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.

The Poverty of Pre-Figurative Politics

“The internal difficulties seem to be almost greater than the external obstacles. For although no doubt exists on the question of “Whence,” all the greater confusion prevails on the question of “Whither.” Not only has a state of general anarchy set in among the reformers, but everyone will have to admit to himself that he has no exact idea what the future ought to be. On the other hand, it is precisely the advantage of the new trend that we do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world through criticism of the old one. Hitherto philosophers have had the solution of all riddles lying in their writing-desks, and the stupid, esoteric world had only to open its mouth for the roast pigeons of absolute knowledge to fly into it. […] But, if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.”

Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843

What is the core of pre-figurative politics? It’s found in the slogan “creating the new world within the shell of the old”. What does this position assume and presuppose? It assumes, first and foremost, that it is indeed possible to create the new world here and now: that we can – and should – establish islands, as it were, free from the malaise of the existing order. Thus autonomous spaces – be it punk houses or larger land areas -, cooperative enterprises etc are to be established, and because they are democratic, non-hierarchic and transparent they carry within them the seeds of socialism.

The presupposition for this perspective is not the class struggle. The question asked by the people pushing pre-figurative politics or in the circles they arise, is not “Where does the class struggle go? What problems face the class as a whole or in particular branches?”. On the contrary, the question for them is “What can we do? What use is there in theory when we can live socialism here and now?”. In other words, it’s the activist that here opens its mouth, and a stench of roast pigeons gushes out of him.

But let’s take the prefigurative outlook into consideration as a whole. As mentioned, it’s more often than not pushed as an excuse for activism rather than serious political activity. Be that as it may, prefigurative politics nevertheless take onto itself the task of changing the whole of society. Is the core assumption – to create socialism here and now, if only in smaller capitalism-free islands – tenable? The old Marxologist Andrew Kliman argues it is literally a politics of make-believe. We would add that it furthermore mistakes the core contradictions of capitalism with its management. The problem is not the class contradiction, but lack of democracy – so as long as something is run “really democratically” it naturally is good for and strengthens the class. This malaise of mistaking the class contradiction for one between “those in power” and “the people”, or “democracy” and “real democracy” is common on the left, and especially among the activists of prefigurativity.

It flows naturally from this that, in the case of the coop, as long as an enterprise is run by its workers, it’s socialist. The mistake here is twofold. First of all, private ownership is but one of the central characteristics of capitalism, be it the most central. But this problem is not solved in bits and pieces. The old slogan of “worker’s control” cannot be taken out of the context of full revolution and destruction of the old order, or at least generalised class struggle, that attacks the whole social order of capitalism: commodity exchange, and following from this isolated enterprises; as well as wage labour, state rule, religion, the family… Secondly, in the mind of “prefiguratists” coops are no longer seen as a particular outcome of particular struggles, but something to be used as a strategy.This ignores how and when coops come about. When arising out of a struggle, it’s usually in times of crisis: the capitalist leaves his factory and parts of his machinery behind to seek more fertile grounds for his capital. The workers, left to themselves without a job to go to, go together to continue production on their own. Nothing has changed but ownership and management: the enterprise still produces for exchange – and of course it does: the rest of capitalist society is left untouched. In fact, when workers take over an enterprise in times of crisis, the pressure from the market makes the workers work harder in order to save their business – the workers freely choose to be more exploited. In other words, it’s self-managed misery.

This second point rings similar to the Marxist theory that trusts, state ownership, stock companies etc makes the transition to socialism easier. But when examined closer the point made by the Marxists is fundamentally different: their point is to show that capitalism drives towards a contradiction between private ownership and social production – in other words, the trust, the worker’s owned enterprise (either through stocks or in the case of the coop) etc are still capitalist enterprises.

Another curious point in pre-figurative politics, is the specific role given to the revolutionary organisation. Its role is not to organise revolutionary workers, produce theory and intervene – instead the revolutionary organisation itself is supposed to prefigure the post-revolutionary society. We write “instead”, because all the while it’s possible to do both, those pushing for this kind of politics sacrifice the former for the latter. And since the revolutionary organisation itself prefigures the coming society, it is believed that there is a one-to-one relationship between how the revolutionary organisation organises and the outcome of the revolution. Maybe this wouldn’t be so laughable, had not the real question been how a couple of hundreds of anarchists are to organise themselves. The result of all this is disastrous: a fetish for democracy and organisation, expressed in stale discussions about organisational structures, correct democratic procedures etc, devoid of any political content. And for many, this becomes the main – or even only – “theoretical” discussions the revolutionary organisation intervene in, further delaying any meaningful discussions on class struggle and its ultimate aim: abolishing capitalism.

Let’s chew on this particular problem a little more. What kind of views on the relations between the revolutionary organisation and the class are we met with here? A view that aggrandizes the revolutionaries and their role in the making of revolution – it is again activism that rears its ugly head. Organising is of course important, so is questioning how we organise. But the fact that a handful anarchists believe that they themselves prefigure a society that inevitably has to include 7, 10 or 12 billions – depending on your pessimism – is testimony to a great delusion of grandeur. The problem of the relations between class and party is not overcome by simply ignoring the question.

Contrary to the analysis and politics presented above, we say that, on the contrary, it’s only capitalism that prefigures communism. And only through uprooting capitalist society as a whole, does “worker’s control” make sense. Furthermore, democracy does not solve the antagonisms of capitalist society, not as a whole nor within each enterprise. Whereas the activists of pre-figurativity proudly propose to live socialism today, they tend to preserve the old world within the shell of the new. It is a socialism for the poor, that leave revolutionary theory and activity for the sake of doing something. As opposed to this, we want to create the new world on the ashes of the old.

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.

“We don’t need no stinkin’ books!”

What can we say about Benjamin Ferguson’s letter about Karl Marx in the July/August Industrial Worker? To begin with, he’s bungled a fake Lenin quote (about hanging capitalists with the rope purchased from them), misattributed it to Marx, and then shrugged him off as “yet one more dead white European” while at the same time endorsing dead white Europeans Bakunin and Kropotkin. However, most egregiously in the letter is his rank dismissal of reading Capital, not only serving up the same old vague cliches about “direct action”, but also stooping to ugly we-don’t-need-no-book implications that the only people who read Marx aren’t working class. Does he think workers have no time to read with all the “direct action” going on?

Finally, his view of the IWW: “workers coming together industrially to democratically decide how to protect their interests and improve their lives” – leaves us with questions. How different is this from the rhetoric of other unions? Would these words be out of place in any other union publication? Would democratically-made General Motors cars compete with democratically-made Toyota cars under this IWW union model? Democratically-controlled asbestos plants?

A response

“No politics in the union”, said the anarchist.

We at WOBBLING TOWARDS COMMUNISM are both delighted and surprised by the attention we are suddenly getting. If we had known this would happen, we would have left a biting comment on the Industrial Worker facebook page long ago! We would like to address some of the recent feedback, most of which is about our aims, our output, and our conduct.

When we say communism, we mean “the real movement that abolishes the present state of things”. This present state of things is a social order predicated on value-creation through wage-labor and the circulation of that value through exchange. We are for the dissolution of class society, recognising the immediacy of communism, therefore we also oppose the state in all it’s forms. We do not seek leadership over this movement or over this union, not out of moral principle, but because we realize that it is the class itself that must take up leadership, and it is only the class in motion that is able to overcome the current social order. We are not members of any communist/socialist party or organization, we are only members of the IWW.

We call ourselves communists not because of any allegiance to Marx or any other writer who has called themselves that (although we are indebted to their analysis), but because for us, communism means the end of the commodity form and exchange being in control of our social-relations in favor of the directly human community. This is opposed to the abstract and moral formulations of other writers and thinkers who have thought of human emancipation in terms of “freedom” or “rights” or “liberty”. All of which emerged, ironically enough, out of attempts to justify the very basis of a society they claim to abhor. We do not want a better or more democratic version of this world, we want something new!

The purpose of this grouping is to try to put hard questions to ourselves and to clarify our role as a revolutionary industrial union. Our analysis is especially important considering that the IWW has no internal coherent theory, or set of texts and ideas that describe what wage-labour, commodity production, the state or class society is. These elements are notably lacking in regards to certain other political tendencies within the union, despite being perhaps the more active elements within the organization. What occurs as a result is that the IWW has been turned into just another leftist organization that involves people just endlessly going to meetings and nothing of note actually happening, despite some successes here and there at organizing a few shops. There is a disconnect between these small successes and the goal of changing the world. While we recognize the usefulness of proletarian organs we are also opposed to uncritical proletarian self-affirmation. The historic task of the proletariat is to destroy the proletariat as a category, along with every other social class.

Some wobs have responded to our stated existence in an organized format. When we hear the “no politics in the Union” line, it’s understandable where they’re coming from, but it is consistent with what many in the Union already do and will continue to do. How many times has the IWW been invoked in protests over things not related to workplace struggles? How about in defending oppressed groups? These are all political stances in which the IWW has been inserted into by well-meaning wobs. Our hearts goes out to you all for your effort but the purpose of the Union – the abolition of wage-labor – is nothing short of the most profound political change that the world has seen since the bourgeois revolutions themselves. Keep your eyes on the prize!

We could have sent our introductory statement for inclusion to the GOB, the internal-only discussion publication where little discussion happens, save for the thrill and excitement of one or two letters, voting results of the GEB, and accounting statements. We would have sent it there, if we didn’t care if anyone would read it. We made a deliberate choice to submit it for inclusion to the Industrial Worker, because we wanted it to be read by members and non-members alike.

We can see how some Fellow Workers might feel that our introductory statement runs contrary, and even abusive of the purpose of the Industrial Worker. If the Industrial Worker is meant to be a method of voicing concerns and developments within the Union, we see no reason why a group of organized wobblies should have to buy advertisement space on that periodical, especially when it is essentially a greeting for further dialogue, nor should it be obscured within the confines of union records. This dialogue will be more provoking than the announcement precisely because we are taking our time.

Now that we have your attention, we hope you stay with us as we gradually put out articles which clarify and develop our positions.

Wobble on,
WOBBLING TOWARDS COMMUNISM
wobblingtowardscommunism.wordpress.com
@IWWCommunists

Wobbling Towards Communism

We are members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and we are Wobbling Towards Communism. We announce ourselves as a communist trend within the IWW, and we aim to reaffirm the basic principles of the union.

We are serious about our commitment to the abolition of the wage-labour system and its relation to commodity production and private property (and all that it entails). We are committed to this being the main focus of our tactics as a revolutionary union.

We are against reformist activism because capitalism cannot be reformed. We should not play the bourgeois game of single issue reforms. In particular, we oppose the practices and methods of the bourgeois business unions which only seek to increase their membership at the cost of revolutionary foment, that divides workers along skill and trade lines and capitulate to bourgeois political parties and the state. These reforms are perfectly compatible with the bourgeois mode of production, and have no place in Communism.

From this, we are against class collaboration and participation with any bourgeois institution, such as the state and its political parties. As the beginning of the IWW Preamble states, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” We are opposed not only to the standard bourgeois parties, but also to the left wing of capital in all its forms, from labour parties to political organizations which wish to subordinate the class struggle for their own gains.

Stay tuned.

Wobbling Towards Communism

We are a group of communists in the IWW. Watch this blog for future posts and announcements.