UK action aganst Starbucks - IWW organizing expands throughout UK, Europe

And of course you would know better from without the organisation, yeah? That's incredibly arrogant.

Can't find the actual post yet, but this is along those lines:

Jesus H... y'know earlier I was all benefit-of-the-doubt, maybe it's just not obvious when Dundee's joking, but the 15,000 people thing was so blatantly the man taking the piss out of himself that you're either moronic or willfully misinterpreting him.

Yes John. We were participants in a campaign, and in fact were a large part of said campaign which 'we' won £1.5 million. Get over yourself. You can't quite contain your contempt can you? Spit it out man - you hate the IWW and it sucks monkeys balls

I like the IWW. I was involved in a lot of solidarity for fired Starbucks members - and I didn't particularly enjoy spending my Saturdays outside fucking Starbucks.

However, I think you're a fucking nutcase. I know the US wobs might want to defend their comrade, and believe that what you say is really going to happen. But it obviously isn't.

In other words, I agree pretty much with Devrim on this - there's decent individuals in the IWW, it seems to be flawed as an organisation, I'm quite honest about this view here and everywhere else. That doesn't mean I think it'd be 'a bad thing' if it suddenly experienced massive growth while the rest of the class struggle carried on as normal, it'd just mean I was wrong about one particular disagreement I have about it.

The fact that no-one on this thread seems to be sure whether Dundee is joking about the 15,000 shows where reality and fantasy blur in his serious ones.

No, you just talk a lot of shite though - your IWW branch did not win £1.5m. If it did, your branch would currently have £1.5m. That funding was given to the university, not to the IWW. Trying to say I hate the IWW is just stupid. Solidarity Forever was one of the first books that inspired me when I became a socialist. It didn't have first person accounts from fantasists making hugely over-inflated claims though.

I dont get it, is DU a nutcase because hes thinking in terms of mass membership

Lefty organisations and unions can grow in periods of working class defeat, who said they couldn't? (although even they are severely hampered) Neither are communist or pro-revolutionary organisations in any real sense.

Yes this is all good. I think John's point was that the money was won for the University, by a campaign which amongst others UCU and SNP were also involved with, the latter point was omitted entirely from Dundee's post, consistent with everything sounding more impressive than it actually is. In the case of Crichton, I've not read all the details yet, but it seems like a resounding success - so no need to exaggerate it then.

The UCU were involved but not interested in saving the campus, merely managing its demise. The SNP were only involved in that they came behind the campaign under pressure. If a government concedes to a popular campaign, is the government involved in the campaign? Uh, no.

Personally I think certain people here just have a bee in their bonnet about Dundee and are looking for any small reason to attack him - going to far as to pretend to take obvious jokes seriously, or quoting his opinions from years ago.

I want to clarify a few things in what I said. I care about a great deal outside of the IWW. If workers anywhere win something good or experiment with a useful tactic or organizational form in an exciting way, that's awesome. In those cases too, though, I don't think "support" for those things which amounts to nothing more than agreement with the ideas involved means very much. I like to read Marx. I "support" Marx's ideas. I "supported" the postal worker strike in the UK (in that I read about it on Libcom and went "hurray!" and mentioned it to a few people in converation). So what? What does that amount to? I mean, yeah, I want to associate with people who like the same things I do, I like to talk politics etc, but in terms of power relations this kind of support doesn't mean anything. Insofar as I care about building the IWW, support for the IWW which doesn't build the IWW or contribute to help IWW members fight the battles they're having is support that doesn't matter. That is, it's support which is no more meaningful than my "support" for the UK posties.

Dundee, I don't think you're going to get the numbers growth you want. I hope you succeed and I'll happily hear "I told you so."

As for the forums thing, no one is trying to stifle criticism of the IWW. While I disagree with Devrim, I find his contributions are respectful and comradely in a way that I think very few other people on this site are. I said very clearly that I want to hear from other people, though it was buried in a long rambling post.

EDIT: Inserted the following paragraph -
One thing wasn't clear in this though. What I should have said though is that I wish they wouldn't do it in the middle of other threads on this forum. That is, I wish they wouldn't launch full-bore into their criticism in the middle of threads. If Devrim or Catch or John and many others were to post in the middle of any IWW related thread "I have strong disagreements with aspects of this" then give a one line summary or so followed by a link to another thread about that topic, I would _definitely_ follow the link later on and be interested in the discussion. I'd also be more happy about it than I am when those discussions break out in the middle of threads between IWW members here and turn them in a different direction than they would have otherwise taken.

I respect and appreciate the hard work of the people involved in making Libcom happen. If the above isn't technically feasible then fine. If the Libcommers were to decide this wasn't allowed then I'd be less fine with it but it's their site and their call. For me there's not any other alternative site to use because I can barely manage to work the quote function and I find the different kinds of smiley faces really impressive - I'm technologically pretty stupid.

Again this is not to stifle criticism. Wanting a place to mostly talk to IWW members with the same political views (not all IWW members are libertarian communists) and people who are interested in seeing the IWW grow is not a matter of wanting to exclude others (either non-IWW members or IWW members who aren't libertarian communists). It's more a matter of what feels constructive to me as an IWW member who is also a libertarian communist. I want to talk politics and ideas with comrades outside and inside the IWW. I also want to talk about the IWW with people in and out of the IWW. These are why I'm on this site and why I was veyr excited when the moderators agreed to set up this forum. I feel like conversations with people inside the IWW sometimes get derailed here by conversation with people outside the IWW. For instance, some of us who are IWW members on libcom end up arguing with non-members about whether or not a mass organization like what the IWW wants to build is even possible when what we want to talk about is how we're trying to do this. The 'is it really possible to build a mass organization like that' question is really important, but these are two different conversations. It's like if I'm trying to talk about what I find useful in the section of Capital on the working day and someone else keeps talking about dialectics and the importance of Hegel for understanding Marx (that's what it's like to be in a reading group with my friend Chris Wright). I think this is the same reason why Libcom has different forum sections like 'history' and 'thought' and 'organizing'. I don't see why this is a controversial or problematic idea. People who want to debate for or against the IWW or criticize the IWW could start threads in other forums and drop links in here saying something like "I'm very concerned with the politics of this or that aspect of the IWW" -- like with the SSP thing. Or, actually, they could just start other threads in this very forum. I think that that would make this forum more of a resource for IWW members.

I think it would also make the kind of debates like about why people don't support the IWW or why the IWW's organizational form is flawed and so on more constructive. Flint started a thread or more than one about the problems with the IWW, I feel like I was quite comradely and constructive in that discussion, as was he, despite strong disagreements. I believe the discussions with Flint actually started in the middle of a different thread, he posted a comment and someone, maybe me I don't remember, asked him to start a separate thread. When those discussions don't occur in the middle of other discussions, they go better. I don't feel like I'm being much clearer in this post, but this is the best I can do.

Before I forget, Joseph K, I stand corrected as to your intent. I apologize for my inaccurate speculation about your intention.

I thought he was serious too. Dundee, did you not make that bet then?

bullshit, Dundee wasn't joking, his mates haveclearly just came to his rescue, pointed out to him he's being a loon and now he's claiming he was only joking. I don't think he was, he wasn't joking when he told us we should just dress like however everyone else in you area dresses nor was he joking about organising space workers and making nuclear war battle plans. He's batshit insane and in simpler times would be in a padded room.

Well, I quite clearly remembered him saying he thought the IWW should ditch the pre-amble recently, so did a quick google for it. Instead, I found him slagging off the IWW in 2004 for being full of politicos, and suggesting this was down to the pre-amble.