Posts tagged IWW

Due to space constraints, ALLiance #5′s recommended reading list has been moved to this blog.  Also look forward to a bibliography for my article ALL Wobbly to appear here as well.

I hope to provide food for thought and vindication for left-libertarian theory and strategy.

ALL the best and enjoy:

1.  The State by Franz Oppenheimer with Introduction by George H. Smith (ISBN: 0-930073-23-1).

For those unfamiliar with Franz Oppenheimer’s classic work of political theory and sociology, I envy you because it is electric with radicalizing energy.  In one slim book Oppenheimer brings together many important philosophical and political threads and, most importantly, points out our opposition, our enemy: the “political means.”

“For a most enlightening treatment of the genesis and nature of the State, I refer my readers to Franz Oppenheimer’s short treatise on the subject (“The State …”).  It is sufficient here to define it as an organization primarily designed to perpetuate the division of Society into an owning and exploiting class and a landless, exploited class.  In its genesis it is an organization of a conquering group, by means of which that group maintains its economic exploitation of those subjugated.  In its later stages, when the conquering class has become merely an owning class, the State is an organization controlled by this class through its control of wealth, for the purpose of protecting ownership against the propertyless classes and facilitating their exploitation by the owning class.  The State is thus the natural enemy of all its citizens except those of the owning class.”  –Suzanne LaFollette, Concerning Women, footnote on pg 6-7.

I would like to highlight three important contributions this, particular, book offers to radical anarcho-libertarianism.  First, Mr. Oppenheimer offers us a link to the radical French Liberals that identified “class theory” sociology and a bridge to its contemporary incarnation: “agorism.”

Second, a clear contrast is made between Internal and External class production, which contrasts Oppenheimer from Marx.  As George H. Smith points out in endnote #2, another good reason to check out this version of The State is Mr. Smith Introduction,

“The Marxian approach, like that of Oppenheimer, is frequently placed in the “conflict school” of sociology, but with this difference: the former upholds a theory of the State based on “internal conflict” (i.e., of classes), whereas the latter is a theory of “external conflict.”  Proponents of “external conflict” believe that the State emerged from the conflict and forcible merger of two groups, victors and vanquished, which had formerly existed as separate communities.  (This is the modern “conquest theory” of the origin of the State.)

And third, as was mentioned in the quoted endnote, the historiography presented and vindicated, in The State, for the origin of the state is conquest.  Not with social contract, general will or divine appointment, but with the sword, the bullet, violence and subjugation.

But we already knew this, didn’t we?

“A small minority has stolen the heritage of humanity.”   –Franz Oppenheimer

2.  Solidarity Forever: An Oral History of the IWW by Stewart Bird, Dan Georgakas and Deborah Shaffer (ISBN: 0-941702-12-X)

Solidarity Forever is a great storied invitation to the trials and victories of the rank and file Fellow Worker.  This book will take you from the forests of the American Pacific Northwest to the textile mills of New York City; and through all the prisons in between.  From the introduction:

“Long regarded as belonging to a social movement whose time has come and gone, the IWW may yet prove to have been ahead of its time, developing and popularizing ideas very relevant to economic and political challenges undreamed of in 1905.  Knowing that humans must always err, the IWWs dared to err on the side of liberty.  The photographs we have gathered here show how that commitment to freedom blossomed into a profound mass movement.  The words of rank and file IWWs that we present embody that sense of justice and reason which prompted ordinary workers to deeds of extraordinary courage.”

3.  The Industrial Workers of the World: Its First 100 Years by Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken (ISBN: 978-0-917124-02-0)

The First 100 Years is great introduction to The Industrial Workers of the World.  It is written by two Fellow Workers, Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken, who have lived through and participated in many of the chronicled labor actions.  This book does not gloss over the failures or blow out of proportion the successes of the Union, but rather presents a living, growing phenomenon.  The IWW has weathered many storms, hard winters and police brutality, but has remained and maintained its core radicalism: workers don’t need bosses to get the job done.  From the introduction:

“The IWW was stated in 1905 by “seasoned old unionist,” as Gene Debs called them, who realized that American labor could not win with the sort of labor movement it had.  There was too much “organized scabbery” of one union on another, too much jurisdictional squabbling, too much autocracy, and too much hobnobbing between prosperous labor leaders and the millionaires in the National Civic Federation.  There was too little solidarity, too little straight labor education, and consequently too little vision of what could be won, and too little will to win it.”

4.  The New Harmony Movement by George B. Lockwood (ISBN: 0-486-22719-7)

Those of use in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left who come from the Individualist and Mutualist perspectives will find this a great introduction to Robert Owen: friend and mentor to Josiah Warren.  It presents a number of other social experiments, the practical counterpart to social theory, that were occurring in the American heartland and frontier.  There is also a whole chapter devoted to the life and experiments of Josiah Warren.

5.  AGITATE! EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!: American Labor Posters by Lincoln Cushing & Timothy W. Drescher (ISBN: 978-0-8014-7427-9)

This a great collection of labor activism and art.  There is very little text which is fine because the purpose of each piece is to grab your attention, communicate a message and point you in a direction.