"Anarchism vs. Right-Wing 'Anti-Statism'

[James A. Donald]

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At 11:22 PM 12/11/2000 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
 > http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos05508.html
 >
 > Looks like the Wobblies live...


The wobblies never lived.

In the USA, class struggle unionism collapsed at the end of the nineteenth 
century.  The wobblies were a "union" composed almost entirely of the 
leadership of vanished class struggle unions, with very few actual workers 
among their membership.  All chiefs, no indians.  From the very beginning 
in 1905, the wobblies were a nostalgic look back to the glory days of the 
1870s and 1880s of class struggle unionism, as if in 1980 some forty year 
old ex hippies were to form a commune in memory of the sixties.

During the early days of unionism, the 1870s, many unionists believed that 
the union was destined to replace the capitalist.  Some of them believed 
the union would replace the capitalist while retaining the market economy 
in whole or part (syndicalism) and some believed the union would replace 
the capitalist and the entire market economy (socialism, one big union)

In some parts of America they actually had some substantial success with 
this program.  It then instantly became apparent that replacing the 
authority of the man who pays you, with the authority of the man you 
elected, was not an improvement, because the man you elected (claiming to 
be "the workers") claimed the authority to punish individual workers who 
did not do as they were told, whereas the unelected man with money claimed 
no such authority.

After several horrifying incidents in which unions indiscriminantly 
murdered numerous members of the working class, class struggle unionism 
became violently unpopular among the working class in the USA.  It then 
steadily and rapidly lost power to bread and butter unionism, sometimes 
voted out,  and sometimes, when the violence of the class struggle union 
made voting and competition impossible, crushed by the militia.

After all the class struggle unions had irrevocably lost power or been 
crushed, the washed up remnants of their leadership, remembering the glory 
days of their youth, formed the IWW, the wobblies, from remnants of the 
leadership groups of 57 different class struggle unions.

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          James A. Donald
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