CQ Press Guide to Radical Politics in the United States

Susan Burgess, Kate Leeman

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781452292274
• eBook ISBN: 9781506354705
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The CQ Press Guide to Radical Politics in the United States is a unique work which provides an overview of radical U.S. political movements on both the left and the right sides of the ideological spectrum. It focuses on analyzing the origins and trajectory of the various movements, and the impact that movement ideas and activities have had on mainstream American politics.

This guide is organized thematically, with each chapter focusing on a prominent arena of radical activism in the United States.

These chapters will:

• Trace the chronological development of these extreme leftist and rightist movements throughout U.S. history
• Include a discussion of central individuals, organizations, and events, as well as their impact on popular opinion, political discourse, and public policy
• Include sidebar features to provide additional contextual information to facilitate increased understanding of the topic

Seeking to provide an accessible, balanced, and well-documented discussion of topics often overlooked in political science, this book includes an introduction to anarchism, communism, and socialism as well as the Chicano movement, civilian border patrols, Black power, the Ku Klux Klan, ACT-UP, the militia movement, Occupy Wall Street, farmers' rebellions, Earth First!, the Animal Environmental Liberation Front, and many others.

chapter 1 Organized Labor and Farmer Rebellions

There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.

—Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World¹

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

—Jay Gould, railroad magnate²

Between 1877 and 1935, the United States had what has been described as the “bloodies­t and most chaotic” labor situation of any Western industrialized country, in which thousands of workers, police, private security, and national guardsmen were injured or killed.³ This chapter primarily focuses on this time period, when labor unions (sometimes also called combinations by critics) were typically seen as both radical and illegal. At that time, some individuals’ rights to advance their common interests were generally accepted in mainstream politics. This could include forming groups, electing representatives, and pressuring public officials for change. However, the ban on workers organizing in a similar manner was grounded in a belief that employers had a right to run their companies as they saw fit, including hiring workers at the lowest wages and under whatever conditions the market would bear. The radical labor organizations and movements discussed in this chapter were fighting not only for higher wages, shorter hours, and improved working conditions but also for the right to organize, join independent unions, elect leaders to represent their interests, and bargain collectively without employer interference or intimidation. Their efforts contributed to the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, which guaranteed these rights to most workers and, as described by Paul Frymer, “extended democratic principles to a place where many Americans spend most of their time,” that is, at work.⁴ In addition, its passage allowed organized labor to become an integral part of mainstream American politics and an important constituency in the Democratic Party’s emerging New Deal coalition.

To achieve their goals, workers employed a variety of tactics, including organizing unions, either openly or in secret; striking or engaging in other forms of work stoppage or slow down; destroying property or sabotaging their work product; and publicizing grievances via picketing, parades, songs, cartoons, articles, and other forms of expression. At times, labor unions also used physical violence and intimidation, usually in an effort to prevent replacement workers from minimizing the effectiveness of a strike or as a reaction against owner-initiated acts of violence and physical intimidation. Many workers who engaged in these struggles paid a heavy price for their radicalism—losing their jobs, being evicted from their homes, and facing threats against their property and family, sometimes being seriously injured or even killed. As Phillip Dray suggests in There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, “There was a painful irony to the fact that the labor movement was tarred as an antisocial conspiracy when it was the corporations, the railroads, and the government that most often acted in collusion, frequently with the aid of the courts, the police, and at times soldiers’ bayonets.”⁵

This chapter discusses early attempts at labor organizing as the U.S. economy became more industrial in the mid- to late 1800s; the first nationwide work stoppage, commonly known as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877; one of the most radical unions of the early 1900s, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); and the enormous political and economic upheaval and workplace struggles occasioned by the Great Depression during the 1930s, which resulted in passage of Wagner Act. The chapter also briefly reviews the heyday of organized labor in mainstream American politics, generally recognized as the 1930s through the 1960s, as well as the factors contributing to its loss of power since that time, including the failed Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike of 1981, declining union membership, and the rise of global capitalism. The chapter closes with a short review of radical American agricultural movements that have organized strikes, co-ops, and other forms of protest from before the American Revolution to the present day. Although somewhat different from labor unions, groups such as the Farmers’ Alliance in the 1880s as well as the Farmers’ Holiday Association and Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union in the 1930s raised similar concerns about the impact of industrialization on agricultural work and farmers’ ability to earn an adequate income.

Industrialization and Early Labor Organizing

Although a strike was recorded among New England fishermen as early as 1636, labor conflicts within the United States were rare, small, and short prior to the 1800s.⁶ Farmers periodically rose up against urban elites (see the section on farmers’ rebellions at the end of this chapter), and slaves and indentured servants sometimes organized against their masters (see Chapter 5). However, a majority of the free population were uninterested in labor organizing largely because they worked for themselves or a family member, most often farming but in some cases running a small workshop, store, or professional office. Further, because of a persistent labor shortage throughout much of the country into the 1830s, workers seeking wage labor were in demand and could often negotiate for higher pay and better working conditions, particularly if they had specialized skills.

Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, was adamant that the future of America lay in “manufactures,” or larger scale industrial production.⁷ By the mid-1700s, some industries were already establishing factories to produce iron, glass, and textiles, and in the 1800s, this increased production capacity combined with the development of canals and railroads to create national wholesale markets. Geographically distant companies that would not previously have been in competition now had to vie with each other to offer products at the lowest possible price. To maintain their profit, business owners sought to reduce the costs of production, often by decreasing wages, increasing work hours, or hiring recent immigrants, who would often work for less (see Chapter 7). In addition, factories took advantage of advances in manufacturing technology to break complex tasks into individual steps, allowing highly skilled artisans to be replaced with less expensive, unskilled laborers. Whereas a skilled cobbler had previously made a single pair of shoes from start to finish, many unskilled workers now each performed a single step in the creation of dozens of pairs of factory-made shoes. These workers were typically expected to be on the job up to fourteen hours a day, often doing repetitive and physically demanding tasks under difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions.⁸ Although many workers were made ill, maimed, or even killed on the job, employers were generally not held responsible or required to provide any form of compensation. Women and children who worked typically received substantially lower wages than their adult male coworkers.

Over time, these conditions led to increasing conflicts between workers (sometimes referred to collectively as labor) and business owners (also called capital). However, both industry and government pursued a laissez-faire economic approach (literally, “let them act” in French). In this way of thinking, businesses should be allowed to freely compete to produce the best product at the lowest cost. The ones most successful at achieving these goals could be expected to sell more and grow, while those least successful would sell less and go out of business. This process, referred to by Adam Smith as “the invisible hand of the market,” was believed to work most efficiently when nothing interfered with the natural corrections that the market would otherwise provide.

As a result of the widespread acceptance of this economic view, the U.S. government generally allowed industry to operate without minimum wage requirements, safety standards, or other kinds of regulation. Further, labor organizing was seen as interfering with workers’ and owners’ ability to freely negotiate the terms of employment, which the Supreme Court protected under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. This interpretation, known as liberty of contract, assumed that labor and capital were negotiating on an equal playing field. However, with increases in European immigration, the number of people seeking work often greatly exceeded the number of available jobs, effectively eliminating the individual’s ability to negotiate with the employer. Factory workers could accept the pay, hours, and conditions offered, or they were “free” to look for another position. Over time, many workers determined that the only way to regain power in the workplace would be to organize as a group and use the threat of withholding labor (i.e., striking) as a tool to prompt negotiating equitable terms of employment with capital. Employers fought back against worker demands by firing union leaders and warning other employers against their hire (called blacklisting). Courts frequently aided employers by finding unions guilty of criminal conspiracy to interfere with trade or by striking down laws favorable to labor on the grounds that they unconstitutionally interfered with the free market, representing partial interests of labor rather than the neutral interests of all.⁹ The emerging labor movement sought to challenge these claims, arguing instead that ostensibly neutral law...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Summary Table Of Contents
• Table Of Contents
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• chapter 1 Organized Labor and Farmer Rebellions
• chapter 2 Socialism, Communism, and Other Anticapitalist Movements
• chapter 3 Anarchists, Militias, and Other Insurgents
• chapter 4 Native American and Mexican American Resistance to U.S. Sovereignty
• chapter 5 Resistance to Slavery and Black Nationalism
• Chapter 6 The Ku Klux Klan, Fascism, and White Supremacy
• chapter 7 Nativism and Immigration
• chapter 8 Gender and Sexuality
• chapter 9 Peace and Antiwar Movements
• chapter 10 Environmentalism, Environmental Justice, and Animal Rights
• Index