William Z. Foster

William Edward Foster (February 25, 1881 - September 1, 1961), who renamed himself as William Z. Foster, born in Taunton, Massachusetts, was the long-time General Secretary of the Communist Party USA and trade union leader. In many ways a syndicalist at heart, he passed through the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, as well as leading the drive to organize the packinghouse industry during World War I and leading the steel strike of 1919 before joining the Communist Party in 1921. While he continued to focus on the Party's work within organized labor, he largely subordinated his own political views to the policies declared by the Comintern throughout his years in and out of leadership of the Party.

Entry into politics and trade union work

Foster joined the Socialist Party of America in 1901 and was a member until he was expelled in 1909 for activity in a left wing faction of the party in Washington state. Foster then joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1909, when he took part in one of the IWW's "free speech fights" in Tacoma, Washington. He changed his middle initial from "E" to "Z" while in Tacoma in order to avoid confusion with another individual named William E. Foster who lived and worked there.

Related Topics:
Socialist Party of America - 1909 - Washington state - Industrial Workers of the World - Tacoma, Washington

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Foster became a prominent figure within the union, serving as its representative at an international labor conference in Budapest in 1911 and a contributor to its papers. Foster's politics, however, were moving him away from the IWW. He became a committed syndicalist after touring Europe in 1910 and 1911, and criticized the IWW for not working within established unions or within the workshop in any event. He urged American leftists to enter the AFL unions, rather than establish rival unions, as the IWW had tried to do. He also denounced electoral politics as a dead end that smothered the revolutionary ardor of these groups by channeling their energies into pursuit of office, with all the compromises that entails. Foster lost the battle, however, and soon thereafter left the IWW and formed his own organization, the Syndicalist League of North America.

Related Topics:
Budapest - 1911 - Syndicalist - 1910

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The SLNA's policies — direct action at the shop floor level leading to workers' governance of society, but without the dead weight of bureaucratic structures — bore a strong resemblance to the anarchist thinking of the day. That is not coincidental, since Foster was not only lecturing at anarchist groups and settlements, but became a close working associate with Jay Fox, an anarchist with roots in the Chicago labor movement, and married Ester Abramowitz, who had belonged to an anarchist collective in Washington state. Among the other members of the SLNA were Tom Mooney, who became a labor martyr while in prison for allegedly throwing a bomb at a Preparedness Day parade in 1916, Earl Browder, an accountant and union activist in Kansas City and Foster's rival for the Presidency of the Communist Party twenty years later, and James P. Cannon, a member of the IWW and one of Foster's allies in the internal warfare within the CPUSA until he was expelled for Trotskyism. The SLNA, however, was never an effective force and folded in 1914.

Related Topics:
Anarchist - Chicago - Washington state - Tom Mooney - 1916 - Earl Browder - Kansas City - James P. Cannon - Trotskyism - 1914

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Foster took his own advice and became a union business agent for a local of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen in Chicago. He continued his syndicalist campaign, this time through the International Trade Union Education League, while obtaining a position as a general organizer for the AFL in 1915. His syndicalism led him to drop any criticism of the more conservative union leaders; in his eyes, organizing workers was a step toward dismantling capitalism. The ITUEL did not so much seek to take power in those organizations in which its members were active, as to steer them in a more progressive direction.

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Foster also tempered his politics at this time: he not only did not publicly oppose the United States' entry into the war, as Eugene V. Debs and figures associated with the IWW had done, but helped sell war bonds in 1918. Foster also remained quiet when the government arrested hundreds of IWW activists, convicting them en masse in 1918.

Related Topics:
Eugene V. Debs - 1918

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Foster did not, on the other hand, become wholly apolitical. The Chicago Federation of Labor, headed by John Fitzpatrick, was a nest for a number of labor causes: the campaign to free Tom Mooney, plans to launch a labor party, and, most importantly, programs to organize the thousands of unskilled workers in the City's packinghouses, steel mills and other mass production industries.

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