The Dobbs Papers are arranged in four series: BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL, CORRESPONDENCE, SPEECHES AND WRITINGS, and SUBJECT FILES. The papers are available both in original paper form and also on microfilm.
The BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL consists of clippings, obituaries, memorabilia, Dobbs' FBI file and several folders concerning his wife, Marvel Scholl. The biographical clippings consist of a few general references to Dobbs' career, as well as an extensive collection of reviews of his Teamster volumes. Recollections penned by Harrison Salisbury, a former schoolmate of Dobbs, are among the highlights of the clippings. (Another brief statement by Salisbury about Dobbs is included with the obituaries and tributes.) The memorabilia consist of Dobbs' 1934 IBT dues book and a few items relating to his imprisonment under the Smith Act during World War II. With the memorabilia are two photographs of Trotsky, one inscribed by Natalia Sedova in 1940. (After microfilming the two photographs were separated to the Trotsky name file in the Visual Materials Archive.)
The FBI file is arranged as received, eighteen sections bound together into six volumes, and filed with some supplementary correspondence relating to the release of the file. This large file, which is essentially arranged in chronological order, contains frequent references to articles by Dobbs in the Militant and detailed information about his day-to-day activities that is not documented within the primary material elsewhere in the collection.
Most important in Marvel Scholl's brief papers is her 1934 diary. The diary consists of typed segments from a journal around which a narrative text has been woven and not the original diary, which Dobbs later stated was a major source for his historical narrative. The disposition of the original diary is not known. Scholl's recollections of the 1934 strikes form the basis for some other autobiographical writings as well as for a paper on the Ladies Auxiliary of Local 574 written by Marjorie Penn Lasky, all of which are filed here.
Dobbs' CORRESPONDENCE is chronologically arranged and dates from 1934 to 1983. Virtually no truly personal material is included, although it is clear that Dobbs knew many of his correspondents on more than a political basis. Although the majority of the series is comprised of original letters, there are also many mimeographed memoranda and correspondence (for which Dobbs is either the sender or the recipient) which were widely distributed to SWP members. Coverage from 1934 to 1952 is quite incomplete. Only a few items relate to Dobbs' role in the 1934 Teamster strikes (for example, a 1935 letter to Tobin about the local's financial crisis and suspension from the international), his organizing work for the Central States Drivers Council during the late 1930's, and his responsibilities as labor secretary for the SWP during the early 1940's. The correspondence of this early period includes exchanges with James Cannon and Vincent R. Dunne, as well as narrative reports drafted by Dobbs about his observations, 1942-1943, of labor conditions in several cities.
The correspondence becomes extensive only with the years 1953 and 1954 when Cannon moved to California and Dobbs became the national secretary. However, the file for the 1950s cannot be considered Dobbs' official correspondence as national secretary, as a substantial portion of the file consists only of exchanges between Dobbs and Cannon about organizational meetings and the challenges posed by Cochranism-Pabloism. Only a few letters to and from other national and branch leaders are included. (The detailed, frequent exchanges with Cannon are essentially duplicated in the Cannon Papers which are also held by the Historical Society.) During 1954 the correspondence is increasingly dominated by the factionalism of Michel Pablo and the problems of the Fourth International. Correspondence with British socialist Gerry Healy (in which Dobbs used the alias Smith) is also extensive. In 1958 Dobbs went to Europe to discuss reunification with Healy and other European socialists, and the collection contains numerous letters written by Dobbs from London, Paris, and Zurich. Exchanges with Healy continued even after relations between the SWP and the Socialist Labour League soured.
The correspondence also becomes extensive during the early 1960s, with the series gradually including a larger circle of party leaders (especially Joe Hanson, Art Sharon [aka Ray Sparrow], and George Breitman). At the same time, Dobbs' general responsibilities as national secretary become more apparent in the documentation, and the content is a mix of routine and policy-level matters. The year 1960 is dominated by routine arrangements for the public speaking that Dobbs did as the party's Presidential candidate. The most useful document about the campaign is a lengthy rehash written to Cannon shortly after the election. In addition to the ongoing discussion of the factionalism of Wohlforth, Robertson, and Swabeck the content of the early 1960's increasingly focuses on national and world events such as Cuba, the civil rights movement, and the impact of these issues on Trotskyist theory. The correspondence from the early 1960's also includes several interesting letters relating to the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination and the SWP's relationship with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
After 1966, the SWP administrative correspondence becomes scarce, and the content is increasingly dominated by Dobbs' Teamster research and writing projects. Here, his exchanges with several historians and with participants in the 1934 strikes such as Max Geldman, Harry DeBoer, and Jack Maloney provide many useful details about their activities.
SPEECHES AND WRITINGS, 1940-1980, contains notes and outlines, reports to the party, articles, and speeches. In these speeches and writings Dobbs covered issues such as black civil rights, the Korean War, Capitalism, and Stalinism. As secretary of the SWP Political Committee, Dobbs addressed audiences throughout the country and he reported to party conventions and plenums on political topics ranging from ideological splits to presidential elections. For this reason, a great many of the speeches and writings address issues of national and international party building. Second, because of his personal experience, Dobbs focused many of his speeches and writings on labor issues and the relationship of organized labor to the party. (This series of the collection is supplemented by several tape recordings that are part of the SWP records and by published material held by the SHSW Library.)
Except for a few items, the speeches and writings are organized chronologically with no distinction based on genre. The majority of the documents date from the 1940s and 1950s, and the bulk represents political and organizational reports to the party's conventions and plenums. Most of the reports are represented by handwritten notes or outlines rather than final drafts, but the documentation is useful, as Dobbs' handwriting is legible, the notes are often complete sentences, and the drafts are generally well labeled. The speech outlines dating from the 1960's are usually typewritten. While the speech files are chiefly comprised of Dobbs' original notes, published or mimeographed transcripts of many speeches (and especially his reports to the party) may be found in the SWP records. It is likely this section represents only a portion of Dobbs' public speaking and writing. Certainly there are no drafts of his Teamsters or his Revolutionary Continuity books here, although brief, reprinted sections--such as his recollections of his meeting with Trotsky about the 1940 election--are included, and there are no files on the writing he did as editor of the Militant during the 1940's.
The SUBJECT FILES consist of correspondence, original documents, and notes on various topics. The file divides into three subseries. The first, General , consists of material for which the intended purpose is unknown, while the other two files were clearly collected during the research for his Teamsters and Revolutionary Continuity work. Dobbs' original order has been somewhat modified to combine similar material originally received in different folders, and the whole series has been weeded to remove a large quantity of secondary information and material clipped from readily accessible publications. Whenever possible, Dobbs' file designations such as “Black Struggle,” “Party Building,” or “Rightist attacks” have been retained. In some cases these categories are not mutually exclusive; for example, researchers can find information on the Fourth International not only in the file of that name but also in files entitled Cochran Dispute and Gerry Healy. Similarly, the file on the Wohlforth-Robinson split overlaps documentation present in the YSA file. Topics in this series may be documented by correspondence (to which Dobbs was not a party), memoranda, handwritten or typed notes, clippings, and mimeographed SWP documents. When the documentation on a particular topic is extensive the files have been subdivided, as required, into correspondence, notes, and documents. Some of these files contain original material, but many of the letters are, in fact, mimeographed correspondence that was widely distributed. Dobbs' handwritten and typed notes, which are scattered throughout the series, tend to be fragmentary and poorly identified and, as a consequence, difficult to use. Some appear to relate to reading and research, while other items may be contemporary to the topic in question.
Among the highlights of the series are the files on the national and international factionalism that split Trotskyism during the 1950s and 1960s. On the Cochran Dispute, one of the most divisive of these episodes, there are carbon and mimeographed exchanges between George Novack (Warde), Michel Pablo, and other leaders of the international Trotskyist movement. There are also numerous reports concerning the way in which Cochranism was handled locally. Many of the same issues are repeated in the file on the Fourth International, although that section also contains documentation dating to 1980. International factionalism is also prominent on the file on Gerry Healy, the leader of the Workers Revolutionary Party in Great Britain, and on Arne Swabeck, an early SWP leader who was expelled for Maoism in the 1960s.
Information on the SWP's sometimes troubled relations with its youth wing are documented in the files on the Wohlforth-Robinson split and on the Kirk-Kaye Dispute in which much of the Seattle branch left the party in 1966 due to differing views about Black nationalism.
Also notable here is a full transcript of the Club Executive (the Political Committee) for January 26, 1952 which is not included with the minutes in the SWP records. The file on V.R. Dunne contains a transcript of an oral history interview conducted by the Minnesota Historical Society in 1969. Other party members who are prominently featured are George Breitman, Murry Weiss (see the Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party file), and Tim Wohlforth.
Within the SUBJECT FILES the reference material for Dobbs' books on the Teamsters strikes consists of primary source documents about the strikes and subsequent events in Minneapolis (1928-1941, but mainly 1934), together with some later histories, newspaper clippings, and background information on the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, James Hoffa, and other related topics.
The chronologically-arranged original documents about the strikes consist of correspondence, telegrams, memoranda issued by the strikers and the Citizens Alliance of Minneapolis, minutes, handbills, and reports. The provenance for most of the section is uncertain. Dobbs' published works shed little light on the sources he used, mentioning only the diary of Marvel Scholl, his own personal recollections, and “considerable union material” in his personal files. It is likely that much of this documentation was not received by the Historical Society.
Internal evidence suggests that Dobbs gathered the documents from several sources. Some material which is present in the form of microfilm reader-printer copies appears to derive from the AFL-CIO Archives in Washington, D.C. Minutes of the strike committee in the handwriting of Grant Dunne were probably given to Dobbs by Vincent Ray Dunne who is known to have cooperated in the preparation of the Teamster history. (Handwritten speech notes about the strikes labelled “V.R.D.” that were found in the Dobbs Papers were returned to the small collection of Vincent Ray Dunne Papers held by the Historical Society.) Some evidence suggests that the material dealing with the organization of WPA workers as the Federal Workers Section of Local 544 may have been in the custody of John Estevedt, a steward of that section, while other documents dating from the late 1930's appear to have come from Dobbs' friend Shaun “Jack” Maloney.
Documentation about Dobbs' importance in organizing the over-the-road drivers during the late 1930's is disappointingly scarce, perhaps because not all of the records in Dobbs' personal files were turned over to the Socialist Workers Party. From 1941 on, the material in this section consists almost entirely of material presumably copied from the Teamster records held by SHSW. (The deed of gift signed by the Socialist Workers Party does not convey any rights to this collected material from other institutions.)
The secondary material about the Teamster strikes includes short histories, several dealing with Dobbs' role; clippings; more recent correspondence involving individuals other than Dobbs; background information on the Teamsters Union and James Hoffa; and a few miscellaneous, undated documents. A major focus of the newspaper clippings is the 40th anniversary of the strike and a reunion of former strikers. The histories section includes the rare pamphlet The Permanent Counter-Revolution by William Dunne and Morris Childs. The Hoffa file includes a transcript of an ABC News Close-up program on the union leader. No drafts or outlines of the four Teamster books are included here, although a file of reviews is in the BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL. Researchers should also consult the transcript of Dobbs' four lectures on the Teamsters' strikes (dated circa 1964) in the SPEECHES AND WRITINGS series.
The final section of the SUBJECT FILES includes notes, outlines, and assorted materials for Revolutionary Continuity, Dobbs' incomplete history of Marxist leadership in the United States. While Dobbs originally conceived Revolutionary Continuity as a four-volume history, he only published the first two. Although it is difficult to determine his ultimate plans for the series, Dobbs wrote in the first volume that he intended to move from a purely historical analysis of Marxism to a more personal treatment of his own experiences as a grass-roots leader and organizer. The time-period covered and subjects represented in this subseries suggest that these files are preliminary research for the series.
Although containing interesting and pertinent material on the history of the SWP and Dobbs' revolutionary vision, this section is sketchy and unfocused. The files do not include a rough draft or a bibliography, so it is difficult to accurately determine the primary and secondary sources used or to clearly differentiate handwritten outlines from research notes. The section does begin, however, with Dobbs' “Schematic on Party History” and handwritten notes that may have been the beginning of an outline. Researchers should also be aware that some material in specific files has only a tenuous relation with Dobbs' file headings and, second, that this section contains no drafts.
The files have been organized alphabetically by heading as well as chronologically by period, and a special effort has been made to maintain Dobbs' original file designations. Like the general and the Teamster subject files, this section is comprised of handwritten and typed outlines, notes, and documents and letters. Throughout his career as a socialist leader, Dobbs was concerned with SWP politics and party development, and these issues are prominent here. There are files on party building, successful political leadership, and the evolution of the SWP. Of particular utility is a detailed chronological outline of the SWP's history that begins the subseries. Also represented are political developments outside of the SWP--the Labor Party, the Farm Labor Party, and particularly, the Communist Party in the United States and the Soviet Union. Notable in the files on the Communist Party is a transcript of the Cannon, Abern, Shachtman trial. While politics appears to have been Dobbs' main concern, the inclusion of other topics indicate that he planned to discuss modern social problems and the relationship between these problems and a healthy Socialist Workers Party. For instance, he included a folder on the black civil rights struggle as well as a second folder containing notes on a Marxist analysis of the oppression of women. Finally, the Revolutionary Continuity files include several folders of general material and working notes apparently unrelated to any specific subject heading: notes on historian Theodore Draper's analysis of Communism in America and a transcript for a proposed documentary film about James Kutcher, a wounded American veteran persecuted for his socialist views.
