The Labor Wars: From the Molly Maguires to the Sitdowns

By Sidney Lens

Book Overview

The rise of the American labor movement was characterized by bloody and revolutionary battles. From the first famous martyrs, the Molly Maguires in the Pennsylvania coal fields in the nineteenth century, to the crucial workers' victory of the 1930s in the sit-down strikes against General Motors, it has a history of pitched battles that frequently erupted into open warfare.

This is also the story of the factional wars within the American labor movement itself and of the great leaders it generated: Eugene Debs, Samuel Gompers, William Z. Foster, Bill Haywood, John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, and many more--some of them Sidney Lens' personal friends.

There have been no revolutions in the United States since the first one in 1776. The closest America has come to revolution has been the Labor Wars, each one of which has been, in a sense, a revolution-in-microcosm. The strikers in these industrial fl are-ups confronted not only the power of their employers but, ultimately, that of the State . . . and in the process there was always the possibility of a widening and escalating conflict bordering on insurrection.

Sidney Lens (1912-1986) was the author of many books about labor and radical movements in the United States, including The Forging of the American Empire (republished in 2003 by Haymarket Books and Pluto Press). He was a candidate for the Senate for the Citizens Party and an editor at The Progressive.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931859701
• ISBN13: 9781931859707
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Length: 372 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Amazing history, short and readable

This little book packs a punch. Small enough to fit into the backpocket of your jeans, Lens manages to cram 100 years of working class history into a tiny space and does an amazing job bringing the rebellions, uprisings, and violent battles fought by the American working class to life. Lens starts by looking at the Molly Maguires, a supposedly secret organization of working-class Irish immigrants accused of plotting to kill their strike-breaking managers after a hard-fought strike went down to defeat after the Civil War. He makes it clear that this was a frame-up orchestrated by big business to destroy working-class resistance in the mines to unsafe conditions, speed-ups, and poverty wages. The lesson here and throughout the book: big business in America was absolutely ruthless in its pursuit of profits, breaking strike after strike by force, framing leader after leader on bogus charges, and bribing politician after politician to get their way. Lens' history goes on to cover the tremendous railroad strikes in 1877 led by future revolutionary socialist Eugene Debs, the Homestead Strike, the founding of the American Federation of Labor, the rise and fall of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies as they were known, and the tremendous sit-down strikes that began the wave of mass unionization in the 1930s and the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organization. He pays particular attention to the role of organized working-class radicals - socialists, anarchists, communists, revolutionaries - who formed the backbone of the militancy that played a central role in winning what generations took for granted, the so-called American Dream. Lens' final chapters deal with the betrayal of the American Communist Party of the working class during WWII (supporting Roosevelt, the imperialist war, the no-strike pledge, and breaking all strikes during the war), the strike wave that swept the country right after the war's end, the economic prosperity of the 50s and 60s, and the castration of the labor movement that took place during the McCarthy era as tens of thousands of labor radicals were fired and blacklisted for their political beliefs. An unholy alliance of big business, Democratic and Republican politicians, and conservative union officials joined forces to get rid of, smother, and destroy rank-and-file organization and the influence of organized radicals within the labor movement in the 1950s. As a result, no one has been able to organize against the downsizing, restructuring, layoffs, pay cuts, attacks on benefits, and outrageous corporate greed over the last 30 years that have destroyed once powerful unions like the United Auto Workers among many others. Labor Wars is an eye-opening account for all of us who were taught in school that America has always been a middle-class society whose class mobility made "European-style" class struggle and mass socialist parties impossible here in the U.S. It's a history that's essential if we're