Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Organized Thoughts Issue 04
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:
-----=====Earth's Dreamlands=====-----
(313)558-5024 {14.4} (313)558-5517
A BBS for text file junkies
RPGNet GM File Archive Site
.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.
______________________________________________________________________
issue number 4 october 30, 1992 // ///
//
//// // /// /// // //// ////// /// ////// //// //
// // /// // // // // // // // / // // // /////
// // // // // ///// // // // // ////// // //
// //\\ // \\\ ///// // // // // // \\\// / \\ // //
//// \\//// \\ // /// // // // //// \\///// \\/// /// //
\\\\\\ \\ ////\\\\ \\ \\ \\\ \\ \\ \\\\\\ \\\\\
\\ \\\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\\\ \\ \\
\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\\
\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\
\\\ \\\ \\ \\\\ \\\ \\ \\ \\\ \\ \\\ \\\\\
\\\\
address all correspondence to mlepore@mcimail.com
CONTENTS
________
#4.01 About the DISCUSSION BULLETIN ..... The D.B. Committee
#4.02 Purpose ............................ The Industrial Union
Party
#4.03 Correspondence from the INDUSTRIAL
WORKER Collective ............. MV
#4.04 Reply to the I.W. Collective ....... M. Lepore
#4.05 Manifesto .......................... The Convention of
January 1905
______________________________________________________________________
ORGANIZED THOUGHTS is dedicated to the organization of the working
class to establish industrial democracy. Compilation copyright 1992
by M. Lepore. This document may be freely reproduced and distributed
by the general public, in electronic or printed form. Please upload
this publication to your local BBS's, and send copies to associates.
______________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
| |
| "Democracy is the solved riddle of all constitutions." |
| |
| -- Karl Marx -- |
| _Contribution to the Critique |
| of Hegel's __Philosophy of Right__ _ (1843) |
|__________________________________________________________|
______________________________________________________________________
#4.00 Some introductory verbiage ......... Mike Lepore
______________________________________________________________________
This issue includes the self-description of the DISCUSSION BULLETIN.
The DB is a magazine which focuses on the domain of thought with which
I identify myself, and which the DB Committee calls the "libertarian
socialists".
Lib-soc organizations adhere quite literally to the position, "The
emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working
class itself." (Marx, letter to Bebel, et al, Sept. 18, 1879), and
therefore reject Lenin's concept of a "vanguard party" which is
supposed to govern "for" the workers. The DB Committee describes it's
own "political sector" with these words: "... the element Lenin had
in mind when he wrote _Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder_."
Workers of this type are similar in the general tendency to reject the
wage system, government nationalization of industry, "market
socialism", and gradual reform. However, the common "libertarian
socialist" designation doesn't imply an agreement about the goal or
the program. This category includes some organizations which firmly
hold that other lib-soc organizations are critically lacking the
correct objectives or strategy. Some of them might deny that they can
be classified with the other groups, even when stretching the point.
The DB is a fascinating magazine where we can see these groups, which
are similar in some ways, debate various areas of disagreement.
Available by paper mail only, since the magazine is composed of
photocopied letters. I give the DISCUSSION BULLETIN my highest
possible recommendation.
The NEW SYSTEM is the new quarterly journal of the Industrial Union
Party, and it replaces THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC. Same price as before
($4 for four issues). Compared to its predecessor, the NS has a more
modern appearance in layout and typeface. The NS carries a new IUP
declaration, entitled PURPOSE, which is reprinted below.
In a recent public letter, I solicited comments on the following
points of debate:
-- Is a stateless society possible?
-- Can collective industrial planning take the place of the political
state?
-- Is the ballot a useful instrument for bringing about revolutionary
change?
MV, a member of the Industrial Worker Collective, contributed a
reply. His letter is contained here. I have also replied to a couple
of MV's points.
Part of my objective in providing this publication is to get certain
documents of historical significance into electronic form, so that
students and writers may easily quote from them in their own essays.
This issue contains an important paper from labor history.
In January of 1905, members of a numbers of labor organizations met in
Chicago to take action on a problem. It was recognized that the craft
union structure, while uniting the workers in some ways, divides them
in other ways. It was determined that the only solution is for all
the workers in an industry to be members of the same union, and for
all such unions to be departments of a single organization of the
international working class. This strategy is called industrial
unionism, as opposed to craft unionism. The January convention
adopted a "manifesto", the text of which is reproduced below.
One of the points agreed upon at the January convention was that the
workers should reconvene in the following June "for the purpose of
forming an economic organization of the working class." The June
convention established the Industrial Workers of the World.
Okay, we're almost finished.... Just a couple more announcements....
Let's clarify the matter of the IWW having several e-mail addresses.
The address < iww@igc.org > is for the main office in San Francisco,
while < indwrk@web.apc.org > is for the Industrial Worker Collective,
the group in Ottawa which publishes their newspaper, the INDUSTRIAL
WORKER. UUCP users can reach the I.W. Collective at < web!indwrk >.
Future issues of O.T. will report on any online projects undertaken
by the recently computerized Wobblies.
The New Union Party has announced that, effective January 1, 1993, the
subscription price of its newspaper, the NEW UNIONIST, will be going
up. Right up until we have to change our calendars, the price (new
sub or renewal) will be $3.00 for 10 issues ($1 - student/unemployed).
However, after we pop the champagne corks on January 1, we'll have to
pay $5 per year (12 issues). (In my opinion, it's still a bargain.)
New Unionist --- 621 W. Lake St, Suite 210 --- Minneapolis, MN 55408
I Jammed Up!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
In O.T. #3 I said that this is the first presidential election since
1892 that the Socialist Labor Party hasn't nominated a candidate.
Correspondent Ben Perry, who happens to be the co-author (with Frank
Girard) of the book, _The Socialist Labor Party, 1876-1991_, has
clarified:
> The SLP has not participated in any presidential campaigns
> since 1976.
Thanks for pointing out where I jammed up. I should have reported
that the SLP has participated in every presidential election from 1892
to 1976, but none since.
I had also said that the SLP's decision not to nominate candidates was
due to financial problems. Ben replied:
> It's inability is more a lack of human resources than
> finances, although the latter is an important consideration.
I think it's hard to make a distinction. The difficulty is getting
the signatures required for a place on the ballot (almost half a
million signatures are needed in California alone). An organization
with sufficient funds could hire people to walk the streets with the
nominating petitions. That's what I have in mind when I view the
denial of the ballot to small parties as a "financial" situation, but
my description was misleading.
______________________________________________________________________
#4.01 About the Discussion Bulletin ..... The D.B. Committee
______________________________________________________________________
The Discussion Bulletin is affiliated with the Industrial Union Caucus
in Education (IUCE). It was designed to serve as the financially and
politically independent forum of a little-known sector of political
thought. It places the great divide in the "left", not between
anarchists and Marxists, but between capitalism's statist left wing of
vanguardists and social democrats, and the real revolutionaries of our
era: the non-market, anti-statist, libertarian socialists. It is
organized in small groups of syndicalists, communist anarchists,
libertarian municipalists, world socialists, socialist industrial
unionists, council communists, and left communists.
The perspective of these groups with their rejection of capitalism's
wage, market, and money system, along with capitalist politics and
unionism, constitutes the only real alternative to capitalism in both
its market and statist phases.
In the DB the often fiercely antagonistic groups that make up this
sector can debate and discuss the issues that divide them, gain some
understanding of their history and future possibilities, and begin a
process, we hope, of at least limited cooperation.
The pages of the DB are open to anyone in this political sector, the
only limitation being that submissions be typewritten, single-spaced,
and copier ready. We do no editing here. As to content, we assume
that submissions will be relevant to the purpose of the DB and will
avoid personal attacks.
Subscription Information
The Discussion Bulletin is published bimonthly. The price of a
six-issue, one year subscription:
U.S. Individual subscription $3; Library $5
Non-U.S. Surface Mail: Individual sub. $5; Library $10
Air Mail: Individual sub. $10; Library $15
Discussion Bulletin
P.O. Box 1564
Grand Rapids, MI 49501 USA
______________________________________________________________________
#4.02 Purpose ............................. The Industrial Union
Party
______________________________________________________________________
Industrial Union Party
P.O. Box 533
White Plains, NY 10603-1506
P U R P O S E
_____________
WE are a nation of workers. Our class is the majority class. WE
live and work under a system that has failed to reward our labors with
a stable and safe society.
Working class labor power is the primary force that makes our
industries and services work. Ordinary common sense, as well as
universal tenets of equality and justice, affirms that WE, as a class,
have control of priorities in the planning, production, and
distribution of all goods and services needed and wanted by our
society.
WE live under the rules of capitalism. The system does not
respect society's needs. Today our necessary industries are owned and
controlled by a minority class of private corporate owners who use our
labor power in industries, not for the good of society, but for their
corporate power and personal wealth. The nation's laws make this
undemocratic arrangement legal! But WE can change the laws! WE can
vote in a new and better way to manage our lives.
Because the capitalist system is responsible for unemployment,
poverty, ethnic and racial confrontations, and many other forms of our
discontent, the system's replacement is both necessary and desirable.
Because the profit system has brought about the needless impairment of
our life-sustaining environment, its replacement becomes urgent.
History shows us that social deterioration of the kind we witness
today has ended in severe social upheavals. The story of the
dictatorial Nazis and Soviets warn us that, unless the majority of
citizens take control out of the hands of politicians, and lead the
way with its own social and economic program, change itself is
unpredictable and not always for the better. Therefore, we must
prepare ourselves now for a positive, democratic future in which there
will be no repetition of the social problems we now endure. The IUP
has a plan.
The IUP's goal is to bring together our nation's working class
into one unified political and industrial union movement to change the
present economic and governmental system. The new system will be
based on industrial rather than political constituencies, owned and
democratically governed through the industries in which we work. The
new Industrial Government constitution will empower democratic
decision-making to ourselves in all matters essential to building and
maintaining a free and prosperous society.
To accomplish our goal the IUP calls upon all workers to learn of
the proposed new democratic industrial system, and join together in
the workplace and the community to unite into one nation-wide union.
Once WE are industrially and politically organized, WE will use our
ballot to vote out the old system and begin building our new, free,
safe and prosperous national community in harmony and peace with our
world's neighbors.
The time to realize our second American revolution is now. WE
need it. Our future generations deserve it. Join us!
______________________________________________________________________
#4.03 Correspondence from the INDUSTRIAL
WORKER Collective ............. MV
______________________________________________________________________
Thanks for OT's. I am very supportive of the focus you have
selected, promoting unity among various groups with similar programs.
Industrial Worker is the newspaper of the IWW and is a collective
production of many minds and hands in many places. We here at Ottawa
try to function as coordinators of the information flow.
We look forward to more extensive use of conferencing and email,
as a means of information flow among the working class, and want to
explore cooperation with similar publishers.
Here are some personal observations.
LABOR PARTY POLITICS
____________________
In Canada we have a living experiment in labour party government.
Recently the New Democratic Party, which grew from the 30's and is
supported by major trade unions, gained control of provincial govts in
Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
The overall effect has been a slight buffer from some of the worst
atrocities of the fed govt's destruction of the domestic economy.
Resistance to the corpstate program are visible, e.g. revised labour
laws now being debated in Ont. Scabs will be outlawed, union
certification will be easier, and unresolvable disputes will go
quickly to binding arbitration -- some main points. Obviously these
laws are designed by trade union interests who form the foundation of
the NDP. There are other points where the provinces attempt to
counter fed initiatives, but balancing these are all the compromises
that have also been made.
There is something to be said for the role NDP played for decades,
as 3rd party opposition they hindered the ruling class agenda slightly
at times.
In 1991 when the major strikes by public service workers fizzled
under back to work legislation, the leaders in their speeches
emphasized defeating the govt at the polls, rather than direct action
(which could have defeated the govt, but would also have got the
leaders in jail, cost unions money, and shift control from the leaders
to the rank and file.).
In Canada, just as in other countries before, the "labour"
government is under attack from corporate interests including media.
Canada like the US is in a wave of discontent, the NDP could win
federally in 93. However they will still have to deal with global
corporate interests, and can not alter the fundamental relations
between workers and capital. Many NDP supporters are disappointed
along the way with compromises the govt. makes.
I mention this because people outside canada may not hear much
about it. American folks who are interested in labor party politics
as a means of revolutionary change, should certainly pay attention to
this ongoing experiment in your northern back yard. You can contact
the NDP by writing to national party leader The Right Honourable
Audrey McLaughlin, House of Commons Ottawa Ontario Canada K1A 0A6.
STATELESS Society?
__________________
The question should rather be, can society survive the state?
Society is an organic organism of all the people and all their
relations with each other economic, cultural, etc. The state is
merely an artificial construct, violently enforced, which feeds upon
that organism of reality. By controlling some social relations the
state prevents the organic evolution of society. The state was set up
by the ruling class, and then modified somewhat to appease the angry
workers. No state was never designed by workers as a method of
controlling social relations (nor protecting borders). The workers
have other means of doing so.
COLLECTIVE INDUSTRIAL PLANNING
______________________________
Industrial planning has been done by the state in the "communist"
countries; they seem to improve the distribution of goods, but have
problems with production.
True they are all hampered by outside enemies, but even if you
postulate a world socialist state, there will always be rebellious
forces and people trying to subvert the system and help themselves, or
even overthrow the state. Some energy would always be required for
state security.
In capitalist countries industrial planning by the state has been
limited to dabbling: trade restrictions, product safety standards,
and specific projects such as hydroelectricity. In the 1930's "make
work" projects were set up by the state to appease the hungry workers,
who built roads etc.
States are presently facilitating global trade, through the EEC,
NAFTA, etc. But in this instance the states are merely acting as
agent for the ruling class, placing their whole populations at risk;
with no goals other than profit for a few; the states are abdicating
control of national resources and economy. This is "industrial
UN-planning" or "devo-lution," where local supply and trade, the
domestic and organic industrial base is dismantled and dependence on
distant suppliers is enforced.
Thus, industrial planning for human benefit does not really exist
in the capitalist states, and is not satisfactory when planned by the
socialist states.
The problem in the socialist state is that the free will of the
individual, the capacity for creative initiative, is stifled. So
there is no growth, just an ever deepening rigidity which does not
answer the natural fluctuations in society.
Human industry is organic, ever changing. Like society or a blade
of grass, industry can't be "planned" from the top. Not if you want
efficiency, vitality, or popular participation. Too much of what goes
into actual production is unaccounted for in any plan: a million
volunteer acts involving trust, familial relations, and such things as
moral support. No top-down plan can ever take all this into account,
but the organic growth of industry builds on this complex and strong
foundation of human social reality.
The Industrial Union or Anarcho-syndicalist plan for grass roots
workers control in each workplace united by federated industrial
unions, is the only feasible, global industrial "plan" which has ever
been proposed in recorded history. An American judge once called the
IWW Preamble the most scientific document he had ever seen.
The Grand Industrial Plan allows industry to be "planned" from the
bottom up, a living changing "plan", not a thing written on paper but
an active process. It's like a football game, you don't plan the
outcome, you play the game and then it comes out one way or the other.
Only when control is in the hands of the people directly, will
industry be found to harmonize with life -- with society, environment
etc.
There is a place for the "community council", not limited to the
workplace but including its workers; this community council can
overrule the workplace on resource allocation, polluting practices,
etc. If you extrapolate these community councils federating, then you
have something like, not a state but a mutual agreement. The Six
Nations Iroquois Confederacy needed only the Great Law of Peace, which
they could transmit orally (although it was also written). The
community councils federation which can be global, might have a simple
agreement pertaining to individual freedom, equality and democracy.
ECONOMICS OF ABUNDANCE
______________________
The economic question has not been fully addressed by utopian
visionaries. In order to achieve the stateless society and make the
Grand Industrial Plan a total success, we are going to have to
fundamentally alter our economic relations. I trace the root of the
problem to the point where you place a relative VALUE on goods and
services. The alternative is SHARING, that is GIVING of free will.
The very concept of trade, value for value, must go, it seems to me,
before you can eliminate the tendency towards capitalism.
Such a society with its economy based not on trading but on
giving, was possible in the past, for it was practiced by many earth
based cultures. It is also possible now, but it was not possible in
the recent past until about 1950. The key is abundance.
When you have a scarcity of goods or services, that product takes
on extra value and there is no way to prevent it being traded to the
highest bidder, starting the cycle of speculative profit and enforced
scarcity. But when there is abundance of everything needed for a good
life, it becomes possible to remove the relative scale of values, and
do away with currency, capital, credit, and private property in the
process.
Many forest peoples formerly lived in abundance. Some British
Columbia natives used to try and outdo each other in giving away
things, I believe it was called potlatch. People would give away a
dozen canoes at a time, furs, jewelry, utensils, everything they
owned... The most generous, if they were also thought wise, were
chosen as leaders. These people would throw their canoes in the fire,
if they couldn't give them away, just to prove they didn't give a
damn.
Now technology exists to provide an abundance of all necessities,
and more besides, to all the people of the world, with a minimum of
human effort on the scale of 4 hours a week per worker. It is clearly
obvious that computer communications is the key that makes global
cooperation feasible, to unite the entire human population in a
democratic social system. Such a technological abundance is clearly
superior to that of earth based peoples, not in all ways but in the
crucial way of making possible a global united community, which was
never possible before.
Thus for the first time all humanity will begin to think as if it
were one giant brain. It is clear that wars between various factions
will never be ended until such unity of communication is established.
Industrial democracy could make this technological abundance a
reality - and still protect ecology.
Industrial democracy would not enable us to drive gas powered
autos to the mega mall, to shop for cheap shirts from Guatemala, or to
buy frozen dinner in aluminum trays in a pretty cardboard box. The
"standard" of living, that is the frantic pace of excess consumption
and waste, must go "down" in the over-developed countries -- but that
means the quality of life will go up as we start doing sensible things
like building trains and planting gardens. You won't buy tv dinners,
but you can get all the food you want for free. Meanwhile in the
"third world" the standard and quality of life would come up to meet
ours -- since they would now control their own resources and labor.
The stateless society and industrial democracy are possible, and
marvelously practical; but they require a high degree of communication
and cooperation. They remain the ideal towards which we can struggle,
the bright light at the end of this tunnel. Don't think it's so far
away. The tools are in our hands and really, what is stopping us?
Probably with 10 per cent of the population in each country
participating in a revolutionary global industrial program, we could
take over the world. ---MV
______________________________________________________________________
#4.04 Reply to the I.W. Collective ....... M. Lepore
______________________________________________________________________
This is a brief response, and not a complete one, to the Industrial
Worker perspective that was provided by MV.
> The problem in the socialist state is that the free will of
> the individual, the capacity for creative initiative, is
> stifled.
I'd like to make a comment on the appearance of the adjective
"socialist" in such proximity to the noun "state". Coming as I do
from a Marxist-De Leonist background, the phrase "the socialist state"
sounds to me as discordant as, for example, "the bright darkness".
It's fundamental in Marxian theory that the state is to be
discontinued as soon as the ruling class is successfully deposed. The
fact that Leninists have interpreted revolution as the opportunity to
make themselves into new rulers of coercive states may be a reflection
on Leninism, but it's no reflection on Marxism. As Marx put it -
"When class domination ends, there will be no state in the present
political sense of the word." (Conspectus on Bakunin, 1875)
Therefore, the IWW goal described above -
> grass roots workers control in each workplace united by
> federated industrial unions
is compatable with Marx's original vision -- before "Marxism" was
distorted into its opposite.
I'm not claiming that Marx was a syndicalist. The Industrial Union
concept was not conceived until the early 20th century. However, Marx
and Engels did repeatedly emphasize that, because the state is nothing
but an instrument of oppression, a true classless society would
discard this obsolete shell. "As soon as there is no longer any
social class to be held in subjection", Engels said, "... a special
repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary." In place of the
state, therefore, "... the government of persons is replaced by the
administration of things, and the conduct of the processes of
production." (_Socialism, Utopian and Scientific_, 1880)
The states which claim to be "Marxian socialist" have, indeed, imposed
regimentation, censorship, the negation of individuality - they have
even committed mass murder - and more than once. In doing so, they
have abandoned socialism, regardless of what they may choose to call
themselves.
You may wonder why I'm bothering to fight for a mere word. A word is
only a vocal cord vibration, charged with meaning only through
association. Why not let the repressive regimes keep the word
"socialism", and simply use another word for the highly democratic IU
model? For the same reason that we can't let them get away
unchallenged with terminology like "the people's democratic republic."
Since such names were selected to obscure the exploitative
characteristics of phony "socialism", therefore a disclosure of the
facts involves correction of the names.
MV continues:
> There is a place for the "community council", not limited to
> the workplace but including its workers; this community
> council can overrule the workplace on resource allocation,
> polluting practices, etc.
I agree with this concept. Worker's self-management is the best
general policy, but the community should be able to overrule the
workers' decision when necessary. Protection of the planet's
biosphere may not be the only occasion.
In fact, an adversary in a debate recently stopped me dead in my
tracks by asking a simple question which I had never considered
before. Suppose we had workers' control of industry. What if the
textile workers were to calculate that they could have the shortest
workweek by producing nothing but polyester? Couldn't this result in
everyone having nothing but polyester to wear?
This is easily answerable only if we go beyond the traditional
Industrial Union model. If and when situations arise in which the
most localized interests (real or imagined) of the workers in a
particular place, or in a particular occupation, come into conflict
with the more general good, then the industrial democracy should be
administered at the social level (municipal or global, depending on
the issue), and not at the workplace level. However, for best
results, this must be the exception. For most of the
method-A-versus-method-B decisions that are made each day in industry,
the workers should practice decentralized self-management.
______________________________________________________________________
#4.05 Manifesto .......................... The Convention of
January 1905
______________________________________________________________________
Manifesto
Adopted Jan. 4, 1905
Social relations and groupings only reflect mechanical and
industrial conditions. The great facts of present industry are the
displacement of human skill by machines, and the increase of
capitalist power through concentration in the possession of the tools
with which wealth is produced and distributed.
Because of these facts, trade divisions among laborers and
competition among capitalists alike are disappearing. Class divisions
grow ever more fixed, and class antagonisms more sharp. Trade lines
have been swallowed up in a common servitude of all workers to the
machines which they tend. New machines, ever replacing less
productive ones, wipe out whole trades, and plunge new bodies of
workers into the ever-growing army of tradeless, hopeless unemployed.
As human beings and human skill are displaced by mechanical progress,
the capitalists need use of the workers only during that brief period
when muscles and nerves respond most intensely. The moment the
laborer no longer yields the maximum of profits, he is thrown upon the
scrap pile, to starve alongside the discarded machine. A deadline has
been drawn, and an age limit established, to cross which, in this
world of monopolized opportunities, means condemnation to industrial
death.
The worker, wholly separated from the land and the tools, with
his skill of craftmanship rendered useless, is sunk in the uniform
mass of wage slaves. He sees his power of resistance broken by craft
divisions, perpetuated from outgrown industrial stages. His wages
constantly grow less as his hours grow longer, and monopolized prices
grow higher. Shifted hither and thither by the demands of
profit-takers, the laborer's home no longer exists. In this helpless
condition, he is forced to accept whatever humiliating conditions his
master may impose. He is subjected to a physical and intellectual
examination more searching than was the chattel slave when sold from
the auction block.
Laborers are no longer classified by differences in trade
skill, but the employer assigns them according to the machines to
which they are attached. These differences, far from representing
differences in skill or interests among the laborers, are imposed by
the employers, that workers may be pitted against one another, and
spurred to greater exertion in the shop, and that all resistance to
capitalist tyranny may be weakened by artificial distinctions.
While encouraging these outgrown divisions among the workers,
the capitalists carefully adjust themselves to the new conditions.
They wipe out all differences among themselves, and present a united
front in their war upon labor. Through employers' associations, they
seek to crush, with brutal force, by the injunctions of the judiciary,
and the use of military power, all efforts at resistance. Or when the
other policy seems more profitable, they conceal their daggers beneath
the Civic Federation, and hoodwink and betray those whom they would
rule and exploit. Both methods depend for success upon the blindness
and internal dissentions of the working class. The employers' line of
battle and methods of warfare correspond to the solidarity of the
mechanical and industrial concentration, while laborers still form
their fighting organizations on lines of long-gone trade divisions.
The battles of the past emphasize this lesson. The textile workers of
Lowell, Philadelphia and Fall River; the butchers of Chicago, weakened
by the disintegrating effects of trade divisions; the machinists on
the Santa Fe, unsupported by their fellow-workers subject to the same
masters; the long-struggling miners of Colorado, hampered by lack of
unity and solidarity upon the industrial battlefield, all bear witness
to the helplessness and impotency of labor as at present organized.
This worn-out and corrupt system offers no promise of
improvement and adaptation. There is no silver lining to the clouds
of darkness and despair settling down upon the world of labor.
This system offers only a perpetual struggle for slight relief
within wage slavery. It is blind to the possibility of establishing
an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery, but
where the workers will own the tools which they operate, and the
product of which they alone will enjoy.
It shatters the ranks of the workers into fragments, rendering
them helpless and impotent on the industrial battlefield.
Separation of craft from craft renders industrial and financial
solidarity impossible.
Union men scab upon union men; hatred of worker for worker is
engendered, and the workers are delivered helpless and disintegrated
into the hands of the capitalists.
Craft jealousy leads to the attempt to create trade monopolies.
Prohibitive initiation fees are established, that force men to
become scabs against their will. Men whom manliness or circumstances
have driven from one trade are thereby fined when they seek to
transfer membership to the union of a new craft.
Craft divisions foster political ignorance among the workers,
thus dividing their class at the ballot box, as well as in the shop,
mine and factory.
Craft unions may be and have been used to assist employers in
the establishment of monopolies and the raising of prices. One set of
workers is thus used to make harder the conditions of life of another
body of laborers.
Craft divisions hinder the growth of class consciousness of the
workers, foster the idea of harmony of interests between employing
exploiter and employed slave. They permit the association of the
misleaders of the workers with the capitalists in the Civic
Federation, where plans are made for the perpetuation of capitalism,
and the permanent enslavement of the workers through the wage system.
Previous efforts for the betterment of the working class have
proven abortive because limited in scope and disconnected in action.
Universal economic evils afflicting the working class can be
eradicated only by a universal working class movement. Such a
movement of the working class is impossible while separate craft and
wage agreements are made, favoring the employer against other crafts
in the same industry, and while energies are wasted in fruitless
jurisdictional struggles, which serve only to further the personal
aggrandizement of union officials.
A movement to fulfill these conditions must consist of one
great industrial union embracing all industries - providing for craft
autonomy locally, industrial autonomy internationally, and working
class unity generally.
It must be founded on the class struggle, and its general
administration must be conducted in harmony with the recognition of
the irrepressible conflict between the capitalist class and the
working class.
It should be established as the economic organization of the
working class, without affiliation with any political party.
All power should rest in a collective membership.
Local, national and general administration, including union
labels, buttons, badges, transfer cards, initiation fees, and per
capita tax should be uniform throughout.
All members must hold membership in the local, national or
international union covering the industry in which they are employed,
but transfers of membership between unions, local, national or
international, should be universal.
Workingmen bringing union cards from industrial unions in
foreign countries should be freely admitted into the organization.
The general administration should issue a publication
representing the entire union and its principles, which should reach
all members in every industry at regular intervals.
A central defense fund, to which all members contribute, should
be established and maintained.
All workers, therefore, who agree with the principles herein
set forth, will meet in convention at Chicago the 27th day of June,
1905, for the purpose of forming an economic organization of the
working class along the lines marked out in this manifesto.
Representation in the convention shall be based upon the number
of workers whom the delegate represents. No delegate, however, shall
be given representation in the convention on the numerical basis of an
organization unless he has credentials - bearing the seal of his
union, local, national or international, and the signatures of the
officers thereof - authorizing him to install his union as a working
part of the proposed economic organization, in the industrial
department to which it logically belongs in the general plan of
organization. Lacking this authority, the delegate shall represent
himself as an individual.
____________________________ Line 763; end of issue number 4 _______
