> Not all anarchists think that. Chuck0 may, and he may
> be a self-appointed ambassador of anarchism this list,
> but a lot of anarchists subscribe to the ideas of the
> IWW, whose motto has always been "One Big Union."
> {That is, all unions should combine as one to fight
> capital.) In any event, most anarchists I have read or
> have heard of would stress social, working class
> solidarity with even small unions, to amplify their
> effects during a strike or while doing a picket line.
<Sigh> I support the IWW as one of the alternatives to the big unions. However, I think that capitalism can be defeated by a combination of the IWW, clones of the IWW, and many small unions. In fact, I think the IWW has a graphic that shows a bunch of small fish ganging up on the big fish of capitalism.
> But anyone who fetishizes "smallness" in social
> organizations -- who thinks that an organization, by
> virtue of simply being large, is going to somehow
> become authoritarian automatically -- will have a hard
> time fighting capitalism.
We're talking about the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO, not small unions like the IWW. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to point out how large unions have been instrumental in co-opting worker dissent into official large organizations. Big unions are fatter targets for the capitalists and the state. It's a much bigger headache for capitalism to deal with an organized network of smaller unions and informal worker-organized resistance campaigns.
Chuck