My studies have provoked in me a keen interest in the Trade Union Education League, and its founder, William Z. Foster. The T.U.E.L. was a rank and file movement in the 1920’s to organize millions of workers in the basic industries along industrial lines (that is, in “one big union”). Where this differed from the Industrial Workers of the World was a dogged insistence on working within the existing AFL craft unions and “amalgamating” them.
Foster seemed to be a tireless organizer as well as a savvy strategist, but his own beliefs eventually became muddled by the Stalinist party line so that the “real” Foster, in his later years, is something of an enigma.
I sought out Foster in his own words. The only book of his that remains “in print” is “Pages From a Worker’s Life,” from International Publishers. One of the great things about International is that the cover price remains the asking price no matter how old the printing is, so that this fine book can still be had for $3.25. (One of the other great things about International is that the adventurous reader can travel to that storied building on 23rd Street, up the rickety manually operated elevator, to their offices to shop.)
“Pages” does not contain much of Foster’s theoretical or polemical writing, nor much of a standard biography. This seems to be outtakes from his other books; delightful stories and anecdotes that fit nowhere else. It’s a brisk and enjoyable read that makes me sorely miss the lack of adventure in my own life. Much of it is hard to believe. His jobbing, hoboing, seafaring and organizing seem to constantly place him in positions where he narrowly escapes sudden death or tortured lynching. Still, it’s not that implausible.
Foster’s ability to reevaluate, correct and criticize his own decisions is refreshing, as is his ability to admit that he misjudged a man, generously providing space to acknowledge the goodness of John L. Lewis, as well as an obscure building trades business agent who turned out to be a dedicated organizer in the 1919 steel strike.
As early as 1912, Foster pioneered the notion that the last thing labor radicals should do is abandon the mainstream trade unions to the bureaucrats and conservatives. He spent many years in the political wilderness as the IWW absorbed much of the energy of the labor radicals of the era. However, when a triumphant Lenin endorsed Foster’s model of “boring from within,” his organization became a cause celibre among the new throngs of Communists. He joined the Communist Party, and joined his cause, and the cause of his organization, with that of the CP. The ranks of both the T.U.E.L. and the CP swelled and their campaigns laid the building blocks of the CIO that was to come.
Years later, Stalin led Foster out of the AFL and back into independent union organizing. Foster remained an apologist for Stalin to his dying day, which makes the search for the real William Z. Foster, much like the search for the real Michael J. Obermeier, that much more intriguing.