Half Baked Class Struggle at Whole Foods

As with every union, every action that it takes is a defensive action, each one a way to keep the capitalist mode of production going. This includes offensive action which necessarily become defensive ones in the course of time, such as the fight for wage increases or the making of work places more tolerable. The IWW, as with every other union, falls into this trap when it refuses to accept it’s own revolutionary program and the conquest of power by the proletariat in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is due to, as we believe, the rejection of class as the motor of history, the rejection of historical materialism and the raising of bourgeois moralism such as the democratic principle, with the result of a goal of a decentralized, localized, struggle.

Let us take a recent example.

The IWW Whole Foods campaign has a goal of “raising the quality of life for workers today while laying the foundation for a future free of class exploitation”. In other words, the way that the IWW is organized predicates the future society, or lays the model for that future society. If we are to follow the general ideas in the union this involves co-ops and markets, decentralized units of localized activity, and so on. This is the socialism of the petite-bourgeoisie and even as revolutionary activity, it fails in an age when capital becomes ever more centralized.

For a more tolerable capitalism!

The token “free of class exploitation” is always thrown in as a way to legitimize every IWW campaign as way to somehow make the IWW seem different from any other union. A quick look at their demands reveals the usual vanilla union things such as fair wages, paid time-off, retirement plans and other things that will help the worker integrate more into the capitalism. None of the literature is promoting the idea of a world without wage-labor. This sort of thing is against the preamble, and it has become a joke. Even just taken at face value, which one is forced to do because it is accompanied by nothing but itself, the phrase doesn’t even amount to the abolition of class society.

This stems from a view of capital not as a social-relation, but as a subjective condition, such as here when they say “we practice solidarity with all people fighting for emancipation from the domination and oppression of capitalist society”. No longer is capitalism an objective process, it is now a subjective feeling of oppression. This fits perfectly with the current trendy Zeitgeist of socialism as work place democracy.

“Whole Foods has now increased its minimum hourly wage for all of its locations in Northern California and Reno to $12.75, and is transitioning to 2-week schedules for all employees in said region. Workers have been showing support for the union by wearing buttons to work, and no workers have been disciplined or terminated for engaging in union activity. This is a significant victory for the IWW and the working-class movement for emancipation. ”

Such a significant victory! The self congratulatory back slapping over this is the most obnoxious component. The IWW has long now just been a repository for those who take on “radical” as a lifestyle choice. As an aside, this $12.75 is below their original demand of $5, and is only slightly above the state minimum wage. A fact curiously missing from most literature produced by the IWW on the subject.

Three defects stand out from this. The main one is that there is no real emphasis on the abolition of capitalism, or even on class society despite what the token appeal might make one think. But this tied to the second: there is no call for the abolition of the wages system. Without the abolition of the wages-system the people behind this are just calling for the continued production and reproduction of the capitalist mode of production. Thirdly, the idea that the IWW is the form in which future society will take. What is this, one might ask? Again, the appeal to the democratic principle. Democratically managed and worker owned co-operatives. Couple this with the continuation of wage-labor, and through that, the continuation of commodity production, gives us nothing but the continuation of the capitalist mode of production (albeit apparently freed from the oppression and tyranny of evil capitalist over lords).

The same general themes appear constantly. As we have said in our previous articles, what the IWW should be doing, if it is what it pretends to be (the most advanced section of the working class), is emphasizing over and over the objective nature of capitalism and communism and that we are for the abolition of the wages-system, and point the way towards communism. Members have to go back to the books because it is apparent that none of the leading lights in the IWW understand what capitalism is.

What is Exorcism and How is it Performed?

First, we must diagnose the patient, which our previous articles have elaborated on. The problem in summary is; the resurrection of the IWW has only resurrected a putrescent corpse, an amorphous blob of connecting eyeless diodes that has no brain and can conjure up no life goals.

Problem: IWW is not a vehicle for the emancipation of the proletariat. It is too obsessed with its own individual functioning in its individual cells, rather than as a whole. Each cell has to be its own autonomous and democratic organ, separate from the corpus and without a conscious brain. Solution: exorcise the demonic presence from the body.

First step: recognizing the symptoms of demonic possession. The victim will be prone to blasphemy, denouncing Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, denying the holy trinity of abolition of wage-labour, property and classes. Other symptoms will include a great aversion to a materialist understanding of history, hating anything which mentions class as the sole locomotive force of social-change, the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. They oppose the materialist outlook with their own idealist views. Plus the upholding of the democratic principle over the destruction of capitalism by the body of the proletariat.

Second: the victim has to come to grips with reality. A thorough and scientific investigation must occur in relation to the body of the Union. This includes its relation to the class as a whole, its position in society, the methods of syndicalism, past examples which we can dissect, etc. Doing so without a ruthless critique of everything existing will only lead to a dangerous position of which spiritual rehabilitation will be impossible.

The third step is the most painful. The victim has to read the works of Karl Marx, Engels, and other socialists. The perversion of bourgeois ideology into the soul of the body can only be expunged by a knowledge of the relation of ideology to material situation. Past sins can be washed away, and the parts of the body that will remain corrupted will be forced out as bile along with them. A proper ideological reflection will reveal to the viewer that the mind of the body is only a reflection of the decayed state of capitalism today, a reflection that it tries to deal with by integrating it’s soul into the situation in which the body finds it. This is no proper course of treatment. To confront our problems is to eliminate the source of our problems.

The emancipation of the proletariat can only be undertaken by the proletariat, and that can only happen through the dictatorship of the working class. History has progressed since the foundation of the IWW in 1905 and anarchists, with their liberal bedfellows, have been rooting around in the emaciated shell of the union ignorant of these changes. But even in 1905 we had the historical precedent of the Paris Commune. A realization has to take place for us to move forward, that history has moved forward.

“The IWW reached out and grabbed an armful,” Bill Haywood said. “It tried to grab the whole world, and a part of the world has jumped ahead of it”. Syndicalism on its own is no good. All we have to do as a revolutionary organization (albeit only on paper, it would seem) is to formalize the already non-workplace related activity, so that we can regulate it and move away from senseless ego stroking activism. Anarcho-syndicalism is worst still, with the raising of the democratic principle and the diminishing motor of the body (class struggle) as a reality.

The fourth measure requires the amputation of all useless committees, with useful ones being retained and absorbed into the body. A structure has to be erected to hold the body together which can convey ideas to and from its extremities with ease with a centrally co-ordinating brain. Posts can be democratically decided with instant recall in times of relative calm but in situations of greater magnitudes of pressure, more strict controls will have to take place. We are not trying to create heaven in the corpulent shell of the old. We are forging a machine that will knock down the shell.

With a sound mind and a sound body, the next step will be giving directions to this creation. A plan for the future has to be presented for this body. A debated plan is better than no plan at all, and this can only be done with the body acting in unison with itself directed by a brain. A level of theoretical unity is a requirement which will lead to a cohesion of unity of action. If the body can’t even agree with itself on which way to walk, or how to walk, then it will never walk. Only an actual material understanding of the world in which it walks will allow it to progress.

Fantasy and idealism will keep it in its death bed.