from NATIONALISM AND SOCIALISM
Marxist and Labor Theories of Nationalism to 1917

by Horace B. Davis

Monthly Review Press, 1967, pp.167-173

Chapter 7

Nationalism, Imperialism and the
Labor and Socialist Movements in the United States

THE UNITED STATES as a country of heavy immigration was related to the nationalist movements of Europe in a special way. Not only ideas came across the ocean, but men, whole groups of them, who organized themselves after their arrival into societies using the language and continuing the traditions of the homeland. Especially significant were, in the second half of the 19th century, the Germans. Their workers' circles, political and economic as well as social in character, formed the first centers of Marxist discussion and agitation in the country. Some of their leaders, such as Wilhelm Weitling, Joseph Weydemeyer and F. A. Sorge, who kept up a correspondence with Marx and Engels, were pioneers in the American union and socialist movement.

In the 1880's, the German anarchist groups took the lead in several important battles such as the eight-hour movement in Chicago. The majority of the Haymarket martyrs were of German extraction; the leaflet announcing the meeting on the evening of May 4, 1886, was printed in German as well as English. The industrial union of the brewers was organized by the Germans in Milwaukee so strongly that it was able to influence municipal politics for many years; Milwaukee became famous for its Socialist administration, the backbone of whose support was the brewers' union.

After the turn of the century the German national groups had lost their revolutionary orientation, but new Marxist groups were organized on a nationality basis among the immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. It was the language federations which supplied a large part of the membership and finances to the Socialist Party in the period 1911 to 1917, although the leadership and the bulk of the membership were home-grown.

The old-timers who think of the European nationality groups in the Socialist and Communist movement recall them in their latest phase, when they were already marked for the discard. Such people easily forget that in their day these groups combined an active socialist consciousness with a continuing interest in their respective "home" countries. The European nationality differences meant little to the typical American-born worker, but their influence in building the Socialist movement should not be forgotten. The spark of altruism and dedication without which no social movement can flourish was by no means absent from their proceedings.

The American labor and socialist movement contributed to the development of the Marxist theory of nationalism by giving expression to a deep-seated popular opposition to imperialism. The trade union movement, incredible as it seems today, went through a phase of active opposition to the imperialistic activities of the United States. Samuel Gompers, President of the AFL, in the 1890's also repeatedly voiced organized labor's opposition to war. When the Venezuelan boundary dispute raised the specter of possible war between England and the United States, he said:

Who would be compelled to bear the burden of war? The working people. They would pay the taxes, and their blood would flow like water. The interests of the working people of England and the United States are common. They are fighting the same enemy. They are battling to emancipate themselves from conditions common to both countries. The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world.'

Gompers and the AFL leadership campaigned against imperialism, by which they understood the annexation of foreignterritory. During the 1890's the proposal was advanced for the United States to annex the Hawaiian Islands. Organized labor voiced strong disapproval, and the first attempt at annexation was defeated in the U.S. Senate.

Gompers was interested in the problems of Cuba, which was struggling in the 1890's to throw off the Spanish yoke. The 1896 Convention of the AFL expressed hearty sympathy to the Cuban people in their striving for independence, and called on the President of the United States to recognize the belligerent rights of the Cuban revolutionists. Before the Cubans had secured their freedom, the United States went to war with Spain, promising the Cubans that they would be granted their independence. After the U.S. had won the war, Gompers called for the prompt implementation of this promise.

To be sure, Gompers's motives with regard to Cuba were mixed. The Cigarmakers' Union to which he belonged was in competition with the labor of the Havana cigarmakers. Cuba was the chief source of imported U.S. tobacco and finished cigars. "It was important for us," wrote Gompers later, in his autobiography, "that we should spread the gospel of unionism in Cuba. But a labor movement was practically impossible under Spanish rule."

The union movement was by and large opposed to the U.S. going to war with Spain, but supported the war after it had begun—on the Cuban issue. The Railway Conductor said in its issue of May 1898: "There can be no question as to the right of this country to intervene between Spain and the land she had so horribly devastated." And in the same month the Locomotive Engineers Journal added its opinion: "We shall feel assured that there will be no faltering, and that there will be an end to Spanish misrule in Cuba."

The Knights of Labor were at this time still active, though not nearly so important as the AFL. The Knights even upbraided President McKinley for not going to war sooner—on the Cuban issue. Unions which did not specifically pick out Cuban freedom for endorsement nevertheless endorsed the war after it had started; thus the Coast Seamen's Journal of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific said in an editorial (April 27, 1898) : "Having got into a war, no matter how or why, we want to win out as speedily as possible.'

But labor leaders were far from accepting without criticism the publicly announced war aims of the McKinley administration. I. D. Chamberlain of the Knights of Labor, who as General Worthy Foreman was second in the organization only to General Master Workman Henry A. Hicks, warned the membership already in May, 1898, that it was the intention of Congress to make the pillage of Cuba legal.? He also feared that there might be created in the United States a great standing army which would mow down strikers.

Eugene V. Debs denounced the war while it was in progress, a step which practically no other labor leader dared to take, though some privately agreed with Debs. The Monthly Journal of the International Association of Machinists hinted darkly after the war that the "capitalistic system" had been responsible.9

When it was proposed to annex not only Puerto Rico but the Philippines as well, organized labor moved into open opposition. Imperialism became for a time (1898-1900) a burning issue. It was taken for granted by "imperialists" and "anti-imperialists" alike that Cuba would be given a somewhat circumscribed independence. The battle raged over the fate of the Philippines, and to a lesser extent of Puerto Rico.

The 1898 convention of the AFL went on record against imperialism. Samuel B. Donnelly of the International Typographical Union endorsed the U.S. acquisition of Hawaii and called for the annexation of the Philippines, for conventional nationalistic reasons: to keep pace with colonial Great Britain. But the prevailing sentiment at the convention was opposed to colonial annexations on the ground that this would involve competition from cheap native labor. The resolution adopted read as follows:

WHEREAS, as a result of the war with Spain a new and far-reaching policy, commonly known as "imperialism" or "expansion" is now receiving the attention of the National Government, and if ratified by the United States Senate will seriously burden the wage-workers of our country, thrust upon us a large standing army and an aristocratic navy, and seriously threaten the perpetuity of our Republic, therefore be it

RESOLVED, that this convention offers its protest against any such innovation in our system of government, and instructs our officers to use every honorable means to secure its defeat.

Only three delegates voted against this resolution.

With labor in the campaign for Philippine independence were ranged (said the Nation in an editorial) all the leading authorities on statecraft and political morality—men of the caliber of Carl Schurz, Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, Samuel W. McCall, Senator Pettengill of South Dakota, and many others, joined later by Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain). An Anti-Imperialist League was formed in Boston on November 19, 1898, with Gompers as a vice-president. In October 1899 a convention in Chicago attracted delegates from nearly every state in the union. It was estimated that 150,000 persons signed the card for membership in the League. Gompers was a vice-president of the national Anti-Imperialist League, and worked actively in its campaign.

The 1899 convention of the Knights of Labor passed a resolution opposing (1) the subjugation of the Philippines by military conquest and (2) the extension of U.S. territory beyond the limits of the American continent. "It is clearly the interest of all wage-earners to oppose imperialism root and branch," wrote Ernest H. Crosby in the American Federationist for September 1900.

Gompers shared the general view that America's productive capacity was outrunning the ability of American markets to absorb the output, but thought that it was ridiculous to attribute the limitation of domestic markets to the saturation of America's consuming power, when so many millions of Americans were "workless, ahungered and ragged." He advocated extending American commercial might, but for other reasons; he thought that U.S. economic penetration of foreign territories would contribute to "the attainment of the highest pinnacle of [American] national glory and human progress." He agreed with Carl Schurz in condemning "the barbarous notion that we must own the countries we are to trade with," but did not oppose economic imperialism. His economic analysis was more realistic, though less moral, than that of the American Socialists.

If he opposed colonialism as such, then known as "imperialism" or just "expansion," this was primarily in order to forestall an erosion of American standards such as might take place if the U.S. acquired colonies. He opposed the annexation of Puerto Rico "with its semi-nude people," and especially of the Philippines, whose "half-breeds and semi-barbaric people" were, he contended, "perhaps nearer the condition of savages and barbarians than those of any islands possessed by any other civilised nation on earth."

The danger to U.S. labor, as he saw it, was partly economic, through the admission of colonial products to the American market in competition with American-made goods, and partly political. In a debate with F. B. Thurber of the U.S. Export Association, Gompers said that the AFL had to oppose annexation because countries becoming part of the United States would share the same legal system as the home country, and laws applied to native labor might set precedents for restrictive legislation against American workers. The AFL feared the results that might follow if insular labor were allowed free immigration to the U.S. Colonial expansion, finally, would violate the American principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. It is most interesting to find that the AFL in its stand on early American imperialism reproduced the position, and some of the arguments, that we found the Council of the International using with regard to Ireland in 1866-1870.

Gompers, in consistence with his idea of protecting American labor from the competition of the labor in the new dependencies, interested himself personally in the condition of labor in the islands, including Hawaii. He claimed at least some of the credit for abolishing "involuntary servitude" in Hawaii and for the establishment of a certain degree of trade-union freedom in Cuba and Puerto Rico. The American military in Cuba had started out in the traditional imperialist style. In the fall of 1899 a general strike for the eight-hour day was broken when General Ludlow threatened to arrest and imprison all the leaders. Gompers personally went to Cuba and protested vehemently. Some years later, direct American rule of Cuba was somewhat reluctantly withdrawn.