Review of From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor: A Collective History of the International Socialists, edited by Andrew Stone Higgins (Haymarket, 2026)
Some young radicals are still pondering how they should relate, personally and collectively, to the labor movement. Should they try to become agents of workplace change while serving on the staff of local, regional, or national unions? Or should they organize “on the shop floor” — in nonunion shops or as unionized teachers, nurses, or social workers? And then seek elected rather than appointed union leadership roles?
A few years ago, delegates to a national convention of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) narrowly passed a resolution favoring the rank-and-file route. Some DSA members have joined the Rank & File Project, which supports this approach “to fighting for a better world from the bottom up.”
Fifty years prior, ’60s leftists pondered the same options before launching their own reform efforts, both within the labor bureaucracy and as challengers to it. Some had the foresight to transition from campus and community organizing to union activism in health care, education, and social work where college degrees were helpful and job security good.
Other former student radicals — under the (not-always-helpful) guidance of various left-wing sects — opted to become blue-collar workers in trucking and telecom, Midwest auto plants and steel mills, and West Virginia coal mines in the 1970s. But in the decade that followed, deregulation, deindustrialization, and global capitalist restructuring produced enormous job losses and industrial contraction.
Radicals who made a “turn toward industry” often lost union footholds they had struggled for years to gain. Many ended up back on the academic track, retooling as teachers, lawyers, or pro-labor college professors. Others became community organizers, public sector union activists, labor educators or staffers, and in some cases even…
Auteur: Steve Early
