Meet the Wobblies
There's no better time than Labor Day to take an educational field trip to the website of the Industrial Workers of the World. Here's what our late friend Samuel Edward Konkin III said about the Wobblies five years ago:"[F]ree-market and pro-entrepreneur as we are, MLL [Movement of the Libertarian Left] supports genuine anarchosyndicalist unions which consistently refuse to collaborate with the State. (In North America, that's the IWW and nothing else I know of.) ... you'll note the abhorrence of the IWW to politics and party; they split with the nascent U.S. Socialist Party on the same grounds that MLL split with the formative USLP --- rejecting parliamentarianism for direct action.
"If you have to have workers, they ought to be all IWW."
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Technorati Tags: New Libertarian, Movement of the Libertarian Left
posted by Wally Conger @ 8:53 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I grew up in a town which once had an IWW branch - LaCrosse, WI. La Crosse was a very interesting place to grow up.
When I worked in factories there in the very late 60's and early 70's, I didn't meet any wobblies. I'd recall if I had.
However, years later after I had left La Crosse, I'd see La Crosse Wobblies occasionally at Madison antiwar protests.
The main IWW site doesn't list any La Crosse affiliate now. In fact, from that site, Madison's near east side seems like the IWW "hotbed" in Wisc.
Joe Hill has seemed a somewhat heroic figure to me since my times in La Crosse, although also tragic to die so young.
(Below Joe Hill's "The Preacher and the Slave" to the tune of "In the Sweet Bye and Bye.")
Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray,
Live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
Perhaps Joe got some pie eventually. Pie has too much sugar for me these days. Happy Labor Day.
The rise of Mankind from a precarious existence wandering about in small bands to the present affluence and comparative leisure is the exchange of a primitive social organization based on ascribed status to complex inter-relationships based on contracts freely entered into by the concerned parties. The INTERNATIONAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD organization is, in its essentials a reversion to the tyranny of Ascribed Status. But the invocation of the sacred NAME (IWW!) sends those delicate frissions of liturgical envy quivering along the spines of weak intellects.
Wampus, What a jargon-laiden crock of shit. Leave your state capitalist apologetics somewhere else. And you can't even get the IWW's name right name right!
Poor LARRY! The concept of thought is beyond his capacities, and his ineffective flaming is futile. Poor LARRY!
Resume your obsession with the TELETUBBIES, LARRY. Focus your LOVE!
Waumpus, you really are something else! It's interesting how you seem to feel that EVERYONE who doesn't see eye to eye with you must suffer from "weak intellects" or the inability to think.
Memorizing a thesaurus and producing comments amounting to little more than verbal masturbation, while failing to read and mull over opposing points of view (something I remember you once sort of admitting to) does not make you any sort of superior intellect who should never be challenged.
Larry - Not only is he a state capitalist apologist, but he is also a neoconservative apologist. For his views on Islam and American foreign policy and such, click here. Be sure to read "bk_2212"'s response to him. Good stuff.
For anyone interested, I found out yesterday that the library I work at is celebrating the IWW's 100th anniversary with a special exhibit, including original letters, posters, photographs, sheet music and memorabilia. I plan on checking it out the next time I'm able to get to work early enough to do so.
NOTE to Freeman:
Don't bring a knife to a gun-fight.
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