Syndicalism / councilism

Yeah possibly. Contrary to caricatures, most wouldn't look at such things as static historical examples that must be emulated in their entirety until magically they awaken. I imagine the contemporary forms will be but one piece of the puzzle in any major upsurge of struggle.

I dunno, last time I check, I still had a pulse.

Civil War re-enactors also have pulses...

This must be the punk influence on anarchy? If it's old...it's their thing and not ours. In any case, saying something is old is not actually an argument in itself. Its just a statement that gains traction with people who think old = bad. There's really nothing that isn't old. Platformism is from the 1920s. Syndicalism from the 1910s. Insurrectionism from the 1880s. Ultraleftism is pretty much 1930s. It's all old.

What matters now is how its being adapted and what is being done with it.

My above comment didn't actually represent a critique so much as a trite response to an equally trite provocation. Obviously we can glean a lot of lessons from the past and so on and so on...

What I think gets lost, and this is based on my experience in engaging with IWW folks, is that certain forms of organization are more appropriate at certain periods than others. My argument is (and has always been) that syndicalism had a time and that that time has passed. I definitely respect the work that some people within the IWW are doing in terms of coming to terms with this reality, but I think the majority of IWW members are more content to read about history than to make it.

Bravo!

Let's not forget that capitalism is more than 500 years old! And it has taken less than 200 for it to fully expend its revolutionary vigor.
Excluding prehistory, if you combine Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the capitalist era (including the Renaissance) you have more than 6000 years of private property, patriarchy and class division ideologies. Talk about obsolete ideas!

The critique of capitalism is a mere 170 years old. Not even half as old as capitalism alone.

Well, if you're not "super well-versed" in the history of the IWW, then perhaps you should abstain from passing too harsh a judgement on them.

If you want to understand the IWW of today you need to go to Chicago, June 1905. Then start walking back into the present.

Book O'Dead wrote -

I disagree it's even that old - and definitely not beyond England.

You're spot on there!

The Joe Hill Appreciation Society is a very real and problematic thing in the IWW for sure. Some places are worse than others. On one hand, I've dubbed a dismissive nickname for them ('the old beards') which has spread somewhat, but on the other hand, these folks kept the organization alive and more important than the organization represented a historical lineage of combative working class culture that eventually cultivated a new crop of people in the early 2000s. This lead to pretty inspiring attempts at fast food and retail organizing and as you well know also to the more interesting parts of the Wisconsin movement.

The Joe Hill Appreciation Society though is dwindling, as more people come into the union, not through reading old labor books or stock activism, but because they're on a committee at their workplace, or their friends are. Branches are not expected to be a bunch of dudes sitting around talking about texts, and there are resources to make sure this isn't a default way of operating.

I don't buy that the majority of people in the IWW are just content about reading history. This isn't even true in your state. The Madison branch are a primary reason the general strike resolution got passed through SCFL and were some of the few folks in the public sector actively trying to get job action off the ground, rather than mindless chanting and walking around the capitol. Just this week I did an training for an active non-public campaign in the communications industry there. Seems to me these people are engaged in the type of activities that 'make history' and are not content just to read about it.

Whether syndicalism has had its time, I don't know, and we also probably have very different conceptions of what this word means and what is or isn't included in its definition. That's fine. But the type of organizing that has become the dominant (although by no means always hegemonic) form of the IWW since the early 2000s - without mediation, without representation and based on direct action - certainly fits into my idea of what the better aspects of syndicalism and anarcho-syndicalism have to offer. If those types of tactics are a relic of the past, if they are stifling jackets of ancient history, then I'm not sure what the alternative is, but I imagine, when it comes down to it, it would look pretty similar.

yeah, it annoys me so much when people say that precariousness (I cannot bring myself to say "precarity") has meant that previous forms of struggle are "outdated", as when those previous forms of struggle were popular, employment was much more casual for the most part time today. TBH it's only said by people who know nothing about working class history further back then their own lifetime (of about 20 something years).

If you can't bring yourself to read actual historical texts, you can read some working class literature like B Traven or Steinbeck for an idea of what things used to be like.

This was exactly what I was going to say! As if slagging something off as "old" is a valid argument.

and here you are being dismissive and rude, but really showing that you don't know what you are talking about. The IWW was all but dead by the 30s, it was big up until like 1918. (I say this as a critic of syndicalism and the IWW BTW, but you're not doing yourself any favours by using ill informed, baseless criticism)

I date the origins of mercantile capitalism to at least the time of the Italian city-republics. That's makes it at least 500 years old.

I still disagree mate - I see those as failed transitions; full market reliance for profit extraction came later, in my understanding. But there's not much in it - and your general point stands.

But that isn't workers self-organization for the abolition of work or the wage system, it is the affirmation of the world of work, glorification of the workplace, the current IWW just wants to take over Starbucks and Jimmy Johns to run them as their own revolutionary workplaces, not burn them to the ground! jk

But that seriously sounds like the angle demolition squid is coming from, and the one I hear as a gut level response from many newbies, I think we can recognize that most people have a gut level response that work sucks and all these alienating forms of labor have to go go go...but there is a misunderstanding often about this stuff. There is a talk soon in Olympia that will have the Wobblies, SeaSol, and a WSA member there, and one of the questions is "what does organizing and taking over the means of production look like in 21st century precarity."

I actually get that question a lot from the whole lot of 20 something radicals who come from the typical middle class backgrounds where they are either in dead end jobs or lower academia, they are like "but aren't the IWW for running the current society the way it is? Are the IWW and platformists and other class struggle anarchists for taking over the means of production, but we don't have any, that's all in China!" I tend to answer that there are still manufacturing and other traditional hard labor jobs out there but because of their relative stratification/perhaps even the color line within the class they are not seeing it, I mean in my city there are still tons of manufacturing jobs but it is mostly Mayan or Guatemalan immigrants who work those jobs. Now certainly there is less of these jobs than before but it's not like all of production has left the USA, nevermind food production which is a little more important in a revolutionary situation.

edit: just to state that i also think this comes from the huge proliferation of "prefigurative politics" type thinking within the movement whether it is conscious or not. you often get young radicals wondering why we sell things, or use money at all, or why we have strategies based on work, if we want to just abolish it, this almost is getting comically old school crimethinc style...but seriously, i encounter it time and time again. i had people, of reasonable adult age thinking the general strike call this past may could have been the BIG ONE. a lot of people need development as militants and a smack of reality. i have seen people leave the IWW locally because they thought we were lying when we said we were for the abolition of the wage system, because they didn't see us immediately trying to abolish it.

& BTW I think on the spectrum of workers autonomous self-organization to workers representation, integration, and recuperation into capital...that syndicalism, councilism, and other forms of base organization are closer to the former than to outdated forms that make up the later.

I better go and get my musket then.....

I agree with what others where saying about taking the best aspects of old ideas and trying to apply them in as contemprary way as possible.

Hey Squidman.... what's you plan,man? I mean, what are your politcs and practice?

Sabotage - that sounds like a bloody interesting discussion; is there going to be a recording?
I always go along the lines of comparing the shift in production under capitalism - production possibility curves, opportunity costs and all those other yummy bullshit tools to analyse a shift in working patterns allow and understand that there is a period of sluggishness until we adjust, to remind people trying to argue against libertarian communism because there will be a period of change. Of course, this is probably why nobody listens to me for very long...

dialectical squidlyismology (affiliated to fourth submersible international, aligned to the manifesto of armed squiddle). I just ate the north sea section for lunch i think

Sounds interesting, have you ever done something on this in written form?

I always found production possibility curves quite amusing because they appear to endorse inter-state trading, aka state socialism. I wonder why none of the bourgie profs ever thought of that.

Any attempt at organizing workers along class lines is an affirmation of the class struggle by the organizer and by the worker, be it at the factory floor or at the coffee shop in the mall.

Let's always keep that in mind when we critique any effort by our class against capital.

I'd be lying if I said that I could totally pin down my position. I'm definitely still figuring it out and I participate in these sorts of discussions as a way of fleshing this stuff out. In regards to workplace organizing, which is what this thread is certainly focusing on, I want to make it clear that what I'm opposed to is not workplace organizing generally. What I'm opposed to is the idea that formal organization (ie unions) can be revolutionary. Having seen the way that both radical and mainstream unions functioned during both the Madison "uprising" and, more recently, the Palermo's strike in Milwaukee it seems pretty clear that a formal union is limited by the following:

1. Legality - It should be clear that any above ground organization, no matter how radical, is going to have to limit its actions and rhetoric based on state repression. In the context of Madison, for example, the IWW was capable of calling for a general strike only because everyone knew that they didn't actually have the capacity to do the damn thing while the unions which did have that capacity were limited by potential state repression in the form of legal fines. We can't forget that it was wildcat teachers who got sick notes from sympathetic doctors and didn't go back to work until their unions told them to.

2. Democracy - As demonstrated by the wildcat teachers in Madison, the majority of the less radical workers tends to impose its will on the active minority via unions. In a sense, unions impose limits on actions by their very nature as organizations which move collectively or not at all.

3. Recuperation - There's no shortage of examples of radical union members being tricked into fighting ultimately reformist campaigns. The IWW may have a Jimmy John's, but those workers are still working for a wage.

I think that the form of workplace organizing which is vastly more effective is informal organizing. A good example can be found here: http://workersagainstwork.tumblr.com/

TL;DR My position is that unions are more of a hindrance than a help to workers seeking autonomy.

In someways I am with demolition squid on some of these points. I actually do think the legality that the IWW is a state recognized union does hinder it from being a more autonomous workers organization. If it wasn't so it could incorporate more of the work that solidarity networks do or this workers assembly that got linked to, without having to worry as much about secondary boycott, though the State could try to force legality upon such organizations as well, and declare such an organization a union or other form of labor organization. I'm not good at labor law so help me out.

Another thing I think worth point out is that struggle:

Is possible whether you are in a union or not...I actually think it is definitely not hegemonic within the IWW, and it is a strategic debate/position that has yet to be convinced of all internally, I mean there are still Wobblies who fight for the right for workers to have no strike clauses in their contracts! So I guess my positin is that though I think the IWW is a great organization and I will always be a wobbly, and I think it actually has a lot going for it in the ways of training and even organizational networks, at somepoint as a form it will need to be superseded.

Regarding demolition squid's point on "recuperation" sorry but we can't just abolish work tomorrow, and I very much doubt the precarious and service workers assembly has been successful towards those ends either. Faceless resistance and informal workplace groups are natural forms of self-organization and I think the bedrock for all workers organization, but we are not in a revolutionary situation, and I think it is fair to fight for immediate reforms without it being reformism in order to work less for more pay or whatever gains are sought.

The link you offer and the rhetoric it contains seems to be inspired by a combination of Luddite philosophy and a bourgeois contempt for useful work. It's reactionary and plain dumb to presume that wielding a bat like Buford Puser and going after the office copier is going to resonate with many workers, except at the junkyard.

"FUCK WORK?" I wish I had work to fuck, brother; I wouldn't feel so goddamned poor all the time!

You express contempt for democracy and legality and blame them as a cause for the supposed failure of unionism. I've heard that argument before and it comes from people who are neither sympathetic nor supportive of socialism or anarchism.

After poo-pooing unionism with misleading and puerile objections unworthy in any intelligent and well-informed person you offer an alternative that you say you have taken under serious consideration; Some strange creature called "informal organizing", more appropriate for wild street mobs than for workers seriously trying to take control of their workplace, their society and their lives.

Judging by the content and tone of your interventions here I get a strong but possibly mistaken impression that you are neither intelligent nor well-informed.

Please prove me wrong.

I agree with the thesis that says that the intensity of the class struggle dictates the form in which it is conducted by the most conscious elements of the working class, if that is what is meant by "precarity".

Without trying to launch this into a discussion on solnets....I don't think the issue of legality is something that is keeping them from being a part of the IWW, but more that some of us view it as service model activism that fails to bring on new people or leaders. I think there's a point to this (although I think it doesn't give the model enough credit), but legality is something I've rarely seen come up in discussion to them.

I can't see how open assemblies of workers with only a vague sense of purpose or outlook would be desirable doing or useful for any sort of workplace organizing. There's a reason the IWW tells you not to call for a mass meeting as the first thing you want to do if you want to do workplace organizing.

You have a point, but we haven't reached that point where labor law would come down on us because we're registered with the state. I imagine it doesn't really matter though. The state will just change their rules. For example, a non-union workplace group here that does stuff with immigrant workers got hit with injunctions that stated that it pretty much was a labor organization. The same thing would probably happen with solidarity networks or even assemblies if they became a threat.

Well, I did say dominant, not hegemonic. Although, I'm not sure people on a listserv is neccesarily a good indicator of much. I've come across more people who actually thought no strike clauses were already banned somewhere in the constitution ("Because, wtf, we're Wobblies!") than defend having them (usually on the basis of having contracts and 'growth')

I pretty much agree with everything you say, so maybe I was not explaining myself right. I share the critique of the worst directions SolNets could go in, I'm actually with Nate lately on thinking that type of work should be done as the IWW. I definitely agree that mass assemblies are a death wish to any campaign and am for just building up clandestine workplace committees, which like I said faceless resistance of informal workplace groups is a precursor to. These assemblies in the Bay Area seem to be outside the workplace and basically concerned with promoting faceless resistance/SolNet type activity. Regarding the labor law stuff I was basically hinting at that, that the State will do whatever it wants, just like they'll call us whatever they want, so we might as well call ourselves the worst of names if it makes contextual sense to do so . And yeah the lists are the lists, but some of those people are trainers!!! Sigh...

Care to elaborate?

If you don't want to abolish work, what are you doing here?

Cool story, bro.

And you call me a reactionary? Do you even read your own writing?

Done.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. There's already enough shit talking. No need to try to bring punk down. Don't for get that plenty of punks have aided in worker's struggle (Crass and the miner strike for instance), and that punks around the world are still shaking things up, and still being repressed. Also, anyone still calling themselves a punk is holding onto a genre that peaked in the 80's. I'm pretty sure punks don't mind old things if that's supposed to be your point.

Yes, but the particular strand of syndicalism popular in the US is outdated, not just old. For instance, the IWW wouldn't call for a ballot boycott because back in its heyday a lot of wobs were SP members. I feel like they don't have that problem any more, yet they still wouldn't and couldn't call for a ballot boycott because of constitutional provisions.

Now, I'm a wob because they're the only union that'll take precarious laborers like myself. However, what they offer me as a union isn't clear, and what they offer me as a revolutionary union is even harder to see.

Work per se cannot be abolished. What can be abolished is the status of labor as a commodity.

Marx advised us that our slogan should be "The abolition of the wages system!"

Compared to that, the slogan "the abolition of work" is imprecise, misleading and ideologically unsound..

TBH, the only substantial article on that website is one which I wrote - and which they have posted without even a credit to me or libcom, let alone a link. Which is pretty out of order in my view.

demolition, I think you may be arguing at crossed purposes with some people on here. Here is our view on unions:
http://libcom.org/library/unions-introduction

By the way, going back to your earlier post these sort of anti-union ultraleft views you are expressing are actually pretty much from the 1930s, which you slagged off earlier…

work can be abolished as a separate sphere of life from everything else (play, leisure, learning, chores, etc

.

Indeed, some cultures do not even have a word for "work", which demonstrates that it can be abolished as a concept.