbiased" as possible.

[Art Vandelay]

Have you looked into the Minneapolis general strike of 1934?

The general strike began as a Teamsters strike. Local 574 in Minneapolis was quite small and had a few ex-CPers who had sided with the Left Opposition in the wake of Trotsky's expulsion. Significant groundwork was laid leading up to the strike: headquarters was set up, which included an infirmary and a kitchen, a women's auxiliary was organized, and support for the upcoming strike whipped up.

What followed was old school unionism at it's finest. Clashes between scabs/police and strikers, which ultimately resulted in casualties on both sides. Production largely shut down. Other unions began striking in sympathy and the AFL sent financial support. The Trotskyist League of America (forerunner to the SWP-USA) was able to organize a daily strike paper.

Due to the fact that TLA members (particularly Farrell Dobbs if my memory serves correct) were able to insert themselves into leading spots of the local, the strike was essentially organized by James P Cannon and the leadership of the TLA in all but name. At one point Cannon and Schatmann were arrested and released under the condition that they leave the city of Minneapolis. They agreed, left the city, set up shop in nearby St. Paul and ran the strike from there.

Eventually all major union demands were met and the Teamsters local would stay under control of the SWP until leaders of the organization were jailed under the notorious Smith Act in the early 40's.

Cannon himself wrote extensively on the strike. You should check out some of his work on it. There is an entire chapter devoted to it in 'History of American Trotskyism,' and he wrote many articles on the subject, all of which can be found on his Marxists.org page.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/index.htm

[Sewer Socialist]

^ you should write quite a bit on the labor movement in Minnesota, in my opinion. The above strike was in fact betrayed by moderate leftists, rather than radicals. Much like the SPD betrayed the KPD fifteen years earlier, Governor Olson, a member of the Farmer-Labor Party, called in the Minnesota National Guard to try to break the strike, where they joined the goons of the right-wing Citizens' Alliance. The two organizations declined into irrelevancy soon after the strike.

You should also mention the Works People's College, the northern Minnesota institution intended to raise the consciousness of the proletariat, associated with the Socialist Party and later the IWW.

[G4b3n]

Thanks for the assistance you guys, I will certainly look deeper into these things.

I have already written 4 pages on the Seattle situation, and what I am emphasizing is the transcendence of sectarian ideology and the strong sense of solidarity that characterized the strike. Though I fear that events in Russia and Germany are part of the reason for the nature of the situation. This is the only point I know of that the IWW and organizations of the like (non-Leninists) expressed solidarity with Russia, which in my opinion, was an astonishing means for a desirable environment.

Would it be possible to frame Minneapolis as having a similar affect? Admittedly, I have not studied the documents of that event. But from what I know about strikes in general, if conditions are desperate enough workers do not give a shit about ideology and "what ought to be", but more so "just crush this shit right now".