: First off, it's written in the same tired old revolutionary language that all manner of Socialist off - shoots use when banging on about their particular slant on industrial relations. Yes, the IWW is partisan. We pro-worker, not pro-employer, like the
Trolly Dollies.
: This kind of stuff was trotted out by the Workers Revolutionary Party and the Socialist Workers Party in the U.K. 15 years ago, and it's still exactly the same.
Really! That's exciting. The last time I checked those people out they were ranting on about "leadership", "taking a radical position within the Labour Party" and how "Trotsky was better than Stalin".
It's good to know that they've changed and are now concerned about abolishing wage-slavery, instead of trying to "lead" workers to another form of wage-slavery.
: Talk about the blind leading the blind. If something doesn't appear to be working, isn't it common sense to try a new approach?
Exactament mon ami--you've hit the nail on the head! Congrats. Here's the new approach. Instead of just going along blindly selling your life away day after day after day; why not wake up and organize a democratic union? What's more, why not start stimulating the old imagination to think of ways the processes of production and consumption on our planet could be run for use and need and not just for the profit of a few people who own most of the stocks and bonds in the market place.
: From what we saw ten years ago it was mainly middle class university students who peddled this guff when they went through that rebellious phase at University, and were faintly embarrassed that Mum and Dad's money (earned by the exploitation of the masses) fed, clothed and kept them in beer and fags.
Nice put down. Hey, you guys ought to get on the Macdonald's payroll. You're good at personal attacks. Actually though, I don't know anybody in the IWW who is a student. Mores the pity. I'm sure that there are some students in the IWW. I just haven't met any. I've met quite a few Wobs too. So, while the put down was spot on, the reality is quite different. Oh well--really youse guys should look in to that job as maybe Macdonald's PR types or something.
: Secondly, we are really interested to know exactly what IWW would like to replace the wage system with, once it has been abolished.
Me too. I guess when the IWW gets big enough to actually make that decision, it will democractically decide something like maybe production for use and need based on the principle that labor is entitled to own or control all it creates. Don't forget that part of our Preamble where we talk about "living in harmony with the Earth" too. You know, that's what's so great about the IWW. We wobs want more than just the numbers, the quantity, like the employing class and its "bottomline" mentality of today. We want to actually create a society where we take the Earth into consideration. Utopian, huh? Yeah; but a whole lot more hopeful than continuing down that path of blindly following our "bottomline" to environmental destruction. That's the way to "nowhere"--the true meaning of utopia, BTW.
: What is wrong with "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" ???
What's wrong is that we workers as a class produce gobs more wealth than we get back in pay. It's called EXPLOITATION.
: Perhaps McDonald's should pay us in burgers.
Har, har, har. Youse guys. Such jokesters! Have you perhaps ever been in show biz?
: Or maybe IWW want us to work for nothing, so we can truly be slaves. That way we'll be justifiably pissed off and take up the revolutionary banner.
Please stop it. No more. I can't stand it. My sides are aching.
Ok now, it's better. Actually what we want is everything. Yeah. We figure that we workers produce everything--except for the Earth of course--and that we should get what we produce.
: "Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth"
: This simplstic crap completely undermines your whole organistion. Do you REALLY believe, for one moment, that you have a snowballs chance in hell of achieving this objective ?
It takes one to know one. Couldn't help it. Childish rants like that sort of breed this kind of contempt. Anyway, whether the working class ever achieves its liberation will, of course, depend on the workers themselves, including Macdonald's workers. If we don't, well we can just go on selling our lives away to the rich while they laugh all the way to the bank.
: OK, we realise that you are offering the means for workers of the world to unite, so for the next step - how are they going to take possession of the means of production ?
We could always take, hold and operate the means of production for ourselves when we reach the appropriate level of organization.
: Do the workers have the expertise, once they have overthrown the "employing class" to step into the bosses shoes and do his/her job ?
Workers already operate the means of production. Do they have the moxy to run it for themselves or do they "need" somehow to run it for a bunch of parasitic stockholders?
: It's not simply a case of tell the capitalist pig who owns the cotton mill to take a hike, and let the workers who operate the machinery continue to do so as an equal group of co-owners/workers. To operate in the industrial climate of today takes, knowledge, experience, expertise. Of course only a few have this expertise. And wherever power is concentrated in the hands of the few there is inequality, that's a fact of life. But exactly HOW does your plan fit into the grand scale of things ?
Like I said. We already run production. We just need to dump the bosses off our backs and put them to work helping us. Instead, they just ride the clutch--they're a drag on production.
: Fine, if all you want to do is grow vegetables on a kibbutz, but modern economic society isn't overnight going to change and become some medieval structure. It's too advanced and complex.
May the goddesses forbid--a medieval society--no way Jose. We want to
work less, not more. We can only do by making prodution more efficient.
: To conclude, the nature of industry HAS changed since Marx's day you know. How can you possibly expect to be able to apply the doctrines he came up with in the mid 1800's to economies and industries in 1998 ?
Oh yeah, the dogma argument. "Youse guys are trying to apply an old dogma to our new tricks and it ain't gonna work, ha, ha."
Nope--we're not trying to apply a dogma and neither are we stuck in the
"ruling ideas of our time" which have become dogma i.e. only the capitalist class and its toadies can run a modern society. This is 1998, not 1789/1776 baby.
: Until you lot step out of the time warp, and stop holding up historical events as an indication of what we should do in the furure, you are on a road to nowhere. If you could come up with some practical solutions for workers in 1998, perhaps they'd sit up and take notice. But when your whole organisation is based on outdated political dogma that has no relevance to the modern day situation you are up against, it will ultimately result in failure - unless you change your outdated approach.
Same to you. My, my, my aren't we testy.
: We thought you might be worth listening to until we read the IWW website. Talk about pie in the sky ! Get yourselves a mission statement that bears some relation to the real world - it's 1998, not 1898 !
Yeah well, you convinced. This is the "best of all possible world" and we should just shut up and "tend our own gardens" hay Candida?
Wage-slaves of the world organize. You have nothting to lose but your bosses (and their toadies).
Flora Tristan
