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0 votes
Hello Fellow Workers (FW),

I have seen on this website the mention that the IWW is not an anarchist organization.

http://anarchy101.org/5537/is-the-iww-still-active-and-helpful-to-workers

I know that the IWW is officially not an Anarchist organization. They could be described as Syndicalist and I think have been listed as Syndicalist in some official literature. There are Anarchists who are members along with mostly liberals, progressives, Marxists, socialists, communists, and labor unionists.

http://www.iww.org/about/political_parties_and_anarchism

"This leads some to argue that the IWW is an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist union and/or organization, but that is also not the case.  That is not to say that either anarchists or non-anarchists are unwelcome in the IWW, quite the opposite, in fact.  The IWW is open to all workers."

But, unofficially, do most of you on here secretly sing "Solidarity Forever" before you go to sleep ?
by (230 points)
I usually sing Knockin' on Heaven's Door before I nod off, unofficially of course.
My question is why don't you believe what the wobs officially say about themselves?
Like any good Anarcho-Syndicalist, I believe everything the IWW does it great and I am a 100 % loyal Wobblie.
I just wish you all would join the One Big Union. We got great folks like Steve Ongerth and Elliott Hughes kicking ass for the working class in the Bay Area. Jon Bekken, Mike Harris, Jeff Stein, and others out on the prowl reviewing the situation and putting the Anarcho-Syndicalist Review out to our Fellow Workers (FW). There are others who kicking ass for the working class and painting the town Red and Black.

1 Answer

+2 votes
(Upvoted for first class troll bait.)

As far as i know, the wobblies _used_ to be anarachists (way back when).
As one among a number of radical unions, they went where they weren't welcome, and were as often attacked by cops as by company thugs.  Their comrades were locked away on false charges, and murdered with impunity.  "An attack on one is An Attack against us all."  If a wobblie wound up in hospital, more often a couple of company men would wind up face down in the river.  And the funeral marchs for the fallen would number tens of thousands, men women and children clogging the streets, while the cops hid in the alleys for their own safety.
And that, i think, is what marked the wobblies for our admiration, they didn't respect the laws or the governments, they viewed this conflict as a temporary beachhead before we all stomped the bastards into history.

Then the industrialists and the governments and the domesticated unions conspired to break the radical unions, of which the wobblies were one but not the only.

Now, they have cool t-shirts.
(And say they aren't anarchists anymore - and i believe them.)

There is a theory that every organization has a useful lifespan, be it in days or decades, beyond which the sole purpose of the organization becomes the continued existence of said organization.  It is well past time to put the One Big Wobbly out of its misery.  (We'll keep the t-shirts though.)
by (2.0k points)
Okapy::  i'd be grateful if you'd give the readers some examples of what a really radical union can do.  I especially love some of the shit the french agricultural unions do - your policticians seem genuinely afraid of their farmers.
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