I wrote this article two years ago (August 2021) in response to Marianne Garneau’s article titled “Workplace struggles are political”which was published on organising.work. At the time, I tried to get the article published as a response on the same website only to find out that Garneau was its editor and refused the retort. The IWW’s magazine Industrial Worker also refused it based on its length and on the grounds that it does not appeal to its target audience: “readers who are interested in organizing their workplace, but not in debate over socialist theory” — ironically, a position I just so happened to critique in the first few lines of the piece. Following these rejections, I put the piece to bed and forgot about it only to come across it a few weeks ago. I decided to reproduce it here, with minor alterations, as a small contribution to a continuous debate and, because, contrary to what anyone may believe, you cannot separate organisational practice from theory.

Marianne Garneau’s article titled “Workplace struggles are political” presents an important theoretical contribution in a field that is either considered as settled by fellow revolutionary socialists or is ignored as largely abstract and therefore unimportant by many organisers within the IWW. If you haven’t had a chance to read the article, which I recommend you do, Garneau attacks “those who consider themselves radicals in the labour movement” for maintaining a dichotomy between labour organising, which they present as unable to “spontaneously” radicalise workers, and the need for outside organising which needs to occur in a political sphere distinct from the workplace. At the heart of this dichotomy is the very serious question of whether the working class can emancipate itself, or if it needs the guidance of a political party.

In trying to settle this question, Garneau makes important contributions, the most crucial of which is the affirmation that workplace organising is in and of itself political, but also presents some contradictions and misrepresentations of her own. The aim of this article is to try and unravel some of these contradictions not for the sake of theoretical muscle flexing, but in the hope to clarify the role of the IWW in mobilizing, and indeed creating the working class, and its role in making a revolution.

Who is the working class?

Before dealing with these contradictions, it's worth staking out what and who the working class is. While this may seem like an elementary task, it remains an important one as it drives straight to the role of consciousness in bringing about a socialist revolution and in how workplace organising is actually political.

The working class consists of all those who own no private (as opposed to personal) property and must rely on selling their labour power to survive. This is an objective position shared by the majority of the population which is kept in this position by the owners of capital (the means of production) who own the commodities produced by the working class and sell it at a profit by not paying the worker the full value of their labour. This difference, known as surplus value, is then used by the capitalists to ensure the recreation of both the labouring and the owning classes.

The mechanics of the market means that it is in the best interest of the owners of capital to maximise the surplus value appropriated from workers to remain competitive. This means increasing productivity and output to capture greater market share while decreasing costs. What this translates into is increased workload, greater precarity, lower wages, automation, increased division of labour and a slew of negative outcomes for the working class.

As Garneau makes clear, these mechanisms create a situation in which workers “are in relationships of domination and exploitation by employers, as well as relationships of solidarity with each other”. These shared experiences can help forge them into a fighting force in such a way that, as Karl Marx said, capitalism creates its own gravediggers. However, in addition to this force that can create a fighting working class, there are other forces which act against its solidification. These forces of capitalist domination, which Marxists and anarchists alike agree exist, operate through state and non-state institutions to reinforce the view that capitalism presents a natural or optimal state of affairs that is beneficial to all or at least fair in its distribution of rewards based on merit. These forces are so strong that they have, so far, been able to suppress, subvert, or neutralise any attempts of the working class to overcome the capitalist system and put an end to the class system.

The result of these opposing forces means that members of the working class, although objectively sharing in a subordinate position, vary in how they subjectively perceive their situations due to their interaction and internalisation of these forces. Therefore, some members of the working class may subscribe to and defend the capitalist system, some may be aware of its exploitative nature but feel impotent in their ability to do anything about it, and others may believe that while exploitative, capitalism is the best available option and therefore must be guided and its negative attributes curtailed, while a section of the working class seeks to rid itself of the capitalist system altogether.

The problem this state of multiple competing consciousnesses presents is that it is necessary for a material force greater than that of capitalism to exist so that it may be overthrown. This force will not come from the capitalist class and therefore must be won from within the working class itself. This requires an apparatus of some sort able to win over sections of the working class to its side and forge it into a conscious and disciplined force able to overcome capitalism.

There is no doubt that absent such an apparatus, such a force cannot exist. This is something that Garneau and “those who consider themselves radicals in the labour movement” agree upon. What they disagree on is the shape, form, and function of this apparatus.

The party as separate from the working class

For “those who consider themselves radicals in the labour movement”, this apparatus must be a political party. This follows Lenin’s conception of a revolutionary party which is spelt out in his What is to be done? and would become a major plank on which the Bolshevik party (then still a faction within the larger Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) would establish itself. The reason this apparatus needs to be a party and not a union, they argue, is because unions are so overstretched by the day-to-day economic struggle for better wages and conditions that they are incapable of becoming sites that engage in the political analysis and understanding needed to create a force needed to overcome capitalism instead of just fighting against its immediate injustices.

The party’s role would be to “extract” the most promising and advanced radical workers and organisers, what they call the vanguard, from this daily struggle, and transform them into professional revolutionaries who are sustained by the party and go where they are needed to create and influence other workers groups and unions. In such a way, a symbiotic relationship between the party and the working class will develop as the party will consist of the most ardent members of the working class, and feed back into the class as a whole.

Garneau charges that this political party is bound to become one of “self-appointed specialists gathered in organizational in-groups … thick with radical opinion-havers.” Simply put, she argues that the party would inevitably become disconnected from the working class itself and sit above it. This is historically correct. While the Bolshevik party could at one point show itself to be a working-class party, it eventually substituted itself for the working class during the process of the Russian Revolution. Today, similarly constructed parties lack any sort of mass-working class membership or affiliation. This is partly their own doing, but also due to historical reasons such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the de-radicalisation of labour. They therefore now mostly operate as isolated cliques bickering over “programs” that will never see the light of day.

Unfortunately, Garneau takes the failure of the political party model as proof that their assertion that unions are not inherently radical as equally false. And while, as Garneau rightfully argues, fighting for better wages and conditions is inherently political, the question remains if it is inherently radically political, is that fight alone able to result in a revolutionary consciousness? Garneau argues that it is, saying that

“Organizing … builds opposition to the boss, and opposition builds solidarity. In doing this, workers can develop the capacity to run more and more of our lives. That’s an eminently political process and a transformative one, and one that doesn’t need functionaries from parties, no matter what their stripe.”

There is an obvious leap in the above quote in that Garneau seems to assume that simply by having the capacity to run more and more of our lives, which I would argue the working class already possess by virtue of them being the ones who currently run it! the working class would want to run it. This leads her to reach the wrongful conclusion that the only needs a working-class apparatus must fulfil is to provide organising training and have a website. But if this was the case, then why has the already organised working class not taken control of the means of production?

Garneau makes a second, related, leap here. Her argument that workplace organising is political assumes an inherent connection between the struggles that take place in individual workplaces over pay, conditions, etc. with a coordinated drive to restructure the economy as a whole. This connection, however, cannot exist unless it comes from outside the workplace because it must necessarily transcend it! In simpler terms, imagining a socialist economy requires a conception of the economy that extends beyond the workplace and the struggles that take place within it. This does not mean that this conception needs to come from a disconnected class of intellectuals, indeed the idea of socialism emerged from the working class well before Marx or anyone else refined it. But it does speak to the need of a body of workers, again, an apparatus, that exists beyond the workplace.

To summarise, Garneau’s view, although acknowledges that “building up the muscle of the working class and shifting the balance of power at work is not adventitious… It is something to be studiously analyzed and improved, as with any war strategy”, fails to identify where or who will undertake this studious analysis and improvement should take place. Her view also fails to adequately account of how this “war strategy” will avoid subversion, bureaucratisation, and opportunism. More damningly, it undercuts the entire function of the IWW itself and confuses its role within the class struggle.

Acting vanguard-ly without a vanguard party

While the IWW is a union and not a political party, it still serves as an important and indispensable political organisation, not simply because as a union it affirms that economic struggles are themselves political, but through its political analysis it has determined how the economic fight must be waged and to what end. This is mostly done in the IWW’s preamble which has remained largely unchanged since the founding of the union in 1905. For example, through its political analysis, the Preamble identifies that

“The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.”

It also identifies that

“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.”

It is these declarations and the political commitment to them, not just engagement in the opposition of bosses which has generated the politically important tasks that Garneau highlights. That is to say that those tasks are politically important only in so far as they operate in the forefront of a pre-existing political set-up. To present them on their own as inherently radical or radicalising is a mistake. It is the political background that gives meaning to the tactics and not the other way around. It is for this reason that the IWW exists, to continuously reintroduce and inject our political orientation, and not just our tactics, into the working class to win them over.

There is a widespread assumption within the IWW that the mere existence of the union and the blueprint it provides negates the need for further political work which is dismissed as theoretical or abstract. What is left for us to do, as members, is to simply carry out the vision set out so many years ago. This cannot be further from the truth.

Within the Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England Regional Administration of the IWW, in which I am a member, there is important debate on all sorts of issues pertaining to the internal functioning of the union. These debates spread from the place of paid work, the structure and organisation of workers on industrial lines, the function of representative work in organising, and the role of general membership branches, and whether or not we should be organising in communities and participating in “activism”. These are all political conversations that exist outside of the workplace which Garneau’s politically important tasks do not address. More importantly, the result of these political debates will have major and longstanding implications on how workplace organising itself is carried out and whether or not the union drifts towards or away from its political vision.

Other examples of exclusively political questions can be the relationship of the union with prisoners, the unemployed, or the union’s stance on the oppression of workers in other parts of the world. A non-IWW organiser friend of mine recently informed me of the frustrations they faced at work when an IWW member refused to acknowledge the importance of the issue of Palestinian liberation, even though the company they work with has significant ties with the occupying regime of Israel and its military. The IWW organizer emphatically argued that the organising committee at the workplace should focus exclusively on “economic concerns”. This is a perfect example of how the eight tasks Garneau presents do not go far enough in acknowledging the political questions the union needs to contend with and how important they are at a shop-floor level. Unfortunately, this presents ammunition to those who believe in the need for an exclusively political organisation and party. Organisers can still use Garneau’s tactics and focus exclusively on “economic concerns” without ever arriving at socialist conclusions or internationalist socialist conclusions. Even worse, that sort of thinking can itself become reactionary, protective, and nationalistic.

There is therefore a clear need for the IWW to undertake political tasks of analysis that extend beyond and outside the individual workplace unit and then inject that analysis into the way we organise. In the above example, the union needs to take a clear stance of international solidarity with workers specifically because the task of revolution is both political and economic. By doing this the IWW acts to influence and guide the working class by injecting an internationalist working class consciousness into workplace struggles. Garneau might charge this perspective as one that, just like those who advocate for the need of a political party, focuses on bringing an abstract socialist analysis to working people. However, this process is the same one Garneau would need to use to import her eight tasks into the functioning of other unions. Except that the tasks alone present no guarantee of radicalising workers.

The main, and a very crucial, difference becomes not the method that the organizations take, both unions and parties seek to influence and win over the working class as apparatuses, but rather how these apparatuses themselves operate. Those who argue for an exclusive political party often limit its membership to whatever they see as the vanguard and believe that the needed correct political analysis can only emerge if this membership is limited. On the other hand, the IWW is a mass labour organisation open to anyone who is not a capitalist or a class traitor and believes that it is the democratic and open debate of these political issues by the masses and not a discrete vanguard that will generate the most useful political analysis.

The location of the struggle

By maintaining the primacy of the workplace, Garneau ends up reinforcing a political/economic dichotomy instead of helping remove it. She justifies this primacy by saying

“the workplace is where the power struggle between the working class and employing class plays out — not just in terms of wages (the share of the value the worker creates that she actually gets to keep), but in terms of the pace of work, the scope of work, the authority of management versus worker control, respect on the job, etc.”

In the above paragraph, Garneau perpetuates an error maintained by many syndicalists and poses the question of worker's power as one only between the authority of management and workers’ control. The paragraph, and the article in general, says nothing of the power of the state, the police, prisons, education, right-wing forces, the military and all the other “trenches”, as Antonio Gramsci called them, on which the authority of management rests. While the power struggle is for worker's control, it is actually fought through a direct competition of power which will require the organisation of workers within and outside of the workplace.

By exclusively focusing on the workplace, Garneau ends up throwing under the bus, unintentionally, many other forms of organisation and confrontation which also help workers learn how to wrest back control such as anti-fascist organising, tenant unions, and community organising all of which the IWW is also actively involved in or supportive of as a way to win over the working class to revolutionary socialism. It is the class as a whole that the IWW must organise and influence and this means seeing the power struggle as one that is not exclusive to workplaces alone.

By exclusively focusing on the workplace, Garneau ends up throwing under the bus, unintentionally, many other forms of organisation and confrontation which also help workers learn how to wrest back control such as anti-fascist organising, tenant unions, and community organising all of which the IWW is also actively involved in or supportive of as a way to win over the working class to revolutionary socialism. It is the class as a whole that the IWW must organise and influence and this means seeing the power struggle as one that is not exclusive to workplaces alone.

This is not simply an academic or abstract assertion, it has massive implications on our apparatus, from the role our general membership branches need to play, to where our resources need to be directed, to how the union as a whole is structured. All of these need to be debated in a democratic manner within the union and the result of such debates taken forward by the different bodies of the union to succeed in meeting our objective of taking possession of the means of production, abolishing the wage system, and living in harmony with the earth.

Conclusion

I joined the IWW in 2018 after I became disillusioned with a political organisation for the very reasons Garneau highlights. What drew me to the IWW was that in addition to an exclusively political mission, it also sought to improve everyday working conditions for workers and was in fact a mass worker organisation and not simply purporting to be one.

Critics of the IWW such as James P Cannon argue that the IWW’s attempt to be both a political organisation and a union is a contradiction that “hampered its effectiveness in both fields”. But this is a contradiction only for those who see the economic and political fields as distinct instead of being an interrelationship in which, as Rosa Luxemburg argued, “The proletarian army is recruited and becomes aware of its objectives in the course of the struggle itself. The activity of the party organization, the growth of the proletarians’ awareness of the objectives of the struggle and the struggle itself, are not different things separated chronologically and mechanically. They are only different aspects of the same struggle.” This interrelation necessitates that we build an organisation which the working class can be recruited into and is at the same time capable of directing the course of the struggle based on the political principles set by the working class themselves through the organisation. It is thus both organic and imposed, operating within the workplace and outside of it.

To be able to do this we should embrace our “duality” and recognize our political tasks and the fact that they extend beyond the workplace, while concurrently fighting to wrest back control at workplaces. It is this process and this process alone that will allow us to begin erecting the structures of the new society within the shell of the old.

Originally posted: June 30, 2023 at Medium