Machine Politics : A radical 'infiltrated' a Ford plant in 1971. He's still there, but he no longer dreams of a Marxist revolution.

By JAMES RISEN

May 31, 1989 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

DETROIT — Rich Feldman, like so many other ‘60s radicals, has found that life has not been what he expected.

The Revolution never came. Slowly, one by one, the members of his generation of rebellion drifted away from the cause, slipping into law school or banking, finally disappearing into the pinstripes of yuppiedom.

But somehow, Rich Feldman got left behind. And thereby hangs a fascinating tale of a stubborn ‘60s Marxist who wanted to change the world by mobilizing the working class but who ended up joining the working class instead.

Now 40, Feldman still clings to his ideals, but for the last 18 years, he’s been doing his believing on the assembly line at Ford’s Wayne, Mich., truck plant.

Finally, Feldman has co-authored a book about life in the Wayne plant called “End of the Line,” one of the few books ever written by an auto worker about auto workers. For Feldman, the “oral history” is “a way to validate the last 18 years of my life.” Perhaps eventually it will provide him a steppingstone out of the plant and into the kind of life of the mind he had always expected for himself.

Auto Workers Unenthusiastic

But today, Feldman works away in the paint shop on Wayne’s assembly line and has become something of a living museum piece, one of the last remnants of a more innocent time when romantic radicals looked to the working class for revolutionary change--and came away sorely disillusioned.

He first hired into the plant in 1971 as part of a small cadre of student radicals trying to infiltrate industrial America in search of masses to be organized.

Feldman quickly discovered, however, that American auto workers weren’t waiting for a revolution, and many weren’t particularly happy about having a “Commie” in their midst. All they really wanted, he said he discovered, was a raise in order to buy a new van or boat.

“A lot of it was naive,” Feldman concedes now. “I thought the workers could make a difference. I didn’t realize how deep-seated materialism was in American society, not just in the middle class, but in the working class as well.”

He knows all of that about blue-collar workers now, because he is one of them. Today, he, too, goes to work on the line at Ford each day looking for a paycheck. Like so many other young workers who have entered America’s auto factories planning on a short stay, Feldman found the money too good to ever leave.

“It was clear to me after three or four years that the workers weren’t interested in organizing,” recalls Feldman. “Why did I stay? It was convenient.”

Feldman’s story of radicalism and final accommodation began in 1967, on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan--the real life alma mater of Tom Hayden, and, perhaps fittingly, the fictional alma mater of the cast of “The Big Chill.”

Ann Arbor was then a hotbed of anti-war activism; it was here that Hayden had helped forge the radical Students for a Democratic Society just a few years earlier.

Feldman, then a freshman from Brooklyn, was quickly caught up in the anti-war protests, and by the spring of 1968 found himself on the presidential campaign staff of Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

After working as a field organizer for McCarthy in primaries in Indiana, Oregon, Nebraska and New Jersey, Feldman went to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The experience changed his life.

As a McCarthy worker, he watched, sickened, as the Chicago police began beating up demonstrators in Grant Park. He quit McCarthy’s staff on the spot, and went into Grant Park to join the demonstrators.

Radical Activities Increased

“That was an important turning point in my life,” Feldman says now. “I was deciding to work outside of the system, rather than inside of it.”

Back in Ann Arbor, Feldman joined SDS, moved into Marxism, and, for the next two years, participated in increasingly radical actions. He helped take over the ROTC building at Michigan, and was repeatedly arrested during protests against the war, against Dow Chemical, against General Electric, against Chase Manhattan Bank and for the Black Panthers.

Finally, in 1970, Feldman, who had stopped his formal schooling, joined a group of 35 Ann Arbor radicals who moved to Detroit to take their message to the working class. Like others on the left fringe of the anti-war movement around the country, they felt the only way to bring about true change in America was to take the movement beyond the campus and into the heartland --”to the point of production,” as Feldman says now.

“Our goal in going into the plants was to learn from the people, to learn about life and what was necessary to contribute to change, and to get the workers involved in overthrowing the entire system,” he adds. “We were part of a long tradition of radical intellectuals going to the workers with their ideas to bring about revolution.

“We had a confidence,” he adds, “that bordered on arrogance that we could change the world.”

Together, all 35 rented a house in Detroit, and began looking for factory jobs. There were plenty back then, and several members of the group were soon on the inside of General Motors, Chrysler--and Ford.

“I kept quiet until I had my 90 days in and I was off probation,” says Feldman. “But starting on the 91st day, I was completely honest with the company and the union, and everyone, about why I was there.”

Soon, Feldman and a few other young workers started an independent newsletter to expose problems in the plant and to bring to light cases of racism and sexism. In the process, Feldman said, he became “one of the most written-up workers at Ford” and was cited for insubordination.

Still, the radical group’s plans to free the workers from their chains never got off the ground. The workers weren’t listening. Feldman recalls sitting in the plant cafeteria as his co-workers hurled names like “Commie” in his face.

Turned to Other Causes

“By about 1974 or 1975, I came to the conclusion that the capitalist culture was not just ingrained in the top executive ranks of corporations but in all Americans,” says Feldman. “I realized that people really would trade their lives for dollars.”

Quickly, Feldman’s group broke up, but a few members, like Feldman, stayed in their factory jobs; he claims that some are still working at other auto plants.

Realizing that his co-workers weren’t interested, Feldman eventually turned his attention to outside causes, getting involved in community groups and social programs. He stayed on at Ford because it was a good way to make enough money to pay his bills--he now has a wife and two children-- and it also gave him enough free time to pursue outside interests.

As he grew older, he said, another reason for staying was that he found the factory was like a window into the American soul. He finally put that sense of the working man to good use in his book, which gives an unfiltered account of life on the line.

Feldman now would like to leave the factory and teach. He hasn’t made much money from his book, which hasn’t sold all that well since it was published late last year. Written with Detroit writer Michael Betzold, it was well received by Feldman’s co-workers, he said, but has had limited distribution outside the Detroit area.

But while he may have tired of the line, 18 years at Wayne haven’t squeezed all of the idealism out of Feldman.

He now hopes for an “American Revolution” of individuals--change taking place one, person at a time. Now he works with community groups to improve Detroit, fighting the twin scourges of crime and drugs.

But he now knows not to look to Marxist theory for change--or to expect conservative workers on a truck assembly line at Ford to become the shock troops of a revolution.

“When I was young, I was providing simple answers to complex questions, but the dreams and idealism were real,” he observes.

“I have a different sense of time now. I don’t think the revolution is going to come tomorrow.”