Pure and Simple Radicalism: Putting the Progressive Era AFL in Its Time

Abstract

Dorothy Sue Cobble's “Up for Debate” retrospective on the early American Federation of Labor heralds a new era of scholarship connecting labor history to larger judgments about American institutionalism — be it business, politics, the law, or ideology. Cobble reclaims both the complexity of AFL structure and its oppositional stance to market fundamentalism from what she claims (à la E. P. Thompson) from the condescension of history: ultimately, she wants to reconsider the federation as “part of a progressive political tradition on which future generations of reformers can build.” The range of responses from four distinguished commentators suggest just how “radical” (to use a term contested throughout the exchange) Cobble's revisionist turn is. Melvyn Dubofsky, for example, who had once accepted the conventional “business unionism” dismissal of the AFL, now ventures halfway in Cobble's direction: the early AFL, he allows, may well have been more pluralist and politically contentious than previously recognized; however, there was a “darker” side of intolerance and missed opportunities that grew worse through the 1920s. Andrew Wender Cohen not only reaffirms Cobble's central claims regarding the de facto mixed-skill nature of the AFL, but goes further to emphasize its city-based struggles for workers' control. Altogether, the federation, he suggests, was at once a defining historical force in the period and of “vital” benefit to working people. Donna Haverty-Stacke prefers to interrogate further the very framing of the AFL across time. Just how and why labels like “pure and simple” and “conservative trade unionism” were created and “how they functioned” offer an agenda, she suggests, for further research. Within this forum, Julie Greene is the least inclined to accept Cobble's main premises. Although she welcomes renewed attention to the AFL's more innovative aspects, she insists that the federation be judged in relation to actually existing contemporary alternatives. In such light — particularly with attention to an incessant AFL attack on the Labor Left and support for US imperialism — the claim for AFL “radicalism,” in her view, appears far-fetched. Cobble responds with a gracious but full-throated defense of her core arguments.

Twentieth century US labor history: Pedagogy, politics, and controversies Part 2

“…55–56) . Furthermore, at least one historian has argued that we should assess labor leaders such as the American Federation of Labor's (AFL) Samuel Gompers favorably and thus reject the critical interpretations put forward by Philip Foner and others whom had described Gompers as a conservative figure guilty of defending US imperialist goals and promoting class collaborationism (Cobble, ) …”

“…55-56). 1 Furthermore, at least one historian has argued that we should assess labor leaders such as the American Federation of Labor's (AFL) Samuel Gompers favorably and thus reject the critical interpretations put forward by Philip Foner and others whom had described Gompers as a conservative figure guilty of defending US imperialist goals and promoting class collaborationism (Cobble, 2013). 2 A considerable amount of scholarship on the 1930s to the 1950s reflects an equally decisive departure from hard left interpretations of past individuals, organizations, and events.…”

Blue-Collar Classroom

“…But as Cobble (2013) has pointed out, when the AFL is put in appropriate context, a better understanding of its “business unionism” emerges. For one, the practical “hard-nosed tactics of Gompers” were forged in his “upbringing and education in Marxist circles” (Licht 1999, 611).…”

“…But a flexible organizing strategy characterized the approach of the AFL overall during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which paved the way for impressive gains in membership in the 1930s and early 1940s, a period typically framed as the time when the CIO led the way (Cobble 1997; Tomlins 1979). Citing a 1915 study, Cobble (2013, 70) notes that “only 28 of the 133 existing national unions, most affiliated with the AFL, were still pure ‘craft’ unions.”…”

“…Therefore, the right of workers to collectively organize, to strike, and to bargain on an equal basis with their employers was essential, and not only for the narrow, if still important, purpose of securing a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. As Cobble (2013, 80) put it, “a radically democratic—and perhaps utopian—aspect of ‘Gomperism’ was his insistence that labor could be equal at work and in society and that labor’s equality could be won by the economic organizing and political action of workers themselves.”…”