The I. W. W. is popularly considered Bolshevik, and has thus been advertised by the attacks the police have made upon it. There have also been “criminal Syndicalist” laws passed against it which have enhanced its importance. But an examination of what it is does not give cause for serious alarm.
The I. W. W. has never been able to boast of much of a membership, and it has barely enough members now to keep it alive. During the past few weeks I have taken a fairly close look at the I. W. W., or what I could find of it, and I should say it is more of a purpose, more of a labor philosophy, than a movement. It is out for One Big Union, but it has not even one small union that stays put.
Provided Organization of Labor Where No Other Union Could
It has provided a chance for organization when there was no other union to do it. It went into the woods and the harvest fields and organized the migratory workers. It had a free and easy way of organizing, and they were free and easy men. In the woods it acquired some permanency. The loggers of Oregon, Washington and Idaho are about the only active members it has. The important consideration is how much revolution did it instil into them? According to my observations, very little.
The loggers were told about the preamble of the I. W. W., the theme of which lies in its first words: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” With those sentiments the loggers were in hearty accord. They knew better than the I. W. W. organizers how true it was in the woods. They wanted better camp conditions. The I. W. W. gave them a chance for organized protest, so they joined. They are frontiersmen with the virtues of the frontier; they stand by their friends. So they stand by the I. W. W. But to say they become class-conscious revolutionists is absurd.
The leadership at the I. W. W. has syndicalist purpose, but its membership is merely looking for better working conditions. The average man who joins the I. W. W. would as willingly join a union that had less to say about revolution if it were there. The I. W. W., like the Salvation Army, works where more bourgeois organizations fail. At the I. W. W. headquarters in Chicago is turned out a varied supply of I. W. W. reading matter, but you do not see workers pouring over it. They glance at occasional pamphlets, but they do not bother themselves with the anarcho-syndicalist theories. Some few harvest workers have tried sabotage, and that is about the most serious charge against the I. W. W.
No Consistent Idea.
Out of the scores of leaflets and pamphlets they can get no consistent revolutionary idea. They are a confusion of syndicalism, anarchy, Socialism, Communism and Bolshevism. That is inevitable, as the writers, not always very thoroughly informed, have tried to adapt their individual conceptions of the various social revolutionary movements in Europe to American conditions. The I. W. W., being the one outstanding revolutionary movement, has drawn to it so many different types of revolutionists they have mutually destroyed each other’s theories.
The Bolshevists in the I. W. W. have recently had a serious jolt. They tried, without success, to induce the loggers to support the Third Internationale, the propaganda body of the Bolshevik Government in Moscow. They told the loggers that, as part of the proletariat, they should give their indorsement to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the organization of the world revolution from Moscow.
The loggers are not very long on political ideas, but they wanted to know about it first. So the editor of the Northwest Industrial Worker, one of the I. W. W.’s most important publications, explained it. He is himself a syndicalist and no Bolshevist. Moreover, he lives in Seattle and knows the loggers are not to be turned into rubber stamp revolutionists by the propaganda of the Lenine-Zinovieff school. So in the Northwest Industrial Worker for Oct. 20 he printed the following editorial: