Workers World, Vol. 12, No. 1, January 10, 1970
Many years ago, Hugh Byars wrote a book called “Government by Assassination.” The book is not about the U.S. government, although the title seems perfectly fitting. Hugh Byars was the New York Times correspondent in Tokyo for many years and wrote the book shortly after the Japanese militarist-industrialist oligarchy made its plunge into the Second World War.
The book describes in detail the pre-war days when the Japanese ruling class was desperately trying, through its military and especially its naval leaders, to root out all opposition, including those in its own ranks who questioned its plan for the conquest of all Asia and its challenge to Japan’s imperialist rivals – Britain, France, and the U.S. – for the domination of the Pacific. As the war fever of the militarists increased, and as the need to maintain a façade of national unity became urgent, indeed imperative, the government resorted more and more to individual political assassinations.
In many ways, the U.S. ruling establishment is faced with an almost identical dilemma. Like the Japanese ruling class, it has a military-industrial complex at its summit which has set itself an impossible goal in world affairs and has roused an opposition which it can only subdue by force and terror. And like its Japanese counterpart, the U.S. ruling class has resorted to individual assassinations as a means of quieting opposition at home in order to succeed in its mad projects abroad.
It is almost seven years since the assassination of President Kennedy. His violent death is regarded by the world as a political assassination that came strictly form within the establishment. Since then, there have been numerous assassinations of prominent individuals, among them Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton. The assassinations extend to any and all who offer an obstacle in the way of the unbridled course toward mad, imperialist war abroad and rampant, uncontrolled repression at home.
The [candidate for president of the United Mine Workers Joseph] Yablonski assassination [on December 31, 1969] is singularly significant because it is the first time that this tendency has reached down to the ranks of the labor hierarchy which has, until very recently, been regarded as absolutely safe, submissive, and amenable to whatever the ruling summits of the imperialist establishment have laid out for them in the way of pursuing broad political objectives of the ruling class in foreign and domestic policy.
For more than two decades the imperialist establishment had regarded the working class not as a class, in the social sense of that term, but as a bourgeois economic category, like its other mythical categories such as commerce, industry, capital, the consumer, etc. The long years of the witch-hunt and the docility and crass opportunism of the leadership of the labor movement has not destroyed the irreconcilable antagonism between the ruling class and the working class but merely driven it underground and created the illusion of everlasting class peace.
But the ravages of inflation, as evidenced by the skyrocketing cost of living, the inability of wage increases to in any way keep up with price increases, and the slow but sure awakening of the masses to the intimate connection between economic hardships and the Vietnam war are bringing to the surface sure signs of a growing insurgency and militancy from the ranks of labor.
Any real challenge by a significant section of the organized workers which would have political overtones would be regarded with the utmost seriousness by the ruling class which finds itself saddled by an imperialist war abroad and a revolutionary struggle by the oppressed people at home. The one thing that the ruling class has tried to safeguard itself against is a revival of class warfare on the scale of the thirties. Such a revival of mass struggles in the context of the present-day predicament of the U.S. ruling class would create a truly profound revolutionary crisis in the country. This is the one thing that has haunted the ruling class ever since it embarked on a campaign of worldwide domination.
It is commonly known that the CIA has subsidized almost all of the top unions in this country at one time or another with the sole purpose of securing “internal peace.” Only when the CIA overdid things and went to an extreme in this area did the imperialist press put the spotlight on one of the dark corners and expose the fact that the CIA has subsidized various international unions such as the UAW, the Newspaper Guild, the ILA, the Seafarers, and above all, the International Department of the AFL-CIO.
But that is not the most important aspect of the situation. Far more significant is the fact that the large unions that represent the workers in the basic industries, such as steel, auto, railroad, mining, and others, are subject to a special type of government surveillance as part of the internal security program of the U.S. ruling class. This has generally not been publicized but is very well known, in part because the labor leadership has been involved in it and in some cases has enthusiastically collaborated with the government, even to their own detriment.
Aside from the fact that rank-and-file militants, through the stratagem of security checks, have been rooted out of so-called sensitive jobs, both the FBI and the CIA are enormous factors in the internal affairs of the large basic-industry unions because the ruling class regards developments in them with the utmost seriousness. The CIA has often boasted of how many deputies it has in this or that parliament, or how many communists they control in various foreign countries, but it has been mum about its operations in the labor movement in order not to embarrass its clients. Except for the exposes in 1964 and 1965, little has been said of what the role of the CIA and FBI really is in the unions in this country. But we can use these limited exposes as a scale of measurement of what their actual intervention really is.
The point to be driven home in connection with the assassination of Yablonski is that the mining industry is a key and basic industry in the country and that its leadership has been for many years part and parcel of the establishment. This was so whether the union fought hard or whether it collaborated. Both factions of the union are intimately connected with the government hierarchy and have served in the government for many years. Yablonski himself served in an official capacity in the government from 1934 to 1942 as a representative of the UMW on a government commission.
Because the coal industry is basic and is controlled in turn by the oil and steel barons and ruled by the very summits of U.S. high finance such as the Rockefellers, the Mellons, the Morgans, etc., the UMW leaders have of necessity had long association with top-ranking representatives of the ruling class. As a consequence of this association with the labor leaders, the ruling class has found it to be in their interest to bring these leaders into the orbit of their particular segment of the establishment.
Not only do the top representatives of the ruling class cultivate these special relationships, throwing small favors to them here and there, but as part of the bosses’ strategy they also bestow upon these leaders confidences, thereby tying them to the master class and to the establishment on the basis that they are part of the in-group and are bound by certain secrecies which go along with in-group status. These confidences also include questions of broad political policy pursued by the summits of the ruling class. In this way they turn the labor leaders into the political police over the working class, as exemplified by the Gleasons, the Beirnes, the Meanys, etc. This literally applies to many of the top leaders of the large and powerful unions and this relationship would appear, in the eyes of the philistines, as everlasting and eternal.
This relationship might, in fact, be everlasting were it not for the interference of the class struggle and the contradictions inherent in the laws of capitalist accumulation which slowly but surely brings out class antagonisms into the open and forces the workers to fight regardless of who their leaders may be at the moment. Nowhere is this more true than in the mining industry, which is one of the vital arteries in the economic anatomy of the U.S. capitalist system.
From a union with more than 500,000 members, the UMW has shrunk to a mere 110,000, according to the union’s own figures. This staggering diminution in union strength would be enough by itself to disrupt any relationship between the union leadership and the mining bosses no matter how many ties have been previously created by the establishment to bind the leaders hand and foot. Add to the staggering loss in union membership an even more staggering increase in the productivity per man hour by the miners as a result of technological advances.
Nowhere have the miners gotten the benefits of the increase in the productivity of labor and of the technological advances except for a mere pittance here and there. Furthermore, the advances made in mining technology and available scientific advances in other fields have not been applied to secure the safety and health of the miners. Black lung disease is almost as rampant in the space age as it was half a century ago. Rank-and-file rebellion in the mines is clearly on the order of the day, has been going on sporadically for several years now, and reached an armed stage in Hazard, Kentucky as far back as 1962.
The factional struggle between Yablonski and [UMW President W.A.] Boyle is merely a reflection, or to put it more accurately, an anticipation of the coming large-scale rebellions, not only in mining but in other industries, which to one degree or another are beginning to feel the effects of years of accumulated discontent which is slowly breaking out on the surface. Yablonski and Boyle were both labor lieutenants of the imperialist establishment and held in high confidence by the ruling summits of heavy industry. But this idyllic relationship was disrupted by the nature of the completely altered conditions of the workers which were wrought by the savage and insatiable appetite of the mining magnates for unlimited profit and unlimited exploitation.
It was inevitable that one of the two factions would be drawn to play the role of the opposition. Serious factional disputes, even those that are bereft of any issues, have rarely occurred in the large unions that have organized the basic industries. Where disputes have taken place, such as in the steel union where MacDonald was ousted, the respective factional opponents have not stepped out of line so far as the vital interests of the imperialist establishment are concerned. Nor have they sought, as the bosses would see it, to inflame class hatred or direct dissatisfaction into political opposition of a meaningful character. In such cases the CIA and the FBI, and the ruling class that they represent, keep fully informed of the entire internal struggle, have agents in both camps and report to their superiors the progress of the struggle. Which way the weight is to be thrown, that is, to one group or the other, is decided in Washington.
The CIA, on numerous occasions, especially when appropriations come up or whenever they have made a particularly howling blunder somewhere, have revealed how cleverly they intervened in some foreign election and determined its results. Since, according to Marxism, foreign policy is merely an extension of domestic policy, we must assume that the same thing happens at home.
We must assume that the imperialist establishment was keenly aware of the deep and very bitter struggle that was going on in the UMW, that both Yablonski and Boyle were protégés of the establishment, and that the course of the struggle in the UMW forced Yablonski to step out of line a little, to slightly transgress the limits of a naked power struggle in a key industry with a potentially explosive situation that could reverberate throughout the country.
That violence in inter-union warfare in the coal fields has characterized many of the struggle in previous years is undoubtedly a factor to be taken into consideration. But it is not the explanation at all for the assassination. In the course of the struggle, Yablonski did not rely on the minders alone to beat Boyle. He sought strong support from the liberal establishment. This was symbolized by his having linked up with Ralph Nader and others who have championed progressive causes and in particular mining safety. Yablonski took an unusually strong stand on min safety, considering his relations with the mining bosses. And the recent mine safety legislation that was passed, weak as it was, was due to the struggle which he put up.
It is to be noted, however, that his appeal to the miners on this issue was strong, effective, and a departure from the moderate, garden-variety attacks upon the vested interests. In view of the special surveillance by these fink agencies over key unions in basic industries, such as the UMW, both the CIA and the FBI could not but know every detail in the course of the struggle for control of the union. It is impossible that they would have been unaware of the existence of a plot by one faction to assassinate the leader of the other.
It is also to be noted that although Yablonski lost the election, he was contesting the validity of the results. The Labor Department had dismissed his complaint and he had instituted a suit against the union leadership, the prosecution of which could have resulted in exposures that could implicate elements of the mining establishment who in turn are controlled by the steel and oil barons. With Yablonski silenced, the effectiveness of any exposure is minimal. Along with Boyle, Yablonski was high in the confidence of the establishment. Yablonski’s slight transgression from the ground rules laid down by the invisible infrastructure of the government is what led to the assassination.
The situation in the coal fields is ripe for mass opposition to the do-nothing policy of Boyle’s leadership. With unemployment high, with conditions in the mines deteriorating, and with mass poverty generally surrounding the entire Appalachian country, a militant appeal by Yablonski could have aroused genuine mass opposition of the miners and galvanized them against Boyle’s clique to the extent that favorable election results for Boyle could turn out to be nothing by a Pyrrhic victory.
If anyone had the present authority to open a real struggle of the miners, it was Yablonski. If anyone had the knowledge and the ability to contest the Boyle leadership, to try the newer, non-traditional methods of approach, and to embark on a campaign of arousing rather than squelching the miners’ will to struggle, it was Yablonski. Clearly, the reigning lords of high finance who run the coal industry no longer had anything to gain from Yablonski. If by posing as an opposition and threatening to expose and fight the establishment, Yablonski posed a danger to the ruling class, then they would much sooner get rid of him than face a long period of agitation. That is the classic approach of the police mind in the face of social unrest. They always think that by suppressing the symptoms they will cure the disease. That is the pattern they followed in the previous assassinations. It is not that the bosses are for Boyle just because they were against Yablonski. It is just that they are opposed to anyone who incites militancy among the workers. They would dump Boyle in a minute, especially if he becomes too discredited.
Unquestionably the capitalist press will be filled with all sorts of leads to assassins, perhaps some scapegoat or hired thug will be found to merely divert attention and to convey the impression that all that was involved was an intra-union struggle for power between individual leaders.
The truth of the matter is that the bourgeoisie has finally caught on to the drift of events in the whole country, and their greatest fear is that the mood of fight, which first hit the campuses, then large sections of the population, especially the youth throughout the country, and finally reached millions of people of the older generation, now threatens to reach down to the fundamental class upon which capitalist society rests.
The mine union has always been a bellwether of a sort, a harbinger of things to come. The bourgeoisie has never gotten over the fact that the UMW originally supplied the money, much of the knowhow, the organizational skill, and the inspiration in organizing the CIO and took the initiative in inviting thousands of progressive and radial youth to help in the struggle to organize the working class against the bosses. It is important to note that Yablonski had over 2,000 young people recruited from college campuses to act as poll watchers during the election in areas under the control of the Boyle leadership.
The ruling class has seen the handwriting on the wall. The assassination of Yablonski is a warning by the ruling class to other labor leaders, inside and outside the establishment. Like their Japanese counterparts who were caught in an insoluble contradiction arising out of the insatiable appetite for world conquest and who could not deal with the situation at home except by political assassination, the U.S. rulers are intent in presenting to the world a second edition of government by assassination. The pursuit of this trend by the ruling class will make them subject to the same fate as Tojo and his cohorts, only this time, the entire structure of finance capital will come crashing down upon their heads as the result of a victorious proletarian revolution.
Last updated: 11 May 2026