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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While the I.W.W. was backward in many respects,<br />
in others it displayed great strengths. It was genuinely proletarian.<br />
As an effective mass labor organization, it showed<br />
a fighting spirit long since vanished from white workers.<br />
We are referring to an open anti-Amerikanism. The<br />
I.W.W. urged workers to reject any loyalty to the U.S.<br />
Unlike the majority of Euro-Amerikan "Socialists," the<br />
I.W.W. linked "American" nationalism with the<br />
bourgeois culture of lynch mob patriotism. Just as the<br />
I.W.W. was the last white union movement to be socialist,<br />
it also represented the last stratum of white workers to be<br />
in any way internationalist.<br />
Great boldness relative to the usual settler tradeunionism<br />
characterized the I.W.W. First, it promoted unity<br />
on the broadest scale then attempted, in the U.S. including<br />
not only the "Dago" and "Hunky" but also explicitly<br />
declaring that industrial unionism meant the inclusion<br />
of Mexicanos, Asians, Afrikans, Indians and all nationalities.<br />
Second, it undertook the most militant campaigns<br />
of union organization and struggle, expressing the<br />
desperate needs of the most exploited white workers.<br />
Third, the I.W.W. was able to advance industrial unionism<br />
here by learning from the more advanced and experienced<br />
immigrants from Old Europe.<br />
Because of this, the I.W.W. was able to launch<br />
strikes and unionization drives on a scale never seen before<br />
in the U.S. In the years after 1905 the "Wobblies" led an<br />
escalating explosion of union struggles: Hotel workers in<br />
Arizona, lumberjacks in Washington, textile workers in<br />
Massachusetts, seamen in ports from Chile to Canada,<br />
auto workers in Detroit, and so on. And there were many<br />
notable victories, many successful strikes. It must be emphasized<br />
that to workers used to seeing only defeats, the<br />
1.W.W's ability to help them win strikes was no small matter.<br />
For example, in 1909 the I.W.W. helped the immigrant<br />
workers at the McKees Rocks, Pa. plant of the<br />
Pressed Steel Car Co. (a subsidiary of the U.S. Steel trust)<br />
win their strike. This was of national importance, since it<br />
was the first time that workers had won a strike against the<br />
mammoth Steel Trust. That strike, which taught so much<br />
to union militants here, was led by an underground<br />
"Unknown Committee" representing both the I.W.W.<br />
and the various European nationalities. The "Unknown<br />
Committee" had the knowledge of veterans of the 1905<br />
Russian Revolution, the Italian labor resistance, the German<br />
Metal Workers Union, and the Swiss and Hungarian<br />
railway strikes. It is clear that through the I.W.W. the<br />
more experienced and politically educated European<br />
workers taught their backward Amerikan cousins how to<br />
look out after their class interests. (22)<br />
In 1914 the I.W.W.'s Agricultural Workers<br />
Organization (A.W.O.) pulled off an organizing feat unequalled<br />
for fifty years. They established the "world's<br />
longest picket line," running 800 miles from Kansas up to<br />
Rapid City, South Dakota. In distant railroad yards<br />
I.W.W. strongarm squads maintained a blockade, in<br />
which non-union workers were kept out. Confronted with<br />
a critical labor shortage at harvest time, the growers had to<br />
give in. This was the biggest agricultural labor drive in the<br />
U.S. until the 1960s. The A.W.O. itself grew to almost<br />
70,000 members, becoming the largest single union within<br />
the I.W.W. In fact, at the 1916 I.W.W. Convention the<br />
A.W.O. actually had a majority of the votes (252 out of<br />
335 votes). (23)<br />
But by 1920 the I.W.W. had declined sharply. Not<br />
from failure in an organizational sense, but from both it<br />
and the strata that it represented having reached the limits<br />
of their political consciousness. The I.W.W. was able to<br />
build industrial unions of the most exploited white workers<br />
and to win many strikes, but past that it was unable to advance.<br />
Its local unions usually fell apart quickly, and many<br />
of its victories were soon reversed. The landmark 1909<br />
steel industry victories at McKees Rocks and Hammond,<br />
Indiana were reversed within a year. The 1912 Lawrence,<br />
Mass. textile strike - the single most famous strike in U.S.<br />
trade union history - was also a great victory, and the<br />
I.W.W. also crushed there by the next year. This was the<br />
general pattern.<br />
The external difficulties faced by the I.W.W. were<br />
far greater than just the straight-forward opposition of the<br />
factory owners. The Euro-Amerikan aristocracy of labor<br />
and its A.F.L. unions viciously fought this upsurge from<br />
below. During the great 1912 Lawrence, Mass. textile<br />
strike, the A.F.L.'s United Textile Workers Union scabbed<br />
throughout the strike. The A.F.L. officially backed the<br />
mill owners. In McKees Rocks, Pa. the skilled workers of<br />
the A.F.L. Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel<br />
Workers used guns to break a second I.W.W. strike.<br />
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of Capitalism<br />
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And the factories and mines were not isolated, but<br />
were part of settler Amerika, where the masses of petitbourgeois<br />
farmers, small merchants and professionals<br />
joined the foremen, skilled craftsmen and supervisors in<br />
backing up the bosses. The European immigrants<br />
represented perhaps only one-seventh of the white population,<br />
and were greatly outnumbered.<br />
The I.W.W.'s weaknesses, however, primarily<br />
reflected its inner contradictions. The syndicalist outlook,<br />
while sincerely taken by many, was also a convenient cover<br />
to avoid dealing with the question of settlerism. Using the<br />
ultra-revolutionary sounding syndicalist philosophy the<br />
I.W.W. could avoid any actual revolutionary work. In<br />
fact, despite its anti-capitalist enthusiasm the I.W.W.<br />
never even made any plans to oppose the U.S. Government<br />
- and never did. Similarly, its Marxist vision of all nations<br />
and peoples being merged into "One Big Union" covering<br />
the globe only covered up the fact that it had no intention<br />
66 of fighting colonialism and national oppression.