The 1930s and the origins of the New Deal

The following was excerpted from a talk given by Paul Wilcox, a contributing writer to WW newspaper and chapter chair of District Council 1707, AFSCME Local 107, at a Jan. 6 Workers World Party forum in New York.

The history books talk a lot about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in the Depression of the 1930s. Not so well known is Theodore Roosevelt’s earlier Square Deal or years later what Harry S. Truman called a Fair Deal. But the fact is that whenever the ruling class is dealing the cards, the working class and the oppressed will always wind up with a Raw Deal. You can take that to the bank, so to speak. Somehow, the 1% gets all the aces and the rest of us — the 99% — get the 2s, 3s and 4s.

We study history to apply the lessons of the past to the struggles of today. The basic tenets of Marxism were paid for by the blood of working-class martyrs, and we honor them by remembering the lessons they can teach.

This talk will focus on some popular misconceptions of the New Deal and how gains are really won by the working class. The capitalist media are trying to create a political tidal wave about upcoming primaries and elections. Their message to Occupy Wall Street and the working-class movement will be that however righteous the movement was, it is now over and the grown-up thing to do now is vote. According to the ruling-class stooges in the media, this is how change really happens; the important thing to do is be peaceful and legal — and vote.

This is totally false and always has been. So many things used to be illegal; 150 years ago, it was illegal for enslaved African Americans to escape, and illegal for anyone to help them. It used to be illegal for non-property owners to vote, or for women to vote, or for workers to form a union, or to strike. It is still illegal in most places for lesbian, gay and transgender people to marry. The struggle goes on. Never have any real concessions been won by the vote only. The only thing that made what was formerly illegal legal was the class struggle — in all its many forms and on many levels.

The history books call the 1920's “The Roaring Twenties” — a so-called golden age in U.S. history. But the gold only roared to the top. The 1% celebrate this age of virulent racism, anti-unionism and witch hunts of immigrants. Productivity surged in the 1920s, but one-tenth of 1 percent of the population had a total income more than the bottom 42 percent. Only a small percentage of the working class even worked a five-day week. The average workweek was 55 hours in iron and steel, 54 hours in textiles and 60 hours for the average laborer. As today, about half the population was poor.

It was worse for immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe at the time, and even worse for African-American families. In this period, the wages of African Americans was about half that of the already low wages of white workers. Jim Crow discrimination was the law in the South while open discrimination was rampant in the North. The Ku Klux Klan had more than 4 million members. Lynching and other terrorist acts in the South were not uncommon and were generally ignored by every level of government. The KKK also violently opposed immigration and union organizing, serving as company spies, thugs and assassins of union organizers. In this period, strike after strike was lost.

However, nationally the working class was no longer completely segregated. A half a million African Americans had moved north during and after World War I. By 1930, more than 25 percent of African-American men were employed in industrial jobs, compared with only 7 percent in 1890. By the mid-1930s, African-American workers made up 20 percent of laborers and 6 percent of the workers in the steel industry. One-fifth of the workforce in Chicago’s slaughterhouses was African -American.

This was the situation for the working class when the stock market crashed in 1929 and things got even worse. While $25 billion of stock value vanished overnight, more than 5,000 banks failed. Official unemployment soared from 3 percent to 25 percent. In response to the crisis, the owners cut wages by 45 percent on average. Many unemployed men left their families so that the meager relief supplies would stretch further. Poor families from the Midwest migrated to California to work in the fields, while thousands of Mexican workers were deported en masse.

The response of the Hoover administration was to appoint committees and commissions to study the problem. They concluded that it was the employers who needed help; hence, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was set up to finance building projects, such as the Hoover Dam. But such projects were only drops in the bucket. The American Federation of Labor at the time did not oppose wage cuts, opposed unemployment insurance, practiced Jim Crow segregation and joined Hoover in telling workers that “Prosperity is just around the corner.”

But working-class resistance was only beginning, with hunger marches and demonstrations against unemployment and against evictions. The first national demonstrations against unemployment were called by the Trade Union Unity League in 1932. As 100,000 people packed Union Square in New York City, demonstrations took place in Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco and other cities. Everywhere the marches were redbaited. Hundreds were arrested and beaten, but the movement strengthened.

The National Unemployed Council was founded in Chicago in 1930. Through patient, conscious organizing, it built branches in 46 states and in cities and towns across the country. They organized hunger marches and mass mobilizations in the streets. They demanded jobs through public works, unemployment insurance as well as food and shelter, and the elimination of racist discrimination.

One of the most important organizing efforts of the Unemployed Council was the struggle against evictions. When a family faced eviction, the local council would mobilize its forces and the surrounding neighborhood to keep the family in its home. These tactics prevented the eviction of thousands. They also conducted “penny auctions,” where one person would bid one penny for the property, with the community assuring that no one broke solidarity and bid more. Then the house would be given back to its real owners.

The Communist Party of the 1930s played a leading role in initiating these struggles. Their record of fighting racism and promoting class solidarity was a crucial prelude to the struggles to come. The role of the left in winning a measure of social justice in this country has gone almost totally unrecognized. Many other socialist organizations also played pivotal roles in the struggle.

The CP initiated an aggressive defense of the “Scottsboro Brothers.” They were nine African-American men who were convicted by a Jim Crow jury and a totally rigged injustice system in Alabama and sentenced to death in 1931. The CP vigorously opposed racism in its ranks and in every organizing effort. In unions, defense committees and cultural events the CP made the case of the Scottsboro Brothers a national and international cause. The Soviet Union, which had the prestige of rapid industrialization through its 5-year plans at a time when the West was in economic decline, gave the case support, as well as its allied parties. For example, there was a large demonstration in support of the Scottsboro Brothers in Berlin, organized by the CP of Germany two years before the Nazi takeover.

When the election of 1932 came, the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was elected in a landslide. So great was the hatred for Herbert Hoover, that Roosevelt was seen as a savior to many despite his relatively conservative “budget balancing” platform. The “New Deal” promised to U.S. workers was very high on theater but very low on performance.

The early programs of the New Deal were in response to the capitalist economic crisis. New laws were intended to reassure Wall Street that things were under control, that banks were regulated and the budget was balanced, and that regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission would harness speculation. These laws were intended to regulate profit making and prevent another depression. Of course, today, the superrich want everything. They want limitless profit taking with no regulation whatsoever.

There was limited unemployment relief such as the Civilian Conservation Corp, which employed youth at a very low wage, most of which was sent directly to the young workers’ families. Such was the desperation of the times.

But the early years of the Roosevelt administration saw a great upheaval of the working class. The election of Roosevelt brought hope, but the working class could not eat hope, and they could not afford to wait. Hunger, starvation and desperation demanded action. In 1932, it was estimated that about 75 percent of the population was living at or below the poverty line.

The great working-class upheaval that came soon after the elections sent alarm bells off in the boardrooms of Wall Street and brought concessions from the Roosevelt administration. It was not Roosevelt’s election that brought the concessions; it was the militant class struggle of the workers, which struck fear among the 1%.

The Bonus March of 1932 organized more than 25,000 veterans to come to Washington, D.C. They came on foot from everywhere to demand an early payment of a promised bonus to veterans. The CP called this multinational march, and it occupied part of Pennsylvania Avenue for months. It was violently suppressed by the U.S. Army, led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, which turned whips and horses on the veterans, their wives and their children. But the anger only grew and things were about to change.

The long, hard work by the CP and other left and progressive organizations, the patient agitation, the anti-racist work, all the preparation and earlier struggles gave rise to a new, angry, determined working-class movement that could not be stopped by anti-communist propaganda, arrests, beatings or shootings.

Despite the ravaging unemployment, a great strike wave engulfed the country. In 1933, nearly 1 million workers went on strike. In 1934, it was nearly 2 million. The first sit-down action in the U.S. was at the Hormel Packing Company in Minnesota in 1933. After the workers occupied the plant for only three days, the company agreed to recognize the union and bargain for better wages. The movement grew.

In 1936, there were 48 different sit-down strikes. In 1937, there were 477, and this is according to official figures. For example, in Detroit alone, workers occupied every Chrysler factory, 25 plants, four downtown hotels, nine lumberyards, 10 meatpacking plants, 12 laundries, and two department stores. The union drive was on!

Of course, the greatest and most famous sit-down strike occurred at the General Motors plant in Flint, Mich. Communists and socialists, with the support of the newly formed Committee for Industrial Organization, the CIO, led it. GM refused to bargain with the union, so the workers were forced to sit in the factory to support the union drive and to prevent GM from moving machinery out of the factory. Thousands of unionists and their spouses and families supported the occupiers. Women picketed outside to protect the strikers from attacks by fascist gangs and smuggled food and other supplies to them. Every day was a battle or confrontation with the police, with fascist thugs, and finally, the National Guard.

The strikers sent a message to the governor: “Unarmed as we are the introduction of the militia, sheriffs or police with murderous weapons will mean a bloodbath of unarmed workers … we have decided to stay in the plant.” After 44 days of occupation, fearful of an even greater struggle developing, GM gave in and recognized the United Auto Workers. Spontaneous strikes broke out all over the auto industry. In one year, the UAW membership went from 35,000 to 375,000.

This was just the tip of the iceberg. There was also the tremendous general strike in San Francisco, which began in opposition to shape-up on the docks, but spread throughout the city after police fired into the crowd, killing at least two strikers.

The Teamsters strike in Minneapolis was led by socialist workers, who organized the workers in a long struggle for union recognition. Eighteen of the socialists who led the local that initiated the strike were arrested in 1941 under the Smith Act for “advocating the overthrow of the government.” This happened when Roosevelt, the so-called “workers’ friend” was still president, but by this time he was preparing the country for war.

The CIO was founded because the old, racist, craft-unionist, class-collaborationist AFL refused to organize industrial workers. Since many industrial workers were relatively easy to replace on the assembly line, the AFL’s attitude was that they could not be organized. The fact of the labor upsurge is testament to the solidarity that developed in the working class. The spirit of class solidarity was sweeping the country and there was very little strikebreaking.

Faced with what amounted to a widespread working-class rebellion, the Roosevelt administration responded with a host of concessions. The Wagner Act encouraged unionization, provided time-and-a-half for overtime and many other safeguards. The Social Security Act of 1935 established pensions for seniors and set up an unemployment insurance program.

The Works Progress Administration was established, giving jobs to millions of workers in public works projects, public buildings and roads, as well as art, drama and media projects. Virtually every community benefited from both the new jobs as well as the building of parks, bridges and schools. The WPA employed women and men, African-American and white workers, and generally paid the prevailing wage. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing and housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the WPA. These were the fruits of the class struggle raging in the country, not the election of Franklin Roosevelt.

The ruling class hated Roosevelt nonetheless, but they tolerated him as we might tolerate a root canal from a dentist, painful, but necessary. Roosevelt told the workers the only thing they had to fear was fear itself, but his message to the 1% was that the only thing they had to fear was if the working class made a revolution and did away with them altogether. In fact, when the heat of the struggle subsided even a bit, Roosevelt slashed relief and works programs for the unemployed in 1938 and again in 1939, even though unemployment was again rising.

Only war preparations ended the Great Depression, just as war preparations had restored a false prosperity in Europe, especially in Nazi Germany. Although the “New Deal” Roosevelt seems like a far cry from the Nazi leader Adolph Hitler, both led their countries into a new imperialist war — a war of imperialist rivalries.

For the historians who explain that World War II was between U.S. “democracy” and totalitarianism, we must say to them: Tell that to the Japanese Americans, who were interned in camps during the war in a racist hysteria. Tell that to the Koreans, who suffered millions of civilian dead in the Korean War soon after. Tell that to the Vietnamese, who suffered millions more killed. Tell that to both Vietnam and Korea, countries that suffered grievously from the Pentagon’s biological warfare. Tell that to the Iranians who suffered under the U.S.-imposed shah.

Tell that to the Palestinians. Tell that to the Chileans who suffered under the U.S.-inspired fascist coup in 1973. Moreover, tell that to the Soviets, who bore the brunt of the horrific Nazi war machine. The U.S. came into the war late and carefully measured their war effort until the defeat of Hitler was virtually certain. Tell that to the Iraqis, to the Afghans and to the Egyptians who suffered 30 years of U. S.-supported dictatorship and are still struggling. Tell that to the workers and oppressed here in the U.S., those who fought and died in the war, and those who came home to the witch hunt and continued racist oppression.

The list could go on almost forever.

A thorough review of the struggles of the 1930s could take many discussions. But the lesson for the working class is that only the class struggle can win concessions, and only the socialist revolution that expropriates the ruling class can guarantee them. We have seen first hand over the years how the gains of the New Deal have been whittled away, some immediately, some gradually. The ruling elite always sees concessions as temporary, to be taken back as soon as practicable.

The heroes of Occupy Wall Street have begun to wake up the rest of the working class and progressive movement. It was very clear that the multinational working class started to find its reflection in Zuccotti Park and other occupations around the country. The working class is just starting to find its voice, which is so needed and has been missing for a long time. This is what scared the ruling class and gave them a serious case of the jitters.

Nothing whatsoever has been solved. The ruling class will not long be able to congratulate itself for its suppression of Occupy Wall Street because the struggle continues and develops. However, they will try very hard to direct progressive energy toward the upcoming elections — a safe, secure, and generally ineffectual forum for struggle. The ruling class’s idea of a fair election is what just happened in the Iowa caucuses, where the candidates, Tea Party stooges, were shadow boxing with each other.

Despite all the “excitement” and all the money spent and all the free and paid for media coverage, only 5.2 percent of eligible voters in Iowa even bothered to vote. Only 19.5 percent of registered Republicans voted, an even smaller percentage than voted in 2008 when George Bush ran unopposed. As a tiny minority, the 1% likes it when a tiny minority decides elections. It’s their comfort zone.

But when the spirit of struggle such as that shown by Occupy Wall Street is wedded to the creative energies of the entire working class, what once seemed utterly impossible will become utterly inevitable.

Long live the spirit of the multinational working class!