Know Your Enemy
patreon
What Was the CIO? (w/ Tim Barker and Ben Mabie)
🕑 Added 2024-05-26 22:10:14 +0000 UTCHistorian Tim Barker and editor/organizer Ben Mabie join to talk about a thrilling episode in the history of American labor. Barker and Mabie are two of the hosts of Fragile Juggernaut, a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (or CIO). Along with co-hosts Alex Press, Gabriel Winant, Andrew Elrod, and Emma Teitelman, they've been telling the story of organized labor in the 1930s, the radical possibilities of that decade, and the eclipsing of those possibilities in the post-war years — with the onset of the cold war, McCarthyism, and anti-union legislation like Taft-Hartley.
In a sense, this episode is a pre-history of the story we tell on Know Your Enemy. If you’ve ever wondered, what was it that so terrified reactionary businessmen about the New Deal era? How did they come to believe that revolutionary upheaval was a real prospect in America, that Communists were everywhere, threatening the social order, and that this peril demanded the creation and funding of a new conservative movement? Well part of the answer is: the CIO. From a certain angle, the right-wing fever dream was real, at least for a time: the CIO really was filled with Communists, labor militants really did take over factories and shut down whole cities, and it really did seem possible, if only briefly, that the American working class — including immigrants from all over Europe, black workers, and women — might find solidarity on the shop floor, consolidate politically, and threaten the reign of capital. That didn’t quite happen. And this episode will partially explain why.
Further Reading:
Andrew Elrod, "Fragile Juggernaut: What was the CIO?" n+1, Jan 24, 2024.
Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s, U of Illinois Press, 1988.
Robert H. Zieger, The CIO, 1935-1955, UNC Press, 1995.
Landon R.Y. Storrs, The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left, Princeton U Press, 2012.
Eric Blanc, “Revisiting the Wagner Act & its Causes,” Labor Politics, Jul 28, 2022.
Rhonda Levine, "Class Struggle and the New Deal: Industrial Labor, Industrial Capital, and the State," U of Kansas Press, 1988.
Further Listening:
The podcast: "Haymarket Originals: Fragile Juggernaut," 2024
Comments
Kevin Spicer
Today at least.
Kevin Spicer
Trades are so conservative it's a real bummer.
Kevin Spicer
Wow working in factories in the 30's seems exciting...gm strike trying to get a voice to open gms books to see the profit to raise worker wages not connected to prices....the holy grail of labor...so close.
Kevin Spicer
Ohh man, loved thinking of the dream of the cio fulfilling it's promise and having a communist leaning ethos in the trades today...I wish so much.
Matt Eriole
I’m late to this, but I just wanted to recommend John Sayles’ film Matewan about the titular strike which this conversation made me think of. Inspiring and uncompromising look at the power of cross-racial organizing
Klaus Yoder
I published a piece recently about Coughlin and the NYPD: https://therevealer.org/catholic-fascists-in-the-nypd-1939-1940/
Benjamin Pletcher
Also, would love a proper episode on Father Coughlin!
Benjamin Pletcher
Totally essential KNE prehistory. This episode grounds the reactionary project in something more profound than ideological backlash. The CIO was Red ideology with realpolitik teeth in American labor. Fragile Juggernaut is the best! Love how Ben ties the history to the present.
genrepunk
Even though it was a quick aside, as a social dance organizer I was struck by the note about dancing as a means of creating more cohesion between Black and white workers. My teachers talk a lot about how social dance spaces were historically never just for dancing. I wonder what place we might find for dancing and other hobbyist communities in building coalitions.
Charles Zug
I really appreciated this episode, and while I love Matt and Sam equally, I tend to prefer this kind of content over the Catholic-centric episodes. Good to bring the material basis of things back in.
Bob Scott Placier
This was a fascinating episode, thanks for introducing us to Fragile Juggernaut, which I will check out. I have a small quibble, which was the repeated reference to John L. Lewis as just John Lewis. He was always John L. in this region, whether loved or hated. I was born and remain a lifelong resident of Southeastern Ohio, which is proudly the birthplace of the United Mine Workers, and before that a hotbed of union activity through the Knights of Labor. I can't say how many times I have entered the home of an elderly ex-miner back in the 70s and 80s to encounter a picture of John L. on the front room wall, in Irish homes often accompanied by a picture of JFK. It's hard to comprehend today how deeply revered Lewis was in the coal camps. The great labor historian Herbert Gutman published a number of papers on early miners' organizations and strikes in the Hocking Valley.
