The IWW and Anarcho-Syndicalism
Nov 1 2006 22:52
#62
Volin wrote:
What are the arguments for and against joining the IWA/AIT, for example?
Missed this part of Volin's reply.
The thing about the IWA: I've heard a couple arguments. The most frequent one is that we aren't an anarchist union and the IWA is anarchist (though not technically true). The other one is that we are an international union and so it makes no sense to join an international. The IWW isn't an american union, and could/will organize all across the globe. I tend to fall into the second camp as I believe strongly in building a world-wide revolutionary workers' movement.
Likewise my feelings toward the IWA is that the anarchosyndicalist movement should focus on building autonomous federated sections of global industrial unions. I've heard the SAC/CNT-F/CGT have begun doing such a thing in a few industries around europe though I think they're still bounded in the national framework themselves. The IWW seems unique in this regard (though there's lots to be done), and for that reason I think the IWW is ahead of the curve. This seems especially crucial in this present time with the rise of new forms of global capital and capitalist organization. To constrain our organizing to the logic of the nation state seems self-defeating.
Nov 2 2006 10:53
#63
Quote:
could/will
and 'does'. half the membership of the IWW is not in the US.
Quote:
To constrain our organizing to the logic of the nation state seems self-defeating.
definitely. on a sub-national scale, the IWW in the UK is reviewing how our regions are organised and we're rapidly realising that county boundaries are mostly useless.
Nov 2 2006 12:33
#64
ftony wrote:
definitely. on a sub-national scale, the IWW in the UK is reviewing how our regions are organised and we're rapidly realising that county boundaries are mostly useless.
i agree about country boundaries being stupid definition for regional groups, eventhough most often they are a sensible way of organising (due to often being cultural, language, economic and political units).
I still prefer federation based internationalism, rather than trying to fit everything under one method, strategy, and presentation (language, name, images etc).
Nov 2 2006 18:45
#65
JDMF-
It is not like industrial unions are unitary as they still are autonomous at the local branch level. The difference is where you draw the boundaries. It seems like you could call an industrial union a federation, just one that doesn't prioritize national boundaries. In that way one could say the industrial union model is maybe more prefigurative of a post-capitalist revolutionary society.
Nov 2 2006 19:57
#66
While there's a good point about trying to organise around national boundaries, it has to be said that the IWW is overwhelmingly an English-speaking phenomenon and by and large has been since the 1920s. In the British Isles we only have a couple of widely spoken languages and 5 different sets of not-too-dissimilar labour law, so an IWW admin for here makes sense. However, Europe has something like 35 official languages and loads more that are widely used. Each separate nation has its own labour law, often widely different, and so do some autonomous regions within nation states. THese vary very widely, despite the popular perception here in the UK at least that EU law over rides national law in many ways. But, for example, solidarity is effectively illegal in the UK, while it isn't in some EU countries. The political culture is very different as well. And that's without taking into account the Balkans or Russia or Turkey.
Any strengths either approach has are from building from the bottom up - and are also unlikely to involve quite a few transnational companies because these are the ones who go for all the European works councils setup. (My old employer did). That said, Starbucks might be an exception here if they have any sort of presence in Europe outside of UK and Ireland.
Regards,
Martin
(PS I know someone will point out that there are a couple of people in Germany in the IWW and there was a Finnish administration, but I bet they all spoke English!)
Nov 3 2006 03:56
#67
Let me start just by saying I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me, and if not I'm just drawing out some threads anyway 
I think you have the picture of the IWW a bit off. The IWW used to be a predominantly immigrant organization. There were autonomous sections for all the various ethnic and linguistic groups and groups had their own publications and the like. I believe the finnish IWW paper ran well into the later half of the 20th century even. The finnish section opened a working people's college. There were italian, spanish, swedish, ukranian, czech, german etc., papers and local branches. Moreover people always seem to forget about the Chilean, Argentinian, and Mexican IWW that used to be a force to reckon with.
Even to characterize the US or the UK as being linguistically and culturally homogeneous is pretty distorted. Global migrations have made most of the "developed" nations home to a whole of proletarian peoples. Networks and relationships spread across national boundaries. For example Los Angeles had the largest extra-national populations of some 80 countries. It seems like a cop out too to say either it's too hard to translate, or it's too hard to have multi-linguistic/cultural groups. How are we supposed to have a revolution if we can't even do that?
I disagree about the differences in say labor law being a conclusive reason not to federate industrially as well. If you are essentially autonomous at the local level that means you can act and organize as makes sense given your context, and act in federation on issues that extend beyond such. Clearly people working in say production, transportation, etc., have great reason to coordinate on this basis.
Sure linguistic and cultural boundaries are difficult to overcome, but production and capital is global. They have methods of organization such that the power structures they want and need are implimented and carried out. The exploitation we all experience is predicated on us not being organized beyond national boundaries. Unless we confront these issues I think we will be stuck.
Nov 3 2006 10:34
#68
also, i'd say that linguistic and cultural boundaries rarely correspond with legislative and administrative boundaries. there are a lot of grey areas that can't be represented by absolute state or county or whatever divisions.
production is perhaps more tied to state borders due to legislation being different from country to country, but the global, decentred and mobile nature of capital means that it is all connected across borders anyway, and subject to international forces and laws beyond the control of individual states.
so international industrial organising is the most sensible and flexible response to the present nature of capitalism in terms of labour organising, IMHO
Nov 3 2006 12:23
#69
martinh wrote:
(PS I know someone will point out that there are a couple of people in Germany in the IWW and there was a Finnish administration, but I bet they all spoke English!)
i was involved in the finnish lot, which is why i have the opinions i nowdays do about federation approach being much stronger! And of course add the fact that there are thousands of workers organised to A-S and libertarian unions already across europe who do co-operate and might form more industrial cross state federations in future, like FESAL-education initiative.
Nov 3 2006 19:25
#70
I don't know anything about the finnish admin (was there one?), but my point is more general. I'm all down for the A-S unions reorganizing to federate industrially. i'd be one of the first to get on board with such a thing.
Nov 4 2006 18:01
#71
The IWW's present make up in terms of language speakers as compared to that of the working class living in the US is one of the organization's biggest failings at present, in my opinion. We really need a plan to get more current anglophone members learning languages other than English, and we need plans and how-to materials for setting up/converting to either multilingual branches or autonomous single language branches. And we need to prioritize training current speakers of language other than english to become solid organizers, then build plans to organize in industries where there's a lot of workers who speak those languages.
Nov 4 2006 20:15
#72
Yeah that's actually a big issue coming up here for our branch in DC. A number of us speak passable spanish and are taking classes to further our fluency, but we really need to get some native speakers to help us out.
Nov 4 2006 22:19
#73
JDMF wrote:
martinh wrote:
i was involved in the finnish lot, which is why i have the opinions i nowdays do about federation approach being much stronger!Did you mean the finnish thing that almost happened last year? If so, I'd like to hear criticism, as that whole deal was a little confusing (but seemed exciting).
Nov 5 2006 19:01
#74
booeyschewy wrote:
[Did you mean the finnish thing that almost happened last year? If so, I'd like to hear criticism, as that whole deal was a little confusing (but seemed exciting).
no no no, this was in the days of wayback, mid 90s i think?
The new lot has some same peeps involved, and are organising a new direct action syndicalist union. Some of them want the group to join IWW, not sure what the latest in that is to be honest.
Nov 6 2006 01:33
#75
Catch 22 I think your branch is probably better than most in that respect then. I think the union should make matching funds available to people to take language classes, provided there's some accountability and reporting on that, and we should start thinking about ways to build plans for people to learn more Spanish (and other languages) as part of gathering contacts (getting involved in worker centers, for instance, might be one method). We also need more training stuff in other languages, maybe a specific study and roleplay curriculum for learning some words relevant to organizing, so non-native speakers can get a bit of practice before there's more heat in a campaign.
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I agree terms like anarchism and syndicalism can put people off, but so too can the term industrial. In this country 80% of workers are not industrial. Probably seen said a million times before, but in this day and age, the term industrial seems out of date and quaint, unless you're in China or Bangladesh or someplace where a sizeable amount of proles are in the manufacturing sector.
I know some syndicalists define industrial differently but its everyday usage means factory type blue collar jobs.