Nelson Lichtenstein and the Politics of Reuther Scholarship

Abstract

IN THE SUMMER OF 2001, while conducting research in the George Meany Memorial Archives, I came across a curious document. Thorough and meticulous, it detailed a 1939 meeting held in Detroit that identified Walter Reuther as a member of the United States Communist Party (CPUSA). In a subsequent Notes and Documents contribution, Reassessing the Historical UAW, I situated this piece of evidence historically and historiographically and suggested the possibility of revising our understanding of Walter Reuther's politics and rethinking the role of Communists in the early United Automobile Workers (UAW). Nelson Lichtenstein, author of a landmark biography of Reuther, strongly disputes the document's implication that as late as 1939, the UAW leader and subsequent pivotal player in the construction of trade union liberalism was a Communist. I am flattered by Lichtenstein's attention. Although the relevant historical evidence is complex and, in some cases, open to multiple interpretations, I am unconvinced by Lichtenstein's largely negative arguments. Lichtenstein agrees with my assessment of the document's likely source — an adherent of Jay Lovestone spying for Homer Martin's anti-Communist, anti-cio faction of the autoworkers' union. He asserts that the gathering recorded in the crucial document could not have been a meeting of the Political Buro of the CPUSA's National Committee. Lichtenstein instead claims that it was a meeting of the CPUSA auto fraction, the UAW's pro-cio Unity Caucus, or an amalgamation of all three