Teamster Bureaucracy

by Farrell Dobbs

The last of four books on the 1930s strikes, organizing drives, and political campaigns that transformed the Teamsters union in Minnesota and much of the Midwest into a fighting industrial union movement. Written by a leader of the communist movement in the U.S. and organizer of the Teamsters union during the rise of the CIO. Indispensable tools for advancing revolutionary politics, organization, and effective trade unionism. Teamster Bureaucracy tells how the rank-and-file Teamsters leadership organized to oppose World War II, racism, and government efforts -- backed by the international officialdom of the AFL, the CIO, and the Teamsters -- to gag class-struggle-minded workers.

Genres: Politics, Labor

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1977

Reviews

[Brenmlaws · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a really excellent sum up of the era in militancy and outlines the tragedy well. There's a bit of overlap with previous entries from Dobbs, but it's an excellent look into how WWII squeezed out so much space for radicalism.

[Shaun Richman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really about the Teamsters, but about the SWP's Smith Act trial.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the final volume of the 4-part Teamster Series. The three prequels are Teamster Rebellion, Teamster Power, and Teamster Politics (Teamster Series) by Farrell Dobbs.

It is largely concerned with events after the Socialist Workers Party asked Farrell Dobbs to leave his job as union organizer and become full-time labor secretary for the SWP. This did not bring peace between Dobbs and Tobin. Roosevelt had made Tobin the head of labor organizing for his presidential campaign. Roosevelt already had plans to use Tobin to combat the Socialist Workers Party, while he himself was getting the Smith Act in place to use against them.

The SWP was the main anti-war force inside the unions during World War II. This wasn't a fight against fascism like many recruits thought, but yet another inter-imperialist war, like the first one. A war against fascism with a segregated army, with Blacks denied the right to become officers, with Japanese Americans in concentration camps, and friendly relations with Francisco Franco's clerical-fascist regime, which had defeated the Stalinist-engineered popular front government. With alliances with similar groups in Greece, Portugal, and elsewhere?

No, I don't think so. The SWP defended the Soviet Union against German imperialism despite the Stalinist mis-leadership. It also supported the fight of the colonial peoples (all of them) for liberation. And it supported class struggle everywhere. Useful for understanding this book is another book, Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial,
which is the testimony of SWP founder James P. Cannon at the treason trial. He, Dobbs, and 16 other defendants were convicted under the thought-control Smith Act.

Today, many members of the Democratic Socialists of America are promoting the idea that Franklin Roosevelt, just like them, was a democratic socialist. So that's what a democratic socialist is-- someone who jails revolutionary socialists. The Stalinists also supported our prosecution--were they democratic socialists too?