Voluntarism

Voluntarism. This concept is identified with the early American Federation of Labor (AFL), when Samuel Gompers dominated the organization. First used by Gompers to summarize his view of the AFL's goals, voluntarism stressed the importance of freely chosen and noncompulsory relationships within the union movement. Subsequently, historians adopted the term to describe the AFL's early emphasis on the trade union as central to workers' lives, its focus on economic objectives, and its rejection of most forms of government intervention.

The trade unionists who created the AFL in 1886 wanted the resources and strength of a federation, but they refused to sacrifice the power or autonomy of their individual unions. Thus the federation emerged structurally as a fairly weak and decentralized organization. Gompers celebrated this decentralization and from this emerged his emphasis on the “voluntary coming together of unions with common needs and common aims.”

Gompers's emphasis on voluntary cooperation was linked to his political attitudes. Workers, he believed, should rely primarily on their union and its economic activities for assistance and resources, rejecting the government intervention and partisan alliances that would limit their independence. While espousing these notions ideologically, Gompers and other AFL leaders in practice largely ignored them. In the early twentieth century, the federation entered wholeheartedly into politics, including lobbying campaigns and electoral mobilization. By 1908 this strategy had resulted in a de facto alliance with the Democratic party. The AFL worked closely with the Woodrow Wilson administration to pursue its legislative agenda. During World War I, AFL leaders even accepted government intervention into industrial relations. Meanwhile, local trade unionists also ignored the voluntarist principle, working during the Progressive Era for legislation benefiting workers and forming partisan alliances toward that end. Despite this gap between ideology and political reality, voluntarism remained central to the AFL perspective, and historians have continued to rely upon the concept in interpreting the federation's history.
See also Labor Movements.

Bibliography

Michael Rogin , Voluntarism: The Political Functions of an Antipolitical Doctrine, Industrial and Labor Relations Review 15, no. 4 (July 1962): 521–35.
Julie Greene , Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881 to 1917, 1998.

Julie Greene