William Z. Foster
Encyclopedia
William Foster was a radical
American
labor organizer and Marxist politician, whose career included a lengthy stint as General Secretary
of the Communist Party USA
. He passed through the Socialist Party of America
and the Industrial Workers of the World
, as well as leading the drive to organize the packinghouse industry during World War I
and the steel strike of 1919
.
draft registration of September 11, 1918, he listed himself as "William Edward Foster" when he was living in Chicago, Illinois.
on February 25, 1881. His family moved to Philadelphia, where he left school at the age of ten to apprentice himself to a die sinker. Foster left that position three years later to work in a white lead
factory. Over the next ten years he worked in fertilizer
plants in Reading, Pennsylvania
and Jacksonville, Florida
, as a railroad construction worker and sawmill employee in Florida
, as a streetcar motorman in New York City
, as a lumber camp and longshoreman in Portland, Oregon
and as a sailor. Foster even homesteaded for a year in Oregon
in 1905, although he also worked a series of odd jobs as a miner, sheepherder, sawmill worker and railroad employee during that year before abandoning the farm.
in 1901 and was a member in the party's Washington state affiliate
until he left the party in the midst of a faction fight. Foster then joined the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) in 1909, when he took part in one of the IWW's free speech fights
in Spokane, Washington
.
Foster became a prominent figure within the union, serving as its representative at an international labor conference in Budapest
in 1911 and a contributor to its papers. Foster's politics, however, were moving him away from the IWW. He became a committed syndicalist
after touring Europe in 1910 and 1911, and criticized the IWW for not working within established unions or within the workshop in any event. He urged American leftists to enter the AFL unions, rather than establish rival unions, as the IWW had tried to do. He also denounced electoral politics as a dead end that smothered the revolutionary ardor of these groups by channeling their energies into pursuit of office, with all the compromises that entails. Foster lost the battle, however, and soon thereafter left the IWW and formed his own organization, the Syndicalist League of North America
(SLNA).
The SLNA's policies — direct action at the shop floor level leading to workers' governance of society, but without the dead weight of bureaucratic structures — bore a strong resemblance to the anarchist
thinking of the day. That is not coincidental, since Foster was not only lecturing at anarchist groups and settlements, but became a close working associate with Jay Fox, an anarchist with roots in the Chicago
labor movement, and married Ester Abramowitz, who had belonged to an anarchist collective in Washington. Among the other members of the SLNA were Tom Mooney
, who became a labor martyr while in prison for allegedly throwing a bomb at a Preparedness Day parade in 1916, Earl Browder
, an accountant and union activist in Kansas City
and Foster's rival for the Presidency of the Communist Party twenty years later, and James P. Cannon
, a member of the IWW
and one of Foster's allies in the internal warfare within the CPUSA until he was expelled for Trotskyism
. The SLNA, however, was never an effective force and folded in 1914.
Foster took his own advice and became a union business agent for a local of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America in Chicago. He continued his syndicalist campaign, this time through the International Trade Union Educational League
, while obtaining a position as a general organizer for the AFL in 1915. His syndicalism led him to drop any criticism of the more conservative union leaders; in his eyes, organizing workers was a step toward dismantling capitalism. The ITUEL did not so much seek to take power in those organizations in which its members were active, as to steer them in a more progressive direction.
Foster also tempered his politics at this time: he not only did not publicly oppose the United States' entry into the war, as Eugene V. Debs
, Victor Berger and figures associated with the IWW had done, but helped sell war bonds in 1918. Foster also remained quiet when the government arrested hundreds of IWW activists, convicting them en masse in 1918.
Foster did not, on the other hand, become wholly apolitical. The Chicago Federation of Labor
, headed by John Fitzpatrick
, was a nest for a number of labor causes: the campaign to free Tom Mooney, plans to launch a labor party, and, most importantly, programs to organize the thousands of unskilled workers in the City's packinghouses, steel mills and other mass production industries.
: the Knights of Labor
had led organizing drives among these workers in the 1870s and 1880s, while the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen
had made gains among the many diverse ethnic groups working in the industry in the first decade of the century. In both cases the industry, now concentrated in the hands of a few large and powerful corporations, drove the unions out.
The war, however, changed things. The demand for meat increased tremendously during the war, while the draft and the difficulty of importing more workers from Europe led to labor shortages that reduced the number of persons willing to scab in the event of a strike. In addition, the federal government had an interest in maintaining production unimpeded and avoiding the disruption that a strike of 50,000 packinghouse workers would entail. This was an especially propitious time to organize these workers on an industrial
basis; as Foster said, "The gods were indeed fighting on the side of labor".
Before the CFL could organize these workers, however, it had to work out the competing claims of all of the various unions that claimed the right to represent segments of the industry. Rather than create a wholly new organization, which would have immediately found itself fighting other unions in the CFL over jurisdiction, Foster hit on the idea of creating a Stockyards Labor Council that, like the railroad federations that had recently come into being, would fuse all of the interested unions into a single body with the ability to organize the industry as a whole. Foster obtained the endorsement of his union, the Railway Carmen, for this plan then took the proposal to Local 87 of the Meat Cutters, who supported it enthusiastically and obtained the approval of the CFL on July 15, 1917. The SLC was formed a week later, with representatives from all of the crafts — machinists
, electricians
, carpenters
, coopers, office workers, steamfitters, engineers, railway carmen, and firemen. While this body was only a coalition created for the purpose of organizing workers, and would not have had the authority to bargain for them as a single group, it was an important step toward industrial unionism. Foster was the secretary for the SLC.
Another factor posed a serious obstacle to organizing packinghouse workers: many of the unions in the SLC excluded African-Americans from membership, either overtly or in practice. Thousands of recent African-American migrants from the South
had gone to work in the packinghouses and many looked upon their employers as more interested in their welfare than the unions that had either excluded them or shown no interest in organizing them. The SLC, for its part, offered membership in federal unions affiliated directly with the AFL, only to have this offer thrown back at it as "Jim Crow unionism". The same pattern of division prevailed among immigrant workers, who organized along national or linguistic lines.
While privately convinced that launching a strike under these conditions would be a mistake, and aware that the AFL leadership felt even more strongly on this subject, Foster nonetheless continued to organize as if a strike was in the offing. The rank and file workers voted overwhelmingly in November, 1917 and more moderate leaders, such as Fitzpatrick and the leader of Local 87, used this strike threat to great advantage in negotiating with the federal government and the employers.
The Wilson
administration wanted to bring about a peaceful resolution of this dispute and put great pressure on the employers to agree to arbitration of the issues in dispute — wages, hours of work, and union recognition — without a strike, even threatening to seize the plants as a wartime measure if necessary. While the unions had their own reservations about arbitration, they also agreed to it rather than find themselves forced to strike. The arbitrator's initial award, ordering the eight hour day, overtime pay and significant wage increases, was a major victory for the workers. The Amalgamated Meat Cutters' membership doubled in the months that followed.
Those gains were short-lived, however. The arbitration award had not required the employers to recognize the unions, leading some workers to believe that the government, not the SLC, was responsible for these improvements in their wages and hours. In addition, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters attempted to claim all of the members as its own, breaking off relations with the SLC. Race riots in Chicago in 1919 dissolved what little trust black packinghouse workers had in white-led unions. Once the arbitration award expired in 1919 employers fired union activists; by 1922, after a failed strike, the SLC was defunct.
, that would organize all of basic steel simultaneously. Fitzpatrick agreed to put his name on the project and sent Foster as the CFL's delegate to the AFL's 1918 convention to present the plan.
The AFL's reception was tepid: it endorsed a special conference to create a committee to organize steel workers, but each international union contributed only one hundred dollars apiece — leaving the committee with somewhat less than the $250,000 Foster estimated it needed. Many unions did, on the other hand contribute organizers, whom Foster used as his base.
Without the funds to launch a truly national campaign, Foster decided to start close to home, sending organizers into Gary, Indiana
, and South Chicago, where they received a tumultuous outpouring of support, in August 1918. The Chicago area was not, however, the heart of the steel industry; the Monongahela Valley was.
By the time that Foster sent organizers into that area several months later, however, the influenza
epidemic had led the authorities to bar all public meetings; the announcement of the armistice soon led to widespread layoffs in the mills. The union no longer could rely on a tight labor market or a federal government interested in labor peace. The union faced other problems: the rivalries spurred by the constituent unions' self-interest and the omnipresent power of the industry, which had turned the Valley into a large version of a company town.
Even so, the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers managed to sign up more than 100,000 steel workers by early 1919. The strike vote, taken in August 1919, was almost unanimous in favor of a strike. When the steel companies refused to meet with union officials, 250,000 steelworkers went out on strike on September 22.
The National Committee's organizing efforts had produced mixed results: while it enrolled around 350,000 steelworkers during the course of the strike, its greatest strength was among immigrant workers. Higher skilled native born workers gave the strike only lukewarm support, while black steelworkers gave it almost none at all in the Pittsburgh
area and less than enthusiastic support elsewhere.
The authorities attacked with their customary violence: within ten days fourteen people had been killed, all of them strikers or strike sympathizers. Vigilantes expelled Foster from Johnstown, Pennsylvania
, at gunpoint. Foster himself became the focus of a Congressional inquiry that was originally initiated to study the causes of the strike. In the meantime authorities barred strikers from meeting.
Foster spent most of his time raising money and organizing material assistance for strikers and their families. In the meantime General Leonard Wood imposed martial law in Gary while authorities in Pennsylvania broke up strike meetings wherever they could be found. By November, as funds were running low, the strike was losing steam. Foster and the other members of the committee voted to end it in January, 1920. Foster resigned from the committee in order to allow it to continue its work "with a clean slate".
, which received financial support from the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
, the left-led union that had contributed $100,000 for relief for steel strikers.
Foster had contacts with a number of members of the newly formed Communist Party, but had not joined it after its split from the Socialist Party of America
in 1919. The party had, in fact, denounced him personally during the strike as an opportunist and class collaborator, calling him "E.Z. Foster" for the accommodations he was willing to make with the AFL leadership. The CP at this time was still convinced that the revolution was impending; its suggested slogan during the steel strike was "Make the strike general and seize state power!"
Foster was brought closer within the party's orbit, however, after Earl Browder invited him to attend a conference of the Profintern
, the Red International of Labor Unions, in Moscow in 1921. There he was appointed the Profintern's agent in the United States; the TUEL was later made an affiliate of the Profintern in 1923. Foster joined the CPUSA on his return to the United States.
or Profintern directives or taking direction from the CPUSA. When party leaders complained, the Profintern sided with Foster.
The TUEL took pains to avoid accusations of dual unionism; when the Profintern requested that TUEL start building itself as a mass membership organization Foster demurred, maintaining TUEL as a network of activists with no formal membership. TUEL was strongest in Chicago, where Foster and Jack Johnstone had close relations with Fitzpatrick and many other unionists with a background in labor radicalism. TUEL campaigned for amalgamation of unions into larger, stronger ones—an echo of the IWW's advocacy of "one big union"—and creation of a Labor Party—which was an anathema to those who remained in the IWW.
Its first test was the Railway Shopmen's strike of 1922
, which was crushed by the employers with the help of an injunction that prohibited strikers from trying to dissuade strikebreakers from taking their jobs by any means, including word of mouth or newspaper interviews. TUEL leafleted at picket lines and continued to press for amalgamation of the separate craft unions in the industry.
TUEL also intervened in the internal politics of the United Mine Workers of America, where Alexander Howat was leading a revolt of miners from Kansas
, Illinois
, British Columbia
and Nova Scotia
against the regime of John L. Lewis
. Lewis responded by ejecting all those connected with the insurgency from the union in 1923.
.
Fitzpatrick's project presented Foster with a paradox: he did not think that electoral politics had much potential for advancing the rights of workers, much less revolutionary goals, and he had even less regard for progressive reformists such as Robert La Follette, Sr.. On the other hand, he was attacked from the left within the party for his relations with Fitzpatrick and the CFL, which were denounced as too conservative. Even so, John Pepper
, the Comintern
's representative in the U.S., and those, such as Charles Ruthenberg
, who had criticized Foster for his closeness to Fitzpatrick now directed Foster to make the CPUSA an important player in this new party. At the same time the Party's newspaper, then known as The Worker, published a flattering article about Foster in 1923 that identified him as a Communist, something he had to that point avoided admitting.
Fitzpatrick began to distance himself from Foster when his membership in the Communist Party became public knowledge. Foster and the CP, on the other hand, had enough influence within the CFL to be able to dominate the founding convention with representatives of various organizations, some of them existing only on paper. When the CP appeared to have taken over this new party, Fitzpatrick walked out, leaving the CP with a stillborn organization. From that point forward Fitzpatrick campaigned against TUEL and the AFL began expelling communists from its ranks with a vengeance. The Party likewise split the Minnesota-Farmer Labor Party and repudiated any common work with La Follette. After a disastrous showing in the 1924 elections, the Party dismantled the Federated Farmer-Labor Party it had created.
The split with Fitzpatrick led to the isolation within the labor movement. While Foster and the CP had enjoyed a close relation with Sidney Hillman
and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
, it began organizing an opposition caucus within the ACWA. Hillman declared the TUEL formation to be a dual union and suspended its leaders, including Benjamin Gitlow
.
- Jay Lovestone
faction, which was largely made up of foreign-born workers and represented the vast majority of the party membership. Forming an alliance with a smaller faction led by James P. Cannon
, Foster was able to control the majority of the party's leadership in 1923 and again in 1925.
The internecine struggles between the two camps was, however, disturbing to the Comintern, which sent a representative to oversee the Party's 1925 convention. A telegram from the Comintern directed the Party, after a vote which Foster had won decisively over his opponent, Benjamin Gitlow
, to install Ruthenberg as general secretary of the Party. Foster challenged the telegram, stormed out of the meeting, and attempted to appeal to the Comintern itself, over the objections of his opponents and even his allies in the Cannon faction, who would not accept the possibility that the Comintern could be wrong.
Foster did not succeed in reversing the Comintern's overturning of his election, but did obtain some concessions: his supporters were given control of the Trade Union Committee within the Party and the Comintern recognized trade union work as the most important sphere of activity for the Party. While Foster thought that he had obtained support for effective independence for TUEL, however, he was mistaken.
The Party's trade union work in this era, however, went from one disaster to the next. Rivalries within the CPUSA led to the loss of the 1926 New York dressmakers' strike, as neither the Foster or Ruthenberg faction wanted to appear to sell out by accepting a settlement that the Party's members within the strike leadership had recommended. As a result the Party, which had once held leadership positions within every major New York City local of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
other than the cutters local led by David Dubinsky
, was wholly routed.
The Foster and Ruthenberg factions likewise blamed each other for the defeat of the 1926 strike of textile workers
in Passaic, New Jersey
, in which the Ruthenberg leadership supported an overt Party role in the strike and what amounted to creation of a dual union. When it appeared that the leadership's communist leanings were an obstacle to negotiations, TUEL handed the strike over to the United Textile Workers, which was unable to make any more progress than the CP leadership had.
Foster also played a major role in the revolt against John L. Lewis
' leadership in the United Mine Workers of America. John Brophy
, a leader of the UMWA in Western Pennsylvania, ran against Lewis under the banner of "Save the Union". Brophy might have won if the ballots had been counted honestly, but they were not. Even so, the dissidents retained substantial prestige within the union and were able to establish themselves as a union administration in exile during the 1927 coal strike, running a separate program of strike relief that allowed the strike to continue when the Lewis Administration proved unable to do so.
These efforts were leading in the direction of formation of a rival union, something that Foster rejected but which appeared to be the only possibility left to the Party. As signals from the Comintern indicated the impending change of policy in the Third Period
, when the American party was directed to abandon its work within the AFL in order to form separate revolutionary unions, even former supporters of Foster, such as Earl Browder
, began criticizing Foster for his reluctance to form a dual union of miners. As it turned out, Foster's halting efforts to establish a separate power center within the UMWA had this effect in any case, as Howat, Brophy and his allies dropped out of the "Save the Union" movement as the CP's leadership in it became apparent. The Party founded its own National Miners Union in 1928.
and his opponents.
A firm supporter of Joseph Stalin
, Foster split with James P. Cannon
in 1928 and supported his former ally's expulsion for Trotskyism
. Foster was made General Secretary
of the party in 1929 with the support of the Comintern
, deposing Jay Lovestone
, who was sympathetic to Bukharin and whose policies of American exceptionalism
were anathema to Stalin's new Third Period
line.
That Third Period line also called for creation of new, revolutionary unions outside the AFL. While Foster had always denounced dual unionism, he dutifully complied with the Comintern's directive, renaming the Trade Union Education League as the Trade Union Unity League. Foster and the Party also followed the line by denouncing social democrats as "social fascists" and attacking former allies in the African-American communities as bourgeois collaborators.
In 1928 Foster and Marcel Scherer set up FAECT, the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians, a secret apparatus front organization
which had as its aim the infiltration of Communists into varies public and private technical organizations.
on the Communist ticket. Foster suffered a heart attack
in 1932 and was forced to step down as leader of the party in favor of Earl Browder
. Sent to the Soviet Union for treatment, Foster's condition only grew worse.
Foster returned in 1935, but was estranged from Browder and those who had risen to power in his absence. While the Party's trade union policies in the Popular Front
era was close to what Foster had advocated in the 1920s, the Party's strength was not in the areas in which it had been active during the TUEL era — garment, railroads, and mining — but in the mass production industries with little history of union organization — automobile and electrical manufacturing, meatpacking, longshore on the west coast, maritime on the east coast, hard rock mining and lumber in the west and public transit in New York City
. In the meantime the Party began building a small-scale personality cult around Browder and became a supporter of the New Deal
and, to a lesser extent, the Roosevelt administration both of which Foster hated. Foster became the "loyal opposition" to Browder within the CPUSA while remaining an unwavering supporter of Stalin.
Browder was removed in 1945 due to having attempted to dissolve the CPUSA as a party. Foster had, in fact, been one of the most vocal opponents in 1944 of Browder's decisions to rename the CPUSA as the Communist Political Association and to propose the continuation of the no-strike pledge after the end of World War II
. The entire leadership of the Party came to Browder's defense then; the Comintern directed Foster to withdraw his criticisms.
Foster's letter to the National Committee subsequently formed the basis for the Duclos letter
published as the Cold War
began in 1945 that signaled the Soviet Union's change in line. The Party members who had denounced Foster and questioned his grasp of Marxism and his mental faculties a year earlier now condemned Browder as a class traitor
. The CPA reestablished itself as the Communist Party USA and expelled Browder. While Foster nominally shared power with Eugene Dennis
and John Williamson
, he had the most prestige of the three.
During Foster's leadership the Party took a harder line, both internationally and internally, shedding much of the "Americanist" rhetoric of Browder's dozen years in leadership. Foster published a 'new history' of America, which was highly praised in Moscow and was translated into many languages. Of it Browder wrote, "This extraordinary book interpreted the history of America from its discovery to the present, as an orgy of 'bloody banditry' and imperialism, enriching itself by 'drinking the rich red blood' of other peoples.
The Party campaigned vigorously for Henry A. Wallace
's candidacy for President in 1948 — which failed to produce a viable Progressive Party
. The failure of the campaign and the onset of the Cold War
contributed to a disastrous situation for the unions and union leaders associated with the Party within the CIO, which expelled most of them by 1950.
In 1948 Foster was among the party leaders indicted for subversive activity under the Smith Act
, but, because of his precarious health, he was not brought to trial. The Party began to implode as a result of these prosecutions, as many Party leaders chose to go underground after the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of the first tier of CPUSA leaders in United States v. Dennis], . Foster also presided over a number of internal purge
s.
Foster supported Joseph Stalin
and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
. He rallied the party's faithful during the Soviet Union's military intervention in Hungary
and Nikita Khrushchev
's denunciation of Stalin at the 1956 Twentieth Party Congress. Foster retired in 1957 and assumed the title of Chairman emeritus of the party to make way for the younger Gus Hall
. Like Foster, Gus Hall was also a loyal ally of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
He was in Moscow for his 80th birthday on February 25, 1961.
and Khrushchev headed the honor guards. His ashes were interred with John Reed and Bill Haywood
.
Political radicalism
The term political radicalism denotes political principles focused on altering social structures through revolutionary means and changing value systems in fundamental ways...
American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
labor organizer and Marxist politician, whose career included a lengthy stint as General Secretary
General Secretary
The office of general secretary is staffed by the chief officer of:*The General Secretariat for Macedonia and Thrace, a government agency for the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace...
of the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
. He passed through the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
and the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
, as well as leading the drive to organize the packinghouse industry during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and the steel strike of 1919
Steel strike of 1919
The Steel Strike of 1919 was an attempt by the weakened Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers to organize the United States steel industry in the wake of World War I. The strike began on September 22, 1919, and collapsed on January 8, 1920.The AA had formed in 1876. It was a...
.
Name
Many sources list him as "William Zebulon Foster" and he published under the name William Z. Foster. In the World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
draft registration of September 11, 1918, he listed himself as "William Edward Foster" when he was living in Chicago, Illinois.
Early years
William Foster was born in Taunton, MassachusettsTaunton, Massachusetts
Taunton is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the seat of Bristol County and the hub of the Greater Taunton Area. The city is located south of Boston, east of Providence, north of Fall River and west of Plymouth. The City of Taunton is situated on the Taunton River...
on February 25, 1881. His family moved to Philadelphia, where he left school at the age of ten to apprentice himself to a die sinker. Foster left that position three years later to work in a white lead
White lead
White lead is the chemical compound 2·Pb2. It was formerly used as an ingredient for lead paint and a cosmetic called Venetian Ceruse, because its opaque quality made it a good pigment. However, it tended to cause lead poisoning, and its use has been banned in most countries.White lead has been...
factory. Over the next ten years he worked in fertilizer
Fertilizer
Fertilizer is any organic or inorganic material of natural or synthetic origin that is added to a soil to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. A recent assessment found that about 40 to 60% of crop yields are attributable to commercial fertilizer use...
plants in Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,...
and Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
, as a railroad construction worker and sawmill employee in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, as a streetcar motorman in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, as a lumber camp and longshoreman in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
and as a sailor. Foster even homesteaded for a year in Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
in 1905, although he also worked a series of odd jobs as a miner, sheepherder, sawmill worker and railroad employee during that year before abandoning the farm.
Entry into politics and trade union work
Foster joined the Socialist Party of AmericaSocialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
in 1901 and was a member in the party's Washington state affiliate
Socialist Party of Washington
The Socialist Party of Washington was the Washington state section of the Socialist Party of America , an organization originally established as a federation of semi-autonomous state organizations...
until he left the party in the midst of a faction fight. Foster then joined the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
(IWW) in 1909, when he took part in one of the IWW's free speech fights
Free speech fights
Free speech fights are conflicts over the right to speak freely, particularly involving the Industrial Workers of the World efforts in the early twentieth century to organize workers and publicly speak about labor issues...
in Spokane, Washington
Spokane, Washington
Spokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city of Spokane County of which it is also the county seat, and the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...
.
Foster became a prominent figure within the union, serving as its representative at an international labor conference in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
in 1911 and a contributor to its papers. Foster's politics, however, were moving him away from the IWW. He became a committed syndicalist
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
after touring Europe in 1910 and 1911, and criticized the IWW for not working within established unions or within the workshop in any event. He urged American leftists to enter the AFL unions, rather than establish rival unions, as the IWW had tried to do. He also denounced electoral politics as a dead end that smothered the revolutionary ardor of these groups by channeling their energies into pursuit of office, with all the compromises that entails. Foster lost the battle, however, and soon thereafter left the IWW and formed his own organization, the Syndicalist League of North America
Syndicalist League of North America
The Syndicalist League of North America was an organizations led by William Z. Foster that aimed to "bore from within" the American Federation of Labor to win that trade union center over to the ideals of revolutionary syndicalism.- Background :...
(SLNA).
The SLNA's policies — direct action at the shop floor level leading to workers' governance of society, but without the dead weight of bureaucratic structures — bore a strong resemblance to the anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
thinking of the day. That is not coincidental, since Foster was not only lecturing at anarchist groups and settlements, but became a close working associate with Jay Fox, an anarchist with roots in the Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
labor movement, and married Ester Abramowitz, who had belonged to an anarchist collective in Washington. Among the other members of the SLNA were Tom Mooney
Thomas Mooney
Thomas Joseph "Tom" Mooney was an American political activist and labor leader, who was convicted with Warren K. Billings of the San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing of 1916...
, who became a labor martyr while in prison for allegedly throwing a bomb at a Preparedness Day parade in 1916, Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
, an accountant and union activist in Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
and Foster's rival for the Presidency of the Communist Party twenty years later, and James P. Cannon
James P. Cannon
James Patrick "Jim" Cannon was an American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.Born on February 11, 1890 in Rosedale, Kansas, he joined the Socialist Party of America in 1908 and the Industrial Workers of the World in 1911...
, a member of the IWW
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
and one of Foster's allies in the internal warfare within the CPUSA until he was expelled for Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
. The SLNA, however, was never an effective force and folded in 1914.
Foster took his own advice and became a union business agent for a local of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America in Chicago. He continued his syndicalist campaign, this time through the International Trade Union Educational League
International Trade Union Educational League
The International Trade Union Educational League was a short lived organization led by William Z. Foster from 1915 to around 1917. It carried over some of the ideas of his former Syndicalist League of North America about boring from within existing trade unions, but had less radical rhetoric.A call...
, while obtaining a position as a general organizer for the AFL in 1915. His syndicalism led him to drop any criticism of the more conservative union leaders; in his eyes, organizing workers was a step toward dismantling capitalism. The ITUEL did not so much seek to take power in those organizations in which its members were active, as to steer them in a more progressive direction.
Foster also tempered his politics at this time: he not only did not publicly oppose the United States' entry into the war, as Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...
, Victor Berger and figures associated with the IWW had done, but helped sell war bonds in 1918. Foster also remained quiet when the government arrested hundreds of IWW activists, convicting them en masse in 1918.
Foster did not, on the other hand, become wholly apolitical. The Chicago Federation of Labor
Chicago Federation of Labor
The Chicago Federation of Labor is an umbrella organization for unions in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It is a subordinate body of the AFL-CIO, and as of 2011 has about 320 affiliated member unions representing half a million union members in Cook County....
, headed by John Fitzpatrick
John Fitzpatrick (unionist)
John Fitzpatrick was an Irish-born American trade union leader. He is best remembered as the longtime head of the powerful Chicago Federation of Labor from 1906 until his death in 1946.-Early years:...
, was a nest for a number of labor causes: the campaign to free Tom Mooney, plans to launch a labor party, and, most importantly, programs to organize the thousands of unskilled workers in the City's packinghouses, steel mills and other mass production industries.
Organizing packinghouse workers
Unions had tried to organize the packinghouses for decades before World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
: the Knights of Labor
Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence Powderly...
had led organizing drives among these workers in the 1870s and 1880s, while the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen
Amalgamated Meat Cutters
The Amalgamated Meat Cutters , officially the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, was a labor union that represented retail butchers and packinghouse workers.-History:...
had made gains among the many diverse ethnic groups working in the industry in the first decade of the century. In both cases the industry, now concentrated in the hands of a few large and powerful corporations, drove the unions out.
The war, however, changed things. The demand for meat increased tremendously during the war, while the draft and the difficulty of importing more workers from Europe led to labor shortages that reduced the number of persons willing to scab in the event of a strike. In addition, the federal government had an interest in maintaining production unimpeded and avoiding the disruption that a strike of 50,000 packinghouse workers would entail. This was an especially propitious time to organize these workers on an industrial
Industrial unionism
Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
basis; as Foster said, "The gods were indeed fighting on the side of labor".
Before the CFL could organize these workers, however, it had to work out the competing claims of all of the various unions that claimed the right to represent segments of the industry. Rather than create a wholly new organization, which would have immediately found itself fighting other unions in the CFL over jurisdiction, Foster hit on the idea of creating a Stockyards Labor Council that, like the railroad federations that had recently come into being, would fuse all of the interested unions into a single body with the ability to organize the industry as a whole. Foster obtained the endorsement of his union, the Railway Carmen, for this plan then took the proposal to Local 87 of the Meat Cutters, who supported it enthusiastically and obtained the approval of the CFL on July 15, 1917. The SLC was formed a week later, with representatives from all of the crafts — machinists
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is an AFL-CIO/CLC trade union representing approx. 646,933 workers as of 2006 in more than 200 industries.-Formation and early history:...
, electricians
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is a labor union which represents workers in the electrical industry in the United States, Canada, Panama and several Caribbean island nations; particularly electricians, or Inside Wiremen, in the construction industry and linemen and other...
, carpenters
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America
The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America is one of the largest building trades union in the United States. One of the unions that formed the American Federation of Labor in 1886, it left the AFL-CIO in 2001.-Early years:...
, coopers, office workers, steamfitters, engineers, railway carmen, and firemen. While this body was only a coalition created for the purpose of organizing workers, and would not have had the authority to bargain for them as a single group, it was an important step toward industrial unionism. Foster was the secretary for the SLC.
Another factor posed a serious obstacle to organizing packinghouse workers: many of the unions in the SLC excluded African-Americans from membership, either overtly or in practice. Thousands of recent African-American migrants from the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
had gone to work in the packinghouses and many looked upon their employers as more interested in their welfare than the unions that had either excluded them or shown no interest in organizing them. The SLC, for its part, offered membership in federal unions affiliated directly with the AFL, only to have this offer thrown back at it as "Jim Crow unionism". The same pattern of division prevailed among immigrant workers, who organized along national or linguistic lines.
While privately convinced that launching a strike under these conditions would be a mistake, and aware that the AFL leadership felt even more strongly on this subject, Foster nonetheless continued to organize as if a strike was in the offing. The rank and file workers voted overwhelmingly in November, 1917 and more moderate leaders, such as Fitzpatrick and the leader of Local 87, used this strike threat to great advantage in negotiating with the federal government and the employers.
The Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
administration wanted to bring about a peaceful resolution of this dispute and put great pressure on the employers to agree to arbitration of the issues in dispute — wages, hours of work, and union recognition — without a strike, even threatening to seize the plants as a wartime measure if necessary. While the unions had their own reservations about arbitration, they also agreed to it rather than find themselves forced to strike. The arbitrator's initial award, ordering the eight hour day, overtime pay and significant wage increases, was a major victory for the workers. The Amalgamated Meat Cutters' membership doubled in the months that followed.
Those gains were short-lived, however. The arbitration award had not required the employers to recognize the unions, leading some workers to believe that the government, not the SLC, was responsible for these improvements in their wages and hours. In addition, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters attempted to claim all of the members as its own, breaking off relations with the SLC. Race riots in Chicago in 1919 dissolved what little trust black packinghouse workers had in white-led unions. Once the arbitration award expired in 1919 employers fired union activists; by 1922, after a failed strike, the SLC was defunct.
The steel strike of 1919
Foster turned his attention, while the packinghouse campaign was still underway, to another project: organizing steel workers. The problems here were even more complex: in addition to the history of defeated strikes and the deep ethnic divisions within the workforce, the steel mills were also divided by differences in skills, with the higher paid native-born skilled workers often looking down on their immigrant coworkers, who were often unskilled or semiskilled. Foster proposed a similar strategy, but on a much larger scale: a national campaign, led by a union council of all the craft unions and the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Tin and Steel WorkersAmalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers was an American labor union formed in 1876 and which represented iron and steel workers. It partnered with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, CIO, in November, 1935...
, that would organize all of basic steel simultaneously. Fitzpatrick agreed to put his name on the project and sent Foster as the CFL's delegate to the AFL's 1918 convention to present the plan.
The AFL's reception was tepid: it endorsed a special conference to create a committee to organize steel workers, but each international union contributed only one hundred dollars apiece — leaving the committee with somewhat less than the $250,000 Foster estimated it needed. Many unions did, on the other hand contribute organizers, whom Foster used as his base.
Without the funds to launch a truly national campaign, Foster decided to start close to home, sending organizers into Gary, Indiana
Gary, Indiana
Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city is in the southeastern portion of the Chicago metropolitan area and is 25 miles from downtown Chicago. The population is 80,294 at the 2010 census, making it the seventh-largest city in the state. It borders Lake Michigan and is known...
, and South Chicago, where they received a tumultuous outpouring of support, in August 1918. The Chicago area was not, however, the heart of the steel industry; the Monongahela Valley was.
By the time that Foster sent organizers into that area several months later, however, the influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
epidemic had led the authorities to bar all public meetings; the announcement of the armistice soon led to widespread layoffs in the mills. The union no longer could rely on a tight labor market or a federal government interested in labor peace. The union faced other problems: the rivalries spurred by the constituent unions' self-interest and the omnipresent power of the industry, which had turned the Valley into a large version of a company town.
Even so, the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers managed to sign up more than 100,000 steel workers by early 1919. The strike vote, taken in August 1919, was almost unanimous in favor of a strike. When the steel companies refused to meet with union officials, 250,000 steelworkers went out on strike on September 22.
The National Committee's organizing efforts had produced mixed results: while it enrolled around 350,000 steelworkers during the course of the strike, its greatest strength was among immigrant workers. Higher skilled native born workers gave the strike only lukewarm support, while black steelworkers gave it almost none at all in the Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
area and less than enthusiastic support elsewhere.
The authorities attacked with their customary violence: within ten days fourteen people had been killed, all of them strikers or strike sympathizers. Vigilantes expelled Foster from Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Johnstown is a city in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States, west-southwest of Altoona, Pennsylvania and east of Pittsburgh. The population was 20,978 at the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Cambria County...
, at gunpoint. Foster himself became the focus of a Congressional inquiry that was originally initiated to study the causes of the strike. In the meantime authorities barred strikers from meeting.
Foster spent most of his time raising money and organizing material assistance for strikers and their families. In the meantime General Leonard Wood imposed martial law in Gary while authorities in Pennsylvania broke up strike meetings wherever they could be found. By November, as funds were running low, the strike was losing steam. Foster and the other members of the committee voted to end it in January, 1920. Foster resigned from the committee in order to allow it to continue its work "with a clean slate".
Joining the Communist Party
After his resignation from the National Committee following the defeat of the steel workers strike, Foster was at loose ends. He resigned his position as a Brotherhood of Railway Carmen organizer, but was blacklisted from other jobs on the railroad. He still maintained his friendship with John Fitzpatrick, wrote a book analyzing the steel strike and founded the Trade Union Educational LeagueTrade Union Educational League
The Trade Union Educational League was established by William Z. Foster in 1920 as a means of uniting radicals within various trade unions for a common plan of action. The group was subsidized by the Communist International via the Communist Party of America from 1922...
, which received financial support from the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America was a United States labor union known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by Sidney Hillman for its first thirty years, it helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations...
, the left-led union that had contributed $100,000 for relief for steel strikers.
Foster had contacts with a number of members of the newly formed Communist Party, but had not joined it after its split from the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
in 1919. The party had, in fact, denounced him personally during the strike as an opportunist and class collaborator, calling him "E.Z. Foster" for the accommodations he was willing to make with the AFL leadership. The CP at this time was still convinced that the revolution was impending; its suggested slogan during the steel strike was "Make the strike general and seize state power!"
Foster was brought closer within the party's orbit, however, after Earl Browder invited him to attend a conference of the Profintern
Profintern
The Red International of Labor Unions , commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Communist International with the aim of coordinating Communist activities within trade unions...
, the Red International of Labor Unions, in Moscow in 1921. There he was appointed the Profintern's agent in the United States; the TUEL was later made an affiliate of the Profintern in 1923. Foster joined the CPUSA on his return to the United States.
The Trade Union Educational League
The TUEL, like the ITUEL and SLNA before it, sought to encourage the development of left activists within the established unions and unite those already there around a platform of industrial unionism, and to support the militant struggle for workers' rights. In its early years Foster's TUEL pursued a course of its own, not attempting to line up its policies with CominternComintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
or Profintern directives or taking direction from the CPUSA. When party leaders complained, the Profintern sided with Foster.
The TUEL took pains to avoid accusations of dual unionism; when the Profintern requested that TUEL start building itself as a mass membership organization Foster demurred, maintaining TUEL as a network of activists with no formal membership. TUEL was strongest in Chicago, where Foster and Jack Johnstone had close relations with Fitzpatrick and many other unionists with a background in labor radicalism. TUEL campaigned for amalgamation of unions into larger, stronger ones—an echo of the IWW's advocacy of "one big union"—and creation of a Labor Party—which was an anathema to those who remained in the IWW.
Its first test was the Railway Shopmen's strike of 1922
Great Railroad Strike of 1922
The Great Railroad Strike of 1922 was a nationwide railroad shop workers strike in the United States. The action began on July 1 and was the largest railroad work stoppage since 1894.-History:...
, which was crushed by the employers with the help of an injunction that prohibited strikers from trying to dissuade strikebreakers from taking their jobs by any means, including word of mouth or newspaper interviews. TUEL leafleted at picket lines and continued to press for amalgamation of the separate craft unions in the industry.
TUEL also intervened in the internal politics of the United Mine Workers of America, where Alexander Howat was leading a revolt of miners from Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
and Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
against the regime of John L. Lewis
John L. Lewis
John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960...
. Lewis responded by ejecting all those connected with the insurgency from the union in 1923.
The Farmer-Labor Party
Foster had enjoyed a close relationship with John Fitzpatrick of the Chicago Federation of Labor. Those relations were strained to the breaking point by the Party's decision to pack the convention that Fitzpatrick had called to form a new Farmer-Labor PartyFarmer-Labor Party
The first modern Farmer–Labor Party in the United States emerged in Minnesota in 1918. Economic dislocation caused by American entry into World War I put agricultural prices and workers' wages into imbalance with rapidly escalating retail prices during the war years, and farmers and workers sought...
.
Fitzpatrick's project presented Foster with a paradox: he did not think that electoral politics had much potential for advancing the rights of workers, much less revolutionary goals, and he had even less regard for progressive reformists such as Robert La Follette, Sr.. On the other hand, he was attacked from the left within the party for his relations with Fitzpatrick and the CFL, which were denounced as too conservative. Even so, John Pepper
John Pepper
John Pepper, also known as József Pogány, born József Schwartz was a Hungarian-Jewish Communist politician, active in the radical movements of both Hungary and the United States. He later served as a functionary in the Communist International in Moscow, before being cashiered in 1929...
, the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
's representative in the U.S., and those, such as Charles Ruthenberg
Charles Ruthenberg
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was an American Marxist politician and a founder and long-time head of the Communist Party USA .-Biography:Charles Emil Ruthenberg was born July 9, 1882 in Cleveland, Ohio...
, who had criticized Foster for his closeness to Fitzpatrick now directed Foster to make the CPUSA an important player in this new party. At the same time the Party's newspaper, then known as The Worker, published a flattering article about Foster in 1923 that identified him as a Communist, something he had to that point avoided admitting.
Fitzpatrick began to distance himself from Foster when his membership in the Communist Party became public knowledge. Foster and the CP, on the other hand, had enough influence within the CFL to be able to dominate the founding convention with representatives of various organizations, some of them existing only on paper. When the CP appeared to have taken over this new party, Fitzpatrick walked out, leaving the CP with a stillborn organization. From that point forward Fitzpatrick campaigned against TUEL and the AFL began expelling communists from its ranks with a vengeance. The Party likewise split the Minnesota-Farmer Labor Party and repudiated any common work with La Follette. After a disastrous showing in the 1924 elections, the Party dismantled the Federated Farmer-Labor Party it had created.
The split with Fitzpatrick led to the isolation within the labor movement. While Foster and the CP had enjoyed a close relation with Sidney Hillman
Sidney Hillman
Sidney Hillman was an American labor leader. Head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, he was a key figure in the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and in marshaling labor's support for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party.-Early years:Sidney Hillman was...
and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America was a United States labor union known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by Sidney Hillman for its first thirty years, it helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations...
, it began organizing an opposition caucus within the ACWA. Hillman declared the TUEL formation to be a dual union and suspended its leaders, including Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin "Ben" Gitlow was a prominent American socialist politician of the early twentieth century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. From the end of the 1930s, Gitlow turned to conservatism and wrote two sensational exposés of American Communism, books which were very influential...
.
Setbacks and successes
Foster profited in a way from this debacle: he was able to persuade the Comintern to recall Pepper, with whom he had fought over questions of tactics, and the dissolution of the FF-LP was a setback for the Charles RuthenbergCharles Ruthenberg
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was an American Marxist politician and a founder and long-time head of the Communist Party USA .-Biography:Charles Emil Ruthenberg was born July 9, 1882 in Cleveland, Ohio...
- Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions...
faction, which was largely made up of foreign-born workers and represented the vast majority of the party membership. Forming an alliance with a smaller faction led by James P. Cannon
James P. Cannon
James Patrick "Jim" Cannon was an American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.Born on February 11, 1890 in Rosedale, Kansas, he joined the Socialist Party of America in 1908 and the Industrial Workers of the World in 1911...
, Foster was able to control the majority of the party's leadership in 1923 and again in 1925.
The internecine struggles between the two camps was, however, disturbing to the Comintern, which sent a representative to oversee the Party's 1925 convention. A telegram from the Comintern directed the Party, after a vote which Foster had won decisively over his opponent, Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin "Ben" Gitlow was a prominent American socialist politician of the early twentieth century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. From the end of the 1930s, Gitlow turned to conservatism and wrote two sensational exposés of American Communism, books which were very influential...
, to install Ruthenberg as general secretary of the Party. Foster challenged the telegram, stormed out of the meeting, and attempted to appeal to the Comintern itself, over the objections of his opponents and even his allies in the Cannon faction, who would not accept the possibility that the Comintern could be wrong.
Foster did not succeed in reversing the Comintern's overturning of his election, but did obtain some concessions: his supporters were given control of the Trade Union Committee within the Party and the Comintern recognized trade union work as the most important sphere of activity for the Party. While Foster thought that he had obtained support for effective independence for TUEL, however, he was mistaken.
The Party's trade union work in this era, however, went from one disaster to the next. Rivalries within the CPUSA led to the loss of the 1926 New York dressmakers' strike, as neither the Foster or Ruthenberg faction wanted to appear to sell out by accepting a settlement that the Party's members within the strike leadership had recommended. As a result the Party, which had once held leadership positions within every major New York City local of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s...
other than the cutters local led by David Dubinsky
David Dubinsky
David Dubinsky was an American labor leader...
, was wholly routed.
The Foster and Ruthenberg factions likewise blamed each other for the defeat of the 1926 strike of textile workers
1926 Passaic Textile Strike
The 1926 Passaic Textile Strike was a work stoppage by over 15,000 woolen mill workers in and around Passaic, New Jersey over wage issues in several factories in the vicinity...
in Passaic, New Jersey
Passaic, New Jersey
Passaic is a city in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 69,781, maintaining its status as the 15th largest municipality in New Jersey with an increase of 1,920 residents from the 2000 Census population of 67,861...
, in which the Ruthenberg leadership supported an overt Party role in the strike and what amounted to creation of a dual union. When it appeared that the leadership's communist leanings were an obstacle to negotiations, TUEL handed the strike over to the United Textile Workers, which was unable to make any more progress than the CP leadership had.
Foster also played a major role in the revolt against John L. Lewis
John L. Lewis
John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960...
' leadership in the United Mine Workers of America. John Brophy
John Brophy (labor)
John Brophy was an important figure in the United Mine Workers of America in the 1920s and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s and 1940s. He was the last major challenger to John L...
, a leader of the UMWA in Western Pennsylvania, ran against Lewis under the banner of "Save the Union". Brophy might have won if the ballots had been counted honestly, but they were not. Even so, the dissidents retained substantial prestige within the union and were able to establish themselves as a union administration in exile during the 1927 coal strike, running a separate program of strike relief that allowed the strike to continue when the Lewis Administration proved unable to do so.
These efforts were leading in the direction of formation of a rival union, something that Foster rejected but which appeared to be the only possibility left to the Party. As signals from the Comintern indicated the impending change of policy in the Third Period
Third Period
The Third Period is a ideological concept adopted by the Communist International at its 6th World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928....
, when the American party was directed to abandon its work within the AFL in order to form separate revolutionary unions, even former supporters of Foster, such as Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
, began criticizing Foster for his reluctance to form a dual union of miners. As it turned out, Foster's halting efforts to establish a separate power center within the UMWA had this effect in any case, as Howat, Brophy and his allies dropped out of the "Save the Union" movement as the CP's leadership in it became apparent. The Party founded its own National Miners Union in 1928.
Foster's return to power
C.E. Ruthenberg died on March 2, 1927, and his longtime factional ally Jay Lovestone took over his position as Executive Secretary of the party. The factional fighting between the Foster and Lovestone groups continued, but now became overshadowed by the larger struggle in the Soviet Union between Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and his opponents.
A firm supporter of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, Foster split with James P. Cannon
James P. Cannon
James Patrick "Jim" Cannon was an American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.Born on February 11, 1890 in Rosedale, Kansas, he joined the Socialist Party of America in 1908 and the Industrial Workers of the World in 1911...
in 1928 and supported his former ally's expulsion for Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
. Foster was made General Secretary
General Secretary
The office of general secretary is staffed by the chief officer of:*The General Secretariat for Macedonia and Thrace, a government agency for the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace...
of the party in 1929 with the support of the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, deposing Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions...
, who was sympathetic to Bukharin and whose policies of American exceptionalism
American exceptionalism
American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the United States is qualitatively different from other countries. In this view, America's exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming "the first new nation," and developing a uniquely American ideology, based on liberty,...
were anathema to Stalin's new Third Period
Third Period
The Third Period is a ideological concept adopted by the Communist International at its 6th World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928....
line.
That Third Period line also called for creation of new, revolutionary unions outside the AFL. While Foster had always denounced dual unionism, he dutifully complied with the Comintern's directive, renaming the Trade Union Education League as the Trade Union Unity League. Foster and the Party also followed the line by denouncing social democrats as "social fascists" and attacking former allies in the African-American communities as bourgeois collaborators.
In 1928 Foster and Marcel Scherer set up FAECT, the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians, a secret apparatus front organization
Front organization
A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy groups, or corporations...
which had as its aim the infiltration of Communists into varies public and private technical organizations.
Eclipse and return to power
Foster began to lose power within the Party, due to his imprisonment during the Party's convention in 1930 and his continuing differences with others in the Party over trade union policies. In 1930, he ran for Governor of New YorkGovernor of New York
The Governor of the State of New York is the chief executive of the State of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military and naval forces. The officeholder is afforded the courtesy title of His/Her...
on the Communist ticket. Foster suffered a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
in 1932 and was forced to step down as leader of the party in favor of Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
. Sent to the Soviet Union for treatment, Foster's condition only grew worse.
Foster returned in 1935, but was estranged from Browder and those who had risen to power in his absence. While the Party's trade union policies in the Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
era was close to what Foster had advocated in the 1920s, the Party's strength was not in the areas in which it had been active during the TUEL era — garment, railroads, and mining — but in the mass production industries with little history of union organization — automobile and electrical manufacturing, meatpacking, longshore on the west coast, maritime on the east coast, hard rock mining and lumber in the west and public transit in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. In the meantime the Party began building a small-scale personality cult around Browder and became a supporter of the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
and, to a lesser extent, the Roosevelt administration both of which Foster hated. Foster became the "loyal opposition" to Browder within the CPUSA while remaining an unwavering supporter of Stalin.
Browder was removed in 1945 due to having attempted to dissolve the CPUSA as a party. Foster had, in fact, been one of the most vocal opponents in 1944 of Browder's decisions to rename the CPUSA as the Communist Political Association and to propose the continuation of the no-strike pledge after the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The entire leadership of the Party came to Browder's defense then; the Comintern directed Foster to withdraw his criticisms.
Foster's letter to the National Committee subsequently formed the basis for the Duclos letter
Jacques Duclos
Jacques Duclos was a French Communist politician who played a key role in French politics from 1926, when he entered the French National Assembly after defeating Paul Reynaud, until 1969, when he won a substantial portion of the vote in the presidential elections.During World War I, Duclos fought...
published as the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
began in 1945 that signaled the Soviet Union's change in line. The Party members who had denounced Foster and questioned his grasp of Marxism and his mental faculties a year earlier now condemned Browder as a class traitor
Class traitor
Class traitor is a term used by many Socialist organizations to refer to a member of the proletariat class who works directly or indirectly against their class interest, or what is against their economic benefit as opposed to that of the bourgeoisie...
. The CPA reestablished itself as the Communist Party USA and expelled Browder. While Foster nominally shared power with Eugene Dennis
Eugene Dennis
Francis Xavier Waldron , best known by the pseudonym Eugene Dennis was an American communist politician and union organizer, best remembered as the long-time leader of the Communist Party USA and as named party in Dennis v...
and John Williamson
John Williamson
John Williamson is the name of:* Jack Williamson , American science fiction writer* John H. Williamson , American, North Carolina politician and newspaper publisher* John N. Williamson , American, U.S...
, he had the most prestige of the three.
During Foster's leadership the Party took a harder line, both internationally and internally, shedding much of the "Americanist" rhetoric of Browder's dozen years in leadership. Foster published a 'new history' of America, which was highly praised in Moscow and was translated into many languages. Of it Browder wrote, "This extraordinary book interpreted the history of America from its discovery to the present, as an orgy of 'bloody banditry' and imperialism, enriching itself by 'drinking the rich red blood' of other peoples.
The Party campaigned vigorously for Henry A. Wallace
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...
's candidacy for President in 1948 — which failed to produce a viable Progressive Party
Progressive Party (United States, 1948)
The United States Progressive Party of 1948 was a left-wing political party that ran former Vice President Henry A. Wallace of Iowa for president and U.S. Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho for vice president in 1948.-Foundation:...
. The failure of the campaign and the onset of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
contributed to a disastrous situation for the unions and union leaders associated with the Party within the CIO, which expelled most of them by 1950.
In 1948 Foster was among the party leaders indicted for subversive activity under the Smith Act
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 is a United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S...
, but, because of his precarious health, he was not brought to trial. The Party began to implode as a result of these prosecutions, as many Party leaders chose to go underground after the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of the first tier of CPUSA leaders in United States v. Dennis], . Foster also presided over a number of internal purge
Purge
In history, religion, and political science, a purge is the removal of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, from another organization, or from society as a whole. Purges can be peaceful or violent; many will end with the imprisonment or exile of those purged,...
s.
Foster supported Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
. He rallied the party's faithful during the Soviet Union's military intervention in Hungary
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
and Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's denunciation of Stalin at the 1956 Twentieth Party Congress. Foster retired in 1957 and assumed the title of Chairman emeritus of the party to make way for the younger Gus Hall
Gus Hall
Gus Hall, born Arvo Kustaa Hallberg , was a leader and Chairman of the Communist Party USA and its four-time U.S. presidential candidate. As a labor leader, Hall was closely associated with the so-called "Little Steel" Strike of 1937, an effort to unionize the nation's smaller, regional steel...
. Like Foster, Gus Hall was also a loyal ally of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
He was in Moscow for his 80th birthday on February 25, 1961.
Death and legacy
Foster died on September 1, 1961 in Moscow. The Soviet Union gave him a state funeral in Red SquareRed Square
Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod...
and Khrushchev headed the honor guards. His ashes were interred with John Reed and Bill Haywood
Bill Haywood
William Dudley Haywood , better known as "Big Bill" Haywood, was a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World , and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America...
.
Books and pamphlets
- Insurgency: or, the economic power of the middle class (with Hermon Titus) Seattle, Wash: Trustee Print. Co., 1910.
- Syndicalism (with Earl Ford) Chicago: W.Z. Foster, 1913.
- Trade unionism: the road to freedom Chicago, International Trade Union Educational League 1916
- General report on steel strike relief fund Pittsburgh, Pa. : National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers 1920
- The great steel strike and its lessons New York : B. W. HuebschB. W. HuebschB. W. Huebsch was an American publisher settled in New York in the early 20th century. He was the first publisher in the United States of James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. He also published, in 1919, the first edition of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio . In 1925 he merged his firm with Viking...
, inc. 1920 - The railroaders' next step--amalgamation Chicago, Ill. : The Trade Union Educational LeagueTrade Union Educational LeagueThe Trade Union Educational League was established by William Z. Foster in 1920 as a means of uniting radicals within various trade unions for a common plan of action. The group was subsidized by the Communist International via the Communist Party of America from 1922...
1922 (Labor Herald Library #1) - The Russian revolution Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1922 (Labor Herald Library #2)
- The revolutionary crisis of 1918-1921 : in Germany, England, Italy and France Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1922 (Labor Herald Library #3)
- The bankruptcy of the American labor movement Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1922 (Labor Herald Library #4)
- The principles and program of the Trade Union Educational League Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1922
- Russia in 1924 Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1924 (Labor Herald Library #11)
- Russian workers and workshops in 1926 Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1926 (Labor Herald Library #16)
- Organize the Unorganized. Chicago, Ill. : Trade Union Educational League, 1926. (Labor Herald Library #17)
- Strike Strategy Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1926 (Labor Herald Library #18) alternate link
- Misleaders of labor Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1927
- The Watson-Parker law, the latest scheme to hamstring railroad unionism. Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1927 (Labor Herald Library #19)
- Wrecking the labor banks; the collapse of the labor banks and investment companies of the Brotherhood of locomotive engineers Chicago, Ill. : The Trade union educational league 1927 (Labor Herald Library #20)
- Victorious socialist construction in the Soviet Union New York : Trade Union Unity League 1930
- Fight against hunger New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1930
- Little brothers of the big labor fakers : report of a speech against the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, made in New Star Casino, New York City on May 10, 1931 New York : Trade Union Unity League 1931
- The words and deeds of Franklin D. Roosevelt New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1932
- Toward soviet America New York, Coward-McCann, inc 1932
- Industrial unionism New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1936
- The crisis in the Socialist party New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1936
- Unionizing steel New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1936
- Organizing methods in the steel industry New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1936
- Questions and answers on the Piatakov-Radek trial New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1937
- What means a strike in steel New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1937
- A manual of industrial unionism, organizational structure and policies New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1937
- Railroad workers forward! New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1937
- From Bryan to Stalin New York : International publishers, 1937
- Halt the railroad wage-cut New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1938
- The revolutionary and socialist traditions of American labor Minneapolis, Minn.? : Minnesota State Committee, Communist Party U.S.A.?, 1938
- Stop wage-cuts & layoffs on the railroads; a reply to President T.C. Cashen of the Switchmen's Union of North America New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1938
- http://digitool.fcla.edu:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?application=DIGITOOL-3&owner=resourcediscovery&custom_att_2=simple_viewer&forebear_coll=&user=GUEST&pds_handle=&pid=2180952&con_lng=ENG&search_terms=WCT%20=(Foster%2C%20William%20Z.%201881-1961)&adjacency=N&rd_session=http://digitool.fcla.edu:80/R/APN471ICT1TIK3ADJGTRAHT6BF2AIEXKQ21F2MT287XJ2PGXJP-02283Your questions answered on politics, peace, economics anti-semitism, race prejudice, religion, trade unionism, Americanism, democracy, socialism, communism] New York : Workers' Library Publishers June 1939
- Pages from a Worker's Life New York: International Publishers, 1939.
- http://digitool.fcla.edu:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?application=DIGITOOL-3&owner=resourcediscovery&custom_att_2=simple_viewer&forebear_coll=&user=GUEST&pds_handle=&pid=2669167&con_lng=ENG&search_terms=WCT%20=(Foster%2C%20William%20Z.%201881-1961)&adjacency=N&rd_session=http://digitool.fcla.edu:80/R/APN471ICT1TIK3ADJGTRAHT6BF2AIEXKQ21F2MT287XJ2PGXJP-00394The war crisis: questions and answers] New York : Workers' Library Publishers Jan 1940
- Capitalism, socialism, and the war New York : Workers' Library Publishers June 1940
- What's what about the war; questions and answers New York : Workers' Library Publishers July 1940
- The United States and the Soviet union New York : Workers' Library Publishers Dec 1940
- Roosevelt heads for war New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1940
- Socialism: the road to peace, prosperity and freedom New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1941 "Published on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary celebration of William Z. Foster"
- Communism versus fascism; a reply to those who lump together the social systems of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1941
- http://digitool.fcla.edu:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?application=DIGITOOL-3&owner=resourcediscovery&custom_att_2=simple_viewer&forebear_coll=&user=GUEST&pds_handle=&pid=2700038&con_lng=ENG&search_terms=WCT%20=(Foster%2C%20William%20Z.)&adjacency=N&rd_session=http://digitool.fcla.edu:80/R/APN471ICT1TIK3ADJGTRAHT6BF2AIEXKQ21F2MT287XJ2PGXJP-00878The Soviet Union: friend and ally of the American people] New York : Workers' Library Publishers Oct 1941
- Defend America by smashing Hitlerism New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1941
- World capitalism and world socialism New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1941
- The railroad workers and the War New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1941
- Labor and the war New York, Workers library publishers, inc., Jan 1942 alternate link
- Steel workers and the war New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1942
- The trade unions and the war New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1942
- American democracy and the war New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1942
- Smash Hitler's spring offensive now! New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1942
- The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., war allies and friends New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1942
- From defense to attack: the United Nations seize the initiative New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1942
- The people and the Congress New York : Workers' Library Publishers Feb 1943
- For speedy victory: The second front now New York : Workers' Library Publishers Oct 1943
- Soviet democracy and the war New York : Workers' Library Publishers Dec 1943
- The Soviet trade unions and allied labor unity New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1943
- Organized labor faces the new world New York : New century Publishers March 1945
- The strike situation, and organized labor's wage and job strategy New York : New century Publishers 1945 (with cartoons by Hugo GellertHugo GellertHugo Gellert was a Hungarian-American illustrator and muralist. A committed radical, much of Gellert's work is agitational in nature and distinctive in style, considered by some art critics as among the best political work of the first half of the 20th Century.-Early years:Hugo Gellert was born...
and William GropperWilliam GropperWilliam Victor "Bill" Gropper , was a U.S. cartoonist, painter, lithographer, and muralist. A committed radical, Gropper is best known for the political work which he contributed to such left wing publications as The Revolutionary Age, The Liberator, The New Masses, The Worker, and The Morning...
) - The coal miners, their problems in war and peace New York : New century Publishers 1945
- The Rankin witch hunt New York : New century Publishers 1945
- Reaction beats its war drums New York : New century Publishers 1946
- The menace of a new world war New York : New century Publishers 1946
- Palestine: problem and solution New York : Issued by Communist Party, New York State 1946
- Our country needs a strong Communist Party New York : New century Publishers 1946
- Problems of organized labor today New York : New century Publishers 1946
- A message to America's coal miners New York : Communist Party, U.S.A., 1947
- Quarantine the warmongers New York : New century Publishers Nov 1947
- Workers, defend your unions! New York : New century Publishers 1947
- Organized labor and the Fascist danger New York : New century Publishers 1947
- The meaning of the 9-party Communist conference New York : New century Publishers 1947
- The new Europe New York : International Publishers 1947
- American trade unionism; principles and organization, strategy and tactics New York: International Publishers, 1947
- Beware of the war danger!: stop, look and listen! New York : New century Publishers 1948
- Radio address by William Z. Foster, delivered at Madison Square Garden, August 2, 1948 New York : Communist Party, U.S.A. 1948
- On improving the Party's work among women New York : New century Publishers 1948
- Danger ahead for organized labor New York : New century Publishers 1948
- Labor and the Marshall plan New York : New century Publishers March 1948
- The crime of El Fanguito : an open letter to President Truman on Puerto Rico New York : New century Publishers 1948
- N.Y. Herald Tribune's 23 questions about the Communist Party answered by William Z. Foster New York : New century Publishers 1948
- The Economic Crisis and the Cold War: Reports Presented to a Conference on 'Managed Economy,' the 'Cold War,' and the Developing Economic Crisis New York : New century Publishers 1949
- http://digitool.fcla.edu:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?application=DIGITOOL-3&owner=resourcediscovery&custom_att_2=simple_viewer&forebear_coll=&user=GUEST&pds_handle=&pid=363424&con_lng=ENG&search_terms=Foster%2C%20William%20Z.&adjacency=N&rd_session=http://digitool.fcla.edu:80/R/APN471ICT1TIK3ADJGTRAHT6BF2AIEXKQ21F2MT287XJ2PGXJP-00876In defense of the Communist Party and the indicted leaders] New York : New century Publishers 1949
- The twilight of world capitalism New York: International Publishers, 1949
- Outline political history of the Americas New York : International Publishers 1951
- A letter to Congress: defeat the anti-labor Smith Bill! New York : New century Publishers 1952
- The steel workers and the fight for labor's rights New York : New century Publishers 1952
- History of the Communist Party of the United States New York: International Publishers, 1952
- Danger signals for organized labor New York : New century Publishers 1953
- The Negro people in American history New York : International Publishers 1954
- History of the three Internationals; the world socialist and communist movements from 1848 to the present. New York : International Publishers 1955
- Outline history of the world trade union movement. New York : International Publishers 1956
- The historic advance of world socialism New York: International Publishers 1960
- More pages from a worker's life edited, and with an introduction by Arthur Zipser. AIMS Occasional paper #32. New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies 1979
Introductions, contributions etc.
- Trade unions in America (with James CannonJames CannonJames Cannon may refer to:*James P. Cannon , American Communist and Trotskyist leader*James Cannon , Scottish-born mathematician who was one of the principal authors of Pennsylvania's 1776 Constitution...
and Earl BrowderEarl BrowderEarl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
) Chicago, Ill. : Published for the Trade Union Educational League by the Daily worker 1925 (Little red library #1) - Acceptance speeches (with Benjamin GitlowBenjamin GitlowBenjamin "Ben" Gitlow was a prominent American socialist politician of the early twentieth century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. From the end of the 1930s, Gitlow turned to conservatism and wrote two sensational exposés of American Communism, books which were very influential...
) New York : Workers Library Publishers 1928; accepting the parties' presidential nomination - Foster and Ford for food and freedom: acceptance speeches of William Z. Foster and James W. Ford, Communist candidates for president and vice-president of the United States of America (with James W. FordJames W. FordJames W. "Jim" Ford was the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA in 1932, 1936, and 1940. A party organizer from New York City, Ford was the first African-American to appear on a presidential ticket in the 20th century....
) New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1932 - Technocracy and Marxism (with Earl Browder and Vyacheslav MolotovVyacheslav MolotovVyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
) New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1933 - Get wise—organize: what every young steel worker should know New York : National Committee of the Young Communist League, 1937
- Party building and political leadership (with several others) New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1937
- Letters from Spain by Joe Dallet, American volunteer, to his wife ; introductory articles by William Z. Foster New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1938
- The meaning of the Soviet trials, by E. Yaroslavsky, including the official text of the indictment of the Bukharin-Trotskyite bloc. Introduction by William Z. Foster New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1938
- The Path of Browder and Foster (with others) New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1941
- The fight against Hitlerism (with Robert MinorRobert MinorRobert Berkeley "Bob" Minor was political cartoonist, a radical journalist, and a leading member of the American Communist Party.-Early life:...
) New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1941 - Speed the second front (with Browder, Israel AmterIsrael AmterIsrael Amter was a Marxist politician and founding member of the Communist Party USA . Amter is best remembered as one of the Communist Party leaders jailed in conjunction with the International Unemployment Day riot of 1930.-Early years:...
and Max WeissMax WeissMiksa Weisz was an Austrian chess player born in the Kingdom of Hungary.Weiss was born in Sereď. Moving to Vienna, he studied mathematics and physics at the university, and later taught those subjects....
) New York : Workers' Library Publishers 1942 - America at the crossroads: postwar problems and communist policy by Eugene DennisEugene DennisFrancis Xavier Waldron , best known by the pseudonym Eugene Dennis was an American communist politician and union organizer, best remembered as the long-time leader of the Communist Party USA and as named party in Dennis v...
(forward) New York : New century Publishers 1945 - The menace of American imperialism (with Eugene Dennis) New York : New century Publishers 1945
- Marxism-Leninism vs. revisionism (with others) New York : New century Publishers 1946
- On the struggle against revisionism New York : National Veterans Committee of the Communist Party 1946
- Are communism and democracy mutually antagonistic? Washington, RansdellRansdellRansdell is a surname, and may refer to:* Joseph Morton Ransdell, philosopher* Joseph E. Ransdell, Louisiana senator. In 1930 he sponsored the Ransdell Act which turned the 1887 Laboratory of Hygiene into the National Institutes of Health....
1946 (Panel Discussion with Clare Boothe LuceClare Boothe LuceClare Boothe Luce was an American playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador, socialite and U.S. Congresswoman, representing the state of Connecticut.-Early life:...
, William Henry ChamberlinWilliam Henry ChamberlinWilliam Henry Chamberlin was an American historian and journalist. He was the author of several books about the Cold War, Communism and US foreign policy, the most famous of which was The Russian Revolution 1917-1921...
and Harry F. WardHarry F. WardHarry F. Ward was an American Methodist minister and left-wing activist. He was the first chairman of the ACLU, leading the group from its creation in 1920 until 1940. Ward was a prominent defender of Soviet Communism, although he didn't label himself as a Communist; this ultimately led to his...
; moderated by Theodore Granik) - The Communist position on the Negro question New York : New century Publishers 1947
- An open letter to all members of the Communist Party (with Eugene Dennis and Henry WinstonHenry WinstonHenry M. Winston was an African American political leader and Marxist civil rights activist.Winston, committed to equal rights and communism, was an advocate of civil rights for African Americans decades before the idea of racial equality emerged as a mainstream current of American political...
) New York : Communist Party, U.S.A. 1948 - The case of Puerto Rico: memorandum to the United Nations by the Communist Party of Puerto Rico. (intro) New York, New Century Publishers, 1953
- Marxism vs Keynesism (with Celeste Strack and John EatonJohn EatonJohn Henry Eaton was an American politician and diplomat from Tennessee who served as U.S. Senator and as Secretary of War in the administration of Andrew Jackson. He was the youngest U.S. Senator in history, having been 28 years old at the time of his swearing-in.-Biography:Eaton was born near...
) Los Angeles, Calif. : Progressive Book Shop 1955
See also
- Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1919-1937)Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1919-1937)The Communist Party and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but never succeeded, with rare exceptions, either in bringing the labor movement around to its agenda or in converting their influence in any particular union into...
- Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1937-1950)Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1937-1950)The Communist Party and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but never succeeded, with rare exceptions, either in bringing the labor movement around to its agenda or in converting their influence in any particular union into...
- Industrial Workers of the WorldIndustrial Workers of the WorldThe Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
- The Communist Party and African-AmericansThe Communist Party and African-AmericansThe Communist Party USA, historically and currently committed to complete racial equality in the United States, played a significant role in defending the rights of African-Americans during its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s....
- Communist Party, USA
- Toward Soviet AmericaToward Soviet AmericaToward Soviet America is a book written by Communist Party, USA Chairman William Z. Foster, in 1932. The book documented the rise of socialism in the Soviet Union, the crisis facing capitalism, the need for revolution, and a vision of what a socialist society would be like...
Further reading
- Barrett, James R., William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois PressUniversity of Illinois PressThe University of Illinois Press , is a major American university press and part of the University of Illinois system. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, plus 33 scholarly journals, and several electronic projects...
, 1999. - Draper, Theodore, The Roots of American Communism. New York: Viking PressViking PressViking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
, 1957. - Draper, Theodore, American Communism and Soviet Russia, 1960.
- Johanningsmeier, Edward, Forging American Communism: The Life of William Z. Foster.PrincetonPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
: Princeton University PressPrinceton University Press-Further reading:* "". Artforum International, 2005.-External links:* * * * *...
, 1994; 2004. - Storch, Randi, Red Chicago: American Communism at its Grassroots, 1928-35. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
- Zipser, Arthur, Workingclass Giant: The Life of William Z. Foster. New York: International PublishersInternational PublishersInternational Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City specializing in Marxist works of economics, political science, and history. The company was established in 1924 by A.A. Heller and Alexander Trachtenberg, using funds earned through a lucrative trade concession granted...
, 1981.
External links
- William Z. Foster Writings on Marxists Internet Archive.
- Trade Union Educational League documents found at the Marxist Internet Archive.
- The Trial of William Z. Foster PDF document by Robert Minor. The Liberator, v. 6, no. 4, whole no. 60 (April 1923), pp. 8–12.
- The Question of the Unorganized William Z. Foster. 1925
- Organizational Problems of Industrial Unionism William Z. Foster.