From ‘Industrial Worker‘, May 8, 1913, Spokane, Washington
The numerous questions asked of the Industrial Worker leads us to think that it would be a good thing to have a part of a column set aside each week for brief answers to correspondents. The following questions have been asked within the past fine day:
Does the I.W.W. believe that there always will be employer and employee?
No. The I.W.W. states in its preamble that, “Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system.” The I.W.W. in striving for a social order in which there will be no classes.
Does the I.W.W. believe in Government?
The I.W.W. opposes the institution of the State. It holds that state or governmental control of industry would merely introduce a different form of slavery. Government implies governors and governed, a ruling and a subject class. No man is great enough or good enough to rule another. As opposed to State Socialism the I.W.W. strives for a management of industry without the need of representation by wards, counties, states, or even national divisions such as Mexico, United States and Canada. The workers within an industry, alone knowing the needs of that industry, will manage it; and the several industries will preserve the necessary relations for social production. Industrial management of machinery will replace repressive government of individuals. Only on that basis can there be real freedom.
What is the I.W.W. stand on religion?
As a labor organization the I.W.W. accepts to membership any bona fide wage worker without regard to his or her religious belief. No convention or assembled body of the I.W.W. has yet specifically declared itself on this subject. But as the institutions of each day and age are simply the reflection of the ideas of the ruling class, the I.W.W., true to historic materialism as expressed in the words, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common,” finds its active membership either non-religious or anti-religious. The I.W.W. also accepts evolution as a demonstrated fact and sees that religion is incompatible with science. The I.W.W. is creating its own ideas of morality and ethical conduct, as opposed to the current conceptions of what constitutes “right” and “wrong.”
Should the plumbers, steamfitters and electricians working in a railroad car shop belong to the building trades federation or the railway system federation?
All the workers employed in the transportation industry should be members of that department. This would include the above mentioned workers. A universal transfer card makes it possible to transfer to the construction industry in case the workers seek employment on other than railroad work. The transportation industry would not be organized by federated trades, but by shops or divisions, with branches formed in such a manner as to allow affairs to be easily transacted while gaining the highest solidarity. Were a train crew wholly engaged in hauling ore from a mine on a railroad spur, their place would be in the mining department, just as cooks and flunkeys as well as stationary engineers in logging camps are a part of the lumber worker organization. The I.W.W. is so arranged as to avoid jurisdictional quarrels, while the craft unions find these factional fights on the increase. The question of jurisdiction is the principal reason why the A.F. of L. [American Federation of Labor] cannot develop into a real industrial organization.
Also:
Abolition of Government, by Lizzie M. Swank (1886)
Value, Price and Profit, by Karl Marx (1898)
Japanese and Chinese Exclusion or Industrial Organization, Which?, by J. H. Walsh (1908)
Developments at Spokane, by J. H. Walsh (1908)
The IWW and Political Parties, by Vincent St. John (1910)
Away with Race Prejudice, by Caroline Nelson (1912)
Down with Race Prejudice, by Phineas Eastman (1912)
The Yellow Peril, from Industrial Worker (1913)
The Deadly Parallel, by the Industrial Workers of the World (1917)
The Politician is Not My Shepherd, by Covington Hall (1933)
Ben Fletcher: Portrait of a black syndicalist, by Jeff Stein (1987)
The Struggle of Asian Immigrants / Industrial Workers of The World, by M.Gouldhawke (2002)
Land, Labour and Loss: A Story of Struggle & Survival at the Burrard Inlet, by Taté Walker (2015)
Mexican Workers in the IWW and the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), by Devra Anne Weber (2016)
E52: The IWW in Canada, by Mark Leier and Working Class History (2021)
Indigenous labour struggles, by M.Gouldhawke (2022)
Industrial Workers of the World
“When Debs in his dotage calls the I.W.W. ‘Anarchists’ he is not slandering us, but is giving high praise to the anarchists. Let’s see, didn’t the capitalists once call the socialists ‘Anarchists’? How times do change!”
Industrial Worker, May 15, 1913, Spokane, Washington
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