(Download) "Reuther the Red? (Controversies/Controverses)." by Labour/Le Travail # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

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Title: Reuther the Red? (Controversies/Controverses).
Author : Labour/Le Travail
Release Date : January 22, 2003
Genre: Business & Personal Finance,Books,
Pages : * pages
Size : 229 KB

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VICTOR G. DEVINATZ, author of "Reassessing the Historical UAW," has a good grasp of the historiography, such as it is, on the perennial question: "When, if, and why was Walter Reuther a Communist?" (1) There is indeed much evidence, both direct and circumstantial, which might lead a historian to assert that this key figure in labour history and midcentury political liberalism held membership in the US Communist Party (CPUSA) during the months that followed his return from the Soviet Union late in 1935. This would put him in the CPUSA from November or December 1935 until sometime in the second half of 1936, or even the early months of 1937 when Reuther played important roles in the effort to organize General Motors, Ford, and the Detroit West Side shops. My own research leads me to believe that Reuther worked very closely with the Communists during this period, but he did not actually join the party. In building the Detroit auto locals he was friendly, even intimate, with key Communists like Bill McKie, Maurice Sugar, and Wyndham Mortimer. He attended Communist-sponsored events, made a point of listening to Earl Browder on the radio, and spoke for Communist groups like Friends of the Soviet Union. In 1973 the late Martin Glaberman first published the crucial evidence linking Reuther to "at large" membership in the CPUSA in 1935 and 1936. Bill McKie may well have collected the dues, because the two spent hundreds of hours together trying to recruit Ford workers into the fledgling UAW. But weighing against these memories -- and according to Glaberman, an actual CPUSA membership card -- was Reuther's longstanding connection to the world of Detroit socialism, including political and social comradeship with men and women of intense anti-Stalinist conviction. (2)

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