From The Folks Who Brought You The Weend: A Short Illustrated History of Labor in the United States [Paperback]

The authors attempt the impossible: the description of working class life in general over the last five hundred years with snapshots of countless names and events to provide the sustenance. The tone for the laboring class was set early on in our nation's history. The brutal and deadly nature of both indentured and permanent servitude is vividly brought home by the authors' careful description of their conditions and often futile resistance. Yet the fissures within the working class itself are evident throughout the book. Immigration and slavery and resulting ethnic conflicts and racism are shown through any number of positions taken and violent incidents to have been devastating to working class solidarity. In addition to ethnicity and race, the authors do not shrink from gender and sexual orientation issues. And the trampling of Native Americans fortifies the authors' arguments for the abuse of power.

To counter power and to assert their own voice, workers have formed countless organizations such as political parties (Socialist, Greenback), advocacy and reform groups (Ten Hour Leagues, producer and consumer cooperatives), community groups (Black Panthers, fraternal orders), as well as labor unions. The authors provide enough detail for the reader to see a U.S. labor movement at odds with itself in terms of basic philosophies. It has adopted any number of approaches: the political of the Knights of Labor, the syndicalist of the IWW, the bargaining of the AFL, the CIO's social unionism, and the post-WWII social-accord, not to mention narrow, craft-based unions versus industrial. Of course the issues of native-born versus ethnic or racial differences have been played out in the labor movement.

The authors accurately point out that there have been few periods where the democratic promise for the American working class has made sustained headway. Interestingly enough they comment little on WWI as being a period where workers called for making the world safe for democracy. The U.S. government was forced to back the right of workers to elect representation committees within workplaces. The two periods in our history where workers and their unions gained the most power, that is WWI and WWII, were followed by periods of either suppression or containment. And in both cases red-baiting was a primary instrument of their foes with some conservative unions leading the charge against their more radical brethren. Clearly these were huge turning points not overly emphasized by the authors.

While the book is consistent in showing that working class life has been a constant struggle, there is a lack of an attempt to understand the basis of continued setbacks. The issue of American "exceptionalism," the failure to achieve a stronger, permanent political position, is relevant in any history of the American working class. The Western European working class managed to tame the worst excesses of capitalism. The role of the mass media and the educational system might well be factors to consider. In addition, the attempt to be inclusive of most relevant players and events in the working class story results in what seems like a mountain of details, which can cloud the bigger story. One might question how much insight can be achieved into the American working class from this book alone. It seems that some previous background would have to be assumed.