Accueil > 20- ENGLISH - MATERIAL AND REVOLUTION > The IWW and Revolutionary Syndicalism in the USA
The IWW and Revolutionary Syndicalism in the USA
mardi 16 juin 2026, par
The IWW and Revolutionary Syndicalism in the USA
“We are adversaries of the existing order ; we are its enemies through and through. We do not respect the flag of the United States. It is a symbol of oppression… It flies over the worst places and carries no message for us. We do not believe in a hierarchy of wages. We propose to abolish the entire wage system and give every man a chance. We do not believe in God. The preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the biggest plasphemy in the world because it preaches submission to the current order, promising a better life… in the future.”
IWW, San Diego Union Meeting, April 25, 1912
“We are opposed to the existing order ; we are against it from bottom up. We do not respect the laws or flag of the United States. It is a symbol of oppression ; . . . It floats over the vilest places and has no message for us. We do not believe in the system of wages. We propose to overthrow the whole system and give every man a chance. We do not believe in a God. The preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ has been the greatest curse in the world because it preaches submission to the present order, promising something better in a future life.”
IWW, San Diego Union, April 25, 1912
During the period of rapid industrial development and concentration, the American labor movement also experienced significant growth in the 1870s and 1880s, taking on unique forms. For example, the Knights of Labor, a producers’ fraternity—initially secretive for security reasons—reached 700,000 members by the mid-1880s. Open to women and Black people, it advocated for the eight-hour workday, the nationalization of railroads, the abolition of monopolies, and the formation of cooperative enterprises. It brought together skilled and unskilled workers, union members and non-union members alike, as well as artisans and small business owners. Consequently, its leadership rejected class conflict, and after a series of deadly clashes, its influence declined, challenged by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). This organization, led by Samuel Gompers, brought together trade unions, without seeking to unify their actions or to open itself up to unskilled workers and the unemployed, and openly advocated negotiation, compromise and reform.
In various sectors of the American economy, particularly in railroads and mining in the western United States, workers rejected the methods of the AFL and organized themselves based on their industry. From this regrouping emerged the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905, a labor federation founded on industry-based organization. The IWW—later nicknamed the Wobblies—adopted revolutionary syndicalist principles, comparable to those of the Charter of Amiens, and methods of direct action—strikes or sabotage if necessary—rather than negotiation between union leaders and employers. For more than ten years, they spearheaded numerous struggles across the United States.
Committed internationalists, they opposed US participation in World War I and faced deadly repression. Although they still exist, the IWW has since been unable to mobilize a significant number of workers, but their principles—one union for all workers—and the forms they took in their actions have continued to influence social struggles in the United States.
The First World War also served to crush the revolutionary workers’ movement in the USA !
In 1912, the IWW, a revolutionary syndicalist organization advocating class struggle, had some 50,000 members, primarily concentrated in the Northwest, among dockworkers, farm laborers in the Midwestern states, and textile and mining regions. The IWW was involved in over 150 strikes, including the Lawrence Textile Strike (1912), the Paterson Silk Strike (1913), and the Mesabi Range Strike (1916). They were also involved in what is known as the Wheatland Hop Riot on August 3, 1913.
Between 1915 and 1917, the IWW’s Farm Workers Organization (AWO) brought together hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers throughout the Midwest and Western United States, registering and unionizing them, often in the fields, on the railroads, and in hobo camps.10 During this period, IWW workers were practically indistinguishable from hobos. Since itinerant workers could scarcely afford other means of transportation to reach their next job, covered freight cars, which hobos called "side-door coaches," were frequently plastered with IWW posters. An IWW membership card was considered sufficient for rail travel. Workers often obtained better working conditions through direct action at the workplace, staging sit-down strikes that consciously and collectively slowed down their work. The working conditions of seasonal farm workers saw a huge improvement thanks to Wobbly’s unionism.
Building on the success of the AWO, the Lumber Workers Industrial Union (LWIU) used similar methods to organize loggers and other forestry workers in both the Deep South and along the Pacific coast of the Pacific Northwest in the United States and Canada between 1917 and 1924. The IWW lumbermen’s strike of 1917 led to the eight-hour workday and greatly improved working conditions in the Pacific Northwest. Although mid-century historians credited the U.S. government and "visionary lumber magnates" for these concessions, it was an IWW strike that secured them.
Beginning in 1913, the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union (MWW) proved itself a force to be reckoned with. It competed with the unions of the American Federation of Labor for dominance in the industry. Given its commitment to international solidarity, its efforts and successes in this area were not surprising. Local 8, a branch of the union, was led by Ben Fletcher ; he had recruited primarily African American longshoremen from the docks of Philadelphia and Baltimore. Other leaders included the Swiss immigrant Waler Nef, Jack Walsh, E.F. Doree, and the Spanish seaman Manuel Rey. The IWW was also present on the docks of Boston, New York, New Orleans, Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Eureka, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver, as well as in ports in the West Indies, Mexico, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and other nations.
The IWW often struggled to maintain its gains, even where, as in Lawrence, it had won its strikes. In 1912, the IWW rejected collective bargaining agreements and advocated a permanent struggle on the shop floor against the employer. However, sustaining this revolutionary momentum against employers proved difficult. In Lawrence, the IWW lost almost all its members in the years following the strike, as employers gradually undermined the resistance of their employees and eliminated most of the union’s most ardent supporters.
Clarice Stasz, Jack London’s biographer, notes that he "saw the Wobblies as a beneficial contribution to the socialist cause, although he wasn’t radical enough to call for sabotage, for example." She mentions a personal meeting between London and Big Bill Haywood in 1912.
The effectiveness of the IWW’s nonviolent tactics provoked a violent reaction from the government, business circles, and groups of "citizens." In 1914, Joe Hill (Joel Hägglund) was accused of murder and, despite only circumstantial evidence, was executed by the state of Utah in 1915. On November 5, 1916, in Everett, a group of businessmen, appointed as sheriffs and led by Sheriff Donald McRae, attacked union members on the ocean liner Verona, killing at least five (six others were never found and likely disappeared in Puget Sound). Two members of the gang were killed, and although the exact circumstances remain unknown, it is believed that the two deputies were hit by friendly fire.
Many IWW members opposed US participation in the First World War. The organization passed a resolution against the war at its November 1916 convention. This echoes the view expressed at the IWW’s founding convention that war is a struggle among capitalists, in which the rich get richer, and where the poor often die at the hands of other workers.
The IWW’s daily newspaper, the Industrial Worker, wrote just before the United States entered the war : "Capitalists of America, we will fight against you, not for you ! There is no force in the world that can force the working class to fight if it does not want to." Yet, when the declaration of war was passed by the U.S. Congress in April 1917, Bill Haywood, general secretary and treasurer of the IWW, became firmly convinced that the organization should adopt a low profile to avoid the perceived threats to its existence. It ceased all anti-war activity, such as printing anti-war posters and documents. Anti-war propaganda was no longer part of the union’s official policy. After much debate in the IWW General Executive, with Haywood advocating a low profile while Frank Little supported continued agitation, Ralph Chaplin found a compromise. The resulting declaration denounced the war, but IWW members were encouraged to express their opposition through legal conscription procedures. They were advised to register, indicating their request for exemption by writing "IWW, opposed to the war."
Although the IWW moderated its verbal opposition, the mainstream press and the American government succeeded in turning public opinion against it. Frank Little, the IWW’s most virulent opponent of the war, was lynched in Butte, Montana, in August 1917, just four months after the declaration of war.
The government seized the opportunity presented by the First World War to break up the IWW. In September 1917, agents from the Department of Justice conducted simultaneous raids on 48 IWW meeting places across the country. Also in 1917, 165 union leaders were arrested for conspiracy to obstruct conscription, encourage desertion, and intimidate others in labor disputes, under the Espionage Act ; 101 were tried before Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1918. All were convicted—even those who had not been union members for years—and received prison sentences of up to 20 years. Sentenced to prison but released on bail, Haywood fled to the Soviet Union, where he remained until his death.
In his book "The Land That Time Forgot," published in 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs portrayed a member of the IWW as a particularly despicable traitor and scoundrel. This wave of denigration led to vigilante groups attacking the IWW in many places. In Centralia on November 11, 1919, Wesley Everest, a union member and veteran, was handed over to a mob by jail guards. He first had his teeth broken with a rifle butt, then was castrated and lynched three times in three different locations, and finally his body was riddled with bullets before being buried in an unmarked grave. The official coroner’s report attributed the death to "suicide."
After the war, repression continued. IWW members were prosecuted for violating various federal and state laws, and the Palmer Raids of 1920 targeted foreign-born members of the organization. By the mid-1920s, membership had already declined due to government repression, a decline that increased substantially during the 1924 schism, caused by internal disputes when the union split between "Westerners" and "Easterners" over a number of issues, such as the role of the general administration (often simplistically portrayed as a struggle between "centralizers" and "decentralizers") and attempts by the Communist Party to control the organization through infiltration.
https://www-marxists-org.translate.goog/history/usa/unions/iww/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr
The revolutionary syndicalist movement of the IWW, as reported by Daniel Guérin in "The Labor Movement in the United States (1867-1967)
On June 27, 1905, two hundred activists met in Chicago to form what they decided to call "The Industrial Workers of the World"
They claimed to be creating a new central trade union in opposition to the old AFL—which they punningly called the "Separation of Labor" (instead of Federation of Labor). They vehemently denounced the trade unionism of the trades, the business world, and class collaboration, contrasting it with a vision of industrial unionism based on worker solidarity and class struggle. They aimed to organize those whom the AFL had neglected : the unskilled workers, whose numbers were constantly increasing due to the development of machinery and whom they rightly considered the "granite foundation of the working class."
The founders of the IWW dominated Gompers by a hundred cubits. The manifesto launched by the activists who had taken the initiative to convene the founding congress, Haywood’s interventions at this assembly, the speeches given by Debs in a series of propaganda meetings in favor of the new organization, the pamphlet in which Daniel De Leon commented on the IWW program, all these texts still shine today with a brilliance that time has not tarnished.
Gomperism, however, materially survived the indictment leveled against it. It survived, for a time, and only by making concessions, willingly or unwillingly, to the ideas of its adversary. But its historical condemnation dates from 1905.
“The division of trades,” declared the Manifesto of 1905, “prevents the development of class consciousness among workers, engenders the idea of a harmony of interests between the exploiting employer and the wage slave (…). The universal economic evils afflicting the working class can be eradicated only by a universal workers’ movement. Such a movement of the working class is impossible as long as separate trade and wage agreements favor the employer against other trades in the same industry, and as long as energies are wasted in sterile jurisdictional struggles that serve only to increase the personal power of the union leaders. A movement fulfilling these conditions must consist of a single great industrial union encompassing the whole of industry (…). It must be based on the class struggle, and its general administration must be conducted in harmony with the recognition of the irrepressible conflict between the capitalist class and the working class.”
But while the founders of the IWW were armed with a powerful idea, the means at their disposal to put it into practice were inadequate. The founding congress was composed mainly of individuals representing only themselves or only a small portion of the organizations to which they belonged and which had not delegated them.
The only mass organization to join the IWW was the Western Federation of Miners, with its 27,000 members, and its satellite, the American Labor Union, with 16,500 members. But very quickly, as early as 1906, the Western miners decided to regain their independence. They were disheartened by the factional disputes that had erupted early on within the IWW. The organization, instead of becoming the new labor federation they envisioned, was becoming a battleground where rival sects and individuals clashed. In this environment where they constituted the only mass organization, they felt out of place and left.
Furthermore, the Western Federation was beginning a transformation that would ultimately lead it back to the AFL and diminish its activism… This departure was a severe blow to the IWW. The Western Federation was their backbone, as well as their main source of funding.
The initial weakness of the IWW was that, at first, they failed to attract any mass unions other than the Western Federation of Miners. The absence, in particular, of the Federation of Coal Miners was an irreparable handicap. The founders of the new unionism were right in believing that the AFL was not capable of reforming itself and that the initiative had to come from outside. But perhaps the IWW underestimated the possibilities for reform from within. For example, the creation, in 1898, of a Teamsters (truckers) federation within the AFL had instilled a new spirit into the old organization. The Teamsters possessed a sense of worker solidarity that the old craft unions rarely demonstrated.
After the departure of the Western Federation of Miners, which was finalized in 1907, one might have thought that what remained of the IWW would quickly disintegrate amidst sectarian squabbles. In 1908, a split divided the IWW in two : Daniel De Leon and his followers created an authoritarian branch of the IWW, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, while William Haywood (who, in the meantime, had relinquished his leadership of the Western Federation of Miners) took the helm of a group known as the Chicago branch. On one side were the "political" and "doctrinaire" factions ; on the other, the "anarcho-syndicalists" and "wobblies," proponents of "direct action" alone. (Wobbly literally means : rolling or swaying irregularly from side to side. It seems the nickname was invented by the bourgeois press to ridicule the IWW, who, on the contrary, took pride in it.)
And yet, it was only after these successive splits that the IWW, under Haywood’s leadership, truly entered the social struggles in the United States. It was no longer, as in the original model, a vast union federation intended to defeat the AFL, but an active minority, a kind of mobile force ready to move immediately to any point on the battlefield and take the lead in the struggles undertaken by the workers. Thus, while the IWW did not accomplish the grand mission it had originally intended to undertake, it nevertheless rendered an important service to the American working class. Faced with the shortcomings of Gomperism, it was the only organization to intervene in the labor struggles of the unskilled.
Initially, the IWW had taken the easy route : they paid little attention to the unorganized and turned their attention to disaffected union members, attempting to detach a number of trade union branches from the AFL. In the more advanced centers of the East, such as New York and Chicago, they achieved some results. In Shenectady, New York, a General Electric stronghold and AFL bastion, they managed to launch a sit-down strike at the end of 1906, one of the first of its kind in the United States. But these attempts didn’t get them very far. Therefore, they decided to leave the trade federations alone and devote their efforts to organizing unskilled workers. They turned, in particular, to migrant farmworkers and lumberjacks in the West, predisposed by their isolation and instability to a libertarian revolt : recourse to direct economic action, contempt for all political activity, and an inability to form any permanent organization. These wanderers, known in America as hobos, joined the IWW en masse and helped secure the victory of Haywood’s anarcho-syndicalist faction over the authoritarian faction represented by Daniel De Leon. At the 1908 convention, the "Western Brigade" alone constituted half of the delegates.
To meet the needs of migrant workers and take into account their specific circumstances, the IWW devised a new tactic : free speech fights. Using public squares was the only way to spread propaganda and recruit among dispersed and isolated workers who periodically gathered in towns around employment offices, searching for new jobs. Street speakers were thrown in jail ; others immediately replaced them. Mobile squads of IWW members rushed in from outside and were arrested in turn. These free speech fights shook the entire West between 1909 and 1911.
In 1910, the IWW attacked the organization of loggers in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. These loggers were neither immigrants nor migrants, but old-school Americans, primitive and violent. Suddenly transformed into wage laborers and harshly exploited, they were receptive to the IWW’s arguments. The strike they launched was one of the most violent in the annals of the American labor movement. But it failed, and the union that the IWW had helped organize was crushed.
In 1912, the IWW turned eastward and set its sights on the textile workers. The 25,000 unorganized workers at the American Woolen Company in Lawrence, Massachusetts, went on strike to protest starvation wages. They were mostly recent immigrants from 28 different nationalities, with Italians predominating. One of the IWW leaders, Joseph Ettor, took charge of the strike and led it with a firm hand.
The small town was placed under siege and Ettor arrested. Haywood replaced him. A procession of 10,000 to 15,000 strikers gave him a triumphant welcome. He implemented bold innovations. Assisted by a valuable activist, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, he organized European-style solidarity, directing the strikers’ children to the homes of friends and sympathizers in other towns. He involved women in the struggle, and they fought like lions. He established continuous pickets around the factories, composed of thousands of workers. He successfully drew public attention to the strikers’ cause. He secured support from the press. A committee of inquiry was formed in Washington, and a delegation of sixteen children, boys and girls under the age of sixteen, traveled to the nation’s capital to describe the terrible living conditions in Lawrence. One of these children called Samuel Gompers, who had come to testify against the strike, a liar.
The employers eventually gave in. Upon hearing of their victory, the workers (a very rare occurrence in the United States) sang the Internationale in all languages. The impact of this event was immense and extended far beyond Lawrence. As a result, 25,000 workers obtained a wage increase.
Another strike broke out in early 1913 in the silk industry in Paterson, New Jersey. It spread into a general solidarity strike. Haywood took the lead in the movement. A procession of 35,000 workers of all nationalities marched to a meeting to hear him speak. He was arrested ; when the AFL organized its own meeting, the workers boycotted it in protest against the refusal to allow the IWW leaders to speak.
Haywood, a master of publicity, brought 1,200 strikers to New York, where they marched through the streets. A large rally was held in Madison Square Garden, illuminated by a gigantic transparent screen bearing the three letters "IWW" in red. The strikers themselves described their living conditions in Paterson, sang songs they had composed, and performed a play recounting the events of their struggle. The press ran extensive reports. Haywood, ever innovative, organized meetings for the strikers’ children, helped them form a strike committee, and fostered their class consciousness by telling them the fascinating story of a city of children, without adults, police, prisons, banks, or bosses. Despite all these efforts, the struggle ended in failure.
The textile workers’ uprising made a powerful impression on the workers in mass-production industries, whose organization had been completely neglected by the AFL. In 1913, in Akron, Ohio, the rubber capital, the unorganized workers of the large tire factories spontaneously rose up. The IWW took the lead in the movement. Soon, 20,000 rubber workers were on strike. The indefatigable Haywood rushed to the scene. Aided by James P. Cannon, the future Trotskyist leader, he organized mass pickets, as he had in Lawrence. Here, the AFL’s union of unions supported the movement and considered calling a general strike. But ultimately, the movement failed. One of the causes of this defeat was the hostile attitude of William Green of the Miners’ Federation, Gompers’ future successor as head of the AFL. Then a senator from Ohio and chairman of a legislative inquiry committee, he denounced the IWW leaders, calling them "outside agitators".
Similarly, in Detroit, Michigan, another stronghold of the new big industry, the Wobblies launched a strike at the Studebaker plant during the summer of 1913. Eight thousand workers, all unorganized, walked off the job for a week. They displayed remarkable cohesion, but the movement missed its mark. Almost simultaneously, the IWW organizers focused their efforts on the Ford plants, flooding them with newspapers and leaflets, while orators addressed the workers at the factory gates. Rumors spread that the Wobblies were planning a strike at Ford for the summer of 1914. It was then that Ford, feeling threatened, launched its "high wages" policy.
Three years later, in 1916, the miners of Minnesota’s Mesaba Iron Range, who extracted the raw material needed for the steel mills of Pittsburgh and Chicago, revolted in turn. These recent immigrants, mostly of Finnish origin, were looking for leadership. The IWW answered their call. Joseph Ettor and Elisabeth Gurley Flynn went to the site. The strike became general and encompassed 16,000 miners. Finally, U.S. Steel granted a 10% wage increase, an eight-hour workday, and improved working conditions.
However, after 1914, the IWW again directed the bulk of its efforts westward. Despite their successes in the East, they had failed to establish a permanent organization there, and the prevailing economic crisis diminished the militancy of unskilled workers in the industrial regions of the Atlantic coast. In 1915–1916, they undertook to organize farmworkers, particularly in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. They succeeded in unionizing 18,000 migrant workers. Then they turned their attention to the loggers of the Northwest and the copper miners of Arizona.
In 1917, the IWW reached its peak, at least in terms of membership. In one year, they had grown from 40,000 to 100,000. But the United States’ entry into the war unleashed a fierce crackdown against them. All the combined forces of capitalism, the government, and veterans were employed to crush them. Samuel Gompers, happy to finally be rid of a troublesome rival, gave President Wilson free rein. Thousands of Wobblies were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms. The movement was effectively decapitated. It never recovered.
THE CHICAGO CONVENTION
by
Daniel DeLeon
The Daily People
June 27, 1905
(Note : This article refers to the 1905 industrial unionists’ convention which established the Industrial Workers of the World. — Also, the phrase “the Krag-Jorgensen policy of settling the Labor question” refers to the use of military force to suppress the workers. The Krag-Jorgensen was a rifle that was used by the US Army and National Guard. ”ML)
Frederick Engels, next to Karl Marx the greatest Socialist philosopher, reiterates in his great work, “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” the old Greek philosophy first clearly enunciated by Heraclitus, who said, “Everything is and yet is not, for everything flows, is in constant motion, is in constant process of formation and dissolution.” In other words, life is not a fixed but an ever changing and growing phenomenon. In no phase of life is this philosophy so applicable in its general characteristics as in the economic and social spheres of man. There integration and disintegration are constant and incessant.
Today, a large portion of the working class of this country is turning its gaze in the direction of Chicago. In the Great Lakes city of the West there opens today a convention of workingmen, which, judging from the manifesto calling it, is destined to mark an important change in the history of labor in this country. This convention promises to launch an economic organization of the working class on the lines of the conflicting interests of capital and labor, in direct contradistinction to the prevailing organization, that is based on the principle of the mutual interests of capital and labor. Such an organization necessarily demands integration and disintegration. It necessarily ignores those who regard the present form of trade unionism as fixed and stable, and proceeds to build up in conformity with sound principles, philosophical as well as economic.
That such promises as those of the Chicago manifesto have been held out before and have ended in comparative failure—that the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance and the American Labor Union, for instance, have attempted the same thing with a measure of success less than that confidently expected—is no valid reason for discrediting such promises, or not aiding in the work that would fulfill them - integration and disintegration are processes that must often be accompanied by failure and experimentation in order to be finally successful. The fact that the efforts to launch a classconscious organization of labor are achieving a certain cumulative force, despite their comparative failures, argues well for their final triumph.
Another fact, worthy of consideration, is the more favorable condition of affairs in which the new organization will be launched.
First, it is backed by a large number of weekly and monthly papers, free from the throttling influences of capitalist trade unionism that never supported such a movement before. Headed by the DAILY and WEEKLY PEOPLE, and the Swedish, Jewish, German, Hungarian and Italian organs of the Socialist Labor Party, it has a press that wields a wide influence and can do much constructive as well as destructive, much defensive as well as offensive, work in its behalf. Again, the growth of Socialist sentiment and revolutionary Socialism are factors that cannot be ignored. They possess a power for good in combating the fallacious and treacherous workings of capitalist unionism, that was not so conspicuously present in the past attempts of the kind promised by the Chicago manifesto. With them present, capitalist reasoning and calumny no longer possess the field undisturbed, but are confronted by opponents whose increasing strength threatens them with overwhelming disaster.
Finally, the new movement has the existing disgust against the treachery and futility of Gompersism, combined with its disintegrating tendencies, to help it. The working class look from Frisco to Fall River. They note mutual scabbery, snatchry and defeat everywhere. They note the National Civic Federation and its malignant influence in their affairs, as exemplified in the subway strike. They are, accordingly, alive to Gompersism’s impotency and treachery. Moreover, and above all, they note the organic changes in the system of capitalism itself, and the corresponding fallacy of the Gompers unionism. Hence, they are leaving the latter and are turning toward classconscious unionism, with all that implies. When were the promises of such unionism ever more favorable and worthy of support ? Never before in the history of the American labor movement.
It is to be hoped that the Chicago convention is alive to these facts, and will improve upon them. A step backward from the manifesto would be deplorable, while conditions justify many steps forward. The mere declaration of Industrial Unionism will not suffice without the determination to make classconsciousness the essence of the new movement.
Some sapient “Socialists” proclaim the International Typographical Union an Industrial Union, because it includes in its ranks many branches of the printing industry. The fact that these are the better paid branches, who use the inferior branches to raise their own salaries exclusively, a was done in the Brooklyn Eagle strike, doesn’t affect the thinking apparatus of these wiseacres any. Nor does the International Typographical Union’s endorsement of the Krag-Jorgensen policy of settling the Labor question, have the slightest impression upon their “wisdom.” They, now as always, are pleased with the form, for the essence is beyond them. Save us from such “industrial unionism.” It is the old poisonous adulteration with a new label !
If the Chicago convention measures up to its duty and answers labor’s prayer for relief, it will progress as it deserves. Otherwise retrogression will be its lot, while integration and disintegration will continue in the world of labor as of yore.
Max Eastman 1921
Bill Haywood, Communist
The title of this article will be interesting news to those who have always loved the IWW, and felt that it is the only real contribution America has made to political history since 1789. We have been a little saddened of late years to see the rigidity and lethargy of age creeping over the IWW It seems as though all organizations which do not achieve within ten or fifteen years the purpose for which they are formed begin to be more interested in themselves than they are in their purpose. That instinctive gregarious loyalty which made them possible in the beginning makes them stiff and complacent and useless in the end. Have a split and start a new organization every ten years, might almost be a universal rule — a 22nd point — for the guidance of revolutionary movements. And it seemed as though even the IWW were not going to escape the application of this rule.
But something is happening. The long arm of the Moscow engineers is active in Chicago. Tired, discouraged, jail-worn and work-worn editors and organizers are talking about a new subject with a new enthusiasm — an enthusiasm that Bill Haywood describes as “quiet and warm.” The subject they are talking about is an endorsement of the International Council of Trade and Industrial Unions, affiliation with it, and the resolute fulfillment of its purposes in this country.
“I would like to see a unanimous vote for affiliation on the part of the IWW,” Bill Haywood said to me. “I only want to live to see the dream of the Red Labor International come true. That’s all I want. That’s the IWW”
He had in his pocket a leaflet written by an English delegate to the Council, JT Murphy. In that he showed me a footnote stating that the delegates had voted to draft an appeal to the IWW, and to other organizations of syndicalist tendency which had not yet declared for affiliation.
“That got me,” he said. “To think of the workers of several nations, including one nation of a hundred and eighty million, causing the draft of an appeal to the IWW ! That shows what has happened to the world. I don’t have to wait for their appeal. I’ve read their plans and their instructions, and I know this is something at last that we can work with. They are carrying out the original aims and purposes of the IWW, and you can say for me that I think every genuine labor union in the United States ought to affiliate with the International Council of Trade and Industrial Unions with its central bureau at Moscow.”
I asked him whether he though the IWW would affiliate with it at their convention in May, and he said, “I have not heard a word in opposition.”
Bill Haywood is not the IWW, of course, and he is not at present in a position to speak for its executive policies. But he represents, more than any other one man could, the memory and momentum of it. He was the chairman of the first conference that considered his training, and the chairman of the first convention when it was called. He has never been absent from his counsels except when he was in jail. And even when the executive work was in other hands, he always stood out in the public storm as the head of the IWW. He has stood out in the storm with something of the impassive grandeur of a monument. Slow-moving, but powerfully self-possessed and intelligent, Bill Haywood occupies a position of real influence in America among those who are not foolish enough to believe the newspapers. And I imagine that this present change, or development, of his judgment about the tactics of the revolution, is an indication, not only that the IWW is going to swing again into its place in advance of the front line, but that American industrial unionists in general are going to accept the larger political philosophy of Communism.
Bill Haywood is no more friendly to the idea of political campaigning, or what is called “parliamentary action,” than he ever was — not a bit. But he fully accepts the necessity of a genuinely revolutionary party forming the vanguard of the movement of the revolution.
“I feel as if I’d always been there,” he said to me. “You remember that I used to say that all we needed were fifty thousand real IWWs, and then about a million members to back them up ? Well, isn’t that a similar idea ? At least I always realized that the essential thing was to have an organization of those who know. Don’t call them leaders. I call them engineers.”
I did remember Bill Haywood’s remark about the fifty thousand IWWs. I remember what a wild idea it seemed to me at the time. But I also remembered that in those days his fifty thousand engineers were to be pure industrial unionists, and he seemed to conceive the whole movement then as essentially a fight for the shops. I asked him what had produced the change.
“It is simply because they have done wonderful things over there that we have been dreaming about doing over here,” he said. “It is the fact, the example, that has caused any change in me that may seem contradictory. And even now I would hesitate to confirm such a movement if everything that emanated from Moscow did not show that they want to put the workers in control, and eventually eliminate the state.”
Here Bill Haywood delivered a short eulogy of the Bolshevik revolution, and what he said would astonish a great many people who know him only as the terrible bad Man of America with one eye and a great big Black hat.
“Max,” he said, clenching one of his exceedingly small hands in a gesture firm but not very ferocious, “to say nothing of the expropriation of industry, the thing of greatest importance, they’ve already accomplished three other things over there, any one of which would justify such a revolution there, or here, or anywhere else. Shall I tell you what they are ?
“The first is the education of the children. I Russia every child gets food and clothing and books and amusement and a real education. And, by God, for that one thing alone I’d favor a revolution in this country !
“And the second is the relief that has been given to women in motherhood. In this country we do it for thoroughbred horses and pedigreed cattle. In Russia every woman is supported for eight weeks after confinement. That is the work of Alexandra Kollontay — a good friend of mine — and that again is enough all by itself to justify a revolution.
“The third thing is the transfer of land to the peasants. The peasants have control of the land, and of course that is a more fundamental thing.”
I asked him for the reason why American labor is so much behind the labor movements of Europe in following the lead of the Russians, and he said, “The principal reason is the AF of L.”
“Do you think it is possible for the revolutionists to capture the AF of L.?” I asked.
“Some parts of it,” he answered. “Only I would not say capture them, I would say educate them.”
I asked him what parts he referred to, and he said after a moment of hesitation :
“The United Mine workers. That is already an industrial union, and it is the body of the AF of L. the craft unions are its arms and tentacles. The craft unions are what enable the AF of L. to strangle any germs of life or inspiration that may come to American labor.
“To the general way of thinking it is the official bureaucracy that is responsible for this. It isn’t. It is the craft unions with their high initiation fees, and their policies of excluding the unskilled workers, and even excluding skilled workers who have not served a long conventional apprenticeship. A further thing that outsiders do not understand about these unions is that they are absolutely controlled by the Lodges — Masons, Moose. Knights of Columbus and so forth — working through organized groups within them. It is these Lodges that elect their officials and direct their policies, and it is from these groups within them rather than from the unions themselves that the workers receive what benefits they do receive.
“But if you say that the United Mine Workers are the body of the AF of L.,” I said, “and that it is possible to bring the United Mine Workers to a revolutionary attitude, isn’t that practically saying that it is possible for the revolutionists to capture the AF of L.”
Bill Haywood’s answer to this question was immediate and brief. “if the United Mine Workers do anything,” he said, “then the AF of L. is no more.”
“Do you mean,” I asked, “that the organization would transform itself into something entirely new, or that the United Mine Workers would withdraw and leave nothing ?”
He smiled at my word, transformation. “I don’t know what kind of a bug it would germinate into. It certainly wouldn’t be a butterfly that would come out of that chrysalis.”
“No,” he continued, “you don’t realize what the AF of L. is. The AF of L. is nothing but an executive Board, receiving a small per capita tax from a large membership — a tax sufficient to maintain their office, and pay their salaries, and keep up a lobby at Washington — an executive Board that in thirty-nine years of its existence has never done a single thing fro the American working-class.
“That is what the AF of L. is. And if the unions that form the body of that membership acquire a revolutionary understanding the AF of L. will cease to exist. That is the only answer there is to this question.”
“Do you believe,” I asked, “that in such a case the United Mine Workers would associate themselves with the IWW ?”
“Perhaps not,” he said. “If the United Mine Workers become revolutionary and don’t want to become part of the IWW, the IWW can become a part of them, or whatever they form.”
It was that statement — which like practically all the statements in the interview, is quoted verbatim — that made me feel most vividly the magnanimous practicalness of mature communism in Bill Haywood’s attitude.
“The IWW reached out and grabbed an armful,” he said. “It tried to grab the whole world, and a part of the world has jumped ahead of it.”
Read in English upon the IWW
1917
The Communist International to the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World)
January 1920
Comrades and fellow workers,
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, meeting in Moscow, at the heart of the Russian Revolution, hails the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as the revolutionary proletariat of America.
Capitalism, ruined by the world war, no longer able to contain the immense forces it has created, is in decline.
The hour of the working class has struck. The social revolution has begun, and its first vanguard battle has been fought in Russia.
History has not asked us whether we wanted it or not, whether we were ready or not. The opportunity is before us. Let us seize it, and the world will belong to the workers ; let it pass, and entire generations will perish before it arises again.
It is no longer time to speak of "building the new society within the framework of the old." The old society is breaking free from its shell. It is up to the workers to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, which alone can build the new society.
An article published by your official organ, One Big Union Monthly, asked : "Why must we follow the Bolsheviks ?" The author believed that the Bolshevik revolution had "given the Russian people only the right to vote."
This is, of course, false. The Bolshevik Revolution dispossessed the capitalists of factories, mills, mines, land, and financial institutions, and transferred everything to the working class.
We understand and share your disgust with the principles and tactics of the "yellow" politicians who have discredited the very term "socialism" worldwide. Our goal is the same as yours : a community without a state, without a government, without classes, in which the workers will manage production and distribution for the benefit of all.
We send you this message, fellow workers of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWW), as a token of our appreciation for the heroic part you have been playing for so long in the class struggle that you have brought about in your country, and to make you well acquainted with our communist principles and our program.
We invite you, revolutionaries, to rally to the Communist International, born at the dawn of the universal social revolution.
We invite you to take the place to which your courage and revolutionary experience entitle you, in the front rank of the proletarian Red Army fighting under the banner of communism.
Communism and the IWW
The American capitalist class is revealing its true colors.
The rising cost of living, the ever-increasing unemployment, the ruthless suppression of all efforts by workers to improve their condition, the deportation and imprisonment of "Bolsheviks," the laws against strikes, against "criminal unionism," against the "red flag," against all propaganda in favor of the "violent overthrow of the government and attacks on property"—all these laws and measures can have only one meaning in the eyes of the conscious worker.
Industrial slavery is as old as capitalism ; and workers have known other forms of slavery before it.
But now the capitalists of the world—Americans as well as French, Italians, English, Germans, etc.—are intent on reducing workers definitively to absolute and inescapable servitude.
There is no alternative : either this servitude, or the dictatorship of the working class. And the workers must choose now.
Capitalism is making desperate efforts to rebuild its crumbling edifice. The workers must, through a coup, seize the state and rebuild society according to their interests.
The new slavery
Before the Civil War, Black slaves in the Southern states were bound to the land. Northern industrial capitalists, who needed a floating workforce to supply their factories, proclaimed slavery an offense against humanity and abolished it by force. Now, industrial capitalists are trying to bind workers to their factories.
During the war, and in every country, workers practically lost their right to strike and even their right to stop work. Remember the laws that prevailed in your own country : work or fight !
And since the war ended, what have we seen ? The cost of living has risen steadily, while capitalists have striven to reduce wages. And when workers are driven to strike by hunger, all the forces of the state are mobilized against them to force them back to work. When railroad workers stopped work in California, they were threatened with the deployment of federal troops. When the Railroad Engineers’ Union demanded a wage increase or the nationalization of the railroads, the President of the United States threatened it with the full force of armed repression. When American miners left their pits, thousands of soldiers occupied the mines, and the Federal Court adopted the most cynical measures against the strike, forbidding leaders from ordering a work stoppage and prohibiting the payment of relief to strikers. The United States Attorney General finally declared officially that the government would not tolerate strikes in industries "necessary to the community."
Judge Garry, who headed the steel trust, could refuse the President’s request to negotiate with a workers’ committee. But when the steelworkers went on strike, demanding a living wage and the basic right to unionize, they were branded Bolsheviks and shot in the ensuing riots by Pennsylvania Cossacks.
And you, IWW comrades, you who keep the bitter memories of Everett, Tulsa, Wheatland, Centralia, where your comrades were massacred ; you whose thousands of brothers are in jails, you who nevertheless perform the hardest labor in the fields, in the docks, in the forests, you must clearly distinguish the process by which capitalists attempt, using their tried and tested weapon, the State, to institute a society of slaves.
The capitalists’ cry, "Produce more ! Produce even more !" resounds from all sides. In other words, workers must provide more labor for less pay, so that their sweat and blood, now monetized, can serve to pay off the war debts of the devastated capitalist world.
For this to happen, workers must be deprived of the right to leave their jobs ; they must be prevented from organizing to extract concessions from employers or to benefit from competition among them. The workers’ movement must be stopped and crushed at all costs.
To save the old system of exploitation, capitalists must unite and chain the worker to the machine.
The social revolution
Will the capitalists succeed ?
They will succeed unless the workers declare war on the entire capitalist system, overthrow capitalist governments and replace them with a working-class government which must destroy capitalist private property and institute common ownership of all wealth.
This is what the Russian workers did, and it is the only way for workers in other countries to free themselves from industrial servitude and to organize the world so that the worker benefits fully from the product of their labor and no one can exploit the labor of another.
But if the workers in other countries do not rise up against their own capitalists, the Russian revolution cannot survive. Capitalists throughout the world, understanding the danger posed by the example of Soviet Russia, have joined forces to destroy it. The Allies, momentarily forgetting their hatred of Germany, have invited German capitalists to join them in the common interest.
And the workers in other countries are beginning to understand. In Italy, Germany, France, and England, the tide of revolution is rising. In America, even the most conservative members of the American Federation of Labor are realizing that strikes for wage increases and better living conditions are, in reality, meaningless, as the cost of living continues to rise. They proposed all sorts of remedies to this situation, reforms of the "Plumb Plan", nationalization of the mines, etc. They founded a so-called Labor Party which aimed to achieve municipal or government ownership of industry, a more democratic electoral mechanism, etc.
But even if these reforms were implemented, they wouldn’t solve the problem. As long as the capitalist system exists, people will profit from the labor of others. All the reforms of the current system only deceive the worker into believing they are being robbed a little less than before.
The social revolution has begun, and its first battle is raging in Russia. It leaves the workers no time to experiment with reforms. The capitalists have already destroyed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. If they succeed in suppressing and breaking the workers’ movement in other countries, industrial slavery will be established.
Before it is too late, conscious workers must prepare to repel the assault of capitalism, and in turn take the offensive to defeat it and eradicate it from the world.
The Capitalist State
The war and its consequences revealed with striking clarity the real functions of the capitalist state — its laws, its courts, its police, its armies, its bureaucracy.
The state serves to defend and consolidate capitalist power and to oppress workers. This is especially true in the United States, whose constitution was designed by merchants, speculators, and landowners to protect their class interests against the majority of the people.
As for the present, the United States government is obviously just a weapon of the capitalists against the workers.
The IWW must understand this better than anyone, having been rageously persecuted by the government, having seen their leaders imprisoned, their newspapers suppressed, their members deported or imprisoned on fabricated charges, their bail denied, their prisoners tortured, held incommunicado, their premises closed, their propaganda reduced in some states to becoming clandestine.
The workers see this. The people elect governors, mayors, judges, sheriffs ; but in times of strike, the governor summons the militia to defend the foxes ; the mayor orders the police to beat and arrest the militants in the streets ; the judge charges them with "disturbing the peace," labels them "rioters," and imprisons them ; and the sheriff pays thugs he sends out as strikebreakers...
The whole of capitalist society presents a united front to the workers.
The priest told him to resign himself ; the press cursed him and called him a "Bolshevik" ; the police arrested him ; the court condemned him ; the sheriff seized him for debts, and the poorhouse took in his wife and children.
To destroy capitalism, the proletariat must first wrest political power from the capitalists. They must not merely seize it ; they must abolish the old capitalist system entirely.
For the experience of revolutions has shown that workers cannot seize the state and use it—as the yellow socialists claim. The capitalist state is built to serve capitalism ; it can do nothing else.
In place of the capitalist state, the workers must build their own state, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The dictatorship of the proletariat
Many members of the IWW refuse to agree. They are opposed to "any state, in general." They propose to overthrow the capitalist state and immediately establish Industrial Commonwealth.
The Communists are also enemies of the state. They too want to abolish it and replace the government of men with the administration of things.
Unfortunately, this cannot be done immediately. The destruction of the capitalist state does not mean that capitalism disappears automatically and instantly. Capitalists have other weapons that must be wrested from them ; they are still defended by legions of good employees, administrators, managers, and shrewd businessmen who will sabotage industry—and who must be persuaded or forced to serve the working class ; they have officers who can betray the revolution, priests who can stir up old superstitions against it, professors and orators who can distort it in the eyes of the ignorant, scoundrels who can be paid to discredit it, newspapers that can deceive the people with constant lies, yellow socialists, and so-called laborers who prefer capitalist democracy to revolution. Their efforts must be severely repressed.
To tear down the edifice of the capitalist state, to break the resistance of the capitalist class and disarm it, to confiscate its property and transfer it to the community of workers—these tasks require a government, a state, the dictatorship of the proletariat by means of which the proletarians can, with an iron hand, break the enemy class.
This is what is currently happening in Russia.
But the dictatorship of the proletariat is only temporary. We communists also want the abolition of the state. The state can only last as long as the class war continues. The function of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to abolish the capitalist class as a class ; in fact, to eliminate all class distinctions. Once this goal is achieved, the dictatorship of the proletariat will automatically disappear, giving way to an industrial administration, likely analogous to the General Executive Bureau of the IWW.
In a recent article, Mary Marcy writes that without theoretically recognizing the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the IWW will be forced to admit it in fact in times of revolution, in order to defeat the counter-revolution.
That is true. But if the IWW refuses to recognize in advance the necessity of the workers’ state, confusion and weakness are likely to prevail in its ranks at times when firmness and speed of action will be imperatively required.
The Workers’ State
What form will the Workers’ State take ?
We have before us the example of the Russian Soviet Republic, whose structure, too often distorted abroad by contradictory information, it may be useful to point out here.
The unit of government is the local Soviet or Council of Workers’, Red Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.
In the cities, the Soviet is elected as follows : each factory elects one delegate for a certain number of workers, and each local trade union elects a certain number of others. These delegates are elected from lists of political parties or individually, at the workers’ discretion.
The deputies of the Red Army are elected by their units.
In the countryside, each village has its Soviet, which sends delegates to the Soviets in the towns. These towns, in turn, elect the District Soviet. These, in turn, form the Provincial Soviet.
Anyone who exploits the labor of others is ineligible to vote.
Every six months, the Soviets of cities and provinces elect delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the supreme authority in the country. The Congress decides on the main political measures for a six-month period and chooses the two hundred members of the Central Executive Committee, responsible for implementing the measures enacted by the Congress. The Congress also elects a Cabinet—the People’s Commissars.
The mandates of these officials are revocable at any time by the Central Executive Committee. Members of the Soviets can likewise be recalled by their constituents.
These Soviets are not only legislative bodies but also executive bodies. Unlike the American Congress, they do not simply draft laws that the President is then responsible for promulgating and implementing ; and there is no supreme court tasked with deciding whether the adopted measure is "constitutional" or not.
In the intervals between meetings of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, supreme power in Russia rests with the Central Executive Committee. This committee meets at least every two months, and in the interim, the management of affairs is handed over to the Council of People’s Commissars, while the members of the Central Executive Committee work in their respective regions.
Organization of product production and distribution
In Russia, workers are organized into trade unions, with all workers in an industry belonging to their union. For example, carpenters and painters working in a metalworking factory belong to the Metalworkers’ Union. Each factory has its own local union, and its Shop Committee, elected by the workers, acts as an executive committee.
The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Federation of Trade Unions is elected by the annual Trade Union Congress. A special committee elected by this same congress establishes the wage scale.
With few exceptions, most large Russian factories have been nationalized and are currently owned by the workers. The task of the trade unions is therefore no longer to fight capitalism but rather to manage industry.
The Labor Commissariat of the Soviet government works in full agreement with the trade unions. Moreover, it is only elected by the Congress of Soviets with the approval of the trade unions.
An elected Supreme Council of the People’s Economy is responsible for directing the country’s economic life. It is divided into sections, such as those for metals, the chemical industry, etc., each headed by technicians and workers appointed by the Supreme Council with the approval of the Trade Unions.
Production in each factory is directed by a committee of three members : a representative of the Factory Committee, a representative of the Central Executive Committee of the Trade Unions and a representative of the Higher Council of the People’s Economy.
Democratic centralization
The trade unions thus form a branch of government, and this government is the most highly centralized in existence.
It is also the most democratic government in history, for all organs of government are in constant contact with the working masses and under their direct influence. Furthermore, local soviets throughout Russia enjoy complete autonomy, enabling them to manage local affairs as they see fit, provided they conform to the national policy of the Congress of Soviets. Moreover, the Soviet government, representing only the workers, cannot help but act in their interests.
Many members of the IWW oppose centralization because they do not accept that it can be democratic. But where large masses are involved, recording individual wills is no longer possible ; only the will of the majority can be recorded, and Soviet Russia is administered in the common interest of the working class.
The private property of the capitalist class, in order to become the social property of the workers, cannot be handed over to individuals or groups of individuals ; it must become the property of the entire community and a centralized authority is necessary to accomplish this transformation.
Industries that supply the needs of the entire population concern not only the workers they employ but the whole community and must be managed for the benefit of all. Modern industry is, moreover, so complex, its branches so interdependent, that in order to achieve the highest possible output with maximum efficiency, it must be subjected, according to a comprehensive plan, to a single management.
The revolution must be defended against the formidable assaults of the combined forces of global capitalism. Large armies must be raised, trained, equipped, and led. This means centralization. For two years, Soviet Russia alone withstood the repeated attacks of the capitalist world. Would it have been possible to form a Red Army of more than two million men without a central authority ?
The capitalist class has a highly centralized organization that allows it to throw all its forces against the divided and dispersed groups of the working class. The class struggle is a war. To overthrow capitalism, the workers must form an army with a general staff—but a general staff elected and controlled by the workers.
In times of strike, every worker knows that a strike committee is necessary—a centralized body charged with directing the action and whose orders must be obeyed—elected and controlled by the working masses. Soviet Russia is on strike, facing the entire capitalist world. The revolution is a general strike against the capitalist system. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the strike committee of the social revolution.
The proletarian revolutions currently underway in America and other countries will likely give rise to new forms of organization. The Bolsheviks do not claim to have had the last word on social revolution. But the experience of two years of workers’ government in Russia is naturally of the utmost importance and must be closely studied by workers in other countries.
Policy
The word "politics" affects many IWW members like the sight of a red flag affects a bull—or a capitalist. For them, "politics" means "politician" and usually conjures up the image of the yellow socialist vying for their votes in the hope of securing a comfortable seat where he can conveniently forget the very existence of the workers.
Our "anti-political" working-class comrades are opposed to the communists, who, in their view, constitute a political party and who, indeed, sometimes participate in political struggles.
This is using the word "political" in far too narrow a sense. One of the principles upon which the IWW association was founded is expressed in these words of Karl Marx : "All class struggle is a political struggle." This means that every struggle of the workers against the capitalists is a struggle for political power—for the power of the state.
And it is in this sense that communists use the word "politics".
The yellow socialists imagine they can gradually conquer political power by using the very mechanism of the capitalist state to obtain reforms, and when they have obtained a majority in Congress, in legislative assemblies, when they have elected the president, the mayor and the sheriff, they believe they can use the legislative apparatus of the bourgeois state to peacefully abolish capitalism and likewise institute the community of labor.
This leads them to preach various reforms of the capitalist system, to open their ranks to small capitalists, to political adventurers of all kinds, and ultimately to conclude deals and make various concessions.
The IWW do not admit it any more than the communists.
As communists, we do not believe that governmental power can be seized through the mechanisms of the capitalist state. Since the state is the specific weapon of the capitalist class, its mechanisms are naturally designed to defend and strengthen the power of capitalism. Capitalist control of all institutions that shape public opinion—press, schools, churches, and public platforms—and capitalist control of the workers’ political attitudes through control of their means of subsistence, make it extremely unlikely that workers will ever be able to "legally" elect, under a democratic capitalist system, a government dedicated to their interests.
And, at present, while the capitalist class of the entire world pursues with desperate ferocity its campaign of repression against the organizations of the conscious proletariat worldwide, this hypothesis is simply inadmissible.
But even if it were possible for workers to conquer the capitalist state through political means, the latter could not serve to establish the industrial community. The real source of capitalist power lies in capitalist ownership and control of the means of production. The capitalist state exists only to extend and defend this ownership and control. It cannot, therefore, serve to abolish them.
So far, the IWW and the communists agree. The capitalist state must be attacked by direct action. This action, in the correct sense of the term, is also political, because it has a political aim—the conquest of governmental power.
The IWW (International Workers’ Party) proposes to achieve this goal through a general strike. The communists go further. History clearly indicates that the general strike is insufficient. Capitalists have weapons, and the experience of the White Guards in Russia, Finland, and Germany proves that they have sufficient experience and training to use their weapons against the workers. Furthermore, they have food stocks that allow them to hold out longer than the workers, who are constantly under pressure from want.
The communists, too, rely on the general strike, but they believe it must transform into an armed insurrection. The general strike and insurrection are forms of political action.
Revolutionary Parliamentarism
If this is the case, if communists do not believe they can seize control of the state through the ballot box, why do communist parties participate in elections and present candidates ?
The question of whether or not communists will participate in elections is secondary. Some communist organizations participate ; others do not. But the former do so only for propaganda purposes. Political campaigns give revolutionaries the opportunity to speak to the working class, to show them the class character of the state and what the workers’ true interests are. They allow them to highlight the futility of reforms, to demonstrate the real interests that dominate capitalist and yellow socialist political parties, and to emphasize why the entire capitalist system must be overthrown.
The task of communists elected to Congress or legislative assemblies is to conduct propaganda ; to constantly expose the true nature of the capitalist state, to oppose the actions of the capitalist government and reveal their class character ; to demonstrate the futility of capitalist reforms and measures. Within the legislative assemblies, from the highest platforms of the nation, communists can denounce capitalist brutality and call workers to revolt.
Karl Liebknecht demonstrated what a communist could achieve in Parliament. His speeches in the Reichstag resonated throughout the world.
Others in Russia, Sweden (Höglund), and other countries did the same.
The most common objection to sending activists to capitalist legislative assemblies is that, regardless of their revolutionary value, they will invariably be corrupted by their entourage and led to betray the workers.
This belief is the product of long experience, gained primarily with socialist politicians and smooth talkers. But we, as communists, maintain that a truly revolutionary party will elect only genuine revolutionaries and will know how to keep them under its control.
Many IWW members are staunch opponents of using legislative assemblies or any other government institutions for propaganda purposes. However, the IWW organization has often not disdained such means. During the Lawrence strike of 1912, the IWW even used socialist Senator Victor Berger, who brought the demands of the strikers and IWW members before the House of Representatives. William D. Haywood, Vincent St. John, and many other IWW leaders readily testified before the U.S. government’s Industrial Commission, taking advantage of this opportunity to disseminate their organization’s ideas. But the most striking example of the use of the state’s political machinery for propaganda purposes came in 1918 when the Chicago Federal Court, where one hundred IWW leaders were on trial, became a veritable workers’ propaganda rally for three months.
These are examples of how the political mechanisms of the capitalist state can be used for propaganda purposes among the masses. These methods must be employed according to the circumstances—as must parliamentary action. The use of any weapon should not be condemned outright.
The specific task of the IWW is to prepare the workers to seize control of industry and to lead it. The special function of the communist political party is to prepare the workers for the conquest of political power and the exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Every worker must be a member of both the revolutionary trade union in their industry and the political party that fights for communism.
The social revolution and the future society
The goal of the IWW is to "build a new society within the old." This means : to organize the workers so completely that the capitalist system will eventually break down and give way to the already fully developed Industrial Community.
Such an undertaking requires the organization and discipline of the majority of workers. Before the war, it seemed possible to accomplish this task, although despite their fourteen years of activity, the IWW was only able to organize a tiny fraction of American workers.
At present, this design is merely utopian. Capitalism is in decline, revolution is at our doorstep, and history will not wait for the majority of workers to be organized—100%—according to the plan of the IWW or any other organization. We no longer have the prospect of a long, normal industrial development, which alone would have allowed the realization of such a design. The war has plunged the peoples of the world into a vast cataclysm, and they must think of immediate action, not of developing elaborate plans whose fulfillment would require years.
The new society will not be built, as we once thought, within the old one. We cannot wait for that. The social revolution is here. When the workers have overthrown capitalism, when they have crushed all attempts to re-establish it, they will be able to freely build the new society within their Soviet state.
In the face of social revolution, what is the immediate and major task of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) ?
As the most important revolutionary syndicalist organization in America, it is incumbent upon them to take the initiative in providing a single basis for the unification of all unions of a distinctly revolutionary character, of all workers who accept the principle of class struggle. These include the One Big Union, the WIIU, and certain dissident unions of the American Federation of Labor.
This is not the time for petty squabbles over names or minor organizational matters. The essential task is to unite all workers capable of mass revolutionary action in times of crisis.
As revolutionaries, they cannot refuse the invitations of the American communists eager to conclude an agreement with them for joint revolutionary action. The political party and the economic organization must march in step toward the common goal—toward the abolition of capitalism through the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Soviets, toward the disappearance of classes and the state.
The Communist International extends a fraternal hand to the IWW.
The President of the Executive Committee of the Communist International,
G. ZINOVIEV.
January 1920.