Unemployed Workers in the Great Depression: A lesson from history.

The Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. By 1933 there was 25% unemployment.

Today we are looking at a crisis in the Global economy exceeding the 1929 level. According to the Fed, unemployment is around 15% in the US. This does not include those in long term unemployment, undocumented workers, those in part time employment or the self-employed. The figure is likely much higher.

In the 1920’s there was no social security. Today we have it in name but in practice it is inadequate, or nonexistent for sex workers, immigrants etc. In the 1920’s and 30’s, as today there is a great seething anger that exists under the surface of American society.

The question we have is how we can learn from the victories and defeats of the past to focus this anger into a force to challenge the system.

Before the Crash

The Communist Party in 1929 was a large, centralized organization of tens of thousands of members across the United States. In the years preceding the crash they had been part of a social movement on the left, including organizations such as the IWW, that had driven huge working-class labor struggles and union drives. The CP and other left-wing groups began organizing the unemployed before the crash of 29: in actual fact unemployment was rising in the years preceding the crash.

CP activists learnt very quickly that slogans and propaganda were not enough to inspire unemployed workers. At one early meeting in an African American community the speaker was interrupted by a man who asked what good the words were if a family was being evicted across the street. The CP organizer stopped the meeting, the participants then all crossed the road and helped move the family’s furniture back into their home.

One of the successes of the UWC of the 20’s and 30’s was its ability to terrify landlords. Many landlords in New York would avoid evictions lest they feel the wrath of the UWC.

Community approach

The councils themselves were community based. This allowed the UWC’s to address specific needs in that community, e.g. evictions, local food shortages, however they did not restrict themselves to just local organizing.

The 1931 National Hunger March, organized in part by the councils, called for federal unemployment insurance at full wages for all unemployed and underemployed workers without regard to age, sex, race, political affiliation, or citizenship status.

The anti-racist characteristic of the councils was incredibly important. At the time the largest trade union federation the AFL was a segregated organization. The explicit policy of the UWC was to fight together and to fight against racism. This allowed them to successfully build in urban and rural communities and avoid the divide and rule tactics of the rich and powerful.

Success and Failure

The UWC councils of the 30’s had many successes. They provided material support to striking workers and are credited with sparking the modern Labor movement in the auto industry; through a hunger march in Detroit in 1931. They did however create stumbling blocks for themselves that we would do well to avoid.

They were not the most democratic organization. Nationally they took their marching orders from the USSR’s international wing, the Comintern. As such there was little open debate on a national scale. UWC demonstrations often featured speeches and signs calling for defense of the Soviet Union rather than addressing the needs of the working class in the US.

They also missed chances to hold local and national governments to account by making demands. The first National Unemployment Conference of 1930 adopted a program identical to that of the CP and warned that workers should have “no illusions that the government will grant these measures of partial relief”.

There were other large unemployed worker’s organizations in the 30’s such as the Conference of Progressive Labor Action (CPLA), exchange. This began a self-help, or mutual aid network which changed in favor of militant protest since, ‘self-help never provided more than a fraction of their economic needs.”

The CP’s UWCs were often very sectarian, calling other unemployed organizers and left-wing groups, ‘social fascists’ and refusing to work with them. This undermined a lot of their incredible achievements and prevented them reaching all members of the working class. It also meant that there was only one successful general assembly of all Unemployed worker’s groups.

The UWC began to diminish in the mid to late 30s due to two factors:

The first was the success of the organizations themselves. They had forced the creation of social security and welfare. The second cause of their decline was the strategy of the Popular Front against fascism. This meant a silencing of any opposition to the Government in favor of ‘uniting’ against the Nazis. In practice this meant the CP began to cheer on FDR’s limited reforms and avoid criticism of the inadequacies of the New Deal. They abandoned their initial radicalism around unemployment.

The New Deal was only a partial success, in that it allowed welfare and social security to be split off from each other. This meant that in the 80’s the right, both Democrat and Republican, could cut welfare by dividing unemployed people into those deemed ‘good’ because they were desperately trying to find work, and those deemed ‘bad’ because they either couldn’t work or couldn’t find work.

Lessons from the past

We can learn a lot from the successes and mistakes of the councils of the 30’s. We need to build on the legacy of the fight for welfare and in the ideas that were key organizing factors: solidarity with the labor movement, community support, and opposition to racism.

Sources:

A People’s History of the World- Chris Harmann, Verso 2008

A People’s History of the United States-Howard Zinn, Harpers Classics, 2010

The Unemployed Worker’s Movement-Francis Fox Piven, Richard Cloward, libcom.org/history/1930-1939-unemployed-workers-movement, 2009

We Help Each Other:The Unemployed Councils of the Great Depression-Zach Carlson, cpusa.org, April 2020

The unemployed movements of the 1930s: Bringing misery out of hiding-Danny Lucia- ISR #71

Tackling racism: The Communist Party’s mixed record-Geoff Crown-ISJ #163