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at 02:16:53, subject to the Cambridge Popular Bases of the International Labor Movement303 ism-did not prevent workers from pressing their leaders to support the WFTU at first, but in the latter part of the forties substantially weakened their ability to affect the course of events.The WFTU grew from the conjunction of three major aspects of the mid-twentieth century. British and American workers' involvement in and reaction to these currents largely determined the role they played in world labor in mid-century. The three aspects were: cooperation with the USSR and Communists throughout the world; the bureaucratization of conflict in international institutions; and the inclusion of Third World people as equals in the process. 4 In the United States, the leadership of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had few reservations about cooperating with the Soviets or other Communists after the German invasion of the USSR in 1941. After all, the organization was based on a popular-front coalition of Communists, Socialists, liberals and bread-and-butter industrial unionists. It seemed logical enough to replicate this alliance world wide. The other American union center, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), was not able to prevent the triumph of the popular front internationalism of the CIO. (The importance of the AFL in the mid-forties has been overestimated because it refused to have anything to do with the USSR. 5 ) Despite the CIO's consistent internationalism, a tremendous variety of American working class ideas about world affairs limited the commitment of American workers to international corporatism along the lines proposed by the organizers of the WFTU. The contradictory impulses of American working-class political thinking prevented the development of a unified working class voice on global issues. The one way of thinking which unified them, the ideology of Americanism, did not provide a strong basis for the kind of internationalism promoted by the CIO leadership.In Great Britain, most workers agreed on the shape of the international order they hoped to achieve. Among the great majority of British workers, the USSR occupied a very special position because it appeared to present a model for internal and international transformation. Although they could empathize with people seeking national liberation because British workers Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi
at 02:16:53, subject to the Cambridge Popular Bases of the International Labor Movement303 ism-did not prevent workers from pressing their leaders to support the WFTU at first, but in the latter part of the forties substantially weakened their ability to affect the course of events.The WFTU grew from the conjunction of three major aspects of the mid-twentieth century. British and American workers' involvement in and reaction to these currents largely determined the role they played in world labor in mid-century. The three aspects were: cooperation with the USSR and Communists throughout the world; the bureaucratization of conflict in international institutions; and the inclusion of Third World people as equals in the process. 4 In the United States, the leadership of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had few reservations about cooperating with the Soviets or other Communists after the German invasion of the USSR in 1941. After all, the organization was based on a popular-front coalition of Communists, Socialists, liberals and bread-and-butter industrial unionists. It seemed logical enough to replicate this alliance world wide. The other American union center, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), was not able to prevent the triumph of the popular front internationalism of the CIO. (The importance of the AFL in the mid-forties has been overestimated because it refused to have anything to do with the USSR. 5 ) Despite the CIO's consistent internationalism, a tremendous variety of American working class ideas about world affairs limited the commitment of American workers to international corporatism along the lines proposed by the organizers of the WFTU. The contradictory impulses of American working-class political thinking prevented the development of a unified working class voice on global issues. The one way of thinking which unified them, the ideology of Americanism, did not provide a strong basis for the kind of internationalism promoted by the CIO leadership.In Great Britain, most workers agreed on the shape of the international order they hoped to achieve. Among the great majority of British workers, the USSR occupied a very special position because it appeared to present a model for internal and international transformation. Although they could empathize with people seeking national liberation because British workers Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi
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