The I. W. W. was organized, as the constitution expressed it, to "subserve the immediate interests of the working class and effect their final emancipation." The attempt to realize this "final emancipation" was the thing which marked off the I. W. W. from the typical craft union. This latter body is craft conscious; the I. W. W. is class conscious. The structural and organic form it assumed at the first convention made for the stupefaction of craft consciousness and the stimulation of class consciousness. The idea of the class conflict was really the bottom notion or "first cause" of the I. W. W. The industrial union type was adopted because it would make it possible to wage this class war under more favorable conditions.
It is true the Socialist and Socialist Labor parties are working for the ultimate freedom of the working class, but the (Chicago) I. W. W. considers their method—political action—a snare and a delusion, and (here both the Detroit and Chicago factions came together) absolutely impotent when used alone. It is rather significant that every member of the provisional board elected at the convention was a member of the Socialist party. But they emphatically declared that the Socialist party was not to be involved in any way; and it never did become involved except as an enemy. On the other hand, the Socialist Labor party did, through the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, indirectly affect the work of the first convention.
The anarchist element was weak in 1905, and the anarchistic leanings now so prominent in the direct-actionist wing of the organization were then quite overshadowed by the socialistic and industrial phases of the movement. Carlton says that "the Industrial Workers may be compared with the Knights of Labor shorn of their idealism and saturated with class-conscious Socialism";[177] and he might have added, with their decentralized administrative system replaced by a very strongly centralized one—this constituting a fundamental distinction between the I. W. W. and the Confédération Générale du Travail, a decentralized organization. Nor should the Industrial Workers of the World be quite shorn of idealism. That must surely be idealistic which is "saturated with class-conscious socialism." This was amply demonstrated at the constitutional convention. Their idealism was given more of a pragmatic character by the persistent tendency to place socialism on an industrial rather than a political basis. The immediate struggle must take place primarily in the shop—at the point of production—only secondarily at the polls.
"By organizing industrially," claims the Industrial Worker, "we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old."[178] And here he evidences an idea of the future state of society and the method of its realization, rather new even to the socialist, and somewhat akin to that of the anarchists. The First Convention surely laid its plans, crude as they were, with an eye to the future. The scope of organization implied that the proletariat of the future would include more, by far, than the unskilled; that all those gainfully employed in whatever kind or grade of work would some day become proletarians, in spirit at least, and get together in this "one big union."
The first constitution, crude and provisional as it was, made room for all the world's workers and so at the beginning is a vast and nearly empty structure, with groups of the lower grades of workers in some of the basic industries in their proper places in the scheme, but with all the rest a hollow shell. Whether this empty structure will ever be "filled up" is a question which time will decide. George Speed, formerly a member of the General Executive Board (direct-actionist wing), has characterized this convention as the "greatest conglomeration of freaks that ever met in convention." This may have been true, for freak ideas often did bob up in the convention and some of them got fixed in the constitution, but at heart this was a vital move, impelled by high and serious motives.[179]
FOOTNOTES:
[120] Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention, pp. 1-2.
[121] Ibid., p. 153.