The last American Pope
A long time ago there was a man who struck deals with the mob and businesses rallying men behind him rivaling the total state.
It was a cold morning in January 1936. Men gather around a fire barrel, warming their hands. Wooden picket signs are lined up against a brick building. A 5’5’’ Irishman walks through the striking workers shaking hands and readying them for the fight ahead. He has no fear of what’s to come. He is a veteran of the labor wars. He has been arrested 10 times in the past month he knows there is a good chance he will be in a hospital or a jail cell by the evening.
He stands on top of a wooden crate and smiles as he asks “Hey boys can anyone still feel their fingers?” The men laugh. He gives a speech about workers’ pay and hours. He tells them “They are entitled to their share of the profit they create.” At the end of his speech, he yells “Let’s march on this damn brewery and show them we mean business.”
The men walked through the slippery ice-covered streets up to the Cadillac Brewery. They arrive and begin stopping the trucks going in and out of the docks. Jimmy yells encouragement from the front asking for the dock workers to join the strike. This lasted throughout the day till suddenly a group of men in trenchcoats with pipes began to gather across the street from the strikers. Jimmy keeps his eye on them as he continues to harass dock workers and drivers alike. The managers yell for the strikers to go home and throw bottles at the striking drivers. The police soon arrive and try to get Jimmy to tell his men to leave. He refuses stating he has every right to collective bargain and demand better wages for his workers. A truck pulls up with a bedload of cops and regularly dressed men. Jimmy and his strikers turn to face the men as the police run at the striking workers. As the police begin hitting the striking drivers with clubs and fists the police all of a sudden find themselves being hit in the back of the head. The men cross the street, (all Sicilian mafia enforcers) join in and take the side of the workers. The police retreat as the boss of the brewery finds himself with no deliveries coming in and no products going out. The mobsters turn and walk back across the street. The Capo standing against a car locks eyes with Jimmy as Jimmy gives him a thankful nod. The Capo tips his hat in response. The owner facing financial ruin decides it’s time to negotiate after being left with no other options.
Jimmy Hoffa made a deal with the local mob to not unionize their drivers in exchange for protection. Jimmy was a different type of union leader. He was not a communist or a Trotskyite. Jimmy was a worker who saw the world through power dynamics he lived in reality and hated all ideas from communism to Christianity.
Jimmy never drank or smoked was faithful to his wife but cursed like a sailor and would often holler obscenities back and forth with his union brothers laughing. He would wait out in the cold in the 1930s for a truck to go by and knock on their door and try to convince them one by one to join the Teamsters.
The tactics of negotiating during the 30s and 40s were often bombing cars and trucks of business owners till they came to the negotiating table. The law said, “You needed to register under the Labor Relations Board.” This was Detroit though and the laws were more of a loose guideline. Then as in now, it was a dangerous, poor, lawless city, filled with corruption, and gangsters. Jimmy was smart, quick on his feet, and fearless, so he quickly adapted to his conditions. His star rose fast and by 1936 he was the de facto leader of his local and by 1942 he was director of the Federation of Labor of Fulton County. He established a state-wide teamsters union to negotiate intra-city contracts to get better wages and prevent wage depression from weak locals negotiating bad contracts. He established the Central States Drivers Council to negotiate wages for all over-the-road drivers. Jimmy would boycott businesses that had non-union workforces, forcing companies that weren’t part of trucking to join the Teamsters. He started boycotting the entire South and making sure no Southern drivers could make deliveries or pickups in the mid-west till their companies unionized.
When Jimmy Hoffa began organizing in 1933 there were 75,000 members. When he went to jail in 1967 there were 2.7 million members. When Jimmy went to jail 33% of the American workforce was unionized. Today that number sits around 10%.
Jimmy Hoffa was a social force outside of the government who held sway over millions of workers and millions of dollars in pensions. This could not stand in a country that was responsible for keeping the world’s trade routes open and being the world’s police.
In 1957 a young Robert F Kennedy decided that having an entire governmental structure outside of the states control was unacceptable. Like King Henry VIII he decided that there should be no institution that holds sway in his land that is not part of the governmental structure. This man cloaked himself in righteousness and went to war with the Teamsters and the Mob. By the time the Kennedy brothers were done The power and sway of organized labor and crime were destroyed. The entire labor movement was vilified as corrupt, antiquated, and parasitic. We today as workers have still not had a raise since 1970.
We in neo-reaction often times talk about needing a king. What we often fail to understand is the power dynamics that made kings tolerable. When we had the good kings of olden times what kept them in line wasn’t just the lack of technology in communication and transport. It was also the fact that they had competition for power within their kingdoms. We have not lived in a state with a competing force in a long time. The British created a total state in the 1500s which forced all other nations to compete with a government not tethered by the catholic church. Before this the king couldn’t just order a war whenever he wanted with another catholic country. The Pope could sway other nations and their leaders to defend land or cause upheavals and revolutions in a warring state. Having competing power centers such as a great labor leader causes the government to have to negotiate with its people properly. A state cannot just act unilaterally without repercussions. This is no different than the power of a pope. When you have a man or an institution that holds sway over the way men transact it forces a government to have to negotiate with them before it acts in any part of the nation. Pope Hoffa, I kinda like the ring to it, don’t you? If you enjoy the ideas of power dynamics and understanding how the world actually works and operates maybe you should subscribe…