Co-operatives as Sheep-skinned Capitalism

A major concern for us who are genuine in our wanting to abolish capitalism is the lack of any specific plan or stragety towards our goal. This is one of the major results of the convergence of failures that we have outlined in our THESES ON THE DEGENERACY OF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD AS A GENUINE PROLETARIAN ORGANIZATION. The lack of a centralised mechanism for deciding policy has resulted in a fetish for local autonomy in a time of global international capital. The principle of democratic control has invaded the IWW like a parasitic tumour which saps the strength and proletarian character away. The influence of those who do not hold an adequate (or any at all) understanding of political economy or the relationship of wage-labor to capital has turned the IWW from a union that was for the abolition of capitalism to one that seeks merely to manage capitalism on democratic lines. We are, of course, talking about the worker co-operative.

Co-ops are historically a mechanism for the defense of capitalist relations. Their main function is to take the burden of the capitalist and to place it on the backs of those who have to labor for a living. It is the ideology of the small business owner, and the children of the small business owner, the students, the academics, and those who mistake democracy for socialism. In other words, those who have little to no experience of wage labor and the production process or lack the means or ability to understand the system, causing the lack of an understanding in the production process.

In capitalism, a laborer sells their ability to labor, their labor-power, to a capitalist for a wage, for money. Labor-power is a commodity and it trades on average for its actual market price, just like any other commodity. The difference between labor-power and a powerloom is that labor-power can go on to create more value than was exchanged for it.

During the working day, laborers work for themselves for part of the day, to recuperate the value that they need to exchange for the production and reproduction of her life as a laborer. The rest of the day, they are laboring for free and this is the surplus-labor (or in other words, surplus-value). It is the source of profit. This is what the capitalist rests upon and the system of wage-labor obscures this method of exploitation.

And for capital to survive, it has to make a profit. It has to create more value than the value that went into it. This means that the capitalist has to squeeze down on labor, by extending the working day, lowering wages, making the worker work harder and/or more productively, etc. And what does the capitalist do with this surplus? They have to put it to market, turning the product into a commodity.

Commodities exist because there is a market, because there is property. Co-operative property, no matter how democratic it is, is still property. Things have to be produced to be exchanged, regardless of their use-values. The irrational logic of capitalist production comes from this fact.

By converting the worker into a co-operative worker, all that is being done is laying the problem of capitalist accumulation onto the shoulders of the proletariat. Commodity production is not abolished, nor is property itself, and the confrontation of alienated labor with the direct producer continues. The money-commodity would not be done away with in an economy based upon the commodity-form. The petite-bourgeois preachers of the co-operative movement, and their mindless intelligentsia, as such do not have any idea of what capitalism is. The best evidence of the reformist nature of co-operatives is the plain fact that they already function perfectly fine in capitalism, and most of them all share the same tendencies of workers working long hours, managing their own pay decreases and the growth of a managerial position.

So what does this to do with the abolition of the wages system? It shares in common the idea that the problems of the worker is not the existence of capitalism itself, but that the worker is not paid back their full value, as such, it also shares in common the reformist and conservative idea of a fight for a $15 minimum wage and universal basic income. What these people fail to understand is the fact for capitalism to exist it has to create every day a class of people who are forced to consume the means of production and means of subsistence. Just another mechanism for keeping the working class the working class.

As such, the co-operative movement is only one way for capital to try and manage its own crisis. Notably this has been the case in Argentina where workers have been taking over business and factories of absentee owners. It does not provide a mechanism for the abolition of capitalism, nor do the proponents even seek to do so in regards to the terms in the preamble. Socialism for these people (and their general goal) is a nicer, more democratic capitalism.

The promotion of this idea is an anarchist deviation. It has no place in our union and it goes against the ideas of our preamble. And if you don’t agree with the preamble, then you shouldn’t be in the IWW. No doubt that these are working class demands, and we would be entirely content if they were explained in the wider context of capitalist accumulation and the fact that they are mere band-aids patching up the haemorrhaging wound of capitalist crisis, but nowhere have we seen anyone doing this apart from us. Further proof that the IWW is just a social club for activists to feel good about themselves about “doing something”.

If the IWW had its shit together, and actually operated like it wanted to abolish capitalism, then it would stamp out this idea and promote a better understanding of what capitalism is, and to do that it has to promote Marx and Marxism. Maybe it would realize that organizing for the sake of organizing is a waste of time, or even counter productive if we’re just tying the proletariat to the bourgeois mode of production. This should be obvious, but unfortunately we have to piss on this activist parade as hardly anywhere does it seem that this goal of communism is raised. The IWW is currently not organizing for the end goal of communism, it is organizing a defence of capitalism. This is stemming from the deficiencies in theory and deficiencies in being a decentralized mess.

The amount of negative anarchist influence in the union, the same influence that unashamedly calls out “no politics in the union” as a thin disguise to keep their childish and bourgeois ideas dominant, is most clearly obvious in this pipe-dream of a demand of a hierarchy-free capitalism. These same people will promote the discussion of what ever theory is the soup du jour of that moment, and are the same people who try to denounce any mention of Marx. It’s little wonder they don’t like the preamble, or try to wiggle out of it like a bunch of lawyers, considering it’s more or less taken word for word from Karl Marx.

THESES ON THE DEGENERACY OF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD AS A GENUINE PROLETARIAN ORGANIZATION

1. Since its heyday in the early 20th century, the IWW has degenerated into a grotesque shell of its former revolutionary proletarian self. Once the closest realization of “the party” in the United States and beyond, the IWW is now a haven for ragtag leftists, lifestyle evangelists, historical re-enactors, moralist-scold anarchists, and labor lusters who would just as soon join the SEIU or an AFL-CIO union if they had open membership. This is not a reflection on workers who get involved with organizing campaigns at their workplace, but rather those who have made the IWW their personal ideological clubhouse.

2. For much too long, the IWW has fetishized decentralization and autonomy. This has led to small cliques and personal fiefdoms in elected union offices. It is not unusual to see members running for union office unopposed in yearly elections. Members who have held the same office for multiple years with nobody running against them become comfortable and complacent.

3. This trend toward decentralization has led to a complete mishmash of ideologies and ideas left to infect and fester in the IWW, which has led to the promotion of all sorts of concepts which fly in the face of the preamble. These include, but are not limited to, support for $15 minimum wage, cooperatives, and no coordination at the branch level. Reformist cretinism has no place in a revolutionary union, leave that for parliamentary cretinism.

4. The union’s newspaper, Industrial Worker, is at this point a waste of money and resources, printing only feel good articles and nothing else. For several years now, an IW website has been promised and has yet to happen, with little sign of it coming down the road. For all intents and purposes, it’s still strictly a print newspaper with a PDF posted onto a third party website for online viewing. This is an embarrassment. At the moment, the paper is only good for lining cat litter trays. The money spent each year on the IW could be better spent elsewhere, such as toward organizing funds or a strike fund (see point 9).

5. The communication between branches is a complete shambles. Only those most engaged and with the least amount of a social life are able to keep up with events union wide. There is no single news source, no single twitter or facebook account, just a myriad of half updated accounts.

6. There is a complete and utter incestuous degeneracy of revolutionary praxis (and even syndicalist praxis) with the adoption of activism. This is mostly a means to waste our time, so that people feel like they are doing something rather than trying to integrate with the class at large. With focus on soft and easy targets and an abandonment and lack of understanding that this abandonment has occurred, of a class theory of history, the reason for the existence of the IWW, and the fact that we are a union and need to have workers in it.

7. The self absorbed navel gazing in regards to organizational approaches and inner orientation as compared to an actual orientation towards the class. The IWW can no longer be a social club for pretend revolutionaries.

8. The Union pretends to not have an historic position on political economy, forsaking the intellectual heritage of revolutionary class politics that used to be the backbone of the union. Marx’s analysis was heavily used to form that backbone and is exactly why we emphasize proletarian politics from a marxist view. The program of the IWW must include investigation into political economy.

9. As far as any of us are aware, there is no strike fund in the IWW. How can the IWW consider itself a union with no form of emergency fund for IWW workers who are caught in the bad end of an organizing campaign? Your “solidarity” means nothing without this basic material necessity, and a crowdfunding campaign launched at the last minute won’t cut it. Perhaps some of the thousands of dollars which are thrown away on the Industrial Worker each year could go toward a strike fund.

10. The focus of gender equality in the organization over political ability. As a woman, there is a preference over my sex over my ability as someone with an insight into political economy and ideology, which was never taken into account at all. This often results in situations where the political ends of a proposal are never taken into account, just as long as there is “gender balance”.

“It would be better if these endless and useless adventures that are daily exhausting the working masses were all channelled, merged and organized into one great, comprehensive upsurge aimed directly at the heart of the enemy bourgeoisie.” – Amadeo Bordiga, “Seize Power or Seize the Factory?”

Safer-spaces and activist posturing

Lately, an idea has been floating around the union regarding the adoption of a safer-spaces policy. This concept has been trendy among the liberal social-justice crowds for a while now, so it was only a matter of time before it crawled into the IWW. It began as a petition to bring the measure forward before the larger union body, which would vote on it. Unlike most other petitions intended to become referenda on official union policy, this one was actively shared and promoted by official union social media, such as the “IWW” and Industrial Worker facebook pages. It’s currently on the ballot in the annual union elections.

One must wonder how the wobbly bully pulpit is distributing its voice. At what point is your implementing rules that you find necessary above the debate over said rules? When does the Union change from what people aim to be a democratically run union to being a democracy of the editor not unlike generic bourgeois politics? Even if the measure is passed what guarantee would placing these restrictions offer in terms of results towards violence; rather, what would they offer in terms of providing an easy mechanism for silencing dissent.

The issue is not with safer spaces policies themselves, but how they are used, who uses them and the ideas behind them. Proposals like this often come under the guise of a certain ideology and because they stem from a theoretical and political position it makes it harder to counter these proposals because of the “no politics in the union” motto, rearing its head whenever convenient. It is not about preventing rape or even the triggering of the abused. Conscious or not, this is a way for a certain political and ideological grouping to creep into the union.

We are, of course, opposed to harassment and discrimination – a correct position albeit one about as unique as being opposed to cancer – but how effective would a “safer spaces” policy be? This just comes off as a feel-good band-aid measure, activist posturing galore. They have about as much effect on real life as a tiger-repellent rock. Without the class dimension these policies/ideas/theories are nothing more than bourgeois reformism, much in the same way that there is a difference between bourgeois feminism and socialist feminism.

These ideas are born from conditions where class consciousness is very low and are promoted by people who do not hold class politics as the motivation of history, who most of the time have no direct connection with the production process in any shape or form. Safer spaces policies and its incestuous bed partner, privilege theory, represent a degeneration of a revolutionary proletarian group, and goes hand in hand with activism. They represent a move away from the class program of the IWW preamble towards the elevation of the democratic principle, to class as an identity/privilege instead of class being the whole mechanism from which communism can be ushered. It is no wonder that this is promoted by people from petite-bourgeois and student backgrounds, who also promote the idea of worker co-operatives as a solution to capitalism, the inward focus on organisation and democracy as a revolutionary principle, consumer boycotts such as buying ethical clothes and veganism as a revolutionary tactic. One could even say they all… intersect.