The IWW and Anarcho-Syndicalism

Not A-S. Seeking ASFAIA to recruit from socialist circles, as it always has done, to build an activist base. A-S union wouldn't be able to do that. Leading individuals involved have been economistic in the past at least, stressing that it didn't matter what political groups the class was involved with as it was in the workplace where the class struggle is located (everything else is irrelevant).

Personally think it would be a backward step for IWW to become 'anarchist'.

Man there's so much misinformation about the IWW it's not even funny.

I'm an anarchist and the reason I wouldn't support the IWW becoming explicitly anarchist is because it's not a mass organization right now, and it would be divisive in our organizing.

Basically the idea is (you can think of this as a counter to malatesta's objections to anarchosyndicalist unions) that you build a solid workingclass international union, and build politics out of struggle rather than trying to impose or prerequire politics in order to struggle. So I think it makes sense to have organized anarchists in the iww (this doesn't exist yet) but not have the iww be anarchist. At some point I might support that but it would require a substantial mass base, social transformation, and a time of struggle. That said I'm not hostile to anarchist unions, I've just seen good things come out of workplace organizing. It moves everyone involved, and develops us beyond our narrow ideology.

That is totally different from saying politics get set aside. There are some economistic people in the IWW but they get crazy amounts of shit. There are also hyper activists who don't organize. I think the bulk now are beginning to be in the middle. My line and people I am closest with is that there aren't clear divisions between politics and economics for organizing purposes, and especially in america with race you can't be only focused on the factory when engaged in working class struggle. You can see this in some of the discussions on "solidarity unionism" where people talk about broad community struggle as a necessity to build a working class movement. There's experiments going on in that department but none public yet. I think it must be hard for outsiders to form coherent opinions since the IWW contains people that think in any number of ways, which is I think healthy since it is born out of struggle rather than ideology.

Oh that's another thing people misunderstand. The IWW less and less is recruiting from political circles. I know where I'm at we don't interact with any of the "factions" instead we build members out of direct workplace struggles. That's really the main reason I stick around. I don't know of groups that radicalize people who aren't political already...

On industrial unionism: There's some historical muddling that took me a long time to sort through. Industrial unionism and syndicalism are distinct. For one syndicalism accepted and was often born out of craft/trade unions. Moreover syndicalism tended to be localized. Industrial unionism predicates workers organization by international industrial unions so as to build solidarity and consciousness of the class, not national consciousness.

One thing I've never discovered is why A-S unions aren't international. I understand that things develop locally, and that anarchists tend towards localized structures, but that in no way stops having local autonomy and international coordination. None of the federations I've seen manage to coordinate or build truly international structures. But that's an outsiders view too

aye, having been in both IWW and now IWA affiliated SolFed, i would say while both have their problems, the federated model works much better over language barriers etc. I have also been at the same time impressed and preplexed about how 5000 strong CNT has the same voting power than some other section with only couple dozen members. Now i dont agree with that and federalism shouldn't be used in such way, it is still pretty damn good compared to the way IWW was working at least when i was involved (practically US run organisation and i cant see how that can be solved without federalistic model).

I agree that there are real issues internationally that I think stem largely from it growing from an activist history club into a workplace based organization. That being said the structure is like a federation anyway since Regional Organizing Committees have autonomy over their affairs. There is also history of it working fairly well abroad (say South America, South Africa, Australia, etc). On the language issue the IWW used to have seperate sections divided by language. I don't know though I'd be interested to hear more detailed criticisms, because I think it is something that needs more experimentation and study.

Hmmm, i'm a little confused by this term industrial unionism. Do you have some evidence that syndicalism was born out of craft unions? I thought it was bitterly opposed to them. The French CGT, possibly the first syndicalist union in the world, had its base amongst skilled workers, and definitely did not emerge from the craft union. And syndicalism was very much an international movement, even if they were often divided up by national sections. And some syndicalists like the IWW (I cant see how the IWW cant be called anything other than syndicalist) formed international unions.

But then i've never really understood the term industrial unionism. I thought it was just a synonym for syndicalism.
Maybe i dont understand the term syndicalism too.

you know, until now, i didnt know the IWW didnt consider itself "syndicalist"!

i'd better be careful about how i describe them from now on

a lot of these particulars in these issues, i frankly leave for others to figure out... whatever wobblies or anarcho-syndicalists or whoever call themselves or the little differences here or there in how they do things, goals seem at least pretty similar and they all seem like good comrades for one another!

I should add I'm quite fond of the Wobblies and Solfed folks I met in London.

Craft unionism is organising all workers who do the same job into one union. So for instance on a construction site you have all the carpenters in one union, all the plumbers into one union, all the concrete workers into another union etc. They will loosely federate into 'building trades councils' sometimes (they do that in North America) but their main concern is their own sectional interests even at the expense of other trades. Generally this form of organisation is put forward by skilled workers because it allows them to stand on the backs of unskilled workers when negotiating. Often unskilled workers will have no union, or their own craft union. In Alberta there are 26 building trades craft unions, that means there can be up to 25 unions crossing a picket line if one union decides to strike.

Industrial unionism is, for example, taking all the workers in one industry into one union. There is nothing inherently revolutionary about just industrial unionism, however it is better unionism and is better suited to expropriating the economy precisely because you are not treating individual shops as economic monads, or as the collective property of the workers who happen to work in that factory. Rather the Industrial union can plan collectively the entire economy without it collapsing into a Proudhonian free market of worker coops.

Syndicalism really just means unionism though on here we all obviously mean revolutionary syndicalism. In IWW circles syndicalism is tkane to mean revolutionary industrial unionism. Talking about Syndicalist craft unionism is really only of historical interest, I don't think anyone really advocates craft unionism anymore. The watchmakers of the Jura federation wouldn't be a bad example if you really want to look for one though.

"Industrial Unionism" and "Syndicalism" mean different things depending on their cultural subtexts, just like everything else. In 1910s US/Canada, "Industrial Unionism" was explicitly revolutionary, whereas now it is just another model of reformist unionism. Similarly "Syndicalism" has at times and placed implied revolution, but I believe in France or Colombia today it just means "unionism".

The point is that these words have been used to describe the same phenomenon, revolutionary unionism. It's true that the IWW and the CGT had different characteristics, however they influenced each other a lot - one article I was reading about the 1913 international syndicalist conference in London said that the "CGT was considered to lead the way in theory, the IWW in organization".

Nate - I think maybe booey meant something along the lines of forming alliances, such as the one between our New York branch and "Make the Road by Walking". I do think our immediate/short-term focus should be on the point-of-production, however if we're talking about eventual revolution then its only to be expected that the more roots we have in the class the more we will be involved in 'peripheral' class activities such as rent strikes, or political strikes (against issues such as deportation or France/Spain style 'labor reforms').

Other than that I want to echo Nate saying that I agree with everything said by Booey and EdWob (and Nate), particularly that one of the most inspiring things to me about the IWW is the way it can radicalize people who join as workers rather than activists.

PS - as far as other groups along our lines in the US, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is perhaps the closest that I know of.

Taking the community/political thread a little further I can illustrate with an example. A restaurant strike could be effective, but if workers organizing at the point of production could involve the community who eats there it could be super effective (think like health concerns). Or social service workers form an industrial union and fight broadly against budget cuts that effect some shops. I've seen that one work actually.

I guess essentially I conceive of it as drawing more people into struggle along revolutionary lines to plant seeds of revolution after the struggle ends.

That view is not in contradiction with anarcho-syndicalism. Well, ok, i guess i have to be honest and say that some anarcho-syndicalists believe in building a union of anarchists, rather than A-S union for all workers. The latter is the approach of all A-S unions in europe.

The difference to IWW is, besides the slight differences in organisational structure and the combining economic with political like syndicalist described above, that A-S union is open about its ideological roots and positions.

So to say that A-S unions are just unions of anarchists is missing the point.

hehe

But hey, IWW is really really tiny, couple thousand in a population base of 300 million compared to the european A-S unions - so in that sense the european A-S unions are multiple times stronger even with the splits. There are cultural issues why splits are not always a big problem at all, like in italy, france and spain the unions are split to different political strands already, instead of larger non-political unions of the UK and north europe style.

nah, i think federalism is ultimately the best approach, its just that federalism based on nation states brings up problems such as the discrepansies between sizes (federalism within an area is not a problem because bigger groups could just be split to smaller ones geographically).

small correction, CNT-AIT would be bigger because their population base is 60 mil, so 5x 500 = 2500 and FAU probably roughly same size? (most irrelevant comment on libcom yet)

I'm not refering to any organization with this comment, just a general observation based on experiance. And I've been on both sides of this coin. So, for what it's worth... the size of an organization doesn't always matter. It is the influence that it has.

I think the "size game" is silly, at best.

As for splits within the IWW, I've been around long enough to know that there have been in recent decades. There was a terrible internal fight in the early 1970s over whether or not to sign Landrum-Griffin government reporting forms (to allow the IWW to participate in National Labor Relations Board -NLRB-elections similiar to other unions). There have been other contoversies, etc. since. Currently the IWW is enjoying growth that it hasn't seen for a generation.

While I'm not in the IWW (and haven't been since I was a care-taker NY branch secretary in the 1980s), I will say that US anarcho-syndicalists (including those in the IWW and WSA) tend to favor more diversity in tactics and approaches. This lessens tensions that has caused problems elesewhere. Does it mean that there aren't pushes and pulls and internal debate, sure. But I think that most US & Canadian anarcho-syndicalists, from what I can see, want to advance the libertarian spirit, libertarian worker forms of organization and just want to build a diverse libertarian workers' movement that is founded in the best traditions of working class ideas and actions.