The Mass Workers’ Movement in the Period of Economic Crisis (1929–1933)
The protracted disfunctioning of the economy spurred by the economic crisis and the resultant acute shortages and destitution suffered by millions of working people, coupled with the pro-monopoly elitist policies of the bourgeois government represented the objective base for a new mass popular movement.
The principal form of the labor movement in the period of economic crisis was a movement of the unemployed. This was logical, for the overwhelming majority of the American proletariat had been affected by unemployment to one degree 97 or another. Finding themselves in a particularly disastrous position during the crisis, millions of the unemployed took up the struggle to satisfy their basic needs earlier and more energetically than other groups.
The movement of the unemployed in the USA was the first mass movement of the American proletariat under the leadership of the Communist Party. By December 1929 the CPA leadership, having achieved the complete ideological defeat of right opportunism, worked out a program of action for the unemployed. The Communists mobilized them to struggle for the introduction of state social security benefits, including unemployment relief, and for immediate aid from the federal and state governments and from the municipal authorities. The CPA called for just wages for public work.
The mass movement of the unemployed made its presence felt in the very first year of the crisis. On March 6, 1930 protest demonstrations against unemployment were held throughout the country under the leadership of the Communist Party. Tens of thousands of working people took to the streets of New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburg, Philadelphia and other major industrial centers. The number of demonstrators on this day reached 1,250 thousand. In June 1930, the first National Unemployed Convention was held in Chicago. The convention delegates, who came from all parts of the country, approved the Communist-initiated program of action for immediate aid for the unemployed and for introduction of a federal social security system. The convention established a National Unemployment Council to coordinate the activities of the numerous local councils of unemployed leading the workers’ struggle in the various cities, countries and states. Large segments of the Black population played an active role in the movement of the unemployed.
more....
http://www.leninist.biz/en/1976/HUWWI500/03.3-Mass.Workers.Movement.During.Economic.CrisisThis is how it is done.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
