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Boring from Within Won’t Work
By Tom Wetzel
In their reply to my attempts to defend revolutionary syndicalism, Joe Richard and Ty Carroll try to force the debate into an arbitrarily narrow set of choices.
The attack on “dual unionism” seems to be designed to rule out efforts at building new worker-controlled unions outside the bureaucratic framework of the AFL-CIO type unions.
The basic problem today is the glaring need to build a new kind of worker unionism that is directly controlled by the workers, is based on direct participation and practices of powerful disruptive action, recognizes the flat antagonism of interests between workers and the employers, builds solidarity in action between workers in different sectors, and builds solidarity with grassroots social movements and struggles outside the workplace. A workers movement of this kind in the USA would have to be prepared to violate court injunctions and unjust laws that restrict worker action. To do this, alliances and mutual support need to be developed between unions and social movement organizations so that worker action has mass support.
A movement based on direct participation, collective decision-making, and direct action is essential to the process through which the working class develops the confidence, aspirations for change, organizing skills, and social cohesion to mount a fundamental challenge to the dominating classes. Some Marxists refer to this as the process of “class formation” — the working class “forming” itself into a social force for change. Marxists and syndicalists can agree that it’s necessary to encourage this process. Continue reading “Boring from Within Won’t Work” »
Posted on June 11, 2015
Filed Under Debate, Labor | 2 Comments
The (End) Work Zone: Tales of Spontaneous Rebellion in the Workplace
By Smoker
The normal course of a person’s working life typically produces a plethora of stories where the boss got one over on the employees and faced no retribution; countless unfair firings, anomalies with the paycheck, bullying, mistreatment and abuse. Hidden within, and on the periphery of these tales, is evidence of a small scale class-struggle springing into and out of existence in every imaginable kind of workplace.
While many of these instances of rebellion do not result in long-term organization and often include a small number of workers, these events still play an important role in the class struggle. They become major contributions to a person’s constellation of experience in the workplace that reveals the counterpoised interests of the boss, as well as the potential for resistance. Continue reading “The (End) Work Zone: Tales of Spontaneous Rebellion in the Workplace” »
Posted on May 31, 2015
Filed Under Labor | Leave a Comment
We Support the Uprising in Baltimore
This is a war that will not end. It is only growing more deadly. In 2013 767 people were killed by police (64 a month, most of the them African Americans); in 2014 1101 people were killed by police (92 a month, most of them African Americans); in the 4 months of 2015 380 people have so far been killed police, (95 a month, most of them African Americans).
The militarization of the police has had a predictable outcome: the police are now behaving like the military would in their policing function. The rules of martial law are now (unofficially) in effect and anyone who violates those laws is The Enemy; the “insurgents”; the “terrorists” etc. and subject to summary execution. If by chance that person happens to be a Black Man, so much the better. The role of the police, their true role, has always been to protect the property of the Master Class from any defilement by rebel slaves.
Now, thanks to the grassroots organizing of the Black Lives Matter movement, people have risen up and are fighting back as best they can. In Baltimore the people are taking the fight to the oppressors. We can only hope this flame spreads like wildfire, and that the murderous police forces feel the heat in Philadelphia, New York, Memphis and Los Angeles, and all the other places they have decided to engage in ethnic cleansing.
In America, the capitalist system was founded on slavery and white supremacy. The only way to end the insanity of white supremacy is to end the American capitalist system. We need to build a new society, one based on true egalitarianism, where everyone, EVERY ONE, is actually and finally equal forever.
Posted on April 30, 2015
Filed Under Anti-Racism | 2 Comments
Reply to ISO on Syndicalism
By Tom Wetzel
The International Socialist Organization’s webzine socialistworker.org recently published a critique of revolutionary syndicalism in the form of a review of Radical Unionism by Ralph Darlington. The review, by Tom Goulet, makes a number of mistaken claims.
The claim that “syndicalist unions broke off from mainstream federations to form ‘purely revolutionary’ unions, cutting themselves off from the mass of workers” doesn’t hold up, though it does conform to the Leninist orthodoxy of Leftwing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. There were many countries where the syndicalist unions were the majority – such as Portugal, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Brazil. Syndicalist unions in South Africa, such as the Industrial Workers of Africa (modeled on the IWW) were the only union that organized native African workers, who were excluded from the white craft unions. Continue reading “Reply to ISO on Syndicalism” »
Posted on April 27, 2015
Filed Under Debate, History, Ideas, Labor, Syndicalism | 2 Comments
What is Class Oppression? Who is the Working Class?
Modern Slavery and the Triumph of Capitalism, (Part One)
WSA Memories
Recalling WSA
Why Consensus Decision-making Won’t Work for Grassroots Unionism
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Ideas and Action is a publication of the Workers Solidarity Alliance, a revolutionary group rooted in the anarcho-syndicalist tradition.