William Z. Foster

William Z. Foster

William Zebulon Foster (born February 25, 1881 in Taunton , Massachusetts , † September 1, 1961 in Moscow ) was the longtime general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and union leader.

Foster was a staunch syndicalist and a member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World . He led the organization of the packaging industry during World War I and the 1919 steel strike before joining the Communist Party in 1921. While directing his efforts towards party work with organized workers, he largely subordinated his own political views to the policies of the Comintern .

Childhood and youth

Foster left school at the age of ten. Three years later he started working in a factory. For the next ten years he worked at a fertilizer factory in Reading , Pennsylvania and Jacksonville , Florida , as a railroad track worker and sawmill in Florida, as a tram driver in New York City , as a lumberjack and dock worker in Portland , Oregon, and as a sailor . In 1905 he owned a farm in Oregon for about a year. On the side, he hired himself there as a miner, shepherd, sawmill employee and railroad worker before finally giving up the farm entirely.

Entry into politics and trade union work

Foster joined the Socialist Party of America in 1901 . In 1909 he was expelled because he was active in the left wing of the party in Washington, DC . He then joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He also changed his middle initial from "E" to "Z" while living in Tacoma to avoid confusion with another William E. Foster who also lived and worked there.

William Z. Foster became a well-known figure within the union and in 1911 he took part in an international workers' conference in Budapest as its representative . However, his politics removed him from the IWW . After traveling around Europe in 1910 and 1911 , he became a syndicalist and criticized the IWW for not working in the existing unions. He urged American leftists to join the AFL unions before opposing unions were formed, as the IWW intended. He also denounced electoral politics as a dead end, stifling the revolutionary enthusiasm of these groups by channeling their energies into the pursuit of office with all the compromises that it entails. Foster lost the fight, soon left the IWW and founded his own organization, the Syndicalist League of North America (SLNA).

The politics of the SLNA (direct action at the lowest level, which leads to a worker-led government of society without being restricted by bureaucratic structures) bore a great similarity to the anarchist thinking of these days. This is no coincidence, as Foster not only lectured to anarchist groups and associations, but also became a close working partner of Jay Fox , an anarchist with roots in the Chicago labor movement. He married Ester Abramowitz, who belonged to an anarchist collective in Washington. Other SLNA members included Tom Mooney , who was martyred for workers for allegedly setting off a bomb in a 1916 Preparedness Day parade , Earl Browder , an accountant and union activist in Kansas City, and Foster's opponent in the 1916 election Chairman of the US Communist Party 20 years later and James P. Cannon , a member of the IWW and one of Foster's allies in the internal clashes in the CPUS, until he was expelled from the party for advocating Trotskyism . However, the SLNA was never an effective force and disbanded in 1914.

Foster went his own way and became a union representative at a local body for the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen in Chicago. He continued his syndicalist campaign, this time through the International Trade Union Educational League (ITUEL), while in 1915 he received a position as an organizer with the AFL. His syndicalism led him to disregard any criticism from more conservative union leaders. In his view, organizing workers was a step towards dismantling capitalism . ITUEL was not trying so hard to take power in the organizations in which its members were active, but it wanted to steer them in a more progressive direction.

Foster softened his political views somewhat at the time: he did not oppose the entry of the United States into the war, as did Eugene V. Debs and other personalities associated with the IWW. Instead, he even helped sell war bonds in 1918. Foster also held back when the government arrested hundreds of IWW activists and sentenced them in 1918.

Nevertheless, Foster remained politically active. The Chicago Federation of Labor, led by John Fitzpatrick , was a nest for a great number of workers 'issues: the campaign for the release of Tom Mooney , plans to form a workers' party, and most importantly, programs to organize thousands of unskilled urban workers Packing houses, steel mills and other mass production plants.

Organizing the packaging workers

Unions tried to organize packaging operations decades before the outbreak of World War I : the Knights of Labor union made organizational attempts among workers in the 1870s and 1880s, while the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen found more support among the many different ethnic groups living in this industry worked. In both cases, the unions were driven out of the companies that were then in the hands of some large and powerful firms.

However, the war changed that. The need for meat increased dramatically during the war, while recruitment and difficulties in importing workers from Europe resulted in cuts, reducing the number of people willing to act as scabs. In addition, the federal government had an interest in maintaining production, which should run unhindered and avoid the interruption that a strike of 50,000 packaging workers would have brought with it. It was a particularly propitious time to organize these workers on an industrial basis when Foster said that "the gods really do fight on the side of the workers".

Before the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) could organize these workers, however, it had to work out the competing claims of the various unions claiming to represent different parts of the industry. This seemed a better way to go than founding a completely new organization in which the other unions would quickly have found themselves struggling over responsibilities. Foster had the idea of ​​creating a workers' council that would bundle all the interests of the participating unions in a large umbrella organization that would have the opportunity to represent the industry as a whole. He received the support of his union, the Railway Carmen . The workers' council was founded in July 1917, with the support of representatives from all guilds (mechanical engineers, electricians, carpenters, coopers, office workers, plumbers, engineers and firefighters). Since this organization was merely an association created for the purpose of organizing workers, it did not have the authority to conduct collective bargaining for all represented professional groups as a whole. Still, it was an important step towards industrial union work. Foster eventually became spokesman for the workers' council.

Another factor posed a difficult barrier to organizing packaging workers: many of the unions on the workers' council excluded African Americans from membership. Thousands of African-American migrants from the south had come into the packaging industry to work, noting above all that their employers were primarily interested in their own wealth. The fact that the unions either excluded them or showed no interest in their representation was in the background. The workers' council promised membership in the unions directly linked to the AFL.

Although he himself was convinced that preparing for a strike was a mistake and he was sure that the leadership of the AFL agreed, he continued to organize the workers as if a strike was imminent. Workers largely voted in favor of a strike in 1917, and more moderate leaders like Fitzgerald used the threat of strike as a great asset in negotiating with the government and employers.

The administration of President Woodrow Wilson wanted a peaceful solution and put pressure on employers to agree to mediate the issues. The debates were wages, working hours and the recognition of the union. Ultimately, the workers' intermediaries were able to enforce an eight-hour working day and noticeable increases in income. As a result of this success, the number of members of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters doubled . The improvements were short-lived, however. Because the mediators failed to convince employers to recognize the unions, many workers believed that the government, not the workers' council, was responsible for the improvements in incomes and working hours.

Presidential candidate

In the elections of 1924 , 1928 and 1932 Foster was the candidate of the CPUSA for the office of US president. In the first two candidacies, he did not get more than 0.1 percent; In 1932 he got 0.3 percent of the vote. In 1930 Foster was also a Communist candidate in the New York gubernatorial election . The victorious Franklin D. Roosevelt received around 1.77 million votes, Foster landed in fourth place with 18,034 votes, well behind the candidate of the Socialist Party, Louis Waldman (100,444 votes).

Books and brochures by William Z. Foster

• Outline of the history of the world trade union movement from its beginnings to 1955 , Tribüne Verlag, Berlin 1960.
• Outline of the political history of both America , Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1957.
• History of the Communist Party of the United States , Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1956.
• World capitalism in decline , Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1954.
• Defend America by smashing Hitlerism , Workers Library Publishers, New York 1941.
• The Railroaders' Next Step: Amalgamation , The Trade Union Educational League, Chicago 1922.
• The Great Steel Strike And Its Lessons , 1920, Kessinger Publishing (print on demand) ISBN 1-104-91399-2 .
• Syndicalism , self-published, Chicago 1913.

Books on William Z. Foster

• Barrett, James R., William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism , University of Illinois Press, 1999, ISBN 0-252-02046-4 .
• Johanningsmeier, Edward P., Forging American Communism: The Life of William Z. Foster , Princeton University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-691-03331-5 .
• William Z. Foster - organizer and propagandist of the American working class , Josef Lawrezki, Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1978.

Individual evidence

1. ^ "The Railroaders' Next Step: Amalgamation" , William Z. Foster 1922, scanned version of the original in the Internet Archive of the American libraries (pdf or online).
2. ^ "Syndicalism" , William Z. Foster 1913, scanned version of the original in the Internet Archive of the American libraries (pdf or online).

Web links

• Literature by and about William Z. Foster in the catalog of the German National Library

• William Z. Foster in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• The Political Graveyard