Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring means to ends in a democratic Labor Movement

Eduard Bernstein was not the first to promote a reformist Labor Movement that would follow an “evolutionary” path to social progress. Six years before he published his book Evolutionary Socialism, the American labor leader and longtime head of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers urged unions to be “conservative in methods” and “evolutionary in outlook.” Rather than trying to transform power relations and overturn capitalist authority, labor should concentrate on gaining higher wages, shorter hours of work, and better working conditions. Abandoning his youthful flirtation with socialism, Gompers proposed a platform “around which moderate trade unionists and social reformers might gather to reconcile the interests of labor and employers” (Gompers 1893; Stromquist 2006: 51).