Okay, so it would take some pretty torturous rhetorical twisting to make me a "worker." Still, I've always said that, although I think revolutionary Socialist ideologies are typically misguided in our era of legal and effective labor unions, if I was going to be a revolutionary, I think the most realistic and compelling revolutionary creed is revolutionary syndicalism. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
Here's what's so great about the IWW:
1. No violence (unless the capitalists provoke it)--the only "revolution" is a general strike.
2. Capitalists capitulate because they can't get the workers to go to work.
3. The union--the IWW--takes over and runs things from there. Replaces exploitative capitalist puppet governments with union structures and worker self-management. Everybody holds hands and sings about Joe Hill. No need for a "vanguard party" or a "dictatorship of the proletariat."
4. We don't learn this in history class, but there were actually some near-miss union syndicalist general strikes in history, including a couple in US History (Lowell/Lawrence general strike and the Seattle General Strike). Workers actually struck, shut down city governments, and managed the governments themselves. It worked until police and the military got nasty. The biggest problem was that the union itself was poorly organized, so couldn't carry the strike to other places.
Okay--why am I writing about this? It's May Day--International Labor Day. Happy May Day!
1 comment:
2.5) Scabs
Post a Comment