How much Bolshevism is there in America? : $b Also a series of articles entitled "Russia from the inside"Dosch-Fleurot, Arno
History
How much Bolshevism is there in America? : $b Also a series of articles entitled "Russia from the inside"
Dosch-Fleurot, Arno
Communism -- Soviet Union; Communism -- United States; Labor -- United States; Working class -- United States
That is a long way from Bolshevism. Nothing like that could happen in
Russia. As an incident it is symptomatic. It shows the members of the
movement insist on running it according to their individual will. =In
other words it is not a Bolshevik movement directed by a highly
centralized labor autocracy. It is rather an anarcho-syndicalist
movement bossed from the “job.”=
Is “Job-Controlled.”
The Bolshevik-minded within the I. W. W. do not really belong there. The
I. W. W. happens to be the most radical band wagon and they have climbed
on. Incidents such as I have just quoted show them where they get off.
The men who understand better the I. W. W. movement know it must be
based on “job control.” Every time it has ever done anything it has been
a case of “job control”—in other words, the men on the job decided what
they were going to do. Their successful strikes in the woods the summer
of 1917 were, for instance, declared in the camps.
In the I. W. W. dogmatic concepts do not get far. Revolutionary phrases
take on new meanings and disconcert their originators. The phrase
“direct action,” for example, is well understood in the revolutionary
patter to mean direct revolutionary action to put a workers’
dictatorship into governmental power. But it does not mean that in the
logging camps. It means direct action by the camp crew and not action
according to the decision of the I. W. W. headquarters.
Are Fundamental Democrats.
Fundamentally the I. W. W. members are democrats like the rest of us.
They have no far political vision, and they wish to ameliorate the
condition in life of workingmen, but they could be trusted in the final
analysis not to follow any doctrinaire revolutionist who had thought it
all out for them and told them to come along. Lenine could do that with
the Russian workers. But no one could do it with American workers. And
the membership of the I. W. W., particularly in the woods, is largely
American.
The I. W. W. has its ups and downs, and just now it is down. But it will
not go out of existence and disappear because it stands for an idea,
industrial unionism. There are other labor organizations, such as the
Automobile Workers, which also stand for industrial unionism, but the I.
W. W. has proclaimed it loudest, though it has perhaps done less
effective organizing than some of the others.
Industrial unionism is essentially inimical to the craft unionism upon
which the American Federation of Labor is built. The individual unions
in the A. F. of L. could unite along industrial lines, and some have,
but the results have not been sufficiently striking to remove from the
I. W. W. further excuse for existence.
Not Essentially Revolutionary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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