Pages from a Worker's Life

by William Z. Foster

A memoir by a leader of the American Communist Party, and a contribution to the history of left-wing trade unionism in the United States.

Genres: Labor, History, Nonfiction, Politics

316 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Labor organizer and Marxist politician. Joined the Socialist party in 1901, later became a Wobbly, Syndicalist, and Communist. Three times a presidential candidate of the Communist party.

Reviews

[P.J. Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is America as seen by a migrant worker in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is hard to believe that any one man could survive all this adventure, but Foster speaks with an authority that could come only from first-hand experience. Work camps, strikes, union organizing, life in prison, hoboing in the West, gales at sea off Cape Horn, it is all here, rip-roaring adventure in every chapter. These were the experiences that formed his political opinions. A member of unions and leftist political parties, he became the presidential candidate of the Communist party in 1924, 1928, and 1932.

Strongly influenced by Vladimir Lenin, he studied working class conditions in Europe and praised the USSR for its advances in living standards and for delivering “a shattering blow to Hitler.” He despised Social Democrats and reformist Socialists in Germany for surrendering to Hitler without a fight. The 1970 edition covers half a century of history, from 1890.