Re: [Marxism] Class, Party, and Organization

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

My interest was piqued by the commentary on Sakai, and the idea that  
Japanese workers were somehow singled out for exclusion by the IWW.  
Below is an excerpt from an article in PWW discussing a historical  
exhibit in Seattle on Asian-Pacific American History called "Journey  
for Justice".  It in part relates the story of the general strike in  
Seattle in which Japanese workers participated, following the call of  
the IWW. There may have been individual incidents of racism within  
the ranks of the IWW, allowing Sakai to cherry pick and distort the  
truth, but the main thrust of Wobbly racial inclusion did not stop  
with Asian workers. In fact, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino workers  
were all highly valued by Wobbly organizers because they demonstrated  
a greater degree of organizational discipline and class consciousness  
than their white counterparts.



full: http://www.pww.org/article/articleprint/11944/

People's Weekly World
Against ‘race hatred’

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and later the ILWU  
vigilantly organized Asian workers into their ranks.

Another milestone cited in the exhibit was the Seattle general strike  
of 1919. “For five days in February, 65,000 workers participated in a  
general strike in support of the city’s wartime shipyard workers,”  
the timeline states. The Seattle IWW issued an “Appeal to Japanese  
Workers in America.” One “Wobbly” wrote to a newspaper at the time,  
“Teaching race hatred has been the foundation rock on which the  
capitalists have been able to induce the workers to sanction and  
enlist in war. If we would allow every (Japanese worker) in our  
unions, that would solve the question.” He signed the letter, “Yours  
for one big union, with nobody that works barred no matter what his  
or her color, race, or creed.”

During the ensuing general strike, “the Japanese Labor Union formally  
endorsed and honored the strike” despite the continued exclusionary  
policies of many unions, the timeline reports.

Art Shields’ memoir, “On the Battle Lines, 1919-1939,” (published by  
International Publishers, New York) is quoted in the exhibit.  
Shields, later a staff writer for the Daily Worker, wrote, “The  
general strike was the first mass demonstration of interracial unity  
I had seen. The Black migration from the Deep South had not yet  
reached Seattle. But the Japanese colony went on strike with us.  
Seattle had 10,000 Japanese immigrants … any restaurants and hotels  
depended on them. The strike would have been weakened without them.....


  The following essay, by Jennifer Jung Hee Choi, a doctoral student  
at Cal-Berkeley, also argues that the historical record supports IWW  
racial inclusion of Japanese workers. According to Choi, the IWW was  
the only labor organization in the USA which actively organized  
Japanese workers into its ranks.  Sakai's argument falsifies the  
historical record through distortion and lies because the anti-racist  
example of the IWW flies in the face of his white racist settlerism  
thesis.

Greg McDonald

The Rhetoric of Inclusion: The I.W.W. and Asian Workers
By Jennifer Jung Hee Choi

In early 1903, two thousand Mexican and Japanese sugar beet workers  
in Oxnard, California, collectively organized a large biracial  
strike, and then asked Samuel Gompers, president of the American  
Federation of Labor, for a union charter. Upon receiving the request,  
Gompers replied, "Your union must guarantee that it will under no  
circumstances accept membership of any Chinese or Japanese."1 His  
response was typical of American trade unionism because of its anti- 
Asian sentiment and for its refusal to organize Asian workers even  
when they were willing to organize themselves.2 Consequently, in a  
great act of solidarity the Mexican workers repudiated any charter  
that excluded Japanese workers.

The American Socialist Party also endorsed Asian exclusion from  
American labor organizations while simultaneously proclaiming the  
slogan "Workers of the World, Unite." Much in the same vein as  
Gompers and the AFL, the party supported workers' struggles in Japan,  
but not those of Japanese workers in the United States.3 The party  
even opposed the position of the Second International, which  
appointed a special committee in 1908 to study the question of  
immigration.

     We therefore endorse every demand made and position taken by the  
International Congress...; except those passages which refer to  
specific restrictions or to the exclusion of definite races or  
nations...We advocate the unconditional exclusion of Chinese,  
Japanese, Coreans and Hindus, not as races, per se, not as peoples  
with definite physiological characteristics -- but for the evident  
reasons that these peoples occupy definite portions of the earth  
which are so far behind the general modern development of industry,  
psychologically as well as economically, that they constitute...an  
obstacle and menace to the progress. . . of our working class  
population.4

Organized labor's position suited a general atmosphere of hostility  
to Asian immigrants that American labor played only one part in  
creating. Labor advocacy of Asian exclusion encouraged the  
institutionalization of Asian exclusion in other social, economic,  
and political areas. The large majority of both the populations of  
California and of the Pacific Coast more generally, regardless of  
class, religion, party affiliation, or European immigrant status,  
seem to have agreed on the "necessity" for exclusion. California  
politicians Hiram Johnson, Chester Rowell, and James Phelan, and  
novelist Jack London were only a few examples of the similar  
attitudes held among Progressives, Democrats, Republicans, and  
Socialists on this issue.5 From the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act to the  
1913 Alien Land Act to the 1924 Immigration Act, which barred all  
Asians from entry into the United States, exclusionary legislation  
blocked Asians from citizenship and from participating in most  
American organizations and institutions.

Among labor and leftist organizations, the Industrial Workers of the  
World, the anarcho-syndicalist group, were the sole exception to this  
pattern of hostility toward Asian immigrants. The I.W.W. was the only  
major national labor organization of the period to hold open their  
door to Asian workers and consequently to remain consistent in a  
rhetoric of including all workers regardless of race.6 In this, the  
I.W.W. stood in stark contrast to all other labor organizations from  
conservative craft unions like the AFL to radical political groups  
such as the Socialist Party. Furthermore, the I.W.W. developed their  
rhetoric of Asian inclusion during a period of intense hostility to  
Asians and, in so doing, they challenged dominant racial assumptions  
and hierarchies. This paper will examine the organizational discourse  
on this issue by first briefly surveying the historiography, then by  
providing a background on the I.W.W.'s philosophy and ideology, and  
finally by focusing on the organization's position on Asian workers.

The racism of the American labor movement against Asian workers and  
immigrants has been well documented, particularly with recent  
contributions from Asian-American studies which have examined Asian  
workers not as mere victims but also as active agents in shaping  
their own experiences.7 However, few studies have explored efforts  
like those of the I.W.W. to embrace all workers regardless of race.  
Within the historiography of the I.W.W., surprisingly few studies  
concentrate on the organization's relationship to workers of color.  
The record of the Wobblies on race and ethnicity has piqued the  
interest of historians only recently. Early organizational history  
endeavored instead to tell the Wobbly story....



Full: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~epf/1999/choi.html
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