Wobblies

Apsken at aol.com Apsken at aol.com
Fri Mar 17 07:57:09 PST 2000



> Really should ask ChuckO about this--he IS a wobbly, is he not,
> card-carrying member of the IWW?

I joined the IWW in 1961, when it was still on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations. However, no one who joined after 1930 is qualified to speak for the Wobbly tradition that transformed this country. That is the province of historians, whether IWW members or not. I learned most of the history from my old comrade in Chicago, Fred Thompson. Today's Wobblies are mostly nostalgic for a syndicalist past that never existed, and many, like ChuckO, represent an anarchist strain that the old IWW specifically repudiated (as when it urged the Communist International to become an affiliate -- too bad that didn't happen).

Ken Lawrence



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