BolshevismCapitalismCominternCommunismRussian RevolutionSocialismSocialist PartySovietStrikeSyndicalismURSSWorkers MovementWorking Class

6 THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE Saturday, June 14, 1919 Industrial Unionism in Canada T!
PTS: ees and industry: bot the Spar What produce?
as Damn profits!
virtue VIE background of the general strike in Winnipeg, The One Big Union in Action for all wage workers; a big union bent on aggressToronto and other cities of Canada is an intensive agitation in the old unions for industrial uniwere granted they refused. They wanted the strike, ively forging ahead and compelling shorter hours, more wages and better conditions in and out of onism vividly picturized as a campaign for the One anyway. So it came.
Big Union.
They took particular pains to call out the police, the the workshop, and as cach adrance is made holdfiremen, the postmeu and all civil servants, in a delibing on grimly to the fresh gain with the determThat this agitation is producing results is evident.
erate effort to the control, issued orders for polto the government. The strike ination to push still further forward gaining But it is just the begiming of things, a preparation for committee then strength from each victory and learning by every larger action icing, for sanitation, for the distribution of food. It temporary setback until the working class is able to take possession and control of the machinregular convention of the unions of Canada) to discuss for a few hours Winnipeg had the Soviet idea Bolit. ery, premises and materials of production right the adoption of the industrial union form of organiz shevisn in full force.
from the capitalists hands, and tose that control ation, a Central Exccutive Committee was elected to The government struck back at its deserting employto distribute the product entirely among the workcarry on the work, temporarily. In a declaration re the strikers called for sympathetic strikes in.
cently issued, this committee says. Revolutionary industrial unonism embraces other cities in defence of the civil employes. Thus the It appears that many opponents, who know better, whole fight was made, by the strikers themselves, on every individual, unit, section, branch and depurtand other workers who are honest but do not know. the right of labor to paralyze the government on its ment of industry. It takes in every creed, color and nation. From Scandinavia to New Zealand, think that by Industrial Organization we shall throw right to start a revolution.
from Moscow to Vancouver, it appears to every None of this is denied even yet by the strike leadthe workers together promiscuously without regard seorker and forges a mighty weapon of freedom.
for be permanent, and boiler makers and ers. They do deny that this was to And here are a few of the working principles as musicians, for instance. Such a contention ridicu. claim that their Soviet was intended to function laid Right never did prevail and never will without down: lous on the face of it. Craft organisation is according, only during the emergency of the strike. But the printo craft, e. painter, plumber. MA ORGANIZATlal ciple for which they were hghting, is the power to insheet the aid of might.
zerorker. ctc. INDUSTRIAL stall a Soviet at Union Eristence is a prepetual struggle; the weak go MUST BE ACCORDING TO INDUSTRY, e. Bulletin, the organ of the new Bolshevism, naturally write at any time. And the One Big to the wall. It isn the fere who go to the wall, SHIPBUILDING, BUILDING TRADES, MINING. defends the Russian Revolution. It said on April 18: TRANSPORTATION, PUBLIC SERVÍCE (Civic The Russian revolution was the but the weak.
most free The greatest power in the world is the power Employees. These will be subdivided according to from trouble of any in the world. So it is in Ger.
to trades, necessarily, but will discuss together all com many to day, the so called atrocities of in prodnice, but it cuts no ice except when it is mon questions, and vote and act on them together, tacides are mere press fabrications. The working would happen if labor with held its power Do you see the difference?
class took conirol of Hungary without any. to trouble. Instead of one trade acting, or coming out on Capitalists, priests, politicians, press hirelings, strike, by itself, it will and can only act, together with The things that the One Big Union leaders openly thugs, sluggers, hangmen, policemen and all creepother trades of the same industry.
advocate are revolutionary. When the Federation of ing and crawling things that suck the blood of the When we Do write a constitution for the new In Labor of British Columbia voted for the common working man could die of starvation.
dustrial Organization, it must be drafted upon the principle it adopted resolutions which say in part. The New Morality says. RESOLVED, That this convention lay down lines of industry as they at present exist, and to that Damn interest!
extent workers will be organized according to their its future policy, the building up of an organi:association in the product of their joint labor, and not ation on industrial lines for the purpose of enby the craft they follow. The craft (the work of Damn rent!
their industrial strength, of, such demands as such organisations may at any Damn agreements. the skilled workman) is being wiped out by the So much for the idea and purposes. This machine.
time consider necessary for their continued maintenance and wellbeing, and shall not be as hereis the thing that is growing daily in strength just across Industrial Organization is an advance upon the tofore for the purpose of attempting to persuade our border, and as one of its leaders pointed out, there oll and now obsolete craft form, because it places legislative assemblies to amend, add to or take from are twenty three railway lines crossing the borderthe workers in a position whereby they can function the existing statues allegedly called labor laws.
and some roads.
effectirely in defense and for such concessions that The resolution further demanded a five hour workThe agitation along these lines has been going on in market conditions will allow.
ing day, the equal division of ts, and the appoint last four or five years, but the One Big Union as such One Big Union of the workers would be impract ment of central revolutionary committee.
icable unless cast in tlie same mould as the industrial The plan is One Big is brand new, and sprang from what was practically system in which we live and work.
Union Bulletin, and the resemblance to the a bolt from the Trade and Labor Congress of Canada If we are prepared, as members of the working programme and the Bolshevist doctrines stands out in three months ago.
class.
one body, almost every line. Here is the organization, its purp and it became plain that they had with them only the The bolter held a convention of their own in Calgary, to recognize each other as comrades of one class, then the next logical step is to so organize oses and the methods it advocates, as set forth by its as to place our forces in the same relat:on to employers own advocates. radical element of the Western section of organized labor. committee was appointed to draw up are to us. The principle upon which industrial unionism Stanley Frost, writing in the New York Tribune, takes its stand is the recognition of the never enda platform, which is to be submitted to another conpresents an interesting picture of the move ing struggle between the employers of labor and vention within a few days. The names of the comWriting from Winnipeg, June ment in Canada.
the class. It must educate its membmitteemen show the of the move movement so Frost says remember, this appears in a capitalist parent in the movenient at present. Pitchard, Vanpaper. causes bet One Big Union is frankly revolutionary. Its aveen the trevo classes. This self imspeakers, its resolutions and its press all proclaim the posed drill, discipline and education zwill be the ton, and Navhs, Winnipeg: Joe Knight, EdmonCumberland, methods of the The movement is making a bitter fight against the introduce into America the Soviet idea, to seize the short, the Industrial Union is bent upon old line labor organizations, charging that they have 110w held by the government and put it sold out power that to the employers, that they hold the men back in the hands of committees of workers only. It is the ation and doing away cerith all the divisions that grand united working class organis.
from seizing advantages when they could do so by old idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of which weaken the solidarity of the workers in the strugbreaking agreements, that they spend great sums in we have heard so much from Russia it is Bolshe gles to better their conditions.
liseless officials, and that they are generally archaic.
vismi ty a new name.
Revolutionary industrial Unionisn that is, This is the One Big Union.
Watch the Winnipeg developments. There was a the proposition that all wage workers come toIt has set out to beat the government, the old labor demand for collective bargaining of a kind that would gether on organisation according to industry. organizations, and the public, and it has made progress permit the paralyzing of a whole city, province or na the grouping of the workers in each of the big at all three aims.
tion at the demand of a single shop force. But when divisions of industry as a whole into local, national Its leaders have the Russian revolution in mind.
the strike leaders were asked whether they would stop, and international industrial unions, all to be inter They have in mind also the invasion of the United the strike if the principle of collective bargaining locked, dovetailed, eelded into One Big Union States.
The Convention Continued from paye 8)
of uniformed theorizing, instead of in terms of its ialism, and of pioneer instinct and calibre. It is the 1106 raised any theoretical controversy within the actual functioning. And, on the other hand, those who unionism of the common level of labor which comes as in the Scx ialist Party. There is a warm res think they can dispose of the WW. by sweeping with the advance of the machine process. Roughly ponse 10 the revolutionists, as by messages of greeting aside the theorizing of these writers. miss whole vit speaking, it is the unionism of unskilled labor. Inherent to the Soviet governments of Russia and Hungary ality of the 11. 11. as a living force in the American in this unionism is proletarian class consciousness and and 10 the Sim Peiners. It was clecided to send a labor movement.
the proletarian mass instincts. It is the array of the represemative to to the Communist International, upon Meanwhile the Convention, oblivious of the vagaries workers, as a mass, against the industry, as an imperofficial invitation. And there is distinct aversion to of its own theorists, calmly votes the general strike not sonalized system.
anything coming out of Berne Conference. but alone for the o hour day and day week, and for abol This convention re affirmed, in a ringing declarthese things are instinctive, not arising from any reas ition of all piece work, but also proposes the general ation, the world known Preambole of the But comed association of. theories with the theor and intermittent strike for freeing political prisoners, class consciousness is implicit, not in the declarations clical clescriptions of the European revolutions. for free speech, free press and free assembly, for abol of the nor yet in its form of organization, Those who are so near sightedly insistent upon the ition of all fee paying employment offices, and for but in the fight made on a inase basis by proletarians anti political character of the. 11. 11. make their withrawal of troops, from Russia.
who have no craft privilege to intrench or to contract arguments entirely upon the basis of texts taken from And there need be no fear that the the editorial spokesmen of All of liese prevalent fallacy in the discussions of Soci will ecome respectabilized by successes in terms of weiglity answers 10 writers, who happen 10 isi tersus the 11. 11. and this works both ways hours and wages and working conditions. Imperialbe young men more encoreil with honest organization is the glib assumption that the is the orgai istic, militarized Capitalism is daily stimulating a reventhusiasm than with the acumen of scientific research, ized expression of a creed of 11. ism. The truth olutionary response even in the old trade unionisin, are beside the point. These writers need 10 of the matter is that the is a new departure let alone lulling the into amiable conservde called to task for interpreting the 11. in terms in unionism, responsive to an advanced stage of Capmore as ther zvorking cieplenie o complete aunderstanding of the prin couver; JA, 11 forming one alut.
atism.