http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/beyond-charlie-brown/
On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Chris Maisano <cgmaisano at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Labor journalist Bob Fitch has a really good article in the latest New
> Politics that tries to answer a lot of questions about the limitations of
> the labor movement. It's a good complement to Doug's recent interview with
> Mark Brenner:
>
> Card Check: Labor's Charlie Brown Moment?
> http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/fromthearchives?nid=178
>
>
This is a copy of what I just posted at the 'talkingunion' site:
February 11th, 2010 at 7:00 am Said: Your comment is awaiting moderation. Fitch quotes the first rule of the First International:
“That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves; that, the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule.”
The IWW is organised this way. The IWW needs your solidarity and active membership. The IWW is grassroots democratic and has been since it was founded in 1905. The IWW’s Preamble:
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the 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 means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
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 interest 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 is 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 struggle with 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. ****************
How about it, fellow workers? How about lending a hand? Let’s just acknowledge that keeping the abolition of the wage system off the agenda because it’s not ‘realistic’ has castrated the labour movement. It’s time to stand up and speak critical truths about the social relation that is Capital, as opposed to trying to lead the masses as if they were sheep and waiting till later to deal with the problem of creating a communist society. The dead hand of the leninist leadership mentality has put the working class to sleep and made them easy prey for the ruling class. It has made socialists into handmaidens of liberal reform agendas, militant mice who pussyfoot around within bourgeois democracy for fear of scaring ‘recruits’ away and upsetting polytrickster ‘allies’.
Over and out, Mike B)
*********************************************************************** In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. Karl Marx
http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/
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