Solidarity Forever
Chaplin was a dedicated Wobbly, a writer at the time for Solidarity, the official IWW publication in the eastern United States, and a cartoonist for the organization.
He shared the analysis of the IWW, embodied in its famed "Preamble", printed inside the front cover of every Little Red Songbook.
The IWW embraced syndicalism, and opposed participation in electoral politics: "by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old".
The second stanza ("Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite") assumes the two antagonistic classes described in the Preamble.
Late in his life, after he had become a voice opposing (State) Communists in the labor movement, Chaplin wrote an article, "Why I wrote Solidarity Forever", in which he denounced the "not-so-needy, not-so-worthy, so-called 'industrial unions' spawned by an era of compulsory unionism".
"I didn't write 'Solidarity Forever' for ambitious politicians or for job-hungry labor fakirs seeking a ride on the gravy train.… All of us deeply resent seeing a song that was uniquely our own used as a singing commercial for the soft-boiled type of post-Wagner Act industrial unionism that uses million-dollar slush funds to persuade their congressional office boys to do chores for them."
He added, "I contend also that when the labor movement ceases to be a Cause and becomes a business, the end product can hardly be called progress.
"[5] Despite Chaplin's misgivings, "Solidarity Forever" has retained a general appeal for the wider labor movement because of the continued applicability of its core message.
Some performers do not sing all six stanzas of "Solidarity Forever," typically dropping verses two ("Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite") and four ("All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone"), thus leaving out the most radical material.
[6] Since the 1970s women have added verses to "Solidarity Forever" to reflect their concerns as union members.
One popular set of stanzas is: A variation from Canada goes as follows: The centennial edition of the Little Red Songbook includes these two new verses credited to Steve Suffet: Pete Seeger's adaptation of the song removes the second and fourth verses and rewrites the final verse as: "Solidarity Forever" is featured in the 2014 film Pride in which London organisation Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners collect funds to support the miners of a Welsh village during the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike.
