Haymarket Originals: Fragile Juggernaut

The sudden end of World War II was met with both exultation and terror. While millions of Americans understood that the killing abroad could come to an end, the fate of the depression economy that had only been revived by wartime mobilization now hung uncertainly in the balance. The saga of demobilization and reconversion, the name for the process of converting the economy back to civilian production and the winding down of military contracts, is the subject of Episode 18 of Fragile Juggernaut: a battle between business interests and a revived CIO social democracy for hegemony over the reconversion process, fought in the backdrop of the largest strike wave in American history.  Buy Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/458-detroit-i-do-mind-dying [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/458-detroit-i-do-mind-dying]

Episode 17 of Fragile Juggernaut concerns the momentous arrival of long-dreaded events abroad that broke US politics out of its political and economic impasse during Roosevelt’s second term: Europe’s descent into fascist war. Foreign policy dislodged the American elite from their indecision over the nature of domestic reform; dislodged President Roosevelt from his indecision over whether to run for a third term; and dislodged the leadership of the CIO from its political cul-de-sac of battling employers at the bargaining table and their own government at the ballot boxes. With Roosevelt’s third term, CIO founder John L. Lewis surrendered his presidency of the industrial union center. In the process, the drift into war dramatically transformed the relationship of the industrial union movement to electoral politics and the Democratic Party—and of union leaders to the Depression society now energized and organized around war production.  Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/505-introducing-haymarket-originals] podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut] and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way. Buy The Tragedy of American Science, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1888-the-tragedy-of-american-science [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1888-the-tragedy-of-american-science] Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts

Episode 16 is the last in our three-episode regional series, offering a view of the CIO from the West Coast. Andrew, Ben, Emma, and Tim discuss what was distinct about the economy of the West: in this underdeveloped imperial context, working-class activity followed the supply chain, from coastal ports to inland warehouses and processing centers to the fertile valleys of California. This distribution-transportation nexus became a key battleground of jurisdictional disputes with the AFL, only to be scrambled again by an influx of wartime defense spending.  Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/505-introducing-haymarket-originals] podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut] and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts Buy Revolution in Seattle, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/872-revolution-in-seattle

Episode 15 of Fragile Juggernaut is the second of our trio of regional episodes, landing this time in the South. Ben, Emma, and Tim are joined by the celebrated historian Robin D.G. Kelley to discuss the patterns of Southern development, the rich organizational ecology of the region, the strategic misfires of the CIO, and the political and social bases of fascism in America. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/505-introducing-haymarket-originals] podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut] and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way. Buy Class Struggle and the Color Line, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/946-class-struggle-and-the-color-line [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/946-class-struggle-and-the-color-line] Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts

This week our crew at Fragile Juggernaut is delivering our third special bonus episode. Alex, Ben, Emma, Gabe, and Tim converged at Chicago’s Socialism conference to discuss what the CIO can make us alive to in the contemporary labor movement and our conjuncture more broadly. Our series has probed the history of the labor movement of the 1930s and 1940s–detailing its heroism, anatomizing its tragedies, confronting its limits, and rethinking the whole turbulent era of the Great Depression, World War, fascism and antifascism from the vantage point of the mass worker. But the labor movement isn’t something to be memorialized: it’s something we’re building again anew. What can we learn and better understand about the present when we come to terms with the labor movement's past?  Read Andrew Elrod’s “What Was Bidenomics [https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/what-was-bidenomics/]” in Phenomenal World  Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/505-introducing-haymarket-originals] podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut] and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.  Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts