A new pamphlet called Direct Unionism: A Discussion Paper, written by some IWW members, has stirred much discussion in the past months. I agree with much of the paper and find the majority of it a useful way of pushing forward thoughts about what the union does and how it can do better today. I think any serious piece of writing put out by IWW members about our methods and ideas is an important contribution to our organizing culture and am excited that there’s been so much response to this piece. I have a few disagreements of the pamphlet that I believe are worth laying out. I will not dwell on my agreement with the pamphlet, but instead will pose some respectful criticism about ways in which I think it could be improved.
First, to summarize their basic argument: The authors criticize several practices or ideas among some IWW members. Their primary critique is against the contract as the end goal of an IWW campaign. The contract, the authors argue, not only is not enough of a goal because it leads to the constant headache of stagnant shops, but on a political level it actively slows down class struggle by functioning as a compromise between labor and capital. The compromise embodied in the contract promotes social peace not struggle. Obtaining and servicing a contract pushes a union away from shop floor struggle and towards workplace contractualism. They also find a useful way of dealing with the
question "What if the membership wants a contract in a democratic organization?" by effectively arguing that if the membership wants that, we've failed in our job as good organizers no matter what the outcome.
The authors counterpose to this contractual approach a union focused on struggle, on building fights, wins and losses, and keeping organization democratic yet smart. They spell out an articulate and compelling perspective on what the IWW should be doing. We should be a union of militant workers, engaged in the direct work of building the class struggle and always upping our peoples' level of consciousness, experience, and dedication to the class. In two key details their critique is mistaken though: their lack of concern for organizational form and their dichotomy between contracts and non-recognition.
The authors write that they are not terribly concerned with the form in which workplace struggle takes. They say: "We try not to overemphasize formalism (...) we don’t judge a struggle simply on its particular form—be it the union form, the workplace assembly form, or a “workers council” form." This is a mistake, and it's spelled out concretely throughout a section titled Are We Trying to Build A "Union"? For the direct unionists, the answer seems to be "not necessarily." I disagree. The union form, the IWW version of the union form at least, is important. We need to build formal organization and we need to be able to use that to build an IWW identity. A union as the IWW practices it is a group of workers coming together to represent their interests and act against the boss's interests today and in doing so building a fight against the boss class's interests tomorrow. By building the union, we push our message throughout the class and have a flag that we can point to and say "See, this is what the union does." Anecdotally, people working in fast food and restaurants in the Twin Cities know that there’s a union for them because of the IWW’s campaign at the Jimmy John’s sandwich shops here. Without the union form, these workers would not still be talking about these possibilities in a concrete way because there would be no organization for them to plug into. Having a clear organization is important because it allows us to build a strong union identity through our culture of solidarity and allow other groups of workers to see our vision in practice and step closer to us.
The organization is not, or at least should not, be a "union of militants" as the paper seems to suggest, but instead a "union of militant workers." By that I mean that the IWW should not be an organization of highly developed cadre organizers who stir up struggle at work, but should be a formal union made of workers with different levels of consciousness and organizing ability that is always pushing to develop our members. There will always be people with different levels of experience and consciousness and by embracing the union form, we can draw in workers from wherever they are at and develop them upwards as revolutionaries. After all, if we’re serious about revolutionary struggle, we need to build our organizational ability widely through the class struggle, as early IWW organizers suggested that revolutionary industrial unionism should train us to run the economy after a revolution. By building the union, by bringing in workers and having experiences of struggle with them, we have spaces for bringing up workers and building them into organizers and revolutionaries.
The direct unionists call for “a need for organization,” but don’t adequately explain what organization means. If we don't pay enough attention to organization, our analysis of how to act gets fuzzy and we can make mistakes that neither build the class struggle nor make our lives any better. We act united and public because that's how we have power. We should carry a revolutionary unionist banner and act in a revolutionary unionist way. If not, then what leadership can we provide? Being clear about what it is we are and what we're doing is an important part of organizing. How many times have we explained the politics of the IWW to someone in a one-on-one and heard “Wow, the IWW believes in something! That’s inspiring!” The truth is that like it or not, workers look to organizers and militants for ideas. By raising the banner of the IWW and building ourselves as a formal, revolutionary union, we make it easier to join the organization by building an IWW identity through culture and organizing, and make it easier to develop our members internally by intentionally thinking as an organization about membership development.
The second main mistake of the direct unionist perspective is their confusion of recognition and contractualism as the same thing. Here it's worth quoting the piece at length:
"[We’d] like to note that direct unionism does not reject recognition from the boss. It only rejects ‘official’ recognition and the legalistic methods (contracts, labor board elections, union registration) used to do so. This pamphlet intentionally stresses the ‘here and now’, but if we reach a point where the IWW is a majority presence in a shop, recognition won’t go much further than there being a recognized IWW delegate who is management’s “first point of call” when it come to shop conditions."
The direct unionists argue that that recognition is a possibility in the distant future, but in the short term most recognition is simply contractualism and should be avoided. It’s worth noting that the direct unionists effectively demolish contractualism as an IWW strategy throughout the piece, a critique that I share. They argue though that we can get contracts and get sucked into the negative aspects associated with them, or we can act directly as a group of workers using direct action and avoid all those pitfalls. But the question of recognition is not a distant one, in fact it’s a major feature in most of our current workplace campaigns.
In all the IWW union fights that I have participated in or interacted in, the question of recognition and legitimacy have been reoccurring themes, sometimes explicit and sometimes implied. The bosses sometimes attempt to delegitimize the union by arguing that a direct action approach is not a union approach. This can play out many ways, but most often plays out by the boss saying “If they say they’re a union, then they should file for an election.” Here the boss is trying to put the question of the union’s legitimacy at the workplace often as part of an attempt to third-party the union. We can respond by filing an election, something which the direct unionists and I would oppose for reasons they lay out in the pamphlet, or we can stubbornly continue to push for only direct action, not being able to answer our coworkers’ question of why we won’t file. Under the current conditions of labor law and class consciousness, simply telling a coworker that an election is a bad idea politically is not an effective answer, because the IWW and the labor movement does not possess the cultural and ideological power that we would need for most people to accept our answers without seeing it for themselves. A fellow worker said to me that he thought all new branches run end up running at least one contract campaign for this very reason.
The question of legitimacy is thus a power factor in our union fights. I disagree with the contractual approach but also think that the direct unionists’ answer is also weak. Only relying on direct action leads us to question the reasons for going public with the union in the first place, which leads us to ask why we should organize a union at all and not stick to informal work groups, something the direct unionists say they oppose. We need to find a way to find an answer to the question of the union’s legitimacy and I think we can find it in the example which the direct unionists use to argue for non-contractualism, that of Philadelphia’s Local 8, the IWW’s longshoreman’s union in the 1910’s and 20’s.
The direct unionists say “It [Local 8] established ‘worker control’ on the Philadelphia docks while balancing bread-and-butter concerns with radical, non-contractual principles. To achieve this Philadelphia’s longshore workers would strike any pier in which a shipper tried to bring in non-union labor to unload cargo.” What the direct unionists don’t include here though is that through a strong organizing campaign that took years to fight Local 8 was recognized by the shipper’s organization as the legitimate representative of longshoremen in Philadelphia. The IWW had a hiring hall which the shipping companies used to get workers, much like modern longshoring unions do. Also workers believed that the IWW was their legitimate representative and would refuse to work with longshoremen who were not paid up or would not wear union buttons. In short, through a vigorous campaign of direct action, the IWW fought for and received formal recognition outside of a contractual framework. (Refer to Peter Cole’s Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia for support for this section)
The direct unionists could be throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Even if we find contractualism a mistake for revolutionary unionism, we need to note that there are different kinds of recognition and that the question of legitimacy cannot be solved simply by hoping that workers will see the union as legitimate by practicing direct action. Capitalist ideology is pervasive and we need to face the fact that today given a choice between pure direct actionism and a contract which recognizes the union, workers will often opt for a contract because it makes the union seem like a legitimate force in the work place. The IWW needs to fight to find ways that deal with the problem of legitimacy that do not give up our tools of direct action, but rather make them part of the culture of work.
Much of the Direct Unionism pamphlet correctly exposes and argues against approaches that would make it more difficult to develop a fully worked-out model of revolutionary unionism. “Business unionism with red flags” remains an important idea to consider and struggle against within our own organizing and organization. It is not simply enough to declare that we are revolutionaries and that it follows that everything we do is revolutionary. We need an organizing practice which matches up to our vision and values about the unionism we would like to see. In developing that practice though, we must carefully interrogate the practices that we think are associated with business unionism and ask ourselves the same questions we ask ourselves. Just because some organizations declare themselves to be business unionists does not mean that everything that follows is inherently business unionist. Reformism has the same problems of praxis that revolutionary unionism has and we should be able to correctly analyze what the “best practices” are and use them to our class’s advantage.
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Friday, March 9, 2012
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Industrial Unionism and One Big Unionism part 4: Three Big Unions: The IWW and Revolution
by Nate Hawthorne and John O’Reilly
This is the fourth and last in a series of articles on Industrial Unionism and One Big Unionism. In this piece we talk more about the One Big Union and revolutionary change. We suggest that we should not think about One Big Union as the IWW coming to include the entire working class. Instead we think that this is a three-part metaphor or three big unions. The One Big Union is a metaphor and name for our hope and vision of a unified working class acting together – acting in union – in a revolutionary situation. The One Big Union is also a formal organization, the IWW. Finally, One Big Union is the name for the relationship between the IWW as an organization and the rest of the working class. In our view, this understanding orients us toward questions about what we think revolutionary change looks like.
We believe, with the IWW preamble, that it is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. Only the working class can end capitalism, and in certain moments the working class has a greater chance to move closer to carrying out this important task. That kind of moment is a revolutionary situation. We need to have a serious IWW-wide discussion about what a revolutionary situation looks like. We should also talk about what we think is the IWW's role in preparing for and acting within a revolutionary situation. This not an exercise in fantasy but as part of being serious about believing in a revolutionary future.
Think a moment about the size of what we're talking about. A genuinely revolutionary situation where we could end capitalism, even if it happened in one U.S. state or even in just one major metropolitan area would involve millions of people. (And really, this is actually too small of a scale: a working class revolution that ends capitalism must be truly global.) This means we need to be thinking in huge numbers of people. This is not something anyone can control, but we need to figure out ways to make our struggles self-reinforcing and self-expanding. As an organization and as a class we need to see struggles that expand to involve hundreds of thousands people.
In this series of articles we have been discussion revolutionary unionism through the concepts of Industrial Unionism and One Big Union. The meaning of “One Big Union” is closely related to the role of the IWW in the working class’s historic mission. Here are a few scenarios:
1. The IWW grows to become the One Big Union that all members of the working class are members of. This kicks off major social upheaval.
2. The IWW grows to become One Big Union in the sense that it is very large and includes a whole lot of workers, and this creates major social upheaval.
3. The IWW grows to become One Union Which Is Very Big, including a whole lot of workers. Other groups wage important fights as well. The IWW and other groups cooperate and have good relationships. This combination is One Big Union, metaphorically speaking, and makes for major social upheaval.
We can see different versions of the idea of One Big Union in each of these scenarios. In the first scenario the IWW literally becomes the One Big Union for all workers. In the second scenario the IWW becomes One Big Union that's really big but we're not literally all the workers.
The third scenario seems more likely to us than the other two. In this scenario, One Big Union means three different things. We somewhat jokingly call this “three big unions.” One Big Union is the name for the IWW and expresses our commitment to revolution. One Big Union is also a metaphor for the working class as a whole - that is, for millions of workers around the world, acting together in solidarity - in action against capitalism and for a better world. That's not an organization, really, though it is an organized class-wide process. One Big Union is also a metaphor for how the IWW should act within the working class. We should act in a way that is open to struggles outside our organization and we should wage our own organizing drives, trying to both support our fellow workers in their struggles and building our own struggles where we are -- acting in a way that both builds organization and fights the capitalists.
A revolutionary situation in our day (or, within our lifetime) will involve millions of people in a complex ensemble across the class. No single organization will lead or control this. The working class can have more than one organization working on aspects of its interests. Given the divisions in our class it’s good to have multiple types of organization (such as unions of waged workers, committees of unemployed people, tenants' organizations, etc), and multiple organizations of each type. In all likelihood the IWW will be one working class organization among many who make an important contribution to working class revolution. As the working class takes action in a revolutionary situation there will have to be different practices developed than those that the IWW practices, and different kinds of organization - including both formal organizations and informal organizations.
These issues open onto a few key questions which apply both to the ‘normal’ operations of the capitalist system and to revolutionary situations that will develop. How can the IWW become an organization that exerts a strong and revolutionary pull within the working class? How should the IWW relate to other organizations and struggles of the working class? How should we relate to other revolutionary anticapitalists now? How can our orientation to other struggles and organizations help or hurt the IWW and the historic mission of our class? In our view there was a good start to answering these in Alex Erikson’s recent article “For A Union Of 10,000 Wobblies” in the June issue of the Industrial Worker and in Juan Conatz’s “What Wobblies Can Learn From Direct Unionism” in the July/August issue. We don’t have clear answers to these questions. We pose them questions for discussion. The two of us have written as much on all this as we’re currently able to say. We hope the principles and concepts we’ve sketched help contribute to a discussion of these questions of the direction of the IWW as a revolutionary union.
The IWW and the sorts of activities that the IWW currently carries out will not be the only things that go on during a revolutionary situation and are not the only things that will contribute to a revolutionary situation taking place. We have to do our part, but everything does not rest on our shoulders.
We believe the IWW will make a major contribution, however. The IWW will make a contribution by radicalizing workers, and by giving those radicalized workers skills and confidence and relationships that they will use to contribute to the movement of our class as a whole. That's currently what we're doing and have done. We’re helping make more working class revolutionaries. As we grow, we will periodically gather together and re-assess our course in order to refine the specifics of how we contribute to the historic mission of our class. Completing that mission is not in the cards for the relatively near future. Getting the project onto the agenda as a real possibility is not the same thing as actually carrying out that project once and for all. Our tasks for now are preparing ways to get that mission onto the agenda in a real and winnable way.
This is the fourth and last in a series of articles on Industrial Unionism and One Big Unionism. In this piece we talk more about the One Big Union and revolutionary change. We suggest that we should not think about One Big Union as the IWW coming to include the entire working class. Instead we think that this is a three-part metaphor or three big unions. The One Big Union is a metaphor and name for our hope and vision of a unified working class acting together – acting in union – in a revolutionary situation. The One Big Union is also a formal organization, the IWW. Finally, One Big Union is the name for the relationship between the IWW as an organization and the rest of the working class. In our view, this understanding orients us toward questions about what we think revolutionary change looks like.
We believe, with the IWW preamble, that it is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. Only the working class can end capitalism, and in certain moments the working class has a greater chance to move closer to carrying out this important task. That kind of moment is a revolutionary situation. We need to have a serious IWW-wide discussion about what a revolutionary situation looks like. We should also talk about what we think is the IWW's role in preparing for and acting within a revolutionary situation. This not an exercise in fantasy but as part of being serious about believing in a revolutionary future.
Think a moment about the size of what we're talking about. A genuinely revolutionary situation where we could end capitalism, even if it happened in one U.S. state or even in just one major metropolitan area would involve millions of people. (And really, this is actually too small of a scale: a working class revolution that ends capitalism must be truly global.) This means we need to be thinking in huge numbers of people. This is not something anyone can control, but we need to figure out ways to make our struggles self-reinforcing and self-expanding. As an organization and as a class we need to see struggles that expand to involve hundreds of thousands people.
In this series of articles we have been discussion revolutionary unionism through the concepts of Industrial Unionism and One Big Union. The meaning of “One Big Union” is closely related to the role of the IWW in the working class’s historic mission. Here are a few scenarios:
1. The IWW grows to become the One Big Union that all members of the working class are members of. This kicks off major social upheaval.
2. The IWW grows to become One Big Union in the sense that it is very large and includes a whole lot of workers, and this creates major social upheaval.
3. The IWW grows to become One Union Which Is Very Big, including a whole lot of workers. Other groups wage important fights as well. The IWW and other groups cooperate and have good relationships. This combination is One Big Union, metaphorically speaking, and makes for major social upheaval.
We can see different versions of the idea of One Big Union in each of these scenarios. In the first scenario the IWW literally becomes the One Big Union for all workers. In the second scenario the IWW becomes One Big Union that's really big but we're not literally all the workers.
The third scenario seems more likely to us than the other two. In this scenario, One Big Union means three different things. We somewhat jokingly call this “three big unions.” One Big Union is the name for the IWW and expresses our commitment to revolution. One Big Union is also a metaphor for the working class as a whole - that is, for millions of workers around the world, acting together in solidarity - in action against capitalism and for a better world. That's not an organization, really, though it is an organized class-wide process. One Big Union is also a metaphor for how the IWW should act within the working class. We should act in a way that is open to struggles outside our organization and we should wage our own organizing drives, trying to both support our fellow workers in their struggles and building our own struggles where we are -- acting in a way that both builds organization and fights the capitalists.
A revolutionary situation in our day (or, within our lifetime) will involve millions of people in a complex ensemble across the class. No single organization will lead or control this. The working class can have more than one organization working on aspects of its interests. Given the divisions in our class it’s good to have multiple types of organization (such as unions of waged workers, committees of unemployed people, tenants' organizations, etc), and multiple organizations of each type. In all likelihood the IWW will be one working class organization among many who make an important contribution to working class revolution. As the working class takes action in a revolutionary situation there will have to be different practices developed than those that the IWW practices, and different kinds of organization - including both formal organizations and informal organizations.
These issues open onto a few key questions which apply both to the ‘normal’ operations of the capitalist system and to revolutionary situations that will develop. How can the IWW become an organization that exerts a strong and revolutionary pull within the working class? How should the IWW relate to other organizations and struggles of the working class? How should we relate to other revolutionary anticapitalists now? How can our orientation to other struggles and organizations help or hurt the IWW and the historic mission of our class? In our view there was a good start to answering these in Alex Erikson’s recent article “For A Union Of 10,000 Wobblies” in the June issue of the Industrial Worker and in Juan Conatz’s “What Wobblies Can Learn From Direct Unionism” in the July/August issue. We don’t have clear answers to these questions. We pose them questions for discussion. The two of us have written as much on all this as we’re currently able to say. We hope the principles and concepts we’ve sketched help contribute to a discussion of these questions of the direction of the IWW as a revolutionary union.
The IWW and the sorts of activities that the IWW currently carries out will not be the only things that go on during a revolutionary situation and are not the only things that will contribute to a revolutionary situation taking place. We have to do our part, but everything does not rest on our shoulders.
We believe the IWW will make a major contribution, however. The IWW will make a contribution by radicalizing workers, and by giving those radicalized workers skills and confidence and relationships that they will use to contribute to the movement of our class as a whole. That's currently what we're doing and have done. We’re helping make more working class revolutionaries. As we grow, we will periodically gather together and re-assess our course in order to refine the specifics of how we contribute to the historic mission of our class. Completing that mission is not in the cards for the relatively near future. Getting the project onto the agenda as a real possibility is not the same thing as actually carrying out that project once and for all. Our tasks for now are preparing ways to get that mission onto the agenda in a real and winnable way.
Industrial Unionism and One Big Unionism part 3: What Industrial Unionism and One Big Unionism Mean Today
By John O’Reilly and Nate Hawthorne
In this series we’ve discussed One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism as ideas and activities within the IWW. In this article, we turn our attention to how carefully balancing our emphasis on One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism allows us to build the IWW in the short term. While none of us has a magic bullet answer that will make organizing easy, we can think out and discuss possible solutions to ongoing issues that we face as a way of approaching our work more strategically. How can One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism guide us towards better practices? They do so by pushing us to both build members up and build members out.
When we talk about building members outwards we mean developing practical units of struggle within the industries where we are organizing that most effectively share the message of our union and get more people involved in our work. That is: more members, organized to fight more effectively. Building out is like laying railroad tracks into the vast, unorganized working class; the act of laying the tracks means placing one railroad tie after another, each of which advances the line out farther and each of which is an individual task that can be completed. Yet each tie allows us to lay another tie and we are unable to lay the next tie until we’ve completed the one we’re working on. Even as we lay tie after tie, we continue to find that there’s further to go and more ties to be laid. After all, if the destination for our rail line is Industrial Democracy, we have a long way to go!
Concretely, building outwards means several things. Using the social networks that we find in our jobs and our industries and finding ways to tie them together are important aspects of building out. This plays on the importance of Industrial Unionism in our organizing. When a group of fast food workers organizes in their restaurant chain, they may find that they have contact with workers who transport food and supplies to their stores. These delivery workers may work for a different company but likely have grievances of their own. Good organizers can take these contacts and begin a campaign with the delivery workers. By using the relationships that form during work itself, we can grow our membership out across the industries we work in as well as up and down the supply chains within our industries and amplify the union’s power.
Industrial links aren’t the only way that we can build our membership out. During an organizing campaign, we seek to understand social groups in the workplace as way to identify and win over key social leaders – that is, people respected by their co-workers and whose opinions carry a lot of weight – in order to move groups of workers to support the union. These same social groups can be useful outside of organizing in one shop. For instance, if an active part of a campaign is made up of members of a certain church, we can use those cultural connections to meet and link up with other workers in the same church. Perhaps the church members in the union could speak about the importance of their campaign and the vision of the IWW during a service. Or members could convince a social justice committee of the congregation to put pressure on their boss in a way that involves church members and allows organizers to have conversations with different workers and agitate them about conditions on their jobs. Using our members’ access and participation in social networks and cultural groups is a great way for us to build our membership outwards in ways in addition to organizing shop by shop and reflects our ideas about One Big Unionism.
While organizing outwards, we cannot neglect another lesson of One Big Unionism: just because our fellow workers leave a job or an industry does not mean that they become less important as a Wobbly. To move our organization forward in the short term, we need to focus more strongly on retention of members who switch jobs. Finding ways for these members to plug in to campaigns in a new industry or job is integral to keeping them in the union. If one considers how much time organizers spend building relationship with each of their coworkers, agitating and educating them into becoming an IWW member, and helping them acquire the skills necessary for organizing successfully, its clear that washing our hands of members so that they leave the union when they leave a job is a huge waste of our limited energies.
While we build members out, we must also focus on building our existing membership up. In fact, by doing one thing we also do the other. As members become more involved in the IWW, participate and learn, they increase their ability to do the work of the union, and so they help bring in more members, and begin to build others up. At this point in time, we would argue that it’s more important to focus on building members up than out because it allows us to win more fights and improve our organizing strategy, which will lead us to reap the greater rewards further down the line. In any case, by educating members into the IWW – getting them to take part in the democratic process, meeting and sharing ideas about our directions and goals, taking on tasks at different levels of the union including local, regional, craft, industrial, administrative, and international – we amplify our ability as organizers by producing more organizers who can do more work. These new organizers in turn help produce more organizers.
One crucial way that we can build our members up is by training them to organize. This work, undertaken by the Organizer Training Committee of the Organizing Department, constitutes the most important work of the union right now outside of shopfloor organizing. It highlights one of the most important values of One Big Unionism: organizing is an interchangeable skill, regardless of industry or craft, and is something that workers can and should do for themselves instead of leaving these skills to specialized professionals. While there are some concrete legal and structural differences between industries, the work of organizing is basically the same. Organizing means the work of creating relationships with fellow workers, building organization, and fighting bosses together to improve our lives. Whether in an eight worker café with one boss or a giant factory with thousands of employees, organizing is the same basic skill set. When we give our members the confidence they need to organize in their shops, we teach them skills that they can use anywhere they work. This fundamental insight of One Big Unionism cannot be overstated in our approach to organizing in the short term.
Currently, more of our campaigns are going public and need support to push to the next level. Here, we find many opportunities for building our members up. We can create connections between workers in different industries as a way of sharing ideas and experiences about organizing and to create networks that support our organizing work. Starting solidarity committees for public campaigns, providing food or childcare for campaign meetings, discussing important IWW campaigns with coworkers, raising funds or organizing pickets: these and many more are ways that we can give our members tasks that deepen their relationship with the IWW and build new bonds across industries. This builds members up and allows them to grow as Wobblies and push themselves to further heights.
Like a staircase, the IWW can grow both outwards and upwards at the same time. When we stand on the top step of a staircase we are not just standing on that step, we are standing on all the steps below as well. Depending on the moment, we may emphasize growing out or building up, but the two factors develop together. Each step is built on top of the last one and creates the basis for the next one. As we walk up the staircase, we have to step carefully, the two feet of Industrial Unionism and One Big Unionism guiding us, always in balance and working together.
In this series we’ve discussed One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism as ideas and activities within the IWW. In this article, we turn our attention to how carefully balancing our emphasis on One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism allows us to build the IWW in the short term. While none of us has a magic bullet answer that will make organizing easy, we can think out and discuss possible solutions to ongoing issues that we face as a way of approaching our work more strategically. How can One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism guide us towards better practices? They do so by pushing us to both build members up and build members out.
When we talk about building members outwards we mean developing practical units of struggle within the industries where we are organizing that most effectively share the message of our union and get more people involved in our work. That is: more members, organized to fight more effectively. Building out is like laying railroad tracks into the vast, unorganized working class; the act of laying the tracks means placing one railroad tie after another, each of which advances the line out farther and each of which is an individual task that can be completed. Yet each tie allows us to lay another tie and we are unable to lay the next tie until we’ve completed the one we’re working on. Even as we lay tie after tie, we continue to find that there’s further to go and more ties to be laid. After all, if the destination for our rail line is Industrial Democracy, we have a long way to go!
Concretely, building outwards means several things. Using the social networks that we find in our jobs and our industries and finding ways to tie them together are important aspects of building out. This plays on the importance of Industrial Unionism in our organizing. When a group of fast food workers organizes in their restaurant chain, they may find that they have contact with workers who transport food and supplies to their stores. These delivery workers may work for a different company but likely have grievances of their own. Good organizers can take these contacts and begin a campaign with the delivery workers. By using the relationships that form during work itself, we can grow our membership out across the industries we work in as well as up and down the supply chains within our industries and amplify the union’s power.
Industrial links aren’t the only way that we can build our membership out. During an organizing campaign, we seek to understand social groups in the workplace as way to identify and win over key social leaders – that is, people respected by their co-workers and whose opinions carry a lot of weight – in order to move groups of workers to support the union. These same social groups can be useful outside of organizing in one shop. For instance, if an active part of a campaign is made up of members of a certain church, we can use those cultural connections to meet and link up with other workers in the same church. Perhaps the church members in the union could speak about the importance of their campaign and the vision of the IWW during a service. Or members could convince a social justice committee of the congregation to put pressure on their boss in a way that involves church members and allows organizers to have conversations with different workers and agitate them about conditions on their jobs. Using our members’ access and participation in social networks and cultural groups is a great way for us to build our membership outwards in ways in addition to organizing shop by shop and reflects our ideas about One Big Unionism.
While organizing outwards, we cannot neglect another lesson of One Big Unionism: just because our fellow workers leave a job or an industry does not mean that they become less important as a Wobbly. To move our organization forward in the short term, we need to focus more strongly on retention of members who switch jobs. Finding ways for these members to plug in to campaigns in a new industry or job is integral to keeping them in the union. If one considers how much time organizers spend building relationship with each of their coworkers, agitating and educating them into becoming an IWW member, and helping them acquire the skills necessary for organizing successfully, its clear that washing our hands of members so that they leave the union when they leave a job is a huge waste of our limited energies.
While we build members out, we must also focus on building our existing membership up. In fact, by doing one thing we also do the other. As members become more involved in the IWW, participate and learn, they increase their ability to do the work of the union, and so they help bring in more members, and begin to build others up. At this point in time, we would argue that it’s more important to focus on building members up than out because it allows us to win more fights and improve our organizing strategy, which will lead us to reap the greater rewards further down the line. In any case, by educating members into the IWW – getting them to take part in the democratic process, meeting and sharing ideas about our directions and goals, taking on tasks at different levels of the union including local, regional, craft, industrial, administrative, and international – we amplify our ability as organizers by producing more organizers who can do more work. These new organizers in turn help produce more organizers.
One crucial way that we can build our members up is by training them to organize. This work, undertaken by the Organizer Training Committee of the Organizing Department, constitutes the most important work of the union right now outside of shopfloor organizing. It highlights one of the most important values of One Big Unionism: organizing is an interchangeable skill, regardless of industry or craft, and is something that workers can and should do for themselves instead of leaving these skills to specialized professionals. While there are some concrete legal and structural differences between industries, the work of organizing is basically the same. Organizing means the work of creating relationships with fellow workers, building organization, and fighting bosses together to improve our lives. Whether in an eight worker café with one boss or a giant factory with thousands of employees, organizing is the same basic skill set. When we give our members the confidence they need to organize in their shops, we teach them skills that they can use anywhere they work. This fundamental insight of One Big Unionism cannot be overstated in our approach to organizing in the short term.
Currently, more of our campaigns are going public and need support to push to the next level. Here, we find many opportunities for building our members up. We can create connections between workers in different industries as a way of sharing ideas and experiences about organizing and to create networks that support our organizing work. Starting solidarity committees for public campaigns, providing food or childcare for campaign meetings, discussing important IWW campaigns with coworkers, raising funds or organizing pickets: these and many more are ways that we can give our members tasks that deepen their relationship with the IWW and build new bonds across industries. This builds members up and allows them to grow as Wobblies and push themselves to further heights.
Like a staircase, the IWW can grow both outwards and upwards at the same time. When we stand on the top step of a staircase we are not just standing on that step, we are standing on all the steps below as well. Depending on the moment, we may emphasize growing out or building up, but the two factors develop together. Each step is built on top of the last one and creates the basis for the next one. As we walk up the staircase, we have to step carefully, the two feet of Industrial Unionism and One Big Unionism guiding us, always in balance and working together.
Industrial Unionism and One Big Unionism part 2: In the History of the IWW
By John O’Reilly and Nate Hawthorne
We in the IWW, like many others, have long tried to link two types of struggle - struggles for short-term improvements under capitalism, and the struggle to replace capitalism with a better society. For years now the IWW has used two ideas to think about the connections between these types of struggles. These ideas are Industrial Unionism and the One Big Union. These ideas have meant many different things but they have always been related to the IWW's revolutionary vision. These ideas relate to our vision of a future revolution that ends capitalism and to our vision of our organization under capitalism before such a revolution.
In this piece, we discuss some of the ideas in the early IWW about the IWW, One Big Unionism, and Industrial Unionism. The IWW's preamble famously states that "by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old." For the early IWW, the idea of building the new within the shell of the old had two facets. Both were all about revolution. One was a matter of organizational design and the other was a matter of preparing the working class. In its organizational design, the IWW's structures were supposed to be set up to form the basis for running a future society democratically. The idea was for the working class to be able to run the economy as quickly as possible after a revolutionary change, to get the post-capitalist economy going again after the tremendous disruption caused by the revolution. In terms of preparing the class, the IWW was intended to radicalize workers by making them want revolution and make them more capable in acting on their urge to end capitalism.
We can see the notion of structure in some documents from just before the IWW's founding. A letter that helped bring about the IWW's founding convention described the need for a new type of union. The letter called for "a labor organization builded as the structure of Socialist society, embracing within itself the working class in approximately the same groups and departments and industries that the workers would assume in the working class administration of the Co-Operative Commonwealth.” In the words of another letter, this union should “represent class conscious revolutionary principles." A manifesto issued in January 1905 described the goal as an organization which would “build up within itself the structure of an Industrial Democracy - a Workers’ Co-Operative Republic - which must finally burst the shell of capitalist government, and be the agency by which the working people will operate the industries, and appropriate the products to themselves.” In the words of the people who created the IWW initially, that's what the IWW was supposed to be.
An article called “How the IWW is Organized” published in an IWW magazine later tried to sum up the IWW’s aims in three points. “(1) To organize the workers in such a way that they can successfully fight their battles and advance their interests in their every-day struggles with capitalists. (2) To overthrow capitalism and establish in its place a system of Industrial Democracy. (3) To carry on production after capitalism has been overthrown.”
In addition to structure, the IWW's activity was supposed to prepare workers for revolution. One issue of the Industrial Worker newspaper said that conflict under capitalism helped get the working class ready to end capitalism. This conflict was "training" of a sort "most necessary to prepare the masses for the final ‘catastrophe,’ the
general strike, which will complete the expropriation of the employers.” The Industrial Union Bulletin wrote that "the very fights themselves, like the drill of an army, prepare the worker for ever greater tasks and victories.” An early IWW leader named Daniel DeLeon wrote that one function of the union is “to drill the membership of the working class in the habit of self-imposed discipline” - or, to train the class to use its capacities for self-organization. The idea was that workers would learn how to run society through running their own organization -- specifically, the class conscious and revolutionary industrial union, in struggle against the capitalist class.
An Industrial Union Bulletin article called “Industrial Unionism" stated that the IWW “teaches its members that each dispute in which they are involved is merely an incident in the great struggle between capital and labor - a struggle which can only be brought to an end by the overthrow of capital” and “this supreme end must be ever kept in view.” As a result “every incident in the life of the union, every skirmish with the employers is made the text for proletarian education.”
Sophie Cohen was a child during a major strike in 1913 in Paterson, New Jersey, in which the IWW played an important role. Cohen said that “the IWW left people with a taste for organization. Every time workers win a strike, it helps straighten out their backs a little bit more and lifts their heads a bit higher. Even though the big strike was lost in Paterson, there was a feeling of togetherness among the workers. (…) From then on, there were a series of strikes and every shop had to be reorganized. Every shop refought the eight hour day all down the line.”
The education of individual members occurred through direct action, defined by James Kennedy as “use of their economic power by the workers themselves." Jack Terrill, the secretary of a Montana IWW branch put it this way: “If something should happen tomorrow so that the workers would have to run industry when they go to work tomorrow, there would be chaos. They are not educated up to that point, but the IWW is trying to organize them into one big union and educate them so that they can run industry when the time comes.” This education could not happen without the day to day and month to month struggles against bosses.
“[T]he revolutionary character of the working class is best developed while the workers are engaged in actual struggle against the masters,” stated an article from the IWW magazine the Industrial Pioneer. The article said that a “well conducted strike will do more towards developing class-consciousness and radical sentiment than ten tons of
revolutionary propaganda of a general nature.” The idea here is straightforward: struggle changes people. Being involved in struggle, instead of delegating one’s power to another, makes that struggle more meaningful to the worker
Readers may have noticed that we have spent more time on one facet than the other. We agree strongly with the idea of struggles preparing the working class for revolution. While we respect the idea of early IWW members that the organizational design of the IWW should be the structure for a post-capitalist society, we don’t find it very compelling. Particularly in today’s economy, so many workers labor on products or services that are irrelevant or unnecessary for our society if we free ourselves from the bosses’ rule. For many people in the early IWW, however, these facets were not separable.
The article "Industrial Unionism" argued that the IWW's organizational structure was linked to both functions. Under capitalism, the structure was meant to coordinate effective struggle and to maximize the preparatory role -- to make the IWW radicalize as many workers as possible as effectively as possible. After capitalism ended, the same
structure would take on a new role. The article stated: “Under capitalism, the functions of the union are militant and aggressive; under the Socialist Republic they will be administrative only. This change of function will involve no internal transformation of the union, as it is precisely those powers whereby it can inflict injury upon the capitalist that will enable it to take up the work of production. It is precisely its control over production (…) that give[s] its power for militant action.” The idea was that after militant action ended capitalism, the IWW and the working class would immediately deploy its power for cooperative production.
We can see the idea of the One Big Union as having three different roles: a vision of a future society, an idea of revolutionary change, and a structure for coordinating struggles under capitalism. As a vision of a future society, the One Big Union meant a democratic society where workers cooperated freely. As an idea of revolutionary change, the idea was that workers would form one big union and then that union would end capitalism. This could mean a few things concretely. It could mean that the IWW literally became an organization that included the entire working class. Or it could mean the IWW had enough workers in it that it kicked off some major social upheaval. In those two scenarios, the IWW would be the One Big Union. The idea could also be more metaphorical - the working class united together, but without any single organization. In that case, the IWW would be one organization among many who makes a contribution.
The One Big Union was also the name for an organizational form for workers to coordinate activities against specific bosses and the capitalist class before the revolution. In that sense, the One Big meant a structure to work under capitalism. The One Big Union was made up of Industrial Unions, which were meant to be the fighting divisions of the IWW. The Industrial Unions were supposed to concentrate workers in particular industries in order to maximize the power they could exert. The IWW's One Big Unionist administrative structure was supposed to join struggles across Industrial Unions in order to make them more effective. The organization as a whole was also intended to spread the idea of One Big Union as a revolutionary vision. This was supposed to help keep the Industrial Unions from focusing simply and entirely on the day-to-day and month-to-month struggles.
In 1913 Paul Brissenden described the IWW's doctrine as Revolutionary Industrial Unionism. He noted that the IWW didn't invent the idea of industrial unionism or of revolution. “The Industrial Workers of the World is not the first organization of workingmen built upon the industrial form. Even its revolutionary character can be traced back through other organizations." He named other organizations that had helped influence the IWW and that held one or both of these ideas: the Knights of Labor, the Western Federation of Miners, the American Labor Union, the United Metal Workers International Union, the Brewery Workers, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. Still, Brissenden argued that the IWW was part of "the most modern phase of the
revolutionary movement." For the early IWW, the One Big Union served to keep the organization aimed at revolution while Industrial Unionism helped make this revolutionary vision practical instead of just wishful thinking.
We in the IWW, like many others, have long tried to link two types of struggle - struggles for short-term improvements under capitalism, and the struggle to replace capitalism with a better society. For years now the IWW has used two ideas to think about the connections between these types of struggles. These ideas are Industrial Unionism and the One Big Union. These ideas have meant many different things but they have always been related to the IWW's revolutionary vision. These ideas relate to our vision of a future revolution that ends capitalism and to our vision of our organization under capitalism before such a revolution.
In this piece, we discuss some of the ideas in the early IWW about the IWW, One Big Unionism, and Industrial Unionism. The IWW's preamble famously states that "by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old." For the early IWW, the idea of building the new within the shell of the old had two facets. Both were all about revolution. One was a matter of organizational design and the other was a matter of preparing the working class. In its organizational design, the IWW's structures were supposed to be set up to form the basis for running a future society democratically. The idea was for the working class to be able to run the economy as quickly as possible after a revolutionary change, to get the post-capitalist economy going again after the tremendous disruption caused by the revolution. In terms of preparing the class, the IWW was intended to radicalize workers by making them want revolution and make them more capable in acting on their urge to end capitalism.
We can see the notion of structure in some documents from just before the IWW's founding. A letter that helped bring about the IWW's founding convention described the need for a new type of union. The letter called for "a labor organization builded as the structure of Socialist society, embracing within itself the working class in approximately the same groups and departments and industries that the workers would assume in the working class administration of the Co-Operative Commonwealth.” In the words of another letter, this union should “represent class conscious revolutionary principles." A manifesto issued in January 1905 described the goal as an organization which would “build up within itself the structure of an Industrial Democracy - a Workers’ Co-Operative Republic - which must finally burst the shell of capitalist government, and be the agency by which the working people will operate the industries, and appropriate the products to themselves.” In the words of the people who created the IWW initially, that's what the IWW was supposed to be.
An article called “How the IWW is Organized” published in an IWW magazine later tried to sum up the IWW’s aims in three points. “(1) To organize the workers in such a way that they can successfully fight their battles and advance their interests in their every-day struggles with capitalists. (2) To overthrow capitalism and establish in its place a system of Industrial Democracy. (3) To carry on production after capitalism has been overthrown.”
In addition to structure, the IWW's activity was supposed to prepare workers for revolution. One issue of the Industrial Worker newspaper said that conflict under capitalism helped get the working class ready to end capitalism. This conflict was "training" of a sort "most necessary to prepare the masses for the final ‘catastrophe,’ the
general strike, which will complete the expropriation of the employers.” The Industrial Union Bulletin wrote that "the very fights themselves, like the drill of an army, prepare the worker for ever greater tasks and victories.” An early IWW leader named Daniel DeLeon wrote that one function of the union is “to drill the membership of the working class in the habit of self-imposed discipline” - or, to train the class to use its capacities for self-organization. The idea was that workers would learn how to run society through running their own organization -- specifically, the class conscious and revolutionary industrial union, in struggle against the capitalist class.
An Industrial Union Bulletin article called “Industrial Unionism" stated that the IWW “teaches its members that each dispute in which they are involved is merely an incident in the great struggle between capital and labor - a struggle which can only be brought to an end by the overthrow of capital” and “this supreme end must be ever kept in view.” As a result “every incident in the life of the union, every skirmish with the employers is made the text for proletarian education.”
Sophie Cohen was a child during a major strike in 1913 in Paterson, New Jersey, in which the IWW played an important role. Cohen said that “the IWW left people with a taste for organization. Every time workers win a strike, it helps straighten out their backs a little bit more and lifts their heads a bit higher. Even though the big strike was lost in Paterson, there was a feeling of togetherness among the workers. (…) From then on, there were a series of strikes and every shop had to be reorganized. Every shop refought the eight hour day all down the line.”
The education of individual members occurred through direct action, defined by James Kennedy as “use of their economic power by the workers themselves." Jack Terrill, the secretary of a Montana IWW branch put it this way: “If something should happen tomorrow so that the workers would have to run industry when they go to work tomorrow, there would be chaos. They are not educated up to that point, but the IWW is trying to organize them into one big union and educate them so that they can run industry when the time comes.” This education could not happen without the day to day and month to month struggles against bosses.
“[T]he revolutionary character of the working class is best developed while the workers are engaged in actual struggle against the masters,” stated an article from the IWW magazine the Industrial Pioneer. The article said that a “well conducted strike will do more towards developing class-consciousness and radical sentiment than ten tons of
revolutionary propaganda of a general nature.” The idea here is straightforward: struggle changes people. Being involved in struggle, instead of delegating one’s power to another, makes that struggle more meaningful to the worker
Readers may have noticed that we have spent more time on one facet than the other. We agree strongly with the idea of struggles preparing the working class for revolution. While we respect the idea of early IWW members that the organizational design of the IWW should be the structure for a post-capitalist society, we don’t find it very compelling. Particularly in today’s economy, so many workers labor on products or services that are irrelevant or unnecessary for our society if we free ourselves from the bosses’ rule. For many people in the early IWW, however, these facets were not separable.
The article "Industrial Unionism" argued that the IWW's organizational structure was linked to both functions. Under capitalism, the structure was meant to coordinate effective struggle and to maximize the preparatory role -- to make the IWW radicalize as many workers as possible as effectively as possible. After capitalism ended, the same
structure would take on a new role. The article stated: “Under capitalism, the functions of the union are militant and aggressive; under the Socialist Republic they will be administrative only. This change of function will involve no internal transformation of the union, as it is precisely those powers whereby it can inflict injury upon the capitalist that will enable it to take up the work of production. It is precisely its control over production (…) that give[s] its power for militant action.” The idea was that after militant action ended capitalism, the IWW and the working class would immediately deploy its power for cooperative production.
We can see the idea of the One Big Union as having three different roles: a vision of a future society, an idea of revolutionary change, and a structure for coordinating struggles under capitalism. As a vision of a future society, the One Big Union meant a democratic society where workers cooperated freely. As an idea of revolutionary change, the idea was that workers would form one big union and then that union would end capitalism. This could mean a few things concretely. It could mean that the IWW literally became an organization that included the entire working class. Or it could mean the IWW had enough workers in it that it kicked off some major social upheaval. In those two scenarios, the IWW would be the One Big Union. The idea could also be more metaphorical - the working class united together, but without any single organization. In that case, the IWW would be one organization among many who makes a contribution.
The One Big Union was also the name for an organizational form for workers to coordinate activities against specific bosses and the capitalist class before the revolution. In that sense, the One Big meant a structure to work under capitalism. The One Big Union was made up of Industrial Unions, which were meant to be the fighting divisions of the IWW. The Industrial Unions were supposed to concentrate workers in particular industries in order to maximize the power they could exert. The IWW's One Big Unionist administrative structure was supposed to join struggles across Industrial Unions in order to make them more effective. The organization as a whole was also intended to spread the idea of One Big Union as a revolutionary vision. This was supposed to help keep the Industrial Unions from focusing simply and entirely on the day-to-day and month-to-month struggles.
In 1913 Paul Brissenden described the IWW's doctrine as Revolutionary Industrial Unionism. He noted that the IWW didn't invent the idea of industrial unionism or of revolution. “The Industrial Workers of the World is not the first organization of workingmen built upon the industrial form. Even its revolutionary character can be traced back through other organizations." He named other organizations that had helped influence the IWW and that held one or both of these ideas: the Knights of Labor, the Western Federation of Miners, the American Labor Union, the United Metal Workers International Union, the Brewery Workers, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. Still, Brissenden argued that the IWW was part of "the most modern phase of the
revolutionary movement." For the early IWW, the One Big Union served to keep the organization aimed at revolution while Industrial Unionism helped make this revolutionary vision practical instead of just wishful thinking.
Industrial Unionism and One Big Unionism part 1: Two Concepts for IWW Organizing
By John O’Reilly and Nate Hawthorne
This is article is the first in a series discussing the themes of the One Big Union and Industrial Unionism. We believe these themes are relevant to the future of our organization and our organization’s vision and values Through these articles, we hope to push for a discussion about possible ways forward for the IWW and how we can get from where we are to where we need to be to build a new society. We welcome replies, whether in print or sent to us in private at crashcourse666@gmail.com.
The question “how do we best organize the working class?” has been on the minds of many of our members recently. Our organization is small, but we have made great strides towards creating a model that actually builds power for working people. We have one of the best member training programs in any union in North America and Europe, we are building solidarity with working people's organizations in our communities and around the world, and we are continually raising our own bar by taking on and winning bigger fights with bosses. As we continue to build the IWW, sometimes the ideas we have about how our organization ought to function come into conflict with the way that our organization actually functions. These conflicts require us to develop our ideas about revolutionary unionism in the long-term and in our day-to-day activity.
In this article, we reflect on ideas that have been around in our organization for a long time: One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism. Reflecting on the relationship between these ideas and how they relate to our organizing can help clarify both our thoughts and our actions. By understanding how these ideas both overlap and conflict, we want to set the stage for a larger discussion about our organization.
One Big Unionism is the idea that guides us in the work of building the IWW as a revolutionary organization. It is a way to think about the organizing work that we do and the reasons we do this work. The One Big Union is the idea that we want the entire working class to be united to act in our interests as a class and against capitalism. The united working class must cross geographic, cultural, and industrial boundaries, be democratic, and be able to coordinate and marshal the forces of us workers against the united power of the bosses and their rule over our lives and communities.
We in the IWW believe that the working class needs to be unified to fight the battle for economic democracy. We are One Big Unionists because we are committed to uniting all workers across industries and crafts and because we believe all work under capitalism share basic, fundamental similarities. While we do different kinds of work, we have the same basic role in the economy: we’re the people that make our society run but who have no power over how it is run. One of the most important lessons that we have learned in the last few years in our organizing is that because we all occupy the same place in the class system, the basic framework for organizing workers does not change depending on what kind of work they do. Regardless of craft or industry, the basic skills and tools and techniques of organizing are more or less the same. We organize by talking with workers, asking questions, building relationships with them, getting them to build relationships with each other, having frank discussions about the problems they and we all face under capitalism, building solidarity as a group, and taking action to fight the boss. These basic elements of our approach to organizing, based on our commitment to the revolutionary principle of One Big Unionism, come from the fact that all workplace organizing uses basically the same set of skills and practices that any working person can learn and do.
Industrial Unionism, on the other hand, is the idea that we need to build labor organizations connected to each other logically based on the way that the modern economy runs. By organizing unions in this way, we can strengthen our power across connected industrial chains. While One Big Unionism is a set of principles that guides our work, Industrial Unionism gives us practical suggestions about how to best implement our ideas about how to fight the bosses and win.
Industrial Unionism is understanding how we carry out our principles in action. Industrial Unionism is fundamentally about how to build and exert power in the most effective way possible in the near future. Organizing along the supply chain amplifies our power: a union of agricultural workers, food processing workers, truckers, and fast food workers in one chain has more power against the employer or employers on that chain than organizing all the fast food workers in one city. Industrial Unionism builds upon the strength of workers whose jobs are related as way to win fights. We use these fights to win membership to our union and use our membership to win these fights.
If we de-link One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism and only pursue one of them, we become lopsided. If a branch or a group of organizers focus too much on One Big Unionism, they build bodies and activities that only work to build class consciousness, or worse, only gather together people who have already become class conscious through experiences outside the IWW. Class consciousness is important, but consciousness alone does not fight or build organization. By thinking only in the One Big Unionist model, we are unable to shape our world and build industrial democracy because we have no power. There’s no way to stage and win fights in specific shops if we are everywhere at once; leaflet a Starbucks on Monday, talk to truckers on Tuesday, a hospital workers’ forum on Wednesday, etc. By the end of the week, we have not made progress in building shopfloor organizing in any one of those workplaces. Plus, if we overstress the idea that all workers are fundamentally the same, we will miss the concrete differences that do exist right now between shops, crafts, and industries and make them distinct: demographics, legal rights, concentration, forms of oppression, etc.
The other side of the coin is equally or perhaps even more important. If we focus too narrowly on Industrial Unionism, we get cut off from the revolutionary idea that forms the basis of the IWW: all workers, as workers, are fundamentally in the same place in relation to the capitalist class and therefore can and should organize together to make improvements today and end capitalism tomorrow. When branches or groups of organizers focus only on one industry without seeing how all workers need to participate in the work of building the IWW, we lose our ability to learn from workers in different industries, from their successes and failures, tactics and ideas. Many of the best lessons implemented in our most active campaigns were learned from other IWW campaigns across a variety of industries. Additionally, turnover and firings associated with our union drives mean that if we only look at one industry, we will lose our members who change jobs. In the low-wage sector where many of our current campaigns are taking off, many workers move between different industries very quickly. Finally, if we only focus on Industrial Unionism, we lose our ability to turn workers into Wobblies and miss the big picture of our organization, a united working class movement fighting to not only for a better life for ourselves under capitalism but also fighting to end capitalism and replace it with a better society.
Within the IWW as a living organization, One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism should be linked together as ways of thinking about our organizing. The balance of the two allows us to build our organization and move our class forward. One Big Unionism allows us to visualize a united working class and sets our sights on organizing all workers. It’s a vision of association which thinks about how more workers can be organized and work together for our class, as a class. It is the idea that all workers have interests in common as workers, have interests opposed to employers, and includes a commitment to building a new society to replace capitalism. Industrial Unionism is a vision of short-term conflict, expressing our commitment to creating the most effective organization possible for accomplishing goals. Industrial Unionism is about building an effective means to challenge the bosses’ power under capitalism.
Only by carefully balancing the perspectives of One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism can we push forward the work that needs to be done. Our organization has great ideas about how to organize and why, it’s up to us to implement them and build up our class.
This is article is the first in a series discussing the themes of the One Big Union and Industrial Unionism. We believe these themes are relevant to the future of our organization and our organization’s vision and values Through these articles, we hope to push for a discussion about possible ways forward for the IWW and how we can get from where we are to where we need to be to build a new society. We welcome replies, whether in print or sent to us in private at crashcourse666@gmail.com.
The question “how do we best organize the working class?” has been on the minds of many of our members recently. Our organization is small, but we have made great strides towards creating a model that actually builds power for working people. We have one of the best member training programs in any union in North America and Europe, we are building solidarity with working people's organizations in our communities and around the world, and we are continually raising our own bar by taking on and winning bigger fights with bosses. As we continue to build the IWW, sometimes the ideas we have about how our organization ought to function come into conflict with the way that our organization actually functions. These conflicts require us to develop our ideas about revolutionary unionism in the long-term and in our day-to-day activity.
In this article, we reflect on ideas that have been around in our organization for a long time: One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism. Reflecting on the relationship between these ideas and how they relate to our organizing can help clarify both our thoughts and our actions. By understanding how these ideas both overlap and conflict, we want to set the stage for a larger discussion about our organization.
One Big Unionism is the idea that guides us in the work of building the IWW as a revolutionary organization. It is a way to think about the organizing work that we do and the reasons we do this work. The One Big Union is the idea that we want the entire working class to be united to act in our interests as a class and against capitalism. The united working class must cross geographic, cultural, and industrial boundaries, be democratic, and be able to coordinate and marshal the forces of us workers against the united power of the bosses and their rule over our lives and communities.
We in the IWW believe that the working class needs to be unified to fight the battle for economic democracy. We are One Big Unionists because we are committed to uniting all workers across industries and crafts and because we believe all work under capitalism share basic, fundamental similarities. While we do different kinds of work, we have the same basic role in the economy: we’re the people that make our society run but who have no power over how it is run. One of the most important lessons that we have learned in the last few years in our organizing is that because we all occupy the same place in the class system, the basic framework for organizing workers does not change depending on what kind of work they do. Regardless of craft or industry, the basic skills and tools and techniques of organizing are more or less the same. We organize by talking with workers, asking questions, building relationships with them, getting them to build relationships with each other, having frank discussions about the problems they and we all face under capitalism, building solidarity as a group, and taking action to fight the boss. These basic elements of our approach to organizing, based on our commitment to the revolutionary principle of One Big Unionism, come from the fact that all workplace organizing uses basically the same set of skills and practices that any working person can learn and do.
Industrial Unionism, on the other hand, is the idea that we need to build labor organizations connected to each other logically based on the way that the modern economy runs. By organizing unions in this way, we can strengthen our power across connected industrial chains. While One Big Unionism is a set of principles that guides our work, Industrial Unionism gives us practical suggestions about how to best implement our ideas about how to fight the bosses and win.
Industrial Unionism is understanding how we carry out our principles in action. Industrial Unionism is fundamentally about how to build and exert power in the most effective way possible in the near future. Organizing along the supply chain amplifies our power: a union of agricultural workers, food processing workers, truckers, and fast food workers in one chain has more power against the employer or employers on that chain than organizing all the fast food workers in one city. Industrial Unionism builds upon the strength of workers whose jobs are related as way to win fights. We use these fights to win membership to our union and use our membership to win these fights.
If we de-link One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism and only pursue one of them, we become lopsided. If a branch or a group of organizers focus too much on One Big Unionism, they build bodies and activities that only work to build class consciousness, or worse, only gather together people who have already become class conscious through experiences outside the IWW. Class consciousness is important, but consciousness alone does not fight or build organization. By thinking only in the One Big Unionist model, we are unable to shape our world and build industrial democracy because we have no power. There’s no way to stage and win fights in specific shops if we are everywhere at once; leaflet a Starbucks on Monday, talk to truckers on Tuesday, a hospital workers’ forum on Wednesday, etc. By the end of the week, we have not made progress in building shopfloor organizing in any one of those workplaces. Plus, if we overstress the idea that all workers are fundamentally the same, we will miss the concrete differences that do exist right now between shops, crafts, and industries and make them distinct: demographics, legal rights, concentration, forms of oppression, etc.
The other side of the coin is equally or perhaps even more important. If we focus too narrowly on Industrial Unionism, we get cut off from the revolutionary idea that forms the basis of the IWW: all workers, as workers, are fundamentally in the same place in relation to the capitalist class and therefore can and should organize together to make improvements today and end capitalism tomorrow. When branches or groups of organizers focus only on one industry without seeing how all workers need to participate in the work of building the IWW, we lose our ability to learn from workers in different industries, from their successes and failures, tactics and ideas. Many of the best lessons implemented in our most active campaigns were learned from other IWW campaigns across a variety of industries. Additionally, turnover and firings associated with our union drives mean that if we only look at one industry, we will lose our members who change jobs. In the low-wage sector where many of our current campaigns are taking off, many workers move between different industries very quickly. Finally, if we only focus on Industrial Unionism, we lose our ability to turn workers into Wobblies and miss the big picture of our organization, a united working class movement fighting to not only for a better life for ourselves under capitalism but also fighting to end capitalism and replace it with a better society.
Within the IWW as a living organization, One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism should be linked together as ways of thinking about our organizing. The balance of the two allows us to build our organization and move our class forward. One Big Unionism allows us to visualize a united working class and sets our sights on organizing all workers. It’s a vision of association which thinks about how more workers can be organized and work together for our class, as a class. It is the idea that all workers have interests in common as workers, have interests opposed to employers, and includes a commitment to building a new society to replace capitalism. Industrial Unionism is a vision of short-term conflict, expressing our commitment to creating the most effective organization possible for accomplishing goals. Industrial Unionism is about building an effective means to challenge the bosses’ power under capitalism.
Only by carefully balancing the perspectives of One Big Unionism and Industrial Unionism can we push forward the work that needs to be done. Our organization has great ideas about how to organize and why, it’s up to us to implement them and build up our class.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Doing Revolution
Seeing Erik's post at Rethinking Anarchism and Nate's at What in the Hell about Lenin and reading some of the pieces he linked to got me thinking about the man a bit and about his situation. I think I'm more critical of Lenin than some of the folks whose writings Nate links, but I also have an impulse towards criticism of him due to my own ideological baggage.
These articles do really interesting things to discuss the work that Lenin did and the way he thought. That's not what I have, 'cause I can't write good critique, sadly. I've just been thinking about stuff that Lenin's life suggests to me in terms of the possibility and reality of revolution.
Most of us have very little power individually. Radicals in concert tend to have more power based simply on the combination of their individual abilities. Successful organizations have some kind of "force multiplier" that comes from the combination of their individual abilities with action that works. I'm better at charts than writing, so it looks like this to me:
Units of Power (ability/potencia) in society
Individual: 1
Collection of Individuals: 1xN (where N is number of participants)
Organization: 1xNxQ (where N is number of participants and Q is an action that fits the situation)
I'm not really sure what Q is, but I'm certain it exists. I'm using Q because maybe it corresponds to "quality," but I haven't worked that out. (Some social science student I am!) But Q is there, right? Imagine the times when you've participated in an action of some sort that was totally ill-adapted to the situation, and the outcome and amount of power that you exerted. Now imagine a situation where you've done an action that "fit" the situation. Certain actions just work better, and the ability [power/potencia] that the organization has when it fits the situation is much more.
So Q is what gets me back to Lenin. Clearly the man and his contemporaries had a particular kind of organizational model, strategy, and tactics that worked well. Their Q value was really high and that amplified their ability to exert their power. Their Q and their N increased to the point where they were able to "win" if we may simplify, by exerting an QN that was higher than the ruling class's NQ.
[Rather than turning this post into an intelligent political analysis, this is where I will suddenly change directions!]
What's interesting to me, and it's part of the reason why I probably have more sympathy for the historical Lenin (and Mao for that matter) than I should, is that Q frightens me. Most of us have never participated in organizations that had a sustained high Q level. I've done work in groups where we've had moments of great Q where all of a sudden it was as if we "understood" what was happening and were able to intervene in really effective ways. But these have never been really long. Before long we lose our way and end up doing things that are really ineffective. I've been in other groups that have had reasonably high N values representing lots of participation, but rather low Q. Sometimes this has happened in the same organization at different times (for me both my experiences in SDS and the IWW reflect this).
(Somewhere in this discussion it's important to note that we can't fetishize Q over QN. My recent research into the Partido Comunista Mexicano has highlighted for me that the "right line" means absolutely nothing if you can't relate that through numbers and application with the world.)
So how does it feel to be in an organization, much less in the leadership of an organization with a high QN? I imagine it's rather terrifying. It's quite something different to talk about a social revolution when you have no serious way of making it happen than to actually be in a situation where you could concievably carry it out. The pressure to continue to keep your effectiveness high amidst repression and competing groups is difficult enough when you're relatively small, but what about when everyone in the world is watching you?
Further, my concern with Lenin is that he and his comrades were simply the first to ever do this. Modern revolutionaries should think about the same thing. Since we're not interested in re-doing the Soviet Union this time around, we're basically standing on very little well-trod ground. Catalonia, Korea, Ukraine, there's a few examples, but they were all completely crushed. It's almost a tautology, but part of the reason why a revolution is so hard to think about is because there hasn't been the kind of revolution we seek and if there had been that revolution, we wouldn't be thinking about a revolution because it would have happened. How do we know that we're not going to zig when we should zag and produce our own NEP? Or our own Weather Underground? Or whatever? Part of the difficulty in doing revolutionary work and thinking of a revolution is that we have so many examples of failure and none of true success. (I think this may be part of why so many revolutionaries become reformists at some point in their lives.)
I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that reading all this stuff about Lenin, particularly folks who seek to interrogate his political method to draw something from it, makes me doubt more than it makes me feel confident. Lenin failed at bringing communism to life, and if we accept that he teaches a great deal about how to do that project today, or perhaps the opposite, that his failure teaches us more than his thoughts do, I feel like we also have to grapple with the strong personal and emotional problems that these political lessons provide us. Do we have the strength, as individuals as well as together, to make a revolution? This question bugs me because there's no political way out, it's simply a question that gets at issues of personality and, above all, self-confidence. It's easy to be confident of the need for revolution when it is still on the horizon, but could I, or any other would-be Lenin, actually stand up to the task of creating communism? I fear that I couldn't deal with the pressure, the history of so many failed revolutions and dead revolutionaries that call out for a successful change, the need to reimagine the world completely. How did he? How can we?
These articles do really interesting things to discuss the work that Lenin did and the way he thought. That's not what I have, 'cause I can't write good critique, sadly. I've just been thinking about stuff that Lenin's life suggests to me in terms of the possibility and reality of revolution.
Most of us have very little power individually. Radicals in concert tend to have more power based simply on the combination of their individual abilities. Successful organizations have some kind of "force multiplier" that comes from the combination of their individual abilities with action that works. I'm better at charts than writing, so it looks like this to me:
Units of Power (ability/potencia) in society
Individual: 1
Collection of Individuals: 1xN (where N is number of participants)
Organization: 1xNxQ (where N is number of participants and Q is an action that fits the situation)
I'm not really sure what Q is, but I'm certain it exists. I'm using Q because maybe it corresponds to "quality," but I haven't worked that out. (Some social science student I am!) But Q is there, right? Imagine the times when you've participated in an action of some sort that was totally ill-adapted to the situation, and the outcome and amount of power that you exerted. Now imagine a situation where you've done an action that "fit" the situation. Certain actions just work better, and the ability [power/potencia] that the organization has when it fits the situation is much more.
So Q is what gets me back to Lenin. Clearly the man and his contemporaries had a particular kind of organizational model, strategy, and tactics that worked well. Their Q value was really high and that amplified their ability to exert their power. Their Q and their N increased to the point where they were able to "win" if we may simplify, by exerting an QN that was higher than the ruling class's NQ.
[Rather than turning this post into an intelligent political analysis, this is where I will suddenly change directions!]
What's interesting to me, and it's part of the reason why I probably have more sympathy for the historical Lenin (and Mao for that matter) than I should, is that Q frightens me. Most of us have never participated in organizations that had a sustained high Q level. I've done work in groups where we've had moments of great Q where all of a sudden it was as if we "understood" what was happening and were able to intervene in really effective ways. But these have never been really long. Before long we lose our way and end up doing things that are really ineffective. I've been in other groups that have had reasonably high N values representing lots of participation, but rather low Q. Sometimes this has happened in the same organization at different times (for me both my experiences in SDS and the IWW reflect this).
(Somewhere in this discussion it's important to note that we can't fetishize Q over QN. My recent research into the Partido Comunista Mexicano has highlighted for me that the "right line" means absolutely nothing if you can't relate that through numbers and application with the world.)
So how does it feel to be in an organization, much less in the leadership of an organization with a high QN? I imagine it's rather terrifying. It's quite something different to talk about a social revolution when you have no serious way of making it happen than to actually be in a situation where you could concievably carry it out. The pressure to continue to keep your effectiveness high amidst repression and competing groups is difficult enough when you're relatively small, but what about when everyone in the world is watching you?
Further, my concern with Lenin is that he and his comrades were simply the first to ever do this. Modern revolutionaries should think about the same thing. Since we're not interested in re-doing the Soviet Union this time around, we're basically standing on very little well-trod ground. Catalonia, Korea, Ukraine, there's a few examples, but they were all completely crushed. It's almost a tautology, but part of the reason why a revolution is so hard to think about is because there hasn't been the kind of revolution we seek and if there had been that revolution, we wouldn't be thinking about a revolution because it would have happened. How do we know that we're not going to zig when we should zag and produce our own NEP? Or our own Weather Underground? Or whatever? Part of the difficulty in doing revolutionary work and thinking of a revolution is that we have so many examples of failure and none of true success. (I think this may be part of why so many revolutionaries become reformists at some point in their lives.)
I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that reading all this stuff about Lenin, particularly folks who seek to interrogate his political method to draw something from it, makes me doubt more than it makes me feel confident. Lenin failed at bringing communism to life, and if we accept that he teaches a great deal about how to do that project today, or perhaps the opposite, that his failure teaches us more than his thoughts do, I feel like we also have to grapple with the strong personal and emotional problems that these political lessons provide us. Do we have the strength, as individuals as well as together, to make a revolution? This question bugs me because there's no political way out, it's simply a question that gets at issues of personality and, above all, self-confidence. It's easy to be confident of the need for revolution when it is still on the horizon, but could I, or any other would-be Lenin, actually stand up to the task of creating communism? I fear that I couldn't deal with the pressure, the history of so many failed revolutions and dead revolutionaries that call out for a successful change, the need to reimagine the world completely. How did he? How can we?
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Non-Profits and Class Forces
Because I'm still bourgie scum, I read Harper's when I can get a copy of it, having grown up stealing that magazine from my father as soon as he put it down. While it is a capital Left publication, its analysis is sometimes really illuminating and it frequently has great contributors. This month Naomi Klein has a fascinating article titled Minority Death Match: Jews, blacks and the "post-racial" presidency (which of course you gotta pay for to see online; guess Harper's hasn't caught up with the EFF yet).
While Klein's fundamental point is that the U.N. Conference on Racism functioned as a way of pitting Jewish concerns, primarily those of Israelis, against Africa and African-Americans by emphasizing the tiny minority of participants who are anti-Semitic instead of the massive ground-swelling of support for reparations for slavery, the article for me was an instructive point about the uselessness of NGOs. In the flap after the Durban conference and the Israeli lobby's subsequent rebranding of the conference as a "hate fest" instead of what it was, an attempt by third world governments and civil society to make the global North account for slavery by reinvesting money in large projects to close the gap between the African diaspora and the North, NGOs who initially supported the reparations project had to bow out. The article indicates that these NGOs, many of them U.S.-based, feared being tarred with the anti-Semitic brush by being affiliated with Durban or another conference and as such had to move backwards, further allowing anti-Semitic elements to step forward, as Iranian president Ahmadinejad proved when he took the stage at the second conference to denounce Israeli.
Klein illustrated how once an issue became controversial, these NGOs were forced to step back because those who remained close to the issue lost their funding. In an ironic twist, NGOs instrumental in the distortion of the conference's point, like the Anti-Defamation League, actually received a tremendous amount of funding from foundations like Ford which had been taken directly from those black NGOs who were too close to the repartions issue!
What's fascinating about all this is that it really has nothing to do with reparations on the surface. It looks just like one group forcing their issues which results in the distracting from another groups'. Clearly the first group is considerably smaller and more powerful than the second, but the point generally stands. What Klein makes clear, and what I think is instructive for radicals organizing (you knew I'd get there eventually!) is that it still was really about reparations. The U.S. government, under Bush as well as Obama, was basically searching for any excuse to not participate in a conference that would give it anything more than a moral obligation to apologize for slavery. When the Israel issue popped up, it was a smart move to please Jewish and right-wing constituents by stepping back from Durban and it allowed the U.S. to never have to face the possibility of being sued by blacks foreign or domestic for damages and reparations.
The point being that the NGO-industrial complex serves its purpose by being involved in this surface level politics. ACORN has become the whipping boy of the Right in this election, anti-union "public interest organizations" are increasingly being outed by labor and its allies as the corporate shills that they are. But this ideological level where they exist is just that. There certainly are material benefits in this superstructural plane, where certain ideologies can be given control over the discourse and governmental/non-profit resources. No one can deny that the fact that the Center for Union Facts has had a role in shaping workers' thoughts about unionism.
But these top-level operations ultimately only exist at the pleasure of larger, more complicated and deeper interests. When the U.S government did not want to have to deal with the potentially expensive reparations issue, it allowed NGOs and their foundation-based masters to fight amongst each other and quietly departed the fray. We should keep this in mind when we work with NGOs, even the most "critical" or radical of them. It's not just that as that old chestnut runs, that NGOs function as a recuperative wing of capitalism. While they often do that, they also function as a distraction from the real contradictions in society. By placing serious value in our connections with NGOs, we leave ourselves open for the inevitable betrayal that they will be forced to commit when our issue becomes too powerful to the forces that oppose it. NGOs, with no rank-and-file that make them self-sustaining, can never be as useful on the long-term as genuinely self-organized organs of working class power.
Though long-term relationships with them are tempting because of their access to funding, resources in-kind, and expertise, all these must be taken with a grain of salt. When NGOs leave us, and they will, our organizations will be forced into a position where we haven't developed these elements to a strong enough position and we will be open to attack. When the capitalists and state force our hand, NGOs will and must fall away. The story of Durban makes that abundantly clear: NGOs are meaningless when stronger forces move. If we're serious about revolution, we need to make our organizations into ones that can stand up directly and without their assistance.
There's clearly more to be said on this topic, particularly thinking about the theoretical implications of analysis of superstructure and structure and how they interact. I think there's also lots to be said about the interactions with these two levels and with the infrastructure of society, since so many NGOs focus on environmental issues. But that's for another day.
While Klein's fundamental point is that the U.N. Conference on Racism functioned as a way of pitting Jewish concerns, primarily those of Israelis, against Africa and African-Americans by emphasizing the tiny minority of participants who are anti-Semitic instead of the massive ground-swelling of support for reparations for slavery, the article for me was an instructive point about the uselessness of NGOs. In the flap after the Durban conference and the Israeli lobby's subsequent rebranding of the conference as a "hate fest" instead of what it was, an attempt by third world governments and civil society to make the global North account for slavery by reinvesting money in large projects to close the gap between the African diaspora and the North, NGOs who initially supported the reparations project had to bow out. The article indicates that these NGOs, many of them U.S.-based, feared being tarred with the anti-Semitic brush by being affiliated with Durban or another conference and as such had to move backwards, further allowing anti-Semitic elements to step forward, as Iranian president Ahmadinejad proved when he took the stage at the second conference to denounce Israeli.
Klein illustrated how once an issue became controversial, these NGOs were forced to step back because those who remained close to the issue lost their funding. In an ironic twist, NGOs instrumental in the distortion of the conference's point, like the Anti-Defamation League, actually received a tremendous amount of funding from foundations like Ford which had been taken directly from those black NGOs who were too close to the repartions issue!
What's fascinating about all this is that it really has nothing to do with reparations on the surface. It looks just like one group forcing their issues which results in the distracting from another groups'. Clearly the first group is considerably smaller and more powerful than the second, but the point generally stands. What Klein makes clear, and what I think is instructive for radicals organizing (you knew I'd get there eventually!) is that it still was really about reparations. The U.S. government, under Bush as well as Obama, was basically searching for any excuse to not participate in a conference that would give it anything more than a moral obligation to apologize for slavery. When the Israel issue popped up, it was a smart move to please Jewish and right-wing constituents by stepping back from Durban and it allowed the U.S. to never have to face the possibility of being sued by blacks foreign or domestic for damages and reparations.
The point being that the NGO-industrial complex serves its purpose by being involved in this surface level politics. ACORN has become the whipping boy of the Right in this election, anti-union "public interest organizations" are increasingly being outed by labor and its allies as the corporate shills that they are. But this ideological level where they exist is just that. There certainly are material benefits in this superstructural plane, where certain ideologies can be given control over the discourse and governmental/non-profit resources. No one can deny that the fact that the Center for Union Facts has had a role in shaping workers' thoughts about unionism.
But these top-level operations ultimately only exist at the pleasure of larger, more complicated and deeper interests. When the U.S government did not want to have to deal with the potentially expensive reparations issue, it allowed NGOs and their foundation-based masters to fight amongst each other and quietly departed the fray. We should keep this in mind when we work with NGOs, even the most "critical" or radical of them. It's not just that as that old chestnut runs, that NGOs function as a recuperative wing of capitalism. While they often do that, they also function as a distraction from the real contradictions in society. By placing serious value in our connections with NGOs, we leave ourselves open for the inevitable betrayal that they will be forced to commit when our issue becomes too powerful to the forces that oppose it. NGOs, with no rank-and-file that make them self-sustaining, can never be as useful on the long-term as genuinely self-organized organs of working class power.
Though long-term relationships with them are tempting because of their access to funding, resources in-kind, and expertise, all these must be taken with a grain of salt. When NGOs leave us, and they will, our organizations will be forced into a position where we haven't developed these elements to a strong enough position and we will be open to attack. When the capitalists and state force our hand, NGOs will and must fall away. The story of Durban makes that abundantly clear: NGOs are meaningless when stronger forces move. If we're serious about revolution, we need to make our organizations into ones that can stand up directly and without their assistance.
There's clearly more to be said on this topic, particularly thinking about the theoretical implications of analysis of superstructure and structure and how they interact. I think there's also lots to be said about the interactions with these two levels and with the infrastructure of society, since so many NGOs focus on environmental issues. But that's for another day.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Decentralization in Theory and Practice
I've been pondering this question for awhile now and have only been pushed to consider it even more strongly since I've been here in Mexico.
What is it exactly that anarchists mean when they talk about a society based on "decentralization"? What is being decentralized?
My experiences here in Mexico City have taught me that, if nothing else, decentralization of institutions is incredibly frustrating and inefficient. Decentralized capitalist institutions like immigration have provided me with a great deal of irritation, but that's understandable, as they are premised on a giant bureaucracy that makes things difficult to accomplish. Surely in an anarchist society, we wouldn't need the extensive decentralized bureaucracy that say, the Mexican or U.S. migration process provides.
But decentralization in our daily lives of institutions would mean a whole host of different problems. Take decentralization in institutions of learning. I'm familiar with the critique of schooling, but I'm still a firm believer that we can radically restructure education in order to produce institutions that educate without indoctrinating. Here, at my university in Mexico though, decentralization is already the rule of the day. There are literally dozens of autonomous bodies that make decisions which affect themselves but which carry consequences for the whole university. This means that inscription, application, class schedules, as well as more "institutional" tasks like maintenance of facilities require a knowledge of a Byzantine bureaucratic labyrinth to navigate.
This is obviously just one example, but I want to apply it to the theory of decentralizing all of our economic and social activities. What exactly does decentralization imply in terms of the daily lives of people and their well-being? The effects of decentralization in capitalist society reflect in some bizarre manner the so-called centralization of the economy in state socialist societies, where the centralization of power with the state resulted in a profuse diffusion of bureaucracy.
Am I just suffering the irritations of the infamous Mexican impulse towards bureaucracy? How can we decentralize our activities and institutions without creating shortages that could be potentially fatal? That is to say, moving beyond my rather silly example of an educational institution, what potential dangers would a decentralized agricultural system bring? How can anarchist theory account for, and plan to deal with, for these issues?
What is it exactly that anarchists mean when they talk about a society based on "decentralization"? What is being decentralized?
My experiences here in Mexico City have taught me that, if nothing else, decentralization of institutions is incredibly frustrating and inefficient. Decentralized capitalist institutions like immigration have provided me with a great deal of irritation, but that's understandable, as they are premised on a giant bureaucracy that makes things difficult to accomplish. Surely in an anarchist society, we wouldn't need the extensive decentralized bureaucracy that say, the Mexican or U.S. migration process provides.
But decentralization in our daily lives of institutions would mean a whole host of different problems. Take decentralization in institutions of learning. I'm familiar with the critique of schooling, but I'm still a firm believer that we can radically restructure education in order to produce institutions that educate without indoctrinating. Here, at my university in Mexico though, decentralization is already the rule of the day. There are literally dozens of autonomous bodies that make decisions which affect themselves but which carry consequences for the whole university. This means that inscription, application, class schedules, as well as more "institutional" tasks like maintenance of facilities require a knowledge of a Byzantine bureaucratic labyrinth to navigate.
This is obviously just one example, but I want to apply it to the theory of decentralizing all of our economic and social activities. What exactly does decentralization imply in terms of the daily lives of people and their well-being? The effects of decentralization in capitalist society reflect in some bizarre manner the so-called centralization of the economy in state socialist societies, where the centralization of power with the state resulted in a profuse diffusion of bureaucracy.
Am I just suffering the irritations of the infamous Mexican impulse towards bureaucracy? How can we decentralize our activities and institutions without creating shortages that could be potentially fatal? That is to say, moving beyond my rather silly example of an educational institution, what potential dangers would a decentralized agricultural system bring? How can anarchist theory account for, and plan to deal with, for these issues?
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