It has provided a chance for organization when there was no other union
to do it. It went into the woods and the harvest fields and organized
the migratory workers. It had a free and easy way of organizing, and
they were free and easy men. In the woods it acquired some permanency.
The loggers of Oregon, Washington and Idaho are about the only active
members it has. The important consideration is how much revolution did
it instil into them? According to my observations, very little.
The loggers were told about the preamble of the I. W. W., the theme of
which lies in its first words: “The working class and the employing
class have nothing in common.” With those sentiments the loggers were in
hearty accord. They knew better than the I. W. W. organizers how true it
was in the woods. They wanted better camp conditions. The I. W. W. gave
them a chance for organized protest, so they joined. They are
frontiersmen with the virtues of the frontier; they stand by their
friends. So they stand by the I. W. W. But to say they become
class-conscious revolutionists is absurd.
The leadership at the I. W. W. has syndicalist purpose, but its
membership is merely looking for better working conditions. The average
man who joins the I. W. W. would as willingly join a union that had less
to say about revolution if it were there. The I. W. W., like the
Salvation Army, works where more bourgeois organizations fail. At the I.
W. W. headquarters in Chicago is turned out a varied supply of I. W. W.
reading matter, but you do not see workers pouring over it. They glance
at occasional pamphlets, but they do not bother themselves with the
anarcho-syndicalist theories. Some few harvest workers have tried
sabotage, and that is about the most serious charge against the I. W. W.
No Consistent Idea.
Out of the scores of leaflets and pamphlets they can get no consistent
revolutionary idea. They are a confusion of syndicalism, anarchy,
Socialism, Communism and Bolshevism. That is inevitable, as the writers,
not always very thoroughly informed, have tried to adapt their
individual conceptions of the various social revolutionary movements in
Europe to American conditions. The I. W. W., being the one outstanding
revolutionary movement, has drawn to it so many different types of
revolutionists they have mutually destroyed each other’s theories.
The Bolshevists in the I. W. W. have recently had a serious jolt. They
tried, without success, to induce the loggers to support the Third
Internationale, the propaganda body of the Bolshevik Government in
Moscow. They told the loggers that, as part of the proletariat, they
should give their indorsement to the dictatorship of the proletariat and
the organization of the world revolution from Moscow.
The loggers are not very long on political ideas, but they wanted to
know about it first. So the editor of the Northwest Industrial Worker,
one of the I. W. W.’s most important publications, explained it. He is
himself a syndicalist and no Bolshevist. Moreover, he lives in Seattle
and knows the loggers are not to be turned into rubber stamp
revolutionists by the propaganda of the Lenine-Zinovieff school. So in
the Northwest Industrial Worker for Oct. 20 he printed the following
editorial:
‘What about the Russian Workers:’
“A vote for the indorsement of the Third Internationale by the members
of the Industrial Workers of the World means a vote indorsing the
actions of the small political group which now holds Russia under its
rule, the Communist Party. There should be no doubt in the minds of
members as to that fact. If the vote for indorsement carries, members
should realize that we shall have indorsed a political state that is not
only upheld by bayonets but which has sent conquering armies to invade
other countries.
“It is unfortunate that members of the I. W. W. have never received any
accurate information as to the actual condition of the workers of
Russia. We have heard many generalizations as to the conditions of the
Russian people, singing the praises of the Soviet Government. But have
members of the I. W. W. ever heard a report made by industrial unionists
or by syndicalists containing reliable information upon the following
matter?”
Questions Are Asked.
“Are the workers of Russia permitted by the Government to organize upon
their own lines without interference?
“Are the workers of Russia permitted to freely travel through the
interior looking for employment?
“What percentage of the workers in the large industrial sections are
organized, and upon what basis?
“Are workers permitted to maintain their own press without governmental
interference?
“Until the members of the I. W. W. have information upon these and many
other matters they are voting in the dark upon something of which they
know nothing. They have a right to know whether Soviet Russia is a
‘working-class government.’ Communist Party propaganda will not afford
satisfactory answers to these queries.
“We are endeavoring to get enlightenment upon such matters at first
hand, and have already secured some information, but we realize that we
have no right to influence, or attempt to influence, the vote upon a
referendum which is pending. We want the truth about affairs in Russia.
We are interested in the Russian workers more than we are interested in
anything pertaining to that country.”
Absurdity of Label.
I have reproduced this editorial in full partly to show the absurdity of
simply labelling the I. W. W. movement Bolshevik and letting it go at
that. Also, I have never seen an abler editorial against Bolshevism. And
this, mind you, was published in the most important organ of the I. W.
W.
There were people in the I. W. W. movement who did not like it, and they
brought pressure to bear to remove the editor, J. C. Kane, from his
editorial chair. But the loggers read the editorial and liked it. They
would probably never have read it if there had not been a fuss raised;
but, at any rate, they did read it, and approved. Then they heard that
the editor had been fired and they got a little “mass action” into play
and put him back. And they did not indorse the Third Internationale.
That is a long way from Bolshevism. Nothing like that could happen in
Russia. As an incident it is symptomatic. It shows the members of the
movement insist on running it according to their individual will. =In
other words it is not a Bolshevik movement directed by a highly
centralized labor autocracy. It is rather an anarcho-syndicalist
movement bossed from the “job.”=
Is “Job-Controlled.”
The Bolshevik-minded within the I. W. W. do not really belong there. The
I. W. W. happens to be the most radical band wagon and they have climbed
on. Incidents such as I have just quoted show them where they get off.
The men who understand better the I. W. W. movement know it must be
based on “job control.” Every time it has ever done anything it has been
a case of “job control”—in other words, the men on the job decided what
they were going to do. Their successful strikes in the woods the summer
of 1917 were, for instance, declared in the camps.
In the I. W. W. dogmatic concepts do not get far. Revolutionary phrases
take on new meanings and disconcert their originators. The phrase
“direct action,” for example, is well understood in the revolutionary
patter to mean direct revolutionary action to put a workers’
dictatorship into governmental power. But it does not mean that in the
logging camps. It means direct action by the camp crew and not action
according to the decision of the I. W. W. headquarters.
Are Fundamental Democrats.
Fundamentally the I. W. W. members are democrats like the rest of us.
They have no far political vision, and they wish to ameliorate the
condition in life of workingmen, but they could be trusted in the final
analysis not to follow any doctrinaire revolutionist who had thought it
all out for them and told them to come along. Lenine could do that with
the Russian workers. But no one could do it with American workers. And
the membership of the I. W. W., particularly in the woods, is largely
American.
The I. W. W. has its ups and downs, and just now it is down. But it will
not go out of existence and disappear because it stands for an idea,
industrial unionism. There are other labor organizations, such as the
Automobile Workers, which also stand for industrial unionism, but the I.
W. W. has proclaimed it loudest, though it has perhaps done less
effective organizing than some of the others.
Industrial unionism is essentially inimical to the craft unionism upon
which the American Federation of Labor is built. The individual unions
in the A. F. of L. could unite along industrial lines, and some have,
but the results have not been sufficiently striking to remove from the
I. W. W. further excuse for existence.
Not Essentially Revolutionary.
There is nothing essentially revolutionary in industrial unionism,
though the I. W. W. tries to make it so, concluding its well known
preamble with the sentence: “By organizing industrially we are forming
the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” But that
is largely rhetoric. In the body of the preamble is written: “We find
that the centring of the management of industries into fewer and fewer
hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power
of the employing class.” All industrial unionists are of this point of
view. Their position was well described to me by William A. Logan,
President of the Automobile Workers, who is not a member of the I. W. W.
“Industrial unionism is no one’s invention,” he said. “It naturally
follows the combination of manufacturers in an industry. Manufacturers
absorb industries which furnish them, so labor does the same thing. The
combinations of industries in large plants has so highly specialized the
work that no one workman need be a rounded mechanic. Men can also be
shifted easily from one machine to another. Common and semi-skilled
labor has almost entirely taken the place of skilled labor in industry.
I used to be an auto-fitter. There is now no such job. The manufacture
of even such a finished article as an automobile has been specialized to
a point where one man need know very little. He may have merely to start
a nut. So all the men in the industry are on the same footing. There is
no longer point in splitting them into crafts. The logical way to
organize them is industrially.”
Merely New to United States.
That is all there is to industrial unionism. It is comparatively new to
America, but it is an old story in Europe. To organize industrially is
just as democratic as to organize by crafts. It all depends upon what is
done with the organization once it is formed. Industrial unionism only
becomes revolutionarily syndicalistic when a union of industrial unions
announces it is going to take over the Government in the name of its
syndicalist workers.
The I. W. W. says, “The army of production must be organized not only
for the everyday struggle with capitalists but also to carry on
production when capitalism shall have been overthrown.”
The less revolutionary automobile workers, whose correct title is United
Automobile, Aircraft and Vehicle Workers of America, say more
conservatively: “We know that the workers will never know how to manage
the State if they should gain that responsibility through political
action, until they learn how to act collectively in getting some of
their immediate needs satisfied.”
Nothing to Fear.
The I. W. W. foresees the uniting of all the different industrial unions
in one big union. It says, “One union—one label—one enemy.” The
automobile workers say more modestly, “One union, one industry.”
So the industrial union may, or may not, be used with revolutionary
intent. Of itself it is nothing to be afraid of.
Practically industrial unionism has between it and success what even the
comparatively mild automobile workers refer to as the power of “Czar
Gompers and his Grand Dukes.”
Theoretically the A. F. of L. is not opposed to industrial unionism. Any
of the crafts may join forces. But practically the A. F. of L. machine
prevents it.
“PROLETARIAT OF AMERICA” JUST GOES AND GETS JOB, WORLD INVESTIGATOR
FINDS
_By Arno Dosch-Fleurot._
Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).
At Akron, O., where the rubber industry swelled to enormous proportions
in the last few years, business dropped like a skyrocket recently and
there were reports of tens of thousands of men thrown out of work. So I
went to Akron to see how great were the sufferings of the “proletariat.”
Here, at least, I thought I should find a mass of unskilled labor and a
proletarian class consciousness such as I have been in the habit of
associating with big industry in Europe.
I found Akron pretty well shut down, but there was no proletariat about.
There were no bread lines, no soup kitchens. Still there was no question
but that there were some 50,000 fewer men working in the small city than
there had been a short time before. Where were they?
They had gone home. They had acquired no stake in Akron. Most of them
were from West Virginia. They were migratory workers, and when they were
not wanted conveniently disappeared. They went to other towns, other
industries, back to the land. Broadly they were a migratory class, but
they had no consciousness of class. To-day they were seeking the highest
pay in the factories, to-morrow they will be tilling the soil. To a
would-be proletarian leader they must be exasperatingly elusive.
I found the manufacturers of Akron deeply grateful to them. They came
when they were wanted and took themselves away when they were no longer
wanted. Without them it would have been impossible to build industries
so rapidly to meet the demands of a day, and if they did not take
themselves off when the slump came they would create a disagreeable
responsibility for the manufacturer who got them together. It is a
situation that is purely American and would leave bewildered any one who
tried to fix European ideas of industrial organization upon American
institutions.