In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • "In the Interest of Democracy": The Rise and Fall of the Early Cold War Alliance between the American Federation of Labor and the Central Intelligence Agency
  • Arch Puddington
Quenby Olsted Hughes , "In the Interest of Democracy": The Rise and Fall of the Early Cold War Alliance between the American Federation of Labor and the Central Intelligence Agency. Bern: Peter Lang, 2011. 204 pp. $55.95.

Even as the membership and political influence of organized labor in the United States continue a steady decline, the trade union movement's role during the Cold War remains a subject of intense and occasionally combustible debate. To its critics, labor made a bargain with the devil by collaborating with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in opposing the suppression of unions in Europe and elsewhere that were under Communist influence. Others, however, are convinced that American labor merits credit for having stood resolutely against a totalitarian movement whose principal objectives included the extermination of independent trade unions.

The subject of Quenby Olmsted Hughes's study is the early period of partnership between the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the intelligence community. During the period covered in this study (1946-1954), American labor was divided into two competing federations. The AFL, the larger of the two, was dominated by craft unions, avoided alignment with political parties, and was wary of the left. Its rival, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), was younger (it was launched in the late 1930s), led by the newer industrial unions, and strongly tied to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Hughes points to several reasons for the AFL's willingness to work with, and accept money from, the government in an anti-Soviet alliance. First, the AFL had consistently rejected the European pattern of trade union development whereby unions would function as appendages of parties of the left. Samuel Gompers, the federation's dominant personality during the first half of the twentieth century, was especially suspicious of the socialists and Communists who gained influence in union affairs. He regarded them as irresponsible dilettantes who were prepared to use labor as cannon fodder in the class struggle.

Second, the AFL was disturbed by Communist tactics in takeover campaigns against U.S. unions and feared that the movement's ruthlessness would destroy democratic trade unionism in fragile postwar societies.

Finally, there was the role of Jay Lovestone. Lovestone had been a leading personality in the American Communist Party during the 1920s, only to be purged by Stalin himself for acts of defiance. Lovestone emerged from the political wilderness as a wily and relentless anti-Communist who had taken on the mission of thwarting the party's ambitions toward labor. Lovestone was a bare-knuckle faction fighter, and the tactics he resorted to were often indistinguishable from those employed by his Communist enemies. At war's end, Lovestone had a position with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, whose leader, David Dubinsky, was a fervent anti-Communist internationalist with influence in the AFL.

Labor was initially drawn into the Cold War by Communist success in destroying democratic union movements in Eastern Europe and the growing fear that Stalin [End Page 228] intended to use Communist unions in Western Europe as a Trojan Horse against democracy. U.S. officials were particularly concerned about the increasingly destructive role played by the Confédération Générale du Travail, the Communist-controlled French union federation, which had staged a series of strikes aimed at, among other things, thwarting the delivery of Marshall Plan goods. Officials in Washington turned to Lovestone and his deputy, Irving Brown, another veteran of radical politics with anti-Stalinist views. Working through an entity called the Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC), Lovestone and Brown succeeded not only in ensuring the continued flow of Marshall Plan goods but in denying the Communists a monopoly over French labor.

Although the CIA was impressed by labor's exploits in France, the intelligence agency and labor had an uncomfortable relationship almost from the start. Part of the problem was cultural. Lovestone and Brown were Jews from radical political backgrounds who, despite their anti-Communism, remained wedded to left-wing perspectives...

pdf

Share