Radical L.A.: From Coxey's Army to the Watts Riots, 1894-1965 (review)

In Radical L.A. Errol Wayne Stevens tells a compelling narrative history of the political struggles between labor and capital in Los Angeles during the first half of the twentieth century. Radical L.A. chronicles the actions and ideologies of the key players and organizations among L.A.'s "radical Left" and "radical Right" in their prolonged struggle to define the parameters of municipal government and civil society. Although both were connected to spectacular acts of public violence at different times—the Left with the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in 1910, and the Right with continual police brutality (and spying)—Stevens designates both Left and Right as "radical" more to call attention to the large influence these two relatively small groups played in the political and public affairs of Los Angeles. The Left consisted of trade unionists, Socialists, Wobblies (in the '10s and '20s), and Communists (more influential in the '30s and '40s) who were members of interconnected (but also conflictual) labor and political organizations. The Right was made up of the business elite, spearheaded by the conservative Los Angeles Times and The Merchant and Manufacturers Association with the Los Angeles Police Department to do their bidding. Class conflict between the "Socialist Left" and the "capitalist oligarchy" revolved around a fairly constant set of issues throughout the first half of the twentieth century. For the Left, the right to organize unions and the desire to secure adequate social provision for all citizens were paramount. For the Right, the open shop and unfettered profit were of overriding importance.

The strengths of Radical L.A. are many. It very usefully synthesizes previous Los Angeles political history that has focused more singularly on biographies of leaders or histories of organizations/institutions within either the Left or the Right. On the Left, examples include Upton Sinclair and his "End Poverty in California" campaign for Governor, or the socialist philanthropist John Randolph Haynes. On the Right examples include Pacific Electric streetcar/real estate magnate Henry Huntington, or owners of the Los Angeles Times, Harrison Gray Otis, Harry and Norman Chandler. Stevens' approach allows for a more complex explanation of the degree to which L.A. city politics were driven by the dynamic interactions between Left and Right. Another strength is that Stevens contextualizes these local political struggles within the histories of larger scale political movements in California (at times making useful comparisons to the stronger Left political traditions of San Francisco) and the nation.

Stevens is notably thorough in his explanation of the leaders and organizations of both camps. Stevens' attention to the Left, carefully detailing the ideological jockeying, and directives from labor unions, Socialist and Communist leadership that determined the goals of and outcomes of political activity is perhaps the most significant contribution the book makes to Los Angeles historiography. Stevens corrects the perception that Los Angeles was only a stronghold of conservatism. For Stevens the predominantly white labor/Left that he focuses on throughout most of the book constitutes a less known "progressive political tradition" (310) in L.A. history. Its recovery provides a foundation for future scholars.

When it was a central issue to the political struggles over municipal government in Los Angeles, Stevens perceptively attends to issues of race, drawing from recent scholarship on the history of African American and Mexican American Los Angeles (but much less on Japanese American or Chinese American Los Angeles), especially during the 1930s and 1940s. Stevens' argument is that the class struggle which defined Los Angeles politics during the first half of the twentieth century was replaced by civil rights struggles and politics of race after 1965. While Stevens is right to point out that non-whites were a demographic minority and were almost totally excluded from the political affairs of the city by organizations and leaders on the Left and the Right, this narrative leaves out the extant histories of the political efforts of leaders and organizations from...