Re: [Marxism] Anti-Imperialism and the IWW

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Magon probably refers to the average white worker, whom the IWW so
militantly represented the class interests of. Not that the IWW was national
chauvinist or openly white supremacist; it most certainly was not. However,
part of the reason for the decline and rollback of wobblie unionism,
according to J. Sakai, was that it did not properly tackle the imperialism
of the US government and link its trade union agitations and victories to
the political struggles of oppressed nationalities in the US and in its
wider imperial environs. "If the WW had fought colonialism and national
oppression, it would have lost much of its white support. What it did
instead- laying out a path that the CIO would follow in the 1930s- was to
convince some white workers that their immediate self-interest called for a
limited, tactical cooperation with the colonial proletariats" (Sakai, p.
67). When the US ruling class established that it could afford to sustain
this same section of white workers in jobs and security from imperialist
expansion, just as the latter were slaughtering and ethnically cleansing
black workers from amongst their occupational and residential ranks,
industrial militancy amongst the US immigrant workers that formed the IWW's
support base, tailed off accordingly.

LOUIS PROYECT WROTE:

> But was Magon referring to the IWW or to the average worker?

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