Fifth in the series: The Principles of Organzing

Cold War Liberalism

During the Cold War, Labor unions violated their own sacred principle of solidarity by joining with imperial elites and corporate interests to weaken militant trade unionism abroad — usually under the mantle of anti-communism. By undermining unions, AFL-CIO foreign policy helped corporations exercise global control and contributed its share to the availability of cheap labor abroad. That cheap labor then became a central ingredient in outsourcing, plant closing, wage suppression, and the loss of jobs at the heart of labor’s current decline.

This support for empire was sometimes called “Cold War Liberalism” because many liberals, progressives, even some radicals joined the anti-communist crusade. 

Labor’s own eager cooperation with the Cold War agenda undermined our unions and our way of life at home. That was the price we all paid so union officials could be “team-players” and reap the illusory benefits of the machine: status, minor concessions and patronage positions in city, state and national machines.

The domestic counterpart of the Cold War was the mid-century social contract, also called the labor-capital accord. The truly national mobilization during WWII opened new vistas for workers, women, and minorities both racial and sexual. An unprecedented feeling of national unity was momentarily forged and rising expectations fueled the emerging labor and social movements. 

This contradictory combination of fighting for workers during good times on one hand, while supporting the empire’s war against communism on the other allowed Cold War liberals to maintain their liberal image and radical criticism while collaborating with the ruling class. 

Special benefits may have temporarily functioned to motivate workers to join unions but once the peak of prosperity passed by the mid-70s, “exclusivity” backfired and encouraged resentment among unorganized workers making then open to anti-union appeals. Exclusive union welfare plans yielded decisive ground in US political culture: health care or pensions became private matters for “member’s only” not political rights for all.

Be it Cold War liberalism or mid-century social contract, Labor’s political perimeter was set and policed by the Democratic Party.  And, this is nothing new. Since the days of Tammany Hall in the 19th Century, big city machines have corralled first Irish-Americans  then African-Americans and many others since. The bribe: swap narrow self-interest in the form of racial, status, organizational or class privilege — even the most pathetic and temporary forms of  patronage and concessions — for freedom, equality and democracy.

Quite a bargain for the Corporate Empire. As the New Cold War (and the hot wars it provokes) intensified we can expect to see the reemergence of Cold War Liberalism.

Next: Working Idealism In

1. For more on the mid-century social contract see David Brody, Workers in Industrial America: Essays o the Twentieth Retry, Oxford University Oress 1980 Chapters 5 and 6; Barry and Irving Bluestone, Negotiating the Future: A Labor Perspective on American Business, Basic Books, 1992, Chapter 2; Nelson Lichtenstein and Stephen Meyer, On the Line: Essays in the History of Auto Work, University of Illinois Press 1989, pp. 1-16; Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968, Cornell, 1995.  For more see p. 109 Endnote #3, in Richard Moser, “Organizing the New Faculty Majority” in Equality for Contingent Faculty: Overcoming the Two-Tier System,Keith Hoeller editor, Vanderbilt Press, 2014.
2. Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man In Detroit: Walther Reuther and the Fate of American Labor, New York: Basic Books.