Episode 11 of Fragile Juggernaut concerns the Communist Party and its complex role in the creation of the CIO. Andrew and Ben trace the strategic zigzags of America’s far-left, recount their pioneering role in organizing drives, and measure the Party’s own accounts of its politics against the often ambiguous, even contradictory realities of its practice.
Did Communists merely supply the shock troops for someone else’s political ambitions, or did they put their stamp on the CIO, in ways that were durable and lasting? Did their practice of unionism conform to the mainstream of the labor movement, or did it contain the germs of another kind of CIO? What, ultimately, did the CIO do to the Communist Party? We discuss this and more amongst our co-hosts, and with our special guest, the historical sociologist Judith Stepan-Norris, co-author of Left Out and Talking Union (our interview begins around 1:25:00).
Featured music: “The Bourgeois Blues” by Lead Belly; “The United Front” by New Singers; “Our Line's Been Changed Again” by Joe Glazer; “Internationale” by New Singers)
Archival audio credits: Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists (1983)
Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.
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Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, we’ll see a billionaire called before the Senate to answer for his company’s union busting. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, which is 20% off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
In 2026, we’re celebrating 25 years of publishing “Books for Changing the World.” In those 25 years, we’ve helped build critical space and infrastructure for radical ideas and movements on the left to grow. That work of institution-building and popular political education has never been more necessary or more urgent. We need your help to continue to do this work.