Rev Left Radio - Labor Militants: The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL)

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Chase from Mass Struggle joins Breht to discuss American labor history and communist political theory in relation to the trade union struggle through the lens of TUEL, or the Trade Union Educational League (1920 -1929). Together they discuss trade union consciousness, the necessity of a vanguard party, William Z. Foster, the limitations of spontaneity, specific actions taken by TUEL in their struggle against bosses and labor beurocrats, the importance of revolutionary theory, and then they even have a comradely back and forth over the differences between MLs and MLMs on the question of China. Chase on instagram: @massstrugglepod     Emails for contact: [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail]     Link to the Vote No episode      Recommended Reading: From Bryan to Stalin     Outro Music: "Vote No (Which Side Are You On)" by Space Baby ft. Red Teamsters and Math Rock Matt Follow Space Baby on Insta HERE   --------------------------   Support Rev Left Radio on Patreon or make a one time donation

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have a really interesting and important discussion with my friend Chase, who, you know, is the host behind the podcast Mass Struggle, who is a prominent Marxist-Leninist Maoist on the American Socialist Left, who's a longtime friend and comrade of mine, and he's here today to talk about Tool, or the Trade Union Educational League in operation between 1920 and 1929, spearheaded by one William Z. Foster. And basically, the first portion of this conversation is a revisiting of

and entrenchment of revolutionary theory. So he's going to walk us through the importance of revolutionary theory and guiding praxis. He's going to walk us through what that revolutionary theory is from a fundamentally Marxist-Leninist Maoist perspective and after that we will launch into an analysis of this little known element of American labor history. I'm sure if you're anything like me, you know, you're listening here, you're well read, you understand history, you are a Marxist and are interested in labor history, but you might not ever have heard of the tool. And so we're going to rectify that today. And of course, if you have heard of this, this is going to be a three-hour.

conversation in which we really get down into the details. And the importance of this is, you know, many-sided. But one of the important things is that we're living through this period almost 100 years after, exactly 100 years after the period we're going to be discussing today, in which we see this re-emergence of labor struggle, of working-class consciousness, of working-class labor strikes. And with the re-emergence of this sort of, labor militancy also comes the renecitation of us understanding our history, understanding mistakes, failures, and successes of previous iterations of union struggle, of communist-led union struggle, of the communist struggle within unions, right? And so we're living through

this period of time in which looking back at our history and understanding it is now becoming incredibly important. Now, my friend and comrade Chase, as I mentioned, is a Marxist-Leninist Maoist and he is a wonderful comrade and he's one of those people that you can have a discussion with, even if you disagree. So I'm sure that if you're listening to Rev. Left Radio, many of you are Marxist-Leninists. Many of you are Marxist-Leninist Maoists. Many of you are probably democratic socialists, Marxists of some other variety. We cast a wide net on this program because we want to reach a lot of people and we also want to center different perspectives within the revolutionary communist left so that even if you disagree with this or that, you can learn from

the perspective, you can understand the perspective, and we can engage with one another in a comradly fashion. So throughout this conversation, especially in the first half, me and him have these friendly back and force, right? China gets brought up. What should be the American proletarian stance, whether organizationally or individually to China? What's the Maoist perspective versus the Leninist perspective. And we don't over-focus on that because we don't want to get too far off the main topic, but he's a wonderful comrade. And we sort of touch swords a little bit, you know, discussing some of these differences

that him and I or Maoist and Leninist more broadly might have. And one of the things that we talked about, I think off the record here, I don't think we talked about it throughout this conversation that's on air, but in the background, we were discussing, you know, maybe it would be cool if I moderated, perhaps, Not a debate, because I think there's real limitations to the learning efficiency of a debate, right? A lot of people will pick aside, they'll batten down the hatches, they'll get in a defensive posture, and they'll turn the part of their brain that is curious and open and wants to learn off so they can defend a position, which is why I think debate is often not very useful for an educational, political educational model.

Sometimes it certainly can be. But I'm more interested in like a really good faith, but highly principled, no punches pulled conversation between a principled Marxist-Leninist and a principled Marxist-Leninist, because I feel like this ground between the two is very interesting. It's worth exploring. And if you're a Leninist or you're a Maoist, you can learn a lot from listening to a really principled and good faith conversation between these two representatives of these two. different tendencies and you can learn a lot that way and so even if you disagree with this or that you can at least understand the other perspective on a more deeper level and I think that really is important for the socialist left to not engage in this Twitter fueled algorithmic outrage cycle bullshit where you're just trying to dunk on somebody else of a slightly different tendency than

yourself but that's not very productive it doesn't give us much more than a visceral thrill right There's no real educational substance or value in a lot of that nonsense on social media. And so perhaps a show like this could be the perfect show to moderate a discussion between those two. But while we get into it a little bit here, it's not the main focus of the show. And so you'll have times when I might push back on something he says and he'll push back on something I say and we'll have a back and forth. I'm sort of amplifying these two positions. But throughout the conversation is this thread that connects us that. We're comrades. We're communists.

We want the same fucking thing. We have the same principles, the same values. We disagree on this or that, but we're not enemies of each other, right? We shouldn't treat non-antagonistic contradictions as if they're antagonistic, etc. But yeah, so that's just an idea that I had, and maybe we'll make that happen down the line. And him and I have talked offline about possibly doing just that. And I think there'd be a lot of interest from an audience base of a show like this to listen to that. but yes so all that aside this is a wonderful discussion a crucial educational conversation on an essential aspect of american labor history getting into the details and it really behooves anybody who is a socialist a communist involved in union in a union of any sort want to become involved in a union of any sort want to partake in this reemergence of union and labor militancy and strikes it really behooves us to

to learn from this particular history and to take its lessons into the here and now and into the future. So without further ado, here is my discussion with my comrade Chase on precisely that. Enjoy. Mass Struggle podcast for a while, but I really kind of take a step back from that. I might post an episode here and there, but I'm really focusing on, on these studies, and really around the topic that we're, that we're going to be discussing tonight. So I'm super stoked to dive in. Cool. Well, yeah, this is sort of an ongoing thing. It kind of accidentally happened with Rev. Left over the last several episodes, which is a focus on American history, but specifically

a focus on labor history, right? We had somebody, we had some labor journalists on. recently to talk about the recent UAW strikes. We had a conversation over on guerrilla history with John Melrod, who was a communist who struggled within unions through the 70s and 80s and 90s, and we had a lot to learn from him. And so today we're going to be talking about another iteration of both American history and labor history. And I do think it is increasingly important for a communist in North America, communist in the United States, to study and understand our history, our labor history in particular,

It's very important to understand, you know, the Russian Revolution. It's essential to understand the Chinese Revolution, study places around the world. But for those of us based here, we have to work with the conditions we exist in here. We have to understand our cultural and material history here in order to develop strategies and approaches going forward. And I think today's episode is going to be very helpful in that regard and add to the work that we've been doing here on RevLeft to try to bolster that among our listeners. But let's go ahead and get into it. So, yeah, Chase, can you kind of introduce me and the audience to what we'll be talking about today? Sure.

So, I mean, communists exist to develop the organization and consciousness of the working class for the overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, you know, to establish a proletarian dictatorship and begin the transition through socialism to communism, right? We don't wage class struggle for class struggle's sake, nor is our primary goal, simply the building up of the trade unions. you know, we want to end the struggle between classes, which entails the abolition of classes and class society. And so, you know, this has to be understood as the ultimate task of every genuine living communist today. But a world of communism cannot be realized if we do not first lead the working classes of our respective countries to overthrow each of our own ruling class of capitalists. And this is really the main thrust behind what we are going to be discussing. So if the working class in the United States is going to overthrow the American bourgeois and needs a party of its own most advanced and capable militants to lead it, you know,

no mass organization, but even a militant minority trade union organization, which is what we'll be talking about today, can fill the role of a proletarian vanguard party. You know, this is actually one of the theoretical and organizational heirs of the old syndiclists that the communists in the United States needed to overcome early on, but we'll say more about that stuff later. So while there is no part of our past that we should simply try to copy and paste,

an effort to reconstitute a communist party and build a proletarian socialist movement in this country doesn't need to start from scratch. If we're equipped with revolutionary theory, a grasp of the experience of the Communist Party and the labor movement through the trade, Educational League, and then after that, the Trade Union Unity League from 1921 to 1935 gives us an opening, I believe, into how we might go about accomplishing these tasks.

However, today we are going to focus on the Trade Union Educational League. Here on now, I'll just refer to it as the tool, right, T-U-E-L, which operated from 1920 to 1929. So the point I hope to make clear throughout this entirety, is that you know, I'll hear throughout this entirety of the episode, is that whether you're a communist or not, I think an immediate task for all who genuinely would have served the working class and the masses more broadly in overthrowing the American bourgeoisie is the establishment of a tool-like military organization within the established trade unions to unite the relatively advanced workers

for the purposes of ousting the incorrigible opportunists and social chauvinists. That's Lennon. Organizing the unorganized. That's Williams E. Foster. And transforming the trade unions into an organizing center of the working class for its broad interest of complete emancipation. That's Merck's. In the latter half of the episode, we're going to look at the struggles of the railroad workers, the miners, the garment workers, fur workers and textile workers throughout the 1920s. And I hope folks stick around for that introduction to the work of the tool.

in those industries. But before we even get there, I'd like to stress the importance of the need for revolutionary theory and clarify Marxism's understanding of the role of the proletariat, and principally the industrial proletariat in the struggle to abolish capitalism, imperialism. Yeah. So, yeah, Brad, if you're good to go, I'm going to dive in. Yeah, well, let's get there in a second. I just want to comment on the sort of importance of Revolutionary Theory in general. We had an episode with Jay Malfaude Paul on his book, Politics and Command, which addresses a lot of these issues. And of course, long-time listeners of Rev. Left and just veterans of, you know, Marxism in general, understand that while trade union

struggle is essential under capitalism and that, you know, radical socialist and communists, you know, need to have a presence in those struggles and support those struggles and help develop those struggles in and of themselves. They are not enough, right? Unions are sort of what we have under capitalism in a class society that we ultimately want to overthrow. And there's many reasons why we want to abolish class society. But one of the reasons that is very important and studying American history will reveal to be important is that if you do these half measures, if you just do reformism, even if you get to, let's say, elements of social democracy that might have been president something like the New Deal, and the best parts of the New Deal, as flawed as it was,

came from these bottom-up movements by communists and socialist and union organizers, etc. But without a real socialist transition away from capitalism and ultimately a transcendence of class society, any and all of those gains can and will be rolled back. And so, you know, I understand neoliberalism, the rise of Reagan in the United States and then Clinton's solidifying of neoliberalism as largely a ruling class response to the New Deal to the falling rate of profit throughout the 70s and a sort of assault. on, you know, what made the New Deal beneficial for at least some segment of, you know, in particular white middle class sort of workers in the United States. And so we can just see

with something like that that even some good things that developed out of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era and eventually the New Deal were still subject and actually were heavily rolled back. And so, you know, if you want to reform the system, you want to operate within the system, you know, Democratic Socialists, you know, their strategy. of using the electoral mechanisms to try to gain power. That's all fine and dandy, as long as you keep in mind that as long as you maintain capitalism, any and all of those gains can and will be rolled back. And we've seen time and time again that exact thing happened.

And so ultimately, if you want to secure these gains, if you really want equality and justice and freedom for all people going forward indefinitely in perpetuity, we need the socialist and ultimately the communist struggle. Do you want to add anything before I ask the next question, Chase? No, I'm absolutely in agreement. We should stop short of nothing of revolution. Absolutely. Yeah, so having gone over 80 years without anything close to resembling a vanguard party,

we suffer from a fairly low level of ideological development, and our very low level grasp of communist ideology, politics, and proletarian history has led to two extreme errors. The first being that of the internet politics of dogmatism, and the second being empiricism. Mao discredits the former in on practice when he says, Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory but merely prayed about it, pigeonhole it and do not have it put into practice,

then that theory, however good, is of no significance, end quote. One only needs to hop on any social media platform to find an incredible, amount of talk about Marxism, but not even a fraction of these people talking about Marxism are actually trying to make revolution in this country. It is a theory stripped of the test of practice, which is not Marxism. pertaining to that latter error, empiricism, I was wrapped up empiricism myself for a while fairly recently on the Mass Struggle podcast. If you listen to old episodes, I used to say all the time that mass work is everything. Literally, I was acting is if we were starting from scratch.

Practice something, anything, everything, and practice itself, I thought, was guaranteed to lead to better practice, but I was carelessly ignoring the incredible breadth of knowledge we can already learn from. Here I'm thinking specifically the experience of the French Revolution

with the French proletariat between 1848 and 1852, the Paris Comrieu in 1871, the Bolshevik Revolution through Stalin's death in 1953, and the lessons from the Chinese Revolution up through the great proletarian cultural revolution, which ended with the counter-revolution following Mao's death in 1976. And these revolutions should serve merely as the beginning, not the end of our study.

But having gone so long without a vanguard in the United States, on one hand, we see Marxism being reduced to generalized abstract phrases, void of any real practice today, and on the other hand, we see a bunch of activity that is being done in the name of Marxism, but is really serving no one but the bourgeoisie because the activists didn't care to first take the study of revolutionary theory seriously. And so amidst this swamp of dogmatism and empiricism, there is a desperate need for revolutionary theory. In what is to be done, against the wishes and ideas of the economists and the worshippers of the Russian proletariat's spontaneous trade union activity, Lenin clarified the need for revolutionaries to grasp revolutionary theory

and struggle ideologically against incorrect ideas. And by incorrect ideas, I mean ideas that fail to accurately reflect reality. And why did Lenin see the need to struggle against wrong ideas? Insofar as wrong ideas do not reflect reality, they cannot serve the proletariat in their ultimate goal of understanding and transforming the society that That enslaves them. Without a revolutionary theory, right, Linden Sut, there can be no revolutionary movement. To ground this in the particular topic of today's discussion, if we do not equip ourselves with the theory of Marxism, there is only so far we'll be able to go in a struggle against

the capitalists through the trade union movement. Without a deep grasp of Marxism, we will not be able to turn the most elementary form of working-class organization for fighting the capitalists into, as Mark said, a deliberate organizing center of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. So without Marxism, like the bourgeois trade unionists, we will end up treating the labor moot as an end in itself, which is an end in the interests of the capitalists, not the workers.

You know, we will fail to overcome trade unionism. We will fail to help the workers distaste. between their real friends and their real enemies, we will fail to raise the consciousness of the workers from the more economic and immediate concerns to the level of genuine class consciousness. The principal

error of people who call themselves socialists and Marxists today and are active in the trade union movement is right opportunism. As systematically exposed by my comrades in their recent Cosmoto article, the UPS struggle and the tasks of Marxists in the labor movement.

You know, everyone from the party for socialism and liberation, to the Democratic Socialists of America, to a number of Trotskyist organizations all clung to the class collaborationism of Sean O'Brien with the language of class struggle and historic victory.

Or, we're simply passive when the correct line was clearly to vote no, given that even a basic link of the development of the struggle revealed the tentative agreement to be a masterful deception, a great betrayal of not only UPS workers, but

the whole of the working class. So because these organizations are without revolutionary theory, these groups in the labor movement acted not as servants and leaders of their working class, but as their enemies. As Lenin explains to us and what is to be done, the best case scenario for a movement without revolutionary theory is that the working class will spontaneously develop class instinct due to the objective contradiction between the workers and the capitalists. They'll say, work, sucks, right? Bosses suck. We workers should unionize to make more money and make our lives a little less miserable. But all the unions in the world cannot fundamentally change the fact that

workers under capitalism have to endlessly defend themselves against the onslaught of the capitalists given our position in society as an oppressed class of laborers in meat of employment for survival. Despite what modern revisionists espouse, we kind of like gradually unionize and vote our way out of capitalism into socialism. The workers must be educated on and prepared for their historic task of revolution. The communists, true communists, must take revolutionary theory to the people. The realm of ideas is an extremely important site for struggle in the war between capitalism and communism. You know, wrong ideas incorrectly reflect society and therefore materially serve in the interests of the

capitalists and imperialists. Even on the other side of the revolution, right, there will exist a material basis for revisionism to arise within the party itself as long as we remain in the period of socialist transition, both the material inequality that persists under socialism and the privileges that members of the party of the now ruling proletarian class receive are ground for a new bourgeoisie to emerge within the vanguard of the revolutionary class itself. This is what happened in the Soviet Union and in China. Revisionism found its basis in the revolutionary parties, and the capitalist rotors defeated the defenders of the revolutionary line, turning the first two socialist states, the first,

at the last, the first two socialist states back into capitalist countries while masking their bourgeois rule by keeping the word communist next to the word party. Again, and on practice, Mayo says, in class society,

everyone lives as a member of a particular class. In every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped at the brand of a class. So, those of us who are serious about turning the labor movement into an organizing center of the working class

where its ultimate goal of complete emancipation must understand the role of theory and the struggle to abolish capitalism, right? We cannot transform what we do not understand. And one more thought on this point on the need for revolutionary theory.

It's possible to come to see the effectiveness and necessity of an organization like the Trade Union Educational League and the Trade Union and Unity League but failed to grasp the knee for revolutionary theory and thus continually be led to wrong political lines in the incorrect

handling of contradictions throughout the struggle. You know, the popular liberal notions of class struggle unionism or the rink and file strategy are great examples, I think, of revisionists talking about workers' militancy, but really putting forward ideas in politics that incorrectly worship the spontaneity

of the workers, as opposed to developing their consciousness, and failed to lead the workers in transforming the trade unions for the ultimate purpose of proletarian revolution. Kim Moody, the main theoretician of the rank-and-file strategy, was a founder of both the Trotskyist international socialists and the more well-known labor notes. We could spend all day tearing apart his article origins of the rank-and-file strategy, but a short quote from the article on how Draper's conception of the tool gets a

this point of needing revolutionary theory to correctly work within the trade unions. Quote, tool was somewhat of a hybrid and that it did have support among some high-level leaders, particularly those in the Chicago Federation of Labor, but mostly it was a genuine rank-and-file movement that spread rapidly across the unions in 1922 through 23. Its initial success was based precisely on the willingness of Foster and at first the CP to go with the existing opposition movements and several unions and to address existing consciousness. As Draper put it, and this is quoting Draper,

as a result of the policy amalgamation in the Labor Party, they followed all the ferment that existed. All those currents of opposition that followed that flowed beneath the surface of the movement, coalesced around the tool. And that's ending Draper's quote. Back to Moody. But, sure enough, CP control was increased and the party actually merged the tool's paper,

The Labor Herald, with Soviet Russia Pictorial and The Liberator, and turned it into a Communist Party front. This killed the tool as a real movement. The lesson seemed clear. Socialists should help build rank-and-file movements and organizations, but the task is not to take them over or dominate them, but to develop a broad leadership that can sustain the movement. This was a lesson that later made the Teamsters for a Democratic Union possible, end quote. All right, so that was, again, Kim Moody in his article, Origins of the Rican File Strategy.

Now, these eight sentences, in my opinion, are quite unbelievable. But just in case, it's not extremely clear, Moody and Draper's A historical conception of the tool strips the tool of its revolutionary character, watering it down into a simple tool for trade unionism, which is downright a falseness character issue, because revisionism is a rejection

of Marxism, it is utterly incapable of leading the proletary in their struggle for emancipation. All this to say, it is not enough to want to organize or tell the existing opposition or sustain some broad movement.

This is one of the basic lessons from Lenin's what is to be done. In Chapter 1, Lenin quotes angles on the need to not only struggle on the political and economic front, but on the theoretical front. And why, we might ask, is it essential we struggle not on two but all three fronts? It is because, as Lenin says, the role of the vanguard fighter can only be fulfilled by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory. So continue to reject revolutionary theory and the masses will continue to go without a revolutionary movement. Yeah. I mean, I think that's incredibly crucial. It's something that we stress on our show all the time, the essential nature of revolutionary theory and what's left when you don't have it or when you only have parts of it or when you default to a sort of a more mainstream position, whether that's within an organization, within a union, within the society as a whole. you lose that revolutionary theory, therefore you lose the guidance and all of the wisdom that have been tested, right, by a figure like Lenin, by a figure like Mao, not in the armchair of these two thinkers, but in actual real world socialist struggle and victory. And so, you know, they did that. Lennon and Mao were able to do that in a way that others were not precisely because they understood exactly what Chase is saying here, the essential nature of revolutionary theory to guide revolutionary practice.

Axis. And so I think that's incredibly important. I will say this, just to kind of put this out there, of course, a show like Rev Left is meant to be, you know, casting a wide net and speaking to different elements of the left. Would you say it's fair that this analysis is fundamentally a Marxist-Leninist Maoist analysis? And do you want to say anything about that before we move on? No, I mean, I would absolutely agree. Yeah, this is Marxism and Linus and Maoism. But no, I think that's, I, I, I I think folks taking seriously the study of revolutionary theory and really trying to figure out, you know, why are all of these different Marxisms out there today and what really reflects the reality most correctly? I think those are really important questions for people to dive in. You know, for example, like if the question of whether China is an imperialist power or not is a very important question. because the tool in the 20s and 30s, part of their program, as I'll talk about later, was to recognize Soviet Russia. And so, I mean, if a tool existed today and hell, if you have like five or six different socialist countries today, don't you think that would be a part? That would be a really important part of the tool program to support and to defend these socialist countries. But if there are no socialist countries today, and in fact, China is an imperialist power, you know,

just not a socialist power, but in the imperialist country, well then that would change the way in which we would encourage the proletariat of our own country and of course the proletariat of the world to relate to the struggle against China. So yeah, I really do think that

rasping revolutionary theory is important on all for all questions. I don't want to get you know logged down here in anything or you know get in between the ML versus MLM part of the debate. But an ML might say something thing. And, you know, this is not, of course, the point of this entire episode, but, you know,

it's worth bringing it up because this is a hot topic on the left. And as you just said yourself, it's an important one. An ML might say, yes, that while China has a capitalist mode of production, objectively, and capitalist social relations, objectively, that there is a socialist party overseeing that capitalist development. And ideally, or at least in their rhetoric, saying that they are genuinely interested in moving in the direction of socialism once a certain amount of, you know, productive forces and wealth, et cetera, have been created. They don't want to isolate themselves and become a sort of pariah state of the international system. They've embedded themselves into the global economy in such a way that, you know,

is at least strategic in the sense of, you know, growing their own economy and not being sort of partitioned out of the main global trading block and that these are parts and parcel of developing socialism. And it's not happening instantaneously. It's not, you know, an of the entire Chinese society, but ultimately socialist and communist party lines, even if they're just ML, not MLM, are sort of directing the state at least, and they have a plan for the future of Chinese society to move more robustly in a socialist direction. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because I do have ML listeners who would be thinking something like that. Yeah, I don't think it's possible for a communist to see China at all representing anything close to socialism or communism anymore. Politically, the counter-revolution was first political before even economic, before they were able to destroy the, what, the two-and-a-half decades of construction of socialism economically, they politically had to overthrow the revolutionary line.

And it's a full-on capitalist party. That was kind of what I was suggesting earlier when I say, they just keep the name communist. But there's nothing resembling anything communism in China anymore, politically, economically, or even culturally. Like I said, it's been 245 years now. The Chinese proletariat are in need of a whole new revolution. Now, there's no saving what happened so, you know, half a century ago, are returning to that just by an internal struggle within the party because the party is a bourgeois party. Yeah. And for those interested in learning more about the difference between Maoism and Marxist Leninism and some of the debates, we've had many, many episodes on both explaining Leninism, explaining Maoism, and we've had on many figures, you know, like maybe a Jay Malfaad Paul who comes on, talks about continuity and rupture in which he lays out this argument in extreme detail.

So again, this is not the point of this particular episode, so I don't want to get bogged down. but for all those who are interested in hearing more of this sort of debate and this sort of advancement of Maoist theory in particular, Marxism, Leninist Maoist theory, you can definitely go check that out. But let's go ahead and get back to what's at hand today, and that is, of course, studying a tool. So moving forward in the conversation, according to Marxism, what role must the working class and the trade union movement play in a revolutionary movement in a developed capitalist country like the United States? Sure, yeah. So, stressing the fundamental importance of developing correct political lines, during his 1971 Provincial Tour, Mao urged, The correctness or otherwise of the ideological and political line decides everything. When the party's line is correct, then everything will come its way, end quote.

And, you know, this might sound a little elementary at first, but before moving on to the tool, I'd like for us to return to this idea, Brett, that fundamental to Marxism that teaches us, that it is the working class, it is the most consistently revolutionary class under capitalism, and more specifically, the industrial proletariat is the most consistently revolutionary section of the working class as a whole. Marxism teaches us that the proletariat has a unique class interest in ending all forms of exploitation and depression. Because of this unique, objective class interest, the proletariat has proven to be the most consistently revolutionary class in a world of capitalism imperialism. Because it is the most consistently revolutionary class, it then must take up its role as the leading class of all other classes in strata in the war to end all exploitation and oppression. Why is it that, more than any other class or strata under capitalism, the working class has the most,

at stake in ending not just capitalist exploitation and class rule, but all oppressive social relations? It is because these social relations, in the corresponding ideas they produce, serve to reproduce the rule of the proletariat's enemy number one,

right? The ruling capitalist class. And if the working class is going to break free from its enslavement, if the proletariat is going to bring an end to its subordination, it has to aim to destroy every last vestige of patriarchy and racism, both the material inequalities and subjective prejudices that are foundational to this old society. And vice versa. If oppressed peoples, you know, want to see the end of

their oppression. If they want to abolish patriarchy and white supremacy and Christian supremacy in the United States, they should see to it that the working class builds up the revolutionary movement and that all the progressive elements of their various classes and strata in the United and states support them in their revolution. Presently, we are in a stage where we do not even have a party, right, let alone a strong pre-party formation, which means we need to be strategic and intentional, right, not careless with the dissemination of our limited forces. In the tasks of the Russian social democrats, Lenin speaks to the attitude of the communists

toward working amongst the various sections of the proletariat and masses. And this is a long quote, but I think it's worth reading every word. Again, this is from the tasks of the Russian social democrats. Quote, our work is primarily and mainly directed to the factory urban workers. Russian social democracy must not dissipate its forces. It must concentrate its activities on the industrial proletariat, who are most susceptible to social democratic ideas, most developed intellectually and politically

and most important by virtue of their numbers and concentration in the country's large political centers. The creation of a durable revolutionary organization among the factory urban workers is therefore the first and most urgent task, confronting social democracy.

And by social democracy, he means communism, cool? One from which it would be highly unwise to let ourselves be diverted at the present turn. But while recognizing this necessity of concentrating our forces of the factory workers and opposing the dissipation of our forces,

we do not in the least wish to suggest that the Russian Social Democrats should ignore other strata of the Russian proletariat and working class. Nothing of the kind. The Russian Social Democrats think it inopportune to send their forces among the Hany Kraftsman and

rural laborers, but they do not in the least intend to ignore them. They will try to enlighten the advanced workers, also in question, affecting the lives of the handicraftsmen and rural laborers, so that when these workers come into contact with the more backward strata of the proletariat, they will imbue them with the ideas of the class struggle, socialism, and the political tasks of the Russian democracy in general,

and of the Russian proletariat in particular. It is impractical to send agitators among the handicraftsmen and rural laborers when there is still so much work to be done among the factory, urban workers. But in numerous cases, the socialist worker comes willing-nilly into contact with these people and must be able to take advantage of these opportunities and understand the general tasks of social democracy in Russia. Hence, those who accuse the Russian Social Democrats of being narrow-minded, of trying to ignore the mass of the laboring population for the sake of the factory workers, are profoundly mistaken. On the contrary, agitation among the advanced

sections of the proletariat is the surest and the only way to rouse, as the movement expands, the entire Russian proletariat. The dissemination of socialism and the idea of the class struggle among the urban workers will inevitably cause these ideas to flow in the smaller and more scattered channels. This requires that these ideas take deeper root among the better prepared elements and spread throughout the vanguard of the Russian working class movement and of the Russian revolution, end quote. And so the lesson that I hope that this quote highlights for us is that we have to ask ourselves who it makes sense to focus our efforts on and why, right, with such limited forces. We don't even have, as I said, a strong party formation yet. And if we fail to

answer this question correctly, we're going to seriously delay. the development of both the revolution and the vanguard. In Lenin's lecture on the 1905 Revolution, he explains how the working class is not a homogenous whole that is without difference, but in fact, there are relatively advanced intermediate and relatively backward elements of the revolutionary class. And in the case of the 1905 Revolution,

it was the advanced metal workers, as demonstrated through the consistently political character of their strikes that were able to lead the intermediate textile workers into higher forms of struggle, raising their consciousness from a more economic fight in early 1905 to the level of genuine cost consciousness by the end of the year. Now, many will be surprised to find that the metal workers were among the highest paid workers of the Russian proletariat at that time. You know, why? Of course, because, you know, they were the most militant in their fight amongst the the manufacturers. Yet, despite being better paid than the textile workers, they proved to be

the most advanced section of the proletariat. Then, through the working class, the communists were able to reach and lead the other classes and strata of the Russian society, such as the lower and middle peasantry, the petty bourgeois students of intelligentsia, and the soldiers and sailors. My point here is this. It is the working class, and principally the industrial working class that communists today should primarily concentrate our efforts with. I'll say more about this in a minute, but communists in the United States have largely abandoned, not in word, but in practice, the Marxist conception of the proletariat being the most consistently revolutionary class for more post-modern distortions of the proletariat and the masses.

And to be clear, I think it makes perfect sense, of course, for communists to speak of the masses, But we need to be clear and concrete about the various sections of the proletariat, the various strata of the masses, and be strategic in who we focus on in every given stage of the struggle, and, of course, base that strategy on Marxism, not postmodernism. According to Mars, unions must, quote, learn to act deliberately as organizing centers of the working class and the broad interest of its complete emancipation.

They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction, in quote. So in capitalist countries, the labor movement is the primary means in capitalist countries for building up a revolutionary proletariat. You know, it will be an extremely protractive process. It will be an extremely difficult process. But if we don't organize the working class at their workplaces and transform the unions into militant, fighting mass organizations and educate the mass of workers

on capitalist society, right? Their ultimate tasks as a class, who their real friends and enemies are, the role of the state in class society, the need for proletarian dictatorship and much, much more, then we will not be able to build up a proletarian vanguard, and we certainly will not be able to overthrow the bourgeoisie. Many communist organizations in the United States,

including many Maoist organizations, I've abandoned the proletariat in practice by de-centering the trade union movement or in the case of the RCP in 1978 outright rejecting the trade union struggle entirely as a communism. The right opportunists tend to abandon the proletariat by rejecting revolutionary theory in politics, but the left opportunists erroneously suggest

that U.S. imperialism and the existence of the labor aristocracy make the labor movement in imperialist countries less effective, less important, sight of struggle. And in the case of organizations who follow the line of the RCP post-1978, they completely discard it. You know, maybe in a future conversation, you and I can discuss the post-modern misconceptions of the impact of imperialism on the working class and on who really makes up the labor aristocracy.

But for now, what left opportunists end up doing his term sites of struggle, I should be part of a revolutionary movement into its center and foundation. Will anti-police mobilizations, you know, tenant organizing the projects, anti-imperialist efforts, and anti-fascist fronts, you know, play important roles in building up a broad revolutionary movement? Of course, right? Anyone who denies the importance of those sites and forms of struggle really shouldn't be taken seriously. But we have to have to be. We have a have to understand that it is the trade union movement that must be developed as the foundation to the revolutionary movement.

Well said. The relationship between the tools and the unemployed councils from the 20s through 1935, I think, demonstrates for us a proper relationship between these various forms of organization. You know, and even CPI Maoist, according to their document, urban perspective, emphasizes the centrality of their work among the industrial proletary and their urban work. And capitalist relations are far less developed in India compared to the United States. Though it's not that the Indians are generally premising urban work over their work in the countryside, which would, of course, be an error considering their given conditions. But unless their policy has changed due to the steady rise

of fascism in India, urban perspective says their urban work is centered around the comparatively less developed industrial proletariat. So, as I mentioned earlier, you know, there is much to be said about these postmodern interpretations of Bengals and Lennon on the labor aristocracy and imperialism's impact on the consciousness of the working class in imperialist countries. But the result of this rejection of such elementary Marxist politics is the treating of the workplace as one among many sites of struggle and the proletariat as one among many classes. Contrary to the present bourgeois trade unionism of the reformist socialists and the

decentering of the trade union struggle by left communists, the communists in the 1920s and 30s worked to transform the labor movement into a clutches organizing center for the working class that could act as a lever for its ultimate interest of emancipation from capitalism. And they did this through the trade union education league and later the trade union Unity League. You know, they understood that a powerful trade union movement can only come about after the opportunists and class collaborations were ousted from the working class organizations. And the communists themselves took up positions of leadership by winning the support of the workers in the trade union movement. So to wrap this section up, it is extremely

concerning how easily people throw out the basic lessons of the Bolshevik experience has laid out his left-wing communism in infantile disorder. In this key text, Lenin tells us that the struggle of the trade unions must, quote, be waged ruthlessly, and it must unfailingly be brought, as we brought it, to a point with all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social chauvinism are completely discredited and driven out of the trade unions. You know, political power cannot be captured, and the attempt to capture it should not be made until the struggle has reached a certain stage. This certain stage will be different in different countries and in different circumstances. It can be correctly engaged only by thoughtful, experienced, and knowledgeable political leaders of the proletariat in each particular country, end quote.

The main point here is this. Political power in the capitalist countries cannot be captured and the attention not be made until the trade union movement is firmly under the leadership of the most advanced, politically conscious, militant leaders of the working class. And to be clear, I actually don't think that it's possible to completely drive out the influence of the bourgeoisie from the labor movement under capitalism. You know, that kind of metaphysical thinking is akin to the revolutionists. to dream of starting new, pure, revolutionary communist unions.

But it is not only possible, but essential, that we unite to oust the opportunist and chauvinist leadership from the labor movement. Yeah, well said. And I think what's important here, I mean, everything you said is really interesting. It's food for thought. It's really well said and detailed and important. What I really love is that you are, these first two questions, you're really centering and making incredibly, clear the precise revolutionary theory that you're talking about before we get into this specific historical example of tool. I think that's a really good approach to like understanding

history in general and to like understanding a certain element of labor or communist history is like front load the conversation with the relevant political theory and then get into the example. So now that we're equipped with that theory, we can parse through the historical specificities of tool with that theory freshly in mind. and sort of help ourselves guide ourselves through this example. So very good on you for doing that. Another thing you mention is the postmodern distortion of certain Marxist concepts. And, you know, this can take a variety of forms across the spectrum from like actually

committed postmodern or post-structuralist thinkers who are, you know, incredibly suspicious of grand narratives and who work to combat something like Marxism for its quote-unquote totalizing universalist nature, right? but I think it also takes much more subtle forms. And this is what you're getting at, too, of people who don't consider themselves intellectually or ideologically postmodern in any way and maybe or even, you know, consciously and overtly hostile to postmodernism. But because it's so culturally ambient, it slips in. And one of the ways it slips in, as you said, is like sort of getting off the center and the clarity point of what the primary parts of, you know, sites of struggle are. and sort of diffusing these as many sites of struggle, you know, as you said, the industrial

proletariat or denigrating that down and dissipating that into, well, there's many different types of classes, many different types of struggles, right? It's not about the class struggle. And these are issues that creep into even well-intentioned people, you know. I mean, a hallmark of post-structuralist thinkers or post-modern thinkers, as we call them, sort of, you know, non-super specifically, but whatever, is the Foucodean sort of, um, dissipation of power structures. You know, it's not just the capitalist class exploiting the working class, but power actually operates through linguistic framing. It operates through grand narrative construction. It operates interpersonally, right? And all of these things have had an

immense impact on the culture such that people who don't even know and can't even define or maybe you never even heard the terms like postmodernism or post-structuralism or deconstruction, right, are still imbued with certain attitudes, postures, and unexamined assumptions because of the cultural infiltration of these ideas such that they do manifest in certain ways. And the only way that you can combat that, even in yourself as well as in others, is through organization, is through line struggle, is through a clarification of revolutionary theory. And of course, the real full-on and unapologetic embrace of something like scientific socialism, which is anathema to post-modern and post-structuralist thinkers, right? It's actually a very specific target of theirs to attack,

as well as other things like liberalism and its pretensions to, you know, humanist universalism or whatever. But those are just very important points to sort of make that you touched on, but I just wanted to elaborate a little bit further. I have one quick question, a follow-up on what you said, and then we'll move into the next question. But you stress the importance, rightfully so, of the industrial proletariat. Can you just help us understand maybe people out there listening? What does that mean. What is different about the industrial proletariat from other sections of the proletariat and what makes sort of the industrial proletariat, industrial proletary, right? Like, what are some defining features of that? Well, one of the main defining features is the socialization,

the mass socialization of that labor. And so today, on one hand, yeah, there is traditional manufacturing still in the U.S. It's not true that we completely deindustrialized, like completely out of the United States. That's never been the case. And with the inter-imperialist conflict becoming more acute with China and the need for the United States to kind of onshore a lot of production or friends shore, you know, we're bringing even more traditional manufacturing back right now. We're going to see waves of that, especially here in the south where I'm at. Anyways, so that's one thing. But there's traditional manufacturing, but there's also the really large socialized production, you see Amazon, UPS, those I think fall into account of the industrial.

Really important sites are logistics, transportation, and also the defense industries. You know, lithium mining and the production of that has to do with lithium and the new electric vehicles, that's a very important site of the industrial proletariat in the U.S. And so I think kind of those three, four categories are helping me think of and conceive of the industrial proletariat. today in the United States. Sure. And because of, you know, various occurrences, especially like the supply chain issues caused under the COVID pandemic, for example, but other issues as well, like the conflict with China, you know, on behalf of the United States has led to, even under, you know, obviously dictatorship with the bourgeoisie, this idea of reshoring or friend shoring

certain crucial industrial manufacturing factories and plants that have otherwise, through the neoliberal globalization era been spread across the globe. And for various reasons, both imperialist interests on behalf of the United States and their competition with other countries, as well as just what the pandemic revealed about globalized supply chains in general, we're seeing a move in that direction as well. So we're actually, you know, in some sense, bringing more industrial jobs back to the United States, back to North America, et cetera. Absolutely. I think I think that's really important for people to understand it. There is like there is a, um, um, um, um, uh, reindustrialization happening in the United States.

And it's primarily because of the interior imperialist conflict with China. And I want to make really quickly a point of distinction here because there are some reactionary chauvinist elements masquerading as Marxists who take this idea to a whole, you know, different level and a non-Marxist level, which is to say that, you know, this fetishization of the industrial proletariat in juxtaposition and the sort of annihilation of other forms of labor as not really working class is something that Marxist should not care about. And in fact, should denigrate. You'll hear people say something like a barista isn't even a worker. You know, they're just like a blue-haired liberal sciop has nothing to do with Marxism. And that's obviously a right-wing

deviation and error. And that is not what Chase is saying, just to be clear. Yeah, the industrial is not the only section. That's the thing, you know, what I said earlier is, is the work class isn't homogenous. There's difference within a section of the proleteary is industrial. But then another section is the service sector. You know, you know, and another section might be the fast food. I worked at fast food for a year or so and at the airport. And I wasn't industrial, but I was part of the working class. I still am.

My wife and I still are. So, yeah, the point is not to just say that all we need, the only important section of the entire United States is the industrial proletariat. It's just to say, listen, we have very, very limited forces. And this is just what we've learned from the Bolshevik experience. It actually made and won the revolution. They said, Lyndon said, look, we don't have that many forces.

Yes, the most oppressed people in our society are not the working class. They're the peasantry. He was very clear about that. But we can't go to the peasantry right now. Because of Marxism, we understand that we must go to the proletariat. And who amongst the proletariat must we target our very limited forces? Well, we must go to the industrial. And even amongst the industrial, there proved to be, over time,

relatively advanced, intermediate, relatively a backward, and the rest of history. So that's why we need revolutionary to theory, you know, to really guide our practice. And I hope that this is becoming more concrete rather than just like this, yeah, theory should guide our practice kind of abstract thing, but

really in a concrete way for, it's becoming more clear to me. Yes. And you're helping us in this episode right here, making it more concrete and less abstract. So I appreciate that. So now that we've discussed the role of revolutionary theory and its essential nature and the industrial proletariat and its important role in the revolutionary movement. Can you give us a brief sketch of

what the tool was or the trade union educational league? Absolutely. Let's go. I've been studying the stuff. Not for very long at all. But I have dove in pretty deep and pretty hard. And so I'm really excited to share, if you bring back into light, the trade union educational league, because I think the communist work in the 20s and 30s in the labor movement has been hidden from our eyes. Brad, I mentioned before we started recording that you and I both in studying, I mean, roughly almost a decade, maybe a little less, I don't know, Marxism for a period now. And you and I, both until recently, had not even heard of the training in educationally, which is mind-boggling. So, really

excited to dive in. Totally. Sure. The tool was a united front labor organization through which the Communist Party linked up with the most advanced the militant elements of the working, of the organized working class, to struggle against the reactionary and opportunist leadership of the labor movement and raise the level of the workers' consciousness, right? The militancy of the union, or perhaps the character of a strike or strike movement. The fight was to be waged both against the class collaborationist leadership and the capitalists. The goal was nothing short of resting the control of the entire trade union

movement from the hands of the right opportunists, the class traitors, and the labor misleaders. In other words, the representatives of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. The tool was a militant minority organization in the sense that it was a labor organization for the most advanced and militant elements among the workers of all unions. And to explain the need for an organization of the most militant workers, a quote from Mao's song questions concerning methods of leadership reminds us, quote, the masses in any given place are generally composed of three parts, the relatively active, the intermediate, and the relatively backward.

The leaders must therefore be skilled in uniting the small number of active elements around the leadership and must rely on them to raise the level of the intermediate elements and to win over the backward elements, end quote. There's a very weird and widespread misconception of the militant minority that thinks it is only concerned with organizing a small fraction of the workers, or that it assumes that the mass of workers are stupid and unable to be consciously developed. You know, if this were the case, the tool would not have been able to directly and indirectly influence the thinking and practice of millions of workers across a period of less than 15 years. You know, these anti-communist misconceptions cannot be based on even the most elementary study of William Z. Foster's theorization of the military and the historical practice of the tool. And frankly, you know, people who paint the Maoist method of analyzing the masses in given situations as elitist or sectarian will inevitably tail the relatively backward elements as opposed to winning over and leading the intermediate in sections of the backward through the relative. advanced. You know, the militant

minority are simply the relatively active, right? And the relatively politically advanced in each particular union, which the communists need to unite with, you know, went over to the side of the communists and then rely on to lead the great mass of workers.

But members of the tool would develop the organization, consciousness in fighting capacity of their own good file, by uniting the workers around the particular means and demands of each respective industry. For example, gender or racial discrimination within the union, the contracting out of labor

to non-unionized needle workers, nationalization of the railroads, organization of both of the bituminous and anthracite miners together, et cetera, and around the general program of the tool. Some of its main demands being amalgamation of the divided sectarian craft unions into single industrial unions, organization of the unorganized, recognition of the USSR, the call for a working class-led labor party, and abolition of capitalism. These efforts often took the shape of the establishment of a union-specific progressive committee, which united the progressives and communists in campaigns from below as oppositional movements against the rightist

AFL and socialist union leaders. It amidst the class collaborationism of the AFL's bourgeois trade unionists, the right opportunists of the reformists to socialists and the independent unions, and the left sectarianism of the fading syndicalists and anarchists in the IW, the colonialist party, through the tool, was the most powerful and successful leader of the working class in the United States throughout the 1920s, and helped to develop the objective and

subjective conditions that made the great advances of the proletariat from 1933 through 35 possible. All right. So that sets up. That's a sort of introduction to tool what it was, the context in which it was operating, et cetera. One important element, which I don't know if you get to this later on in some of these questions or not, and maybe we can talk about this more in depth as it becomes more relevant. But the thing I always like to talk about when we're talking about the history of American labor union, and labor struggle, is this, there's, of course, these internal contradictions that occur with in

various unions and, you know, these line struggles and all of that. But there's also, at various times throughout American history, multiple red scares, you know, that in the first, and like the first wave in particular is really focused on, on the unions and the radical leaders of more radical unions and this sort of purging of unions of radicals that came hand in hand with the co-option of what was left into these bourgeois electoral parties and the apparatus overall. So like today, for example, unions in general tend to often lack militant leadership that some of these unions once had or that the union struggle in general might have had in the 19-teens and the 1920s, et cetera, but precisely through these red scares, which can be seen as these sort

of counter-revolutionary attacks on the most radical advanced elements of the trade union struggle by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie were sort of conscious attempts to simultaneously sort of rid these unions of their radical communist elements and the subordinate and ultimately co-op them into the sort of bourgeois apparatus overall. And so today we have a lot of unions who are, you know, basically just apparatchiks of the Democratic Party, who vote for Democrats, who fund Democrats, support Democrats, et cetera. Now, there are rank and files that are more militant and in some more democratic unions, more militant leadership might get voted in. But I just want to stress this sort of historical protracted effort by the capitalist class in the

United States to first purge unions of radical elements. And then I think with the Reagan counter revolution to purge unions from the economy as much as possible. I mean, you know, he came in, you know, sort of firing the air traffic controller unions, for example, setting the sort of tempo for the rest of his administration and for the new era that the American working class was being dragged into by the capitalist ruling class. So those are just some thoughts on unions throughout American history in particular. Yeah, and just to kind of throw this in as well, the bourgeois Z through Biden, as openly said, now listen, okay, we're

going to bring back a lot of production because we can't exploit the Chinese proletariat anymore. The Chinese capitalists are down with that. And they want to to compete with us. So we're bringing back a bunch of production. And listen, you know, a good portion of this is actually going to be unionized. Biden has said a lot of the production coming back will be union jobs. And that's not just this word of mouth. The reason is because unions can be really, really effective in stable production. And union leaders, if they're, if they work and they collaborate with the capitalists can play a very significant role in keeping production steady and just subordinate. And so, so yeah, I think that we will see actual union jobs

coming back, but we should really be concerned with who is leading and do they really represent the workers or not. Exactly. And that's why this intervention, I think, that you're doing right here is important because as these jobs come back, as you, unions. We've already seen this sort of momentum of these unions, you know, striking, building their ranks, becoming more whatever, a parent on the American political scene, et cetera. This sort of stuff is particularly extra important because the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is going to try to defang and neuter these unions and make them work for the broader capitalist system. Act as a release valve for the people who think of themselves as in the middle class, right? But they're really

working class. We know that's an obscuration in and of itself and sort of restabilize not only production, but a society racked by 40 plus years of neoliberalism, which is just applied libertarianism, right? The running rampage of the capitalist class with no protections for the working class. So there's a certain sort of chaoticness that just unleashing the capitalists and subordinating the working class releases on society. And so there's is like this, at least elements of the American ruling class who see a limited use for controlled and fully co-opted unions to re-emer. But they do not want those unions to get too radical or to get out of control, you know? And that's our struggle is to do precisely what they

don't want us to do. Yes, absolutely. All right. Well, let's go ahead and move forward then. Now that we're introduced to Tool, you've mentioned that there were two syndicalist leagues that existed prior to the tool. What did they get wrong that the tool would eventually get Right. So the tool was formed by William Z. Foster at the end of 1920, with only a few dozen other labor militants in Chicago that were remnants of his prior to syndiclus leagues, which, contrary to the dual unionists who wished to start new pure unions outside of the NFL, applied the concept of boring from within the reactionary trade unions in order to transform them. These militants also worked alongside Foster in the 1918 meat packing campaign in the 1919 Great Steel Strike, both of which may foster the most well-known labor activist in the country. It's worth discussing the heirs of the first two leagues

so we can better understand the communist theory in the work of the Trade Union Educational League. Foster's Syndicalist League of North America lasted from 1912 to 1914 in the International Trade Union Educational League from 1915 through mid-1970. While being a step forward for the working class in the sense that the leagues, one, overcame the left sectarian dual unionism that ideologically dominated the majority of militant workers of that era, to put forward demands of class struggle militancy in opposition to the class collaborationism of the AFL leaders and the right-wing reformists of the Social Party of America.

Three, explain the need to move beyond craft unionism to industrial unionism. Four, called for solidarity between the employed and unemployed. In five, they did not shy away from calling for the need to abolish the capitalist wage system, among other positive factors, of course. But both of the first two leagues were ideologically syndicalist, which greatly stunted their work. And the I-Tool, the second league, was really just a repeat of the S&L.A. So just kind of meshing all of the errors together because it really reflects both of the leagues from 1912 through 1917.

And really quick, just to jump in here, you mentioned the word dual unionism. And perhaps some people might not understand what that means. You said overcame the left sectarian dual unionism that ideologically dominated the majority of militant workers. of that era, and just so people know, dual unionism, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Chase, but is this basic idea that there might be a union in a given industry that's reactionary or too moderate? And then so there'll be a creation of either a separate union that is sort of redundant but more militant or an attempt to sort of form a caucus within a sort of ideologically right-wing or revisionist or whatever trade union. Is that more or less what dual unionism

is or am I missing something? The first half was correct that it is dual unionists were represented in the revolutionary syndiclists of the IWW. They saw how backward and class collaborationists and reformist, they genuinely were, you know, the correct about this about the AFL and the reformist socialists and the independent unions. And so, but their answer was wrong. They said, listen, we should just go start our own union, one big union, the IWW, and through militancy, we will win over the working class. And they were, the IWW, if you know anything about the history of the labor movement, in that period and before, they were, they crushed it. They were incredibly, they were much farther, more militant than the AFL. And they had a great success in, um, and really, you know, pointing towards a revolution.

But the, because they were sectarian, uh, they, they never were really able to develop the organization of the working class at all. And what they ended up doing was pulling all of the military. let's say, revolutionary elements in the mass, which is the far, you know, the vast majority of the workers were in the AFL. They were pulling out those militants, pulling out the relatively advanced and alienating the relatively advanced from the intermediary of the backward and thus leaving the mass of workers to this endless, the inability to actually overthrow the boris. No unionists do not bore from within.

They think boring from within is fundamentally like class collaborationist or something. I see. So the well-intention and very radical IWW was creating this one big union. And one of the impacts it had was to suck out to siphon the most radical elements of other unions who should have stayed in those unions and struggled out of those unions and into its own separate entity, which then could, among other things, much more easily be cracked down upon. Yes, this is left-wing communism and infantile disorder. This is one of the two lessons. Not two, but one of the two main lessons from that book. Absolutely. Okay. And both of us are saying hats off to IWW. They made amazing progress and advancements. We're not hating on them, but this is an objective error that they made. Oh, yeah. Revolutioneer Syndicalism was a step forward for the working class compared to reformist socialism. Absolutely.

It still was a step backward for the working class and compared to communism. Sure. All right. But yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Oh, that's cool. So in the spirit of learning from failure, seven of the most significant errors, again, of the Syndicalist League of North America and the International Trade Union Educational League were number one, their complete lack of centralization. The locals of the leagues were totally decentralized and autonomous and didn't understand the need to work more closely in ways that would have made sense. Number two, they also did not understand the role of a need for a Vanguard party.

This led to a conflation of the role of the leagues, which were mass labor organizations, with the role of the advanced detachment of the working class unified in a political party. Number three, and the flip side of not understanding the role of the party was that they, conversely, did not understand the proper role of the trade unions in a revolutionary struggle. During this time, Fostered in the leagues greatly overestimated the unions to the point of believing that unions were in eerily revolutionary, regardless of the ideology of the leadership. This resulted in an underestimation of the role of consciousness

and the need for revolutionaries to develop the workers' consciousness. Number five, the programs of the two leagues convey the distinctly Bernsteinian idea that the gradual growth and strengthening of the unions would lead to greater and greater levels of worker millicency and ultimately the gradual transition of society out of capitalism into some syndicalist world where either the trade unions themselves or perhaps a special labor committee would manage the new society now completely without exploitation

in class struggle. Number six, the leagues were not exempt from the widespread confusion on what differentiated economic from political struggle. The syndicists, much like the anarchists, believe that political struggle was equivalent to electoralism and said what was principal between the two was the economic struggle. Along these lines, failing to keep the political struggle principle to economic struggles, when the first interim imperialist war broke out in July of 1814,

the Syndicalist League of North America and later the International Trading and Educational League failed to connect the economic struggles of the workers to the political struggle against imperialism. Foster himself, he told the labor militants that they shouldn't take aside or have a stance on the war because that might undermine their ability to do what was most important, which was the building up and strengthening of the labor unions. So clearly, you know, we can see that the leagues spanning 1912 to 1917 were unable to combine economic demands

with political demands and really just throughout political agitation entirely. And finally, number seven, the syndicalism of the SL&A and ITUL greatly underestimated the role of the state. You know, this has two consequences. First, Foster believed that waves of general strikes alone would be enough to overthrow the bourgeois state and bourgeois dictatorship. You know, he had no conception of armed struggle necessarily becoming principal during what Lenin defined as a revolutionary situation. And secondly, syndicists, like anarchists and reformists to socialists, failed to understand that history has again and again and again demonstrated the necessity of establishing a socialist state, right? A proletarian class dictatorship.

In order to defend the revolution, consolidate the political power of the proletariat, begin socialist construction and wage cultural revolution. And the experiences of the two socialists' states, the U.S.S.R. from 1917 to 1953, and China from 1949 to 1976, I've demonstrated for us that under socialism, class struggle

not only intensifies, but a basis for the restoration of the bourgeois rule remains in society and within the Communist Party itself. And not to go down a rabbit hole here, but the swamp of revisionism, that is, in the United States, has made it so that there

is widespread confusion among social as to what socialism even is. The need for taking study of revolutionary theory in history, seriously, in clarifying Marxist-Littanist Maoist politics today, I think is extremely urgent. But to stay on the topic here, after the proletarian revolution, the working class needs a temporary and transitional state in order to begin the transition of society politically, economically, and culturally. And so the S&LA and ITUL were wishfully dreaming that they thought,

a post-capitalist society would spontaneously abolish class struggle in class society, which are what gives rise to the existence of states themselves. Absolutely. And over on our other theory, a podcast, Red Menace, we've done works by Lenin,

especially on an infantile disorder, left communism, an infantile disorder, and other works in which he discusses and makes incredibly clear the utter limitations of spontaneous action and the spontaneity impulse arises in multiple ways, right?

It's not simply that enough people taking to the street and all of a sudden revolution will happen, but it operates in these more subtle ways as well, like the trade union struggle, doing general strikes is enough to abolish class society or to overturn the bourgeoisie and various other examples of this idea of spontaneity being the thing that in and of itself can actually topple society. But, of course, it can't, it literally never has. And Lenin, in particular, lays out in excruciating detail exactly why that is. But some of the errors that you mentioned here of the syndicalist period, you know, is this economics in command over politics being in command.

The economic struggle in and of itself can take us beyond capitalism. And it just can't. And it just never has been able to do that. and that is a sort of limitation of a merely trade unionist consciousness or even a spontaneous economicistic sort of consciousness which sort of eschews the need for something like a vanguard party which in every really successful socialist revolution there's been a version of a vanguard party and we've never instantiated socialism historically through merely spontaneous even trade union struggles and so you know we have to learn from history we can't just continually make

the same mistakes over and over and over again and never learn. And that's one lesson that I think is really important. The other thing that you mentioned that I wanted to double down on is this anti-imperialist element of, you know, which is just another way of saying internationalism amongst the working class, that you do not side with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in your own society against another country, but that you find solidarity with the workers of this other country. In the recent UAW strikes, of course, the UAW, is not some perfect union that is the vanguard party or anything like that it it succumbs to you know various mistakes errors the momentum of its own history etc but one of the nicer things

that i've seen come out of the mouth of somebody like sean fein for example is this stress on the working class as a whole not just his union on the tying together of social justice with economic justice and more broadly this internationalist um just sort of signs of solidarity right of course you would need a sort of political party to materially entrench these connections and make them actually work for us on a deeper level. But, you know, I've seen videos of French labor unions, of Mexican labor unions, etc., posting videos online showing solidarity with the UAW. And of course, the UAW receives those shows of solidarity with a lot of love and appreciation, et cetera. And of course, this is a, you know, it's not fully advanced and there's things to critique still. But that's a beautiful

sign. And I think one of the big things that can happen is a lack of this anti-imperialist perspective can lead to chauvinist nationalistic impulses dominating within a union. You can betray the working classes of other countries for this nationalist idea that your country, you know, interest comes first over another country's interest, right? Nationalism obscures class in this way. And that's why it's very dominant on the on the right and amongst the amongst the bourgeoisie in particular. So, yeah, those are just some really interesting and important things that you mentioned. You mentioned much more, of course, but I just wanted to sort of double down and focus on those two to sort of accentuate their importance.

But yeah, do you have any other things to say? Are you ready to move on? Well, I do think you raised a really, really important point, actually, with the whole interim peerless thing. Because Foster, you know, he didn't come out and say, yo, we should just, like, support the United States. we should like work with our capitalists to defeat the foreigners or something like that. No, he literally just said we shouldn't take a stance at all. And so it was this like this passive, just let them have their war. And I think, you know, the same thing today could come about in a position where you're like,

you know what, I don't know if China's imperialist or not. And so we shouldn't really have a stance on that. But that's not a communist position. I think we have to have a stance on the inter-imperialist. war. Is it a war between imperialist countries, or is it a war between capitalism and communism? That's a very different struggle.

Then we should have very different stances. So I think I just would encourage folks to really do the work diligently. Study both sides. Study the Maoist analysis of the defeat of socialist China in 1976 and the

utter destruction, politically, economically, culturally, all that stuff. The last 45 years, in China and then also yeah, study the what I would

understand the revisions learns that say no China is socialist or maybe maybe they're a capitalist I'm not sure

maybe the capitalists but they got a chance to get back to social all that stuff I would say study all these lines take it very seriously because it's a fundamental

question today just as the question of World War I was fundamental for the SL&A and the ITOL but they dropped the fucking ball well let me ask you this

in a spirit of comrade Lee sort of curiosity. If we accept the Maoist premise, which, you know, I'm skeptical of, but I'm open-minded about of this idea that this China and America conflict is, you know, a deeply and profoundly inter-imperialist conflict, how would that change the posture of the American working class to China? Does that mean that we need to be more hostile to the Chinese government or somehow try to pit the people and the workers of China against their own government, or would it be whether it's an inter-imperialist conflict or if just an imperialist attack on a non-imperialist country,

would the basic approach of American workers be more or less the same, which is not playing in to the anti-China rhetoric from the Democrats and Republicans and the mainstream media and the bourgeoisie, not playing into that at all? Even if we accept the Maoist premise that China is imperialist, what would be the, difference in the American proletarian position to China. Is it not best for us to not get into the demonizing game of China, which the Democrats and Republicans do in different ways, and to actually outright reject this idea that China is a threat, that China is some big, bad monster that needs to be taken down? And if you take this Maoist approach where you're like, well, they're not,

you know, they're not, we don't hate them because of American nationalism. We dislike them because they're revisionist. What difference does that lead to? in the overall posture that the American proletarians should take towards China, in your opinion. Yeah. And I know that you've, you know, I would say you've taken a similar position with Russia in the sense that you, on all your podcasts, Brett, have said, listen, Russia's not socialist, right? But some people would disagree with you. Some people would say, no, they're still socialist.

Or maybe they still got a chance. And so the war that's happening through Ukraine against Russia right now is a very similar situation, where it would make a difference, you know, do, does the, there's a communist party, just the working class in the United States? And do we need to be working with the Communist Party of China and Russia to, you know, to combat and to defend the socialist states, you know, in the east? Or do, should we actually, or is the working class and even the petty bourgeois forces in China now, are they oppressed under?

a bourgeoisie, you know, it's really like who our allies and who our enemies are. And if the, if it's true that the billions of working class, the hundreds of millions people in China need to overthrow their capitalist dictatorship, then we would not want to side with the bourgeoisie of another country at the expense of a proletariat of another country. And so, like I said earlier, in a program of the tool, when we're waging a struggle, trying to teach our own working class the ideas that actually reflect reality. You know, we need to be able to say,

look at China from 1976 to 1923. Everything that's happened there, everything they did to the countryside, what's happened to their urban areas and to their education institutions, the insane inequality of power and not to mention just like wealth between the vast majority of

the Chinese proletariat and the ruling bourgeoisie that has the billion in a class that has implanted itself within the Congress Party of China. You know, that's what we're fighting for. And so we have to be able to we should be able to give the people a vision

and it really does matter whether we're pointing to a country and we say, now that is exactly what we're fighting for or actually, no, they're the enemies and we need to side with the proletariat of China and Russia to overthrow their own warsis and we you know we shouldn't be supporting the United States and in the war anyway so yeah I think there's a material difference I haven't necessarily thought out okay this is the program this is how we do it and this is the slogan or something but I think it's really really important

that we're concrete about what's actually happening in the war and what kinds of wars are being fought and such yeah I think that's fair and I think that's an interesting take I would just my last point here, we can move on. It would just be like, I don't think that it would serve, whether we're talking about a vanguard party, or particularly Marxist radical trade union, whatever. I just don't think it would serve anything except U.S. imperialist interest to come out and draw this dividing line between the Chinese state and the people and say, we dislike the state, but we support the people. I think what that would just be Trojan-horsed into, what that would just get shoehorned into is just more hatred towards the Chinese government,

at which whatever you say about it, whether it's socialist or not, has, honestly, a lot of massive support among the people of China and the overthrow of their government by an external force like the United States would be nothing but bad for the proletariat of China. And if the Chinese proletariat want to organize and take up arms and go against their own state and the government there, I think that's totally fine. And that would certainly change the calculus of what a left-wing Western organization or whatever might orient itself towards. But insofar as that's not happening right now, I don't think hostility toward the Chinese state at all. On an outward rhetorical level would be helpful. Now, what you're saying is perhaps

internally in an organization or within a trade union for clarification's sake, you know, assuming a sort of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line, that it would be helpful to increase the understanding of a people within an organization to say, hey, we're not just trying to do what China's doing here in the U.S. We're looking for something different. Here's our criticisms of how the Chinese system, where an interorganizational discussion is obviously, I think, an important and a line struggle could develop around it, whatever. That's totally fine. But I think outward hostility towards the Chinese state, even on this technically Maoist point, would still overall just contribute to a general hostility which would bolster the the sort of cultural and

ideological forces that want a real hot conflict with China, which would not serve the Chinese working class nor the American working class. But those are just my two cents. Yeah. A few things did come to mind. Sure. Because, you know, you're lying on, okay, say the, you know, this line on you're against the capitalist state, Chase, you know, from a modest perspective, you're seeing China is a bourgeois state, but you're trying to be for the people. We don't really need that. But that is the same line that you, I know, applied to Russia, right? And I think you're correct about that because it's a bourgeois state. And I can't support the masses of Chinese people if they're exploited and oppressed by ruling class. If I'm saying, actually, the bourgeois,

your bourgeois state is pretty good. Or maybe I don't say it's a bourgeois state. Actually, I think it's a socialist state. And therefore, any kind of revolution, you know, attempt to build a revolution in China, I might be like, wow, that's kind of reactionary. You should be grateful. Or the same thing with Russia. Hell, you might even look like Cuba and Venezuela. If all the countries in Central and South America are socialist today, then we would look at attempts to make revolution as extremely dangerous and backward as counter-revolutionary. But if those people do need to overthrow their ruling classes, then that is a political stance that we do as true internationalists, we have to understand and have a concrete grasp on so we know who to actually support and who our friends are and who our real enemies are, if that kind of makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that you made a really interesting point about, you know, by overemphasizing the socialist nature of the Chinese state, you might, in the instance of a real proletarian uprising against. the state, sort of see that as like, you know, a CIA plot or a color revolution or something like that, which is incredibly harmful. And so I can, I understand that. So yeah, that's a good point. And of course, this is a broader discussion. We can't talk about this all night, but I do. I appreciate you willing to struggle with me. Same, same. Absolutely. All right, well, let's go ahead and move forward and refocus on the point of this conversation, which is, of course, tool. So we've talked about the Trade Union Educational League, introduced it at least. So let's talk about the details of the of tool so where do you want to begin absolutely so all right beginning

in november of 1920 on a cold winter night in chicago the tool had a very rough start as i said the cynicalist league of north america peaked with two thousand labor militants but the tool started with two dozen workers concentrated in chicago and really remained in a dismal state for over a year but two major events happened in 1921, a kept the tool from becoming Foster's third short-lived league. The first was Lennon's left-wing communism and infantile disorder, being issued in English and appearing in the United States in January of 1921. According to Lennon, to refuse to work in the reactionary

trade unions means leaving the masses under the influence of reactionary leaders, agents of the bourgeoisie, labor, aristocrats, or bourgeoisified workers. Every sacrifice must be made, the greatest obstacles must be overcome, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, stubbornly, insistently, and patiently, precisely in all those institutions, societies and associations, to which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses belong, however ultra-reactionary they may be. In the trade unions and workers' cooperatives, the latter, at least sometimes, are precise. the organizations in which the masses are to be found, think quote. So what left-wing communism served to do was correct the mistaken notions

held by revolutionaries across the world about how the Bolsheviks actually led their proletariat in the overthrow of the Tsar. It established the first dictatorship of the proletariat. And to the revolutionists dismay, the Bolsheviks did not start new, pure, revolutionary unions isolated from the established labor movement. They didn't ignore the immediate demands of the workers. They didn't even boycott the elections all the time. And why this was important was because all of the left-wing socialists that had become communists

with the beginning of the U.S. Communist Movement in 1919 were firmly IWW syndicalists, who wouldn't be caught dead utilizing the elections toward revolutionary hands, combining economic with political demands, or boring from within the reactionary trade, They were correct to see the AFL as a bastion of bourgeois politics and class collaborationism. But Lenin shocked the hell out of him when he said

that they were flat out wrong to not be in the AFL, the filthy, mainstream reactionary labor movement, where all the bourgeois trade unions and right opportunists and anti-Marchists were in charge. Foster, who charged that dual

unionism, you know, severed the soul from the body, by pulling the military workers away from the rest of the workers really enjoyed his first introduction to Lenin, so much so that he propagandized to the dual unionists with the pamphlet of the leading theoretician of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The second important event of 1921

was the founding of the Red International of Labor Union, otherwise known as the Profiturn. In American delegation to the First Congress and the Profiturn, was to be led by Earl Browder, who had joined the Communist Movement after being released from prison in November of 1920. Had it been worked closely with Foster

in Chicago, Browder invited Foster to Moscow as a reporter for their federated press. It is the, it is during the first Congress of the Profenturn that they decided the tool will be affiliated with the Red

International Labor Unions and the militants of the IWW were told that they should join the NFL and work as militants through the tool. And this is where Foster's transition from syndicalism to Marxism is really completed. He stays

in Russia for three months, studying Marxism alongside the Bolsheviks, learning about the Russian Revolution and witnessing the advances of the world's first socialist state, and at the end of the summer, one of the most well-known labor activists in the United States and leader of the Trade Union Educational

League returns home in joins the Communist Party. In February 1922, the tool officially comes into existence, really, by a series of local meetings that were held simultaneously across the country. The purpose of this first drive was to establish educational groups of militants in all the basic industries and in all the important cities and towns. Every advanced rank and file worker were going to be invited to hear about the formation of the militant worker organization. The established local groups were then tasked to organize the many other militants in their respective industries. Just one month later, Jack Johnstone, who was a close militant alongside Foster for the previous

decade in Chicago, but had a call to action through the tool propaganda organ, the Labor Herald. By March of 1922, Labor Herald had a circulation of 10,000, up 10 times since the fall of 1921. The ALEEN started out with a great deal of support. In March of 1922, the leaders of the Chicago Federation of Labor, John Fitzpatrick and Edward

Knuckles, were in favor of major aspects of the tool program to the extent that the CFL passed a resolution calling upon the president of the NFL, Samuel Gompers, to organize an international conference for the purposes of arranging the amalgamation

or unification of the craft unions into single industry-specific organizations. In addition to the major backing by the CFL, writing for the April issue of the Labor Herald, Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party of America, said, The Trade Union Educational League is, in my opinion, the one rightly directed movement for the industrial unification of the American workers. The June issue of the Labor Herald put out a call for the first national congress. of the tool. And this is what it said. Militans. Do you believe that organized labor should have a real

rebel spirit? You believe that the craft unions should be amalgamated into industrial unions. Do you believe the trade union movement should have a new and militant leadership? If so, comes to the National Conference of the Trade Union Education League. It will be one of the most important gatherings in the history of the American labor movement, end quote. And in August of that year, the first tool convention was held with 45 delegates from 26 cities and towns, almost exclusively from the North Midwest, Plains, and Northwest, with the exception of Los Angeles. The 10-point program of the tool included, rejection of dual unionism, rejection of the AFL's class collaborationism, and adoption of the principle of class struggle, industrial unionism through the amalgamation of the existing unions, organization of the inorganized,

unemployment insurance, a working class-led labor party, the shop delegate system, which was a demand to democratize the unions, affiliation with the Rilu or the Profiturn, recognition of Soviet Russia, and abolition of the capitalist system in the establishment of a worker,

Republic. So here we have the official formation of Tool. We see a William Z. Foster move from syndicalism to outright Marxism, and Tool's sort of 10-point program reflects that shift, sort of adjusting and fixing many of the errors made in these previously syndicalist union attempts. And that is where we are right now. So now that we have a good grasp on the formation and the beginnings of tool and the context in which tool arose. Let's move on to some specific actions that tool participated in, et cetera. So let's start with the railroad shopman strike of 1922. Yeah, yeah. So we've done a lot of theory and a lot of politics on the front half of this episode. I think it was really, really important to start there, as you were saying, Brett. But now,

yeah, we're going to talk about the railroad workers, the miners, the ladies garment workers, textile workers, fur workers, all these are really, really important actual struggles that the tool dove into and made a significant fight. So hopefully, you know, walking through these different struggles in the very different industries throughout the 20s will give people a really good insight, okay, this is exactly what the tool did, this is what happened, and potentially this is something that we can apply in our own very, in our own new situation today. The capitalist crisis that ensued following World War I brought about the conditions for a brutal open shop offensive by the employers.

And by open shop, I mean, the bosses were trying to wipe out the unions. While the war years saw a rapid increase in production, the end of the war brought about a sharp decline, and the years 1918 to 1922 saw millions of workers thrown out of jobs and one million organized workers thrown out of the AM. and independent unions combined. So within three years, there was one million less Orenays workers.

But in addition to the Open Shop Offensive of 1919 through 1922, there was a period of intense political repression. The Homer Raids of 1919 and early 1920 saw thousands of labor militants, almost

exclusively affiliated with the IWDW, rounded up, imprisoned, handed excessive sentences, or deport it. Having begun with roughly 40,000 members in total, the raids pushed the newly established communist parties of underground only to reemerge at the end of 1922, with a unified about 10,000 members. But amidst the period of the greatest defeats of the working class in the history of the U.S. Labor Movement, up until that time, and before they even had a first Congress, the tool was able to play significant roles in several big strikes

during the end phases of the post-war open shop offensive. Two of these several strikes worth noting here were the Greek coal strike of 1922 and the railroad shotman strike of 1922. On the heels of the union being wiped out in Alabama in West Virginia's Battle of Blair Mountain, by Lincoln 22 the owners of the month, had set their sights on completely wiping out the largest, most powerful union in the United

States, the United Mine Workers of America. In 1919, the UMW was 400,000 strong, but only three years, within three years, the union was literally fighting for its life, and 600,000 miners were brought out on strike in defense. So Frank Farrington, was president of the Illinois chapter of U and W, who later proved to be a paid agent by the Pea Pottie Coal Company. You tried to break the strike by signing a backstabbing agreement, but the effort of the tool not only saved the strike, but literally saved the entire organization for the miners that had taken them three decades to build. So I want to cover the miners struggle later on, so I'm going to leave it here, and I'll return to it after I talk about the set packs faced by the tool in 1923, but I just wanted to mention it because they played a major role in this fight

alongside the railroad shopman's strike of 1922. The open shop drive of the capitalists culminated in the great railroad shopmen's strike. What happened was the Transportation Act of 1920 set up a railroad labor board, basically to force decisions upon the union. The owners of the railways, pointing to the hard times of the economy, requested that the Labor Board approve a 10% slash of the workers' wages, which it did. The board

also, unsurprisingly, was unable to do anything about the trend of the government to contract work out to non-union employers. In 1921, the board sanctioned a 12% pay cut, a reduction of protection against peace work,

a modification of rights around eligibility for seniority and the establishment of company unions, among other major concerns of the workers. In July of 1922, the workers had had enough and 400,000 railroad shopmen walked out. The owners and their government responded to the strike viciously with sweeping injunction that criminalized everything from picketing to writing in a letter or publishing in a newspaper or communicating by word of mouth, anything that attempted to persuade

workers to strike. They literally criminalized every possible act of solidarity. Having already begun a campaign with the slogan, Amalgamation or Annihilation, through the bi-monthly paper Railroad Amalgamation Advocate, and Foster's widely read pamphlet, Little Railroaders' next step, Foster went on a national tour to try and shore up support for the workers. And in an effort to prevent Foster from speaking in Denver, Colorado, Colorado State Rangers, kidnapped him at his hotel, jailed and friendly, drove him to Cheyenne, Wyoming, only then to have the sheriff dump him a few miles outside of touring to Nebraska. But when the injunction was passed down, the tool launched a campaign for a general strike of all the railroad brotherhoods to then be followed by sympathetic strikes in other countries. The Communist Party, too, issued a leaflet to the railroad workers.

In a labor struggle, it read, the government is never neutral. It always serves only the capital's class, and you must resist all its mandates to the very limits of your power. Over 500,000 miners are now in strike. Their cause is also your cause. You should have gone on strike with them long ago, but it is not to the war. late now. You must stay on the strike until they win all their demands, then they should stay out until you gain all yours. United you, the working class, can crush your enemies, the capitalist class, with its brutal and murderous government, and with all its prostitute judges, presidents,

presidents, congressmen, and senators, end quote. The toll campaigned in the Communist Party's agitation were both a far cry from the AFL. simple verbal denunciation of the most reactionary injunction a judge could make against strikers. But to wrap this story up, in the face of a waning strike, the refusal of all the brotherhoods to join the strike, and the continued recruitment of strike breakers, the Willard Jewel settlement, which was a prototype for the coming Baltimore in Ohio, or the B&O plan, was agreed upon and 225,000 of the workers had returned. to work by mid-October.

While seniority rights were projected was nearly all the major railroads, all of the railroad workers saw their wages slashed, and many of the roads saw their unions wiped out completely and replaced with company unions, which the workers had to join if they wanted a job. Later on, Foster would say that it was this strike that was the beginning of one of the worst decades of class collaborationism in the history of the U.S. labor movement. following the climax of the post-war open shop drive until the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, the leadership of the labor movement actively promoted collaboration between management and the unions for the purpose of increasing labor productivity.

The speed-up scheme, that was the B&O plan, right, based on the Willard Jewel plan from the strike, was the employer's means of developing the worker's productive power under the guise of scientific management. Instead of mobilizing the massive workers into battle against the capitalists, the opportunist to chauvinist leadership sold the unions to the bosses in exchange for their being allowed to maintain their privileged positions as union leadership. In fact, President William Johnson of the International Association of the Machinists greatly influenced the Willard-Jule Agreement. As we will continue to see throughout the 1820s, the missus leadership of the AFL and the independent socialist unions pushed union management cooperation

as a means of preserving the unions from the employer's advances. President of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, emphasized that this kind of cooperation could be a win for the bosses, the workers, the stockholders, and the public, which, I would say, sounds a lot like the trash that came from Sean O'Brien of the Teamsters when he recently said, unions are good for workers, good for the economy, good for business. Yeah, that says so much. Like the Gompers said that this cooperation could be a win for the bosses, the stockholders, and the public and the workers. It's either or, motherfucker.

It's not what's good for the bosses is not good for the workers. What's good for the stockholders is often, as we're seeing with something like, I don't know, climate change, not good for the public. So this is this class collaborationism. This is this obscurantism. this mystification of the real conflict, the real contradiction, and a melting away, an attempted melting away, of these actual contradictions, which actually don't solve the contradictions,

but just tries to bury them under rhetoric, and they come out in other places at other times. But yeah, linking it up with more modern attempts at this exact thing where it's, it is this attempt to, you know, collaborate with the entire capitalist system, to try to find what's good for all of us, you know, let's all work together for the benefit

of all of us and that again sort of obscures the fundamental contradiction between the bosses and the workers at the very least so yeah very fascinating fascinating history and the railroad shopman's strike of 1922 which you just beautifully laid out for us was another thing that you know I was not aware of there are a million strikes throughout labor history of course and then no one person can know all of them or maybe some scholars do but I certainly don't but here's another example of something that not only do a lot of people not know about but as we were talking maybe before we started recording, it is a concerted and conscious effort to usher these elements of our history completely sort of out of the picture. You don't learn about this stuff in school. You don't even

really learn about it in college. And that's not an accident, right? These more radical elements of this history. It's not an accident. So part of our job as I think Marxists, as educators, as organizers is to, you know, sort of archaeologically dig up this history and present back to modern day workers and say here's a tradition here's some stuff we can learn from here's some failures here's some mistakes here's what class collaborationism leads to right etc and so great job at doing that but let's go ahead and move forward now that we understand that that one action let's go to talk about some setbacks and the united front split if you will yeah sure yeah and the main reason why i brought the railroad shop instruction of nation 22 and was really because of the bno plane

is based upon the Will or Joel statement and the B&O plan is the, it's the main kind of expression of class collaborationism at the AFL and the independent and socialists use that foster the tool. It's one of their main enemies

throughout the entire tournament. So that's the real main reason why I brought that strike in. But yeah, the setbacks, because the tool was able to put forward to significant immediate demands of the workers and were also fairly successful at exposing

the right opportunism of the reactionary leadership, the rank and file of the unions rallied around the tool, and 1922 through 1923 saw a major surge in resolutions from AFL locals for amalgamation of the craft unions. Support of the tool had grown so much at the second Congress of the Tool in September of 1923, had 103 delegates from Lainty Cities. Overall, the workers had responded positively

to the tools call for militancy, amongst the rank and file. Yet, despite the significant leap in resolutions for agamation, a labor party, and recognition of the Soviet Union, the tool would find themselves with few allies by the end of 1923. Earlier that year, Debs comes out against the tool. Debs was never one for struggle against the right, and his capitulation in this instance

was really no different from his consistent capitulation in the Socialist Party of America, but socialist leadership and the needle trade unions were tired of the tool in the communists trying to transform their conservative unions. And Debs was persuaded into thinking that the socialists

really did have the workers' best interests at heart. Around the same time, Gompers began a personal anti-communist campaign that literally wouldn't stop until he was dead. So he knew that the alliance between Fitzpatrick of the Chicago Federation

of labor and Foster, as a tool, was significant and had to be stopped. And so he did everything in his power to split the United Front. He started by pulling funding from the CFL, which was literally Fitzpatrick's paycheck and the rent that paid for the office. It was not long until Fitzpatrick, under pressure from Gompers, decided to abandon both the drive for industrialization of the crafty and hands, and the entire project of founding a Labor Party with the Communists. And when the Illinois AFL convention rolled around,

he literally voted against every one of the tool's proposed resolutions simply because Foster and the tool supported it. To top it all off, an expulsion campaign was officially launched, and the E&T tool reaction demonstrated its strength at the Portland Convention in which William F. Dune was expelled simply for being a known member of the Communist Party. So this was the beginning of a new and extremely

difficult period for the communists in the labor government. Yeah, very interesting. Now, Eugene Debs is a very complicated and interesting figure who we can learn from, both the failures and the successes of his politics overall. I really think it's long past due that Rev. Leff does a full episode

just breaking down Eugene Debs' story, his life, and learning precisely from those mistakes and those successes within his personal politics and his personal life story. So that's definitely something that I'm going to be looking forward to covering in future episodes. I was going to say, go ahead. Well, before you move on from Debs, Foster in his first autobiography from Brian to Stalin, which I definitely want to recommend later as well. But he actually talks about, you know, the three great

syndicists. And so I think it's important to say that Debs played a positive, primarily positive role earlier in the struggle of the working class. He was a true American syndicalist. And so I think that, yeah, I do think that for a period, he played a positive element. And just because, you know, any one of us might play a positive element in this period, but then a primarily negative element in a later period doesn't discard the earlier positive aspects. But, yeah, if you're, I really recommend people checking out fosters from Brian to Stalin

would be in thought that day. Then you can read a little bit more about that business of syndicalism. Very interesting. Yeah, I'll check that out. Another thing I wanted to mention really quickly is over at guerrilla history, and I also released on a Rev Left. We did an interview with, I mentioned this before, a communist who was involved in union struggles throughout the 70s and 80s,

named John Melrod, who wrote an entire memoir about his time there. He actually got prostate cancer from being exposed to toxic chemicals and these factories that he would go in to try to unionize. and importantly, relevant to this part of the discussion, he talked about his fights within unions with reactionary members of the unions, you know, anti-communists who would physically threaten and even assault communist union workers within the same union. He talked about one time going to a bar and one of his fellow union members pulled a gun on him

because he was a member of the White People's Party. But he was in the union and he was saying, you commies need to get out of our union. And he talks about how he dealt with that. So to have like a first person on the ground sort of portrayal of what it's like to be a communist within an organization which, of course, like the broader society has reactionary elements and how you struggle with them, definitely check out, check out those interviews in that book. Because I think we have a lot to learn from that. But let's go ahead and move on forward. And I think the next topic we want to touch on is the struggle of the minors.

So take us there. All right. let's go. So it just so happened that the bituminous and anthracite contracts were set to end in March 1922. And due to the sharp decline in the need for coal following the war and the recent defeats in both Alabama and West Virginia, the operators were fairly confident as strike could be easily defeated. So they decided not to maintain the 1921 rates and slash the wages. In response to the attack. Six hundred thousand miners struck in what was the largest minor strike in U.S. history and the first simultaneous walkout of anthracite and bituminous works in the United

States. So socialist Alexander Howitt would urge all out unity for the wind while Gumpers was trying to recruit scabs and expelling supporters of his opposite. position. The Utah miners, interesting enough, asked the NFL if they could join the strike. They were rejected, but decided to go out on strike anyways. And the fight in Utah would actually have the workers armed to the teeth, while state militias and company guards set up machine guns surrounding the strikers tent colonies. And remember, this is over whether workers under capitalism should have the right to unionize. or note. In June, a full-on battle ensues in Illinois between strikers and company guards

and scabs. And in July, miters are slain in West Virginia. Lewis decides, the president of the OMW, decides this is all getting out of hand here, makes concessions with the operators, and calls all the miters back to work. But out from the 1922 strike, with Howitt still expelled, two groups emerge in opposition to Lewis. Brofee's Central Pennsylvania District 2 and Foster is a tool in the Communist Party.

So following the 1822 strike, Foster calls a meeting to form a Lewis opposition in Pittsburgh, February of 1923. This was supposed to be the beginning of the United Front work at the Maynors Union. Following

the meeting between the Progressive and the communist, they then organize a progressive international conference, right, a pick of the UMW, at which a progressive miners' international committee was established and organized around an eight-point program. Unfortunately, though, by the time the second conference of the miners' Progressive International Committee comes around, in June of 1923, Groffey gets cold feet with the communists and temporarily joins the Lewis Barrington Front. Brofee's split from the tool and the colonists is exactly what Lewis needed, and Lewis went on a terror campaign,

hiring thugs and gangsters to assault the rank and file and leadership of the miners' Progressive International Committee. The UMW convention in January of 1924 was won long fistfight with a bunch of explosions. But immediately following the convention, the Progressive International Committee organized a large gap. gathering for the reinstatement of Howitt and launched a campaign against the wage cuts in unemployment. So the tool actually established one of the first unemployed councils during this campaign, which was key, given that thousands of minors were still laid off. In August of that year, Rofi swings back to the side with Howitt, the progressive, and

the tool, and the pick forces unite in what. was called the Save the Union Campaign. This is a really big important campaign in the history of the tool. So in 1925, the tool was carrying on the Save the Union campaign against both Lewis and the operators when

IthraCe contract expired in September. Its key demands being the removal of Lewis, a 20% increase in wages, protection from unemployment, in a campaign to organize the hundreds of thousands of non-union

minors. The tool pushed for a united strike of both antarcite and bituminous miners, and then for both miners to organize the unorganized fields. But Lewis, you know, the leader of the union, did everything in his power to prevent this from happening. In September of 1926, Lewis signs an agreement and sends the workers back into the balloons. By this time, having started with 600,000 members in the UMW in 1920, Lewis has overseen the diminution of the membership to somewhere between

60 to 150,000. The progressives in the communists had been in the summer of 1926 to plan the next steps against Lewis. Rofi and Howett represented the non-communists and Voisey, Hapgood, and Coil, the Communists. But the 1927 Convention was a massive defeat for the aggressive committee. Lewis shut down every resolution raised by the pick, solidified his dictatorial power in the union, and Hapgood was nearly killed by Lewis's goons back at his hotel. Jesus. Yeah. So despite the development of these conditions within the UMW and in the mines, Foster continued to say that the Save the Union was still the correct slogan. In April of 1927, 175,000 bituminous miners were brought out on strike in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Reporters from Bourgeois newspapers would visit the company towns and be completely shocked to find what they said was hell in Pennsylvania. They could not believe the extent to which the coal and iron police were brutalizing the picketers and their families. The conditions of the union-made tent colonies for evicted strikers, the general serfdom of the company towns. Despite Lewis signing an agreement in September of 1927, the toll of the pick pushed to continue the strike until victory. But in response to the call,

you know, more miners joined the walkout. And by July of 1928, the strike was hanging by a thread and the UMW was completely wiped out from entire regions. So in seven short years, Lewis had destroyed the most powerful union in the United States. And the effort from the tool in the UMW during these years, I think gives us a few takeaways. First, had this organization of militant workers not been united to organize against a reactionary leadership of Lewis and Farrington and at times the vacillation of Brophy, the UMW would clearly have went from the strong longest union of the United States in 1920 to being non-existent.

It would have completely been wiped out. The working class organization that took the miners three decades to build was saved because the communists allied with the progressive elements and mobilized the mass of the rank and file against the class collaborationist regwing leadership and around the immediate needs of the workers, which were they need to organize the unorganized miners, receive a significant can't raise in their wages, develop some protection from unemployment, and democratize a union that was blatantly dictatorial. But fostering the tool also means some mistakes here that we should learn from as well, that save the union movement seems to have carried on for far too long.

Beginning in 1925, the strike was defeated and the union crushed by the middle of 1928. So while I was correct to launch the Save the Union campaign through the pick, this progressive committee, the fact that the UMW was now non-existent in the vast majority of the minds, Lewis had just spent years shoring up his power and preventing even a word of criticism or opposition to be spoken at conventions, and tens of thousands of oppositional workers have now been expelled, the condition of the condition of, had developed where it would have been since to transition to save the union campaign into a drive for a politically independent union that would have put forward all the key demands of the strike much earlier. So this is what happens in September of 1928 with the founding of the National Miners Union. But with all the momentum of the strike, it would have been more effective to launch the new union earlier. And potentially they could have saved not only the strike, but carried on a successful unionization draft.

And after we talk about the textile workers, you know, I'm going to dispel this myth that the Unity League proves the dual unionists right all along, which is 100% wrong. But the point here is that conditions and contradictions aren't unchanging, and communists need to be able to identify what the situation makes it so new tactics are called for. And while it is correct to see that dual unionism alienates the most advanced workers from the massive workers, and that work has to be done in the mainstream labor movement. For example, it would have been ridiculous for the communists to skip the work of the tool

and try and, you know, the educational league and try and organize the minors into a new minors union without the conditions necessitating. You know, there will come moments where it is correct to establish unions politically independent from the reactionary and opportunist leadership, but the key is to properly grasp when the situation calls for a new union and when it does not. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. And I think this whole little chapter in Tools history and our own history really does

show that the struggle within these unions is essential. It's ongoing. It's real. It happens. And the dictatorial versus Democratic Union sort of bifurcation is an important sort of way to understand this issue. I think a lot of people from the outside who don't have a lot of knowledge of labor history and don't have any experience within labor unions

might sort of naively conclude that more or less even if the ideological advancement isn't sharp, that the trade union and the leaders and the rank and file are more or less on the same page and that is very, very far from the case in many, many instances. And I think this little part certainly highlights that. So now that we have a good grasp on the tools, efforts in relation to miners' struggles,

let's move on to the needle trades maybe talk about what the needle trades even are and then go into tools efforts with the needle trades yeah I mean I mean really simply there were so many different crafts that worked with needles and so we may see much less of that

today because of the development revolutionization of technology but they really were just various different kinds of workers that worked with machines that had needles. So, you know, there are, but in the needle trades, you know, there are many battles, I'd say, in so many different unions that I wish we could talk about. It's a really fascinating industry in which the tool fought, but I want to briefly talk about two of the tool

efforts in the needle trades before touching a bit on the textile industry. So the first one was the international ladies garment workers union, which because of anarchist and communist militancy had an incredibly aggressive rank-and-file. You know, the anarchists eventually sided with the conservative socialist party because, you know, Russia should have floated to a classless, stateless society. But the communist rank-and-file women of the ILGWU really give us, I think, an opportunity to understand what proletarian feminism could mean for us today in a fully developed capitalist country.

Whereas the mining industry was almost entirely made. then the garden workers were mostly women. And until the International Fur Workers Union rallied behind the openly communist leadership of Ben Gold, you know, the entire needle trades industry was under the conservative leadership of the socialists in the Socialist Party. So because the communists have rejected dual unionism and instead bore within the existing trade union movement, the tool was able to build a progressive communist alliance that would transform from a small opposition movement into a mass movement, particularly in the ILGWU.

Socialists Sigmund and Dubinsky were never pleased with the influence of the revolutionaries in growing militancy of the rank and file. But, as Mal said, when you have the correct political line in the form of agitation, methods of work and tactics, you know, everything else will fall in place. Communists Rose Wardess and Dora Lipschitz got to work early on in the ILGWU during a time when the manufacturers were slashing wages to the bone and contracting work out to non-union shops. Sigmund, the socialist, thought the answer was to implement union management collaboration,

but the workers were educated on why that was not the answer to their real issues of conditions, organization, and wages. Sigmund, of course, expels the locals where the rank and file was the most militant, and in February of 1924, the workers strike against both the socialist leadership and the attacks of the employers. But the Army in 1823 to 1924 explosion policy backfired on the opportunist union leadership amidst deteriorating conditions in the industry in capitulation. by the socialists in the 1924 strike to bosses, the progressive

communist alliance was able to sweep the 1924 ILGWU convention. In 1825, the right-wing socialists went on the offensive, again, expelling half of the union because a Mayday event organized by the tool had simply invited

communist, I think it's, you pronounce a name Boise, Ogan, I'm sure, as a speaker. And so the first joint action committee of the needle trades industry was founded and this was the united front through which the progressives and communists would fight the right. Long story short, a very important strike was carried on in 1926. The small opposition movement had developed into a mass movement controlling the vast majority of the locals, but the socialists still maintain control over

the international. The 1926 strike was against wage slashes across the industry, the contracting out of work to non-union shops and a very important issue of the employers wanting reorganization rights in which they could fire 10% of the union throughout the year. Obviously, the reason one of the reorganization

rights was to be able to fire the relatively advanced in military workers whenever they needed to do so. Now, under the leadership of the Joint Action Committee, the strike was able to win significant short-term wins. It won numerous

partial victories. But the committee made significant errors and conceded to the employers the right to reorganize. So this put the Progressive Communist Alliance in a much weakened position. Despite verbally supporting the strike the whole time, Sigmund and the rightists now came out against the strike. And having remained in control of the general executive board, they purged the ILGWU of the progressive and communist forces. It was a serious defeat for the left, and one that would be hotly debated within the Communist Party. According to the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party at that time, significant rightist errors were made within the party work. Wrong policies by the left-wing leaders during the strike contributed to deprive the

strike of its needed militancy and effectiveness. Amongst the activists in the unions, there was an incorrect theory that you can't fight on two fronts at once against bosses and bureaucrats? This led to a false sense of unity with the right-wing socialists and gave a free hand to the misleaders to weaken

the striker's capacity and morale. Number two, the United Front relations between Lewis Hyman, who was the leader of the progressives in the Joint Action Committee, and the party leaders, was deficient in that Hyman acted as

though he was against a strike the whole time. So there was a serious failure by the communists to seize the opportunity for leadership. And they really sat back, watched as the strike was weakened. So number three, there was general underestimation of the leading role of the party in the union work. This was demonstrated by a failure on the part of the activists to maintain close relations with party committees, failure to build a system of party fractions within the Lady Garman's Union, and failure to execute party advice or decisions. So lots of issues here, but I think this fight is actually still a good example on one hand of what's possible when communists uniting with progressives and a progressive communist opposition

to the rightist leadership of the unions. But it also demonstrates, again, the need for revolutionary theory and for the development of correct political lines. You know, we shouldn't willy-nilly start a militant minority organization today in the trade union movement and think we're going to magically oust the opportunists and the chauvinists, right? We really do need to study revolutionary theory so that our work can most effectively serve the building up on the vanguard and the development of the larger revolutionary movement. The fight, however, didn't end there. Progressive Hyman and Colombianist Wardus joined to establish a national organization committee,

of the ladies garment workers and eventually that committee led to the founding of the Trade Union Unity League's needle trades workers industrial union in 1928. But that's a story for another time. Yeah, very interesting. Another important

chapter in labor history, American labor history, that we have to learn from. The mistakes, the successes, the united front with progressives when the strategy calls for that, etc. Very important stuff. a personal note. I mean, this is only tangentially related to the topic at hand, but, you know,

sort of somewhat was the 1911 triangle, triangle shirtwaist factory fire. I bring this up only because my daughter, who's in high school, recently came home. And whenever she learned something in history, I try to engage with it. You know, what did you learn today, et cetera, and try to build on it. And she talks about, like, how she learned about this triangle shirtwaist factory fire, which, of course, resulted in the death of over like 100 women and girls and even, like, two dozen men. That's why doors today open outward instead of inward, et cetera. But I use it as a wonderful opportunity to sort of explain to her proletarian feminist

organization and protest that came in the wake of the factory fire, how workers are mistreated, you know, what this period of labor history was like for the average worker, et cetera. So it's just one of those nice fatherly moments. I know you're a father, too, of obviously children who are much younger than my daughter. But one of those beautiful moments where your child comes home, learn something from school, and you can take that and deepen their understanding, broaden it out. And, of course, with my daughter who's very interested in sort of, you know, feminist politics, naturally, I get to tie this labor struggle with this sort of proletarian feminist struggle, et cetera, and teach her that as well. So I don't know.

It's just kind of a cute moment I had with my daughter that this section made me think of for what it's worth. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I would just say, like, you know, we really lack stories of militant women workers fighting against capitalists and patriarchy. And so I think, yeah, I'd love to hear her thoughts, actually, on the struggle in the ladies garment workers and also the upcoming, what we're going to talk about, the fur workers. Totally. Actually, you know, she's such an articulate, intelligent young woman. I would love to bring her on maybe for a Patreon episode and have her just talk about, you know, stuff that she's learning and her thoughts. it because I'm continually surprised and shocked that, you know, of how intricate her thinking is. Absolutely. That's dope. Give myself a pat on the back a little bit for that, but it's mostly her.

But all right, let's go ahead and get into tools, efforts in the textile industry, if you will. Yeah, and my bad. Actually, one more in the needle industry, these are the fur workers. Oh, sure. Yes. Then with the textile. Absolutely. So, yeah, so the tool in the needle industry was mostly successful with some hair.

and defeats. In the ILGWU, because we just talked about, the minority left opposition, became the mass movement of the workers, but was then defeated by the right-wing socialists who had maintained good control under the international. The left-wing in the amalgamated

clothing workers of America were never able to have the influence that the tool had in the other needle trade unions at all. But in the international fur workers union, the left wing was able to fully win and keep control. So in the story of the fur workers, it was Isidore Cohen and Loris Kaufman that represented the right-wing socialist union leadership.

Ben Gold and Aaron Gross were the representatives of the communists. In April of 1925, half of the fur workers were thrown out of work. And so the furriers struck, but they elected Ben gold to lead the strike, not the socialist international. While the union leadership was emptying its bank account on gangsters to intimidate and terrorize the striking workers, it was the communists that were mobilizing the workers on the picket line and in standoffs against the employers, the cops, the National Guard, the reactionary socialists, and their fucking goons. Yes, the reformist socialist, the peaceful transition socialist people would use union dues money to pay gangsters to brutalize

and stab in brass knuckle punch working class women striking for more money, a shorter work week, the right to unionize, and actual democracy within the union. My God. But with mass support for gold in the communist leadership of the strike, the furriers were able to withstand some of the most violent means of repression, and they won the 1926 strike. So, Gold had already been hospitalized back, and I think it was like 1924, 23, I'm sure. It had to receive 11 stitches on the head from Cohen and Kaufman's goons during a fight that erupted at a meeting of a union local.

But after the 1925-26 strike, a couple of gangsters showed up to Gold's office with a gun and hand and they were demanding back pay for work they did for Coen and Coffman because now Gold was in charge. Gold, who was staunchly against using thugs, was able to get a signal out to the workers who immediately walked off the job

and within minutes hundreds of fur workers had grabbed the gangsters, brutalized them down a flight of stairs, and threw their asses out in the streets. Go. And so from that point on, union workers would take turns standing guard at the union offices, willing to defend their communist leadership by any means necessary.

Yeah, but the fight wasn't over. So the AFL decided to lend a hand to the socialists in their fight to prevent the communists from continuing what was the most militant union in the history of the labor movement in the United States. and the militancy, the bravery, the revolutionary spirit and heroism of the furriers had not even peaked. Following the strike, the years 1926 through 1928 were full of fierce battle for the furriers. The AFL, completely out of any normal routine, told gold they needed to investigate the affairs of the union. This was very interesting, given that the workers had just one a major and successful strike,

including a strike that won for the first time, a 40-hour work week, five-day week. Wow. So, yeah, exactly. And after a committee interrogated the workers over whether they were in any way connected to the Communist Party, the entire leadership in left-wing rank-and-file

were expelled. So, interesting enough, whereas the left wing of the garment workers were expelled for losing the strike, the left wing of the furriers were, expelled for winning their strike. This attack from the bourgeois trade unionists and

the reformist socialists brought the workers out in mass. Six weeks of street battles ensued, and this was by far the bloodiest of strikes the furriers had seen, and that is saying something given the repression they had already faced.

So the industrial squad, alongside gangsters, who were on the socialists' payroll, slashed and beat the women picketers. The police would ran their vehicles straight into the picket lines in an attempt to run over the strikers. Despite all this, plus rubber hoses, blackjacks, nightsticks, the almost all women's union refused to let the violence subdue them. This extraordinary heroism of the strikers needs to be uplifted as one of our greatest examples of proletarian feminism.

One day, 40 pickets were imprisoned on welfare. Island. But when the union came to pay their bail, they refused to even let the union funds be exhausted by the payment of their fines. This only stirred the workers on even more. And so the majority of the rink and file support remained for the communist-led joint board who had been expelled. At the 1927 convention, all right, the joint board, I'm sorry, the joint committee run by the AFO, the socialists, prevented the communist-led joint board from entering the doors. And it was these conditions in which the communist-led joint board was forced to act as an independent union.

In January of 1929, after having won the five-day, 40-hour workweek, not as the socialists had tried by begging legislators to serve in the interests of the workers, but through militant strikes and class struggle, the vast majority of the furriers joined workers in other needle trade unions, including the National Organization Committee of the Ladies Garbing Workers that we just talked about, to form the needle trades workers industrial union, right? The NTWIU of the tool, the Unity League. And they started with 22,000 members.

Wow. That is, yeah, that's a fact, I mean, gut-wrenching. but fascinating element of our history. The fact that you have these fucking people brutalizing women, brass knuckle punching, working class women who are on strike. Absolutely disgusting. On a recent Patreon episode I did, I discussed this sort of old idea of the union thug,

right, this sort of, I don't know, pseudo-lumpin or outright lumpin element within various unions. You know, that could be geared in different directions, of course, some positive and some negative. But basically this idea of backing up, whether that's a revolutionary socialist or communist organization or a militant trade union with these sort of lumpen elements that can harass, intimidate and seek revenge on those who, you know, would do something like brass knuckle punch a woman who is on strike. I'm just wondering, what are your thoughts on this idea of the old classic trope of the union thug and how much usefulness does something like that have in the modern day? in your opinion? I mean, I think we should just be conscious of, like, of what time period, whatever, you know, this union thug stuff was going on, who was in charge of the unions?

Because, as I just said, like, you know, these revisionists, these reformists, they genuinely used the dues money from the workers, the workers paid to be in the union to, to, they employed people to stab them. God, to work with the cops in the National Guard and ramming the, they're trying. I mean, so I think it's, it is actually a part of our history. And we, we just need to be conscious of, you know, who was doing it and why. Right. Exactly. I, I think it's very different from, you know, some of the, the important fights against scabs, right? As we were talking about with the miners, you know, the scabs had brought their weapons and the miners had brought their weapons and the miners were very seriously. You're not fucking going in this mind. And, and so I, so I think we have actually you can really understand the context

of what someone's like saying there's a weird just kind of general trope but but it's very true that liberal and revisionist union leaders have employed people to attack the workers and those are enemies of the working class

yeah absolutely and that's kind of crazy you know of course you hear about like the Pinkertons and you hear about these efforts by the bosses to inflict violence on striking workers but yeah rarely do we think think about this idea that union leadership and the bureaucracy could use the union dues by workers to set, you know, scumbags on them to physically assault them. Yes.

That's absolutely wild. All right. That's in our future as well. Yeah, definitely. All this stuff I try and mention, you know, not to just like talk about the past, but to say there are things in this that are our future. And we should be really conscious with those, especially those who are really serious about saying, you know what, I'm not worried about retiring.

You know, I am, I'm not worrying about trying to find a career. I want to become a labor milligent and I want to fight the capitalists. I don't want to fight the opportunists, you know. So we should really know our history so we know how to fight them effectively. And just to really quickly just mention the fact that in the past week or two, with the UAW strike alone, we've seen scabs use their vehicles to run over striking workers. and we even saw a reactionary driving by a picket line hurling slurs getting out physically attacking striking workers. In that case, the striking workers dusted that boy off.

But yeah, these are real threats. And we see them in the last week in American 2023 reality as well as 100 years ago. So worth thinking about for sure. But let's go ahead and move into the last section, I believe. And of course, there are so many stories that by necessity, length of time. We're going to have to leave out, as you've mentioned before, but the tools' efforts regarding the textile workers. Absolutely. So, in 1923, less than 100,000 of one million textile workers were organized. By the mid-1920s, the Southward movement of

textile mills for cheap, unorganized labor was well on its way to the point that in 1925, in the middle of the decade, there were more spindle of the in southern mills than in New England. Northern manufacturers, of course, began to use southern competition as an excuse to slash wages, but the manufacturer offensive to increase profits by reducing wages,

expanding workload, and increasing hours in the work week was met with resistance. Patterson, New Jersey, had already become known for its great history of battles between textile workers and the manufacturers when the years 1912 to 13 and 1919 added a few more heroic struggles to its list.

But by 1924, the only union left in the area was the craft-based associated silk workers. So in response to this, the announcement of a wage slash, the ASW called a strike. But it was swiftly defeated. due to the ASW's narrow craft unionism. The tool attempted to get the ring and file to push the leadership of the ASW to expand the strike and their union to include

the relatively less skilled crafts of the textile industry in the same region. But even after the defeat of their strike, the ASW leadership resisted the demands for industrial unionism. The tool was also active in Willamantic, Connecticut.

strike, which began in January of 1925. Willamantic was a company town under the tyranny of the American thread company, and the United Textile Workers, the UTW, had about 35% of the workers unionized in the town. When the company announced a 10% wage cut in January of 1925, UTW called the workers out on strike. But, just as in the Patterson, 1924 strike, the UTW held a defeatist attitude toward organizing the lower-skilled women workers. The tool stepped in midsummer and called for the expansion of both the strike and the union with the slogan, organized and fight, but the UTW surrendered to the manufacturers instead and eventually called off the strike in April of 1926.

Less than 10 miles down the road from Patterson, New Jersey was Passaic. And while the UTW was pulling the struggle in Patterson backward, the tool's United Front Textile Committee was leading the largest strike under communist leadership during the 1920s here in Passaic. So, unlike the craft unionists, the tool organized both rule and silk workers, skilled and unskilled, for a total of 15,000 striking workers. This was a great opportunity for tool because both the IWW and amalgamated textile workers had failed to unionize Pasek in 1980. And with the UTW completely absent from the town, the tool's textile committee was able to lead the charge to organize the owner organized. In January of 1926, a worker on the textile committee was fired.

And thousands of workers responded to the tools called to walk off the job. The strikers were composed of 39 nationalities, primarily divided into four different main languages. And while 50% of the strikers were women, the women workers who were paid less than the men and forced to work the late shift were on the front lines from start to finish. While facing police terror in horses and clubs and fire hoses with freezing water, the women led the mass media. meetings, the strike committees, working in unemployed women's councils, local and national relief efforts, chants and songs on the picket lines, and much, much more. They even mobilized a children's victory playground for when the kids were on the picket line or agitating in the streets in groups of three for the strike. The police and national guard, though, they didn't care that they

were clubbing children pickets and strollers with babies in room. God damn. They were there to serve the manufacturers, which meant ending the strike by any means necessary. Much more could be said about the strike, but I want to focus in on the events in which the tool ended up making a grave error, one that anyone's serious about becoming a labor militant and transforming the trade union movement into an organizing center of the working class for its broad interest of command.

complete emancipation, must certainly learn to overcome. So Albert Weisgord, or Weisgore, and I'm a sure if the dude was German I don't know, Albert Weisgord. At the time, a member of the Communist Party and head of the TechSouth Committee had been appealing to the AFL

for help. So in response, the AFL rejected working with the openly communist-led tool and said they would only work with a UTW. The manufacturers then joined the course with the AFL. If Wise Board would step out of the strike completely in the

UTW were brought in to assume leadership over the strike, the AFL would support with relief funds that the bosses would recognize the United Textile Workers Union. The Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party and Tool leadership thought that by agreeing to these demands, they would be prioritizing the workers. strike over it being known that the strike was led by communists. Given that the rest of the communists remained amongst the workers in the strike, they thought had they could maintain influence over the leadership. But both of these assumptions were wrong.

In effect, the communists surrendered their political independence to the opportunists, surrendered their leadership of the working class to the class collaborationists in representatives of the petty bourgeoisie. To jump in really quick, you can totally understand why what they were doing is kind of principled, right? Like agreeing to these demands, stepping aside in the idea that they would prioritize the workers' strike and their struggle over themselves being known as the leaders or whatever. Exactly. But it results in this bigger error. Yeah.

Absolutely. Exactly. Yeah. So with Wiseboard out, the UTW sought to immediately end the strike. The strikers refused to go back to work. But with a new leadership demoralizing and pulling back, as opposed to carrying forward the worker's struggle, the strike ended in a slow and painful defeat. Worse yet, in spite of the manufacturer saying it would recognize the United Textile Workers, if the communists seated leadership to the UTW and the UTW receiving a freshly formed, intested Paseaic local, numbering in the thousands, that local was reduced to a few dozen in less than two years.

So the defeat of the Pessex strike of 1926 would have a significant impact on the communist's 1929 transition from the Trade Union Educational League's emphasis on boring from within to the Trade Union Unity League's emphasis on organizing the head organized by launching independent unions where the AFL and Socialist Unions were either extremely weak or non-existence. Finally, in April of 1928, 5 to 6,000 textile workers walked out in New Bedford. These were primarily skilled workers

led by the New Bedford Textile Council. Tool members, through the Textile Mill Committee, organized throughout and around New Bedford, thousands more of unskilled workers that the council refused to call out as well. So throughout this entire strike, the council led the skilled and the tools committee

led the unskilled. Essentially, they had separate strikes, separate demands, and separate relief measures. One of the notable developments actually from this fight was the committee's organization of the Unemployed Council of Textile Workers.

But the longest strike in the history of New England's textile industry was brought to an end in October of 1928. Overall, It was a success due to the tooled militants and communist leadership, expanding the strike amongst the less skilled, unorganized workers. But following the strike, the committee would soon reorganize to form

the Trade Union and Unity League's National Textile Workers Union. But, you know, as we mentioned, perhaps I can return some other time to talk about the Unity League, which is a whole other realm in another episode. before wrapping up our look at the Educational League, I do want to make clear something that you had brought up earlier what might be confusing for some folks. I'm often asked how dual unionism differs from what the Trade Union Unity League's turn

was toward organizing independent unions, such as the National Miners Union, the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union, and the National Textile Workers Union. You know, doesn't the end of the the Educational League, prove the practice of dual unionism, correct? The answer is, in my opinion, not at all. And this is really actually important for us to grasp.

Bourgeois historians, revisionists, and left opportunists all point to the trade union unity league's independent unions and say, ha, you know, an independent union is a dual union, Foster's boring from within was wrong all alone. But the difference between the old syndicalists and the communists were that the syndicalists started their one big union, right, the IWW, with the intent to pull the workers out of the mainstream unions into their shiny, pure, revolutionary syndicalist union. Early American revolutionary syndicalism was, as I mentioned earlier, a genuine step forward from the backwardness of the reformist socialists. but it was a step backward for the proletariat in relation to communism. The communists in the initial tens of thousands of military workers who followed their leadership didn't choose to start new unions

because, like the left sectarians of today, they thought starting separate organizations was how they could overcome Boreswaite unionism. No, instead, they were expelled in mass, barred from the AFL and socialist-led unions because of their work through the Educational League. Even with the establishment of the independent Unity League unions, which again were forced upon them by mass explosions

and blatant sabotage of efforts to organize the unorganized, they still sought to work within the reactionary unions as much as they could. There is criticism to be made of the Unity League between the years 1929 and 1935, but that's for another ton. My point here is that there is a clear difference between duals, unionism, which is sectarian and unwarranted by conditions, and the unity link's tactic of organizing the unorganized through independent unions, a tactic forced upon them and correct in light of the development of conditions.

All right. So, yeah, so we're getting at the very end here. We're going to wrap this up here in a second. But what we've done so far and what you've done, my friend, Chase, is to walk us through the relevant revolutionary theory that's going to guide and help us make sense of this. this historical specific example, and then walked us through the history of the tool and showed us how at different parts and different stages of their development, they made certain mistakes, they made certain successes, they made certain advancements over what came

previous, the way in which there's reactionary elements, of course, without, but also within union struggles and laid out for us this broad history in hopes that people listening now will get involved in labor unionizing struggles, learn from the mistakes of the past of really well-intentioned comrades who are doing their absolute best and from their successes, and try to implement, guided, of course, by revolutionary theory, some of these lessons into the modern-day labor struggle because this labor struggle is not a flash in the pan.

The stuff we're seeing right now, whether it's Starbucks and Amazon or UPS, the railroads and the UPS, the railroads, UAW and whatever the hell comes next is a real working class response to the depravity of 40 years of applied libertarianism that we call neoliberalism acutely. And then more broadly is a response to the conditions of late stage capitalism and what it does to the working class. And so learning these lessons, understanding them in their deep minutia and trying to apply them in our present time is what this episode was about. And I'm so grateful, Chase, that you came on and educated me and my audience about this fascinating, though little-known episode of American labor history

and what we can learn from it today. So as a way to wrap this conversation up, though, I want you to sort of synthesize everything we've learned and respond to this question. Where do we go from here? Yeah. So first and foremost, I would say, you know, We need a proletarian vanguard party with a firm grasp of Marxism and Loomsome, that over time becomes capable of leading the working class of this country through every stage of the revolutionary struggle. And I would say this task should be on the forefront of our minds and everything we do. But regardless of whether a listener agrees with me on that or not, we can. This is what I really want to emphasize. We can unite around the necessity of transforming the unions into organs to which the working class fights,

not just for reforms or the amelioration of conditions, but its emancipation. This cannot be achieved without the uniting of today's labor militants into a tool-like organization, a united front militant minority organization that begins its work within the existing labor movement. But we have to begin to combat the conservative reactionary leadership whose labor programs and policies betray our working class by capitulating to the capitalists and pulling back the consciousness and the struggle of the workers. There can be no transformation of the labor movement

as long as we allow the enemies of the workers to maintain control over the unions. In addition to ousting the opportunists and chauvinists, We have to build up the organizational strength of the proletariat by organizing the unorganized. And this task cannot be separated from the fight within the mainstream movement. So if we're going to see not just a small uptick, as we've seen recently, in unionization, but significant waves of the unorganized battling their way into new and old unions like 1933 through 35, then there must first be a serious fight within the old unions

from a tested and steeled militant ring and file. At every step of the way, the members of this military organization would need to be aware of the right danger. You know, the error of falling into bourgeois trade unionism and economism. We are not fighting to modify the situation of the workers in this country. At minimum, genuine labor militants will grasp the need

to abolish capitalism. You know, we certainly won't all be Maoists in this fighting trade union organization, but we would all know that any hopes for reforming capitalism must be overcome. Genuine class consciousness, which is to say revolutionary class consciousness,

must be brought to the workers. And the workers will now embrace revolutionary ideas in what we know to be their ultimate objectives as their own, if we do not link up with them and lead them in their day-to-day struggles for immediate demands as well. There are many more questions that need to be asked and answered that I am presently unsure about, but this foundation is clear to me. With that said, some comrades of

mine and I are working to pull together some educations on this particular period of the labor movement and on the application of Marxism to the trade union movement. And we are looking to connect with anyone who wants to devote themselves to becoming a labor militant or is genuinely committed to the emancipation

of the masses from capitalism. Two of them being Audrey and Lenny, who I interviewed for the Vote No episode you let us publish last month that I hope listeners will go check out if they haven't already. And to be clear, you know, you do

not have to be a Maoist to link up with us, okay? Like the Russian syndicalists and communists who work together to transform their trade unions for the ultimate purpose of overthrowing the Tsar, the transformation of our trade unions will require communists and adherence to various anti-capitalist ideologies to unite with the aim of complete emancipation of capitalism. So please, don't hesitate to reach out, even if just for a conversation. And the last thing I'll say is that, you know, I really want to encourage whoever is listening to throw off any desires of having a career, throw off any concern you may have with retiring.

Give your life to a struggle that aims to end capitalism, right? The aims to abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression. Why not build up the movement? that could bring an end to cops killing us in the streets, that could bring the oppression of semi-colonies and the wars between imperialists to halt. Throw off the desires of private comfort and private leisure and consider giving your whole self to making war to end war.

But I think, you know, it is not a life worth living, a life that sacrificed it all out of love for the people. Amen. So if you want to connect with us, three emails, you can do so. We can put these in the show notes, our Mass StrugglePod, that's POD, at Protonmail.com, and then my comrades' emails are AJ 5284 at Proton.me, and Lenny N17 at Proton.me. We'll put those in the show notes. Real quick, a couple recommended readings for people who are really interested.

Again, please, if you're going to read some of this stuff, definitely connect and reach out to us, but start with Fosters from Brian to Stalin. It's on bandthought.net. That's a really great place to get an introduction to the tools. Also, he has a lot of other great ones. I'd also recommend Lazovsky's marks in the trade unions you can find online, PDF. But most of the information that I talked about here today was pulled from both Foster and Fonda's series on the history of the labor movement, volumes 9 and 10.

So, I mean, of course, you know, Brad, Lenin's, what is to be done in left-wing communism, I would say, are fundamental texts for really getting at the political and theoretical questions that we discussed at the beginning. Definitely. And for those who are interested in those two last texts, Lenin's, what is to be done in left-wing communism and infantile disorder, over on Red Menace, we've done full-on episodes, analyzing, teaching, and applying the lessons from those texts. So anybody's interested in deepening their knowledge of that. definitely check it out. And for all the other things that you mentioned, including the emails, I will link to that. In the show notes, I really want to reiterate Chase's example or his call to like give up on having this career, this individualistic pursuit of private comfort and this idea that you can retire. Right. Like this system is in a crisis. This system is not going to

reward you for being a good little, you know, worker be for following their rules and staying in line. even if you get a nice job and you think you're going to be able to retire the crisis that is endemic to this late capitalist system is going to throw all of that into question there's no guarantee even if you're currently paying into something like a 401k that you're going to ever have the chance to retire and you know would you want to keep your head down make profit for a company waste the best years of your life a toiling away at some computer desk for some guy who doesn't give a fuck about you and doesn't even know your name or would you rather risk this one life we have in the cosmos to fight for something bigger than yourself i think the question i think the

answer is very obvious is certainly obvious to chase and myself um thank you again chase for coming on man i really love you i love your work i love everything you do i think you're a real gem of the american communist left and that you know more people should um be exposed to you and your work and should learn from you. So thank you so much for coming on Rev. Left, and you have a home here anytime for any reason, my friend. Super appreciate you, Brad. Thank you so much, my friend.

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go down and be bold which side are you on which side are you on which side are you on which side are you on which side are you all Which side are you on? Oh, workers, can you stand it? Oh, won't you tell me now? Will you take this lousy deal or will you vote it down, down? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on?

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Do you stand with your class Their vote don't folk know Don't let the moment pass The work is right right We've learned from a history We win through a struggle We don't win from the sympathy The same goals for the union sell out

John Bryant get the hell out Biden made you bail out With leadership on the leash By UPS the government And black rock deans We got a world to win United we are strong Which side are you on?

Yeah Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are you on?