Red New York - communism

Monthly Review, July-August, 2002 by Joshua B. Freeman

On the panorama of the twentieth century, occasionally a red glow emanated from a city electrified by the culture of the left: red Vienna of the 1920s and 1930s; Moscow, after the Revolution; Weimar Berlin; Paris '68. Midcentury New York, with its Broadway musicals, liberal Democratic leaders, and commercialized mass culture, seems a world apart. "Cultural Capital of the World," some dubbed it, not for its radicalism, but for its embrace of depoliticized modernism--abstract painting, modern dance, jazz, International-style architecture. (1) Yet in its own way, New York in the 1940s and early 1950s had a tangle of left culture as dense as any in the history of the United States.

New York had more than its fair share of first-rank left artists and intellectuals, from Paul Robeson to Arthur Miller to W. E .B. Du Bois. But the strength of New York's left culture rested elsewhere, on the institutional achievements of its working class. New York City's union movement had some one million members, with strongholds in manufacturing, construction, transportation, retail and wholesale trade, and the service sector, and outposts in the public sector, clerical work, the professions, and many of the arts. Left-wing parties had significant influence within the labor movement, which in turn gave them considerable clout in local politics. Left-led fraternal, neighborhood, ethnic, tenant, veteran, and student groups threaded through city life. Repeatedly, they joined with unions and liberal reformers in coalitions to campaign for such causes as affordable housing, cheap mass transit, an end to racial discrimination, full-employment, and international peace. (2) Numerous left-wing magazines and newsp apers, including at least five dailies--the Daily Worker, the Yiddish-language Forward and Morgen Freiheit, the Chinese Daily News (Meizhou Huaqiao Ribao), and PM (founded in 1940 to give voice to the left-wing of the New Deal coalition)--promoted labor and leftist events and disseminated particular ways of seeing the world.

The high degree of political mobilization of the New York labor left in itself represented a kind of culture. In 1945 and 1946, for example, among the events at the 20,000-seat Madison Square Garden were labor-backed rallies demanding that the United States break diplomatic relations with fascist Spain and calling for "World Unity"; a "Negro Freedom Rally"; an International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) commemoration of the 1910 cloak makers strike; a celebration of the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Communist Party; a rally supporting the Fair Employment Practices Committee; another calling for "Big Three Unity for Colonial Freedom"; a "Monster Benefit" to replenish the Uniformed Firemen's Association Death Benefit Fund; a meeting protesting racial violence; another to back striking maritime workers; two Communist Party rallies; and an election rally cosponsored by the CIO. Such events, along with the May Day Parade, marked the pinnacle of a culture of activism that manifested itself in an endless ro und of marches, protests, and meetings.

Political gatherings had instrumental intent, but they also represented a form of expressive politics, an outlet for and affirmation of the intense sociability which characterized much of the city's working class. New Yorkers of modest means, mostly living in the close quarters of tenements and apartment buildings, had scant access to privacy and little opportunity for quiet contemplation. Out of their physical circumstances grew a culture of mutualism and social interaction--clubs, gangs, unions, dances, picnics, boat rides--that shaped Gotham's left culture.

Much of this social and political life was neighborhood based. The Liberal, American Labor, and Communist Parties and the huge Communist fraternal organization, the International Workers Order (IWO), all had neighborhood clubs or branches, many of which served as social centers as well as political headquarters (much like Tammany clubs had long done). In areas with high concentrations of leftists--like Brighton Beach or East Harlem--left-wing language schools, ethnic organizations, youth groups, consumer organizations, musical ensembles, and arts clubs made it possible to live much of one's life within the organizational confines of the left. The left even could offer temporary respite from the city at resorts and summer camps run by the IWO, the Socialists, and unions such as the ILGWU, Furriers, and United Electrical Workers. (3)

Some of the most impressive achievements of New York labor reflected this near-manic predilection for organized activity. Take housing. Between the mid-1920s and the 1970s, the New York labor movement sponsored the construction of 40,000 units of nonprofit cooperative housing, the vast majority of which were built during the twenty years after the Second World War. Together these projects housed more people than the entire populations of Albany, New York or Columbia, South Carolina.

The model for the labor co-ops came from three Bronx housing complexes built during the 1920s by left-wing Jews: the Communist "Coops," the socialist Sholom Aleichem Houses, and the Labor Zionist Farband Houses. The architecturally conventional outer skins of these projects masked bold experiments in the creation of self-contained political communities, rich in educational, social, and cultural activities. Built with many common facilities--auditoriums, libraries, club rooms, and dining areas--the co-ops had numerous sports clubs, music groups, political organizations, cooperative buying schemes, and social events. When the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and other unions began building cooperative housing, they embraced this vision of collectivity that extended beyond the legal ownership of buildings to multilayered resident interaction.