Communism; Industrial Workers of the World; Socialism
"In some countries these revolting, desperate masses may come out
victorious, and establish a rule of their own, like the Russian
Bolsheviki, only to find that they will have to keep on running
society on private ownership basis, until industrial organization
of the workers is so far advanced that it can take over the
responsibility. There is no way in which the masses can escape
industrial unionism. What they do not want to do now at our
prompting, they will have to do later of their own initiative,
driven by economic necessity. Our new society is bound to come. It
will be firmly established in ten years if we are energetic. It
will take longer if we are indifferent. We cannot stand still
socially, because there is no footing before we reach the bottom.
We cannot go back, any more than the butterfly can again become a
larva. We must go forward to Industrial Democracy."
On page 23 of the same issue of "The One Big Union Monthly" we are
informed that Industrial Unionism is International:
"Industrial unionism arises out of and is modeled after modern
capitalism. Unlike trade unionism, it is not born of the capitalism
of fifty years ago. Industrial unionism recognizes that capitalism
is not only interindustrial, so to speak, but also international.
That just as it binds industries together by means of machine
processes and financial investments, so also does capitalism tend
to bind nations together. Industrial unionism follows the same
trend. It, too, is not only interindustrial but also international.
Industrial unionism seeks to organize the industrial workers of the
world just as capitalism seeks to exploit them. Industrial unionism
is spreading wherever international capitalism exists. Like
international capitalism, industrial unionism knows no boundaries,
color, race, creed or sex. As international capitalism knows only
profit, industrial unionism knows only the industrial exploitation
by which profit is possible. Industrial unionism organizes to make
industrial exploitation an impossibility. And capitalism is its
most valued assistant."
Ettor, in "Industrial Unionism," page 21, tells us, that the I. W. W.
does not organize by trades, but by industries: "All the workers in any
plant, factory, mine, mill or any given industry in a given locality
organize in one Local Industrial Union. All the Local Industrial Unions
of a given general industry are banded together in the National
Industrial Union. The National Industrial Unions are banded again
stronger in the Industrial Department and then all Departments, six in
all, are brought under one head, the General Administration of the I. W.
W. One Big Union of all workers, welded together in such a manner that,
imbued with the war cry: 'an injury to one is an injury to all,' all its
members can act together in fighting the common enemy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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