Sugar, Maurice

SUGAR, MAURICE (1891–1974). The interrelationship between socialist politics and mass struggle was the crux of the career of Detroit labor lawyer and activist Maurice Sugar. Born in Brimley, Michigan, an Upper Peninsula lumber town where his Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents ran the general store, he saw class conflict between lumberjacks and the paper mills’ bosses as a way of life, and the working class as the main force for change.

Sugar was a conscious Marxist who followed the faction fighting of the nascent Communist movement of the 1920s, but he remained an independent Marxist for most of his political life. He first gained national attention for his legal efforts on behalf of the Congress of Industrial Organizations’ sit-down strikers and the industrial union drives of the 1930s. He was also a writer of union songs in the 1930s. His two most famous were “Sit Down” and “The Soup Song.”

Sugar believed the function of a Marxist was to build mass movements, and that much “theoretical” debate was really jousting for position by untested “leaders.” During his tenure in the legal department, the United Auto Workers (UAW) grew from a handful of members to an organization representing 700,000 workers. In addition to his trade union work, Sugar used his private legal practice to redefine the law on behalf of industrial workers and others discriminated against by the system. He had a Gramscian-type position in which he thought it correct to struggle within the existing law and culture of capitalism while working for socialist change. He always attempted to relate the legal struggle to the overall class struggle, and in the 1930s he believed the immediate task was to build industrial unions.

Another tactical priority was his view that the struggle of the workplace should be linked to the struggles in the community. In Detroit this often meant taking part in the black movement. Sugar defended many blacks throughout the 1920s and 1930s and sought black support in two unsuccessful bids for local office. He was a vital part of a Left culture that helped to shape many of the black leaders of the 1970s and 1980s, among them Detroit’s Mayor Coleman Young and Congressman George Crockett.

Despite his political sophistication and organizational independence, Sugar was driven from his UAW post by Walter Reuther’s purge of the Left. When the battle for control of the union first broke out after World War II, Sugar believed the anti-Reuther faction would prevail when the rank and file were mobilized. He underestimated the impact of the Cold War and the power of red-baiting. The struggle between factions was as fierce as a civil war, and the losers were vanquished from the union. For Sugar this meant the end of his political life, and the end of his legal activism. He retired to live in rural Michigan until his death.

Babson, Steve, Dave Riddle, and David Elsila. The Color of Law: Erne Goodman, Detroit, and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010.

Johnson, Christopher H. Maurice Sugar: Law, Labor and the Left in Detroit, 1912–1950. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988.

Sugar, Maurice. The Ford Hunger March. Berkeley, Calif.: Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, 1980.

Maurice Sugar Papers. Finding Aid. Walter P. Reuther Library. Wayne State University. http://reuther.wayne.edu/node/2883