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Bill Shields
Labor Studies Journal, Volume 31, Number 4, Winter 2007, pp. 97-98 (Review)
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Communist Party, in favor of what might have been if only partisans of the
Fourth International had been dominant on the left. She begs the question,
though, of why they did not prevail, which may be attributed to whose program
made more sense to active workers, particularly African-Americans.
Smith’s treatment of the post-war period describes betrayals and sell-
outs by labor leaders, including collaboration with the CIA abroad and a
self-destructive reliance on the Democrats at home. Most importantly, she
asserts that McCarthyism was responsible for destroying the long-standing
presence of an organized left in labor, which continues to cripple us even
today. This ignores the large number of Civil Rights/Black Power and New
Left veterans who went into the movement, but, perhaps, the fact that labor
progressives are not rolled up into one hegemonic cadre group is what she
is talking about.
There is not enough room here to thoroughly praise and criticize her
main points. I will conclude with an observation on her main concern. The
lack of a labor party has at least as much to do with the passage of anti-fusion
laws and the consolidation of Jim Crow segregation as with a lack of left-la-
bor vision. Once the new regressive voting regime was in place by the 1920s,
workers were left in most states with getting something from the Democrats
or nothing at all. This is an important political fact, and we’re still dealing
with this conundrum today.
Which do you think is more likely, for instance—a progressive takeover
of the Democrats or changes in the political system that allow minor parties
to compete successfully for power? There is no easy answer, although inter-
esting experiments are in progress, like the Working Families Party in New
York and the Instant Runoff Voting in San Francisco. Of course, we do have
a Labor Party; it has just taken them ten years to actually run candidates for
office! It is instructive that they are doing so in South Carolina, where fu-
sion, or cross endorsing, is allowed. That might be a good battle cry to carry
on with the militant spirit that Smith calls on us to emulate. Workers of the
world, fuse!
Bill Shields
City College of San Francisco