Articles from the April 2014 issue of the Industrial Worker, the newspaper of the revolutionary union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
Industrial Worker (April 2014)
For paper subscription info, please visit iww.orgor the Literature Department website.
For a PDF copy of issue, check here.
Other articles in this issue, already available on libcom, include:
-Portland Solidarity Network: Things Are Heating Up at Fubonn
-For the long haul by Colin Bossen
-The early IWW, the preamble and the break with political socialism by Klas Batalo
Striking workers at Boston Insomnia Cookies win settlement
An article by Jake Carman about a settlement between IWW strikers and a Boston area retail cookie shop.
On March 3, Insomnia Cookies and four striking workers agreed to a settlement of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charges, officially ending a sixmonth strike. The four workers, Chris Helali, Jonathan Peña, Niko Stapczynski, and Luke Robinson, struck on Aug. 18, 2013, demanding changes at work, including higher pay, benefits, and unionization, and were fired immediately. According to the terms of the settlement, they will all receive back pay totaling close to $4,000, and have their terminations rescinded from their records. Insomnia Cookies will post a notice in their Harvard Square store promising not to fire or otherwise retaliate against workers for union activity, including going on strike.
Additionally, Insomnia revised a confidentiality agreement which improperly restricted workers’ rights to discuss their conditions of employment with one another and third parties (including union organizers and the media).
According to organizers for the IWW, the union representing the strikers, “This settlement is another small victory in a long struggle to bring justice and a union to Insomnia Cookies.”
When the four workers, comprising the entire night shift at the Harvard Square Insomnia Cookies, voted unanimously to close the store after midnight on Aug. 18, 2013, they served cookies to the customers already in line, and then locked the doors. The workers put protest signs in the windows, wrote up a strike agreement and informed their boss they were striking for a raise, health care and other benefits, and a union.
Jonathan Peña, one of the strikers, said he remembers “feeling real conservative that August night, but something told me to stand up for what I believe in. I had nothing to lose but I had much to gain.”
The following morning they returned to set up a picket line, and reached out to the IWW, which sent union organizers to help. Within the first few days, all four were fired, and all four signed union cards. For the next six months, strikers, IWW members, allies, and student organizations at both Harvard and Boston University held pickets, marches, rallies, forums, phone blitzes, and a boycott, while workers continued organizing at both the Cambridge and Boston locations. The union also pursued legal charges through the NLRB. The settlement reached on March 3 came two days before a scheduled NLRB hearing on the charges.
“Since the first utterance of the word ‘strike’ that late August night, it has been an uphill battle for all of us,” said striker Chris Helali. “The Industrial Workers of the World answered the call when no other mainstream union was interested in organizing a small cookie store in Harvard Square. We picketed, we chanted, we sang. I thank my fellow workers, the IWW and all of our supporters for their continued work and solidarity through this campaign. I am proud to be a Wobbly!”
Other outstanding issues remain unresolved between workers and the company. Wages, benefits, break time, scheduling, safety, “independent contractor” status of delivery workers, the November 2013 firing of IWW member and Insomnia baker Tommy Mendez, and police violence against a picket line and resultant charges against IWW member Jason Freedman, top the list of grievances.
The union vows to continue organizing efforts at Insomnia Cookies. Helali said, “I am extremely pleased with the settlement, however, it does not end here. This is only the beginning. The IWW, along with our supporters, will continue to struggle until every Insomnia Cookies worker is treated with respect and given their full due for their labor. There is true power in a union; when workers come together and make their demands with unified voices and actions.”
But for now, union members are celebrating. “Being a part of the IWW means something to me,” said Peña.
“I will never forget the four amigos, Niko, Chris, Luke, and I. We actually made a difference. Being a Wobbly can change your life! I just want to really thank everyone for their solidarity and commitment to crumbling down on this burnt Cookie,” Peña added.
UPDATE: Six days after the settlement, on Sunday, March 9, Insomnia Cookies suspended bicycle delivery driver and IWW organizer Tasia Edmonds. Edmonds was disciplined for speaking out against workplace injustices, which the boss called “insubordination.” According to Edmonds “I was suspended for my union involvement. I have never been disciplined before. I was not served any paper work detailing why I was suspended. I want to get back to work, and I want back pay for the days I missed.” Two dozen IWW members and allies picketed the Boston Insomnia Cookies location, where Edmonds is employed, on Friday, March 14. Organizers planned another rally for Saturday, March 22, after student allies from the abutting Boston University return from spring break. The IWW demands that the company follow through on its promise to cease targeting union organizers.
Originally appeared in the Industrial Worker (April 2014)
Comments
New evidence shows U.S. government spied on Wobblies, activists
An article by Brendan Maslauskas Dunn about military infiltration of an anti-war group around the Port of Olympia.
Ian Minjiras walked out of the anarchist community space Pitch Pipe Infoshop in Tacoma, Wash., and ventured to an anti-war demonstration at a weapons convention where military personnel and law enforcement were in attendance. It was not his first protest, but it was the first protest where many activists met “John Jacob,” who would later be uncovered as a spy for the U.S. Army.
As the demonstration wound to a close, Ian left and walked a distance to catch a bus to the other side of town. Police were later heard saying they sent undercover officers to follow Ian. He was arrested and accused of scrawling graffiti on a wall. While he was being booked, the police confiscated all of the anarchist literature in his backpack that he had just picked up at Pitch Pipe. He spent the night in jail but was eventually let out.
This is a common story at demonstrations—the rally, the arrest, the time in jail. What is not so common is what happened to Ian in the aftermath. In 2007, his name, along with the names of at least three other activists, was entered into a Domestic Terrorism Index. His crimes were that he attended an anti-war rally and had some anarchist literature.
Ian is not alone. He is one of many activists who have been targeted and spied on by the U.S. military in what is perhaps the most expansive surveillance network targeting radicals in the United States since the tumultuous days of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) COunter INTELligence PROgram (COINTELPRO). That secret FBI program was created to destroy the Civil Rights and New Left movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Since it was uncovered, it has only evolved in more secret ways. Currently, a team of lawyers is taking on the U.S. military with the landmark civil liberties case Panagacos v. Towery. This story, however, starts well before the U.S. government labeled Ian as a terrorist. It starts in the streets of the small port city of Olympia, Wash., in 2006.
I remember the feelings of excitement, anxiety and uncertainty that surrounded the Stryker Brigade military shipments that came through the Port of Olympia in May 2006. What started off as just several protesters getting arrested for standing in the road and blocking Stryker military vehicles rapidly grew into hundreds of people, day and night, descending on the port, attempting in vain to stop or slow down the war machine.
Activists came up with the name Port Militarization Resistance (PMR) to describe the network of people who started to take decisive action against these shipments. Dozens were arrested and many more were attacked by the police. PMR was one of many organizations that took part in the port protests—the IWW was another.
Although we were not successful in stopping the shipments, there was no turning back. We had ignited a spark in the anti-war movement, one that suggested that civil resistance and directly confronting military shipments was a more logical approach to ending the wars. To this day, activists reminisce about the time 200 of us marched to the port entrance chanting, “War machine! Tear it down! War Machine! Tear it down!” It was an electric feeling, one the military did not want to spread.
Deployment after deployment, the military changed its tactics to avoid us. Instead of shipping convoys in broad daylight, they used the cover of night for future shipments through the more desolate Port of Tacoma. The Port of Grays Harbor was also used before the military, again, came back through the Port of Olympia in November 2007 with returning shipments. Perhaps military officials thought that there would be no resistance as these were not outbound shipments. They were wrong. Activists saw the ports as revolving doors. We knew that these Stryker vehicles would be repaired and shipped right back out again to continue in the senseless slaughter.
The model that PMR created was contagious. Activists in New York City shut down a military recruitment center in solidarity with one of our actions. There was a short-lived attempt to start a New Yorkbased PMR. Unionists in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in the Port of Oakland made connections with us to organize their own actions while Hawaiian activists were in regular discussion with us as well. Olympia and Tacoma became the epicenter of the antiwar movement. All eyes in the movement were on the Pacific Northwest.
In addition to the resistance in the ports and streets, there was a parallel resistance evolving in the ranks of the military. Lt. Ehren Watada refused to serve in what he saw as an illegal war in Iraq. Suzanne Swift went AWOL (absent without leave) when she was asked to ship back out and remain under the command of a superior who had raped her and put her on suicide missions whenever she refused his advances. PMR activists helped build political movements supporting Watada and Swift and made their stories national news.
Many other soldiers refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some did it publicly, asking for our support and going to the media with their stories. Most did it quietly. At least one soldier who went AWOL joined PMR. For the first time, these soldiers realized who their true enemy was. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) became very active in the Northwest. The group established an anti-war G.I. coffeehouse called Coffee Strong just across the street from the massive military base Fort Lewis (now called Joint Base Lewis- McChord). It was not uncommon for soldiers to show us peace signs and clench their fists in the air as they drove by during military shipments. Off duty, soldiers approached us in tears, telling us they were preparing for their third or fourth tour of duty and thanking us for taking action. One soldier, in what might be called an act of mutiny by his commanding officers, refused his orders to ship more vehicles and marched out of the Port of Olympia to a jubilant crowd of protesters.
The situation was becoming a threat to the war efforts. Militant, raucous demonstrations followed the Army wherever they went. Soldiers and workers at Fort Lewis joined PMR. More and more soldiers refused to fight. Public opinion was not only turning against the wars but was turning into direct action to end the wars. The Army had to do something to put an end to this so their mission could continue unabated. This is where John Jacob entered the scene.
John said he worked as an information technology (IT) specialist at Fort Lewis and was an Army veteran. He was around 40, donned a beret and wore IWW and anarchist buttons. He was welcomed with open arms into the anti-war and anarchist movements. He became very active with PMR and spent much of his time hanging out at the Pitch Pipe Infoshop in Tacoma. I considered him not only a fellow activist but a friend. We gave a workshop together on community organizing at the Tacoma Anarchist Book Fair in 2007.
Suspicious individuals came onto the scene. Many of us were routinely harassed. My house in Olympia, where I lived with several other activists, was under almost constant surveillance by police. They regularly parked their cars across the street, facing our house, and often came onto our property to harass us. I also discovered that the police at the college I attended kept a picture of me on their wall alongside that of another PMR activist for reasons I am still unaware of. In Tacoma, a surveillance camera was secretly installed on a utility pole across the street from Pitch Pipe. In September 2007, and again in the same month in 2009, I was detained and interrogated by Canadian border officials on trips to British Columbia. The first time, they threatened to put me in a Canadian jail without charge, temporarily confiscated my passport and deported me. The second time, I was informed I had an FBI number. A criminal trial called the Olympia 22 that stemmed out of the 2006 port protests was also sabotaged by law enforcement (and later, we learned Towery was in on this) when they hacked into our attorney-client listserv. Former IWW General Secretary-Treasurer (GST) Sam Green and I were both in this case. But there was one thing that tipped us off and made the Olympia IWW branch decide to file a public records request.
In April 2008, the Olympia Police Department stole the IWW newspaper box located downtown. The box was given back only after a lawsuit was threatened. In response, I filed a public records request for any information on the IWW, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and anarchists. The hundreds of documents that were released included one that was an email sent by a John J. Towery II. It did not take long for a small group of activists to research and discover that John Jacob was in all actuality John Towery, Army informant. The jig was up for John but this revelation was only the tip of the iceberg.
Other activists filed more public records requests and over the next few years we would receive hundreds upon hundreds of documents that provided fragments of information detailing a vast surveillance network. Not only was the Army spying on us, but the Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force were as well. We also learned that countless federal agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security were spying on us. Even Air Force personnel from as far away as New Jersey and the U.S. Capitol Police in Washington, D.C. were part of the network. Not to mention the seemingly endless list of local and state police departments that were involved.
We discovered that at the core of this network was a fusion center that Towery worked for. Fusion centers are a shadowy post-9/11 development created to monitor “terrorist” activities and “threats to national security.” They blur the lines between local and federal law enforcement agencies and the military. There have been congressional hearings on fusion centers in the past for overstepping their boundaries and trampling civil liberties. Fusion centers have gone so far as targeting Planned Parenthood and peace groups. Occupy Austin was also infiltrated by a fusion center informant. The danger of course is that fusion centers do intelligence gathering on “threats” to U.S. national interests and in doing so see peace groups, Occupy and Al-Qaeda as all part of the same monolith bent on destroying the government. The only thing fusion centers have been successful at is helping prop up a national security state. Civil liberties and constitutional law are simply viewed as annoying inconveniences to fusion centers. There are currently almost 80 such centers in the United States.
Towery’s exact role within the fusion center is still unclear but he did prepare threat assessments on local activists. He was not alone in his work. Clint Colvin was outed as a spy for the Coast Guard. Sandy Kortjohn, whose husband, Mike Kortjohn, worked in the same circles as Towery and spent his time gathering intelligence on SDS and PMR, infiltrated an anti-imperialist group in Olympia and was outed by another activist. Towery’s superiors not only knew what he was doing, they encouraged it and gave him orders. To this day, however, Joint Base Lewis McChord maintains that he was a rogue individual and did not have clearance from his superiors to spy. Documentary evidence that has come in the form of public records requests states otherwise and turns their lies into a thin veil they are finding harder to hide under.
Knowledge of this surveillance went way up the chain of command, all the way up to the Secretary of Defense. It started under the Bush administration and continues, to this day, under Obama’s presidency. Towery’s role as a spy gives us a glimpse into the dynamics of this vast surveillance network. Although I cannot speak about the details yet as I signed onto a protective order, the Army recently gave my attorneys nearly 10,000 pages of discovery documents. Hopefully, the day will come when we can share these and other documents. I’m really curious about the details of this program and am confident that we will get a better picture during trial this June.
The parameters of this surveillance network could fill the pages of a book. This should of course concern everyone in the union. Not just for the obvious reasons that Wobblies were spied on, including former GST Sam Green, or that our union was targeted by an institution which has the main goal of neutralizing and killing threats to U.S. governmental interests. I plan on writing more on this, on who John Towery was, and on what practical things we can take from this experience. There are some new revelations I am still wrapping my head around. I recently learned that while Towery was spying on us, he carried a concealed gun with a bullet in the chamber. I also learned that he tried to convince a friend that anarchists and fascists had much in common, that we should work together. It also seems likely that the U.S. Army was planning an entrapment case on my friends, on fellow anarchists in Tacoma. These are stories for another day.
What we need to do is turn our rage over these revelations into love, into action. To take the words of one Wobbly that was murdered by the state of Utah years ago, “Don’t mourn, organize!” That’s precisely what we need to do in moments like this. Yes, repression is real. But we need to use the story of Army spy John Towery to agitate and organize other workers. We need to educate workers that this government will take excessive measures to ensure that big business accumulates as much profit as possible through perpetual warfare and propping up a national security state.
You can help with this case by giving a donation to our legal defense fund. We need it. Thankfully, we have a brilliant team of lawyers representing us, including Larry Hildes, who joined the IWW during our union’s Redwood Summer campaign with Earth First! Dennis Cunningham is also helping us. He represented radicals the FBI targeted for neutralization, like Black Panther Fred Hampton and Wobbly Judi Bari. It is however a grassroots legal defense on a shoestring budget.
Like Ian Minjiras, I am considered a domestic terrorist by the U.S. government. Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of this fact. The bigger question is: Does the government consider the IWW a terrorist organization? This would not be the first time that the government labels those fighting for freedom and liberation as terrorists. And it won’t be the last, unless of course we continue in our struggle to create a society rooted in true freedom, in mutual aid, cooperation, and dignity and abolish the system that shackles the poor of the world. That’s a system the military, law enforcement, both the Republicans and Democrats, the rich, and the national security state that protects all of them are deathly afraid of. We have a world to win! Let’s keep on fighting for it.
Donate to the legal defense fund by visiting http://www.peoplevtowery.org.
Originally appeared in the Industrial Worker (April 2014)
Comments
Fighting back in high-end hotels: an interview with a Miami Wobbly
An interview with an IWW member in Miami about working in hotels.
In November 2013, the Miami IWW interviewed one of its members, Eduardo Segundo, about his organizing and experiences in a high-end hotel in Miami.
Miami IWW (M): Describe your workplace. Who were the clients, workers, and how was the environment when you got there?
Eduardo Segundo (E): It was a very draconian-style workplace, so for example, if the boss didn’t like the stubble under your chin, or didn’t like the dirt on your socks, that was considered a heavy burden. They would call you out on it—it was that kind of workplace. It was so trivial at the time; I didn’t really know what to make of it, but I knew what I was getting into (i.e. high-end hotels have an orthodox view of how particular employees should look).
I mean, right from the very start, I saw all kinds of things: degradation of female workers, atrocious treatment of immigrants, management being unorganized in every aspect (from the kitchen to the pool). During that time, I didn’t really know anyone, and even when I did, which was only a few people, they didn’t have much of a reaction to the abuse (most of the workers had years of experience under these conditions and were already ingrained into the system).
As for patrons, they were mostly CEOs, and their families, celebrities, all those sort of people. In fact, whenever a big-shot venture capitalist showed up, they’d make a big fuss out of it by printing a shot of his face, his biography, the kind of foods they liked, what time they wanted their alarm to be rung, all kinds of interesting things.
M: What about the workers like you? Mostly young? Immigrants? Low wage? Or more of a spread?
E: Yeah, it was mixed—old, young, immigrants, gays, etc. I can’t say it was low wage, because in my opinion, all wage is intolerable, but I guess there’s a so-called thing as humane wages. I think the wages were fair, to some extent, but no one’s ever content with any kind of wage. Look, whatever the wage was at the time, it didn’t matter, we wanted more. I mean, why should the manager be paid more when all he ever did was stop by the kitchen and pick out fries?
M: In that situation, were workers talking about the problems or was it just something you noticed?
E: They were, but the guys who were talking about it were ones who came from a union background; in fact, there were two brothers who spark my memory, both from Chicago, and they were the ones who had some idea of how helpful a union would be. Again, most of the workers—I know from experience— are already ingrained into the system: they speak when only they’re spoken to. That kind of militarized-style of hospitality only leads to the worst kind of conformity. So there was a ton of isolation, mainly because of the competitiveness, but there were sectors of the pool and beach who spoke out against it, but it was nothing too noticeable. If you were lucky, like these two brothers, then you already knew the situations at hand.
M: What got you to start organizing there? Was there some spark or cause that made you think it was time to start doing something?
E: It’s the service sector, why waste a second not to organize? This is an industry that takes you nowhere, unless you want to reach the level of management, but even there, you’re someone else’s boss.
But to more accurately answer your question, the spark comes at the very second you walk into work and punch in: you’re working for someone else at that point.
M: When did you start to think you could fight back though? From the beginning?
E: My gut feeling was that there was something I could do, it’s just that I didn’t know how to, hence I joined the IWW. And the IWW was helpful. For instance, the IWW provided workshops that were tremendously helpful in assisting me in ways to work and combat these systems of power. And I used them, to the best extent I could, but if it weren’t for the IWW, I would have had zero knowledge about the interventions of a business union (and I was approached by them, too). So from a revolutionary perspective, it gave me an open eye—fighting back, that is. Fighting back doesn’t mean throwing yourself into the pit; it means getting along with others and doing things collectively.
In fact, another worker and I fought for better pay and we managed to get $10.50 an hour for food running, up from $10. But if it weren’t for my co-worker, that wouldn’t have happened. I had to convince him to fight for better pay. He was fine with $10 an hour until the workload picked up. It took him a while but I got him to fight with me.
M: How did you convince him to fight? And how did you all win that raise?
E: He was the food-running veteran. He was hired as a barback but eventually they forced him out and into food running. When I got there, it was just him doing the work by himself, but at the beginning, it was slow. I maintained loyalty with him, but I was always persistent and I wanted him to know that he was worth more than what he was bargaining for. Every worker is worth more than what they’re paid. That’s not even an argument; you have to be a fascist to argue otherwise.
But anyway, when we were hired, they were paying him $9 an hour as a food runner; another runner and I were getting paid $10. It wasn’t until he found out about the pay disparity that he really became angry. We didn’t know it at the time, but they eventually back-paid him all the dollars for that month.
M: How did that happen? Just by confronting management individually?
E: No, collectively. He was getting paid the wages he worked as a barback. When they transferred him as a runner, they just kept him at $9 (the wage actual wage for a runner is $10).
M: Did that include the raise to 10.50? Or did that come later?
E: That came later.
M: How’d you get that?
E: Same, we went to the manager. The managers promised us a raise, but it wasn’t easy. We had to ask every week, reminding them...The managers had so much to do, because of the busy season, and just to find time for us...I thought we got lucky. I mean, managers were clocking in at 7 a.m. to help whatever way they could (of course, all the real physical labor was on the workers), but they were stressed out.
M: And eventually they gave in?
E: They did, but only with that issue. We had other issues, all completely ignored, as usual.
M: Were there ever times when your co-workers confronted management together?
E: Oh, yeah, of course. I remember one time, a female pool server was demanding promised pay or something, but it was only involving the servers (the majority of whom were females). I was at my lunch break, and I saw this pool server confront the boss, I had never seen anything like it. But she was demanding better pay or something like that.
M: Anything come of it?
E: No, nothing. Just promises.
M: Anything you would do differently a second time around?
E: Doing things a second time around means learning from your mistakes—and there were mistakes, without a doubt. Personally, I’m someone who goes through SAD [social anxiety disorder] so just talking in groups or whatever is a tough task in and of itself. Having joined a syndicalist union has helped me to break these fears, it’s helped me to jump into situations which I would have never dared to do. Furthermore, just having a base of solidarity has played a critical role in my politics, which is why I joined the IWW in the first place (I’ve been anti-authoritarian since I was a kid).
Originally posted: January 6, 2014 at Miami IWW
Republished in the Industrial Worker (April 2014)
Comments
It’s the service sector, why waste a second not to organize? This is an industry that takes you nowhere, unless you want to reach the level of management, but even there, you’re someone else’s boss.
I currently work with a delivery driver peon turned boss. Its that creepy fascist corporate culture or the service sector
So 2018 'high-end' USA hotel workers in mainstream unions organising strikes fo improved wages and conditions but not sure how effective or widespread these are. Same hotels are international with generally poor conditions especially amongst cleaners who have organised in the UK through smaller 'base unions' across sectors but with still a long way to go to impact in the hotel sector.
See here;
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/travel/2018/10/08/marriott-hotel-employees-strike/1572529002/
The hotel industry is going to be going through a lot of changes in the next few years, primarily automation of many jobs formerly done by humans (check in kiosks, roboticized housekeeping etc). Alot of the larger hotel chains such as Marriott are enjoying record profits as well, while workers are making the same low wages that they received 20 years ago and depending on the uneven U.S. tipping system to close the gap, when applicable. I work in a hotel in a tourist destination and as a part-time bartender make probably more than anyone in the hotel outside of management. These hotel strikes were news to me and when I went to picket lines in Boston to learn more I was brushed aside. No one could even tell me the list of demands or point to someone who could help me further. I'd like to organize a city wide discussion amongst people in my industry but UNITE-HERE seem only interested in their narrow purview. Another struggle coopted and likely lost by conservative business unions.
Around the union
An update on various IWW activities around the world as of April 2014.
• The Boston IWW is in a celebratory mood because Insomnia Cookies has agreed to pay four Wobbly strikers back pay after they were illegally terminated for union activity. The Boston General Membership Branch (GMB) has been busy signing up new members, especially in the many fast food joints in and around Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. Conditions in the area are ripe for organizing, with rampant injustices such as the routine denial of premium overtime pay, refusal to pay workers their compensation, and managers’ insistence that employees should work off the clock. Harvard Square could emerge as the site of a new “corridor campaign” for our branch, with the goal of making this trendy neighborhood a hotbed of unionization. We’ve produced a new flyer for outreach to retail and service workers that is targeted at employees of Insomnia, where the campaign to unionize local stores continues. Our Insomnia Cookies IWW Organizing Committee has been holding productive and well-attended meetings. We are also making store visits (when managers are elsewhere) to introduce workers to the One Big Union. All fellow workers are invited to please come to Boston and visit our vibrant and growing branch! And what better place to come “salt” than our city by the sea, plagued by gentrification but also simmering with barely contained class rage?
• The Denver GMB will be hosting commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre in both Boulder and Denver, Colo. There is renewed interest in the IWW along the Front Range of the Rockies with members in Boulder, Colorado Springs, Denver, Ft. Collins and Pueblo. The Denver GMB is investigating holding an organizing training in the next couple of months.
• Lithuanian IWWs are forming a Regional Organizing Committee.
• Belgium IWWs will be attending Work People’s College in Berlin this summer.
• The Portland IWW and Portland Solidarity Network activists won several wage theft cases in February. They are still working on the campaign for back wages against a large Asian grocery store. An IWW-led campaign to raise the minimum wage by $5 per hour is going into neighborhoods with IWW and supporters canvasing. IWWs also helped blockade scabs at the Port of Vancouver, Wash., and again against a Guatemalan vessel.
• An organizer from West Scotland reports that Wobblies in the United Kingdom are sending £1,200 for the European Work People’s College in Berlin. The Clydeside GMB is also subsidizing travel for two delegates to Berlin in July. The Sussex branch was unfortunately dechartered. There are 802 members in all of the United Kingdom (with the 90 members in Scotland included in that number). The IWW National Conference will be held in London late May, but the exact date is not yet finalized. A workshop for trainers will be held in Birmingham in April.
Originally appeared in the Industrial Worker (April 2014)
Comments
What went wrong with the organizing: the elephant in the room of political will
An article by Scott Nappalos about how organizing has taken a new direction in our current society where we have to build movements rather than join, and that a new level of commitment is needed.
Organizing has taken a new direction in our current society where we have to build movements rather than join. A new level of commitment is needed. Miami IWW member Scott Nikolas Nappalos provides a great analysis and critique of organizing today in the piece below.
When people hit a brick wall organizing today they are very quick to look at big picture aspects to explain their failures. For many of the tiniest fights we see calls for large revisions of structure of social organizations, committees, and demographics in countless versions. Ideology is also popular with a deep drive towards critique and adopting new ideologies as technical fixes for hurdles in organizing; forms of born-again ideology. The worst of this is relying on large-scale analyses of the economic environment to explain away concrete daily problems that seek to persuade people not to fight in vast sections of society and the globe because of often amateurish crystal gazing and doit- yourself political economy. The focus is generally on us, likely because of how demobilized society is, which shifts the view away from the people struggling.
There is a basic element of organizing people to fight around their daily interests that rarely is discussed and yet is a fundamental aspect of nearly everything political happening today. A question we should ask ourselves perpetually is: do these people want to organize? As revolutionaries we ask people not only to engage in their immediate problems, but also to take on the system itself; to abolish the wage system and hierarchical exploitation and oppression. Even people’s immediate issues, say low wages, take a significant commitment of time and emotional energy to deal with. People have to be willing to plan, meet, and exert their resources towards something they may already hate (their job, their conditions). There are lots of detours that allow people to avoid this stuff. We move jobs, we change buildings, move to different cities and neighborhoods; try to avoid the police, take matters into our own hands, etc.
The forces against sustained action are powerful, especially today when there is no liberatory social force that intervenes consistently within society. People are working in isolation with bad odds when there are more pleasant things they could probably be doing. Simply put, it’s often better for people not to fight than to fight in the immediate. Organizing involves sinking more of one’s life into something that makes you miserable with little prospect for big successes, and more than likely you may end up worse off. Organizing goes against the current both of overt oppression and coercion, and tactics that allow people to delay, defer, or avoid the nasty stuff in society. This is something that should be recognized, understood, and inspires us to put minds together to deal with it.
In the film “The Wobblies,” an old IWW member retells the story of a recruit who asked “What does this membership card entitle me to?” to which the IWW delegate said “Fifteen years in the penitentiary.” The recruit signed up. That example provides good contrast to common thinking about how this all works. Today people often fixate on victories, material gains, and winning something for people. The problem is that fighting often involves losing more on a social level than any immediate gains we might achieve. Even when we have all-out wins, it’s not clear that it is actually a win for those people. This Wobbly who signed up did so not because of concrete gains they might have gotten, but in spite of the misfortune that would ensue. Put politics aside and think of all the meaningful, pleasant, and important social things someone has to sacrifice in order to do the tedious, tense, and often hostile work of organizing. Attempts to understand commitment to political projects in terms of a cost-benefit analysis will trip up here consistently.
To build movement we need sustained long-term action on a consistent basis— something that is not likely to be enjoyable, filled with victories, or motivating by itself. What allows people to maintain this action is bigger. A will to struggle in spite of everything comes from deeper inspiration; ideas and ethics that carry people through misery. Union contracts and campaigns usually focus on breadand- butter issues like wages, healthcare, retirement, etc. Yet when attending union meetings where grievances are aired and you talk to workers organizing, you hear distinctly different discussions. Workers persistently raise issues of respect, dignity, and injustice as their primary motivating force. The union often channels that anger into those wage fights, but the issue is different. To carry things out, people need to be inspired to work towards a better world. In doing so, they become willing to do things that do not make sense on a strict dollars and sense basis, and even can make them happy having contributed to something bigger in life.
Just do the math. I once participated in a four-month strike allegedly for a $1.50 per hour raise. At the workplace, turnover was high with most workers lasting less than a year and nearly all less than three years. The costs of being on strike immediately went beyond anything the workers would ever see. Likewise the workers were willing to occupy board members’ businesses and be arrested to help win the strike, incurring more personal harm, both financial and otherwise. When the union pressed to settle the strike it was for 25 cents per hour, and after the negotiating of the contract nearly everyone quit. A few likely were disillusioned, but for many it was an eye-opening experience. Some co-workers went on to become active in unions and more committed to working in their industry. The logic of this scenario makes no sense unless we look to the motivations of the workers that go beyond their immediate demands. In fact the demands seem to matter very little beyond the will to address injustice, work against management that is perceived to be tyrannical and wrong, and a willingness to work for something better.
I call this the “collective mood” or “political will.” Rather than an appendage to our work, it should take a center role in our thinking about how things play out. Today there are countless opportunities to organize and potentially motivating issues, and yet given the circumstances people often choose not to. That is a reality we have to deal with, and that should be pointed out in our work. When you pull that element out, it becomes apparent why people are not ready at any moment to dedicate the bulk of their life to politics. Without the collective mood to fight, the best organizing will ebb and flow with the amount we are asking from people and their level of frustration with short-term issues. This is in keeping with most recent fights. Places heat up, people mobilize, and then life goes back to normal with the exception of a few individuals who become more active for years, and a smaller minority for their lives.
Coming to act can change people even when they lose. Some come to see the possibility of a better life through experiences with organizing, and this can open space for revolutionaries. Our job is not just to help open that mental space, but also to offer our analysis, ideas, and values that can carry people from immediacy to the bigger picture. For those who are interested, we need to work hard to both prepare them for future fights and inspire them to carry on and go deeper. With others who don’t want to continue, our focus should be on planting seeds and understanding that there has been an increase in the social experience of struggle; things which may ripen at other times. If we can sustain individual militants and work towards networks of organizers who come out of struggle, those linkages and experiences can form a backbone of social organization that isn’t identical with our projects or groups, but that can in crucial moments bear fruit.
This is part of why it is so demobilizing when people try to hide, remove, or actively prevent revolutionary politics from the day-to-day work of organizing. Without engaging people politically we are abdicating our ability to provide tools that can motivate potential militants. It also gives us clarity as to why apolitical and neutral organizing is such an idealistic approach; the very basis for action comes out of how people think about the world and their actions. All action is inherently political, and our response can contribute to or stunt its trajectory.
In the present environment we have to take into account that likely only a few will want to commit themselves to sticking it out for the long haul. That doesn’t mean necessarily we change what we do, but it should change our expectations and how we respond to difficulties. When we can contribute to making organizing happen, it does have an impact on people’s lives and thinking even when they return.
This situation could change. There are times when broad swaths of society catch a wind and hunker down for social change. By recognizing the role of political ideas and ethics in motivating and the force of political will within social action, we arm ourselves to understand and act on different situations that may come at us. Today this means finding ways to plant seeds, spread collective activity that can help transform people, and investing in people who rise above and become willing to commit to something bigger.
Originally posted: Febuary 2, 2014 at Miami IWW
Republished in the Industrial Worker (April 2014)
Comments
The best brick you’ll ever read: why Wobblies should read “Capital”
A short review by Lou Rinaldi of Capital, which he advocates for Wobblies and the like-minded to read.
Karl Marx’s “Capital” looks like a brick and weighs about the same. And it’s an old brick, from 1867. Seeing it, you might think, “I can’t do this, it’s too long, too boring. Plus, it’s so old, this cannot possibly be relevant.” You’d be wrong. And you’d be wrong to think that “Capital” is too hard for you to comprehend. I think a big problem is that, as working-class people, we doubt ourselves and our ability to be intelligent. After all, we’re told we’re stupid nearly every day by our bosses! You should be assured that although a work like “Capital” may seem like a wall that cannot be scaled, it is possible to get through it. There are even various guides out there to help you along the way that might be worth looking into!
Another reservation you might have is thinking of it as something only for academics. If Marx had intended for his work to be relegated to the universities, he would never have done the work he did. Instead he presents us with a tool: an in-depth study of capitalism, a critique of capitalist ideology, and strategy and vision for a new society. Although parts are undoubtedly difficult to read, there are others that are extremely readable. Don’t let a few tough pages hold you back, read at a pace that is comfortable. Skip parts you have trouble with and come back to them later. But don’t give up on it, it’s a book you’re supposed to read—it’s not just for European professors.
We should give “Capital” a chance, especially as members of a revolutionary union like the IWW. In the past, Wobblies have taken “Capital” and Marx’s writing seriously. So seriously that our Preamble nearly quotes Marx verbatim when it proclaims we ought to replace the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” with the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system.” The founding convention of the IWW in 1905 included discussion of Marx and his ideas and after the union was formed, some IWW branches formed reading groups to study “Capital.” The IWW’s political education pamphlet “An Economic Interpretation of the Job” from 1922 was essentially a short synopsis of Marx’s ideas in “Capital.” And from the 1910s to the 1930s the IWW Work People’s College repeatedly offered courses on Marx’s critical understanding of capitalist economics. There is a history within our own organization of taking this book seriously, of studying, and using it as a tool in our work. However, there are many ways to read “Capital.” The way we should think about it is reading it politically, that is, reading it as a weapon in our hands. If we can think of it this way, then it becomes an invaluable tool, a practical book that is important for all revolutionary, class-conscious workers to read.
A Description of Capitalism Like No Other
The breadth of “Capital, Volume 1” is simply unmatched by other works on the economy. Marx was relentless in his research on how the system of capitalism functions. He researched history, economic figures, and philosophic works in order to complete the book. Each chapter in “Capital” is another piece of the puzzle for understanding how the capitalist economy functions.
“Capital” touches on everything that has become part of our everyday lives, things which every working person experiences. Why we work, how we work, how we are exploited: Marx takes these subjective experiences and puts them into a larger view of things, in the perspective of a class and class struggle. An important component of the book is a history of working-class struggle against capital and the system it tries to implement. This makes the book an important weapon for revolutionaries. It helps to know this history, and to know how the capitalist system works overall.
Take chapter 25, for instance, which is about “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.” This chapter describes the effect that creating profit has on working people in terms of wages and employment, but also the lengths that businesses must go in terms of monopolizing an industry. This describes an important element of capitalism: its flexibility and its ability to be dynamic. It has the ability to make wages and standards of living rise, to make them endurable. At the same time, it can increase the levels of exploitation and increase the amount of misery we experience. These fluctuations can create space for militant reform movements, movements like Fight For 15 that seek only to win reforms and keep capital intact while using some radical forms or strategies, to make their demands and even win them as long as the value-form is not challenged, or in other words, so long as the circulation of commodities does not stop.
A Critique of Capitalist Ideology
“Capital” becomes a weapon for revolutionaries in two ways: as a lesson on struggle and on ideology. The subheading of “Capital” is “A Critique of Political Economy.” What does Marx mean by this? His work not only shows us the technical processes that are performed in capitalism, but also the ideological war on the working-class consciousness. Namely, Marx looks to famous early economists, names that many of us will recognize: Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo.
Marx contends that while these thinkers seem to “get” capitalism, they have absolutely no understanding of the real, social processes that occur in the system. Their analysis of capitalism is only a crude interpretation of what is happening in the daily lives of workers. The result is gross dismissals of the horrors of the system, and their so-called “science” thinly veils a true disdain of the poor and exploited. In particularly damning phrases, Marx summarizes and condemns all that capitalism truly stands for, from degrading a worker “to the level of an appendage of a machine” to dragging our partners and children “beneath the wheel of the juggernaut of capital.”
A Strategy and Vision for a New Society
“Capital” is a weapon for workers, not merely a trophy on your bookshelf or an academic thought experiment. Because it chronicles the history of the implementation of capitalism and workers’ resistance to it, we learn something about ourselves when we read it. We can see ourselves in the processes and struggles that Marx describes. This is class consciousness.
The description of the working day, in chapter 10, shows how the day was lengthened and shortened through struggle. This chapter is of enormous relevance to us today as the gains of the old labor movement are torn apart and today, like then, “Capital [is] celebrating its orgies.” Recently in Poland, the eight-hour workday was taken away from the workers, and in the global South the working day remains similar to Marx’s time: 12 or more hours a day. If Poland, whose loss of privileges won through struggle, is an indicator of anything, it may be that this is the direction the West is going. Without a combative movement to fight for something better we will see more places go in the direction that Poland has gone in.
In identifying the features of capitalism, “Capital” gives us some heading. It shows us that our workplaces are battlegrounds of conflict. It shows us that our lived experiences are important and worth fighting for, to improve them, to live in a truly human community. It shows us, conscious revolutionaries, how to examine the economy to choose the best places to strike and advance the struggle, to make gains for our class.
In reading “Capital” it’s important to remember that in the struggles of workers we can see the beginning of the creation of a new society, a classless society. “The only way to understand the system is through conceiving of its destruction,” as the Italian radical publication Quaderni Rossi put it in 1962 (as quoted in Steve Wright’s “Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism”). Or, as Marx once put it, we need to “imagine, for a change, an association of free men (sic), working with the means of production held in common.” As IWW members and members of the working class, this is our struggle. “Capital” describes in detail what we’re fighting against and enriches our fight to achieve a new society.
Originally appeared in the Industrial Worker (April 2014)
Comments
'i think maybe you need to address the fact that regardless of literacy and confidence most people caught between work, family and everything else, simply often don;t have the time to spend hours every week studying long academic texts. I'm sure you know this obviously but its something this article glosses over, making it read as if everyone has a spare few evenings a week to devote to capital reading groups and just needs to get stuck in.
Hi, cantdocartwheels. Thanks for reading my article! Basically my opinion on this is that the IWW needs to have revolutionary politics and devote time to the development of people through deliberate political education. A major issue, to me, in the IWW is that many IWWs don't have even basic understandings of how capitalism works... This serves to inhibit workplace organizing in the union, I think, because people do not understand why it is so crucial we take up this work, and to do with with revolutionary politics that reject existing society (espcially, and I think this is one of the most pressing issues in the IWW, rejecting the State as means for have our revolutionary organization). Part of being a revolutionary, quite frankly, is going to mean being willing to make sacrifices and learn political theory. I think that needs to be in the "ask" when we work with people and want to bring them on board to the IWW.
Also, sorry, this really bugs me, but Capital isn't an academic text. That's sort of the point of the article. It can be hard to read, but so can anything you might read for pleasure that was written in the 1800s or earlier. And working class people read stuff like that, they're dynamic and intelligent and a diversity of interests. I'm also not sure where why you took this article saying people need to spend hours upon hours reading Capital. I think I said to take it slow in the article... At any rate, Nate Hawthorne has a really good article about how to get through Capital.
I would also say that it's not necessarily just a matter of us reading Capital, but having read it, acting on it and using its lessons as a means for political education (I mention "An Economic Interpretation of the Job"... We should have more material like this!)
I think that the I.W.W. approach should be to get people to do a chapter a week, but maybe start with things like Value Price and Profit, Wage Labor and Capital etc. Another important aspect would be to have someone who has moved through the works before, who can do maybe like a 15-30 minute lecture or talk on the key points from the chapter of the week, for those who lost reading time over the week but still want to get stuff out of it.
Don't get me wrong, I understand lectures to usually be boring, so it really could be 15 minutes or less, of again, just describing the main points, and then allowing a jump off for discussion. Might require a tight chair/moderator as well.
We should give “Capital” a chance, especially as members of a revolutionary union like the IWW. In the past, Wobblies have taken “Capital” and Marx’s writing seriously. So seriously that our Preamble nearly quotes Marx verbatim when it proclaims we ought to replace the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” with the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system.” The founding convention of the IWW in 1905 included discussion of Marx and his ideas and after the union was formed, some IWW branches formed reading groups to study “Capital.” The IWW’s political education pamphlet “An Economic Interpretation of the Job” from 1922 was essentially a short synopsis of Marx’s ideas in “Capital.” And from the 1910s to the 1930s the IWW Work People’s College repeatedly offered courses on Marx’s critical understanding of capitalist economics. There is a history within our own organization of taking this book seriously, of studying, and using it as a tool in our work. However, there are many ways to read “Capital.” The way we should think about it is reading it politically, that is, reading it as a weapon in our hands. If we can think of it this way, then it becomes an invaluable tool, a practical book that is important for all revolutionary, class-conscious workers to read.
This is why the whole argument of "no politics in the union" has been a historical falicy.
Is "an economic interpretation of the job" online anywhere? It would be great to have it in the library here.
Also, I have read volume 1 but so far have basically given up on volume 2. Is it really worth me reading volumes 2 and 3?
Finally, cartwheels, I'm not really sure what your point is. That people shouldn't bother to read it, or what?
As Lou says, it's not an academic text. It can be a bit hard to read in places, but again as Lou says not much more than many other books from the time. For example I have just finished reading Moby Dick, and that was harder to read than Capital volume 1.
Of course, lots of working class people don't have a lot of spare time, however most people would be able to find the time to read this book eventually. I read it while commuting, and I took into work to read during lunch, downtimes, etc, and it took me a few months but I got there eventually.
Steven.
Is "an economic interpretation of the job" online anywhere? It would be great to have it in the library here.
Here and here. I think it'd be good to get it up on here. I think it was mentioned to me by someone that a couple IWW members might be working on making a new version of it, which I think would be wicked awesome! I hope that isn't just a rumor (well, it is now! ;) )
As for reading all 3 volumes, I would say volume one is definitely the most important, but 2 and 3 go into some interesting stuff. Talks a lot about financial capital in volume 3 as I recall.
Oh and I am totally down with starting people off with lighter stuff and working into parts of Capital. Value, Price, and Profit as well as Wage Labor and Capital are both really good and very easy to read. You could even use VPP in lieu of the chapter one of Capital probably, though I would maybe pick of a couple of the passages on commodity fetishism to highlight that stuff, because it becomes important when thinking about alienation. We are going to read Wage Labor and Capital in my IWW Branch's Industrial Organizing Committee (also not so theory oriented stuff! We are starting out with Lines of Work, actually!).
http://www.iww.org/history/documents/iww/economic_interpretation_of_the_job
A very accessible text. Includes study questions at the close of each chapter.
cantdocartwheels
'i think maybe you need to address the fact that regardless of literacy and confidence most people caught between work, family and everything else, simply often don;t have the time to spend hours every week studying long academic texts. I'm sure you know this obviously but its something this article glosses over, making it read as if everyone has a spare few evenings a week to devote to capital reading groups and just needs to get stuck in.
This was exactly how I got through Capital. I was working as a support worker at the time so my hours were all over the place but I found 2-3 hours in a week to read a chapter and watch an episode of David Harvey's accompanying lectures [also online for free] as well as Heinrich's book as an intro.
It wasn't easy but it also wasn't impossible and it was definitely worth it in terms of my own political perspectives.
Oh, and this may be of interest: "PolyluxMarx: An Illustrated Workbook for Studying Marx's Capital" There is a free PDF available on the MR site.
Yo Lou, thanks for this. This is great. I think your basic point stands, that there needs to be an engagement with Marx's critique of political economy to develop working class militants' ability to fight against it, not just the forms of appearance (bosses and workers, wages and prices), but the very heart of alienated labor and all its phenomenal forms (commodity, money, wages, capital, etc.).
I think "wheels" above has raised a legit concern but I think that often translates into nothing at all as opposed to thinking about how to make the theory accessible. Along that line of thinking, I also want to highly agree with pennoid here, that starting with Wage Labor and Capital as well as Value, Price, and Profit are much shorter and more digestible pieces, the first being made for popular consumption.
Here in Houston, a few of us a part of Houston IWW, Unity and Struggle, as well as Third Ward Defense Network are doing a study of Marx and Communist Tactics. The first part of that syllabus includes: Estranged Labor (from the 1844 Manuscripts), Wage Labor and Capital, Value Price and Profit, Civil War in France, and Critique of the Gotha Programme. This is to acquaint folks with fundamental Marxist categories and to be able to root later development of communist theory around organization and tactics.
I'll be sure to share this with folks. Thanks, again.
Tyler Zee
Steven
Also, I have read volume 1 but so far have basically given up on volume 2. Is it really worth me reading volumes 2 and 3?
Yes. By reading only Volume 1 you get just Marx's analysis of production, and nothing about circulation, and nothing about how Marx's sees the two together in Vol. 3. In other words, you'll understand what value is, but will have a deficient understanding of what capital is.
Steven.
I read it while commuting, and I took into work to read during lunch, downtimes, etc, and it took me a few months but I got there eventually.
I read it the same way.
In response to Cantdocartwheels - My dad's not read Capital but he reads loads, the last construction job he had before the economy tanked he was reading like three or four novels a week on his lunch breaks. Lots of working class people read lots of books. Or shit, tons of my extended family (unfortunately!) read the bible regularly and are in bible study classes, in addition to going to church on sundays. It's the women in the family especially, and they're the ones who do the lion's share of the childcare too, so I don't buy the 'no time to read hard stuff' thing. People have time for the things they decide is a priority. This article isn't saying "hey every worker in the world, you right now should go read Capital." It's saying IWW members should make reading Capital one of their priorities for a while. People who have decided to join the IWW (and similar organizations) are pretty far down the road in terms of convincing compared to a lot of other people I think.
I have only read snippets from the Marx Engels read Tucker edited. I've read the Economic Interpretation of the Job pamphlet though. I got a copy of Capital Volume 1 years ago in college when it was the primary text for an economics class (believe it or not) on " Marxist political economy" at Portland State University. It was too much to read with my other classes, especially when we were expected to read it all in only a 10 week term. Now feels right though, and I am looking to start a reading group in my area. Thanks for writing this encouraging reminder of its utility and general accessibility.
Also, I coproduce a weekly program called The Old Mole Variety Hour on a community radio station in Portland, Oregon USA. While this article is aimed at wobs, would you be willing able to have a 15-minute conversation for the show on how Marx is basically writing for the sake of working class self education, and maybe a bit of history on how it's been used to that end? We can do international calls if that's an issue. I am not sure if my email links through my user name.
Economic Intrepretation is a wobblized version of Mary Marcy's Shop Talks on Economics which in turn is an updating of Marx's Value, Price and Profit.
I've thought of updating again. Chapter a month in the Industrial Worker, Then in pamphlet.
@ Library Wob: Just sent you an email!
@Fnbrilll: I would love to see that happen and would be willing to work on it with you, if you wanted or needed help! PM me if you are interested.
So Nate has already beat me to (and in a weird way that makes me proud of myself), but people find time for things they think are worthwhile. A huge percentage of American workers go to church on Sunday mornings. I mean, at best, most of us have 2 days off a week and people get up early on one of those days to go to church. I think that's obviously crazy, but it does prove a point that the same people who find 2 hours or so a week to go to church could, if they decided it was a worthwhile, read Marx or go to a union meeting or whatever. Of course, the latter two won't happen until they feel those activities are relevant or useful to their lives.
lou
in the IWW is that many IWWs don't have even basic understandings of how capitalism works...
I hear you lou, I mean Jesus, when I hear the Wobs who support co-ops as a strategy for revolutionary change, yeah that's painful. But I actually think most working people - at a 'gut' level, albeit often in a confused and contradictory way - have a pretty good understanding of capitalism. For example, outside of folks who are ideologically committed to capitalism, who didn't, after some pretty basic conversations, have an understanding of the labor theory of value. They didn't use that terminology of course, but that understanding that we - not the managers, not the bosses - keep companies running is understood by most people, I think.
For me, Marx is useful as an analytical framework. Even just the terminology, it's just so succinct that it allows me make clearer arguments in my own head. But I don't think you need to read capital - or even to be able to read - to understand capitalism. And I get what your saying: political education is important inside a revolutionary organisation. But fundamentally I think it's active involvement in your own struggles that's the ultimate educational tool.
lou.rinaldi
Also, sorry, this really bugs me, but Capital isn't an academic text. That's sort of the point of the article. It can be hard to read, but so can anything you might read for pleasure that was written in the 1800s or earlier.
Hste to break it to you but most people don't generally spend a lot of their time reading texts from the 1800's for pleasure.. The books from that period that are read with some frequency (though not by large swathes of the population) are obviously a lot easier and less dense than capital.(eg oliver twist, christmas carol, pride and prejudice,wuthering heights, treasure island, huckleberry finn etc) and do not require you to set up by your own admission a study group to read. Plus they all have plots to follow and movies you can watch. Capital is not a a story, it is an academic study of capitalism.
I mean, yeah, but, for me, Shakespeare comes across as pretty academic. I mean, I get it when I see it performed, but just reading it for pleasure is pretty freaking difficult, at least for me as an uncultured American. And that Bible example again - a lot of it is basically contradictory gobbledygook - but people study that shit until it makes sense to them.
Nate
Steven.
I read it while commuting, and I took into work to read during lunch, downtimes, etc, and it took me a few months but I got there eventually.
I read it the same way.
In response to Cantdocartwheels - My dad's not read Capital but he reads loads, the last construction job he had before the economy tanked he was reading like three or four novels a week on his lunch breaks. Lots of working class people read lots of books. Or shit, tons of my extended family (unfortunately!) read the bible regularly and are in bible study classes, in addition to going to church on sundays. It's the women in the family especially, and they're the ones who do the lion's share of the childcare too, so I don't buy the 'no time to read hard stuff' thing. People have time for the things they decide is a priority. This article isn't saying "hey every worker in the world, you right now should go read Capital." It's saying IWW members should make reading Capital one of their priorities for a while. People who have decided to join the IWW (and similar organizations) are pretty far down the road in terms of convincing compared to a lot of other people I think.
I'm actually all for reading groups, and have done a number of them in the past but i think they should be accessible based on pamphlets, debates, accessible texts and news articles (also so that people can be casual attendees) not long endless study groups slogging through academic treatises.
I'f your family read then great, that doesnt have any effect on the fact that 20% of the population (22% in the Uk) is functionally illiterate. If your family find time to read a lot then great for them, most people dont,.and a lot of people cant.
Most religions generally provide respite from childcare with sunday school, community links and other activities, an academic reading group, even with the best will in the world, provides a lot less on that front..
The IWW is a union. If i went into my workplace and suggested a few news artciles or left a few freesheets or pamphlets lying around people might think i was an oddball but no worse than that. If i went around my workplace or my street trying to sign people up for a capital reading grpup because ''its a weapon in the hands of the workers'' most people i've ever worked with would assume i was having some sort of mental breakdown.
This sort of thing happens anytime people bring up having politics and analysis in the IWW -- they think that there is an unbridgeable chasm between organizing workers, who of course are backwards and conservative, and revolutionary politics, which they will not and cannot care about. Just, no. Stop. No.
If i went into my workplace and suggested a few news artciles or left a few freesheets or pamphlets lying around people might think i was an oddball but no worse than that. If i went around my workplace or my street trying to sign people up for a capital reading grpup because ''its a weapon in the hands of the workers'' most people i've ever worked with would assume i was having some sort of mental breakdown.
Straight up never said to do this. Complete strawman.
This article says that convinced revolutionaries, especially IWW members, should have a greater understanding of capitalism and how it functions, and that Capital is the most complete way to do that. Revolutionaries are also workers (not letting you get away with have a separation of the two in your logic) and should be engaged in workplace organizing, which means dealing with people where they're at, but not to the preclusion of their own politics. Organizing a revolutionary movement is a slow thing, it's not going to be worth taking short cuts now because when things are hot down the line it will really bite us. Sure, the IWW is a union. That doesn't tell me much. The United Auto Workers is a union. These organizations are qualitatively different because of the politics we have and do practice.
Marx wasn't an academic, didn't work in academia, and didn't produce academic works for the academic world. Capital wasn't academic, sorry. Capital doesn't require a study group to read, but I think learning in a collective setting is always better. I also never said anywhere in this article that the first thing you ever have to read to be a revolutionary is Capital. I don't know why it's being treated that way.
Who reads Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights outside of a reading group? I've only ever heard of people reading those a) for school or b) in a reading group. Just like Capital.
I think Lou's basic point, that Capital is a useful and worthwhile thing to read for revolutionaries who want to understand how capitalism works and what it is, is right. Certainly when one thinks about how much time is wasted on facebook conversations, which are fairly useless, or e-mail lists, which are generally worse than useless (at least the IWW ones are), I think a lot of members could find time for something like this if they wanted to.
OliverTwister
Who reads Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights outside of a reading group? I've only ever heard of people reading those a) for school or b) in a reading group. Just like Capital.
.
Exactly as my post said it would be a minority of people that would bother reading it in full. I had to read wuthering heights at school (and no you wouldnt be able to get 16/17 year olds to read the whole of capital at school), I wouldnt read either outside of it.
Both those books are obviously more accessible than capital though as even a cursory glance at the text would tell you. More to the point you dont need a specific historiography of the period to understand the basics of the romantic story of pride and prejudice hence why their are lots of films/tv adaptation about mr darcy or similar updated types and no films of note based on capital.
Cantdo, your posts are getting more disingenuous as you write them to the point that it looks like you're either engaging completely in bad faith or that you've just missed the entire point of what's been said..
Lou has not suggested handing out freesheets at work, he has not suggested asking workmates to come to a Capital reading group and he's not mentioned asking 16/17-year-olds to come to a Capital reading group. What he said was:
This article says that convinced revolutionaries, especially IWW members, should have a greater understanding of capitalism and how it functions, and that Capital is the most complete way to do that.
This is his point. Do you agree or disagree with this? Coz as for the other stuff you've mentioned you've just pulled it out of nowhere and it seems suspiciously like you're hostile to the idea of any merging of economic and political work..
lou.rinaldi
This sort of thing happens anytime people bring up having politics and analysis in the IWW -- they think that there is an unbridgeable chasm between organizing workers, who of course are backwards and conservative, and revolutionary politics, which they will not and cannot care about
yes because politicising people and setting up capital reading groups are completely synonymous and inseperable. Theres literally no other way of talking about how capitalism works, no other shorter more accessible ways of getting communist ideas across.
Obviously having not read capital i don;t understand this and think your just talking bollocks, perhaps when i slog through its hundreds of pages over six months i'll be enlightened.
This article says that convinced revolutionaries, especially IWW members, should have a greater understanding of capitalism and how it functions, and that Capital is the most complete way to do that. Revolutionaries are also workers (not letting you get away with have a separation of the two in your logic) and should be engaged in workplace organizing, which means dealing with people where they're at, but not to the preclusion of their own politics. Organizing a revolutionary movement is a slow thing, it's not going to be worth taking short cuts now because when things are hot down the line it will really bite us. Sure, the IWW is a union. That doesn't tell me much. The United Auto Workers is a union. These organizations are qualitatively different because of the politics we have and do practice.
oh give over on this ''weal wevolutionawwies'' crap. If you organise at your workplace you are a union, if not then you aint. The people you are ostensibly trying to get to join the IWW are your co-workers. However i would take the same attitude if you were talking about an out and out political group, the idea that we all need to read dense marxist theory is just nonsense.
Asking people to read some pamphlets, come to a discussion group about issues in the world or suggesting accessible texts online for them to have a look at is one thing. You'll find people often don;t even have time for that but it is worth doing However, If somebody union be it ''revolutionary'' or ''non-revolutionary'' expected me to spend numerous hours every week reading a dense academic text like capital to gain a better understanding of capitalism i'd let that person know what i thought and tell them exactly where they could go.
This article says that convinced revolutionaries, especially IWW members, should have a greater understanding of capitalism and how it functions, and that Capital is the most complete way to do that.
This is his point. Do you agree or disagree with this? Coz as for the other stuff you've mentioned you've just pulled it out of nowhere and it seems suspiciously like you're hostile to the idea of any merging of economic and political work..
yes mate i'm pretty hostile to a bunch of jumped up marxist pointy heads who think that a radical union should tell its members to set up capital reading groups
1) because its impractical as no-one would have the time
2) because it would make you look like a loon in a lot of circles
3) because its a really really crap way of politicising people
4) because its elitist intellectual bollocks
Basically i now just have a mental image of you knocking on doors shaking a copy of capital at them, telling them ''this is a weapon in the hands of the workers11!!!!111''
cantdocartwheels
This article says that convinced revolutionaries, especially IWW members, should have a greater understanding of capitalism and how it functions, and that Capital is the most complete way to do that.
This is his point. Do you agree or disagree with this? Coz as for the other stuff you've mentioned you've just pulled it out of nowhere and it seems suspiciously like you're hostile to the idea of any merging of economic and political work..
yes mate i'm pretty hostile to a bunch of jumped up marxist pointy heads who think that a radical union should tell its members to set up capital reading groups
1) because its impractical as no-one would have the time
2) because it would make you look like a loon in a lot of circles
3) because its a really really crap way of politicising people
4) because its elitist intellectual bollocksBasically i now just have a mental image of you knocking on doors shaking a copy of capital at them, telling them ''this is a weapon in the hands of the workers11!!!!111''
did you enjoy that juvenile tirade?
For all your talk about others talking "bollocks" and having "mental breakdowns", you are the person who is just making stuff up. Now you are imagining people "knocking on doors shaking a copy of capital…" because someone, a communist on a communist website has advised other communists to read the most important communist book of all time.
I think if anyone is having trouble understanding reality, it is you, because rather than address what anyone is actually saying you're inventing fantastical scenarios in your own head which have no connection with the real world.
Also I think it's pretty funny that for your talk of "Marxist pointy heads" everyone in this discussion who is arguing against you that I'm aware of has done a lot more workplace organising than you.
And other things you have said are also nonsense. You admit you haven't read Capital, but you claim it is an academic work. But it's not.
And your patronising idea of an idealised worker is just complete nonsense. In the UK at least 90% of the population reads for fun. My mum was a busy housewife plus had two jobs cleaning and ironing and looking after four children. She read at least one book a week on top of this. And my dad worked 90 hour weeks driving a cab, but he read The Times cover to cover every single day.
Working class people have much greater intellectual capacity than you are giving them credit for, and than a lot of them give themselves to be honest.
Finally, on an admin note, the form guidelines say people should be polite. So stop speaking to everyone so aggressively and rudely. The only person that is looking like a "loon" here is you.
I wish i could intuit my way to consciousness. So tired of all this slogging through academic text. Why aren't we all just punching our bosses? That's some communication our co-workers can understand!
I'm not going to engage cantdocartwheels on this anymore, but I'd really love to have a conversation about more readings that we can do as revolutionary organizers, to help us understand the world and be able to act in. People have already mentioned Value, Price, and Profit, Wage Labor and Capital, and An Economic Interpretation of the Job. Last year in the Industrial Worker I wrote a review of Fighting For Ourselves, and I think that is an excellent piece that should be taken into consideration. I think I mentioned Lines of Work earlier, and I get all anxious promoting this because I help edit for Recomposition now and also there are two essay I wrote in it, but I think pairing up 'theoretical' texts with more 'lived experience' readings could be really fruitful!
I'd really rather have this conversation than a back and forth over whether Marx was a jerk or not.
Yea I think:
Capital
Lines of Work
Fighting For Ourselves
Value Price and Profit
Economic Interpretation of the Job
Maybe SelfEd?
I think organizers or a working group or something should also focus on the Post-WWII history of your region. Capital Flows, sites of struggle, neighborhood development, immigration, capital flight, general recomposition of the working class etc. Kind of like mapping your workplace, but mapping your city.
Obviously this all has to be linked to some kind of concrete struggle, likely solnet style or workplace organizing.
I get a lot from reading groups but I do think that they, or some form of them, is over stressed in parts of the socialist milieu.
I would say to cantdocartwheels that historically reading groups have often been an answer to illiteracy, not an obstacle to inclusion of people with less or no literacy. I mean, reading groups for Paine in mid-late 19 C. UK or Marx in early 20th C. Russia were a significant aspect of revolutionary movements of the uneducated proletariat. In my experience, they are still sometimes places people who struggle with texts can have an easier time reading them cos they can usually find some other people in the group who can help them out with a bit they struggled with.
However the opposite can definitely happen where the group becomes a space to show off. I know discussing Marx in discussion groups I've often felt that temptation to use some bit of knowledge on, like, the peculiarities of industrial production in Manchester or whatever to seem all clever. It's a dick move so I try not to, but things like that can be used by academic oriented socialists to control and, in the end, deaden a group.
I get a lot out of reading group type scenarios because they come naturally to me. That's a tradition my school and church bought me up in as a kid. I didn't learn all that much from those, but I learned how to do them. But this is not the case for many, I expect most, people in my country at least.
In 19th C. factories from England to Cuba at least (I'm sure many more) factory workers grouped together to pay someone to read to them while they worked. Everything from novels to religious texts to political theory. And this way of doing things was easily adapted by politically specific groups for their organising. Read out a text in parts in a rented room in a pub or some one's cellar or whatever and chat about it after.
But that's not how we are used to doing things now. Which is no tragedy. We're still humans used to taking in and processing abstract social information in a collective fashion. But we usually do it in different ways today. Fine.
So 'Yes!' to Capital reading groups, but an even bigger 'Yes!' to exploring forms of mutual education that are more innovative and, in a sense, catching up with where the class is already at in terms of communally understanding the society around us. And we've been doing this anyway. Hell, I'm typing this on an internet forum.
And your patronising idea of an idealised worker is just complete nonsense. In the UK at least 90% of the population reads for fun
22% off the UK population are functionally illiterate so would have no chance at reading a chapter of capital a week,. I'd go so far to say that at least another 30%-40% of people would really struggle with a text like capital and would have never attempted a book of that density and would not be familiar with reading long academic economic, political or philosophical texts. The majority of people basically would see a capital reading group and go ''thats not for me''.
Forums discussing issues with a speaker/film, and groups reading shorter texts and pamphlets are things that most people should be able to access (not all though unfortunately) , capital reading groups obviously aren't of that ilk as they require ongoing commitment not casual attendance and are more academic.
If you want to set up a capital reading group on your own steam then fine, good for you if you want to spend hours of your life doing that and have an understanding partner, regular working hours etc then again great for you. However, if you think thats something your union branch (radical or not) should or could be doing, as the article above basically argues, then id say thats complete nonsense.
If you dont understand why shoving big books and long dense material in front of people puts a lot of people off then i'd say you need to go back to the drawing board on that wonderful enlightened understanding of class and capital you claim to have,
Anyways carry on,, have said what i've said and am done with this thread tbh. ..
lou
Last year in the Industrial Worker I wrote a review of Fighting For Ourselves
Is it in the libcom library?
Fighting for Ourselves
Maybe SelfEd?
As part of a now over year's long project, I've been committed to doing an audio recording of both these books for SF website and probably librivox and libcom. For SelfEd especially - which is pretty damn long - one of the ideas was to get a different person to read each chapter so we have a nice mix of accents and genders and all that good stuff. So, if anyone's interested in making this happen, drop me a PM.
CantDo
I'd go so far to say that at least another 30%-40% of people would really struggle with a text like capital and would have never attempted a book of that density and would not be familiar with reading long academic economic, political or philosophical texts. The majority of people basically would see a capital reading group and go ''thats not for me''.
...which is why a reading group is ideal.
And, Cantdo, I don't want to make this personal (and, in fact, if you want me to delete this part of the comment, just say it) but I know you've given/arranged talks on anarchism. You know what dude, for the vast majority of the population, they're going to see something like that advertised and say "that's not for me".
And that's okay as the point lou is making is that committed revolutionaries should make the effort to read capital. Not that they should force there non-revolutionary co-workers to or that the IWW should make it required reading for new members, only that committed revolutionaries, of their own accord and preferably in groups, should read capital. That's it.
Chilli Sauce
And that's okay as the point lou is making is that committed revolutionaries should make the effort to read capital. Not that they should force there non-revolutionary co-workers to or that the IWW should make it required reading for new members, only that committed revolutionaries, of their own accord and preferably in groups, should read capital. That's it.
Sure, there's an implied context of a ladder of engagement style progression. First step is moving co-workers (or neighbours) towards joining the union (or residents assoc. or other mass org) as participating members. Next moving members to activists and then organisers. Next moving organisers to being convinced revolutionaries. Then comes the question of what convinced revolutionaries can do to develop themselves as better revolutionaries - and learning a deeper understanding of the dynamics of capitalism, is very much part of that. Reading Capital is not the only way to do that, or a final "one stop shop" answer to everything. But it's very useful - at the appropriate level of engagement.
RedEd
In my experience, [reading groups] are still sometimes places people who struggle with texts can have an easier time reading them cos they can usually find some other people in the group who can help them out with a bit they struggled with.
However the opposite can definitely happen where the group becomes a space to show off. I know discussing Marx in discussion groups I've often felt that temptation to use some bit of knowledge on, like, the peculiarities of industrial production in Manchester or whatever to seem all clever. It's a dick move so I try not to, but things like that can be used by academic oriented socialists to control and, in the end, deaden a group.
Sorry this is a derail, but I wanted to write it out so I remember it better. I think the above distinction between supportive or solidaristic space and competitive space is key. From anti-oppression politics we have the concept of "safe space", but that doesn't always consciously recognise the need for such a space to suppress competitive behaviour (sometimes quite the opposite!). I think its useful for us to raise the need to see supportive or cooperative space in terms of the competitive/solidaristic binary as well, not just safe/unsafe. Particularly as regards making allowances for the hierarchisation of class in terms of access to education and prior political literacy. Otherwise "safe spaces" can be made pretty hostile to those working class people who never went to college or haven't a family culture of voracious reading.
Chilli Sauce
lou
Last year in the Industrial Worker I wrote a review of Fighting For Ourselves
Is it in the libcom library?
It is! Actually, was in the IW exactly a year ago. Weird. I will note that I totally did not come up with the lame title for it, I believe Nate Hawthorne is to blame for that. :) http://libcom.org/library/reviews-primer-anarcho-syndicalism-all-read
cantdocartwheels
22% off the UK population are functionally illiterate so would have no chance at reading a chapter of capital a week,. I'd go so far to say that at least another 30%-40% of people would really struggle with a text like capital
100% of people struggle to read a text like capital, and "20% of people have trouble reading" is a weird argument for saying 0% of people should try to read hard books.
That aside, I got a lot out of what RedEd and Ocelot said about supportive vs competitive behavior in lefty environments. Respectfully, one or both of y'all should write that up as a blog post/article.
on this -
ocelot
making allowances for the hierarchisation of class in terms of access to education and prior political literacy. Otherwise "safe spaces" can be made pretty hostile to those working class people who never went to college or haven't a family culture of voracious reading.
I think that's an important point. My dad and one of my brothers both have a learning disability and they're latino and the combination of the two was that schools made them feel stupid. IMHO they're both really smart, my dad taught himself all kinds of computer shit and he reads books a lot, my brother quit high school and taught himself a bunch of stuff he used to get construction jobs that pay better than anything I've ever worked. I've got more formal education than they do and when I was younger I would sometimes use words I learned in college and things would get tense, either with them feeling stupid or them thinking I was trying to one up. It's not intelligence that's the issue though, it's that they don't speak particular high-status vocabularies. Some of those vocabularies IMHO are basically built mostly or at least partially to play status games. (My wife had a chronic cough for like a month once and went to the doctor and he listened to her breathing and listened to a cough and said "you're having bronchial spasms" and she said "explain that to me" and he said "something in your lung is twitching" and she said "oh, so you're telling me I'm coughing, I knew that actually, maybe you could tell me why it's happening, or what to do about it?" and he was like "wait another month and come back." It's a minor thing but he translated what she told him into expert vocabulary and acted like that meant something. Not to say that's all that medicine does, of course.) I think in trying to do collective self-education it's important to be aware of that kind of thing and try and lessen it's influence. I think Capital reading groups and similar efforts are one of many ways to do some of that. Setting up books like that as inaccessible and something for experts is how those experts get to be experts and play status games, kinda like the old timey church guarding the bible and not translating it out of Latin or whatever.
Just wanted to share that Black Orchid Collective recently put out a piece called "DIY Study Strategies" that may be of interest to folks.
I would suggest that before you start on Capital you should make yourself familiar with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations as well as David Ricard's The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. This will help put Marx's work in context -- otherwise it may not be completely clear what he is getting at.
Also, remember that in volume 1 Marx writes at a high-level of abstraction -- ignoring competition and assuming all industries have the same level of capital investment, for example. Unless that is remembered, it may all get a bit confusing -- as I became when I first tried to read Capital decades ago!
Being me, I should also note that Marx applies the methodology that he attacked Proudhon for using in his System of Economic Contradictions. In 1847 it was a case that Marx thought you had to discuss everything -- and its history! -- at the same time as the use of abstraction and categories meant idealism. By 1857 he finally realised the impossibility of doing this and instead embraced the methodology he had previously mocked Proudhon for using -- and, of course, never admitting he was wrong.
And, of course, his theory of exploitation in Capital is basically Proudhon's as expounded in What is Property? and System of Economic Contradictions. Marx has no real theory of exploitation in The Poverty of Philosophy beyond market exchange equals capitalism and somehow producing commodities results in workers being exploited. So no theory of how exploitation happens in production as a result of wage-labour, unlike Proudhon.
Anyways, getting beyond what I initially wanted to say -- which was read Smith and Ricardo first as this will help you understand Capital better.
In my opinion that is completely unnecessary. Sure if you want to really understand the critique of political economy that makes sense, but not needed if you just want to understand Marx. Then you pick up a companion instead.
Oh, and Marx does discuss competition briefly in the context of SNLT and the production of relative surplus-value, but does leave the details for vol. 3.
Being me, I should also note that Marx applies the methodology that he attacked Proudhon for using in his System of Economic Contradictions. In 1847 it was a case that Marx thought you had to discuss everything -- and its history! -- at the same time as the use of abstraction and categories meant idealism. By 1857 he finally realised the impossibility of doing this and instead embraced the methodology he had previously mocked Proudhon for using -- and, of course, never admitting he was wrong.
Proudhon was a Hegelian?
Yeah, the first couple chapters are a bit tough to grasp. But, things like Heinrich's intro and Rubin etc. are useful for thinking about abstract labor, value etc.
Khawaga
In my opinion that is completely unnecessary.
Probly more than that, probly counter-productive. You want to read a book, read that book. The longer the list of things you have to do before you have permission to read a book, the less likely you are to actually read the book.
Good point. And I would add, reading Harvey's companion is also counterproductive.
The IWW should fight to win – by any means necessary
An article by Matt Muchowski that is part of an ongoing debate on the use of labor contracts.
Previous articles in this discussion include:
-The contract as a tactic by Matt Muchowski
-Contractualism should be avoided by Juan Conatz
-Contracts are not a tool, they're a trap by Scott Nappalos
I wrote a piece in the December 2013 Industrial Worker (IW), “The Contract As A Tactic,” which appeared on page 4, discussing the IWW’s relationship with contracts, and I encouraged the union to see them as a tactic that can be used when it makes sense.
I’m glad to see that it has sparked some conversation, with separate response pieces printed in the January/February and March 2014 issues of the IW.
I wanted to write another piece to keep this conversation going, and perhaps clarify my views on the topic.
Overall, the decision about which tactics and strategies to use is up to each workplace, and I’m glad that our union is big enough to support workers with different views on strategy and tactics .
I agree with Fellow Worker (FW) Juan Conatz, who wrote in “Contractualism Should Be Avoided” (January/February IW, page 4), that organization is the base of the IWW’s strength, but at times a contract can be used to organize—whether it be offensively to mobilize workers around their demands, or defensively as a shield to keep union supporters employed when the boss tries to fire them.
We should not make our strategies or goals revolve around a tactic—whether it be contracts, strikes, or picketing. Using any given tactic does not prevent us from using other tactics either at the same time, or at a different time.
“Contractualism” is something that should be avoided just as much as “‘strikeism,” “electoral politics-ism,” “OSHAism,” or “picket-ism.” Turning any tactic or tool into an ideology or strategy leads us to build towards an action or event, with no follow-through. Our goal is have workers democratically control the means of production, and it’s not my intent to compare “contractualism” to “all-out-revolution;” rather it is my intent to encourage any and all tactics necessary to build our union so that we have the strength to follow through on our “unfinished business” as former IWW General Secretary-Treasurer (GST) Fred Thompson put it.
FW Conatz makes the point that if a shop were strongly organized enough to get a contract without certain promanagement clauses, we could be strong enough to simply impose the will of the workers without a contract. I feel like this is a slippery slope argument—if we are strong enough to do X, we are strong enough to do Y and Z. The fact is that workers’ organization isn’t always strong enough to get X, Y and Z, but if they can get X and Y, why shouldn’t they take it, and use those extra resources to fight for Z as well? The reality is that workers in each shop and throughout the IWW and the labor movement have to assess their strengths at the moment and make decisions that will allow them to build off of that strength. Having an “all or nothing” approach will hurt our ability to get it all.
In his article “Contracts Are Not A Tool, They’re A Trap,” which appeared on page 11 of the March IW, FW Scott Nappalos described a bad experience with contracts at his branch’s shop—where workers became apathetic because, despite having a contract, there was a lack of organizing. Unfortunately, sometimes the union loses battles.
Workers are fired and unable to get their jobs back, strikes end with the workers returning to work to keep their jobs without obtaining the goals they set out on strike for, and occupied factories can be evicted by force. In FW Nappalos’s example, a contract was an end in itself and wasn’t used to organize and mobilize workers.
The fact that these tactics sometimes fail to achieve the union’s goals is not a reason for us to swear to never use them under any circumstance. Rather, it’s a reason for us to examine the particulars of why that tactic in that circumstance didn’t lead us to our goal of better and stronger organization of the working class, and what we can change about it in the future.
In some ways, FW Nappalos’s article actually supports my point. The contracts gave the union a foothold in the shops, and when effort was applied, the union was able to organize in these shops. No matter what tactic is used in organizing, effort is necessary to make it successful.
Some “tactics” are always bad, as they do not even try to lead us to our goal—any tactic that undermines union democracy or pits workers against each other for example. However, tactics that are used to advance us towards our goal, even if they might not succeed, are up to workers to decide on a shop-by-shop and industry- by-industry basis, and eventually as a whole social class.
Granted we need some standards to make sure that a particular shop doesn’t do something which is inconsistent with the values and goal of our union. Some of these are hard-line standards, some are “best practice” standards, and some will be left up to shops to decide on a case-bycase basis.
Historically our union set standards for contracts by requiring that they be approved by the General Executive Board, and that they be consistent with the values of the union. The IWW has also rejected contracts that had “specified lengths of time” or required workers to state their demands before taking action on them. You can read more about these standards in a pamphlet that the union put out in the 1920s that examined how the union can organize around bread and butter issues’ in a revolutionary way called “The Immediate Demands of the IWW,” at: http://www. workerseducation.org/crutch/pamphlets/ immediate.html.
FW Nappalos said that we shouldn’t expect our opponents to play fair, and that they often use legalistic framework to keep us from organizing. Our opponents won’t play fair, and they will use any means and any tactic to keep us from organizing—not just legalistic ones.
With that said, we don’t have to “play fair” either.
We’re not required to tell the boss our strategy, tactics or intentions—in fact sometimes it may be useful to mislead the boss. We can talk to them about contracts while we are organizing direct actions. We can make the boss think that we are conceding something big, when we didn’t have it to concede in the first place.
The boss can feel free to mistake our tactics as reformist, and give in to some immediate demands of ours. However as a democratic union we are required to be honest with each other—that we will fight to end against the system of wage slavery, no matter what we take from the boss, or what they give to us in the meantime.
I think it is important that the IWW fights to win in a big picture way. We need to win against capitalism. There will be ups and downs in that fight, day-to-day battles, as well as struggles that last months, years and decades. But just as the boss leaves every tactic on the table—including contracts that they don’t like, including legalizing strikes, including force, etc., we too need to leave every tactic on the table.
Contracts, like any tactic—including strikes, if done in a reformist way—can be a trap for workers, but if done in a smart, revolutionary way, it can help set traps for the boss.
I’ve commented on some of the related posts on Libcom, and fellow workers interested in the conversation can follow or contribute there in addition to the IW.
Originally appeared in the Industrial Worker (April 2014)
Comments
We should not make our strategies or goals revolve around a tactic—whether it be contracts, strikes, or picketing
See, no one has yet to convince me (or, if I'm honest, offer any sort of explanation) how contracts are a "tactic".
Not to be pedantic, but a tactic is a short-term action (like a picket or a strike) designed to create an immediate change or apply pressure. A strategy is a long-term plan achieved by a series of tactics that seeks to change the status quo. Contracts - legally binding documents that last at, say, a minimum of a year - become a goal in themselves, a result of a particular strategy.
FW Scott Nappalos described a bad experience with contracts at his branch’s shop—where workers became apathetic because, despite having a contract, there was a lack of organizing. Unfortunately, sometimes the union loses battles.
I think this misses the point. What FW Nappalos and others have argued is that contracts change the role of the union in the shop - that "servicing" the contracts or, worse, enforcing the contract on the members, becomes fundamental to functioning of the union in that shop. FW Nappalos was pointing out that such a dynamic is a recipe for rank-and-file disempowerment.
Contracts, like any tactic—including strikes, if done in a reformist way—can be a trap for workers, but if done in a smart, revolutionary way, it can help set traps for the boss.
One thing that really falls flat for me in these conversations are statements like this. It is just assumed to be true, to be pragmatic, but the questions I have are: What does a "revolutionary contract" mean? How does that play out? What historical examples are there of "revolutionary contracts"? how does that build the IWW around an anti-capitalist, anti-state platform? I would like to see an article that really addresses these issues, they seem important and pressing, despite being glossed over by pro-contract arguments every time.
Sorry, historical question: What year is the "Agreements" from? Pretty heavily centralist. UE basically has same policy on strikes, only they have to be approved by the national office. Same principle tho
A revolutionary contract would be one where the boss agrees to pay us and we agree to nothing.
Quote:
Contracts, like any tactic—including strikes, if done in a reformist way—can be a trap for workers, but if done in a smart, revolutionary way, it can help set traps for the boss.
One thing that really falls flat for me in these conversations are statements like this. It is just assumed to be true, to be pragmatic, but the questions I have are: What does a "revolutionary contract" mean? How does that play out? What historical examples are there of "revolutionary contracts"? how does that build the IWW around an anti-capitalist, anti-state platform? I would like to see an article that really addresses these issues, they seem important and pressing, despite being glossed over by pro-contract arguments every time.
I think two things here;
1) You are not going to be able to set any traps for the boss or exert any meaningful pressure against the employing class in the US unless we organize, at least as a start, in the way Matt is talking about. Rejecting contracts as a dogma will continue to make us irrelevant in the US labor movement. We propose something that will grow and strengthen the radical labor movement, the other side has nothing really to show and no plan.
2) Its not the "contract" that is revolutionary (although i believe contract organizing by revoluationaries would provide even more contrete power and gains to workers than those organized and controlled solely by liberal bureaucrats) it is the philosophy of the union in its entirety. By growing in strength and numbers through contractual labor organizing the union can start building to strike (general strike or smaller strikes against specific targets) start a program of political engagement for the workers, began tackling other political issues outside of the shop floor that some union stay away from, etc..
Contract relations with the employer comes straight out of the AFL playbook in the early 20th century. It became solidified under the bureaucrat dominated unions of the CIO and even though the more radical or rank and file unions like the MESA used contracts, they refused the checkoff and forfeiting the right to strike, a clause the I.W.W. recently passed/upheld. The MESA was also uniquely democratic and rank and file controlled (if still dominated in spirit by Smith).
Contracts in general are the basis of classical liberal legality and the logic of capitalism. The worker is a free human, selling their labor-power for a wage. A lot of business unions see their role as conceptually an actual business that sells the labor-power of it's workers to the capitalists, in order to give the workers a better payout. But the IWW isn't a business union, and isn't about oiling the gears of capitalist accumulation. It's about building class power as independently of bourgeois institutions as possible.
We shouldn't rely on the notion of "legitimacy" conferred by contracts or recognition "enforced" by the NLRB. But this doesn't mean workers shouldn't settle, or have demands. But this means building union strength through solidarity and direct action. Or the hard way.
It doesn't mean we can't take some fights to the NLRB, to the extent we can win them and gain from them, like monetarily etc.
But what does a contract actually give? Stability? Nope, that's created by workers responding to unfair disciplinary action or firings with an immediate walkout. A rally point? It would be clearer just to make a list of demands. Recognition? Why do you need a contract or the state at all? Recognition practically means that you're the force on the shopfloor that represents the workers. This can be it's own separate demand, but why drag in the bureaucracy of the NLRB?
They actually came out of the playbook for the state, and of course the afl and the cio adopted them and soon became enshrined as the standard.
I disagree about contracts being the basis of classic liberal capitalism, maybe between employers, but not in a employer to employee relationship. that belief is founded in a master slave relationship where they employee has zero rights. Anything to the contrary is usually fought bitterly, mostly out of class loyalty, principle, or the cost to the employer.
"legitimacy" is not the issue, the issue is organizing power and strength. Remember you dont need to be legitimized by the NLRB to file a charge and i think the IWW has used the NLRB about 99% of the time to press for demands when they had a shot to do so.
billz
I think two things here;
1) You are not going to be able to set any traps for the boss or exert any meaningful pressure against the employing class in the US unless we organize, at least as a start, in the way Matt is talking about. Rejecting contracts as a dogma will continue to make us irrelevant in the US labor movement. We propose something that will grow and strengthen the radical labor movement, the other side has nothing really to show and no plan.
Ironically, the IWW has organized in the fashion Matt has advocated. Pretty much from the 1960s-late 1990s, nearly every organizing campaign was a NLRB election, contract campaign. And you know what, the IWW has never been more irreverent besides this period. So I don't buy that contractualism as a strategy gets us footholds, necessarily. To say nothing of what these footholds would look like.
And dogma? Please. I'm sick of hearing this. It was already addressed in the reply I wrote, but the solidarity/direct/revolutionary unionism a lot of us advocate has clear precedent and is based on lessons learned, either through contemporary direct experience in organizing campaigns or lessons from people who came before us, such as radical accounts of what was happening with the CIO or if you wanna take it back far enough, the tradition of the historical IWW. In contrast, those who advocate some version of contracts have nothing but the talk of aspirational growth, with no examples, and a vision of unionism that ignores the developments of the last 70 years. Honestly, until Matt started this debate off, there has been little (maybe nothing) written about why contractualism should be a strategy1 for the IWW.
- 1sorry, Matt, it's not a tactic ;)
Rejecting contracts as a dogma will continue to make us irrelevant in the US labor movement. We propose something that will grow and strengthen the radical labor movement, the other side has nothing really to show and no plan.
Well, Juan has already covered this better and more eloquently than I can, but the US labor movement has been in decline for decades, both on it's own terms and certainly in terms of radical social transformation. I don't think becoming relevant in what's basically a failing and, in large parts of the country, irrelevant, movement is much to aspire to.
If anything, the bits of the labor movement that have taken a look at the IWW - say Labor Notes - are specifically looking at the solidarity unionist approach, looking at how the Starbucks Workers Union organizes fights on the shopfloor as opposed to contracts.
Also, "nothing to show and no plan" not only is that offensive, it's just plain wrong. Have you not read Direct Unionism? Attended the 101 training? Read the Workers Power column in the IW?
Finally, "dogma"? One's person's dogma is just another person's principles, so let's drop the rhetoric here, yeah?
Juan Conatz
billz
I think two things here;
1) You are not going to be able to set any traps for the boss or exert any meaningful pressure against the employing class in the US unless we organize, at least as a start, in the way Matt is talking about. Rejecting contracts as a dogma will continue to make us irrelevant in the US labor movement. We propose something that will grow and strengthen the radical labor movement, the other side has nothing really to show and no plan.
Ironically, the IWW has organized in the fashion Matt has advocated. Pretty much from the 1960s-late 1990s, nearly every organizing campaign was a NLRB election, contract campaign. And you know what, the IWW has never been more irreverent besides this period. So I don't buy that contractualism as a strategy gets us footholds, necessarily. To say nothing of what these footholds would look like.
And dogma? Please. I'm sick of hearing this. It was already addressed in the reply I wrote, but the solidarity/direct/revolutionary unionism a lot of us advocate has clear precedent and is based on lessons learned, either through contemporary direct experience in organizing campaigns or lessons from people who came before us, such as radical accounts of what was happening with the CIO or if you wanna take it back far enough, the tradition of the historical IWW. In contrast, those who advocate some version of contracts have nothing but the talk of aspirational growth, with no examples, and a vision of unionism that ignores the developments of the last 70 years. Honestly, until Matt started this debate off, there has been little (maybe nothing) written about why contractualism should be a strategy1 for the IWW.
Juan, im not an expert, but i dont even think the IWW was recognized by the nlrb until the late 70s.
I think from the 60s and 70s the where the iww was almost extinguished, i think there was even more of a rejection around the kinds of campaigns i argue we need to run. I think more into the late 80s they started getting more into contracts, including organizing the Berkeley plant, which remains to this day as one of the largest Industrial Union shops, thanks in part to their contract with the IWW.
I am not arguing against "revolutionary unionism" but to advocate for it without having done the organizing makes it irrelevant. I think their are great examples of pulling unions to the left using a mix of what matt and i seem to be advocating and with what you are advocating. I have yet to see any current examples or realistic plan or strategy which rejects contracts but also produces a clear foothold and revolutionary power in a job shop that clearly can move the boss or threaten them legitimately in any way.
- 1sorry, Matt, it's not a tactic ;)
Chilli Sauce
Rejecting contracts as a dogma will continue to make us irrelevant in the US labor movement. We propose something that will grow and strengthen the radical labor movement, the other side has nothing really to show and no plan.
Well, Juan has already covered this better and more eloquently than I can, but the US labor movement has been in decline for decades, both on it's own terms and certainly in terms of radical social transformation. I don't think becoming relevant in what's basically a failing and, in large parts of the country, irrelevant, movement is much to aspire to.
If anything, the bits of the labor movement that have taken a look at the IWW - say Labor Notes - are specifically looking at the solidarity unionist approach, looking at how the Starbucks Workers Union organizes fights on the shopfloor as opposed to contracts.
Also, "nothing to show and no plan" not only is that offensive, it's just plain wrong. Have you not read Direct Unionism? Attended the 101 training? Read the Workers Power column in the IW?
Finally, "dogma"? One's person's dogma is just another person's principles, so let's drop the rhetoric here, yeah?
Labor notes is pretty much the direction i want to push the iww in, no disagreement there.
I dont mean to be offensive, just trying to ask hard questions because i think we dont have much time to get organizing. I have not read direct unionism but if you link it ill be glad to. I think i actually helped run a 101 training awhile back with some bike messengers.
I dont think dogma is good on either side of the debate..
There you go:
https://libcom.org/library/debate-direct-unionism
including organizing the Berkeley plant, which remains to this day as one of the largest Industrial Union shops, thanks in part to their contract with the IWW.
Now, I'm not in CA, but having talked to folks who are a bit more familiar with the Berkeley plant I've heard two things:
1) The workers themselves have pulled off some worthwhile actions, including strikes. Which is awesome.
2) The shop itself is maintained through the use of a business agent and the workers there have very little contact or engagement with the local GMB or certainly the wider union. On top of that, I believe their last contract was concessionary.
In short, basically what we have in Berkeley is militant trade unionism, which is all well and good, but it's not the sort of revolutionary union that I think most of us want to create.
i think we dont have much time to get organizing.
Path to hell, good intentions....
Organizing of any sort - never mind revolutionary organizing - is a long, slow process. If there are any shortcuts to that, the NLRB and signing agreements with the bosses certainly aren't it.
Billz, if you don't mind me asking, how long have you been in the union?
Chilli Sauce
There you go:
https://libcom.org/library/debate-direct-unionism
including organizing the Berkeley plant, which remains to this day as one of the largest Industrial Union shops, thanks in part to their contract with the IWW.
Now, I'm not in CA, but having talked to folks who are a bit more familiar with the Berkeley plant I've heard two things:
1) The workers themselves have pulled off some worthwhile actions, including strikes. Which is awesome.
2) The shop itself is maintained through the use of a business agent and the workers there have very little contact or engagement with the local GMB or certainly the wider union. On top of that, I believe their last contract was concessionary.
In short, basically what we have in Berkeley is militant trade unionism, which is all well and good, but it's not the sort of revolutionary union that I think most of us want to create.
i think we dont have much time to get organizing.
Path to hell, good intentions....
Organizing of any sort - never mind revolutionary organizing - is a long, slow process. If there are any shortcuts to that, the NLRB and signing agreements with the bosses certainly aren't it.
Thanks for the link.
I doubt the have enough resources to have a full time business agent, but maybe im wrong, either way i think the wider union should be more engaged with it, but i think they are stuck in the dogma that rejects what they are doing. I think this is wrong. They should be activity supported and their model should spread.
I dont think we know yet if its not the revolutionary union that you want to create, i think it is. Pretty much almost every contract is concessionary now, that is reflects power and reality most of the time, and not the ideology of the workers. If they could have squeezed more out of the boss and made it a net positive, i am sure they would have. I would bet you that their contract is one of the best for what they do around though.
I do think that is the path their, i know you disagree, but be specific with your counter plan. Ill check out the debate.
I have been an on and off member for over 10 years. I current not up to date but am helping out with organizing consulting.
think they are stuck in the dogma that rejects what they are doing. I think this is wrong. They should be activity supported and their model should spread.
Oh, come on, contract or no contract, you don't think the IWW is going to rally around their members in a dispute?
And, I would like to point out that throughout this debate, the pro-contract folks have used a lot of "I think..." And this is actually why I asked how long you've been in the union. I've been in the Wobs on and off for about the same amount time. In that time, I've seen the growth of an organising culture and a cadre (if you'll forgive the word) of dedicated, capable organisers alongside an infrastructure (the OD, the 101) that supports organising. And the vast majority of that comes out of organising experiences on the ground. It's also those same people are the ones generally most in support of non-contractualist models.
It seems like when I talk to pro-contract folks, it's all about what they think - their opinion about what will work, no matter how much it flies in the face of experience. For my money, when it comes to having the debate, it's the anti-contractualists who are far more grounded not only in theory and history, but in practical experience.
I mean, seriously, how many NLRB elections do you think the IWW has filed for in the past 30 years. How many do you think we've won? How many have resulted in contracts? How many of those contracts have lasted? How many of those contracts had no-strike clauses? How many resulted in 'phantom shops'?
To be blunt, the model you're advocating has been tried. And it's failed for the IWW as much as it's failed for the wider labor movement.
Comments