Alaska Airlines has proposed a contract to its workers that, if signed, will cut their salaries by 20%, while United Airlines has succeeded in cutting wages by 25%.

On a different front, the number of American deserters from the Iraq war over the last two years has grown to 8,000, and is still growing.

Far away, across the Atlantic Ocean, in several European countries the working class has staged massive struggles, especially around the issue of the attacks on state-funded pensions (the equivalent of the American Social Security system). We can cite many examples of this kind, which show both a return of the class’ combativeness and militancy, and weakness in face of the bosses’ attacks, but if we do not have a method, a framework for understanding them, they will just appear as isolated snapshots that have no bearings on or relationship with history and with each other. Without a method, we will not be able to make any sense of them. It is then appropriate to ask these questions:

How to explain these apparently contradictory behaviors by our class, which in the first instance, seem to point to passivity and tremendous weakness, and in the other two reveal a determination not to settle and rather to fight back and even see through the bourgeoisie’s ideological campaigns? More importantly, how do we analyze and understand them?

• What do they mean in relation to the overall assessment of the forces between the bourgeoisie and the working class?
• What do they mean in terms of the decisive, revolutionary struggles the class will have to wage in the future, if it is to fulfill its historic task?

In the last year and half the ICC has been writing about a ‘turning point’ in the class struggle. This article attempts a clarification and an explanation of this concept.

The historic context

The massive, worldwide struggles that began 1968 marked the return of the working class on the historic scene after the years of the counter-revolution. During those years, the working class had suffered a major historic defeat, as the ruling class succeeded in dragging it into the madness of World War II. Its revolutionary organizations survived only in the very small and dispersed numbers of their militants. 1968 marked the first great wave of class struggle out of the counter-revolution, which continued, with ebbs and flows, and waves of struggles in the 70’s and 80’s, until 1989. It was the first attempt by the working class to once again advance toward the revolutionary perspective after the years of the counter-revolution.

Various factors explain the failure of this first attempt. While the struggles of 1968 were massive and extensive, they came up against a lack of political maturation and theoretical depth. As important as they were in terms of developing the class’ consciousness of the dead-end of capitalism, there were yet important illusions in the possibility for reforms. They were also marred by councilism and anarchism, petty bourgeois contestationism, and a rejection of political organizations. The collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989, resulting from the deepening of decomposition, as we have analyzed elsewhere in our press, marked the failure of the class’ first attempt at regaining its revolutionary perspective after the counter- revolution. The collapse of the Eastern bloc in turn had a severe impact on the combativeness and consciousness of the class. The ruling class was able to take advantage of this important disorientation in the working class as a whole, particularly by unleashing a tremendous campaign about the ‘end of communism’. This campaign aimed at discrediting the proletariat’s final goal, its history, and its class theory, and resulted in a significant, although temporary, loss of the class’ self-confidence and identity, and in the domination of inter-classist ideology.

The working class’ disorientation permitted the ruling class’ success in waging the first Gulf War in 1991. It was easy, at that time, to fall in the mistake of assessing the working class’ strength and overall historic perspective based on the state of confusion and disorientation of the class, and on its apparent passivity in the face of the war. It was rather common then to hear even revolutionaries express a loss of confidence in the class and disappointment as to the class’ final goal. In a similar way, it is also easy to fall into a euphoric over estimation of the struggles and the overall state of the class when the latter engages in massive confrontations, as in Argentina in 2001, or in France in 2003. The Marxist method, by contrast, strives to place events of a different nature in a historic perspective. In this sense, the retreat in consciousness and combativeness in 1989 and the massive confrontations of 2003, contradictory and disconnected as they appear to be, are part and parcel of the same tortuous, difficult, non-linear process the class experiences as it learns to face a very sophisticated class enemy which throws in its path serious obstacles and diversions. They are also part of the process by which the class comes to an understanding of the impasse of the capitalist system and of its own historic, revolutionary role.

The Marxist method does not base the analysis of the class struggle on an immediatist or empiricist approach, but by taking into consideration the overall historic conditions, which include an understanding of the maturation of the proletariat and the maneuvers of the bourgeoisie. When we use this method, then we are able to see that undeniable as the weaknesses and retreats of the working class are in the face of war and the ferocious attacks against its very conditions of life, they do not constitute, by any means, a direct ideological or historic defeat. On the contrary, we are able to see that the historic course is still open for the revolution.

The turning point

As we have said, 1989 marked the beginning of an important retreat in class consciousness and a lull in its struggles. Since then, though, we have witnessed and are witnessing how the class is reawakening, although slowly and with great difficulties and hesitations. We have seen this most clearly in the massive mobilizations in France and Austria during the spring 2003 and summer 2004. We continue to see this in less spectacular, yet significant, events as well, from the desertions from the Iraqi war and a growing reluctance against military recruitment in the US, to the surging of a questioning minority in search of a political orientation. This last aspect in particular, is the most significant in the present period, which we have characterized as a’ turning point’. Contrary to the dynamic opened in 1968, during which consciousness arose following and almost as a result of the massive struggles, today we are seeing a reflection and a insistent questioning of capitalism’s perspectives, of the bleaker and bleaker future it has to offer, prior to the class’ engaging in the struggles. We are seeing a growing awareness of the degradation of the conditions of life, which the open crisis can no longer hide, as the class’ very conditions of life are threatened by growing unemployment, war, and, more recently, the brutal attacks against pensions and social security. These aspects will favor the development of consciousness in depth, as well as a rapprochement by the searching minorities with revolutionary organizations. It is clear that these conditions represent an advantage in relation to the struggles opened by 1968. The ICC has for some years recognized a ‘subterranean maturation’ of the class, which does take place at the very moments of apparent lull in the class struggle, and which today is more and more coming to the open in the voices of the minorities in search of political clarification.

Although the struggles of 2003 and 2004 in France and Austria were massive and in response to significant attacks, there is no decisive or contingent element that confirms the idea of a change in the development of the balance of forces between the classes. What the 2003 events tell us is that there is a real potential present in the development of the struggle, because they reveal a growing awareness that the attacks are worldwide, carried out by an exploiting class against the exploited class. They reveal the beginning of a regaining of class identity, and of a feeling of belonging to the same class.

It is doubtless that the nature of this turning point is not as spectacular as the one which marked the return of the class onto the historic stage in 1968; however, we can draw one important parallel. It is the underlying change in the view of the future. A specific and contingent aggravation of the crisis, with its accompanying windfall of brutal attacks on the conditions of life of the class, can well spark outbursts in the class struggle. However, it is not true that there is a mechanical link between the attacks and rising consciousness, or even combativeness. The current turning point is characterized by a questioning about the perspectives that capitalism offers to humanity. In 1968, the massive mobilizations were not just a response to the return of the crisis after the ‘boom’ years; they were above all the result of a growing disillusionment with post-war capitalism’s ability to offer a better a future, but with a comparatively low level of politicization. The present turning point is characterized by a change in spirit in the working class, the result of years of subterranean maturation in which the questioning as to what capitalism has to offer is becoming more and more the central preoccupation of the class.

This analysis and this method allow us to conclude that the present turning is the second attempt by the working class to advance toward the recovery of the revolutionary perspective since the return of the global economic crisis, the first attempt being 1968. This perspective has been maintained to date, because the class has not suffered a profound, direct or ideological defeat. Thus, what we call ‘turning point’ is not any specific point in time, but rather an ongoing process in a changing period.

The context for the development of consciousness and future struggles

Two generations of workers have now gone undefeated: the generation of 1968 and the present generation, a situation that the bourgeoisie has not confronted since the revolutionary wave that began in 1917 in Russia. The maturation of minorities since 1989 is characterized by much more fundamental questions about what the class is, how it struggles, what the role of revolutionaries is, what obstacles will have to be overcome, and, above all, the question about the validity of Marxism and the communist perspective. Whereas the generation of 1968 was distrustful of Marxism because of the weight of Stalinism and the organic break with the past of the workers’ movement, the present generation looks at the communist minorities for a political understanding and clarification. The present generation also confronts certain obstacles that the generation of 1968 did not confront: the context of decomposition and the fact that this time, contrary to 1968, the bourgeoisie will not be taken by surprise. The ruling class has elements against itself, too. Although better prepared to confront the working class, the effects of decomposition are working against it too. The crisis pushes it to more and more openly reveal the bankruptcy of its system. Similarly, the political disarray resulting from the collapse of the Eastern bloc forces the ruling class, particularly the American ruling class, to pursue imperialist confrontations. In the context of an undefeated working class whose consciousness is developing in depth, the present war has the potential of provoking a crucial understanding: there is no solution to capitalism’s contradictions. Without developing this point further, it is important to notice how, in the belly of the beast, in the country that was ‘attacked by terrorism’, the unease about the war is expressed in the number of deserters, but also of parents who oppose their sons’ and daughters’ recruitment and enlistment, which has grown from 58% in summer 2003 to 75% today, according to the bourgeoisie’s own public opinion polls. The bourgeoisie would like us to believe that there is nothing political in the decision to desert, and looks at this action as a shameful example of cowardice. In reality, the decision not to die for ‘your’ country is the proof of an underlying process of political maturation. The unwillingness to stand by the state is above all political: it expresses the budding assertion of a proletarian perspective, which poses itself in contradiction with the attempt by the ruling class to tie ideologically the workers to the state.

The working class is in the period of a turning point. Its hesitations are in significant ways linked to a growing awareness of the immensity of its historic task. Revolutionaries, the searching minorities, and the most class-conscious workers are called upon to take on the responsibilities the class has invested us with. We need to show the class the necessity to struggle and to develop the struggle. We need to show that the class’ strength lies in its solidarity. We need to show the bankruptcy of capitalism, and thus continue to fuel the deep, important reflection presently taking place in the class.

Ana, 25/6/05.

The pensions of American workers face an unrelenting attack as part of the ruling class’ austerity program aimed at lowering the standard of living in order to make the working class bear the brunt of the deepening global economic crisis and to finance US imperialism’s military interventions throughout the world. In Internationalism No.134, we demonstrated how the bourgeoisie has been siphoning off vast financial surpluses from the social security fund over the years to finance its imperialist operations (“Report on the National Situation: Social Security Reform – A Frontal Attack on the Working Class [3]” Internationalism 134). We pointed out that in regard to its proposed social security “reforms,” “The real goal of the Bush administration is to avoid paying back those $6 trillion that will have been pilfered from the trust fund by 2028. In 1983, the American ruling class used the ruse of an impending social security crisis to raise the taxes on the working class and used that money not to pay pensions to retirees or to set it aside to pay the pensions of future retirees but to fund its aggressive imperialist policies. Now it wants to complete this massive social swindle by maneuvering to avoid repaying $6 trillion dollars confiscated from the working class back into the social security trust fund.”

Facing tremendous skepticism within the working class and reluctance even from elements within the bourgeoisie, who fear the economic impact if the government refuses to repay the bonds issued to the social security trust fund, the Bush administration continues to readjust its social security reform proposal. The most recent version of this plan maintains the call for a partial privatization of social security, with part of pension money deposited in privately administered stock market investment accounts. But its most significant feature is to propose changing social security from a pension fund that is supposed to support all workers’ retirement, to a modified welfare fund, aimed at using the contributions paid by more well paid workers to finance the retirement of lower income workers. According to this plan, low income workers would receive 100% of their current benefits, but workers earning higher wages would have changes phased in that would lower their benefits by up to 65% (in the previous proposal, the maximum cut was only 45%) in order to fund benefits for the poorer workers.

The argumentation supporting this proposal emphasizes that higher paid workers don’t “:need” social security to support their retirements, because they receive money from their private pension funds usually managed through their employers. Never mind that workers have fought for these private pensions as part of the benefit package that comprises part of their wages, and have also put part of their savings into these funds, precisely because social security benefits are only sufficient to maintain a bare subsistence standard of living in retirement. Recent developments demonstrate the hypocrisy of this argument. The seriousness of the economic crisis has put these private pensions in jeopardy. For example, as part of its court-supervised plan to recover from bankruptcy, United Airlines was granted permission to abandon its seriously underfunded pension plan, which will now be taken over by the government sponsored Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), which is responsible for bailing out failed private pension funds. United Airlines employees will be lucky to receive 70% of the benefits they were entitled to. Other major airlines, also facing economic difficulties, are expected to follow United Airlines lead. Major companies in other industries may also follow suit. So serious is the failure rate of pension funds in the US, the PBGC is currently operating with a $23 billion dollar deficit. An estimated 50% of the top 100 private pension funds in the US are currently underfunded, and at risk for collapse.

So, the so-called “higher paid” workers, who are supposedly so comfortable, face up to 65% cuts in their federal social security pension benefits at the same time that their private company-based pension funds increasingly face economic disaster which will mean a loss or severe cut in benefits from that quarter as well. This double-whammy that the government is trying to ram down the throats of the working class is fraught with tremendous political risk for the bourgeoisie, as there is a risk that workers will respond to this frontal assault on their standard of living. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced in April to abandon his proposal to privatize state employee pensions because of near universal opposition from public sector workers. Despite making social security reform his number one domestic issue, Bush has made absolutely no headway, despite his so-called “mandate” at the polls last November. The inability of American capitalism to pay its wage bill, including pensions earned working class, in large part in order to pay for its imperialist military incursions, exposes both the economic bankruptcy of global capitalism and the fact that it offers humanity a future of death and destruction.

J. Grevin, 25/6/05.

The AFL-CIO is primed for a possible split at its upcoming quadrennial convention. A coalition of unions, led by the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) and including the Teamsters, Laborers, United Commercial Food Workers, and UNITE HERE are threatening to leave the federation if it does not adopt a broad set of “reforms” ostensibly designed to once again make the union movement a powerful force in national and international politics.

What are workers and revolutionaries to make of these events? Do they harbinger the possible revitalization of the unions as organs that could once again defend the interests of the working class and serve as weapons of the downtrodden in the 21st century quest for global justice?

From a revolutionary Marxist perspective, the answer is a clear no. Unions may have been the unitary form of working-class self-organization in the period of capitalist ascendance, when workers could come together to confront and win reforms from a still historically progressive capitalism, however, with the rise of capitalist decadence, when the system becomes a brake on the further development of the productive forces, the unions were transformed into weapons of the state to instill shop-floor discipline among the workers. They do so by pursing a capitalist agenda while pretending to speak the workers’ language. From the point of view of the theory of capitalist decadence, unions have been irretrievably lost to the working-class as a mode of organization. They are no longer proletarian institutions and no change of leadership or political direction can alter this fact.

If the working-class is ever to carry out its historic mandate to overthrow the capitalist system and build a world human community beyond capital, the union is just one of the capitalist institutions it will have to confront, defeat and ultimately surpass.

Nevertheless, this does not mean the recent turmoil in the AFL-CIO is not unimportant. These events ultimately need to be seen in the context of the overall political life of the bourgeois class. In many ways, the fact that the AFL-CIO might split is a reflection of the wider difficulties of the American ruling class to control and manipulate its political system.

What we are witnessing today with the unions is the complement of the turmoil and disorder that have infected the overall bourgeois political arena. From the botched election of 2000 to its hesitancy to rally behind a candidate in 2004, the American bourgeoisie is encountering increasing difficulty in coordinating its democratic mystification, of which the unions are a key element.

What we are seeing today is not the equivalent of 1995 when current AFL-CIO president (at the time president of SEIU) John Sweeney ousted Lane Kirkland in an effort to radicalize the union’s image in the eyes of the working class. SEIU’s program is not appreciably more radical appearing than other unions. While they do call for spending more money on organizing, consolidating unions, and confronting Wal-Mart, there is no visible plan to call for strikes, mass protests or other actions. On the contrary, most of SEIU’s program involves organizing more workers and consolidating smaller unions in order to have more influence in national politics. In other words, SEIU seeks to bring more and more workers into the union trap so as to increase their own weight in intra-bourgeois political scheming and bureaucratic competition.

This does not compare to the 1930s, the era of the CIO and its philosophy of mass industrial unionism, when the Roosevelt administration actively cooperated with the unions in order to gain greater control of the working-class and enroll more workers into these capitalist institutions as part of a long-term vision to quell class struggle.

Today’s turmoil in the AFL-CIO does not reflect some well-thought out strategy by the main factions of the ruling class. On the contrary, it reflects the very decomposition that is eating away at capitalist society and complicates the decisive historic action of either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. SEIU and its allies are not threatening to break away from the AFL-CIO in line with any plan to radicalize the unions. Rather, their posturing has more in character with a selfish power move to improve their own union’s standing. In other words, they are considering jumping ship and going their own way. As the largest union in the country, the SEIU leadership probably think they can do better on their own than have to deal with the dead weight of the AFL-CIO and its regulations.

This tendency for “every man for himself” is reflective of the entire period of capitalist decomposition where the discipline of the state over the various factions of the bourgeoisie is beginning to break down. This is the exact process that is at work today within the AFL-CIO and workers should have no illusions about it.

The simple fact of the matter is that the American bourgeoisie is unable to keep its unions on the same page, very similar to the fashion in which it was unable to rally behind a clear candidate for President in 2004, leading to the debacle of a second term for George W. Bush. Today, SEIU sees the opportunity to grab more power for themselves and that is exactly what they are attempting to do, very similar to the way in which Bush and his team saw the opportunity to become President when the Florida vote came back so close, despite the fact that in 2000 most of the main factions of the bourgeoisie backed Gore.

One should not interpret these events as some indication that the democratic sphere or the unions have once again become relevant to the working class. Due to the very nature of the unions, it would be impossible for the working class to exploit this turmoil to its advantage. Moreover, the fact that the American bourgeoisie is experiencing difficulty to control its political apparatus does not mean that a total loss of control is imminent. In fact, it is not even certain that SEIU and company will leave the AFL-CIO. The possibility still exists that a back-door solution could be found, whereby SEIU’s program and the egotistical needs of its leaders are accommodated within the AFL-CIO.

Nevertheless, these events are significant as they mark a definite acceleration in the decomposition of the bourgeoisie’s political apparatus. Workers and revolutionaries need to be aware of this. They cannot allow themselves to be drawn into the increasing drama of bourgeois politics by allowing themselves to believe they have a stake in its outcome. Either way, split or not: the AFL-CIO and SEIU will both remain enemies of the working-class. This is an historic fact that no degree of reform or reorganization can change.

Henk, 25/6/05.

A century ago on June 27, 1905, in a crowded hall in Chicago, Illinois, Big Bill Haywood, leader of the militant Western Miners Federation, called to order “the Continental Congress of the Working Class,” a gathering convened to create a new working class revolutionary organization in the United States: the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), often referred to as the Wobblies. Haywood solemnly declared to the 203 delegates in attendance, “We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism…The aims and objects of this organization should be to put the working class in possession of the economic power, the means of life, in control of the machinery of production and distribution, without regard to capitalist masters.…this organization will be formed, based and founded on the class struggle, having in view no compromise and no surrender, and but one object and one purpose and that is to bring the workers of this country into the possession of the full value of the product of their toil.”

The IWW, however, never lived up to its lofty goals. It’s critique of capitalism never transcended a visceral hatred of the system’s exploitation and oppression, and never attempted to examine the nuances and intricacies of capitalist development and understand the significance of the consequent changing conditions under which the working class waged its struggles.

Historical Context for the Foundation of the IWW

The rise of the IWW in the U.S. was in part a response to the same general tendencies that triggered the rise of revolutionary syndicalism in western Europe: “opportunism, reformism, and parliamentary cretinism.” [1] [6] The crystallization of this general international tendency in the US was conditioned by certain American specificities, including the existence of the frontier; the accompanying large scale immigration of workers from Europe to the US in the late 1800s and early 1900s; and the vitriolic clash between craft unionism and industrial unionism.

The Frontier and Immigration. The existence of the frontier and tremendous influx of immigrant workers were strongly intertwined and had significant consequences for the development of the workers movement in the US. The frontier acted as a safety valve for burgeoning discontent in the populous industrial states of the northeast and Midwest. Significant numbers of workers, both native-born and immigrant, alienated by their exploitation in the factories and industrial trades, fled the industrial centers and migrated westward to the frontier in search of self sufficiency and a “better” life. This safety valve phenomenon disrupted the normal and routine evolution of an experienced proletarian movement.

The differences between native-born, English-speaking workers (even if the latter were only second generation immigrants themselves) and newly arrived immigrant workers who spoke and read little or no English were used to divide the workers against themselves. These divisions were a serious handicap for the working class in the US because it cut off the native Americans from the vast experience gained by workers in Europe and made it difficult for class conscious American workers to be current with the international theoretical developments within the workers movement. This retarded the theoretical development of the workers movement in America, and hampered its ability to resist effectively against opportunist and reformist currents, and understand its political tasks.

Another consequence of the frontier tradition was the tendency towards violence in American society. The American bourgeoisie displayed no reluctance to utilize repressive force in its confrontations with the proletariat, whether it was the army, state militias, private militias (i.e., the infamous Pinkertons), or hired thugs that were deployed to suppress numerous workers struggles, even massacring strikers and their families. Such circumstances readily exposed the viciousness and hypocrisy of the class dictatorship of bourgeois democracy and the futility of trying to achieve fundamental change at the ballot box. This in turn triggered widespread skepticism among the most class conscious workers about the efficacy of political action, which was generally perceived as synonymous with participation in electoralism.

Craft Unionism vs. Industrial Unionism. The clash between craft and industrial unionism was a dominant controversy within the workers movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In essence this was a dispute about which type of unitary class organization best corresponded to proletarian class interests in the period of capitalist ascendancy, when capitalism was still historically progressive in the sense that had not yet reached its historic limits and continued to foster the further development of the productive forces. Since it was possible for the proletariat to wrest structural reforms and improvements in wages, and living and working conditions from the bourgeoisie in ascendant capitalism, this dispute over whether unions organized along narrow craft lines, confined primarily to the most highly skilled workers, or unions organized along industrial lines, uniting skilled and unskilled workers in the same industry in the same organization, was a substantive issue for the advancement of working class interests.

Craft unions regrouped in the American Federation of Labor, which accepted the inevitability of capitalism and the wage system, and sought to make the best deal possible for the skilled workers it represented. Under Samuel Gompers’ leadership the AFL presented itself as a staunch defender of the American system, and a responsible alternative to labor radicalism. In so doing, the AFL abandoned any responsibility for the well being of millions of unskilled and semiskilled American workers who were ruthlessly exploited in the emerging mass employment manufacturing and extractive industries.

Perhaps the most important current in the evolution of the industrial unionist perspective, particularly in terms of its direct impact on the founding of the IWW, was the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Embittered by their experiences in what literally amounted to open class warfare with the mining companies and the state authorities (both sides were often armed), the WFM became increasingly radicalized. In 1898, the WFM sponsored the formation of the Western Labor Union, as a “dual union.” A regional alternative to the AFL, it never really had any independent existence beyond the influence of its sponsor. While their immediate demands often echoed the same “pork chop unionism” wage demands of the AFL, by 1902 the long range goal of the WFM was socialism. The 1904 WFM convention directed its executive board to seek the creation of a new organization to unite the entire working class, which initiated the process that led to the founding convention of the IWW.

IWW’s Revolutionary Syndicalism vs. Anarcho-syndicalism

Despite the incipient syndicalist viewpoint that permeated the views of the founders of the IWW, particularly the idea that the socialist society would be organized along the lines of industrial unions, there were sharp differences between the IWW and anarcho-syndicalism as it existed in Europe. The men who gathered in Chicago in 1905 considered themselves adherents of a Marxist perspective. Except for Lucy Parsons, widow of the Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons who attended as an honored guest, no anarchists or syndicalists played any significant role in the founding congress.

Coming out of the founding convention, “every IWW official was a Socialist Party member.” [2] [7] In addition, the IWW’s general organizer from 1908-1915, Vincent St. John, made it clear that he opposed tying the IWW to a political party, and “struggled to save the IWW from Daniel DeLeon on the one hand and from the ‘anarchist freaks’ on the other.” [3] [8] IWW leaders regarded syndicalism as an alien, European doctrine. “In January, 1913, for instance, a Wobbly partisan called syndicalism ‘the name that is most widely used by [the IWW’s] enemies.’ The Wobblies themselves had few kind words for the European syndicalist leaders. To them, Ferdinand Pelloutier was ‘the anarchist,’ Georges Sorel, ‘the monarchist apologist for violence,’ Herbert Lagardelle was an ‘anti-democrat,’ and the Italian Arturo Labriola, ‘the conservative in politics and revolutionist in labor unionism.’” [4] [9]

In contrast to the decentralized vision of anarcho-syndicalism whose federationist principles favored a confederation of independent and autonomous unions, the IWW operated in accordance with a centralist orientation. While the IWW’s 1905 constitution conferred “industrial autonomy” on its industrial unions, it clearly established the principle that these industrial unions were under the control of the General Executive Board (GEB), the central organ of the IWW: The subdivision International and National Industrial Unions shall have complete industrial autonomy in their respective internal affairs, provided the General Executive Board shall have power to control these Industrial Unions in matters concerning the interest of the general welfare.” This position was accepted without controversy. The GEB alone could authorize an IWW strike.

The Anti-Political Perspective

The preamble to the IWW constitution adopted at the founding convention was clear in its commitment to the revolutionary destruction of capitalism. “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life…Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system…It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.” The organization was not clear, however, on the nature of this revolution or how it would be made. It wasn’t even clear if the revolution was a political or an economic act.

Despite their Marxist sympathies, the dominant view amongst the IWW’s founders held that for the workers the political struggle was subordinate to the economic, and that the organization should not be directly involved in politics, much to the chagrin of Socialist and Socialist Labor Party militants who sought to get the IWW to affiliate with their respective organizations. In the interests of unity, the convention formulated a convolutedly worded concession to socialists from both parties, by agreeing to the insertion of a political paragraph in the preamble to the IWW constitution, which read as follows: “Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as the industrial field, and take hold of that which they produce by their labor, through an economic organization of the working class, without affiliation with any political party.” For most delegates this concessionary reference to politics was incomprehensible. [5] [10]

The opposition to politics derived from a theoretical misunderstanding of the nature of the class struggle and the proletarian revolution and the political tasks of the proletariat. For the IWW, “political” meant participation in bourgeois elections, which offered only propagandistic value in demonstrating the futility of electoralism.

This narrow definition of politics failed to understand the political nature of the proletarian revolution. What could be more political than the destruction of the capitalist state, taking control of the means of production, and the imposition of the proletarian revolutionary perspective over the whole of society? The proletarian revolution is the most audacious and thoroughgoing political act in all of human history – a revolution in which the exploited and oppressed masses rise up, destroy the state of the exploiting class, and impose their own revolutionary class dictatorship over society in order to achieve the transition to communism.

The political compromise embodied in the arcane wording of the political paragraph in the 1905 preamble was not sufficient to maintain the unity of the organization. By the 1908 convention, the anti-political perspective triumphed. The political clause was deleted from the preamble, DeLeon was barred from attending the convention on a credentials technicality, and his followers split with him to form their own IWW based in Detroit that was subordinate to the SLP. Eugene Debs, along with many other Socialist Party members, permitted his membership to lapse and withdrew from IWW activities. Haywood remained in the organization and in 1911 served simultaneously as a leading member of the IWW and a board member of the Socialist Party, until he was removed from the latter after membership in the IWW was deemed incompatible by the Socialists because of the IWW’s stance on sabotage and opposition to political action.

Confusing the Revolutionary Organization and the Unitary Organization

For the IWW the industrial union was an all-in-one organizational form. The union would not simply be a unitary organization what would serve as a mechanism for working class self defense and the form for proletarian rule after the revolution but it would also be an organization of revolutionary militants and agitators. According to its 1908 constitution, the IWW believed that “the army of production must be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with the capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” As we have pointed out in International Review 118, such a syndicalist vision that sees the possibility to form “the structure of new society within the shell of the old …springs from a profound incomprehension of the degree of antagonism between capitalism, the last exploiting society, and the classless society which must replace it. This serious error leads to underestimating the depth of social transformation necessary to carry out the transition between these two social forms, and it also underestimated the resistance of the ruling class to the seizure of power by the working-class.” [6] [11]

With this vision revolutionary syndicalism also confounded the two types of organization that have historically been secreted by the working class: revolutionary organizations and unitary organizations. They failed to appreciate the difference between the revolutionary organization that regroups militants on the basis of a shared agreement on, and commitment to, revolutionary principles and program, and a unitary organization of the class that unites all workers as workers on a sociological basis. This failure condemned the IWW to an unstable existence. The open door to membership that the organization maintained was literally a revolving door, through which perhaps as many as a million workers entered and just as quickly exited between 1905 and 1917.

Furthermore, the battle waged by the industrial unionists against craft and business unionism was increasingly anachronistic. The historic period changed in the early 20th century with the completion and saturation of the world market, which accentuated the effects of the tendential fall in the rate of profit, and ushered in the onset of capitalist decadence and the evaporation of the possibility of durable reforms. Under these changed conditions, the trade union form of organization itself, whether industrial or craft, became irrelevant to the class struggle and was absorbed into the capitalist state apparatus as a mechanism for working class control. The experience of the mass strike in Russia in 1905 and the discovery of soviets, or workers councils, by the proletariat in that country was an historical watershed for the world proletariat. The lessons of these developments and their impact on class struggle were the focus of theoretical work by Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Anton Pannekoek, and others in the leftwing of the Second International. In the real struggle of the proletariat, workers councils displaced the trade unions as the unitary organization of the working class. This new type of organization united workers from all industries in a given territorial area in the revolutionary confrontation with the ruling class and constituted the historically discovered form that the dictatorship of the proletariat would take. Unfortunately, all this theoretical work seemed completely lost on the IWW, which never understood the significance of the changed period or of the workers councils, and continued to laud “industrial unionism [as] the road to freedom.” [7] [12]

Centrist Hesitancy in Response to World War I

Moments of war and revolution are historically determinant for organizations that claim to defend proletarian class interests, a litmus test revealing their true class nature. In this sense, the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 revealed the betrayal of the major parties of the Social Democracy in Europe who rallied to the side of their respective bourgeoisies, turned their backs on the principles of proletarian internationalism and opposition to imperialist war, participated in the mobilization of the proletariat for the slaughter, and thereby crossed the class line to the camp of the bourgeoisie.

When war broke out in Europe, the Wobblies formally espoused principles of proletarian internationalism, and opposed the war. In 1914, the IWW convention adopted a resolution that stated, “…the industrial movement will wipe out all boundaries and establish an international relationship between all races engaged in industry…We, as members of the industrial army, will refuse to fight for any purpose except for the realization of industrial freedom.” In 1916, another resolution committed the organization to a program advocating “anti-militarist propaganda in time of peace, thus promoting Class Solidarity among the workers of the entire world, and, in time of war, the General Strike in all industries.” [8] [13]

However, when US imperialism entered the war in April 1917, the IWW lapsed into a centrist hesitancy and failed miserably to put its internationalism and anti-militarism into practice. Unlike the AFL, the IWW never endorsed the war or participated in mobilizing the proletariat for war. But neither did it maintain an active opposition to the war. Instead, antiwar pamphlets like The Deadly Parallel were withdrawn from circulation. IWW soapbox speakers stopped agitating against war. The majority of the General Executive Board, led by Haywood, regarded the war as a distraction from the class struggle and the more important work of building the union and feared that active opposition to the war would open the IWW to repression. [9] [14]

Individual militants who faced the problem of resisting conscription into the imperialist war were told that it was an individual decision, and received no organizational support. Many IWW leaders were correctly opposed to interclassist anti-war demonstrations and organizations and accurately argued that the IWW did not have sufficient influence within the proletariat to organize a successful antiwar general strike. However, they appeared equally unwilling to seek ways in which they could find a way to oppose the imperialist war on the working class terrain. In a letter to Frank Little, a leader of the antiwar faction on the General Executive Board, Haywood counseled, “Keep a cool head; do not talk. A good many feel as you do but the world war is of small importance compared to the great class war…I am at a loss as to definite steps to be taken against the war.” [10] [15]

When an IWW activist wrote to headquarters and urged that an emergency IWW convention be convened to decide how the organization would respond to US entry into the war, Haywood deflected the request: “Of course, it is impossible for this office…to take action on our individual initiative. However, I place your communication on the file for future reference.”

In an irony of history, it was the IWW that consciously chose not to actively fight against the war once the US had entered the conflict, and not the socialist parties that opposed the war, that was targeted for repression. Only the IWW, as an organization, faced indictment for a conspiracy to sabotage the war effort. In this sense the war provided a pretext for the bourgeoisie to crackdown on the IWW for its past activities and wild rhetoric. One hundred and sixty-five IWW leaders were indicted September 28, 1917 on charges of obstructing the war effort and conscription, and conspiring to sabotage and interfere with the normal contractual economic functioning in society. At the Great Trial of Wobbly leaders, the defendants pointed out that of the 521 wartime labor strikes, only three were organized by the IWW, the rest by the AFL and disowned the views of Frank Little. After their conviction, the bulk of the IWW’s leading centralizers were sent off to Leavenworth in chains and the organization fell under the control of decentralizing anarcho-syndicalists and went into decline.

The Failure of the IWW

There persists even today a romanticized image of the Wobbly organizer as a rugged, itinerant revolutionary, who hops freight trains and hoboes from town to town, propagandizing and agitating for the One Big Union – a proletarian knight in shining armor. This petty bourgeois model of the revolutionary as exemplary individual figure, so appealing to the anarchist temperament, is of no interest to the proletariat, whose struggle is not waged by isolated, heroic individuals, but by the collective effort of the working class, a class that is both an exploited and revolutionary class.

The Russian Revolution won many of the non-anarchists in the IWW to communism, including Big Bill Haywood, who fled to exile in Russia in 1922. While Haywood became disillusioned with the Russian Revolution, in part because he was disappointed that the revolution did not take a syndicalist form, he made a comment to Max Eastman that succinctly summed up the failure of the IWW’s revolutionary syndicalism: “The IWW reached out and grabbed an armful. It tired to grab the whole world and a part of the world has jumped ahead of it.” [11] [16]

The revolutionary syndicalists of the IWW were dedicated to their class, but their response to opportunism, reformism and parliamentary cretinism was completely off the mark. Their industrial unionism and revolutionary syndicalism did not correspond to the changed historic period. The world had “jumped ahead of it” and left it far behind.

J.Grevin, 18/6/05.