Working In These Times
Where Are Our Organic Labor Intellectuals? Maybe Right Here!
Sociologist C. Wright Mills (left), author of the The Power Elite and other books, was a leading labor intellectual in the 1950s. He died in 1962. (Photo by Lillian Tonnaire Taylor, courtesy Kate Mills)
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a fierce debate in labor and left circles about the role of intellectuals in the labor movement.
Samuel Gompers and others such as economist John R. Commons and his followers believed intellectuals had no place in labor. For Commons, because intellectuals were not rooted within the factory system, they were freer to become more radical and thus more dangerous than workers. Many within the socialist camp thoroughly disagreed.
This historical debate is interesting to revisit now, and it's important because it recognized two distinct types of intellectuals: those inside labor unions and those outside. In the 20th century, up until the 1950s at least, there existed in the United States a group of union intellectuals (real public intellectuals) who grew up in and around the labor movement, yet their reach extended far beyond it. They advised leaders, ran education and legislative departments, edited union newspapers and connected the unions to a network of groups.
But where are our current labor intellectuals?
I've been thinking about this because I'm currently researching a group of 1950s labor intellectuals. Then it dawned on me, labor intellectuals exist, but are hidden in our culture. The group blogging here at Working In These Times is such a group.
And there are organic intellectuals who don't have the visibility their predecessors might have had. In the 1940s, a group founded the journal Labor and Nation, which was an attempt to move labor into a more radical stance in its drift towards complacency. Included in this effort were folks like Robert Lynd, C. Wright Mills and J.B.S. Hardman, among others. Their readers were intellectuals in and outside of unions and academics.
But their main hope was to enlighten labor leaders. Working In These Times has brought together such a group through a modern form, a blog. We have journalist, academics and activists, many who have had extensive relationships within the labor movement.
What we need is for you, the reader, to help us go viral. Rather than just commenting on posts (which is important and welcome), why not forward the posts to labor leaders, labor newspapers and mainstream newspapers? Why not help us collectively get these issues heard? In the age of viral media, our posts can (and often do) wind up anywhere—but for that to happen they often need your help and support.
Why not introduce us to intellectuals within the labor movement so we can join with them in their efforts to analyze and strengthen it? Collectively, we need to work on this. Please join our effort to help labor regain some of its stature.
SAVE 53% OFF
Comments
Well one suggestion that I would offer is to solicit and use more articles on labor related issues including strikes, organizing drives, occupational safety & health and immigration issues.
With all due respect to In These Times and other progressive publications, but I have been involved in the movement since 1972. I have submitted no less than four different articles to In These Times and other publications and have yet to see any published! My point? Yes, I am not a “professional” jounalist ( look at the trash the so-called professionals churn out), but I do see labor struggles from the eyes of one who has been there, done that and is still doing it!
Where are the current labor intellectuals?
Well, as a graduate and law student focused upon the broad realm of academic work that one could refer to as ‘labor studies,’ I think that I can safely say that there are no shortage of them out there. As a union activist, I can also say that the work of these labor intellectuals is invaluable. My work as an academic and as a union activist is informed tremendously by these labor intellectuals.
There are both scholar intellectuals in the academy and activist-intellectuals throughout the labor movement (writ large, i.e. beyond the union movement per se). They are there for those who will find them.
But that’s the key: for those who will find them. It seems to me that the project is less about identifying these labor intellectuals and more with churning their ideas, research and writing through the masses of a) labor leaders, b) rank-and-file unionists, and c) the public at-large.
Labor leaders need to become more familiar with the work of these labor intellectuals, not only because of the vibrant debate on the nature, shape and dynamics of the labor and union movements, but also because of the wealth of ideas they produce that can be actionable for today’s movement actors. I don’t think that I have an easy solution to this conundrum—getting labor leaders to digest and internalize the work both brilliant and pedestrian of these intellectuals is something that perhaps no one has found easy in the last five or so decades. Our movement would be far better off had that been the case.
Rank-and-file unionists must familiarize themselves with this work, if only for the most critical reason of that we are the actors with agency to develop, change and build this movement. The ideas and production of the existent labor intellectuals is fodder for rank-and-filers many times over. Again, making that happen isn’t so easy.
That said, with these two categories of potential ‘consumers’ (though I hesitate to use the word, meaning it not in the market consumption sense), there is certainly plenty to be done by labor intellectuals in a) making their work readily accessible to rank-and-file and leaders of the labor movement and b) affirmatively working to reach out to these folks (us).
Finally, labor intellectuals must seek to become public intellectuals. We can count on two hands (or less) the number of pro-labor intellectuals advancing a distinctively laborite (and not just pro-labor) vision of the world, at least with any kind of readership or following. This is absolutely critical. The battle for hegemony in the public discourse over unions, political economy, and ideology has been won, for the time being, by the reactionaries. It is high time that all of us, labor intellectuals and otherwise, to start to fight in the public realm for what we believe in: unionism, collective action, social and economic justice. The battle of ideas is where we create the conditions for expansion of and support for the labor movement.
***
I might suggest that In These Times and Working In These Times, two places I visit regularly, could be the point of departure for folks to be exposed to these labor intellectuals that exist. There have been interviews with Nelson Lichtenstein (a personal hero of mine) and Amy Dean (a person for whom I have tremendous respect and who I found very engaging in person and in print); let’s see more of those. Let’s see book lists and citations to articles and essays these labor intellectuals write. (Working) In These Times can play a role in exposing a broader audience to the wealth of material out there, putting it at the fingertips of labor leaders, rank-and-filers and the public at large. I’ll do my part in sending along linkes.