This week we present part 4 of our Against the IWW series which we started back in late 2013.
The Legacy of the IWW: To Break Their Haughty Power by Joe Richard can be found in the International Socialist Review site.
You can find our previous posts in the series here:
Against the IWW Series Part I: The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement
Against the IWW Series Part 2: The IWW (1955) by James P Cannon
Against the IWW Series Part 3: An Infantile Disorder
Just to be clear, we’ve run anti IWW stuff before though last time around we accidentally confused people. People thought we had become anti-IWW. We’re not, we’re pro-IWW. Very much so. We ran those pieces and are running this piece because we think IWW members should read criticisms of the IWW, discuss them with each other, and be able to respond to those criticisms. In our organizing we inoculate our co-workers to the criticisms employers make of the IWW. Similarly IWW members should be inoculated against political criticisms of the IWW. We invite people to write full rebuttals to this and all of the other criticisms of the IWW and submit them to us and to other web sites and publications.
IWW Charter
The Legacy of the IWW: To Break Their Haughty Power
by Joe Richard
You men and women should be imbued with the spirit that is now displayed in far-off Russia and far-off Siberia where we thought the spark of manhood and womanhood had been crushed…. Let us take example from them. We see the capitalist class fortifying themselves today behind their Citizens’ Associations and Employers’ Associations in order that they may crush the American labor movement. Let us cast our eyes over to far-off Russia and take heart and courage from those who are fighting the battle there.
—Lucy Parsons, at the founding convention of the IWW, 1905
Read More
