Against the IWW Series Part 4: The Legacy of the IWW

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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

Locality and Shop Inside Revolutionary Unions

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There’s been a long debate within the revolutionary union movement about structure and specifically about the relationship between locality-based units and workplace/trade/industrial based units. Though not well known, the IWW also had battles with these concepts with different factions trying to abolish the General Recruiting Unions, the predecessor of the General Membership branch uniting all workers based on a local who lacked a Industrial Union Branch, and other trying to support it. The recruiting unions were banned at some periods of IWW history and had to be brought back though not without controversy. Other revolutionary unions such as the CNT of Spain and FORA of Argentina maintained both locality based grouping and workplace based ones. This piece explores the debate around these issues within the IWW and experiences both with locality-units and workplace-units from recent activities, and attempts to get at the issues of our tasks and objectives beyond only looking at structures. Area, Shop, and Revolution: a case for both locality and workplace unitary organization Scott Nikolas Nappalos In the early 2000s a series of experiments were carried out in the IWW that led to the formation of Industrial Union Branches (IUBs). Alongside the handful of IUBs emerged ideas around why IUBs should be prioritized and their superiority to other structures. The IUBs primarily were initiated in the Portland IWW after a series of struggles that produced the largest and most dynamic area for IWW workplace organizing in the union for decades. The Portland IWW ballooned to its peak with membership in the hundreds in the early 2000s after a decade of organizing attempts in the 1990s, and some high profile contract campaigns, strikes, and actions at the turn of the century. As membership grew, Portland moved from a General Membership Branch (GMB) towards IUBs in areas where there were a concentration of members: social service, construction, education, restaurants, grocery/retail, and transportation. Read More

Solidarity Federation’s Industrial Strategy

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Solidarity Federation’s Industrial Strategy The Solidarity Federation seeks to create a militant opposition to the bosses and the state, controlled by the workers themselves. Its strategy can apply equally to those in the official trade unions who wish to organise independently of the union bureaucracy and those who wish to set up other types of self-organisation. Read More