[Marxism] BOOK REVIEW: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzochi

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Labor Party never did get off the ground, for reasons
well-worth discussing in some leisurely forum, but it never
got off the ground. It did provide some discussion space at
various times and places for those who favored a working
class break with the Democratic Party to advance discussion
of that importand and necessary point of view. 

Most working class people in the United States continue to
think in individual and individualistic terms. They do not
think in class terms away from the workplace. The continued
prevalance of things like individual home ownership, and of
hopes for individual solutions, from gambling to lotteries,
from religion to substance abuse and compulsive consumerism.

A look at Mike Davis's turgidly-written but provocative book
PRISONERS OF THE AMERICAN DREAM provides a good foundation,
in my view, for an understanding of why the Labor Party did
not get off the ground. There simply was never enough of a
groundswell of support for a break with the Democrats within
the organized labor movement.

The notion that it was all due to a failure or a betrayal
of leadership by the union officers and staff, sneeringly
referred to as "the bureaucrats", has been shown by times
passage to have been wrong. Yes, of course, the leadership
of the working class and of the labor movement has been 
tied to capitalist politics perhaps at least since the time
of Debs' 1920 presidential campaign, conducted from prison,
in which he received a million votes. Yes, of course, such
groups as the Communist Party have been committed to reform
-- that is, to remaining within -- the Democratic Party all
the way back to 1936, with the brief exception of during the
Henry Wallace campaign of 1948.

But something more basic, more fundamental, and in the final
analysis more influential was been even more decisive, in my
opinion. These included the concessions made to the working
class under the Roosevelt administration. (This was, by the
way, why presidential term limits was imposed in the USA
by the Republican Party after Roosevelt's death in 1945.)

The crumbs of empire, both in a direct sense as the literal
crumbs of empire, and and in an indirect sense, in that the
rulers of the United States provided a higher standard of
living for the people of the United States as a counterweight
and a counter-model to the dreaded threat of another model,
that provided by the Soviet Union, and the other states not
part of the capitalist world. Though those states had many
profound problems, and socialists today would hardly want 
to look at them as the models for how a socialist society 
can be constructed, they did have important experiences we
can all learn from if we study them attentively.

As the very social fabric of the United States comes even
more asunder, let's hope that working people and their 
allies among all of those oppressed by capitalist society
will seek new and qualitatively superior ways of making
their voices heard and their interests felt in politics.


Walter Lippmann
Havana, Cuba

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The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Book Talk: Les Leopold, The Man Who Hated Work and
Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi

Time: 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Tamiment Library on the New York University campus. The
address is 70 Washington Square South, 10th Floor (West
4th Street between LaGuardia and Greene Streets), New
York, NY 10012. Tel: 212-998-2630.

An Appreciation Of the Labor Party's 'Founding Brother'
Reviewed by Bill Onasch Labor Advocate Online
http://www.kclabor.org/an_appreciation_of_the_labor_par.htm


We don't do a lot of book reviews. This is our first of a biography.
There are some good ones of earlier labor/political leaders such as
Eugene Debs, John L Lewis, and a recent release of one about James P
Cannon. But over the last several decades there hasn't been much
material to work with. One can imagine how exciting and inspiring
would be the life story of Lane Kirkland, Ron Gettelfinger, or Andy
Stern. But when I heard a biography of Tony Mazzocchi was in the
works I could hardly wait to get my hands on it. I thank the folks at
Chelsea Green Publishers for furnishing me a review copy.

My few personal encounters with Tony were within the Labor Party
Advocates movement, during the last several years of his life. But I
had heard much about him over the years, always associated with
important, progressive struggles. I had already pegged Tony as the
most far sighted, class conscious American union leader of the
post-World War II era. This new book reinforces that conviction

Within the labor movement there are quite a few who recognize the
indispensable role Tony Mazzocchi played, while serving as the
legislative director of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers (OCAW), in
getting OSHA passed. Many know of his involvement with the struggle
at Kerr-McGee that claimed the life of Karen Silkwood--immortalized
in film by Meryl Streep. He became identified with the ups and downs
of the fight for single-payer health care.

Fewer are aware of his probing pioneer work in building labor
alliances with the civil rights, environmental, student, antinuclear
and antiwar movements. And too few are aware of his final major
project, the launching of the Labor Party.

Such a figure presents a real challenge to a biographer. Even the
most exceptional men and women who affect history are complex humans
like the rest of us. Tony pulled off some amazing victories in his
nearly six decades of dedication to the labor movement-he also made
his full share of mistakes. Revered by many, respected by most, he
was by no means a saint in his personal life. Drawing a fair, rounded
picture of this remarkable leader was far from easy--but Les Leopold
gets the job done.

Leopold writes,

"Tony was a big-picture organizer who couldn't sit still. All the
time I knew him, he traveled the country incessantly, crusading for
universal health care or a labor party-leaving too little time to
spend with his six children from two broken marriages. He would start
ten different projects at once, tossing the details around like
confetti while others swept up behind."

The biographer was a major contributor to both the projects and the
sweeping up. Leopold was one of a group of young people recruited by
Mazzocchi in the Seventies to put their intellectual skills at work
in rebuilding a class struggle labor movement. One project was the
Labor Institute where Leopold served on the staff, and later as
director, for over thirty years. Over those decades he collaborated
closely with the subject of his book and got to know him personally
as well.

While not exactly an "official" biography, Leopold clearly had the
confidence of Tony and this helped him to gain interviews with
numerous family, friends, collaborators-and even some adversaries who
had to grudgingly respect Mazzocchi. Their comments offer valuable
insights into both the thinking and character of Tony Mazzocchi.

But Leopold gives us much more than personal recollections and
anecdotes. The reader gets a bonus history lesson as he situates
every phase of Tony's tumultuous life in the broader social,
economic, and political context. Among these topics:

The final battles of World War II, and the liberation of
concentration camps, which a teenage Mazzocchi saw first hand.

The great post-war strike wave in 1946.

The 1947 passage of Taft-Hartley, and its passive acceptance by most
mainstream labor leaders.

The Communist Party's support of the Henry Wallace campaign in the
1948 presidential election.

The purge of the "red unions" from the CIO.

The McCarthyite witch-hunt.

CIA involvement in American unions-including Tony's.

The mass civil rights movement of the 50-60s.

The Vietnam war and the student radicalization of the Sixties.

The rise of the modern environmental movement.

The emergence of what's come to be known as Globalization.

And much more. Living up to his subtitle, Leopold examines not only
the life but the times of Tony Mazzocchi.

This book is, of course, not for everybody. It's not going to be
snapped up at airport gift shops. But for anyone committed to the
labor movement, or any of the other movements for social change, it
is a "must read." Once you start you'll continue not because you
"must" but because it is both educational and fascinating.

Tony was discharged from his European combat service in the Army in
time to see the greatest labor upsurge in American history. All the
pent-up demands and grievances suppressed during war time erupted in
to massive, militant, and mostly successful strikes.

His initial views of this turbulence were shaped by family and
friends who were in or around the Communist Party-which at that time
had significant numbers of members, and leadership positions, in much
of the union movement Tony was urged to go in to industry to advance
the class struggle and he landed a strategic, good paying job at a
Ford assembly plant. Tony never adjusted to the hard work and boredom
and, after being laid off in a few months, decided that would end his
career in auto. While recognizing the value of such work, and
respecting those who did it, he never concealed his personal aversion
to such drudgery. He had GI benefits to fall back on and he used
them.

Tony, in fact, didn't hold down a truly steady job until 1950 when,
again at the urging of CP friends, he went to work at the Helena
Rubinstein cosmetic plant, then located in New York City, soon to
move to suburban Long Island. That proved to be a long gig indeed as
Tony rose quickly in the union there.

There's no doubt his Brooklyn CP friends and family circle were
helpful in launching Tony in to what blossomed in to a promising
situation at Rubinstein. Their best attributes of pursuing militant
trade unionism, and unflinching opposition to racism, helped shape
Tony's long view. But Tony never joined the party and soon diverged
from the party line on many strategic and tactical questions. He
staunchly opposed red-baiting but he kept his own counsel as an
independent socialist. Over the years he collaborated with a wide
range of political allies.

Tony's first major project in local union leadership was something
quite relevant to today's sorry state of collective bargaining--a
successful campaign to eliminate a previously imposed two-tier wage
structure. This was the first of numerous victories that strengthened
union solidarity, put more money in members pockets-and made Tony a
very popular guy.

Local 149 was to be his base through thick and thin throughout his
career. Tony organized this modest sized local of initially 500
members into a dynamo within the New York labor movement and the
international union. They provided militant solidarity pickets to
other unions on strike. Their mobilized membership resurrected a
dormant Democrat Party on the Island and became acknowledged
"players" in politics both in the city and the suburbs. Leopold's
detailed documentation of these varied struggles makes compelling
reading.

Tony's early outlook on electoral politics also flowed from CP
influence. The 1948 Henry Wallace campaign that the CP, and some
unions they influenced, had been so prominent in, proved to be a dud
and serious retribution was meted out by the union bureaucrats that
had helped Truman to survive challenges from both left and right.
Since then the CP has always supported Democrats and aims to build a
progressive wing within that Establishment party.

At one point in the Sixties, after playing a major role in
rejuvenating the local Democrats, Tony was on the verge of running
for congress--but then Democrat leaders explained the facts of life
to him. He could be a "player" but was too radical to represent the
Democrats in a major office. His campaign might jeopardize the whole
ticket. To the great disappointment of his followers, he backed away
from a confrontation with the Democrat machine. It was to be another
twenty years before he initiated a serious campaign for a Labor
Party.

But what a twenty years those were. He helped found SANE-the dominant
peace group in America before the student radicalization around
Vietnam. He hooked up with consumer crusader Ralph Nader on numerous
projects in a close relationship that would last for his life. He
embraced the early environmental movement and sought to both advance
it within the union and to bring worker concerns to
scientist/activists such as Barry Commoner. He took on the nuclear
power industry-which included OCAW employers. And, of course, there
was the victory in establishing OSHA.

Many radicals and militant unionists, in the course of bumping up
against the class collaborationist policies of most mainstream union
officials, adopt an anti-leadership outlook. Many shout "we are all
leaders" which translates in to no leaders. This approach has kept
once promising opposition movements in unions disorganized, with a
blurred focus of the real forces at work. Over time they become less
promising.

Tony often mockingly introduced himself at gatherings frequented by
such radicals as a "union bureaucrat." He demonstrated that it didn't
hurt democracy or militancy one bit if class struggle fighters held
leadership positions. From 1965 on Tony, except for one short period
of "exile," held various national posts in the OCAW-legislative
director, health & safety director, vice-president, one term as
secretary-treasurer. He twice ran for president, losing narrowly both
times. His last position was "special assistant to the president,"
which he held until OCAW's painful absorption by the Paperworkers in
the thankfully short-lived PACE.

During all this time Tony made some mistakes-but never sold out and
never tried to disguise his class struggle perspective. If any thing,
he seemed to become more radical and impatient in his final years. He
recognized as few others did that the unions would not survive
without a broader social and political movement. He chose as his last
big task to try to jump start a Labor Party that could pull together
and give leadership to the many battered fronts of American class
struggle today.

Tony didn't live to see this project through to victory. The Labor
Party was already falling on hard times when he lost out to an
untreatable cancer a few months after the party's 2002 convention. 
It remains to be seen whether this initiative can become the mass
workers party so sorely needed by American workers. But the vision of
such a party is the crowning achievement of Tony Mazzocchi's legacy
to the labor he so loved.


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