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.

Setbacks and successes

Foster profited in a way from this debacle: he was able to persuade the Comintern to recall Pepper, with whom he had foght over questions of tactics, and the dissolution of the FF-LP was a setback for the Charles Ruthenberg - Jay Lovestone faction, which was largely made up of foreign-born workers and represented the vast majority of the party membership. Forming an alliance with a smaller faction led by James P. Cannon, Foster was able to control the majority of the party's leadership in 1923 and again in 1925.

Related Topics:
Charles Ruthenberg - Jay Lovestone - James P. Cannon - 1923 - 1925

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The internecine struggles between the two camps was, however, disturbing to the Comintern, which sent a representative to oversee the Party's 1925 convention. A telegram from the Comintern directed the Party, after a vote which Foster had won decisively over his opponent, Benjamin Gitlow, to install Ruthenberg as general secretary of the Party. Foster challenged the telegram, stormed out of the meeting, and attempted to appeal to the Comintern itself, over the objections of his opponents and even his allies in the Cannon faction, who would not accept the possibility that the Comintern could be wrong.

Related Topics:
1925 - Benjamin Gitlow

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Foster did not succeed in reversing the Comintern's overturning of his election, but did obtain some concessions: his supporters were given control of the Trade Union Committee within the Party and the Comintern recognized trade union work as the most important sphere of activity for the Party. While Foster thought that he had obtained support for effective independence for TUEL, however, he was mistaken.

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The Party's trade union work in this era, however, went from one disaster to the next. Rivalries within the CPUSA led to the loss of the 1926 New York dressmakers' strike, as neither the Foster or Ruthenberg faction wanted to appear to sell out by accepting a settlement that the Party's members within the strike leadership had recommended. As a result the Party, which had once held leadership positions within every major New York City local of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union other than the cutters local led by David Dubinsky, was wholly routed.

Related Topics:
1926 - International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union - David Dubinsky

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The Foster and Ruthenberg factions likewise blamed each other for the defeat of the 1925 strike of textile workers in Passaic, New Jersey, in which the Ruthenberg leadership supported an overt Party role in the strike and what amounted to creation of a dual union. When it appeared that the leadership's communist leanings were an obstacle to negotiations, TUEL handed the strike over to the United Textile Workers, which was unable to make any more progress than the CP leadership had.

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Foster also played a major role in the revolt against John L. Lewis' leadership in the United Mine Workers of America. John Brophy, a leader of the UMWA in Western Pennsylvania, ran against Lewis under the banner of "Save the Union". Brophy might have won if the ballots had been counted honestly, but they were not. Even so, the dissidents retained substantial prestige within the union and were able to establish themselves as a union administration in exile during the 1927 coal strike, running a separate program of strike relief that allowed the strike to continue when the Lewis Administration proved unable to do so.

Related Topics:
John L. Lewis - United Mine Workers of America - John Brophy

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These efforts were leading in the direction of formation of a rival union, something that Foster rejected but which appeared to be the only possibility left to the Party. As signals from the Comintern indicated the impending change of policy in the Third Period, when the American party was directed to abandon its work within the AFL in order to form separate revolutionary unions, even former supporters of Foster, such as Earl Browder, began criticizing Foster for his reluctance to form a dual union of miners. As it turned out, Foster's halting efforts to establish a separate power center within the UMWA had this effect in any case, as Howat, Brophy and his allies dropped out of the "Save the Union" movement as the CP's leadership in it became apparent. The Party founded its own National Miners Union in 1928.

Related Topics:
Third Period - Earl Browder - 1928

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