:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.: -----=====Earth's Dreamlands=====----- (313)558-5024 {14.4} (313)558-5517 A BBS for text file junkies RPGNet GM File Archive Site .:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:. ______________________________________________________________________ issue number 1 june 5, 1992 // /// // //// // /// /// // //// ////// /// ////// //// // // // /// // // // // // // // / // // // ///// // // // // // ///// // // // // ////// // // // //\\ // \\\ ///// // // // // // \\\// / \\ // // //// \\//// \\ // /// // // // //// \\///// \\/// /// // \\\\\\ \\ ////\\\\ \\ \\ \\\ \\ \\ \\\\\\ \\\\\ \\ \\\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\\\ \\ \\ \\ \\ \\\ \\\ \\ \\\\ \\\ \\ \\ \\\ \\ \\\ \\\\\ \\\\ Address all correspondence to mlepore@mcimail.com CONTENTS ________ #1.01 Introduction ........................ Mike Lepore #1.02 Preamble to the IWW Constitution .... The Industrial Workers of the World #1.03 Declaration of Principles ........... The Industrial Union Party #1.04 Our Goal ............................ The New Union Party #1.05 What is Socialism? .................. The De Leonist Society ______________________________________________________________________ ORGANIZED THOUGHTS is dedicated to the organization of the working class to establish industrial democracy. Compilation copyright 1992 by M. Lepore. This document may be freely reproduced and distributed by the general public, in electronic or printed form. Please upload this publication to your local BBS's, and send copies to your friends. ______________________________________________________________________ #1.01 Introduction ........................ Mike Lepore ______________________________________________________________________ |||||| What am I trying to do? |||||| |||||| ORGANIZED THOUGHTS is a new publication distributed |||||| internationally by electronic mail, and by upload to BBS |||||| file libraries. It is dedicated to discussing the idea |||||| of INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY through INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM. |||||| |||||| Even if you disagree with what you read here, you will |||||| find this journal to be quite educational. Debates about |||||| principles and strategies are welcome. |||||| |||||| As you shall see, there are a number of organizations and individuals promoting this goal, industrial democracy, with somewhat similar programs for attaining it. Some of them believe that the programs of the others are lacking some features which are necessary to make these programs workable, or they may use terminology differently. I encourage the various organizations to submit articles explaining these matters in their own words, but I will endeavor to be fair when paraphrasing them. I'm not a member of any political or economic organization. I try to remain on friendly terms with anyone who aims uncompromisingly at the education and organization of the working class, for the attainment of workers' self-management, in a classless society. The organizations with position statements excerpted in this document are independent. When various groups and individuals submit articles to this forum, or grant me permission to reproduce their documents, this should not be interpreted to mean that they are affiliated with each other. This journal is an experiment in compiling letters and articles into a publically-available archive of text files. I hope that an electronic database of working class literature of all types will eventually be created, and that this publication will be absorbed into it in some way. I have called it ORGANIZED THOUGHTS for two reasons: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The first reason is that a world free of exploitation can be established only if the international working class consciously and properly organizes to construct it. This forum is dedicated to thoughts about why and how the working class must be organized. We need to discuss why organization is essential, what's wrong with the types of organization that have been attempted in the past, what kind of organization is considered viable, and what life will be like after we organize society in an improved way. The second reason for calling it ORGANIZED THOUGHTS is that the material included here needs to be organized according to the limited available space. While there are many bulletin board conferences suitable for humorous or divergent conversation, this particular forum will need to be condensed to emphasize education and rational argument. There will be some emphasis on "classic reprints", like the works of Marx and Engels, and the official positions declared by various groups. In addition, your manuscripts on related subject are invited. ~~ A CHALLENGE TO THE READER ~~ The intellectual challenge to you, the reader, is to compare and contrast the ideas you read here. In what ways are they similar, and in what ways different? What questions, regarding the social goal and how to get there, are left unanswered? If you agree with a statement: Are the best possible arguments being given? Can you improve the argument, or add supportive facts? If you disagree with a statement: Are your disagreements due to doubt about reported facts, or due to reading what you consider logical fallacies, or differences in value-judgements, i.e., what you consider "right", what kind of world you would prefer to live in? Your conclusions should be tentative, since more complete statements of the viewpoints of others will be given in the near future. Caution: Beware of the tendency to fill in the gaps with your imagination, as a result of stereotypes conveyed by the media. For example, you may have been told repeatedly that collective ownership of industry is synonymous with management by a Big Brother state. However, in fact, the contributors to this journal come from a philosophical sector that is opposed to all social regimentation and the repressive powers of the state -- ANY state. ~~ THE GOAL AND THE PROGRAM ~~ The goal of the industrial democracy movement is to abolish the wage system, i.e., the system in which members of one social class, the many who do NOT own capital, in order to live, must seek and obtain employment by another social class, the few who own capital. The goal is to abolish class distinction itself, so that all members of society will be equal participants in the industrial management process. Industrial democracy will be a social system in which society as a whole will use the principle of majority vote to decide what goods and services shall be provided, what characteristics these goods and services shall have, and when, where and how the product shall be distributed. Whenever administrative tasks are delegated to supervisors or management committees, these shall be elected directly by their workplace constituency. No appointees shall exist in any management positions. Industrial unionism is the principle of organizing the entire working class into a single workplace-based association, or industrial union, so that the workers' own association can take over the management role. This is to implemented without giving any power to "leaders" or a "vanguard party". ~~ THE BALLOT QUESTION ~~ There are two main schools of thought in the movement to build industrial democracy through industrial unionism. One is the viewpoint that the industrial union will be self-sufficient, and it will not offer the workers advice regarding whether they should pull levers in the voting booth, or, if so, which ones. Political activity, like religion, is considered a matter of individual choice. It is believed that politics in the union only divides the workers while they should be uniting. Emphasis is placed on the fact that, because the workers are in physical possession of the tools of production every day, and produce all wealth, therefore economic actions, if planned wisely, will give us an irresistible power to change the world. These actions might include not only such tactics as strikes and slow-downs, but may, if necessary, also include a general strike of all labor. "Direct" economic action is emphasized, which means action that organized workers can do by themselves, for themselves, without reliance on benevolent politicians or other supposed allies. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), founded in 1905, is probably the main advocate of this perspective. (The IWW members often refer to themselves by the nickname "Wobblies".) The other point of view is that the working class should unite into one political movement as well as into one industrial union. Some of the reasons cited for using the ballot are: to use political campaigns as educational vehicles; to enact a constitutional mandate for industrial democracy, which the union's economic might will enforce; to maximize the chances that the social transformation will be made peacefully; to keep the movement above-ground instead of persecuted, to the greatest extent possible; and to dismantle the political state, which is always an instrument of some sort of ruling class. It is important to note that it is NOT the goal to have this political party rule society through the state, as in the so-called "Communist" systems. The party is considered a temporary expediency, while the industrial union is given the entire positive and constructive role. This dual political-industrial program was set forth by Daniel De Leon in the first decade of this century. There are several organizations which show the influence of De Leonist principles, such as the De Leonist Society, the New Union Party, and the Industrial Union Party, in addition to several others. These various groups seem to disagree primarily on the question of what is the best type of internal organization for the political party, the degree of correctness and effectiveness of certain tactics and terminology, and similar matters. This may or may not be an unusual opinion, but I do not think of any of these organizations as being in competition with each other. I personally view all of them as doing important work, all of them contributing, in their own way. ~~ THAT MISUNDERSTOOD WORD "SOCIALISM" ~~ ALWAYS keep in mind that the organizations whose position statements are reproduced here are advocating something that has never been instituted, anywhere. 'Time' magazine and the network news are pounding you with frequent repetition of the phrase "the failure of socialism". This is likely to cause confusion, unless you remember that all the bureaucratic and undemocratic state-run experiments of the past and present are completely unrelated to the genuine Industrial Democracy that is under discussion in this forum. There are many reasons to object to the liberal Welfare State ideal, and the Bolshevik police-state ideal. The miserable failure of these pseudo-socialist ventures is no reflection on "social ownership of industry", as the term is properly understood. Most people associate words such as "collectivism" and "socialism" with government ownership or government regulation. If you are going to make any sense out of the typical articles you'll read here, you'll need to forget that word association. The subject of this document is a movement that does NOT advocate any nationalization, or government ownership or control, and is absolutely opposed to this approach. Instead, the workers' own association is to be transformed into a democratic form of management. Most people associate the words "collectivism" and "socialism" with a sequence of reforms, intended, at least in theory, to bring the people some relief from the excesses of class rule. Or this reformism is intended as part of a stepping-stone or evolutionary approach, based on the belief that social ownership can be instituted gradually. That's another word association I'll ask you to set aside when you read the documents of the industrial democracy movement. You might hear them say that reform efforts are unavoidable, but entirely inadequate for the building of a sane society. On the other hand, you might read the viewpoint that reform demands are harmful, because expending effort to repair junk, before throwing it away, leaves one psychologically and intellectually unprepared to throw it away. This is roughly the spectrum of opinions within the industrial union movement regarding the incremental reform of class rule. ~~ WELCOME ! ~~ Be sure not to miss the future issues of this publication. More information on these vital issues will be on its way to you. ______________________________________________________________________ #1.02 Preamble to the IWW Constitution .... The Industrial Workers of the World ______________________________________________________________________ |||||| The IWW Preamble, in its present form, was ratified in |||||| 1908. The IWW publishes the newspaper THE INDUSTRIAL |||||| WORKER monthly ($10 per year). |||||| Industrial Workers of the World |||||| 1095 Market St., Suite 204 |||||| San Francisco, CA 94103 The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace as long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class. 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. These conditions can be changed, and the interests of the working class upheld, only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout in on, in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system." It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggles with the capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially, we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. ______________________________________________________________________ #1.03 Declaration of Principles ....... The Industrial Union Party ______________________________________________________________________ |||||| Reproduced by permission of Mr. Sam Brandon, the general |||||| secretary of the Industrial Union Party. The IUP |||||| publishes a magazine named THE NEW SYSTEM. |||||| (quarterly, $4 for four issues). |||||| Industrial Union Party |||||| P.O. Box 533 |||||| White Plains, NY 10603-1506 As a scientific socialist organization, the Industrial Union Party of America has been influenced by the work of the many great socialist theoreticians. However, the primary influence on our theory, apart from that of Marx and Engels, has come from the American socialist theoretician, Daniel De Leon. WE, the overwhelming majority of citizens in this country are slaves -- wage slaves. As members of the working class, we produce all of the wealth of America, and we get in return -- a wage. It is just enough to maintain us and enable us to breed replacements, who, in their turn, will give up their lives, bone, nerves and muscles, their joy and love and generosity and kindness, and every natural human grace -- for a wage. So long as capitalism lasts, there is no escape for us from the grinding need to sell ourselves. Our capacity to labor is all we have to sell, and we must sell it to the capitalists. That's how the capitalists make a profit -- by exploiting the working class. That is, the working class produces all the wealth, from which the capitalist ruling class takes the largest portion, in this process of exploitation, and, in return, gives its slaves a wage. The fact that some workers have color TV's, automatic dishwashers, two or three automobiles, and their own homes, does not alter the fact that they are exploited. Indeed, the debts usually connected with such ownership fastens the chains of wage slavery even more securely. Every single degrading aspect of capitalist society is in decay -- wars for profit and plunder abroad, race hatred dividing the working class, the slums we live in, the ruin of our environment, expensive, poor or nonexistent medical care, inadequate education, the second-class status of women, drug abuse, riots, crime -- in short, every one of those brutal, callous, cruel, and desperate things which goes on every hour, every minute, in capitalist society, grows out of exploitation. If we want to stop the degradation, we must end exploitation. If we want to free ourselves from wage slavery, we must abolish the profit system. If we want to live decent lives of freedom and fulfillment, we must build a Socialist Economic Democracy. The rock on which capitalism -- and every other system of profit and poverty -- is built is exploitation, and its utter, final, irrevocable abolition must be our goal. We must never be sidetracked, never be drawn aside by other, seeming more attractive goals. We must never waste ourselves on reforming symptoms. The goal, the abolition of the system of wage slavery, is ALL. To reach that goal in a modern industrialized country, we cannot use the methods of the past. We will accomplish nothing but our own suicide by attempts at armed insurrection. We must build not on our weakness, but on our strength, our strength as the working class, that holds in its hands the source of all power in capitalist society. Our hands and our brains operate all the facilities of production, communication, and distribution -- under capitalist orders. If we take, hold and operate our workplaces in our names, and for ourselves, locking out the capitalists, the ruling class will be helpless. Then we can reap the full abundance of our social product, realizing humanity's great dream: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." To accomplish that revolution, we must organize on the political and economic fields. Politically, we must use every forum open to us, from the soapbox to the ballotbox, to spread the idea of revolution. On the economic front, we must organize as a class at our workplaces into Socialist Industrial Unions, in order to disarm the ruling class, and render it powerless to thwart our revolution. And Socialist Industrial Unions will foreshadow our future form of government, because the present form, the political state, is a weapon of the ruling class, while the SIU administration proposed will be an administration of things, not coercion of our fellow workers. We need a government which will be no more than an agency for planning production and services, which must therefore be derived from our workplaces, where we will elect our own representatives to decide the kinds and quantities of production and services to satisfy our needs. Since the means of operation of the ruling class, its private control over what in effect must be public property, will be abolished, our socialist commonwealth will be a classless society. Since our revolution will be the first in history of, by and for the working class, with no elite "Party" leading us by the nose into a bureaucratic "Worker's State" so it can climb on our backs like any ruling class, we must be conscious of what we are doing and where we're going, conscious to a degree never before seen in a revolution. Just to begin to organize and develop Socialist Industrial Unions, in the fact of the ruling class's ferocious hostility, will require the kind of strength and determination that can spring only from thorough knowledge, leading to this consciousness. Given the consciousness of wage slavery, given the knowledge of how to end it, our second task, organization, will inevitably follow like the beginning of the dawn of a new day. ______________________________________________________________________ #1.04 Our Goal ............................ The New Union Party ______________________________________________________________________ |||||| From THE NEW UNIONIST, newspaper of the New Union |||||| Party, January 1992. Reprinted by permission of |||||| Ms. Jane Christian, the NUP corresponding secretary. |||||| Subscription rate - before Jan. 1, 1993: $3 for |||||| 10 issues; after Jan. 1, 1993: $5 for 12 issues |||||| New Unionist |||||| 621 W. Lake St, Suite 210 |||||| Minneapolis, MN 55408 The New Union Party seeks to bring the entire economy under the ownership and control of all the people. A democratic economy will provide useful and satisfying jobs for all workers. It will end production for profit and will produce to meet human needs. By eliminating the profit motive, it will end waste and pollution, and will make the conditions of work as safe, comfortable and gratifying as possible. To achieve this new economic system, the workers need to unite in one rank-and-file controlled union. This includes those workers now in unions, and the presently unorganized workers. It includes white collar and professional employees, as well as factory workers and craftsmen. It includes the unemployed as well as employed workers. New Unionism will work to end competition for jobs, and will promote cooperation among workers of all industries. It will enable the workers to protect their immediate interests against the employers. In addition to organizing industrially, the workers will need a political party to spread the idea of social ownership, and to gain the support of the majority at the polls. When this is achieved, the workers will assume control of their workplaces, and manage them democratically through their New Unions. An elected Congress of delegates from each industry will plan and manage the national economy, and will replace the present political Congress as the nation's government. ______________________________________________________________________ #1.05 What is Socialism? .................. The De Leonist Society ______________________________________________________________________ |||||| From the March 1986 issue of THE DE LEONIST SOCIETY |||||| BULLETIN. Reprinted by permission of Mr. George Shand, |||||| corresponding secretary of the De Leonist Society of |||||| Canada. |||||| The De Leonist Society of Canada |||||| P.O. Box 944, Station F |||||| Toronto, Ontario M4Y 2N9 Canada |||||| |||||| The De Leonist Society of the United States |||||| P.O. Box 22055 |||||| San Francisco, CA 94122 Socialism is a classless system of society in which the land, factories, mines, mills, and all other means of social production, distribution and services will be owned and controlled by all the people, and democratically administered through a Socialist Industrial Union government. Production will be carried on for use. There will be no economic classes in Socialist society. With the elimination of private (and State) ownership, the division of society into exploiting and exploited classes will end. Instead of wages, the useful producers under Socialism will get back directly and indirectly (indirectly through social services -- public health, education, recreation, etc.) all that they produce. There will be no political State, no politicians, no political parties. Instead, we shall have a government based on Industrial Union representation -- an industrial democracy. Under Socialism, all authority will be exercised by the useful producers. Organized into integrally united Socialist Industrial Unions, they will manage and direct all social production. In each plant, the rank and file will democratically elect a council or management committee to supervise their plant operations. So with the shop units. The workers will also elect their foremen and supervisors. Finally, they will elect their representatives to the All-Industrial Union Congress, which will plan and coordinate all social production. All representatives and administrators will be elected directly by the rank and file. To guarantee effective democratic control over all administrative bodies, all representatives will be subject to immediate recall whenever a majority of those who elected them decide it is necessary and desirable to do so. Such is the full-flowered democracy of socialism. The Socialist Industrial Union form of government and the program for establishing it were discovered by the great American Marxist Daniel De Leon. They are expounded by the De Leonist Society. ______________________________________________________________________ Revisions to this file ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sep 06 1992 Changed e-mail address Sep 06 1992 New mailing address for the IUP Sep 06 1992 Permission to reprint clarified Sep 11 1992 Manuscripts invited Oct 22 1992 Changed e-mail address Oct 28 1992 New name for IUP publication Oct 28 1992 New price for NUP publication ____________________________ Line 555; end of issue number 1 _______