strategy and tactics

Transcribed by J. D. Crutchfield from an original kindly lent by FW Steve Kellerman, Boston GMB. Some misprints silently corrected. Reformatted slightly for easier reading.

Last updated 8 March 2004.

A Foreword About Those Who Wrote This Booklet

This booklet, like the movement to organize railroad workers into the One Big Union of the I. W. W., comes from actively engaged railroad workers themselves. The authors do not make their living by writing or by organizing. For over thirty years each of them has made his living by working in the railroad industry. They were selected as a committee by their fellow workers who wanted the best possible working conditions and who realize they will need the best possible unionism to get them.

For this reason they selected the I. W. W. because of its structure, policies, principles and its 43 years' clean record of no sell-outs, no crossing of picket lines, no scabbery and continuous working rank and file control.

They have made rapid progress. At the present time they have delegates in the following departments of railroad transportation: Engineers, Firemen, Conductors, Trainmen, Car Inspectors, Dispatchers, Switchmen, Signal Operators. Not one of these is drawing pay from the union for his work. They give the necessary hours to their boss on the job and the other hours are devoted to rest and organization activity. This shows their sincerity and determination. Every delegate has years of experience in railroad transportation and in the more than twenty unions that keep railroad workers divided. It is their firm determination to organize all who work for the railroads.

In making this booklet to explain why they want industrial unionism, and what they hope to accomplish with it, they have picked up whatever good idea they could find anywhere, without concerning themselves with crediting the originator, certain that a good idea should be circulated.

They propose Tentative Demands. They are tentative because a democratic organization does not get its demands shoved down its throat. It is not enough to re-organize railroad labor industrially. An industrial union with the policies of the present craft-union leadership, while it might be better than craft unionism, is not good enough. The men who have sat up nights to prepare this booklet want you to read it, to think about it, and circulate it.

• Chapter 1 - Why This Booklet
• Chapter 2 - How the I. W. W. Functions
• Chapter 3 - Some Proposed Tentative Demands
• Chapter 4 - Some Questions Answered
• Chapter 5 - Two Kinds of Unionism And How They Work Out

 LISTEN, RAILS!

 Every click of the rails is singing to you,
"Get more, get more, get more !"
Every exhaust of every engine is saying,
"You can do it, you can do it, you can do it !"
And the deep-throated wampus says:
"Organize, Organize, Organ-i-i-ze!"

The inadequacy of craft unionism on the railroads has long been obvious to every thinking worker in the industry. Many efforts have been made to transform it into something more serviceable. These efforts, like those in other industries where workers faced similar problems, have wound up in failure. In general one may observe that the leadership of unions is powerfully entrenched. Constitutions and prevalent practice give the rank and file little to say about major decisions. The business we have with our employers is handled in such unions rather by officers than by workers themselves.

Many discouraged railroad workers, dissatisfied with past and present conditions, are looking askance for relief in some new order. Some have declared for an independent organization. Careful analysis will prove such independents can only revert back to their same old ills. Fat jobs and false promises.

Others have heard vaguely of the I. W. W. and are asking—What is the I.  W.  W.?

The Industrial Workers of the World Railroad Workers Industrial Union No. 520 unites all railroad workers from the section men upwards to dispatcher in order to secure protection and economic equality for all.

The I.  W.  W. has no President nor Vice-Presidents, no lobbyists in Washington nor politicians to clutter up or obstruct the workers in running their union and economic affairs. A General Secretary-Treasurer is nominated and elected by General Referendum ballot, voted on by all members of the I.  W.  W. The G.S.T. is elected for only one year and cannot serve more than three terms in office. The G.S.T.

The vast majority of railroad workers of all crafts are dissatisfied with their present form of organization, with leadership, and most of all, with their wages and working conditions.

In office and round-house, in switch-shanty and caboose, there is constant grumbling and "beefing." But obviously grumbling and beefing, though they may relieve the feelings, don't help much on payday.

Introduction - (from the 1985 republication of this pamphlet):

Thousands of thoughtful and class-conscious workers in years past have looked to the General Strike for deliverance from wage slavery. Today their hopes are stronger than ever. Their number has been increased with additional thousands who are confident that the General Strike, and the General Strike alone, can save Humanity from the torture and degradation of the continuation of capitalism and the misery and privation of its recurrent wars and depressions.

The General Strike is the child of the Labor Movement. It is Labor's natural reaction to a system of society based upon the private ownership of the machinery of production. It is Labor's ultimate attitude in the class struggle. It is Labor's answer to the problem of economic disorganization.

Logically enough the General Strike has become the rallying-cry of millions of persons the world over who favor it simply because they do not wish to see the highly industrialized modern world sink into chaos, and human society sink to the level of savage survival.

The idea of the General Strike is here to stay. It came into being with the perfection of the machine process and the centralization of control which made it possible. And it will remain as a constant challenge to capitalism as long as the machinery of production is operated for profit instead of for use.

What is the General Strike?

When Ralph Chaplin wrote this pamphlet in 1933, fascism was on the march in Europe and America. He saw the general strike not just as a broad work stoppage, but rather as the occupation of industry by the workers themselves. It was his belief then that only worker control of industry could combat fascist repression and insure world peace.

 This conception of the general strike influenced the stay-in strikes of the '30s here and was modified by Japanese workers after World War II when they occupied the industries to make sure they were kept running. More recently, in the 1980s, workers in Bolivia, the Phillipines, Poland and South Africa have militantly taken up the tactic. It remains to be applied on a mass level once and for all to do away with the dangerous foolishness of private or State ownership of production. It is an idea both revolutionary and constructive, with a tremendous future.

Current IWW literature urges that workers the world over need to reach an understanding among ourselves as to what we will make, where we will ship it, and how we will distribute it in order to make optimal use of our skills and Earth's productive resources without either raping the Earth or making slaves of her people.