Wobbling Towards Communism statement and response

A statement from a group of communists in the IWW and a follow-up to some responses they have received.

We are members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and we are Wobbling Towards Communism. We announce ourselves as a communist trend within the IWW, and we aim to reaffirm the basic principles of the union.

We are serious about our commitment to the abolition of the wage-labour system and its relation to commodity production and private property (and all that it entails). We are committed to this being the main focus of our tactics as a revolutionary union.

We are against reformist activism because capitalism cannot be reformed. We should not play the bourgeois game of single issue reforms. In particular, we oppose the practices and methods of the bourgeois business unions which only seek to increase their membership at the cost of revolutionary foment, that divides workers along skill and trade lines and capitulate to bourgeois political parties and the state. These reforms are perfectly compatible with the bourgeois mode of production, and have no place in Communism.

From this, we are against class collaboration and participation with any bourgeois institution, such as the state and its political parties. As the beginning of the IWW Preamble states, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” We are opposed not only to the standard bourgeois parties, but also to the left wing of capital in all its forms, from labour parties to political organizations which wish to subordinate the class struggle for their own gains.

Stay tuned.

A response

“No politics in the union”, said the anarchist.

We at WOBBLING TOWARDS COMMUNISM are both delighted and surprised by the attention we are suddenly getting. If we had known this would happen, we would have left a biting comment on the Industrial Worker facebook page long ago! We would like to address some of the recent feedback, most of which is about our aims, our output, and our conduct.

When we say communism, we mean “the real movement that abolishes the present state of things”. This present state of things is a social order predicated on value-creation through wage-labor and the circulation of that value through exchange. We are for the dissolution of class society, recognising the immediacy of communism, therefore we also oppose the state in all it’s forms. We do not seek leadership over this movement or over this union, not out of moral principle, but because we realize that it is the class itself that must take up leadership, and it is only the class in motion that is able to overcome the current social order. We are not members of any communist/socialist party or organization, we are only members of the IWW.

We call ourselves communists not because of any allegiance to Marx or any other writer who has called themselves that (although we are indebted to their analysis), but because for us, communism means the end of the commodity form and exchange being in control of our social-relations in favor of the directly human community. This is opposed to the abstract and moral formulations of other writers and thinkers who have thought of human emancipation in terms of “freedom” or “rights” or “liberty”. All of which emerged, ironically enough, out of attempts to justify the very basis of a society they claim to abhor. We do not want a better or more democratic version of this world, we want something new!

The purpose of this grouping is to try to put hard questions to ourselves and to clarify our role as a revolutionary industrial union. Our analysis is especially important considering that the IWW has no internal coherent theory, or set of texts and ideas that describe what wage-labour, commodity production, the state or class society is. These elements are notably lacking in regards to certain other political tendencies within the union, despite being perhaps the more active elements within the organization. What occurs as a result is that the IWW has been turned into just another leftist organization that involves people just endlessly going to meetings and nothing of note actually happening, despite some successes here and there at organizing a few shops. There is a disconnect between these small successes and the goal of changing the world. While we recognize the usefulness of proletarian organs we are also opposed to uncritical proletarian self-affirmation. The historic task of the proletariat is to destroy the proletariat as a category, along with every other social class.

Some wobs have responded to our stated existence in an organized format. When we hear the “no politics in the Union” line, it’s understandable where they’re coming from, but it is consistent with what many in the Union already do and will continue to do. How many times has the IWW been invoked in protests over things not related to workplace struggles? How about in defending oppressed groups? These are all political stances in which the IWW has been inserted into by well-meaning wobs. Our hearts goes out to you all for your effort but the purpose of the Union – the abolition of wage-labor – is nothing short of the most profound political change that the world has seen since the bourgeois revolutions themselves. Keep your eyes on the prize!

We could have sent our introductory statement for inclusion to the GOB, the internal-only discussion publication where little discussion happens, save for the thrill and excitement of one or two letters, voting results of the GEB, and accounting statements. We would have sent it there, if we didn’t care if anyone would read it. We made a deliberate choice to submit it for inclusion to the Industrial Worker, because we wanted it to be read by members and non-members alike.

We can see how some Fellow Workers might feel that our introductory statement runs contrary, and even abusive of the purpose of the Industrial Worker. If the Industrial Worker is meant to be a method of voicing concerns and developments within the Union, we see no reason why a group of organized wobblies should have to buy advertisement space on that periodical, especially when it is essentially a greeting for further dialogue, nor should it be obscured within the confines of union records. This dialogue will be more provoking than the announcement precisely because we are taking our time.

Now that we have your attention, we hope you stay with us as we gradually put out articles which clarify and develop our positions.

Wobble on,
WOBBLING TOWARDS COMMUNISM
wobblingtowardscommunism.wordpress.com
@IWWCommunists

Originally posted: April 10, 2014 and June 1, 2014 at Wobbling Towards Communism

Comments

Wonder how I'm just now

Wonder how I'm just now hearing about this. Will respond after reading.

It's all been on Facebook,

It's all been on Facebook, bruh. That's why I brought it here.

Quote: immediacy of

immediacy of communism, therefore we also oppose the state in all it’s forms.

Sounds very anarchic.

Interesting stuff. Firstly

Interesting stuff.

Firstly though, they've started out on a bad note by screaming like babies because the IW didn't publish them. It was a short anonymous announcement about a blog with no content...what editor would publish that? I wouldn't. I hope this isn't a sign of ultraleft wingnuttiness to come. Leave that sort of conduct to some of the insane, older members who have been made irrelevant and marginalized.

As far as the 'no politics in the union' nonsense, I agree with Nate.

Haven't kept up with posting

Haven't kept up with posting their content (or really any of my projects for the library actually), but they have continued writing short critical pieces of various elements of the IWW. Both Oliver and myself have responded to some of what WTC has said, if anyone is interested.

The "immediacy of communism"

The "immediacy of communism" is a striking phrase but what does it mean? Does it mean anything? This bit is much better though.

We do not seek leadership over this movement or over this union, not out of moral principle, but because we realize that it is the class itself that must take up leadership, and it is only the class in motion that is able to overcome the current social order. We are not members of any communist/socialist party or organization, we are only members of the IWW.

They say: "it is the class itself that must take up leadership" which I take to mean what Marx meant by "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the class itself." And in a way this is a "moral principle " isn't it, though the writers seem queasy about this? It is a new kind of moral understanding that the working class embodies in its being and in its movement towards freedom from exploitation: the morality of the class taking responsibility for itself and its actions in freeing itself from exploitation. For exploitation is not a moral condition, being underhanded and dirty, and always imposing its dictates on those it screws through "leadership" and the like. Let us do your thinkng for you, urges the bourgeois, the better to exploit you. This is no morality at all.

But if these adventurous and thoughtful guys stay lodged within the confines of the IWW, wonderful as this organization may have been in the past, I fear for their future. Surely they would do better to look outside the union towards real communist organizations so that they can move forward together. They say somewhat bravely that they are not part of any larger organization "only members of the IWW". This suggests to me that the group may already have sneaking doubts about "only" being members of the IWW. But best wishes to them!

jojo, I'm sure that you would

jojo,

I'm sure that you would recognise with abit of thought ''the immediacy of communism'' phrase alongside other comments from this group as short hand for the concept of 'communisation' which you have criticised on another thread here. Of course 'communising measures' in practice may well involve, as this group seem to understand, the development of autonomous working class struggle (under certain 'objective' conditions) to a point where capitalist social relations are so severely undermined as to make a leap forward towards 'full communism' possible. In this respect they would differentiate themselves from others in the 'communisation' tendency except perhaps Dauve. So presumably they see some potential for a revitalised IWW (as a minority current?) to assist in the development I refer to (which leads back to a number of other related discussions on this site between some of those involved in both the IWW and the SolFed for instance) Suppose I'm guilty again of trying to connect to many different discussion threads but it's the way my mind works! Juan may be able to confirm or contradict my assumptions here?

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Readings on the racist, pseudoscientific history of psychometrics and intelligence-testing

Seeing as how Trump regularly goes around accusing his opponents of being "low-IQ individuals," and others within his circle, such as Elon Musk, have similarly stated how they want "high-IQ revolutionaries" to run the new bullshit DOGE department of class warfare (officially the "department of government efficiency"), I thought it worth compiling a list of readings on the racist and pseudoscientific history of intelligence-testing.

I'm familiar with Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man, but what other books are there that deal with the problems of intelligence-testing (especially when applied to societal policies, such as having people take psychometric tests for certain forms of employment), the historical connections between intelligence-testing and eugenics, the (neo-)Nazis' obsession with race and intelligence (which Trump has repeatedly given a nod to),[1] and so on? They don't have to be from a socialist perspective.

1. From the article linked to:

Mr. Trump has spoken openly about his belief in the racehorse theory, an idea, adapted from horse breeding, that good bloodlines produce superior offspring. He offered a quick explanation for how the theory applies to humans at a rally in Nevada this year. He was proclaiming his own intelligence by noting that his uncle, John Trump, was a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Same genes, we have the genes,” Mr. Trump said of his uncle, who died in 1985. “We’re smart people.” Then he added: “We’re like racehorses, too. You know, the fast ones produce the fast ones, and the slow ones doesn’t work out so well, right? But we’re no, we’re no different in that sense.”

It was not the first time that Mr. Trump has pointed to the theory to bolster his claims of superiority. But he has also extended the notion to others, often praising the genes of supporters he is shouting [at] from the stage. During his 2020 campaign, he notably praised the makeup of a substantially white crowd at a rally in Minnesota.

“You have good genes,” he said. “You know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”

Mr. Trump, in contrast, has a pattern of using dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants. He has repeatedly referred to immigrants who commit crimes as “animals.” At a rally in Ohio in March, he was even more explicit. “I don’t know if you call them people,” he said of immigrants accused of crimes. “In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion.”

His remarks on Monday in some ways echoed his repeated assertion last year that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase criticized by many for evoking the ideology of eugenics promulgated by Nazis in Germany and white supremacists in the United States.

Mr. Trump has defended his use of that phrase by saying he was “not a student of Hitler,” even as a number of news articles, biographers and books about his presidency have documented his long interest in Hitler. He has largely stopped using the poisoning-the-blood phrase.

Matteo Pasquinelli’s…

Matteo Pasquinelli’s autonomist AI book talks about the racist origins of IQ, how it was applied to cybernetics, and now LLMs.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/735-the-eye-of-the-master?srsltid=AfmBOoqk1P2VSZFNgNcT0X915yRetE58-iXas04r8oBlT2VbfkXcAsg5

Thanks for that. There's…

Thanks for that. There's also Yarden Katz's article in Monthly Review that provides a nice overview of the historical attempts at measuring/quantifying "intelligence," starting with Alfred Binet, and how such efforts have almost invariably gone hand in hand with eugenics, white supremacist ideologies and policies, and racial pseudoscience. The American eugenics movement in fact directly influenced the sterilization and other policies of Nazi Germany. The latter part of Katz's article also shows how modern "intelligence" testers reproduce many of the ideas of earlier eugenicists, while dropping some of the overtly racist language, by pointing to "learning" platforms like Coursera and their emphasis on how certain parts of the world are fit for certain types of labor:

Katz wrote: The rankings of individuals and their skills are then aggregated to produce an extensive intelligence hierarchy, presented in Coursera’s 2021 Global Skills Report. The report is framed from the perspective of U.S. empire, scouring the globe for workers (or “learners”) with the necessary skills to serve U.S. corporations while trying to ensure no other state threatens its hegemony. The report ranks more than one hundred countries by their performance in the valorized areas of data science and business. These rankings are justified by a circular logic familiar from intelligence testing. Just as Terman justified IQ scores by claiming that they positively correlate with incomes, Coursera justifies its rankings by suggesting they positively correlate with indicators such as the World Bank’s “Human Capital Index” (the latter being yet another crude metric that incorporates GDP, international standardized tests, and other indicators to rank countries’ worth). Coursera then uses the rankings to categorize countries and regions as “cutting edge,” “competitive,” “emerging,” or “lagging.”

The results resemble the racialist hierarchies that were concocted using the U.S. army intelligence tests of the First World War. Wealthy European countries such as Germany, Sweden, and Austria are classified as “cutting edge,” while those places still suffering the weight of colonialism, such as Algeria, Brazil, and Puerto Rico, are classified as “lagging.” The “Cutting Edge” places excel in the areas valorized by U.S. technocratic elites, such as Bayesian statistics, and have “stand-out industries” such as information technology and the arts. By contrast, the “lagging” nations are reported to excel in so-called soft skills such as “adaptability” and “sales”; their noteworthy industries are “household activities,” mining, and hospitality and food. Like Brigham’s hierarchy, Coursera’s rankings reaffirm white supremacy and imperialist attitudes. But while Brigham and his peers determined that the less white countries are less intelligent, Coursera determines that mostly non-white countries lack the most desirable skills.

It's worth noting that the aforementioned Carl Brigham, a eugenicist and white supremacist, also created the Scholastic Aptitude Test (or SAT). Many colleges in the US still use SAT scores as part of their admission requirements, though the number of colleges requiring these scores has been decreasing in recent years, partly due to its unsavory history, as well as other factors like the pandemic and the inherently inequitable nature of such assessments.

The idea that there is something called "intelligence" in the first place, and which can supposedly be quantified by taking one of a number of "intelligence"-measuring tests, is also just fundamentally unsound and unscientific (much like the entire field of psychology itself; see for instance its replication crisis, with the reproducibility of studies being a key criterion for a field being considered scientific). "Intelligence"-measuring also serves neo-Nazis and white supremacists like Trump and co., just like it served its original proponents, by letting them point to how better-off white people (shockingly) score better on such tests, and enjoy more "success" in capitalist society, than poorer and disadvantaged groups.

Pasqunelli’s premise is…

Pasquinelli’s premise is classic operaismo; calculation of intelligence was a means of improving early automation to reproduce the average task, both physical and cognitive which he makes the point are interlinked even in menial work. Don’t think there was (or is) any notions of being scientific or right, just what is efficient. Like with LLMs, an answer to a question is what matters, not whether it’s factual. The most recent Adam Curtis series covers a bit of it as well as replication crisis and science being neutral but caught in capital’s reasoning.

I remember Michael Billig's …

I remember Michael Billig's "Psychology, Racism & Fascism" being quite good on how the far right used this stuff. It is from 1979 though. Published by Searchlight but quite decent I think :

https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-9959

(his book "Fascists: A Social Psychological View of The National Front" from 1978 is also good)

Nice one. I've also come…

Nice one. I've also come across Ron Roberts' Psychology and Capitalism, which partly deals with the history of "intelligence"-measuring and its historical association with eugenics. There are also loads of other informative books on the same topic if one searches around; I was just wondering if anyone had any particularly good recommendations. I still think Gould's book (The Mismeasure of Man) is a must-read as far as critiquing the reification of intelligence, along with the appalling history of "intelligence"-measuring itself (which has often been directly in the service of capital and the state).

Speaking of the "race-horse…

Speaking of the "racehorse theory," here's Trump today at his "victory rally" following a speech by Musk:

Trump said: But his son [who's 4] is a great guy [sic]. One thing we know: his son is smart. If you believe in the racehorse theory, he's got a nice smart son.

Never mind the fact that Musk came from a well-off South African family who was heavily involved in the emerald-mining trade, or the fact that his father gave him thousands of dollars to help set up his first major business (i.e. Zip2), or the fact that Musk's "success" owes much to government funding and subsidies, as well as technologies created within the government and education sectors, like the internet itself, etc. The "great-man" image of Musk that portrays him as this "revolutionary capitalist innovator," who single-handedly created all of the junk-products he peddles, is a complete myth; in many cases he is merely rebranding or commercializing technologies that had been created elsewhere. They prefer to just chalk up Musk's "success" to genes and this reified, vulgar concept of "intelligence," rather than a privileged-bourgeois upbringing and the horrific exploitation of countless workers.

This hereditary fallacy, or Trump's claim that he and his allies are fit to rule due to their "good genes" and "inherited intelligence" (they inherited wealth—not intelligence!), also sort of reminds me of Paine's critique of hereditary rule from around 250 years ago:

Paine wrote: Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honors than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honors could have no power to give away the right of posterity, and though they might say "We choose you for our head," they could not without manifest injustice to their children say "that your children and your children's children shall reign over ours forever." Because such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most wise men in their private sentiments have ever treated hereditary right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils which when once established is not easily removed: many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the plunder of the rest. (79-80)

At any rate, it seems like there's now (and has been) a capitalist oligarchy, rather than a foreign monarchy, that the US has to contend with.

At any rate, it seems like…

At any rate, it seems like there's now (and has been) a capitalist oligarchy, rather than a foreign monarchy, that the US has to contend with.

I should maybe add that I'm aware that the issue is not the greed or cruelty of a handful of capitalists, but rather capitalism as a mode of production itself. I was just referencing how this upcoming administration is unprecedented in its closeness to business interests and billionaire tech-capitalists.

Have to enjoy the irony this…

Have to enjoy the irony this shite comes from a president born from an ‘illegal’, a vice president that’s Afrikaans and a backer that’s German. Maybe this was always on the cards of a country that created the purest of bourgeois revolutions, no Enrages or Levellers to contend with. Of all the English empire’s crimes, the Mayflower ranks pretty high.