From Comintern to the Council on Foreign Relations: The Ideological Journey of Michael Ross

Abstract

Michael Ross was international affairs director for the American Congress of Industrial Organizations from 1945 to 1955 and for the merged American Federation of Labour—Congress of Industrial Organizations from 1958 until his death in 1963. As such, he played a prominent role in the bitter anti-communist international trade union politics of the day. Ross, however, had been a communist in his younger years. Making use of Ross's own writings and an extensive secondary literature on the politics of the period, this article seeks to describe and explain his ideological journey. It argues that, while there were significant shifts in Ross's politics, there were also underlying consistencies. Specifically, it is contended that Ross retained a consistent commitment apparent throughout his career—as advocate of Soviet communism, New Deal bureaucrat, and trade union official—to working-class interests advanced by technocratic planning. It notes, however, that the radicalism and ambition of this politics were diluted both by the successes and constraints of Ross's career advancement and, more substantively, by a political context hostile to planning ideals in the US after 1945.

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