WOBBLY HISTORY

A polemic by Art Hopkins towards Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a one-time IWW organizer who became involved with the Communist Party USA. Originally appeared in the Industrial Worker (January 13, 1940)

Don’t know why, lately I’ve been picking on old, old Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, once called a “child wonder” but who now can appropriately be called an “old age wonder”. And it is a wonder that one individual can change so completely. It’s almost as amazing as Mussolini’s turn to fascism.

What gets me now, is that Gurley has the gumption, the audacity in her column appearing in the Sunday Worker of December 24, 1939 to quote part of the IWW Preamble and say “The words of the old IWW Preamble come to my mind, more familiar to me that a Christmas carol: ‘There can be no peace as long as hunger and want are found among the millions who make up the working class and the few, who make up the employing class have all the food things of life” These words might be very familiar to Gurley Flynn but she doesn’t believe it or she is so hynotized with commizarism that she things she believes it.

It Hurts

Somehow it hurts to hear Gurley Flynn quote the IWW Preamble – it’s almost as bad as hearing Harold L. Varney quote the IWW Preamble, and say it’s familiar to him.

I remember long ago, when I was still a kid, my ambition was to meet up with a rebel girl like Gurley Flynn. I remember even writing an epigram in a book I gave a birthday gift to a young lady, “The world needs more Gurley Flynn’s and Emma Goldman’s”

I must apologize to Emma Goldman for using Gurley’s name in the same sentence with her’s.

Perhaps, it is wrong for an individual much younger to criticize an older person. But be that as it may, here goes;

What surprises me, Gurley Flynn, is that you, who have been reared in a tradition of struggle and direct action, of revolutionary industrial unionism, have stayed so long in the Communist part. Perhaps it’s because you have changed, or did you have dreams that you could be a commissar here in the United States for Soviet Russia? Or perhaps you have turned practical, and have found some kind of paying position within the ranks of the Bolsheviki and for the sake of the dollar are continuing to as a tool in a political machine.

IWW Versus C.P.

Surely you cannot suggest that the Communist party has anything in common with the IWW. And the part of the Preamble you quote: “There can be no peace…” remember the time your comrades were speaking of United Front; there was peace between those classes for the party. And you were part of that party.

“There can be no peace…” yet the Soviet Union has made peace with a ruthless, barbaric ruling class in Germany.

“There can be no peace…” yet the party has done its utmost to break up the IWW, and the party supports the CIO and AFL as against the IWW and the former two believe that there can be peace between the working class and the employing class. And you are member of that party.

Gurley, you write in your column: “…my sympathy goes out tot he poor people, struggling desperately in a rich, fertile, productive country like the USA, to provide food, warmth, cheer and joy for their little ones on at least one day of the year…Better than even the sweetest Christmas carol would be a fighting American slogan that the earth and the fullness thereof belongs to the people everyday. 1940 is the year, to make the good fight to give American back to the Americans. What a grand Christmas stocking full that would be for the children.”

Do you really believe that Gurley? I doubt it! Your actions don’t prove it!

Transcribed by Juan Conatz