THE LEGACY OF RIC PFEFFER

By Cliff DuRand

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Ric Pfeffer had a passionate commitment to social justice. And he knew it takes struggle to move society toward that goal. For most of his life he engaged in that struggle from within the dominant institutions of society. By virtue of his talent, education and energy, he could have advanced a safe career path for himself. But instead, refusing to be co-opted, he functioned as a critical gadfly from within, prodding those institutions to actually serve the noble ideals they professed. And out of all this turmoil, not only did he receive the respect of his colleagues, he also produced a lot of positive change.

Whether it was as a professor at the elite Johns Hopkins University or on the legal staff at the Occupational Safety and Health Office of the U.S. Department of Labor, Ric was on the critical cutting edge - a change agent on the inside advocating for those on the outside. He taught political science at the staid Hopkins campus from 1969-1979 - a tumultuous decade of anti-Vietnam war protests. And Ric was in the thick of it all, organizing, leading and speaking at marches and rallies against the war and the University's Applied Physics Lab, a prime Defense Department contractor. He was a brilliant teacher to boot; selected by students as "Best Teacher of the Year" and as faculty commencement speaker twice. With a record like that, Hopkins had to get rid of him. He was denied tenure and, after a fight, left in 1979.

This was in spite of having authored a widely read book, Working for Capitali$m. It seems Ric's scholarship was not of the conventional sort. The book is based on his seven months working incognito at the Koppers Co., a piston ring factory in southwest Baltimore. He had entered the capitalist workplace as a participant observer in order to understand the authority relations that shape most American's work life. The book that resulted is a scathing critique of daily industrial life in America - not the kind of scholarship likely to win tenure at an elite university.

Ric also helped to build counter-institutions. He was one of the key players in the establishment of Baltimore's Progressive Action Center in 1982, contributing the royalties from his book to help buy a former public library building to make it into a political center. For 20 years he served as President of its Board, ensuring that the Baltimore Left would always have a home.

As a self-described American Marxist, Ric understood all too well the power and the contradictions of capitalism and the class struggles that resulted. By temperament he was well suited for struggle. In his personal life as well as his political life, he rose to a challenge and seemed to enjoy testing the limits, thereby developing an enhanced sense of competency for himself and others. His wife, Sylvia Gillette, tells of her surprise after accepting an invitation from Ric "to go hiking', only to find herself climbing down into the Grand Canyon! To be around Ric was to grow in response to ever-new challenges.

Ric himself responded to one of the great events of the 20th century: the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This world historical event informed Ric's understanding of class struggle and its importance for developing a new social consciousness that has internalized the imperative, "serve the people". He was among the first group of American scholars to visit China at a time when the U.S. still sought to isolate that vast nation. He was instrumental in building the US-China People's Friendship Association, a people-to-people organization that fostered positive popular attitudes toward China, laying the basis for public support for the eventual establishment of normal relations between our two nations.

Nowhere do we see him more faithfully carrying out the dictum, "serve the people", than in his 20 years of service at OSHA. As an in-house lawyer, Ric fought vigorously for workplace standards that would effectively protect worker's health and safety. As he said in his farewell speech to OSHA staffers last January, "trying to protect workers required constant struggle, not only against business interests, which expectably have different priorities, but also against the political leadership of OSHA, which cannot be relied upon to consistently protect workers to the extent feasible. That struggle gave meaning to my job for all these years."

It was a struggle waged from within a federal agency on behalf of those on the outside that has made a marked difference in the lives of many. As Marthe Kent, one of his former colleagues, testified, "Hundreds of thousands of workers go home safe and healthy every night because of Ric's work. In sum, Ric Pfeffer was a giant in OSHA's regulatory history."

This giant died on May 20, 2002, a fighter laid low by prostate cancer. One of the saddest things about death is that it interrupts projects not yet finished. Ric leaves a challenge for all those who admire his commitment to social justice -- the challenge to take up the struggle wherever we find ourselves, in whatever institutions we are located, and use the leverage that that place gives us to produce some positive change. That is Ric Pfeffer's legacy for all of us. Death cut him short, with much work still to be done - done now in an even more hostile political climate. Our responsibility is to take up the torch and carry it forward.

In spite of the title of his book, Ric never really worked for capitalism. The spirit of the book -and most of his work--is well stated in his closing paragraph:

"As the structure of human relations in the United States increasingly breaks down under the pressures of intensified crisis, we need to integrate a revolutionary consciousness into the struggle that is our daily lives. We need to experience capitalist life as a peculiar and contradictory mode of existence brought into being and maintained by a ruling class during a particular period of human development; to experience the present as a historical problem/opportunity that will be transcended, as it was created, by the thoughts and actions of men and women in interaction with their material surroundings. Then, as we become the conscious makers of history, we will truly know that capitalism is not the end of history."