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  • Organic Intellectuals and Working-Class OrganizingThe Case of Sarainne Loewe, 1920–38
  • Nathan Godfried

A teenage, working-class immigrant, Stanley Nowak—later to become a labor union organizer—stood at the corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Paulina Street in Chicago on a Saturday night in 1921. He recalled seeing a "colorful … flamboyant," and "attractive young woman" step onto a soapbox before a large crowd: "She was a dynamic speaker, with dark hair and eyes and a magnetic personality that drew a response from her audience. She spoke of the growing unemployment and the injustices in the economic and social world and invited people to enroll in classes on labor history and economics conducted by the Proletarian party at its headquarters and to attend lectures held in various halls around Chicago." Nowak joined the Proletarian Party soon thereafter.1

The speaker who made this indelible impression was Sarainne Loewe, a rank-and-file organizer active throughout the Midwest during the 1920s and 1930s. Shaped by her immigrant working-class roots, Chicago's labor and radical movements, and the turbulent events of World War I, Loewe embraced revolutionary socialism during the 1920s. By the depth of the Great Depression, however, she had become an advocate for a popular front social movement that centered on industrial democracy, anti-fascism, civil liberties, and civil rights.2 Loewe believed in a radical transformation of U.S. [End Page 37] society via the organization of mass industrial unions and the creation of an independent labor party. Although sensitive to the complicated plight of working women, her emphasis remained on class relations and conflict.

Studying Loewe's activism during the interwar era illuminates the counterhegemonic forces that, in their challenge to America's corporate-capitalist system, recognized the inexorable connection between a "war of maneuver" and a "war of position." The former was the battle for direct economic and political power, which could occur in the workplace, voting booth, or street; the latter was an ideological and cultural conflict aimed at winning over people's hearts and minds.3 In these battles, "organic intellectuals" such as Sarainne Loewe played a central role.

The Italian political economist Antonio Gramsci argued that "every social group" produced its own strata of intellectuals, "which gave it homogeneity and an awareness of its own" purpose. Organic intellectuals fell into one of two groups: "the functionaries of a dominant class attempting to maintain its hegemony, or those of a 'subaltern' class striving to create an alternative" order.4 The former—the intellectual servants of power—provided ruling elites with a holistic assessment of the world's condition as well as a strategy for remedying structural defects, enhancing efficiency, and maintaining the status quo. They legitimized the privileges and inequities of capitalism and tried to convince other social classes of the universality of their world views, strategies, and tactics.5 Intellectuals emerging from the second group resisted and challenged the dominant structure, exhibiting "a critical consciousness of the world, a desire to question and to change existing conditions, and a sense of collectivity with others in working to restructure society."6 Organic intellectuals, thus created, disseminated and safeguarded "distinct forms of consciousness" reflecting their class origins or allegiances and the particular historical environment in which they emerged.7 Reciprocity between ideas and action, theory and political practice, remained central to the work of organic intellectuals. Given how theory and practice interacted, Gramsci recognized that the identity of organic intellectuals was not static, but "always relational and dynamic." Specific historical conditions helped to produce organic intellectuals and, hence, changed circumstances could lead to alterations in their roles.8 Such was the situation with Sarainne Loewe, whose politics evolved during the interwar era.

Scholars—and society at large—rarely acknowledge the work of organic intellectuals such as Loewe. Little is known about her life: she was married [End Page 38] twice and had no children; she left behind no correspondence or memoirs. Only a handful of studies written about the 1920s and 1930s mention her by name.9 Yet telling the story of Loewe and other neglected individuals, as Jill Lepore has suggested, can serve "as an allegory for broader issues affecting the culture as...

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