Does this fall under sectarianism? IMO this is a “Reality Check”
Consider this post a “testing the waters” type on the sectarianism part xdddddddd
Does this fall under sectarianism? IMO this is a “Reality Check”
Consider this post a “testing the waters” type on the sectarianism part xdddddddd
I’d classify those as mostly adventurism, not praxis. Violence is not inherently praxis unless it is to defend the continuation of a movement. And even violence that is praxis isn’t always ‘correct praxis’.
IWW theory at the time was generally speaking ‘dual-power’ around the ability to conduct a general strike. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, and their historical relationship to the coal wars, I would assume that eventually it would have required arming the working class. That said, what really killed the Wobblies was the New Deal jobs program and WWII. It is difficult to organize when your main political class (itinerant workers) is swallowed up by either conscription or mandatory employment. You can see the ideological split occur within the leadership of the era, with some seeing this as a working class victory and eager to collaborate with a government that finally seemed to be listening to their demands, or decriers who saw the New Deal as Leninist-collaborationism (referring to the coal wars, Kronstadt soldiers revolt, anarchist purges and the alliance with the USSR). It was a combination of this lack of a real political constituency, indecision by leadership, the rise of new deal consumerism/prosperity, domination of trade-unionism, and the crushing of independent newspapers by capital-intensive Cold-War era mass media that signaled the death knell of the I.W.W. as a relevant political organization in the U.S.
It’s not that their rejection of theory killed them, their rejection of theory just helped create the inability to adapt to a rapidly changing political-economy. Not that the American communists (nor the inheritors of the USSR) faired much better.
I assume there are online anarchists who claim Czolgosz, but I’ve never met an irl anarchist who cared enough to speak on the matter.
That indecision you mention has got to be one of the greatest barriers to leftist organizing in all of American history. It always appears to stop stuff getting off the ground before it goes anywhere. It impacted the wobblies, the Black Panthers, even now it’s like no one is sure what to do
That’s got to be a material result of Americans not feeling constrained enough. It’s hard to get people to care or stick around if they can just get on a bus and find better conditions in a different state. Just move, just find a new job, just leave America entirely if you’re so upset. I know packing up and leaving isn’t a real possibility for most people, but that dream of it permeates everything
This reminds me of Stalin discussing how a shop-owner-turned-worker may have the material conditions of a worker, but still lack proletarian consciousness because their plan is to save up enough money to open the shop again. It’s only when they realize that they make barely enough to survive and they give up on once again gaining some bourgeois character that they can instead gain a proletarian consciousness.
I know so many people who would never dream of falling into the hustle culture trap, but are constantly dreaming of leaving the country or of homesteading and going off the grid. And maybe some of them could actually escape. But it does very little for those of us who can’t escape and know it.