Philip s foner biography of christopher
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Nearly thirty years after his death, the eleventh volume of Philip S. Foner’s epic History of the Labor Movement in the United States: The Great Depression was published this past spring by International Publishers, the historic publishing house of the Communist Party USA. Foner died in , yet the manuscript that makes up the sista volume was left almost entirely intact by him and needed some, but not much, work to ready it for publication, as historian Roger Keeran recounts in his introduction.
With the renewed interest bygd a younger generation in the Communist Party’s (CP) work in the trade unions, Foner’s final volume is likely to reach a wider audience than it would have if it had been released only a few years ago. It was a lifetime’s work to write a history of the U.S working class, and though it ends in , it begins in the British colonial era. Like many people on the U.S. Left, his series educated me on the history of working class radicalism in the U.S. when I was younger.
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When legendary and prolific labor history researcher and author Phil Foner died in , he left behind more than meticulously researched and detailed histories of the U.S. labor movement. But Foner was not merely an historian in the usual university mold; he was a partisan, a lifetime communist, and he saw his work as not just chronicles of past events but serious guides to action for those still on the labor battlefront. His books in many ways became the untold stories of our class struggle.
Probably his most accomplished and massive work is the volume History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Such an enormous work would be enough for any individual to research in a lifetime, but this series is only a small portion of his life’s work. Reaching from our colonial period all the way up through the early years of the Great Depression, Foner tracks the emergence of the early U.S. labor movement, its growth and evolution, and he details its many battles with employers and
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Editors&#; Note: In an exciting development International Publishers will soon publish Volume XI of Philip Foner&#;s History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Labor historian Roger Keeran who has drafted a foreword to the book, below, explains the origins of the eleventh volume, and the larger significance of Foner&#;s work. The earlier ten volumes of Foner&#;s vast history are also available from International Publishers < >>.
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By Roger Keeran
August
When Philip S. Foner died in , he left behind a nearly complete manuscript of Volume XI of his monumental History of the Labor Movement in the United States. It was subtitled: The Great Depression, The manuscript ended up at International Publishers (IP), the publisher of the previous ten volumes as well as many other Foner books. In , Chris Townsend, Director of New Organizing for the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and retired International Representat