There Is No Such Thing as Spontaneous Worker Organizing

Nelson Lichtenstein

Well, some might say it was a “spontaneous” action, but I will not use the word spontaneous. I want to say a quick word about spontaneity. I will not use it. I think all social historians should ban the word spontaneity. It does not exist. Nothing is spontaneous.

“Spontaneous” is a word that people who are on the outside use to explain something they can’t understand because they don’t know what’s going on inside, or that the upper class uses to explain what’s going on below. All social activity, whether radical or conservative, is part of a world of knowing, thinking and planning. There were groups of radicals, groups of unionists, who’d been fighting the foreman, fighting the company for months or years. Finally, in late 1936, early ’37, they said, “The only way we’re going to win is to have a sit-down strike.” From the point of view of a New York newspaper man, or even from that of John L. Lewis on top, it might appear spontaneous, but it wasn’t.

I think all social historians should ban the word spontaneity. It does not exist. Nothing is spontaneous.

But when these sit-down strikes happened, Lewis, instead of repudiating them, supported them. The Wagner Act is passed in 1935, and it has a mechanism for holding elections, negotiations, and signing contracts. All the companies, and the Republican Party for that matter, were saying, “The Wagner Act is unconstitutional. We will not obey it.” So the sit-down strikes were, in a sense, designed to force the companies to obey the existing law as it was written. That was the rationale for it. “Okay, we will do something illegal, but that’s because you’re doing something illegal. And once you’ve stopped resisting unionization and resisting the Wagner Act, then we will cease our sit-down strikes.”

In auto, they began in a few plants in Detroit —…