The advent of the C.I.O. on the American labor scene has been the grounds for the rebirth of scholastic arguments long thought crucified on the cross of experience and fittingly buried with the rest of the superstitions and myths of the primitive strivings of the wage workers. Aside from the possible immaculate conception of the Saviour, John L. Lewis—of his being born again after being bathed in the blood of refractory miners—the ghost which the Faithful are most ardently trying to blow life into, is the historically discredited doctrine of "Boring From Within."

Though at the danger of being burned at the stake as a materialistic heretic and non-believer in the revelations of St. Marx and his disciples, Lenin and Stalin, Hayes and Berger, Foster and Browder, a review of labor history in relation to this doctrine is in order. Experimental science of the twentieth century has more to offer us than has the jesuitical logic and dialectics of the dark ages.

As soon as the A. F. L. became the foremost labor organization of America, numerically if in no other way, the socialists set out to capture control of it to further party aims.

In 1893, they were successful in putting over in the A. F. L. convention a program including "the collective ownership by the people of all the means of production." But the following year, 1894, Gompers, opposed to the socialists, maneuvered successfully in having this rescinded. Apparently as compensation for this setback, the socialists were able to elect their candidate for president of the Federation. Gompers, however, resumed this position the following year.

This frustration, on the eve of success as it seemed, spurred the Socialist Labor Party to officially forsake the salvation of the A. F. L. and to promote the dual paper organization, the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance. A faction, however, tantalized by their near-success retained faith in changing the A. F. L. and the difference between the factions culminated in the formation of the Socialist Party, 1900, which adopted officially the policy of boring from within the A. F. L.

Socialists in the A. F. of L.

Despite their exorcism of dual unionism and wailing allegiance to the Federation, Gompers scorned the socialists and never missed a chance to give them a raking over the coals. But he was canny enough to use their support to counter-balance the growing sentiment favoring the progressive groups which formed the I. W. W. in 1905.

The socialists' influence in the A. F. L. grew. In 1911, their candidate for president of the Federation, Hayes, received 5073 votes, against Gomper's 11,974. In 1912, the socialists lead the industrial union advocates in polling 5929 votes against the 10,934 craft union votes in the convention. Their party membership grew to 110,000 and votes polled in the presidential election, 1912, were 1,000,000.

The socialist leaders became impatient. The realization of a party similar to the German Social Democrat with its party funds, its officials and well paid jobs, its power to demand some of the political patronage-dispensing authority of the regular parties, was just around the proverbial corner. There seemed to be just one fly in the ointment to their quick ascendancy with A. F. L. support. Though the political parties were asked out of the I. W. W. in 1908, many members of the I. W. W. still placed some confidence in independent workers' political action and the means such a party offered in putting across working class propaganda. These members and their sympathizers maintained membership in the S. P. or supported it in other ways. Bill Haywood was a member of the S. P. executive board. This was a touchy problem in the party's relationship with the A. F. L. and as absolute proof of their loyalty to the principles of the A. F. L. the party convention, 1912, virtually ruled out the I. W. W. members. The I. W. W. members and their sympathizers left.

With this positive evidence of their good intentions, the socialist leaders turned hat in hand to the A. F. L. officials for praise and reward. They got none. The craft union officials figured it out this way: "If the socialists don't believe in interfering with our racket by running around with those I. W. W., and they promise to be faithful to us, what is the use of giving them anything? Any gifts we have to spare we had better give to those we are not so sure of." From this time on the Socialist Party lost influence not only in the A. F. L. but as a political party.

Another Party Tries

The communists who after the war took up the boring from within methods had an even more dis-mal experience. Without the understanding bred from experience of the old socialists, steeped in the rule or ruin policy of the Moscow Messiahs, controlled entirely by intellectuals out of touch with the working class, the communists did little but confuse and disrupt. Where they did gain success in taking over the officialdom of a union they milked the treasury for party funds; or the ones elected as officials promptly forgot their former radical views, if they ever had any, and used the powers in their hands for their individual good.

Aside from the political parties, boring from within had other advocates who had less influence. Foster's Syndicalist League seems to have exhausted itself by publishing the pamphlet "SYNDICALISM." Moreover, there is little evidence that even Foster himself was affected deeply with revolutionary syndicalism in his organizing activities in the lumber, steel and packing industries. He gained a seat in the officialdom and retained it at the price of endorsing and playing ball as official ball is played.

The anarchists followed the policy of each to his own individual conception, helping, obstructing, nullifying, and duplicating the work of others. As officials of unions their actions vary greatly from their ideals. We see anarchists on the executive board of the International Ladies Garment Workers fraternizing with politicians and working hand in hand with the state drawing up codes for the government to enforce. It was not the labels of socialist, communist, anarchist, or syndicalist, with all their hysterically imagined implications, that accounted for the disappointing showing of the borers. Even those innocent of radical beliefs, those popularly referred to as liberals or progressives, failed equally as brilliantly to reform the conservative unions even the slightest. Those quaint persons, ex-wobs, ex-socialists, the ordinary run of scissorbills1 , who tell us that they are working for the same things as the I. W. W. but are doing it in a "different and better way" have nothing to show for all their efforts of pushing "good men" into the office of union leadership. After seeing their heroes one by one go the way of all flesh afflicted with piecarditis and exercise of authority, it must be plain to them that they are kidding no one but themselves and might just as well wave the red flag over their march to defeat.

Why Boring Fails

Why have all these groups and individuals failed to achieve the metamorphosis of the conservative unions into revolutionary industrial unions?

Primarily because a collective bargaining agency is an institution of capitalism and can function only in this way if it is to exist. Woven of and into the fabric of the "the catch as catch can, no holds barred" competitive system it functions as do all other capitalist institutions. Likened to a capitalist bank it may be more clearly shown. The function of a bank is to arrange debts in such a way that the investors are assured a profit on their investment. Now it is possible that a philanthropist could be appointed as the official of the bank, but to carry into his every day banking operations his philanthropic ideas by loaning money without interest, or charitably cancelling debts, would inevitably lead to the destruction of the banking institution and not, as the borers from within assume, to a reform of the bank to a philanthropic institution. Aside from all doubt as to the bankers' sincerity and philanthropic integrity, the outcome is seen to be inevitable if the bank is to continue to operate.

So with the A. F. L., C. I. O., and other conservative unions. Allow for the sake of argument, radicals could be officials of the conservative unions. They could not put their radical policies into practice without destroying these capitalist collective bargaining agencies. Those who have attempted to do so with these outfits, at the expense of their functioning as collective bargaining agencies, have just sowed disruption and dissension and only by their removal or the changing of their ideas, have the organizations managed to survive. Look at the C. I. O.—A. F. L. rumpus and the weakness it has caused in the ranks of labor's collective bargaining agencies. The whole cause is, not as some would have us imagine, a fight between craft and industrial unionism, the attempt of political aspirant to make a collective bargaining agency function as something foreign to its nature, as a political vote catching machine. Political parties are not interested in building revolutionary industrial unionism but are motivated in their boring from within relations to the conservative union by one thing; namely, the necessity of obtaining a secure mooring among the working population upon which to anchor their party.

Political Party Roots

Political parties must needs have their roots in an economic group, whether that party be republican, democrat, progressive or socialist. The two old line parties are rooted in the economic groups of the vested interests. Where so-called labor political parties have attained any degree of stableness, as the Independent Labor Party in England and the Social Democrat parties in many countries of Europe, it has been only by sinking suckers into the necks of labor unions. The labor unions supply the blood and substance of these parties and only at the expense of their own health.

The labor union's role, in political party plans, is a source of campaign funds and as substantial evidence of their control of votes by which the labor politicos can bribe the old line parties for favors and some share in the political patronage of job dispensing for party lights. To gain this evidence of strength does not require building rank and file revolutionary industrial unionism. It merely requires the control of the officialdom of the labor unions. This is adequate for their political purposes. The training and education of the union members to the benefits of rank and file control and the development of their abilities to control industry for their own use, as revolutionary industrial unionists propose, is not only superfluous to the needs of a political party but is an actual menace to its aims.

The exercise of rank and file control would nullify all the benefits of gaining control of the official machine. Even where the political partisans have appeared progressive by supporting the industrial form as a substitute for the craft form of unionism it has been merely as a political slogan or to facilitate better control of the members for the party when it should arise to official ascendancy. Their cries for the industrial form of unionism can be likened to the cuckoo advocating to other birds the building of good nests so that later on the cuckoo can lay its eggs in them.

For the run down at the heels intellectuals and aspiring ex-workers, the control of the finances and votes of the labor unions would make for the realization of their dream of a third party with well-paid jobs and authority to dispense patronage to the hangers on. Revolutionary industrial unionism would only blast the hopes of this political borer from within. If there was chance of this kind of success with this tactic they would not want it.

Speech Making Leaders

Foster depended for success on the methods that the syndicalists adopted in France, of gaining control of the official positions and passing resolutions and making speeches about revolutionary syndicalism. But syndicalists prove no different from the socialists and communists after being in office for any length of time; and in the land of Foster's inspiration, France, the C. G. T. officials were equal to Gompers and the Social Democrats of Germany in following the masters' wishes in regards the World War. A resolutionary-speech-making leadership does not make a revolutionary-feat-making rank and file, nor leadership either.

The pitfall to even temporary success of the borers from within appears to be the contaminating effects of the spoils of office, the exercise of authority and high salaries. Even their venerated prophet, St. Karl, did not reveal a revolutionary nostrum for the poisonous effect of officialdom, and it remains the dragon on guard against the Knights of the Bore. Man will protect a woman from everyone but himself, it is said. The opportunist will protect the interests of the rank and file likewise.

Any influence that the political borers have attained in their activities has been while they were tacitly supporting dual unionism. The height of the socialist influence was in the '90s when the ghost of the Knights of Labor was not entirely laid to rest and up to 1912 while they were still friendly to the I. W. W. The communists have time and again tried to bolster their prestige by forming dual unions and then running them back into the A. F. L. both before and with the T. U. U. L. splurge. And even their present prestige, such as it is, is only because of the dualism of the C. I. O. Immediately the S. P. cut itself off from the I. W. W. officially its influence waned. And without doubt, on the consummation of the C. I. O.-A. F. L. peace the communists will go as flat as a pricked balloon. And they know it and will stand in the way of such a peace.

But without organization not even situations favorable to getting to first base with their political ball can be taken advantage of as has been shown conclusively in the development of the C. I. O. Even though the progressive elements and those who know what the score is, far outnumbered them; the politicians control by dint of their organization.

Whoever would influence the conservative union member must, as history shows, have organization, avoid all contact with the germs of officialdom and promote dual unionism. But even then, it still remains that a capitalist institution, whether bank or labor union, cannot become a revolutionary institution or even part of the new society. Such an attempt would destroy the institution, as the politicians are doing with the A. F. L.-C. I. ). without building anything to take over whatever functions are necessary to the working people.

The Job on Hand

Neither the banks nor collective bargaining agencies need be the objects of destructive intentions. As capitalism is destroying itself, so it is destroying the institutions that make it up. The job on hand is to build the structure of the institutions that will carry on when capitalism sinks to its doom. Therefore, it could not be a dual organization, as the C. I. O. is dual to the A. F. L., but would be of entirely different structure and aims, not attempting to duplicate the capitalist functions of conservative unions. In short, it would be the Industrial Workers of the World. The material for this purpose is at hand, the resources, the working men and women.

To destroy any of the institutions of capitalism, whether they be the A. F. L.-C. I. O. financial institutions or industrial administrative agencies, without having first built an organization structure to carry on whatever necessary functions these institutions were caring for, as well as to carry on the new responsibilities of the new conditions, is to court disaster as surely as it would be to tear down an old house before a new structure has been built in which to move. To bore from within the old structure in an attempt to build a new one is fruitless. But while in the old structure, we can build the new one by its side and the necessary arrangements can be quickly completed when the old capitalist system and its institutions, the banks, the industrial administrative agencies and collective bargaining agencies collapse in decay. "By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old."

Originally appeared in The One Big Union Monthly (February 1938)
OCR scanned and edited by Juan Conatz

• 1A worker who is not class conscious - juan

We working people want to raise our wages, cut our hours, make our jobs safer and less injurious to our health and less unpleasant places in which to earn our living. If we realize what an injury the capitalist system does to us, we want also to get rid of it. We can not do these things by ourselves. We can do them together. That's why we form unions. Our unions are labor unions only when they do what we want them to do. A body of workers is not a union unless it is controlled by its members. That is reason No. 1 why the I.W.W. insists upon "rank-and-file" organization.

This phrase "rank-and-file" has come to be used in such strange ways of late that it has picked up some strange meanings. For that reason it is time that the I.W.W., as the foremost exponent and practioner of rank-and-file unionism, explained just what rank-and-file means, and what it doesn't mean.

The strange uses of the expression "rank-and-file" to which we refer are made most often by the communists and other addicts of the "leadership principle." Now the "leadership principle"—the idea that we should pick and follow leaders, and seek a cure for our troubles by changing leaders—is the direct opposite of the rank-and-file idea. It is indeed curious that those who advocate this "der Fuehrer" plan of organization should ever demand "rank-and-file control." How does it happen?

The object of these various political cults of "follow-the-leader" is to obtain more followers for their various leaders. (And since every time there is a new leader there are new cults, this results in a rather bewildering situation. Since their purpose is not to organize a working class to do something for itself, but to make sure that the leaders of one cult are followed rather than the leaders of another, they seek their following chiefly in already organized groups of workers. Sometimes they try to secure such a following by currying favor with the officials of these unions. That was and is the pet policy of the Socialists. The Communist sects vary this policy with that of "boring from within" to grab the official positions.

When a group of self-appointed saviours try to grab the official positions in a union, they must resort to the favorite tricks of the unsuccessful politician—the one who is out of office. They must charge the elected officials with "betraying their mandates," "not living up to their promises," "ignoring the wishes of the rank and file." They must promise that if they are elected, the "rank-and-file" will rule through them. As a result we have the strange spectacle of "rank-and-file" committees waiting instructions from some leader before they can decide upon their next step!

To get into the saddle, these would-be leaders must convince their potential victims that they are now being ridden, but that with them in the saddle, hey will no longer be ridden. It will not serve their purpose to urge that those who are being ridden should get rid of rider, saddle and all. They must urge that only the riders be changed. Their consequent political manipulations in the unions leave the impression that "rank-and-file" means disruption, misrepresentation, henpecking of the officialdom—anything and everything except the use of a union by its own members to give effect to their own wishes.

In the I. W. W.

In the I.W.W. control by the rank-and-file is implicit in our constitution, our structure, our financial arrangements, and our traditional procedure. Yet we have no rank-and-file committees, and rarely do we see any member in our ranks appealing to, or even mentioning, the rank-and-file. Just as the best evidence of a good liver is the lack of any occasion to take note of it, so is the best evidence of rank-and-file control the absence of any mention of it. We find use for the term chiefly in describing the inadequacies of other unions.

How is such complete rank-and-file control accomplished?

In the first place, there is no division of our ranks into officialdom and rank-and-file. There is no officialdom. We have officers, some voluntary, and some on the payroll, some devoting full time to the work of the I.W.W., some devoting only their spare time after regular working hours. None of them are officers for many years. The various terms of office vary from three months to a year, and in no case can a member serve more than three successive terms. Thus our members are elected into and out of office. If they stayed in office for life, as they do in many unions, they would no doubt be "sobered by the responsibilities of office, and subordinate their revolutionary urge to the necessity of balancing the budget." But they don't stay, and during this term of office, they look at the problems of organization in much the same way that the rest of the members do. Conversely, so many of our members who are not holding an official position at any one time, have held such positions, that the viewpoint of these members is based largely upon a realization of the problems that confront the officers of a union. Thus there is a natural harmony and uniformity of views throughout the I.W.W.

The powers of these I.W.W. officers are very limited. They can not call strikes, nor can they stop them. Consequently they can not "sell out." If they are on pay, they have no votes in any membership meeting; and no official, whether on pay or not, has a vote in the Industrial Union or General Conventions. This is in marked contrast to the practice of most other unions. Their work is set out for them by the various conventions or other deliberative bodies of the membership; and should any unforeseen circumstance develop requiring any abrupt change of plan or policy, a referendum must be taken on it. At any time they can be recalled by referendum.

Not a Federation

The structure of the I.W.W. provides for the utmost cohesiveness with the utmost freedom or autonomy of its component parts to attend to local or specific problems as the definite circumstances may require. It is not a federation of industrial unions, but a One Big Union of the working class. All its members are directly members of the I.W.W. They meet as members of industrial unions, according to the sort of work they do; and there is a free automatic transfer from one industrial union to another. A good portion of the work of the I.W.W. is accomplished by general membership meetings, District Conferences of all members in a district, Industrial District Councils, and other structures that bring members of various industrial unions together. All this results in cohesiveness and solidarity without the imposition of a powerful central authority.

Consequently there is no sacrifice of cohesiveness in preserving a usual degree of autonomy for the component parts of the I.W.W. Job branches decide their own policies for organizing the job or for keeping it organized, or for improving it. Industrial Union branches decide their local organization policies, elect their own officers, decide upon their own ways and means. Industrial Unions do likewise. These bodies are limited only by this: all must act in conformity with the General Constitution and the by-laws of their industrial Unions, and the decisions of their conventions.

The financial arrangements of the I.W.W. are a further guarantee of rank-and-file control. Control over a union's treasury often means control over the union. Industrial Union branches have their treasuries; Industrial Unions have theirs; the General Organization has its own. Of the dues collected from the members a portion set by by-laws of each industrial union stays in the local Industrial Union branch, another portion goes to the Main Office of the Industrial Union. From this a certain portion set by the constitution goes to..the General Office, and the rest remains as an organizing fund to be expended by the General Organization Committee of that Industrial Union. If strikes or organizing campaigns break a union treasury, the General Office may be called upon for assistance, or the other Industrial Unions may be asked—but they can not be compelled to contribute their funds. In such emergencies the I.W.W. finds that its treasury is still "in the workers' pockets." And the closer this treasury is to the workers' pockets, the more considerate must union officials will be of the wishes of these custodians of the treasury.

But the most effective guarantee of rank-and-file rule in the I.W.W. is not in its constitution, structure, or financial arrangements, but in the viewpoints that have become traditional in our ranks. The I.W.W. members look upon rank-and-file not merely as a means for making sure that the union is run according to their wishes, but even more as a means for getting things done. The diffusion of responsibility in a rank-and-file organization begets initiative and releases energy. Even more important in getting results, it has things done by those who know what they want done, what obstacles are in the road of doing them, and consequently how they must be done. It may be possible to steer a boat on the open sea by remote control, but it won't work for riding a log down stream. It is rank-and-file control that has enabled the I.W.W. with relatively so few members to accomplish such great results as it has in American industry.

It is rank-and-file control that has kept it from being steered up blind alleys by the various fads and foibles that have beset the alleged intelligentsia of the labor movement. It is rank-and file control that has so developed organizational capacity throughout the ranks of our organization, that not only have most of our members proven competent organizers, but that somehow our ex-members have furnished a good part of the organizing force for other unions. It is this same development of individual capacity that has made the I.W.W. indestructible in the face of the most ruthless efforts to extirpate it; and it is to this development of individual capacity, and to the organized self-reliance that is back of it, that the I.W.W. looks as assurance that it can fend for itself no matter what suppression of civil liberties, no matter what despotism, and state intervention in unionism may grow out of "der Feurher principle."

It is little wonder that the I.W.W. places great emphasis on this idea of rank-and-file, looks for it in the unions that lack it, completely rejects the leader idea that would leave no room for it, and wishes the genuine article "rank-and-file rule" not to be confused with the ludicrous imitations that have been offered by the much-to-be-watched, self-appointed saviours of the American working class.

Originally appeared in The One Big Union Monthly (March 1938)