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Jim Nolan was in prison the first time surged with dignity. There he met three men who were just as poor and tired as he was, except instead of being distraught, they were working on a plan, and they radiated a infectious sense of hope. They were also communists. On the strength of their presence, he decides to join the Party.
Steinbeck wrote In Dubious Battle in the late 1930s when communism was sneered at as unAmerican but still understood as a viable alternative to capitalism, the Soviets were alien but respected, Hoover was president, and white people were still picking things, as in fruit and cotton.
Jim Nolan joins the party and is sent off with his mentor Mac to incite a strike among 1,000 -1,500 apple workers.
I've always been impressed with the structure of Steinbeck's novels, but I've been putting this one off because I thought that In Dubious Battle would be a simple pro-communist screed, replete with strawmen bosses and virtuous labor organizers.
To my delightful surprise, this novel reins tightly in on three or four working-class characters and shows a slew of problems associated with violence and apathy.
Three owners own the bulk of the valley and hire 1000-1,500 labors every season to pick the apples. In the middle of the season, the owners cut the worker's promised pay such that the workers can't buy food at the company store at the end of the day without incurring more debt.
Jim and Mac successfully coax a strike out of the men.
Here is what Steinbeck does extraordinarily well, he gives Jim and Mac a full complement of deep moral deficiencies that make them effective labor organizers but really awful people, which makes me wonder if they are effective labor organizers. We root for them because, in the end, they do want all of the working men to be paid well and to get a larger say in their life, but the tactics Jim and Mac are willing to embrace are just as awful. There seems to be very little difference between the mentality of the people who invest capital for a living and the labor organizers, both were willing to look past the individual dignity of the working man in order to achieve a greater good. For the capital invester, that greater good was more money, for the communist organizer, it was a economic revolution for all working men. For both, the working men as a mob were a means to that end, and both were willing to use all the resources in their power, with heartless efficiency, to achieve that end.
Steinbeck portrays reasons not to like any of his characters, but since those reasons are wrapped up in the character's worthy pursuit of a sense of dignity for themselves and their brethren, we accept the strike organizers as people, even if we don't approve of them as good people.
I've been involved to my elbows with organized labor issues, and I don't think I can go along in labor circles too long without running into a handfull of communists, and there is a particular brand of communist I hate. He is usually some inarticulate rube calling for a strike, or a demonstration, or a show of force, and usually doesn't care about the individuals working as individuals, but rather as building blocks to hasten some revolution.
There are different variants of this organizer, some are more attractive than others, and Steinbeck gives a keen insight ways and means of of organizers. In In Dubious Battle the labor organizers fight dirty because they don't have the weapons of the owners, but their willingness to engage in this fight, to manipulate the working men, is what is deeply disturbing about the entire ethos of the labor movement, and Steinbeck hits that on the head.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. _____
As an aside, the novel didn't remind me of to many of the labor problems in modern day America. I think labor issues in America have metastized into a different animal, the book did make me think of the leadership of Hamas.
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