Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
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"The English-speaking workman was in general<br />
content to ignore the immigrants. Outside the mill he rarely<br />
encountered them or entered their crowded streets. But<br />
indifference often edged into animosity.. .Disdain could be<br />
read also in the stereotyped Dago and Hunky in the short<br />
stories that appeared in labor papers, and in the frankly<br />
hostile remarks of native workers.<br />
"Eager to dissociate himself from the Hunky, the<br />
skilled man identified with the middlinp group of small<br />
shopkeepers and artisans, and with them came to regard<br />
the merchants and managers as his models. Whatever his<br />
interests may have been, the English-speaking steelworker<br />
had a psychological commitment in favor of his<br />
employer. " (2 1 )<br />
So the imperialist era had begun with Euro-<br />
Amerikan wage-labor still a privileged, upper stratum<br />
dominated by a petit-bourgeois viewpoint. And although<br />
the new industrial proletariat was overwhelmingly European<br />
in origin, it was primarily made up of the oppressed<br />
national minorities from Eastern and Southern Europe -<br />
"foreigners" widely considered "nonwhite" by the settlers.<br />
The U.S. Empire's policy of relegating the work of<br />
"supporting society," of carrying out the tasks of the proletariat,<br />
to oppressed workers of other nationalities, was<br />
thus continued in a more complex way into the 20th century.<br />
At the same time the capitalists were raising the<br />
possibility of buying off political discontent by offering<br />
these proletarians Americanization into settler society.<br />
2. Industrial Unionism<br />
As U.S. imperialism stumbles faster and faster into<br />
its permanent decline, once again we hear the theory expressed<br />
that some poverty and the resulting mass economic<br />
struggles will create revolutionary consciousness in Euro-<br />
Amerikan workers. The fact is that such social pressures<br />
are not new to White Amerika. For three decades - from<br />
1890 to 1920 - the new white industrial proletariat increasingly<br />
organized itself into larger and larger struggles<br />
with the capitalists.<br />
The immigrant European proletarians wanted industrial<br />
unionism and the most advanced among them<br />
wanted socialism. A mass movement was built for both.<br />
These were the most heavily exploited, most proletarian,<br />
and most militant European workers Amerika has ever<br />
produced. Yet, in the end, they were unable to go beyond<br />
desiring the mere reform of imperialism.<br />
The mass industrial struggles of that period were<br />
important in that they represented the highest level of class<br />
consciousness any major stratum of European workers in<br />
the U.S. has yet reached. And even in this exceptional<br />
period - a period of the most aggressive and openly anticapitalist<br />
labor organizing - European workers were<br />
unable to produce an adequate revolutionary leadership,<br />
unable to defeat the settler labor aristocracy, unable to oppose<br />
U.S. imperialism, and unable to unite with the anticolonial<br />
movements of the oppressed nations. We can sum<br />
up the shortcomings by saying that they flirted with<br />
socialism - but in the end preferred settlerism.<br />
The Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.)<br />
was the most important single organization of this period.<br />
From its founding in 1905 (the year of the first Russian<br />
Revolution) until 1920, the I.W.W. was the center of industrial<br />
unionism in the U.S. It was the form in which the<br />
Northern and Western white industrial proletariat first<br />
emerged into mass political consciousness. Unlike the<br />
restrictive craft unions of the A.F.L.., the I.W.W. organized<br />
on a class basis. That is, it organized and tried to unite<br />
all sections of the white working class (copper miners, auto<br />
Solidarity, August 4, 1917,<br />
workers, cowboys, hotel workers, farm laborers, and even<br />
the unemployed). It was based on the European immigrant<br />
proletarians and the bottom stratum - usually migrant -<br />
of "native-born" Euro-Amerikan workers.<br />
The I.W.W. saw itself as not only winning better<br />
wages, but eventually overthrowing capitalism. It was a<br />
syndicalist union (the "One Big Union") meant to combine<br />
workers of all trades and nationalities literally around<br />
the world. This was a period in the development of the<br />
world proletariat where these revolutionary syndicalist<br />
ideas had wide appeal. The immature belief that workers<br />
needed no revolutionary party or leadership, but merely<br />
had to gather into industrial unions and bring down<br />
capitalism by larger and larger strikes, was a passing<br />
phase. In 1900 these revolutionary syndicalist unions were<br />
popular in Spain, France, Italy - as well as briefly in the<br />
65 U.S. Empire.