Absurdity of Label.
I have reproduced this editorial in full partly to show the absurdity of simply labelling the I. W. W. movement Bolshevik and letting it go at that. Also, I have never seen an abler editorial against Bolshevism. And this, mind you, was published in the most important organ of the I. W. W.
There were people in the I. W. W. movement who did not like it, and they brought pressure to bear to remove the editor, J. C. Kane, from his editorial chair. But the loggers read the editorial and liked it. They would probably never have read it if there had not been a fuss raised; but, at any rate, they did read it, and approved. Then they heard that the editor had been fired and they got a little “mass action” into play and put him back. And they did not indorse the Third Internationale.
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.