The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 60’s and the last great industrial strike wave of the 1970’s took place during an expansion of the system rather than a crisis and breakdown of buying and selling. The system was reformed, meaning the relations within and between classes were realigned without changing the property relations. When Roosevelt signed into law the National Labor Relations Act, the floodgate for industrial unionism was opened. In this context the “historic” struggle of the workers became “historic.” When Roosevelt came to office a full quarter - 25% of the workforce was unemployed. Farmers were in deep trouble as prices fell by 60%. Industrial production had fallen by more than half since 1929. Two million were flat out homeless. Sensing their interest as a collective mass fighting for survival, thousands of workers joined the Communist Party of America. The 1932 Unemployed strike was a catalyst for the union organizing drives, in the context of what became the “New Deal“ legislation. The state of the unionism had deteriorated between the time of the Fisher Body Strike in February 1921 and the Hunger Strike in 1932. Membership in the autoworkers union fell from roughly a peak of 45,000 members (1919) with thirty-five locals in Detroit, To ledo, Cincinnati, Flint, Pontiac, Buffalo, Chicago, and New York City to less than 200 - 300 in Detroit and 6000 nationwide between 1919 and 1929. Between 1930 and 1932 wages were cut between 5% to 20% depending on job classifications. This meant wages between $8.00 to $9.60 a day dropped to $6.00 and $6.40. (see “The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Union” by Roger Keeran for data and descriptions of the state of the organized labor movement of this period) In October 1928, the Comintern would craft its famous document on the Negro Question, impose it on the CPUSA and reorient the party for the survival fight. Reorienting the “party” meant “an attack against one is an attack against all.” Later, in the unionization of auto, this reorientation on the Negro Question would prove to be the decisive ingredient in the organization of Ford Motor Company. Specifically, the Unemployed Councils and the famous march on the Ford Motor Company in 1932 where company and police killed five people. This is to say that the character of the spontaneous strivings of the workers manifest a somewhat different character during a period of contraction versus a period of expansion of the system. The struggles of the 1960’s and even the 1970’s fit into a period of expansion of the system. The post WW I period of expansion came to an end abruptly and all hell began to break loose - implosion, between 1919 and roughly 1925, with momentary up ticks in production. Implosion and polarization rather than atomization, with nationwide “race riots” or the infamous “Red Summers.” The point is the tendency to stray from facts and data and attribute to the “left” a mystical power. Atomization cannot be fought or outcome but “ implosion” - the turning inward and spontaneous drift to the right, can be overcome on the basis of the survival fight and consciousness of the combatants. What we can do today in real time is aid and develop the survival fight taking place in front of us. American Marxism needs to stand on its own feet unfettered by the ideology of a dead era. In the lead up to the Obama presidential victory, the voting section of our working class gathered in open air rallies numbering 80,000 participants and these gatherings were basically ridiculed and discounted by much of the Marxist sectarians. At least 90% of these real people are "our market." The survival struggle is also "our market." Carrol pretty much hit’s the nail on the head, although the movement of the 60’s was not stamped with the imprint of the CPUSA and most certainly not the SWP. Perhaps it is better to say that the CPUSA lost its ability to teach, contain and train a new generation in Marxism and in this vacuum arose the so-called New or Young Communist Movement of that era. The CPUSA did not merely and magically lose its militancy but had been attacked by the government and faced a working class where every layer of it was moving up the social ladder, as the system was being reformed. The political ideology of the CPUSA has been basically the same since the inception of American communism: anti-monopoly coalition of the old populist movement. Today is very different and we are on the threshold of seeing a different kind of working class movement. WL.
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