Introduction

Revolutionaries who win, are immortalized in history.  Revolutionaries who lose, are relegated to the dustbin of history.

The Industrial Workers of the World, known around the globe as the Wobblies, were revolutionaries who lost.  And yet, 100 years after they were crushed by the most brutal campaign of repression in American political history, the Wobblies are still remembered, romanticized, and immortalized.

This book presents a history of the IWW in its own words, by its best writers and most eloquent speakers.  At the pinnacle of its strength in the first decades of the 20^th century, the IWW set itself apart from the moderate labor unions of its time by its uncompromising radical stance against capitalism and the wage system, and distinguished itself from the Leninists and Communists by its unflinching condemnation of dictatorship and centralized political power.  

I have had the immense privilege of being an IWW member for many years, of organizing IWW strikes and picket lines, and of serving as a Co-Chair of its General Executive Board.  And during that time, I have seen that the principles that the IWW preached a century ago still have their place.  Today, in the first decades of the 21^st century, when the AFL-CIO labor movement is moribund and impotent, and when Leninist dictatorships in the Soviet Union and elsewhere have collapsed, the message of the IWW still gives hope to those who fight for a world without bosses.

                                                                        One Big Union, One General Strike!

Lenny Flank,   x341341

Part One:  Foundation

Editor’s note:  The IWW was founded on the basic principle of opposition to capitalism and rejection of the wage system.  This set the IWW apart from the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the dominant labor union in the country at the time, which fought only for higher wages and better working conditions within capitalism (what AFL founder Samuel Gompers termed “pure and simple unionism”). 

The basic revolutionary goals of the Wobblies were set out succinctly and passionately in the Preamble to the IWW Constitution, which contains what may be the most famous phrase in American labor history: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”

The IWW’s commitment to revolutionary socialism is also set out in two speeches by Eugene V. Debs, one of the most towering figures of the American Left.  A perennial candidate for President of the US under the banner of the Socialist Party, Debs argued that “pure and simple unionism” was a dead end, and that only concerted action by the entire working class to abolish capitalism completely, would ever bring about real changes in the social and economic condition of working people.

Today, at a time when AFL-CIO labor unions seek only to gather more crumbs from the capitalist table, while the rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer, the radical message of the IWW is just as relevant as it was in 1905. 

Preamble to the IWW Constitution

(1905)

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so 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 interest 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 lookout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wages 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 the every day struggle with 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.