THE "EX" SYNDROME
Clark, Jack
ONE EXPLANATION FOR THE OBSESSIVE anticommunism of AFL-CIO foreign policy is the unusual congregation of ex-leftists in its Department of International Affairs (DIA). For more than three...
...NED director Gershman has funded several SD/USA members to advise unions on foreign policy...
...He was formerly the executive director of the SD/USA-influ- enced League for Industrial Democracy...
...Nominally part of the AFL-CIO, the FTUI funnels NED monies to "democratic" labor projects abroad...
...The executive director of the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), Eugenia Kemble, is also an SD/USA member and the sister of SD/USA vice-chairman Penn Kemble, who heads the pro-contra lobby PRODEMCA...
...From there they played a small but important role in the early civil rights movement, helped revitalize the League for Industrial Democracy, and argued within the New Left for a policy of anticommunism...
...ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, is currently president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is a major funder of AIFLD...
...AFT president Albert Shanker has maintained close relations with SD/USA for many years and is widely considered a spokesman for its political line within the AFL-CIO...
...Today, a surprising number belong to a littleknown organization of ex-Troiskyites, Social Democrats, USA (SD/USA...
...And Joel Freedman, a frequent delegate to meetings of the Socialist International who is married to SD/USA national secretary Rita Freedman, is working under a NED grant as international affairs advisor to Bricklayers president Jack Joyce...
...One of them, Don Slaiman, a rank-and-file labor militant with experience in the civil rights movement, landed a job on the AFL(10's national staff...
...As the movements of the early 1960s were building, and moving in directions which the Socialist Party and the League found unwelcome, Schactman's followers achieved a crucial breakthrough...
...The A. Philip Randolph Institute, which links the AFL-CIO to the black community, and Frontlash, which performs a sinular service with college students and younger workers, are both dominated by SD/USA members...
...Trotskyism, who, ironically, was expelled from the Communist Party by General Secretary Lovestone in 1927...
...One is longtime SD/USA leader Tom Kahn, who succeeded Lovestone as director of the DIA...
...Penn Kemble was a founder of the Democratic Party's Coalition for a Democratic Majority and at times is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think-tank...
...Donald Slaiman, deputy director of the AFL-CIO's Department of Organizations and Field Services and SD/USA vice-chairman, is another well-placed member...
...Although he never served in the Department of International Affairs, he held several senior staff positions and established enough credibility with George Meany and the top leadership to bring his comrades on board...
...Carl Gershman, former SD/USA executive director and former deputy to U.N...
...After attempting for decades to organize a revolutionary current opposed to both major powers, Schactman led his band into the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas in the late 1950s...
...Its strength resides in the effectiveness of its bureaucratic network a curious irony, since Schactman's critique of Stalinism focused on the bureaucracy's usurpation of power...
...Dozens more hold positions in unions ranging from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to the United Auto Workers (UAW...
...Jack Clark, a former member of the Young People's Socialist League, is currently active in the Democratic Socialists of America...
...The organization's profile may soon rise, how- ever, since Don Slaiman, the man who built SD/USA's inroads into labor, is due to retire from the AFL-CIO and become SD/USA president...
...Despite its influence, SD/USA maintains a low profile and has fewer than 1,000 members...
...SD/USA's influence is significant...
...These people were disciples of Max Schactman, one of the founders of U.S...
...Dozens of its members hold staff positions in the DIA or its affiliates, including AIFLD...
...The organization has also made itself felt in neoconservative political circles...
...FfUI funding decisions are made by Eugenia Kemble, Lane Kirkland, Tom Kahn and AFL-CIO Secretaiy-Treasurer Tom Donahue, who is married to another SD/USA member Rachelle Horowitz...
...For more than three decades, foreign affairs at the AFL and then the merged AFL-CIO was dominated by former Communist Party leader Jay L.ovestone expelled from the party in 1929 and his ex-communist protege Irving Brown...
...And the pages of Commentary have long been open to the organization's leaders...
Vol. 22 • May 1988 • No. 3
