Has a substitute for the IWW Been Found? - Tor Cedervall

It is about time that someone wrote another “One Hundred Million Guinea Pigs”. In place of horrifying details of sandpaper on your toothbrush, this book should deal with the one hundred million workingclass guinea pigs who in America, past and present, have been dished out an infinite variety of adulterated remedies to keep them sick but satisfied,—all substitutes for the real thing.

The material to select from is wide and varied, for in no realm of human relations are there to be found more substitutes, fake claims, and harmful products than in the field of sociology. For every measure that could possibly aid in the thorough housecleaning of our society, a spurious substitute is offered and pushed before the public. The phenomenon of Fascism alone affords a vast field for fertile study, for Fascism is the grand devil of them all in the black art of adulterated substitution. Its sample wares include such choice items as “national socialism” for socialism, “labor front” for independent labor unionism, race or national struggle for class struggle, to mention a few of the more important ones.

However, since we only suggested the book and are not writing it, let us confine ourselves to one instance in current America that might provide a significant chapter for the proposed volume. We have reference to the current attempt to substitute the C.I.O. for an industrial union movement long championed by the I.W.W.

The C.I.O. emerged upon the scene a little more than a year ago. Why? Back in the “horse and buggy” days the mighty onsurge of solidarity on the part of the workers through the Knights of Labor was stopped by the appearance of the A. F. of L. “The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.” Is the C.I.O., the child of the A. F. of L., coming to the fore to run bona fide industrial unionism into the ground?

The employers’ art of spurious substitution in the labor commodity market was at first exercised entirely on their own initiative in America by those pariahs of the people, the John D. Rockefellers, as an outgrowth of the terrible and magnificient strike of the Colorado coal miners in 1913-14. The Rockefellers, after witnessing fifteen months of heroic struggle on the part of the miners that even wholesale murder of their women and children at Ludlow could not stifle, brought in W. L. MacKenzie King, later premier of Canada, to form the first “company union” in the United States, the Rockefeller Industrial Representation Plan. In subsequent years the “company union” has served with varying success as a substitute for labor unionism in countless industrial establishments of America.

However, since the gaping dent put into Capitalism by the “crash” of ’29, a general awakening of the American working class has occurred. After an interim of stunned stumbling, the workers commenced to organize in earnest.

The unemployed, no longer pleading recipients of charity, organized and clamored for more bread and shelter. Several plants in the mass production industries went out on unorganized but bitterly contested strikes, notably the Briggs body plants in Detroit. The craft-bound A. F. of L. witnessed a large influx of members into its unworkable federal unions. The I.W.W. made some serious inroads into the automobile industry during and immediately following the Briggs strike. The latter organization also conducted a large agricultural strike for higher wages in the martial law-patrolled Yakima Valley of Washington, as well as conducting a construction workers’ strike at Boulder Dam, a seamen’s strike on the Gulf, building strikes in Philadelphia, etc. In addition, several independent unions of a bona fide working class nature were springing up everywhere, such as the M.E.S.A., the Wisconsin Industrial Union, the Union of All Workers in Minnesota, and others.

Against such an arousing working class the employers were beginning to find the camouflage of “company unionism” rather thin.

With the introduction of the NRA, the Government started playing around with the A.F. of L., but found that the rock-ribbed craft structure of the A. F. of L. was so utterly outmoded as to be unfit for the Judas role of old. The piratical prerogatives of the international craft unions upon the federal locals were causing the new recruits to go through the A. F. of L. like a green light. The distressing spectacle of the lumber workers in the West deserting the safe haven of the A. F. of L. for the industrial unionism of the I.W.W., clearly proved the impotence of even “doctored” craft unionism to embrace the aroused workers of America and run them-into the “safe and sane” channels of the A. F. of L. Such experiences early led Generalissimo Johnson of the NRA to declare for industrial unionism. Today this blustery strike-buster is the blatant advocate of the C.I.O., much to the distress and protestation of weary Willy Green. Shocked and offended Mr. Green may not be able to understand why the good General is taking such an attitude, but the General does.

The laissez faire capitalism of old is day by day being pushed into the background. The day of unrestricted “individual enterprise” is fast disappearing. Through governmental pressure the days of suicidal, unplanned production with its disastrous “booms” and “over-production” (as well as rather amateurish handling of labor problems) are diminishing. More and more, despite temporary setbacks, “monopoly”, “regulations”, “standards”, are being introduced into American economic life. A very real “One Big Union” of capital is being evolved in this country in an effort to ‘stabilize” capitalism and secure to the present beneficiaries of capitalism their powers and privileges at the expense of the working class as heretofore. The capitalist system in America is steadily tending towards one gigantic corporation to displace the present big and little corporations.

With the “corporate” trend of capitalism, and its sometimes startling changes in governmental and business procedure from the days of “laissez faire”, it readily can be seen that an industrial union movement growing out from this can be merely a corresponding change in the form of “company unionism”. For the individual “representation plan” of the individual corporation must be substituted a nation-wide “representation plan” to serve the interests of the newly evolving “corporate state”. A One Big Company Union of labor to match the new One Big Corporation of capital!

Is the C.I.O. being groomed as this “One Big Company Union”?

That the C.I.O. may be bitterly fought by some employers does not in the least contradict this question. These employers are still confident that they can go on in the old laissez faire way. They are yet opposed to merging into the “One Big Corporation of Capital”. But, eventually they will see the arrangement as of benefit to them and as their lone salvation, much as an individual worker in a factory being organized by the I.W.W. may at first resist attempts to organize him, only finally to see the point. These employers are conservatives of the old school. Their ranks will continue to diminish, much as their political expression, the Republican Party, is rapidly decaying and is even now practically moribund as far as national politics is concerned.

Another element accounting for the misleading antagonism of some employers to the C.I.O. may well be the ambition of some of the leaders of this latter movement. Capitalism is not in a precisely enviable position at present. It is endangered on the one hand by the stupidity of some of its sections and on the other by the threat of genuine organization on the part of the working class. In order to get personal considerations, would ambitious “labor leaders” be averse to holding the working class for ransom? As it were, blackmailing the capitalist class into assuring them worthy rewards in power and privilege? After all, both Mussolini and Hitler were pretty blustery and did not strike a bargain until they were assured of their perogatives.

For these reasons, and because the substitute must be plausible, the C.I.O. certainly will not fall into the unimaginative routine of a “company union” or a fascist “labor front” until a full-fledged bargain is struck. Furthermore, rank and file impetuosity will provide from time to time certain flare and color to the whole procedure. However, this rank and file activity will become increasingly rare as Mr. Lewis and his lieutenants come to understandings with the various industrial concerns.

Already the chief outcome of the General Motors strike1 is the agreement on the part of the union to outlaw any job action until all avenues of negotiation have been exhausted, meaning conferences between Lewis and the management. When the time comes that Mr. Lewis wins the checkoff and the right to bargain for all the workers in a company’s employ, the rank and file will be caught between the two mill-stones of Mr. Lewis and the employer. The worker, individually and collectively, will find himself helpless in fighting both the employer and the union. A double chain will be around his neck.

Universally organized into the C.I.O., will the American worker find himself bound hand and foot to the system that exploits him? Freedom a myth, will he be an industrial serf forever in his place and receiving such fruits of labor as his masters may in their benevolence choose to bestow upon him?

The socio-economic basis of fascism is the corporate or totalitarian state—one hundred per cent organized industry and parallel industrial organization of the workers. Industrial unionism lends itself very easily to the corporate plans of fascism. Mussolini, the founder of fascism, was guided in his formulation of the fascist state by his experience with the wide-spread “syndicalism” of Italy. He discovered that industrial unionism can be turned upon its head and become industrial bondage.

An industrial union movement can be an instrument of social advancement and happiness for mankind and a bulwark against fascism only if it is thoroughly saturated with a rank and file spirit and adhere in form and practice to democratic control. What is more, it must be based foursquare on the principle of irreconcilable economic antagonism between the employing class and the working class, for only class-consciousness can counteract the totalitarian appeal of fascism. How does the C.I.O. measure up to any of these requirements? Is it a suitable substitute for the I. W. W.?

Will the members of the American working class offer themselves as “One Hundred Million Guinea Pigs”?

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

• 1•NOTE: The conduct and the settlement of the General Motors Strike indicates that the General Motors Corporation represents an employer group that is taking a watchful “on the fence” attitude to the “corporate” tendencies of American capitalism. Despite the heroic determination of the gallant Flint sit-downers, the small percentage of union organization in the G. M. plants would not have prevented the company from engaging in physical efforts to break the strike unless a question of broad social policy were not in the background of the affair. In an ordinary economic struggle the organization of the strikers was much too weak to seriously intimidate the Company, particularly with the support of the Flint Alliance and the old- line A. F. of L. on the side of the corporation.—T. C.