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Title: Redefining Green Anarchism Author: Steve Ongerth Date: December 31, 2013 Language: en Topics: IWW, green syndicalist, green syndicalism, Green Anarchism, Green Anarchist Source: Retrieved on October 23, 2017 from https://ecology.iww.org/node/306
The IWW (and green syndicalists) want to replace capitalism with "One
Big (earth destroying) Factory", or so the story goes among some
self-described radicals who would so quickly dismiss us.
To say the IWW has an I-dentity crises would be the mother of all
understatements. For half a century, we Wobblies have struggled to
disabuse people of the widely believed--though completely
erroneous--notion that the "I" in "IWW" stands for "International". No,
we're not the "International Workers of the World," we're the Industrial
Workers of the World.
It would be a major digression to explain how the "International"
mislabeling came about. We're not really certain even we know, and that
is not actually the heart of the matter I wish to address. Thanks to
recent scholarship and a spate of really good books about the One Big
Union, perhaps resulting from the IWW's centenary in 2005, people are
finally getting the actual "I-dentity" of our first initial right
(finally). Of course, this carries with it a new set of I-dentity
problems.
For many people, The word "industrial" conjures up images of a factory,
with scenes from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or other exposés of satanic
mills vividly dominating those visions. Along with that notion, the
horrors of Fordist factory regimentation of the worst sort enter their
minds, and not without good reason.
As someone who actually worked in a factory (a steel processing
warehouse in Fremont, California to be precise) albeit briefly (five
months during the late spring and summer of 1997), I can attest to the
veracity of what it's like to work in one of them. It's anything but
paradise--though of course--I was working under capitalist economic
conditions and the business union that allegedly "represented" me was a
more than willing collaborator to them.
The machines were loud and dusty--not to mention greasy (lubricated with
whale fat, no less!), the facility fraught with dangers, and the work
rules stiffly regimented. Although there was a good deal of safety
training (in fact we had weekly, hour-long meetings), it was still very
much a death trap. No doubt the union, in this case, ILWU Local 6, had
much to do with the token safety measures, but in spite of the union,
the place was a deeply alienating work environment.
The minds of my fellow workers had been deeply and thoroughly colonized.
Most of them were quite reactionary, and--being a male dominated work
environment, deeply sexist and homophobic. They saw the union as an
outside agency, and (rightfully) criticized it for its class
collaborationism (if the myriad examples of graffiti decrying "Local
Sux" evident throughout the grounds was any indication). However, such
sentiments were no doubt welcomed or even tacitly encouraged by the
bosses, and a year or two after I was "laid off" under somewhat
questionable grounds, the union was busted when the facility relocated
to Stockton, California.
One needn't work in a factory to understand it, though. During the post
war boom, enough working class people did work in factories, and their
stories have been passed on through family lore. If that isn't enough,
there are plenty of accounts of what factory life is like. Consider, for
example, Judi Bari's expose of working conditions in the
Louisiana-Pacific sawmills of Mendocino County based on the first hand
accounts of at least two mill workers.
When some hear that the "I" stands for "industrial", they immediately
flash on such nightmare visions and assume that we Wobblies envision
that the new society that we hope to build within the shell of the old
will look like that! (horrors!!!)
This is a grand misconception, of course, and it in part stems from the
misuse of language. "Industrial" derives from "Industry". One of the
basic tenets of the IWW is that all workers employed by the same boss,
such as an auto maker, hotel, or shipping company belong to one union,
rather than a group of disunited craft unions. The IWW proposed
organizing wall-to-wall unions, i.e. by industry--hence the name
"industrial".
That satisfies some skeptics, but of course, some work is still done in
factories. Much of that has been outsourced. Many people--at least in
the United States in the past two generations--have never worked in a
factory, and there's a good reason for that. The capitalist system
depends upon the maximization of profits by the employing, capitalist
class. At least two factors have driven that process: (1) the drive to
"offshore" labor to locations with cheaper labor; and (2) the connected
drive to move facilities to places with lax regulations, including
environmental regulations.
Of course, the third initial--the second "W" stands for "World", and the
IWW seeks to organize those workers as well, whose factory conditions
are horrid. We call them sweatshops for good reason.
There is still some trepidation among radicals that factories, even
organized factories are a living hell, no matter what!
It's easy to see how one might jump to such conclusions. Most
interpretations of classical Marxism suggest the workers of the world
seizing control of the factories and taking them over, and in doing so,
operating them for the good of all, not just the wealthy capitalist
class.
The IWW is not exclusively Marxist--in fact it's inclusive of both the
best ideas of Marxism and class struggle anarchism, and much else good
besides)--but that concept seems logical enough. After all, the IWW
Preamble declares that the workers of the world must organize as a
class, take control of the machinery of production, and abolish the wage
system. Marx and Engels themselves argued that a revolutionary working
class would achieve its full potential by fully developing society's
"productive capabilities."
It also doesn't help matters that many of the nation states whose
economies are supposedly based on the ideas of Marx (the former USSR and
China in particular) have indeed looked like industrial gulags and have
thoroughly damaged the environment as well.
On closer examination, however, the level of oppression and
environmental degradation is actually worse in capitalist nation states
(though the latter are far more effective at covering up the problem
through outsourcing and propaganda).
Furthermore, at least one nation state whose economic systems is
supposedly based on "Marxist" economics, North Korea, is mostly agrarian
societies.
The real discussion and debate should focus on what degree any of the
aforementioned (supposedly non-capitalist) nations are actually close to
achieving the ideals set forth by Marx (not close at all) or if Marxism
results in actual post capitalist "workers paradises" or some sort of
technocratic dystopia. On that last question, the debate still rages.
Most Marxists would say it's the former, and most anarchists would
suggest that it's the latter.
Syndicalism also promotes the idea of the working class seizing the
means of production, and to some extent, many syndicalists accept Marx's
and Engel's deconstruction of capitalist economics. However, they
propose a substantially different model of revolutionary organization
(one big union) than that of most Marxists (a workers' party).
Still, syndicalists are subjected to much malignment by radical
environmentalists and non syndicalist anarchists, because both of the
latter see the syndicalist goal of seizing the means of production as
chaining the working class to "One Big Factory".
They're quick to invoke that famous lyric by the Who's Pete Townsend,
"Meet the new boss / same as the old boss" (Won't Get Fooled Again), a
common occurrence in political revolutions, to suggest what will happen
in a syndicalist revolution.
To Marx and Engels--and for that matter, to Bakunin as well--factories
represented both a torture chamber of capitalist oppression, but
potentially also the salvation of the working class. If seized by the
workers of the world, the factories and machines could be used to meet
all the wants and needs of the workers thus making life better for all,
including developing the world's productive capacity to the point where
the standard of living of all was raised substantially.
In some cases, such as in the early days of the Russian Revolution in
1917 or the Spanish Revolution of 1936, when the workers succeeded in
taking over the machinery of production, that's precisely what
happened--that is until the counter revolutionary forces gained
ascendency.
Almost a century of experience has shown that the reasons for the
ultimate failure of these revolutions are many and complex, and much
disagreement still surrounds any discussions of them. Capitalist
propaganda has succeeded in convincing many, including many on what
passes for the "left" in the United States (and in my mind that includes
anarchism and radical environmentalism, whether the adherents of both
choose to see it that way or not), that the failure of these revolutions
is due to inherent flaws in the revolutionary ideal, rather than the
sabotaging of those revolutions by opportunists.
Therefore, to many, the idea of "revolution" evokes notions of the naive
masses, spurred on by opportunists, who use the former for their own
selfish ends. The latter then subject the former to even worse
enslavement and even heavier chains once the revolution is complete (Of
course, such a pessimistic view of "revolution" is precisely the
classical conservative critique of revolution). That there are other,
positive, forces at work is often overlooked.
The very tangled web of events that unfolded during the Spanish
Revolution of 1936--all of which have been debated from every angle
imaginable--have only added to the confusion, because some critics of
the syndicalist CNT insist that the leadership of that industrial union
collaborated with the leftist coalition government that capitulated to
counterrevolutionary Stalinist forces, thus paving the way for the coup
led by the fascist Francisco Franco. While there may be some (or a good
deal of) truth to that criticism, the question is rarely asked, "was the
collaboration (if it really happened as charged) a result of inherent
flaws in syndicalism itself? Or was it a case of the leadership
violating syndicalist principles altogether? In my estimation, if the
charges of collaborationism by the CNT leadership are indeed true, and
I'm not at all convinced that they are, the latter is true by
definition. It is an inherent violation of syndicalist principles to
directly collaborate with any non-syndicalist political organizations.
Even though some critics of syndicalism agree with my analysis of the
Spanish Revolution, they still find the classical Marxist and
syndicalist programs, certainly products of the 19th Century, severely
dated to their 21st Century minds, especially one so steeped in a
greater ecological conscience not known in Marx's and Bakunin's time.
Quoting anarchist Murray Bookchin from his 1980 text, "Towards an
Ecological Society":
"The factory worker lives merely on the memory of such traits. The din
of the factory drowns out every thought, not to speak of any song; the
division of labour denies the worker any relationship to the community;
the rationalisation of labour dulls his or her senses and exhausts his
or her body. There is no room whatever for any of the artisan’s modes of
expression — from artistry to spirituality — other than an interaction
with objects that reduce the worker to a mere object... Marxism and
syndicalism alike, by virtue of their commitment to the factory as a
revolutionary social arena, must recast self-management to mean the
industrial management of the self.... Both ideologies share the notion
that the factory is the ‘school’ of revolution and in the case of
syndicalism, of social reconstruction, rather than its undoing. Most
share a common commitment to the factory’s structural role as a source
of social mobilisation.... The factory not only serves to mobilise and
train the proletariat but to dehumanise it. Freedom is to be found not
within the factory but outside it."
Included in this critique of "syndicalism" was an implicit dismissal of
the IWW (in the 1980s when Bookchin wrote these words) as anything but
an historical relic, an implication that Bookchin admitted in rebutting
green-syndicalist writer Graham Purchase's critique of "Towards an
Ecological Society" (Bookchin's rebuttal was rife with his usual
defensive vitriol towards his critics).
Neither we IWWs, nor green syndicalists, for that matter, are arguing
for "One Big Factory" in any case. What we are saying is that we
recognize that in order to abolish the worst aspects of "industrialism",
(capitalism), at least part of the strategy must involve seizing the
machinery of production.
It's what happens after that which is the bone of contention. We argue
that at least some industry is necessary for people to live and prosper.
Much of that could very well be small scale cottage industry, organized
in a variety of scales of urban villages, small towns, or even a few big
cities as suggested by Christopher Alexander, et. al. In A Pattern
Language. Also, one-time IWW organizer and Redwood Simmer participant,
Jess Grant, offered his suggestions on how we might transform invasive
and disruptive industries once the workers seize control of them into
benign replacements, wherever and whenever possible. Even so, there may
be some larger scale industrial operations, because the economies of
scale demand it, but as already stated, these needn't be satanic mills.
The idea of taking over the factories is not merely revolutionary,
however, it's transformative. It's not just a matter of changing the
bosses or the style of management; it's a matter of changing the factory
itself, indeed the whole factory system.
Work in a factory (or foundry) needn't be a prison like dystopia. The
working conditions can be significantly improved. Without capitalism and
its profit uber alles ethic, there needn't be production quotas.
Instead of placing profit above workers' needs, workers' needs,
including creative input, a safe and comfortable work environment,
personalization of workspace and more would take precedence.
Work in a factory needn't be tedious or monotonous either. The various
tasks involved in production can easily be shared and rotated, as
suggested by Michael Albert in Parecon. Where repetitive tasks are
unavoidable, workers can pair up and take turns performing them (the
ILWU--among others--demanded the concept of "ten-minutes on; ten minutes
off" to keep workers fresh and alert. Naturally the bosses resisted such
things.
The length of the workday needn't be eight hours either. Thanks to
technological improvements, workers are at least five times as
productive as they were when the eight-hour day became standard (thanks
in no small part to unions like the IWW agitating and organizing for
shorter hours of work with no loss in pay). Why not have a six-hour day?
One major company, Keloggs, had even institutionalized that, until World
War II, when shortages of workers and increased demand made the six hour
day impractical. Since then, however, productivity has vastly improved.
Even a four-hour day is possible.
As for the factory environment itself, it needn't be a depersonalized
mechanistic hell, as parodied by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times.
Instead work could actually be fun and nurturing. Toxic chemicals can be
replaced by safe alternatives, or even eliminated in many cases. Noise
levels can be reduced. Ventilation and daylighting can make even the
most stifling environments substantially more bearable.
As Jess Grant (and Colin Ward) point out, the productive function of the
factory itself can be changed. Instead of producing merchandise for
profit, it can instead be produced for need. Instead of creating useless
technology, such as weapons of mass destruction and other military
hardware, the same machinery can theoretically, in many cases, instead
be retooled to produce more benevolent goods, such as bicycles, solar
panels, or street cars--for instance.
And since the driving force would be need and creativity rather than the
maximization of profit and the competitive drive, the instances of
injury, noise, and pollution will all but disappear.
So just because the IWW is an industrial union, and Green Syndicalists
are not in favor of abolishing industry, that doesn't make us a bunch of
earth destroying, gulag building, technocratic dictators. It's merely a
case of mistaken i-dentity that leads people to think otherwise.