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C. Wright Mills and the Labor Movement

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C. Wright Mills and the Labor Movement LaborHistory, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2001 The“ Unionof the Powerand the Intellect”: C.Wright Mills and the Labor Movement DAN GEARY* In his “Letterto the New Left” of 1960, C.Wright Mills attackedthe “ labor metaphysic”that heldout “ ‘theworking class’of the advanced capitalist societiesas the historic agency.”1 Mills’letter marked thecompletion ofhis shift from Old Leftto New Leftthinking. At theheart ofthis shift wasthe question of agency, of what group the left identied as its vehicle for social transformation. Old Leftintellectuals believed that allying with labor wasthe best strategy for rectifying theU.S.’ s persistentinjustices and inequalities. By 1950, however,many left intellectuals sawlabor ashopelessly embed- dedin thedominant political order andbegan toseek other movementswith the potential toenact their social critique. In 1960, asMills altogether dismissedthe political potential oforganized labor, heplaced his hopeson the New Left— a“ young intelligentsia”consisting of the emerging studentmovement and Third World revolu- tionaries. Mostof the New Leftists whom Mills addressedin his “Letter”were probably unawarethat Mills himself had oncebeen a rm believer in thelabor metaphysic. The image ofMills that theNew Left constructed remains dominanttoday: a motorcyle-rid- ing maverick whodissented from thecomplacent 1950s in his classicworks White Collar, ThePower Elite , and TheSociological Imagination .This captivating caricature of Mills has long overshadowedthe signi cance of his involvement with thelabor move- mentin the1940s. For anumberof years, culminating in his publication of The New Men of Power in 1948, Mills washeavily engaged with labor’s causeand deeply drawn tolabor’ s promise.His later disillusionmentwith labor profoundlyshaped the nature of theradical social critique for which hebecame famous. As with many other leftistsof his era, Mills’connection with labor played an important role in his intellectual development. Scholars have only recentlybegun to explore labor’s inuence on intellectuals in the postwaryears. For example, Daniel Horowitzhas demonstratedthat Betty Friedan’s involvement with unionsas a labor journalist in the1940s andearly 1950s helpedshape her commitment tofeminism. The lack ofa vibrant labor-centeredsocial movementin thepostwar years limited thework that made Friedan famous:without an analysis of theissues facing working-classwomen, TheFeminine Mystique (1963) had diminished relevance for thosewho were not white, suburban, middle-class housewives. 2 However, *Theauthor would liketo expresshis gratitudeto HowardBrick, David Hollinger,Andy Jewett,and JennieSutton fortheir comments on earlierdrafts of this article.Mr Gearywould especiallylike to thank NelsonLichtenstein for the invaluable assistanceand encouragementhe has given. 1“Letterto the NewLeft,” in IrvingLouis Horowitz, ed., Power,Politics, andPeople (New York: Ballantine Books, 1963),256. Originally published in New Left Review (Sept./Oct., 1960). 2Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedanand the Making of TheFeminine Mystique: The American Left,the Cold War,and Modern Feminism (Amherst, MA: Universityof Massachusetts Press, 1998). ISSN0023-656X print/ ISSN1469-9702 online/ 01/040327–19 Ó 2001Taylor & Francis Ltd onbehalfof The Tamiment Institute DOI: 10.1080/00236560120085110 328 D. Geary FIG.C.Wright Mills. thereremains little mentionof labor in themassive scholarship onthe New York intellectuals.Yet, many NewYork intellectuals wereintensely interested in theleftist potential ofthe labor movementin the1930s and1940s. The lack ofa vibrant labor movementin thepostwar period is aneglectedcause of their famousderadicalization. 3 While intellectual historians are only nowdiscovering theimportance ofthe labor movementfor shaping postwarsocial thought,labor historians have long recognized that thesecond half ofthe1940s wasa watershedfor labor andU.S. politics. The years following World War IIsawa reinvigoration ofthe labor movementfrom its wartime dormancy.Never beforeand never since has agreater percentageof U.S. workers 3EvenAlan Wald’s, The New YorkIntellectuals (Chapel Hill, NC: Universityof North Carolina Press, 1987),the most insightful and detailedaccount of the political trajectoryof the NewYork intellectuals, doesnot fully explorethe signicant impact that labor’s postwar shift had on this groupof thinkers. C.WrightMills and theLabor Movement 329 belongedto unions. Throughout thewar, labor’ s rank and le had demonstratedits militancy in aseriesof wildcat strikes.When the CIO putan endto its no-strikepledge after thewar’ s conclusion,many labor leaderswere quick toexploit that militancy. Indeed,the postwar strike waveof 1945– 1946 constitutedthe most massive work stoppage in U.S.history. In theimmediate postwarperiod, many labor leadersand their labor-liberal support- erswere drawn to social-democratic ideas.Though wartime government agencieslike theWar Labor Board (WLB)and the Of ce of Price Administration (OPA) had renderedmany disappointing decisionsfor labor, their existencenevertheless raised expectationsfor signicant labor inuence at thehighest national level through tripar- tite structuresfor economicplanning. Prominent gureswithin labor’s orbit pondered theprospect of a labor party, speculating that theCIO’ s Political ActionCommittee wouldeither transform theDemocratic Party intoa labor party or provide thenucleus for athird party. The CIO’s Operation Dixie organizing campaign in theSouth sought togain powerin aregion ofthecountry that had stymied labor’s national agenda and it heldout the promise ofcivil rights gains for black workers.Given the broad social-democratic agenda ofambitious unionleaders and the signs of militancy in the rank and le,labor’ s progressive supportershad goodreason to hopethat unionswould play apivotal role in shaping thepostwar political order. 4 The ability oflabor toattract intellectuals toits causewas an indication ofits postwar potential asa social movement.While unionshave always employed theservices of a numberof staff intellectuals, other intellectuals have beendrawn to labor only whenit has promised awiderpolitical transformation that couldutilize andadvance their social critique. It wasthis vision ofa “unionof thepower and the intellect” that attracted left intellectuals like Mills tolabor. In theimmediate postwaryears, Mills sharedhis enthusiasmfor thelabor movementwith anumberof different groups that hewas in contactwith: New York intellectuals suchas Irving Howeand Daniel Bell; the Inter-UnionInstitute for Labor andDemocracy, aconsortiumof labor ofcials and intellectuals headedby thelong-time labor journalist J.B.S.Hardman;the Trotskyists in Max Schachtman’s Workers’Party; andintellectually sophisticatedunion of cials suchas Nat Weinberg ofthe United Automobile Workers (UAW).While eachof these groups had adifferentpolitical agenda,they all believed in labor’s promise asa vanguard social movement. Butif Mills’case demonstrates the enthusiasm with which many left intellectuals viewedlabor in theimmediate postwaryears, it also reveals howtheir later disillusion- mentwith labor signicantly shapedtheir depictionof the postwar U.S. Ultimately, labor’s bid for amore progressive social order in thepostwar period faltered on anti-communistpolitics, internal divisiveness,the entrenchment of thelabor leadership, 4Anumber ofexcellent studies have beenwritten about this period. Themost signicant ones include: NelsonLichtenstein, “ From Corporatism to CollectiveBargaining,” in SteveFraser and GaryGerstle, eds., The Rise andFall ofthe New Deal Order (Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1989), 122– 152; IraKatznelson, “ Was the GreatSociety a LostOpportunity?,” ibid.,185–211; Robert Zieger, The CIO: 1935–1955 (Chapel Hill, NC: Universityof North Carolina Press,1995), 212– 293; Kevin Boyle, The UAW andthe Heydayof American Liberalism (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 1995), 1– 82; David Brody, Workersin Industrial America (NewYork: OxfordUniversity Press, 1980), 173– 255; George Lipsitz, A Rainbow at Midnight (Urbana, IL:University of Illinois Press,1994); Howell John Harris, The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies ofAmerican Business in the 1940s (Madison, WI: Universityof Wisconsin Press,1982); Barbara Grifth, The Crisisof American Labor:Operation Dixie andthe Defeat ofthe CIO (Philadelphia, PA: Temple UniversityPress, 1988). 330 D. Geary anda determinedbusiness counter-attack. Despite the promise that it raised for a dominantrole for labor in U.S.society, labor becamea pluralistic interestgroup, forced tooperate within themainstream ofCold War politics, insteadof the vanguard that left intellectuals had hopedfor. Labor’s postwartransformation from social movementto interest group brought about theloss of Mills’ vision ofan alliance betweenintellectuals andlabor. In addition toMills, intellectuals suchas Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald,Irving Howe,and Harvey Swadosbecame disillusioned with thelabor movementin the1940s. Labor’s failure tomove in amore radical directionin thepostwar period had aprofoundeffect onleft-wing intellectuals whohad consideredlabor theonly forceable tocounteract the powerof corporations andthe state. With noidenti able agent for social transform- ation,intellectual radicals ofthe 1950s pessimistically viewedthe U.S. as a consensus societythat had effectively suppressedopposition, and they tenuouslyheld on to the intellectual’s responsibility todissent from that societyas the left’ s last hope. NewYork Intellectualsand the Idea ofa Labor Party In the1950s, Mills
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