This book examines the
transformation of the American labor
movement from its founding as an organization that rejected socialism
and accepted the private enterprise system, to its present position as an increasingly liberal
movement with declining influence and membership. The author was the executive director of the Young Peoples Socialist League for three years and the special representative for the United Federation of Teachers in New York City. He is now a financial and investment adviser. A summary of the book follows.
Over the past several decades the American labor movement has undergone a radical
transformation. As recently as twenty-five years ago, those who called themselves traditional liberals (as opposed to New Politics liberals) saw organized labor as the only hope for resisting the onslaught of the New Left against the nation's economic system, social culture, and foreign policy. The New Left and then the McGovernite wing of the Democratic Party took aim at the union movement, regularly denouncing labor leaders as defenders of America's capitalist, racist, and imperialist establishment.