A RADICAL LIFE, VERA BUCH WEISBORD

BOOK REVIEW

A RADICAL LIFE, VERA BUCH WEISBORD, INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS,

1977

MARCH IS WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

The history of labor struggles in the United States in the 1920's, which forms the most informative part of the book under review,  looked a lot like the state of  labor struggles today-not much, although there was then, as now  a crying need to fight back against the decades old capitalist onslaught against labor. Nevertheless during the 1920’s period of labor's ebb there were a couple of important labor strikes that, as usual,  involved radicals, especially members of the American Communist Party (hereafter, CP) that had emerged from the underground after the Palmer Raids and deportations of the post World War I period. Those struggles, the great Passaic, New Jersey strike of 1926 and the heroic Gastonia, North Carolina strike of 1929  detailed here by one of the key leaders, Vera Buch Weisbord, centrally involved women workers in the textile trades, then as now, some of the most hazardous, low paying and stupefying work around. Thus an added impetus for trade union militants to read this book today is to better understand the arduous task of organizing international struggles where women form the backbone of the factory labor force such as in East Asia and Mexico.

As in many such memoirs the author here has her own ax to grind, and she unfailingly names names of those who did not measure up to the eclectic political wisdom that she and her husband and political partner Albert put forth over the years when they were politically active. Thus the early part of the book concerning early Communist trade union policy is where the value of the book lies. Three critical points can be gleaned from her work; the narrowness of the early Communist trade union policy of exclusively ‘boring from within’  the established and organized labor movement; the fatally-flawed  ‘dual union’ fetishism of the Stalinist ‘third period’ where Communist trade union policy was essentially to go it alone and create ‘red’ dual unions and eschew united front work; and, the question that presses on every militant today concerning the ability and advisability of doing  so-called 'mass' work by small left-wing propaganda groups.

James P. Cannon, an early leader of the CP and its 'trade unionist' wing along with William Z. Foster and others, acknowledged that Albert Weisbord was an exceptional mass trade union organizer. That is high praise indeed coming from an old Wobblie who knew his trade union leaders. He was then, and later as a leader of the American Trotskyist movement, in a position to also know the limits of the Weisbords as political leaders. And there is the rub.  Much of Weisbord’s achievement came as a result of his excellent work in the 1926 Passaic textile strike where he, with his future companion and wife Vera, led a hard fought effort to organize the woefully underpaid and exploited women textile workers. Weisbord, basically on his own hook, formed an independent union of the largely unorganized women textile works and led them out on one of the important strikes of the 1920's, despite constant efforts on the part of the central labor bureaucracy to sabotage those efforts as "communist" dominated. However, in order to keep the strike going as it was dying in isolation the CP agreed to remove Weisbord as central leader at the request of that bureaucracy and give the leadership to the tradition union leadership that ultimately settled the strike on very unfavorable terms.

 That a communist organization would sacrifice its own while caving in to reactionary trade unionists  is only understandable because in this  period the CP trade union policy, under William Z. Foster's influence,  was  one of  ‘boring from within’ the organized trade union movement. Thus, its sell-out of its leader, and there are no other words for it, was the steep price that it paid to keep in step with the central labor bureaucracy. The fact that important and decisive sections of the American work force in the 1920's were unorganized or poorly organized and needed to be organized independently did not enter the CP’s political horizon at that time.

 

Another critical, if more bloody, strike occurred in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1929 and there again Communists with Vera playing a key early role led the way. That an urban- based radical party could gain a hearing from rural Southern black and white workers, including a fair share of women workers, tells a hell of a lot about the times and how bad the conditions were there. For a number of reasons, including a police frame-up of the leadership of the strike, this struggle also went down to defeat. By 1929, however, the CP was knee-deep in its' third period' immediate capitalism crisis theory and did not call for the desperately needed united front work that might have saved the strike. The CP's argument at the time was a far cry from its earlier position of ‘boring with in’- now all other labor formations were inherently reformist and therefore not part of the labor movement. As a youth doing trade union work I was for a short time impressed by the 'third period', however, it did not take long to realize that immediate capitalist gloom and doom crisis theory is not the way to organize workers for the long haul. On a more empirical level any gains that the CP made among workers during this period, especially gaining an especially important small core of black workers was gained in spite of their flawed policies. A few scattered and isolated 'red' unions that, moreover, negotiated some awful contracts in order to keep influence in the unions they controlled do not make a revolutionary trade union movement.

As part of the internal turmoil inside the CP during the late 1920’s the Weisbords were part of an international right-wing Bukharin-led faction that during the process of the Stalinization of the American CP was purged by the Communist International in Moscow. Thus the pair were left in the political wilderness in America, but not for long. They were in seemingly constant and never-ending contact with groups to the CP's left and right and spent some time around James P. Cannon's Trotskyist Communist League of America before eventually drifting into political oblivion later in the decade. The central conflict with the CLA was over the question of ‘mass’ work by small communist propaganda groups. Coming off their CP experiences where they had led masses of workers under the guidance of a small mass party the Weisbords continued to seek to implement that perspective even though ‘mass’ work by a small propaganda group is usually either fake 'paper' work or tends to destroy the real goal of such a group - the cohesion of a cadre that can lead ‘real’ struggles when they come up. Here is a case where the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Yes, the CLA wandered in the political wilderness in the early 1930's but by 1934 they were in position to lead the great Minneapolis Teamsters strikes, which put them on the political map. They then were able to gather other left non-Stalinist forces and by the end of the decade had became a small mass party, the Socialist Workers Party, with plenty of trade union supporters and a fair share of mass work. And the Weisbords? Nada. Nevertheless, read this book, even if at times you have to read between the lines, to learn more about an important part of American labor history, an important part of early Communist Party history and a chapter in the history of the women workers movement.