Comradery, Class, and Consciousness: A Case Study in Comradery

Abstract

Recent attempts to save the US labor movement from declining relevancy and membership through social unionism have met with limited results. This work identifies this failure with social unionism's lack of interest in helping members create a robust class consciousness. To this end, I develop the idea of a comrade social bond through engagement with a diverse set of theorists and an intensive comparative case study of two unions during the period of the First Red Scare (1919-1920). I argue that comradery as a strong, disciplined, relationship oriented towards a revolutionary goal can create an environment in which members of unions understand their short-term efforts as part of the class struggle and thus build their class consciousness. My case studies test this theory by carefully demonstrating that a union with this social bond was able to retain members during a period of political repression, whereas a union without this social bond lost considerable membership, which indicates a strong class consciousness in the union with this social bond. Developing this theory holds direct implications for the ongoing struggle of labor unions to retain members, as well as vast potential for further theoretical development of the comrade bond as a method of organizing workers into sturdier unions ready to face the challenges of increasingly authoritarian capitalist systems of rule.