Battling for American Labor: Wobblies, Craft Workers, and the Making of the Union Movement

Rating:
Summary: Unconvincing finding of class consciousness
Review: The author's primary goal is to destroy the myth held by many that the American working class turned to the AFL because it does not regard itself as a class in opposition to the capitalist class. More of the myth is that workers do not find it necessary to participate in politics and they view capitalism kindly.

His means of making his case is to follow the various ups and downs of the shiploaders of Philadelphia and the culinary workers of New York City from 1913 into the 1930s. He clearly shows that when workers are strategically located and can control the relevant labor market that they can extract concessions from employers as long as those advantages remain. In both cases the fortunes of workers rose and fell many times.

A weakness of the book is that it does not explore the ramifications to workers' lives to operate in a direct action mode. What sort of hardships were endured and what were the effects on workers' thinking about capitalistic relations? The claim that in their actions lies class consciousness is not convincing. Obviously some solidarity is needed to effect a strike, but it seems fairly evident that the actions of the workers represented mostly a realistic assessment of their situation and of the best means to achieve economic gains. The actions of the workers could in no sense be termed revolutionary; they are presented in the context of a contest of economic wills within US capitalism.

There is no doubt that class consciousness would have to exist in a capitalistic society for the working class to make permanent headway. In many social democracies, workers have expressed themselves through political parties. That has not occurred in the US. The author does not mention that adverse judicial rulings of that era could be a reason that the political route was not taken by US workers. The IWW viewed direct action as a way of transforming capitalistic relations, but the author demonstrates that workers had little interest in IWW ideology.

Other than a few passing comments, the reader is hard-pressed to determine any applicability to the present era. Industrial relations have been completely transformed in the US with the passage of the NLRA and the rulings of the NLRB and the courts since the era under discussion. Furthermore, working class culture has embraced consumerism as the operant ideology. One wonders whether the author would like to mount an argument for worker class consciousness at this point in history. One suspects that such an argument would be even less convincing than one from the early 1900s. END