American Gandhi. Leilah Danielson
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only do they reveal his approach to the problems of labor conservatism and worker dormancy, they illustrate the good humor and evenhandedness for which he was well known:
Don’t be somebody who is going to do something TO the labor movement. Be somebody who is going to be and do something IN the labor movement. . . . Don’t get the Messiah or the Moses-lead-the-movement-out-of-the-wilderness complex. . . . Don’t be in a hurry. . . . Some things have to grow; they can’t be made. . . . Don’t be a cry baby. . . . A cry baby is anyone who always finds someone else to blame except himself. . . . Don’t be a nut. A nut is someone who is so obsessed with his own idea that he doesn’t see it in relation to other ideas nor in its effect on the people he is dealing with. . . . Don’t play for the limelight all the time. There are still somethings [sic] that can’t be done effectively in the limelight, such as making love or bringing up babies. . . . Don’t be afraid of being called names [such as ‘‘Bolshevik’’]. . . . Don’t become a cynic. Don’t grow up; don’t get old; don’t settle down; don’t lose your nerve, your gayety, your willingness to take a risk.13
Yet underneath Muste’s moderate tone was a growing sense of urgency and frustration with the official labor movement. By mid-decade, it was clear to him and other progressives that their hopes in Green had been misplaced, as the AFL ‘‘shifted from militancy to respectability.’’ At its 1926 convention, rather than endorse industrial organization as the answer to Fordism, the federation proposed union-management cooperation through schemes like tying wage increases to high productivity. It also withdrew from its move into electoral politics, retreating into its traditional stance of nonpartisanship and voluntarism. Meanwhile, the labor movement was weak and in disarray. The United States was the only industrialized country without a political party that provided adequate representation for organized workers, as well as the only one in which company unions, injunctions, the industrial spy system, and the yellow-dog contract were used without impunity against workers.14
These developments distressed labor progressives like Muste, as well as the liberal left more broadly, and they grew more vocal in their criticism of the AFL leadership.15 A case in point is Muste’s comments on the infamous ‘‘Mitten-Mahon agreement’’ in which the Street Railway Employees’ Union agreed not to intrude upon certain company unions. Though Muste stated at the outset that he sought to approach the question in ‘‘a spirit of inquiry,’’ he pointedly compared the agreement to the process by which Benito Mussolini had gained control of unions and workers in fascist Italy. He also began touching upon wider themes, linking labor’s fate with struggles against imperialism and racism at home. His response to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, in which he compared the two Italian anarchists to Christ, further revealed a latent ardor and millennial urgency.16
Starting in mid-1928, Muste began to take his first tentative steps toward reviving the spirit of ‘‘militant progressivism’’ that had characterized the labor movement during the war years. In an article for V. F. Calverton’s Modern Quarterly, he groped toward the formulation of a ‘‘progressive-realist’’ position (also known as the ‘‘practical idealist’’ position) that would stand somewhere between a complacent labor movement and an ultra-revolutionary left wing. In contrast to the Communists, who had ‘‘irritated’’ laborites and progressives ‘‘beyond words’’ by their use of ‘‘verbal mud-slinging’’ and by seeking to capture movements, progressive realists would exhibit ‘‘realism and flexibility’’ in the struggle for a socialist society; they would recognize that the revolution was not around the corner, at least not in the United States, and would be willing to cooperate with both liberals and the official labor movement. In essence, Muste’s vision was a mix of social democracy and revolutionary socialism; he placed primary emphasis on industrial organization over parliamentary politics, embraced coalitions and the possibility of gradualism, while at the same time conceding that conditions might arise in which a more Leninist approach might become necessary—in a counterrevolutionary context, for example, ‘‘a compact, centralized, and vigorous party is absolutely indispensable for leadership of the workers.’’17
As this reference suggests, Lenin’s ideas had begun to influence Muste’s thought. Lenin, he reminded readers of Labor Age, was a labor strategist and tactician, who offered insights of the ‘‘greatest value to all active labor people quite regardless of their political or economic views.’’ Moreover, despite his criticism of Lenin’s disciples in the American Communist Party (discussed in more detail below), he was deeply impressed by their revolutionary dedication, which he saw as a model for other socialists to emulate. He reconciled this move to the left with his pragmatism by insisting that Leninist theory was not infallible and by drawing attention to Lenin’s own admonition that revolutionaries must be flexible and adapt their methods to changing conditions.18
As Muste compared the activities of the revolutionary left to the politics of mainline Protestantism, the latter increasingly came up short. Where the churches were ‘‘identified with the status quo,’’ ‘‘the Left had the vision, the dream, of a classless and warless world’’ that motivated the Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ. As he later recalled of this period in his life, ‘‘This was a strong factor in making me feel that [the revolutionary left], in a sense, was the true church. Here was the fellowship drawn together and drawn forward by the Judeo-Christian prophetic vision of ‘a new earth in which righteousness dwelleth.’ ’’ Leftists were, moreover, ‘‘truly religious’’ insofar as they ‘‘were virtually completely committed, they were betting their lives on the cause they embraced.’’19
Muste was also growing disenchanted with organized pacifism. In 1928, he published an article in the World Tomorrow taking pacifists to task for their efforts to dissuade workers from using violence in their struggles against capitalism. Rather than criticize workers, pacifists should denounce capitalism and call on the ruling class to renounce its power and privilege. They should, moreover, disassociate as much as possible from the economic system and identify with workers and their cause. Only then would they be in a moral position to counsel nonviolence. Muste was not prepared to dismiss pacifism entirely, but he insisted that ‘‘in a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist; in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifist is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.’’ In 1929, he made a similar argument when he addressed the annual meeting of the FOR.20 The organization’s refusal to unequivocally support labor’s right to strike at the meeting further alienated him from pacifism and religious liberalism, though he continued to think of himself as a Christian and retained alliances with more radical members of the FOR and left-leaning Protestants for several more years, occasionally attending FOR meetings and continuing to serve as a contributing editor to the World Tomorrow.21
AS Muste assumed a more forceful presence on the labor left, so too did Brookwood. The college’s extension program expanded, and its faculty, staff, and alumni were intimately involved in other workers’ education initiatives like the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, the Southern Summer School for Women Workers, Highlander Folk School, Commonwealth College, Seattle Labor College, Baltimore Labor College, Denver Labor College, Philadelphia Labor College, and Pittsburgh Labor College; indeed, the syllabi, curriculum, and pedagogy of these educational initiatives were largely based on Brookwood’s example.22 The college’s influence also grew as alumni assumed central roles in their unions as organizers, editors, and officials. Among others, the machinist Charles L. Reed became vice president of the Massachusetts Federation of Labor; Bonchi Friedman continued to organize for the ACW; Alfred Hoffman served as an organizer for the American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers (AFFFHW) and the UTW; and Rose Pesotta began her rise within the ranks of the ILGWU.
Meanwhile, the college continued to hold its popular labor institutes in which representatives from various industries met to discuss problems facing their unions. Starting in 1926, it also began to host conferences on more expansive and controversial subjects. In 1927, it held a symposium on ‘‘Negroes in Industry’’ that included presentations by black workers and intellectuals—such as Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Abram L. Harris, A. Philip Randolph, and Frank Crosswaith—that explored such topics as the history