In the Mirror – Communists, Steel, and Ideology in Western Pennsylvania, 1941–1952 Part 2

Abstract

Phillip Bonosky, writer, steelworker, and union leader belonged to the Communist Party USA for 75 years. He maintained a strikingly unique journal documenting his experience. His stance during the early post-World War II anti-Communism, during which he was blacklisted and his sister was persecuted is therein presented. His reflections reveal much about the role of Communists in the labor movement in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio during the mid-40s. As a Party organizer in Canton, Ohio and in Pennsylvania’s McKeesport, Duquesne, Homestead, Monessen, and Braddock, he contributed his efforts to strikes, protests and other work at the grassroots. Central is his response to the demise of “Browderism,” named for Party leader Earl Browder, whom Bonosky had adamantly supported. Bonosky’s devastating self-interrogation of his swallowed-whole acceptance of Browder’s projection of the amelioration of class conflict under capitalism thus obviating the need for a Communist Party – forms one of the journal’s many unique features.