Does this fall under sectarianism? IMO this is a "Reality Check"
Consider this post a "testing the waters" type on the sectarianism part xdddddddd
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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This is Debs Era
Even in Debs era, the lack on general economics theory understanding is what held the IWW back more than anything else. What they saw as 'star gazing' is in fact the very difficult work of prognosticating the development of capitalism, an equally important task that without it leaves a movement directionless, easily guided by the capitalists hand.
They were idealists in the firm sense of the word, with most of the core leadership post 1930's (including Ralph Chaplin, the writer of 'Solidarity Forever') breaking off and eventually turning towards the idea that the 'real workers', i.e. the workers who made up base material extraction (mostly itinerant lumber workers, miners, farm laborers) were the only workers worth organizing, with all other workers being 'parasites' on the 'true working class'. While we can see strains of this in modern-day first world Maoist rhetoric, theirs is at least first informed by a colonial historical analysis, and an understanding of the modern economy.
The Wobblies are a cautionary tale of another sort. Praxis without a bedrock of historical or economic theory, leading to the eventuality of reactionary libertarian chauvinism in any significantly large first world workers movement.
I'm not saying that the communists of the era were any better mind. It's just that pretending that the Wobblies weren't also doing their version of stargazing (or more metaphorically, they were staring at the dirt instead of the sky) is sectarian bullshit. The communists at least got some states off the ground (for as short of a time they existed), the Wobblies paved the way for the imperialist trade-unionism. The communists divined the future from the stars far more clearly, though if by fortune or science, who can say, even if they were equally powerless to stop it.
I also don't wanna be sectarian, but if we're gauging things based on when this comic was illustrated, at least the American anarchists back then sometimes took rich people hostage or would shoot them. The only Wobbly violence I'm aware of is that some of their members were associated with the coal wars, and that's pretty cool though honestly. I say this stuff as a card carrying IWW member.
Do anarchists claim Leon Czolgosz? He was a self described anarchist and he shot president William McKinley with a revolver hidden in a napkin. Dude shot the president by just walking straight up to him.
I'd classify those as mostly adventurism, not praxis. Violence is not inherently praxis unless it is to defend the continuation of a movement. And even violence that is praxis isn't always 'correct praxis'.
IWW theory at the time was generally speaking 'dual-power' around the ability to conduct a general strike. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, and their historical relationship to the coal wars, I would assume that eventually it would have required arming the working class. That said, what really killed the Wobblies was the New Deal jobs program and WWII. It is difficult to organize when your main political class (itinerant workers) is swallowed up by either conscription or mandatory employment. You can see the ideological split occur within the leadership of the era, with some seeing this as a working class victory and eager to collaborate with a government that finally seemed to be listening to their demands, or decriers who saw the New Deal as Leninist-collaborationism (referring to the coal wars, Kronstadt soldiers revolt, anarchist purges and the alliance with the USSR). It was a combination of this lack of a real political constituency, indecision by leadership, the rise of new deal consumerism/prosperity, domination of trade-unionism, and the crushing of independent newspapers by capital-intensive Cold-War era mass media that signaled the death knell of the I.W.W. as a relevant political organization in the U.S.
It's not that their rejection of theory killed them, their rejection of theory just helped create the inability to adapt to a rapidly changing political-economy. Not that the American communists (nor the inheritors of the USSR) faired much better.
I assume there are online anarchists who claim Czolgosz, but I've never met an irl anarchist who cared enough to speak on the matter.
That indecision you mention has got to be one of the greatest barriers to leftist organizing in all of American history. It always appears to stop stuff getting off the ground before it goes anywhere. It impacted the wobblies, the Black Panthers, even now it's like no one is sure what to do
That's got to be a material result of Americans not feeling constrained enough. It's hard to get people to care or stick around if they can just get on a bus and find better conditions in a different state. Just move, just find a new job, just leave America entirely if you're so upset. I know packing up and leaving isn't a real possibility for most people, but that dream of it permeates everything
This reminds me of Stalin discussing how a shop-owner-turned-worker may have the material conditions of a worker, but still lack proletarian consciousness because their plan is to save up enough money to open the shop again. It’s only when they realize that they make barely enough to survive and they give up on once again gaining some bourgeois character that they can instead gain a proletarian consciousness.
I know so many people who would never dream of falling into the hustle culture trap, but are constantly dreaming of leaving the country or of homesteading and going off the grid. And maybe some of them could actually escape. But it does very little for those of us who can’t escape and know it.
All fair points, I'll stand by my point that now it doesn't really count as sectarianism unless you're actively trying to judge current organizations by this old political cartoon. The message of organizing is basically just a way of calling for praxis and that's fine.
Fair enough. I could care less if it is 'sectarian' or not, or even how well it applies in a modern context*, I just think it is important to know, understand, and be clear-eyed about what the successes and failures of past movements are.
*Imo in the west neither our prognostication nor our praxis is nearly as historically well developed as any of the parties indicated here, there is very little actual ideological sectarianism, only personal grievances to make us feel as if we are walking in the footsteps of our predecessors, when in reality we have barely crossed a single heel-print in the footsteps of the giants that came before us.
Exactly, we're not in a position to apply any of the conflicts of our predecessors yet. This version of sectarianism is also so outdated that it's just history at this point as the organizations involved have evolved drastically over the past 100 years.
So we can't draw conclusions about the ideological stances of the modern iterations of these groups from it anymore. Meaning that it's now just a message calling for people to organize, even if at the time it's message was sectarian and claiming some sort of superiority of a specific way of thought.
I would say it still is more than a message to organize, in that it highlights still very relevant lessons about the IWW and adventurism
I thought they were organizing a strike on the moon until I saw this.
retail workers are not parasites and are usually more oppressed than fishermen/etc, but the industry they work for is inherently more parasitic IMO
all companies are parasitic but the industry of selling cheap coffee for $15 because the stressed urbanite can't afford 2 minutes to make their own lest they get fired from their bullshit office job is something that I can't see existing under a utopian socialist economy. Cutting down trees and farm work, on the other hand will always be necessary
IMO socialism inherently requires some type of sacrifice, and sacrifices like "not having a barista" and "not being able to get the exact type of chocolate I want" are fine and good. TBH I think that even private property should be eventually done away with and substituted with rotational living; I think people would be much happier living in a few different houses across their life that they don't own
I don't necessarily disagree, I've deliberately attached myself to the manufacturing economy for a reason. Regardless of if they actually want to fund it well or not, it will always be necessary. That said, you really need to read their works over time to understand how reactionary of a turn this was for certain individuals. I'd almost say there was a 'syndicalist to libertarian' pipeline much in the same way that there was a 'Trotskyite to neo-conservative' pipeline at a later date.