The Great Transition: Channeling “A Mighty River”

Altman, Jake

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-17176-6_8

The Great Transition: Channeling “A Mighty River”

Jake Altman²

Chapter
First Online: 14 June 2019

160 Accesses

Abstract

From the second half of the 1930s onward, socialists transitioned from independent political action under the banner of the Socialist Party to embracing the Democratic Party as an electoral vehicle. Their utopian aspirations faded, and they accepted social democracy. Socialists came to recognize the need for compromise and accepted the constraints of working to reform rather than abolish capitalism. The shift to the Democratic Party was not a capitulation of socialism in favor of liberalism. Rather, it was a process by which socialism was rethought and remade while maintaining itself as distinct from liberalism.

George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 21 September 1938, Box 98, Folder 14, George Edwards Jr. Papers [GEJP], Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.

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Notes

1.
Richard Lowenthal, “Socialism’s New Look,” The New Leader, 3 September 1951, 12.
2.
Denis Healey, “European Socialism Today,” The New Leader, 16 September 1957, 14.
3.
Lowenthal, “Socialism’s New Look,” 15.
4.
Liston Oak, “Communism Versus Social Democracy,” The New Leader, 15 June 1946, 2.
5.
David Liberson, “The Minor Parties Hit Low Ebb,” The New Leader, 29 December 1952, 11.
6.
Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968, 259. Boyle explores this distinction and the tension between the social democrats and liberals. Some works tend to blur the distinction between reformist socialists who joined the New Deal coalition and liberals. See Warren, An Alternative Vision, 117. Daniel Bell’s closing statement on what happened to socialism in the United States is too tepid a description: “In the form of a set of ideas, socialism has, as a pale tint, suffused into the texture of American life and subtly changed its shadings.” Bell also referred to “quondam socialists,” stressing a break with socialism and claimed, “by 1950 American socialism as a political and social fact had become simply a notation in the archives of history.” Bell’s closing epigraph about the Rabbi of Zans further emphasizes a closing of socialist tradition rather than a remaking. See Bell, Marxian Socialism, 191–193.
7.
George Edwards, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 7 November 1934, Box 97, Folder 1, GEJP.
8.
“Thomas Tells Sinclair Some Socialist Truths,” The New Leader, 2 June 1934, 2.
9.
George Edwards, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 7 November 1934, Box 97, Folder 1, GEJP.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Ibid.
12.
George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 21 September 1938, Box 98, Folder 14, GEJP.
13.
George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 13 December 1938, Box 98, Folder 15, GEJP.
14.
George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 13 December 1938, Box 98, Folder 15, GEJP.
15.
George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 21 September 1938, Box 98, Folder 14, GEJP.
16.
Norman Thomas supported this sentiment as early as 1933 in some select circumstances. See the conversation between Thomas and Felix Cohen outlined in Storrs, Second Red Scare, 22.
17.
George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 29 May 1936, Box 97, Folder 11, GEJP.
18.
Ibid.
19.
Ibid.
20.
James Dombrowski to Franz Daniel, 29 October 1940, Box 10, Folder 8, HREC.
21.
Glen, No Ordinary School, 63.
22.
George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 21 September 1938, Box 98, Folder 14, GEJP.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Ibid.
25.
George Brown Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), 520.
26.
Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World War II (Temple University Press, 2003), 209–210.
27.
Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 127–128.
28.
Sidney Fine, Sit-down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937 (University of Michigan Press, 1969), 294; Dubofsky and Van Tine, John L. Lewis, 195.
29.
Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther, 127.
30.
George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 21 September 1938, Box 98, Folder 14, GEJP.
31.
Dubofsky and Van Tine, John L. Lewis, 231.
32.
Levinson and Morton, “An Interview with Philip Van Gelder,” 463.
33.
Ibid.
34.
George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 21 September 1938, Box 98, Folder 14, GEJP.
35.
Paul Porter to Newman Jeffrey, 17 May 1940, Box 60, Folder 41, Mildred Jeffrey Collection [MJC], Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.
36.
Gregory, Norman Thomas, 184; W. A. Swanberg, Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 200.
37.
Cecelia Bucki, Bridgeport’s Socialist New Deal, 1915–36 (University of Illinois Press, 2001), 190.
38.
“Election Results,” The New Leader, 7 December 1940, 1.
39.
Gregory, Norman Thomas, 184.
40.
“Comparison of the Official Socialist Vote, 1928 and 1932,” [1932–1933], Box 5, PHP.
41.
Frank Crosswaith, “I Support Roosevelt: Labor Leader Discusses the Candidates,” New York Amsterdam News, 2 November 1940, 17.
42.
John H. Ohly, Industrialists in Olive Drab: The Emergency Operation of Private Industries During World War II, ed. Clayton D. Laurie (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999), 19, 24.
43.
Ibid., 24.
44.
Franz Daniel to Mildred Jeffrey, 23 June 1941, Box 55, Folder 9, MJC.
45.
Franz Daniel to Mildred Jeffrey, 11 June 1941, Box 55, Folder 9, MJC; For an exploration of historical examinations of the North American strike see James R. Prickett, “Communist Conspiracy or Wage Dispute?: The 1941 Strike at North American Aviation,” Pacific Historical Review 50, no. 2 (May 1981), 215–233. Prickett challenges Daniel’s (and many historians’) interpretations of the strike. The strike, Prickett argues, was about wages and the failings of the government mediation, which alienated workers. Nelson Lichtenstein reaches a similar conclusion and adds union competition between the UAW and IAM to the set of circumstances that led to a strike at North American Aviation. See Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World War II (Temple University Press, 2003), 59–60. Lichtenstein concludes that the strike was only possible because the rank-and-file workers in the plant were willing to engage in militant action to increase their wages. Daniel and his allies were keen to play up the CP link for their own political advantage. The CP, according to Lichtenstein, used its appeal to militancy and its potential rewards in the same way.
46.
Franz Daniel to Mildred Jeffrey, 11 June 1941, Box 55, Folder 9, MJC.
47.
Franz Daniel to Mildred Jeffrey, 10 June 1941, Box 55, Folder 9, MJC.
48.
George Edward, Sr. to George Edwards, Jr., 21 September 1938, Box 98, Folder 14, GEJP.
49.
Merkley, Reinhold Niebuhr, 179.
50.
The importance, scale, and speed of this change cannot be overstated. Few other movements of the era had proven so open and adaptable while maintaining its core purpose for being and basic intellectual premise. Roosevelt, for instance, did not even represent a coherent political tradition so much as help to invent a new one. It took many European socialist movements with much more access to power and institutional strength far longer to arrive at the same conclusions as the bulk of the American socialist movement. It is possible that the shift toward social democracy in the United States helped other socialist movements understand their own limits. See, for instance, Lichtenstein’s discussion of Walter Reuther’s support for Willy Brandt in Walter Reuther, 343.
51.
Myles Horton to Roger Baldwin, 24 October 1942, Box 6, Folder 4, HREC.
52.
Luff, Commonsense Anticommunism, 112.
53.
Franz Daniel to Newman Jeffrey, 12 July 1939, Box 11, Folder 57, NJC.
54.
Ibid.
55.
Franz Daniel to Mildred Jeffrey, 23 June 1941, Box 55, Folder 9, MJC.
56.
Ibid.
57.
Ibid.
58.
Ibid.
59.
Ibid.
60.
Ibid.
61.
Franz Daniel to Newman Jeffrey, 12 July 1939, Box 11, Folder 57, NJC.
62.
Ibid.
63.
David S. Burgess, Fighting for Social Justice: The Life Story of David Burgess (Wayne State University Press, 2000), 81.
64.
Franz Daniel to Newman Jeffrey, 12 July 1939, Box 11, Folder 57, NJC.
65.
Ibid.
66.
Ibid.
67.
Ibid.
68.
Parmet, The Master of Seventh Avenue, 122–128, 133–137, 146–152, 170–173, 184–185. Even before the suspension from the AFL of the union that had formed the CIO in September 1936, Parmet demonstrates Dubinsky’s reluctant break from the AFL. Jurisdictional disputes and fears of CP influence in the CIO were factors mediating the ILGWU’s return to the AFL.
69.
Franz Daniel to Newman Jeffrey, 12 July 1939, Box 11, Folder 57, NJC; On this conflict between Lewis and Hillman, see Dubofsky and Van Tine, John L. Lewis, 235–236; Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 432–433, 442–447.
70.
Franz Daniel to Newman Jeffrey, 12 July 1939, Box 11, Folder 57, NJC.
71.
Simeon Larson and Bruce Nissen, Theories of the Labor Movement (Wayne State University Press, 1987), 132. See the editors’ introduction to part three of their survey.
72.
Franz Daniel to Rose Bush, 4 August 1941, Box 55, Folder 9, MJC.
73.
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 508–509.
74.
Zilla Hawes to Jim [Dombrowski] and staff, 28 February 1937, Folder 14, Box 29, HREC.
75.
Ibid.
76.
Ibid.
77.
They were eventually disheartened by the neglect of the Southern field.
78.
Zilla Hawes to Jim [Dombrowski] and staff, 28 February 1937, Box 14, Folder 29, HREC.
79.
Ibid.
80.
Ibid.
81.
Ibid.
82.
Ibid.
83.
Ibid.
84.
Ibid.
85.
Ibid.
86.
For a discussion of the incident and its institutional context, see Glen, No Ordinary School, 43–44.
87.
Horton, The Long Haul, 81.
88.
Horton, The Long Haul, 87, 88–95; Glen, No Ordinary School, 45.
89.
Glen, No Ordinary School, 48.
90.
Ibid.
91.
Thomas, “The Highlander Folk School,” 363; Price, “The New Deal in Tennessee,” 116–117.
92.
Price, “The New Deal in Tennessee,” 117.
93.
Glen, No Ordinary School, 50.
94.
Adams, Unearthing Seeds of Fire, 84–86; Glen, No Ordinary School, 153.
95.
Glen, No Ordinary School, 153–154.
96.
Ibid., 147.
97.
Glen, Highlander, 38.
98.
United States Senate, Hearings before the Subcommittee to investigate the administration of the internal security act and other internal security laws of the Committee on the Judiciary on Subversive Influence in Southern Conference Education Fund, Inc. (Government Printing Office, 1955), 150. For a full summary and analysis of this hearing see Adams, An American Heretic, 222–232. Adams states that Dombrowski was surprised by Horton’s statement about the exclusion of Communist Party members at Highlander.
99.
“Text of Speech on Stalin by Khrushchev as Released by the State Department,” New York Times, 5 June 1956, 13.
100.
John Rousseau, “EXPOSE—White Citizens Councils’ Hate Crusade: Part I,” Pittsburgh Courier, 18 August 1956, B7; John Rousseau, “EXPOSE—White Citizens Councils’ Hate Crusade: Part II,” Pittsburgh Courier, 15 August 1956, B7.
101.
“Textile Union Condemns White Citizens Councils,” Atlanta Daily World, 26 May 1956, 2; “Textile Union Rebuffs Dixie to Condemn Citizens Councils,” The Atlanta Constitution, 19 May 1956, 1; “Textile Workers Blast White Citizen Councils,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, 19 May 1956, 18; and Bernard D. Nossiter, “Potofsky Scores White Councils,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, 21 May 1956, 15.
102.
“Tenn. School Head Raps Red Charges,” The Washington Afro-American, 15 October 1957.
103.
This did not help Highlander escape a state-level red scare directed at the school’s desegregation work. John Glen recounts these episodes in incredible and terrifying detail. See Glen, No Ordinary School, 207–248.
104.
Historians focus on rank-and-file revolts within the UMW and the alternative organizations these revolts engendered. There is, of course, overlap between this history and the history of Highlander. Franz Daniel, who played an important role in connecting Highlander to the textile unions in the South, considered Powers Hapgood a close comrade of similar politics. Hapgood unlike Daniel never abandoned the position that the CP had a right to be heard. Hapgood arguably had more prescience and regarded a reheated red scare as a political problem for the entire left, not just for the CP. See Robert Bussel’s From Harvard to the Ranks of Labor: Powers Hapgood and the American Working Class (Penn State Press, 2010), 193–195. Hapgood’s position had much in common with the position of James Dombrowski.
105.
Franz Daniel to Rose Bush, 4 August 1941, Box 55, Folder 9, MJC.
106.
Zieger, The CIO, 143.
107.
The social democrats and Christian democrats in coalition would see the CP extirpated from the CIO. The war had only briefly subordinated this desire. See Levenstein, Communism, Anticommunism, and the CIO, 150–152. The delay of the reckoning with the CP was ensured as the Communists embraced much of Hillman’s program on war mobilization—even if there was dissent in individual CIO unions. John L. Lewis continued to represent an alternative to Hillman’s program, which some dissenters in the CIO found attractive. See Philip Van Gelder to John L. Lewis, 10 October 1952, Box, 2, Folder 11, PVGC.
108.
Zilla Hawes to Franz Daniel, 24 July 1943, Box 3, Folder 5, FDC.
109.
Ibid.
110.
Ibid.
111.
Ibid.
112.
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 530–533.
113.
Franz Daniel to Newman Jeffrey, 13 January 1940, Box 11, Folder 57, NJC.
114.
Franz Daniel to Newman and Mildred Jeffrey, 31 January 1940, Box 11, Folder 57, NJC.
115.
Walter R. Storey, “The ADA Convention: A New Liberal Frontier,” The New Leader, 6 March 1948, 5.
116.
John Herling, “U.S. Labor vs. Khrushchev,” The New Leader, 5 October 1959, 17.
117.
Ibid.
118.
Ibid.
119.
Storey, “The ADA Convention,” 5.
120.
Niebuhr, “The Fate of European Socialism,” 6.
121.
Ibid.
122.
Ibid., 7.
123.
Walter Reuther, “Wanted: A Positive Social Program,” The New Leader, 15 April 1950, S-3.

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Altman, J. (2019). The Great Transition: Channeling “A Mighty River”. In: Socialism before Sanders. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17176-6_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17176-6_8
Published: 14 June 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-17175-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-17176-6
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