Even Conservative Unions Have Revolutionary Effects: Frank Tannenbaum on the Labor Movement (original) (raw)
2010, International Labor and Working-class History
Frank Tannenbaum is best known for his studies of Mexican agrarian reform and for his contributions to the comparative history of slavery and slave societies. But as a young man he had made a name for himself as a notorious labor agitator, and he went on to publish two books on the US labor movement, which are worthy of reconsideration as important interpretations of independent trade unionism and political reform. The first volume appeared in 1921 and offered an original perspective on the popular syndicalism that formed such a large, positive element of the philosophy of the International Workers of the World (IWW), to the extent it had one, at the center of which lay the struggle for social recognition on the part of immigrant and (supposedly) unskilled workers. The second appeared thirty years later and provided a thoughtful defense of the private, employment-based welfare and industrial relations system that the New Deal established in the United States. Together the books offer a provocative account of the social and individual radicalism of US-style "pure and simple" trade unionism. Frank Tannenbaum (1893-1969) was a celebrated and successful Latin American historian who is now most widely remembered for his influential interpretations of the Mexican Revolution and his pioneering short essay, Slave and Citizen (1947). But during the course of his writing career he also published two important books on US trade unionism. Neither is well known today; both deserve to be. The Wobbly historian and activist Fred Thompson described the first of these books [The Labor Movement: Its Conservative Functions and Social Effects (1921)] as "a positive presentation of the IWW philosophy," and it stands as an important alternative to other interpretations of the labor movement from the era, including Robert Hoxie's Trade Unionism in the United States (1919) and Selig Perlman's A Theory of the Labor Movement (1928). The second appeared thirty years later as A Philosophy of Labor (1951). 1 Less original than the first volume-if only because by 1951 Tannenbaum's industrial syndicalism had become almost a commonplace-it nonetheless offered a distinctive perspective on the New Deal industrial relations system at its height. Taken together, the two books constitute an original contribution to radical and revolutionary labor thinking, in both its anarcho-syndicalist and its social democratic forms. Indeed, Tannenbaum's interpretation of trade unionism and its impact-namely, that in modern
Related papers
Even Conservative Unions Have Revolutionary Effects: Frank Tannenbaum on the Labor Movement (2010)
ILWCH: International Labor and Working-Class History, 2010
Frank Tannenbaum is best known for his studies of Mexican agrarian reform and for his contributions to the comparative history of slavery and slave societies. But as a young man he had made a name for himself as a notorious labor agitator, and he went on to publish two books on the US labor movement, which are worthy of reconsideration as important interpretations of independent trade unionism and political reform. The first volume appeared in 1921 and offered an original perspective on the popular syndicalism that formed such a large, positive element of the philosophy of the International Workers of the World (IWW), to the extent it had one, at the center of which lay the struggle for social recognition on the part of immigrant and (supposedly) unskilled workers. The second appeared thirty years later and provided a thoughtful defense of the private, employment-based welfare and industrial relations system that the New Deal established in the United States. Together the books offer a provocative account of the social and individual radicalism of US-style "pure and simple" trade unionism.
The Marxist View of the Labor Unions: Complex and Critical
WorkingUSA, 2013
Since the world economic crisis of 2008 and governments' increasing demands for austerity in countries around the globe, labor unions have failed to provide leadership to the working class. This has led to a debate about the value of unions and their role in social change. Longstanding socialist organizations and emerging nonstate socialist and anarchist groups have begun an important discussion of the nature of the labor unions, the character of their leaderships, and their relationship to employers and the state. Marx and Engels are often referred to or cited as authorities in these debates, though seldom do we have an overview of how they arrived at their complex understanding of labor union structures, leaderships, politics, and behaviors. This essay is meant to contribute to this important discussion by examining Marx's and Engel's involvement in the workers' movement, including with the labor unions, as well as their writings about labor unions, placing them in the broader context of their revolutionary socialist strategy and vision. We trace the development of these ideas from their first involvement with the workers movement in the mid-1840s until the death of both by the 1890s. Finally, we conclude by making a summary of their considered opinion. Marxist socialists have a complicated and critical attitude toward labor unions. 1 The general reasons for this are no doubt obvious to anyone who has thought about them. Labor union leaders generally fight for higher wages, while Marxist socialists struggle to end the wage system. Trade union leaders often see strikes as unfortunate if sometimes necessary struggles that temporarily disrupt the labor union's usual and ongoing partnership with capital. Socialists on the other hand see strikes as essential to maintaining workers' fighting spirit and preparing workers to engage in class war and eventually to carry out a social revolution to overthrow capitalism. Trade union leaders tend to see their unions as the only legitimate vehicle and voice of the working class, while socialists tend to see trade unions as too limited in their scope-excluding as they often do much of the working class, especially ethnic and racial minorities, women, immigrants, domestic and farm workers, the unemployed, and the indigent. Socialists, on the other hand, organize workers not only into unions but also into educational groups, workers parties, social movements, and revolutionary socialist organizations. Unions foresee no alternative workers' organization, while socialists envision the organization of workers into community or industrial councils that would include virtually all workers, broad organizations that would bs_bs_banner
Business History Review, 1990
Excerpt] Over the past two decades many claims have been made for what was once called the "new" labor history. Deeply influenced by European scholarship (especially by the British historian, E. P. Thompson) and by writings in cultural anthropology and sociology, this new history seemed to sweep all before it. In a tumble of discrete community studies and precise examinations of individual strikes lay the foundation of the new history's critique of the work of John K Commons and his associates, who had stressed an institutional analysis of labor's growth and development within a liberal, democratic capitalist society. In studying workers outside the labor movement, in exploring their cultures and values, and in asserting the presence of explicit class tension, these works proclaimed, collectively, a new era in the study of the American working class.
An Ideology of Class: Neo-Liberalism and the Trade Unions, c.1930-79
In C. Griffiths, J. Nott and W. Whyte (eds), Classes, Cultures and Politics: Essays for Ross McKibbin (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 263-81
the editors of this volume, and the participants on each of those occasions for very helpful feedback. The Institute of Economic Affairs and Lord Tebbit kindly granted permission to quote from private papers. 1 framework would have required the recasting not simply of employer-employee relationships but of the idea of the nation itself.
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British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2018