American Gandhi. Leilah Danielson

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СКАЧАТЬ both sides. From the hierarchy of the American Federation of Labor. From the Hell-for-leather Communists. And just when the air is thick with critical bullets, you will find A. J. grinning a most winning grin and shooting right back, straight and hard.’’⁴ This characterization of Muste as someone who exuded ‘‘moral authority’’ and equanimity, while also being shrewd and strategic, echoes descriptions of him as a minister and as a leader of the ATWA. As we shall see, they would be repeated again and again in his long career; as David McReynolds would recall of his mentor, he was both a saint and as ‘‘sly as a fox.’’⁵

      Though Muste worked hard throughout the 1920s to reconcile right and left elements within the labor movement, by the end of the decade he found himself attacked as a ‘‘labor fakir’’ by the Communists and red-baited by the AFL.⁶ On one level, the conflict between Muste and the AFL was about competing visions of unionism—a struggle between those advocating industrial unionism, militancy, and political engagement and those advocating labor-management cooperation, voluntarism, and nonpartisanship, or between what we might call progressive and conservative unionism. But on a deeper level the conflict was cultural and generational. Muste and other labor progressives had adopted a modern worldview that frowned upon dogmatism and orthodoxy of any kind and viewed adaptation and flexibility as virtues in a rapidly changing world. Their supporters were a new generation of working-class youth who were more self-confident, modern in their outlook, and more invested in the United States than their immigrant parents. Union leaders, on the other hand ‘‘were ideological prisoners of the past.’’⁷

      BY mid-decade, Muste had become more confident and assertive. He continued to espouse loyalty to the AFL, but he lost the deferential tone of the early 1920s and spoke as an authority. His publications generally sounded two interrelated themes. First, he believed that the ideological splits in the labor movement had to be healed, and he offered insights into the causes and consequences of these divisions, and suggestions for their remedy.⁸ Second, he called for the modernization of the labor movement; it had to ‘‘adapt’’ to the realities of the new capitalism or die. This latter project was intimately related to the former for it entailed incorporating the younger and more militant members of the labor movement and recognizing that modern developments had rendered older methods of trade union organization archaic.

      In an influential series of articles on ‘‘dissenters’’ in the labor movement, for example, Muste assumed the role of an impartial observer, noting that unions often responded in a ‘‘primitive’’ manner to outbreaks of dissent and radicalism rather than ‘‘scientifically’’ and ‘‘impersonally’’ inquiring into their origins. Drawing upon the fields of sociology and social psychology, he pointed out that all organizations had some level of internal strife, and that such strife sometimes indicated that a movement was a ‘‘living’’ one. Unions were particularly prone to internal strife because of their dual role as both ‘‘army and town meeting.’’ On one level, the union assumes the character of an army, with the right to conscript and the right to tax, and during strikes, its struggle was replete with ‘‘generals,’’ battles, spies, and enemies. At the same time, however, the union was a democratic institution, with the membership enjoying the democratic right to elect its leaders. This tension between the union’s ‘‘two and incompatible functions’’ was further complicated by the union’s contradictory position of, on the one hand, having a vested interest in society through its role as a collective bargaining agent and, on the other, its opposition to the present order.⁹

      While some internal dissension was inevitable, Muste maintained that certain conditions gave rise to the ‘‘serious problem’’ of factionalism—such as an economic depression, an industry undergoing transition, or lack of union control over an industry. Thus, when a union faced discord, the correct response was to inquire into industrial conditions rather than try to quash oppositionists; an economic depression, for example, was often a sign ‘‘that the time has come when the union must work out a new program of action, that the conventional tactics will no longer do.’’¹⁰ The real question was not, then, what was wrong with the ‘‘lefts’’ or ‘‘rights’’ but rather ‘‘what measures the union must take to adapt itself to those changes.’’ ‘‘Oppositions do not make crises,’’ Muste concluded, ‘‘they are created by them.’’¹¹

      In these articles and others, Muste suggested that one reason why unions were unable to intelligently and calmly deal with problems such as internal strife was that organizers often had little training or experience for their roles, and he suggested that unions adopt fairly uniform criteria in selecting their organizers, much like modern businesses did. Organizers should, first of all, possess certain personal qualities such as energy, public speaking ability, a fighting spirit, good judgment, a thick skin, and charisma—‘‘He must have the quality variously described as magnetism, personality, ‘sex appeal,’ which enables him to approach people and to hold them.’’ And yet, Muste cautioned, unions did not want ‘‘salesmen,’’ but rather committed and experienced trade unionists; it was essential that organizers have an intimate knowledge of their craft, their union, and their industry; an ability to keep records; and some knowledge of psychology, since ‘‘an organizer needs to know himself and to know others.’’ These qualities could be cultivated through organizational experience, consultation with others in the movement, and, more to the point, courses in workers’ education.¹²

      Another reason for the sorry state of the labor movement was that it had failed to utilize young people. It was natural that older people feared the young; ‘‘young people are inexperienced, often hasty, unorthodox, critical, rebellious, great nuisances. The good God or Nature . . . has fixed that. It’s no good whining about. We have simply to accept the situation and deal with it.’’ Moreover, ‘‘any organization is in constant need of new blood, if it is not to stagnate and die’’; young people often had that ‘‘spark’’ of ‘‘idealism’’ that kept movements alive. At the same time, he offered advice to young unionists about how to deal with a labor movement dominated by conservatives, advice that reflected his own journey from revolutionary idealist to labor pragmatist. His maxims are worth quoting at length; not only do they reveal his approach to the problems of labor conservatism and worker dormancy, they illustrate the good humor and evenhandedness for which he was well known:

      Don’t be somebody who is going to do something TO the labor movement. Be somebody who is going to be and do something IN the labor movement. . . . Don’t get the Messiah or the Moses-lead-the-movement-out-of-the-wilderness complex. . . . Don’t be in a hurry. . . . Some things have to grow; they can’t be made. . . . Don’t be a cry baby. . . . A cry baby is anyone who always finds someone else to blame except himself. . . . Don’t be a nut. A nut is someone who is so obsessed with his own idea that he doesn’t see it in relation to other ideas nor in its effect on the people he is dealing with. . . . Don’t play for the limelight all the time. There are still somethings [sic] that can’t be done effectively in the limelight, such as making love or bringing up babies. . . . Don’t be afraid of being called names [such as ‘‘Bolshevik’’]. . . . Don’t become a cynic. Don’t grow up; don’t get old; don’t settle down; don’t lose your nerve, your gayety, your willingness to take a risk.¹³

      Yet underneath Muste’s moderate tone was a growing sense of urgency and frustration with the official labor movement. By mid-decade, it was clear to him and other progressives that their hopes in Green had been misplaced, as the AFL ‘‘shifted from militancy to respectability.’’ At its 1926 convention, rather than endorse industrial organization as the answer to Fordism, the federation proposed union-management cooperation through schemes like tying wage increases to high productivity. It also withdrew from its move into electoral politics, retreating into its traditional stance of nonpartisanship and voluntarism. Meanwhile, the labor movement was weak and in disarray. The United States was the only industrialized country without a political party that provided adequate representation for organized workers, as well as the only one in which company unions, injunctions, the industrial spy system, and СКАЧАТЬ