LITMIR.BIZ

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Unions/Independent Organizations” conceded too much to the worst aspects of the “Crisis” document. This didn’t necessarily mean the “workerists” were opposed to trade union work, however. Since their whole approach involved direct immersion in working-class struggles, and because these struggles often took place within the unions, many of the people in this faction took a position on stewardship and the trade unions that was strikingly similar to that outlined by “The Crisis.”

In the summer of 1974, less than one year after the departure of the “Crisis” faction, the “workerists” produced their own lengthy critique of STO, a paper known as “The Head is a Balloon.” The title was a reference to the overly inflated sense of self-importance that the signers attributed to the leadership of the organization, and to its pretensions to leadership of the workers’ movement.181 This problem was only exacerbated by the “Crisis” split, since it led to a situation where, as the report to Big Flame puts it, STO “is now dominated by one or two heavies,” especially Hamerquist and Ignatin.182 “The Head is a Balloon” accused STO of “being dogmatically Leninist, and called for the dissolution of the group into a federation of autonomous work groups.”183 This restructuring was intended to serve both an ideological purpose, opening the group to the independent political perspectives of the workers themselves, and an organizational purpose, sidelining the power of the informal hierarchy. Once again, the organization was plunged into conflict, and again the outcome was a split. The cumulative result was a devastating reduction in size and influence for a group that one year before had been one of the leading left organizations in the Chicago area, at least in the arena of workplace organizing. The acrimony of these two consecutive rifts also drove away a number of individuals who were frustrated with both the slow pace of movement building and the infighting that had come to characterize STO.

In the end, perhaps a half-dozen members remained in an organization that had not long before numbered close to fifty. In a particularly poignant scene, Noel Ignatiev recalls a walk along the Indiana dunes in the summer of 1974 with Don Hamerquist and Carole Travis, the remaining founders of the organization.184 They reminisced about the experiences they had shared over the previous five years, and contemplated an uncertain future. While things had not gone as they had planned, none of them wanted to throw in the towel. They dedicated themselves to the rebuilding the Sojourner Truth Organization from the ground up, a task that they managed to accomplish in a little more than a year, as described in Chapter Four. One basis for this regroupment was a stronger emphasis on theoretical development and ideological agreement. This agreement was based on a number of principles, but one of the most important was the opposition to white supremacy as viewed through the theory of white skin privileges. An examination of the origins and development of this concept comprises the next chapter.

80 Most of the information in this section, including the two direct quotes, is derived from an unsigned article entitled simply “Wildcat at Western Electric,” Insurgent Worker, Spring 1974, 14–17, in author’s possession. Author interview with Noel Ignatiev, January 28, 2006, provided additional context.

81 “Wildcat at Western Electric,” 16. Noel Ignatiev remembered almost exactly the same phrasing during an interview in January, 2006.

82 “Western Electric: We Shall Bury You,” Insurgent Worker, May 1971, 2.

83 At the time, several members of STO were lawyers, and as a result the group exerted significant influence on the local NLG chapter, and the Labor Committee in particular. Author interview with Kingsley Clarke, July 6, 2005.

84 “Wildcat at Western Electric,” 17.

85 The classic work on Marx’s theory of history is G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2000 [1978]). A valuable critique from the left of Marx’s theory (written prior to Cohen’s book) can be found in Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987), especially pp. 15–54.

86 For simplicity’s sake, but contrary to some Marxist terminological approaches, I will use “working class” and “proletariat” interchangeably, and will use “industrial” as an adjective attached to either phrase to indicate factory workers in particular.

87 Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France 1848–1850, (1850) “Part I: The Defeat of June 1848,” available online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/ch01.htm (accessed September 15, 2011).

88 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867), Volume 1, Chapter 32. Available online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm (accessed September 15, 2011). This passage can be found on page 929 of the Penguin edition (1990), which translates “trained” instead of “disciplined.” Nate Holdren originally pointed me to this quotation.

89 V.I. Lenin, “On the So-Called Market Question” (1893). Available online at www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1893/market/06.htm (accessed September 15, 2011).

90 For a thoughtful and idiosyncratic history of the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions, see Murray Bookchin, The Third Revolution, Volume 3 (London: Continuum, 2004).

91 Antonio Gramsci, “Parties and Masses,” unsigned editorial in L’Ordine Nuovo, September 25, 1921, in Gramsci, Selections From Political Writings, 1921–1926 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 72.

92 For more on the French events, see Daniel Singer, Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968 (Boston: South End Press, 2002 [1970]), as well as Andree Hoyles, “The Occupation of Factories in France: May 1968,” in Ken Coates, Tony Topham, and Michael Barrett Brown, editors, Trade Union Register (London: Merlin Press, 1969). This latter essay was reprinted by STO in the early seventies as a pamphlet entitled General Strike: France 1968 (Chicago: STO, n.d.).

93 The single best source on the Hot Autumn remains Robert Lumley, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy, 1968–1978 (London: Verso, 1990). Much of the text of this book is available online at http://libcom.org/history/states-emergency-cultures-revolt-italy-1968-1978 (accessed September 15, 2011).

94 This use of “workerism” must be distinguished from the more common English usage as (more or less) a synonym for syndicalism. The latter usage was for a time in the early seventies much more common within the New Communist Movement, and within STO. I will use “operaismo” to describe the former, and “workerism” to describe the latter.

95 On the positive response of US leftists to the Italian Hot Autumn, see Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals

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