Industrial Workers of the World philosophy and tactics

Throughout the early part of the 20th century, the philosophy and tactics of the IWW were frequently in direct conflict with those of the AFL (forerunner of the AFL–CIO) concerning the best ways to organize workers, and how to best improve the society in which they toiled.

"[1] The IWW embraced two guiding principles, fighting like the AFL for better wages, hours, and conditions, but also promoting an eventual, permanent solution to the problems of strikes, injunctions, bull pens, and union scabbing.

John Reed observed, "Wherever, in the West, there is an IWW local, you will find an intellectual center ... a place where men read philosophy, economics, the latest plays, novels; where art and poetry are discussed, and international politics.

[5] IWW publications seemed to enjoy reporting on "the amazement shown by college professors who heard Wobbly speakers deliver talks upon a wide variety of subjects and reveal a remarkable understanding of complex economic and social questions.

[7] However, Dubofsky also identifies American traditions "dating back to the era of Jefferson and Jackson" from which the Wobblies derived inspiration, particularly the concepts of a society divided into "producers and nonproducers, productive classes and parasites.

"[11] Taft and Ross likewise appear to disagree with Dubofsky, stating in more general terms, "violence in labor disputes was seldom inspired by the doctrine of 'propaganda by the deed,' whose self-defeating nature convinced many of its exponents of its fallacy.

He and John Mitchell, head of the United Mine Workers, joined an alliance of conservative union leaders and liberal business men in forming the National Civic Federation (NCF).

[16] That organization's critics on the left believed that its goals were to suppress sympathy strikes, and to replace traditional expressions of working class solidarity with binding national trade agreements and arbitration of disputes.

[37] The IWW maintained low initiation fees and dues, allowed universal transfer of union cards, and disdained apprenticeships in order to attract the lower strata of working society.

the Wobblies of the IWW sought to "comprehend the nature and dynamics of capitalist society and through increased knowledge, as well as revolutionary activism, to develop a better system for the organization and functioning of the American economy.

The IWW needed to "combine the wage-workers in such a way that it can most successfully fight the battles and protect the interests of the workers of today in their struggles for fewer hours of toil, more wages and better conditions," and it also "must offer a final solution of the labor problem—an emancipation from strikes, injunctions, bull-pens, and scabbing of one against the other.

In Taking Care of Business, Paul Buhle wrote that the AFL-affiliated United Mine Workers President John Mitchell declared in 1903, "The trade union movement in this country can make progress only by identifying itself with the state."

[46] Elaborating on this circumstance, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn wrote in the Industrial Worker, A working man may be an anarchist or a socialist, a Catholic or a Protestant, a republican or a democrat, but subscribing to the Preamble of the I.W.W.

"[68] According to Historian Melvyn Dubofsky, neither the WFM nor its successive offspring—the American Labor Union (ALU) and the IWW—accepted that a contract with employers was legally or morally binding, and all three organizations believed that workers could best see to their interests by retaining the ability to strike when necessary.

"[78] Foner concludes that, "ironically, while the refusal to sign contracts was justified, in part, as a means of keeping the capitalists off balance, experience proved that it had the opposite effect of enabling the employers to use it to their own advantage.

[88] For example, dual-card IWW members have been known to advocate direct action on the shop floor to force employers to provide safer working conditions, to be more responsive to workers' demands, and to avoid speedup situations.

[91] Wobbly activists simultaneously demonstrated that direct action works, and that it was possible for members of the lower strata of society to challenge authority and, through determination and perseverance, to frequently win.

The attitude in some communities toward IWW members engaging in the fight for free speech is nicely characterized by an editorial in the San Diego Evening Tribune on March 4, 1912: Hanging is none too good for them and they would be much better dead, for they are absolutely useless in the human economy.

[104] While the United Mine Workers predicted the IWW's walkout would fail in Colorado, Sheriff Harry Capps of Huerfano County commented that "fully two-thirds of the miners in the [Walsenburg] district [are] members of the I.W.W.

[98] IWW philosophy and economic analysis were communicated only passively through the printing of the union's Preamble on membership cards, on leaflets, and in personal conversations with organizers drawn from the rank and file.

In Conlin's words, "[t]he failure of the Wobblies to establish and maintain a viable organization in Colorado resulted from the anarcho-syndicalist strategy of the IWW (i.e., no labor contracts, no union recognition), not from the absence of class consciousness and radicalism among the miners.

"[142] Just over a year later, the IWW initiated the first sit-down strike in American history on December 10, 1906, at the General Electric Works in Schenectady, New York, when 3,000 workers sat down on the job and stopped production to protest the dismissal of three union members.

While Luddites sought to "turn back the clock" to an era before the introduction of workplace machinery, radical labor unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have advocated sabotage as a tactical means of self-defense against unfair working conditions.

"[169] Historically the IWW was accused of outright damage to property—for example, getting the blame for causing wheat field fires in a book of fiction by Zane Grey, published in 1919 at the height of the red scare.

[181] Hoxie continues, In short, violence in labor troubles is a unique characteristic of no kind of unionism, but is a general and apparently inevitable incident of the rise of the working class to consciousness and power in capitalistic society.

Furthermore, an additional weapon has been placed in the hands of the employers by many courts in the form of sweeping injunctions, which render punishable acts which would otherwise be legal, and also result in effect in depriving the workers of the right to jury trial.

I do not think they can be justified, sir, * * * [Their effect] has been, of course, to irritate the men, because they feel that in an anglo-Saxon community every man has a right to a trial by jury and that to take him up and compel him to be tried by a judge, is not in accordance with the principles of equality, liberty, and justice.

IWW organizer Harry Howard describes an instance of this in a 1916 letter to Solidarity, the union's national newspaper, writing, "We left on the night of August 10th with twenty-five or thirty other fellow workers.

From soap boxing to the Paterson pageant, from their colorful lingo to "building the battleship" in the free speech fight jails, Wobblies seemed to instinctively comprehend the benefits of publicity for their cause.

Conlin does note, however, that shortly after the 1913 Paterson Pageant at Madison Square Garden, the IWW officially disclaimed the utility of such productions, and "turned to more proper union activity" (in a period which coincided with the organization's dramatic growth) until the "apocalypse" of government intervention in 1917–1918.