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Organized Thoughts Issue 01
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issue number 1 june 5, 1992 // ///
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Address all correspondence to mlepore@mcimail.com
CONTENTS
________
#1.01 Introduction ........................ Mike Lepore
#1.02 Preamble to the IWW Constitution .... The Industrial Workers
of the World
#1.03 Declaration of Principles ........... The Industrial Union
Party
#1.04 Our Goal ............................ The New Union Party
#1.05 What is Socialism? .................. The De Leonist Society
______________________________________________________________________
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 your friends.
______________________________________________________________________
#1.01 Introduction ........................ Mike Lepore
______________________________________________________________________
|||||| What am I trying to do?
||||||
|||||| ORGANIZED THOUGHTS is a new publication distributed
|||||| internationally by electronic mail, and by upload to BBS
|||||| file libraries. It is dedicated to discussing the idea
|||||| of INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY through INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM.
||||||
|||||| Even if you disagree with what you read here, you will
|||||| find this journal to be quite educational. Debates about
|||||| principles and strategies are welcome.
||||||
|||||| As you shall see, there are a number of organizations and
individuals promoting this goal, industrial democracy,
with somewhat similar programs for attaining it. Some of them believe
that the programs of the others are lacking some features which are
necessary to make these programs workable, or they may use terminology
differently. I encourage the various organizations to submit articles
explaining these matters in their own words, but I will endeavor to be
fair when paraphrasing them.
I'm not a member of any political or economic organization. I try
to remain on friendly terms with anyone who aims uncompromisingly at
the education and organization of the working class, for the
attainment of workers' self-management, in a classless society.
The organizations with position statements excerpted in this document
are independent. When various groups and individuals submit articles
to this forum, or grant me permission to reproduce their documents,
this should not be interpreted to mean that they are affiliated with
each other.
This journal is an experiment in compiling letters and articles into a
publically-available archive of text files. I hope that an electronic
database of working class literature of all types will eventually be
created, and that this publication will be absorbed into it in some
way.
I have called it ORGANIZED THOUGHTS for two reasons:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The first reason is that a world free of exploitation can be
established only if the international working class consciously and
properly organizes to construct it. This forum is dedicated to
thoughts about why and how the working class must be organized. We
need to discuss why organization is essential, what's wrong with the
types of organization that have been attempted in the past, what kind
of organization is considered viable, and what life will be like after
we organize society in an improved way.
The second reason for calling it ORGANIZED THOUGHTS is that the
material included here needs to be organized according to the limited
available space. While there are many bulletin board conferences
suitable for humorous or divergent conversation, this particular forum
will need to be condensed to emphasize education and rational
argument. There will be some emphasis on "classic reprints", like the
works of Marx and Engels, and the official positions declared by
various groups. In addition, your manuscripts on related subject are
invited.
~~ A CHALLENGE TO THE READER ~~
The intellectual challenge to you, the reader, is to compare and
contrast the ideas you read here.
In what ways are they similar, and in what ways different?
What questions, regarding the social goal and how to get there, are
left unanswered?
If you agree with a statement: Are the best possible arguments being
given? Can you improve the argument, or add supportive facts?
If you disagree with a statement: Are your disagreements due to doubt
about reported facts, or due to reading what you consider logical
fallacies, or differences in value-judgements, i.e., what you consider
"right", what kind of world you would prefer to live in?
Your conclusions should be tentative, since more complete statements
of the viewpoints of others will be given in the near future.
Caution: Beware of the tendency to fill in the gaps with your
imagination, as a result of stereotypes conveyed by the media. For
example, you may have been told repeatedly that collective ownership
of industry is synonymous with management by a Big Brother state.
However, in fact, the contributors to this journal come from a
philosophical sector that is opposed to all social regimentation and
the repressive powers of the state -- ANY state.
~~ THE GOAL AND THE PROGRAM ~~
The goal of the industrial democracy movement is to abolish the wage
system, i.e., the system in which members of one social class, the
many who do NOT own capital, in order to live, must seek and obtain
employment by another social class, the few who own capital. The goal
is to abolish class distinction itself, so that all members of society
will be equal participants in the industrial management process.
Industrial democracy will be a social system in which society as a
whole will use the principle of majority vote to decide what goods and
services shall be provided, what characteristics these goods and
services shall have, and when, where and how the product shall be
distributed. Whenever administrative tasks are delegated to
supervisors or management committees, these shall be elected directly
by their workplace constituency. No appointees shall exist in any
management positions.
Industrial unionism is the principle of organizing the entire working
class into a single workplace-based association, or industrial union,
so that the workers' own association can take over the management
role. This is to implemented without giving any power to "leaders" or
a "vanguard party".
~~ THE BALLOT QUESTION ~~
There are two main schools of thought in the movement to build
industrial democracy through industrial unionism.
One is the viewpoint that the industrial union will be
self-sufficient, and it will not offer the workers advice regarding
whether they should pull levers in the voting booth, or, if so, which
ones. Political activity, like religion, is considered a matter of
individual choice. It is believed that politics in the union only
divides the workers while they should be uniting.
Emphasis is placed on the fact that, because the workers are in
physical possession of the tools of production every day, and produce
all wealth, therefore economic actions, if planned wisely, will give
us an irresistible power to change the world. These actions might
include not only such tactics as strikes and slow-downs, but may, if
necessary, also include a general strike of all labor. "Direct"
economic action is emphasized, which means action that organized
workers can do by themselves, for themselves, without reliance on
benevolent politicians or other supposed allies.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), founded in 1905, is
probably the main advocate of this perspective. (The IWW members
often refer to themselves by the nickname "Wobblies".)
The other point of view is that the working class should unite into
one political movement as well as into one industrial union. Some of
the reasons cited for using the ballot are: to use political
campaigns as educational vehicles; to enact a constitutional mandate
for industrial democracy, which the union's economic might will
enforce; to maximize the chances that the social transformation will
be made peacefully; to keep the movement above-ground instead of
persecuted, to the greatest extent possible; and to dismantle the
political state, which is always an instrument of some sort of ruling
class.
It is important to note that it is NOT the goal to have this political
party rule society through the state, as in the so-called "Communist"
systems. The party is considered a temporary expediency, while the
industrial union is given the entire positive and constructive role.
This dual political-industrial program was set forth by Daniel De Leon
in the first decade of this century. There are several organizations
which show the influence of De Leonist principles, such as the De
Leonist Society, the New Union Party, and the Industrial Union Party,
in addition to several others. These various groups seem to disagree
primarily on the question of what is the best type of internal
organization for the political party, the degree of correctness and
effectiveness of certain tactics and terminology, and similar matters.
This may or may not be an unusual opinion, but I do not think of any
of these organizations as being in competition with each other. I
personally view all of them as doing important work, all of them
contributing, in their own way.
~~ THAT MISUNDERSTOOD WORD "SOCIALISM" ~~
ALWAYS keep in mind that the organizations whose position statements
are reproduced here are advocating something that has never been
instituted, anywhere.
'Time' magazine and the network news are pounding you with frequent
repetition of the phrase "the failure of socialism". This is likely
to cause confusion, unless you remember that all the bureaucratic and
undemocratic state-run experiments of the past and present are
completely unrelated to the genuine Industrial Democracy that is under
discussion in this forum. There are many reasons to object to the
liberal Welfare State ideal, and the Bolshevik police-state ideal.
The miserable failure of these pseudo-socialist ventures is no
reflection on "social ownership of industry", as the term is properly
understood.
Most people associate words such as "collectivism" and "socialism"
with government ownership or government regulation. If you are going
to make any sense out of the typical articles you'll read here, you'll
need to forget that word association. The subject of this document is
a movement that does NOT advocate any nationalization, or government
ownership or control, and is absolutely opposed to this approach.
Instead, the workers' own association is to be transformed into a
democratic form of management.
Most people associate the words "collectivism" and "socialism" with a
sequence of reforms, intended, at least in theory, to bring the people
some relief from the excesses of class rule. Or this reformism is
intended as part of a stepping-stone or evolutionary approach, based
on the belief that social ownership can be instituted gradually.
That's another word association I'll ask you to set aside when you
read the documents of the industrial democracy movement. You might
hear them say that reform efforts are unavoidable, but entirely
inadequate for the building of a sane society. On the other hand, you
might read the viewpoint that reform demands are harmful, because
expending effort to repair junk, before throwing it away, leaves one
psychologically and intellectually unprepared to throw it away. This
is roughly the spectrum of opinions within the industrial union
movement regarding the incremental reform of class rule.
~~ WELCOME ! ~~
Be sure not to miss the future issues of this publication. More
information on these vital issues will be on its way to you.
______________________________________________________________________
#1.02 Preamble to the IWW Constitution .... The Industrial Workers
of the World
______________________________________________________________________
|||||| The IWW Preamble, in its present form, was ratified in
|||||| 1908. The IWW publishes the newspaper THE INDUSTRIAL
|||||| WORKER monthly ($10 per year).
|||||| Industrial Workers of the World
|||||| 1095 Market St., Suite 204
|||||| San Francisco, CA 94103
The working class and the employing class have nothing in
common. There can be no peace as long as hunger and want are found
among millions of working people, and the few, who make up the
employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the
workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth
and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into
fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the
ever-growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a
state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against
another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat
one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the
employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the
working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed, and the interests of the
working class upheld, only by an organization formed in such a way
that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if
necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout in on, in any
department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a
fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary
watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with
capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for
everyday struggles with the capitalists, but also to carry on
production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing
industrially, we are forming the structure of the new society within
the shell of the old.
______________________________________________________________________
#1.03 Declaration of Principles ....... The Industrial Union Party
______________________________________________________________________
|||||| Reproduced by permission of Mr. Sam Brandon, the general
|||||| secretary of the Industrial Union Party. The IUP
|||||| publishes a magazine named THE NEW SYSTEM.
|||||| (quarterly, $4 for four issues).
|||||| Industrial Union Party
|||||| P.O. Box 533
|||||| White Plains, NY 10603-1506
As a scientific socialist organization, the Industrial Union Party
of America has been influenced by the work of the many great
socialist theoreticians. However, the primary influence on our
theory, apart from that of Marx and Engels, has come from the
American socialist theoretician, Daniel De Leon.
WE, the overwhelming majority of citizens in this country are
slaves -- wage slaves.
As members of the working class, we produce all of the wealth
of America, and we get in return -- a wage. It is just enough to
maintain us and enable us to breed replacements, who, in their turn,
will give up their lives, bone, nerves and muscles, their joy and love
and generosity and kindness, and every natural human grace -- for a
wage.
So long as capitalism lasts, there is no escape for us from the
grinding need to sell ourselves.
Our capacity to labor is all we have to sell, and we must sell
it to the capitalists. That's how the capitalists make a profit -- by
exploiting the working class. That is, the working class produces all
the wealth, from which the capitalist ruling class takes the largest
portion, in this process of exploitation, and, in return, gives its
slaves a wage.
The fact that some workers have color TV's, automatic
dishwashers, two or three automobiles, and their own homes, does not
alter the fact that they are exploited. Indeed, the debts usually
connected with such ownership fastens the chains of wage slavery even
more securely.
Every single degrading aspect of capitalist society is in decay
-- wars for profit and plunder abroad, race hatred dividing the
working class, the slums we live in, the ruin of our environment,
expensive, poor or nonexistent medical care, inadequate education, the
second-class status of women, drug abuse, riots, crime -- in short,
every one of those brutal, callous, cruel, and desperate things which
goes on every hour, every minute, in capitalist society, grows out of
exploitation.
If we want to stop the degradation, we must end exploitation.
If we want to free ourselves from wage slavery, we must abolish
the profit system.
If we want to live decent lives of freedom and fulfillment, we
must build a Socialist Economic Democracy.
The rock on which capitalism -- and every other system of
profit and poverty -- is built is exploitation, and its utter, final,
irrevocable abolition must be our goal. We must never be sidetracked,
never be drawn aside by other, seeming more attractive goals. We must
never waste ourselves on reforming symptoms. The goal, the abolition
of the system of wage slavery, is ALL.
To reach that goal in a modern industrialized country, we
cannot use the methods of the past.
We will accomplish nothing but our own suicide by attempts at
armed insurrection.
We must build not on our weakness, but on our strength, our
strength as the working class, that holds in its hands the source of
all power in capitalist society. Our hands and our brains operate all
the facilities of production, communication, and distribution -- under
capitalist orders. If we take, hold and operate our workplaces in our
names, and for ourselves, locking out the capitalists, the ruling
class will be helpless.
Then we can reap the full abundance of our social product,
realizing humanity's great dream: "From each according to his
ability, to each according to his need."
To accomplish that revolution, we must organize on the
political and economic fields. Politically, we must use every forum
open to us, from the soapbox to the ballotbox, to spread the idea of
revolution. On the economic front, we must organize as a class at our
workplaces into Socialist Industrial Unions, in order to disarm the
ruling class, and render it powerless to thwart our revolution.
And Socialist Industrial Unions will foreshadow our future form
of government, because the present form, the political state, is a
weapon of the ruling class, while the SIU administration proposed will
be an administration of things, not coercion of our fellow workers.
We need a government which will be no more than an agency for
planning production and services, which must therefore be derived from
our workplaces, where we will elect our own representatives to decide
the kinds and quantities of production and services to satisfy our
needs.
Since the means of operation of the ruling class, its private
control over what in effect must be public property, will be
abolished, our socialist commonwealth will be a classless society.
Since our revolution will be the first in history of, by and
for the working class, with no elite "Party" leading us by the nose
into a bureaucratic "Worker's State" so it can climb on our backs like
any ruling class, we must be conscious of what we are doing and where
we're going, conscious to a degree never before seen in a revolution.
Just to begin to organize and develop Socialist Industrial
Unions, in the fact of the ruling class's ferocious hostility, will
require the kind of strength and determination that can spring only
from thorough knowledge, leading to this consciousness.
Given the consciousness of wage slavery, given the knowledge of
how to end it, our second task, organization, will inevitably follow
like the beginning of the dawn of a new day.
______________________________________________________________________
#1.04 Our Goal ............................ The New Union Party
______________________________________________________________________
|||||| From THE NEW UNIONIST, newspaper of the New Union
|||||| Party, January 1992. Reprinted by permission of
|||||| Ms. Jane Christian, the NUP corresponding secretary.
|||||| Subscription rate - before Jan. 1, 1993: $3 for
|||||| 10 issues; after Jan. 1, 1993: $5 for 12 issues
|||||| New Unionist
|||||| 621 W. Lake St, Suite 210
|||||| Minneapolis, MN 55408
The New Union Party seeks to bring the entire economy under the
ownership and control of all the people. A democratic economy will
provide useful and satisfying jobs for all workers. It will end
production for profit and will produce to meet human needs. By
eliminating the profit motive, it will end waste and pollution, and
will make the conditions of work as safe, comfortable and gratifying
as possible.
To achieve this new economic system, the workers need to unite
in one rank-and-file controlled union. This includes those workers
now in unions, and the presently unorganized workers. It includes
white collar and professional employees, as well as factory workers
and craftsmen. It includes the unemployed as well as employed
workers.
New Unionism will work to end competition for jobs, and will
promote cooperation among workers of all industries. It will enable
the workers to protect their immediate interests against the
employers.
In addition to organizing industrially, the workers will need a
political party to spread the idea of social ownership, and to gain
the support of the majority at the polls. When this is achieved, the
workers will assume control of their workplaces, and manage them
democratically through their New Unions. An elected Congress of
delegates from each industry will plan and manage the national
economy, and will replace the present political Congress as the
nation's government.
______________________________________________________________________
#1.05 What is Socialism? .................. The De Leonist Society
______________________________________________________________________
|||||| From the March 1986 issue of THE DE LEONIST SOCIETY
|||||| BULLETIN. Reprinted by permission of Mr. George Shand,
|||||| corresponding secretary of the De Leonist Society of
|||||| Canada.
|||||| The De Leonist Society of Canada
|||||| P.O. Box 944, Station F
|||||| Toronto, Ontario M4Y 2N9 Canada
||||||
|||||| The De Leonist Society of the United States
|||||| P.O. Box 22055
|||||| San Francisco, CA 94122
Socialism is a classless system of society in which the land,
factories, mines, mills, and all other means of social production,
distribution and services will be owned and controlled by all the
people, and democratically administered through a Socialist Industrial
Union government. Production will be carried on for use.
There will be no economic classes in Socialist society. With
the elimination of private (and State) ownership, the division of
society into exploiting and exploited classes will end.
Instead of wages, the useful producers under Socialism will get
back directly and indirectly (indirectly through social services --
public health, education, recreation, etc.) all that they produce.
There will be no political State, no politicians, no political
parties. Instead, we shall have a government based on Industrial
Union representation -- an industrial democracy.
Under Socialism, all authority will be exercised by the useful
producers. Organized into integrally united Socialist Industrial
Unions, they will manage and direct all social production. In each
plant, the rank and file will democratically elect a council or
management committee to supervise their plant operations. So with the
shop units. The workers will also elect their foremen and
supervisors. Finally, they will elect their representatives to the
All-Industrial Union Congress, which will plan and coordinate all
social production.
All representatives and administrators will be elected directly
by the rank and file. To guarantee effective democratic control over
all administrative bodies, all representatives will be subject to
immediate recall whenever a majority of those who elected them decide
it is necessary and desirable to do so. Such is the full-flowered
democracy of socialism.
The Socialist Industrial Union form of government and the
program for establishing it were discovered by the great American
Marxist Daniel De Leon. They are expounded by the De Leonist Society.
______________________________________________________________________
Revisions to this file
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sep 06 1992 Changed e-mail address
Sep 06 1992 New mailing address for the IUP
Sep 06 1992 Permission to reprint clarified
Sep 11 1992 Manuscripts invited
Oct 22 1992 Changed e-mail address
Oct 28 1992 New name for IUP publication
Oct 28 1992 New price for NUP publication
____________________________ Line 555; end of issue number 1 _______
