THE ORGANIZER

November 2008 • Issue #13.

The Cause of the Economic Crisis

With all of the news about the economy lately, what’samazing is that no one is talking about the real underly-ing cause of the economic crisis.

All of the talk aboutcredit, whether about subprime mortgages, lendingbetween banks or more arcane topics like credit debtswaps, is actually talk about symptoms, not causes.

Thereal cause of the crisis is this: workers are not paidenough to buy the goods and services they produce.For many years, the economy has kept expanding be-cause of sustained consumer spending. And whatmoney were consumers spending?

Only part of it waswages.

Wages, adjusted for inﬂa-tion, are about the same now asthey were in 1973.

Productivity,however, is much higher.

Work-ers cannot buy the increasedamount of goods that they pro-duce - without credit, that is.The fact is that without an ever-expanding supply of credit in thesystem, the economy would haveslipped into a prolonged reces-sion long ago.

(In a recession,the economy contracts as busi-nesses cut back on productionbecause existing goods and serv-ices aren’t being bought.

Workers are laid off as pro-duction slows, and wages and beneﬁts are often cut asworkers compete for fewer jobs.)

Instead, credit-basedspending delayed the recession, and the effects of lowwages have built up and exploded into the current cri-sis.Because the underlying cause of the crisis is being ig-nored, the remedies being tried have no chance of long-term success.

Even if the measures that are beingtaken to free up the credit markets have some success(which is possible, but far from certain), the long-termeffect will be to exacerbate the underlying problem.

The trillion plus dollars that thegovernment is pumping into theﬁnancial sector has to come fromsomewhere.

Whether from taxes,redistributed to the elite, or fromthe Fed printing more money,thereby fueling inﬂation, workerswill have reduced purchasingpower, making the problemworse.Reintroducing regulations into theﬁnancial system won’t help mucheither.

If the underlying dynamicsof the economy were sound, regu-lations could help prevent thosedynamics from being hijacked bygreed or speculation.

But theunderlying dynamics aren’t sound.To understand how we got to thisplace, we have to start all the wayback at the end of the GreatDepression.

We were only ableto climb out of that depression onthe back of World War II.

By theend of that war, the only industri-alized economy still standing wasin the United States.

For the next25 years, without much interna-tional competition, U.S. businessescould afford to pay workers agood salary.

Unions thrived (rela-tively speaking), workers’ wagesgrew, and, for the most part, theeconomy hummed along.

Peopledeveloped the expectation thatthe next generation would bebetter off than they were.Starting in the 1970’s, all thatchanged.

Foreign econo-mies, especially in WesternEurope and Japan, were re-built, and, with new plantsand equipment, were able tocompete effectively with U.S.companies.

Economic com-petition on an internationalscale took on a new andincreasing intensity.At ﬁrst, the U.S. pursued atrade war with Japan, and thebuy American campaign waslaunched.

These were our initialefforts to maintain the UnitedStates’ preeminent position in theglobal economy.

In the end, how-ever, economic competition isabout one thing, and one thingonly: proﬁt margins.The best way to increase proﬁtmargins is to depress real wages.

Continued on page 6Editorial

Editor Ericco Hedake’sanalysis of the U.S.presidential election.

Page 2The IWW andElectoral Politics

Two Wobblies discuss theIWW’s position onpolitics in light of theNovember elections.

Page 3In November WeRemember

You are cordially invited to the Twin Cities GMB’s2nd annual Fall Feast. AWobbly delves into thehistory of the event.

Pages 4More Work for LessPay at Starbucks

An IWW baristadiscusses changes inpolicy that leave workersfeeling the squeeze.

Pages 4 & 5The Left’s Responseto the FinancialCollapse

A Wobbly goes in depthinto the responses of radical communities toWall Street’s blunders.

Pages 5 & 6

A monthly publication of theTwin Cities General Membership Branch of theIndustrial Workers of the World.The IWW is a union for all workers, dedicated to organizing on the job for better conditionstoday, and a world without bosses tomorrow.You are invited to contact theBranch Secretary-Treasurer or any Delegate listed below for no-pressure conversations about your issues on the job.

Branch Contacts

Twin Cities IWW P.O Box 14111 Minneapolis, MN 55414Tel. (612) 336-1266email. twincities@iww.org web. twincities.iww.org

Branch Secretary-Treasurers

Steve Holmstephanholm@earthlink.net Kieran Knutsonredblack@riseup.net

Editors

Errico Hedake Alexander Graham

Policy

Stories, letters to the editors,and belly-aching can beaddressed totc-organizer@riseup.net Unless otherwise stated, theopinions expressed are not necessarily the ofﬁcial positionof the local branch or the unionas a whole. Many of our members areengaged in active organizing campaigns, and some use analias, occasionally their unioncard number, or ‘x’ number. Weprefer transparency over secrecy whenever possible, but will always honor requests for anonymity .

Editorial

As I write this, the US Presidentialelections are dead ahead of me.Were I driving a car, I'd speed up.Police batons are in the rear-viewmirror; we lost them, which isperhaps different from 'victory,'whatever victory at the RNCcould have meant. Any time youget that many fully-armed andoutﬁtted security forces shakingin their armored boots because of a bunch of unarmed workers, theworkers are likely to be on theright side of things, and somethingpowerful of the workers' aims hasbeen communicated.The RNC demonstrated in physi-cal fact the normal operating pro-cedures of the capitalist state. It isour urgent task to expose andpublicize that these proceduresare much more widespread, effec-tive, and largely invisible in otherspheres, like that of economics,and to oppose them. We do thiswhile maintaining the militancyand defense of our rights so ablydisplayed by fellow workers andthe Anti Capitalist Bloc during theconvention.The normal operating proceduresof the capitalist state claim thatthe state manages the imaginarydivision between the capitalisteconomic world and the socialworlds in which we live our lives.This line is imaginary becausethere can be no question of trulydividing the fellow worker's sociallives from those they lead morethan eight hours a day, more than5 days a week, when they labor tomake the bosses rich, and takehome less value than they pro-duce.In the streets during the RNC, wesaw the security wings of the capi-talist state come to the aid of theelite civilian leadership of its po-litical wing. This elite wing is com-posed by the elites of the civilianworld: the 'captains of industry,'the lobbyists who are 'citizens andpeople, too,' and the planners andparasites of the shadow economy,the walls of whose Jericho haveonly begun to shake.The shaking of those walls areperhaps more akin to the hubrisof the planners of a different storyof globalization and difference, thetower of Babel. In their belief thatthey could build a tower to God,the people in that story suffercalamity. In the hubris of the capi-talist's blood thirst and greed, theentire national economy is ﬁnally,perhaps, coming to the end thatmeets all buildings whose founda-tion has completely rotted.

Now the state is hollow, and nolonger even pretends to preservea barrier between financial inter-ests and the interests of the state.Industry reveals how thoroughly itpervades and controls the state.We are told that the bailouts arenecessary for 'main street,' but wesee how one bailout after anotherof the bosses has been used topay off the shareholders, whileworkers continue to get laid off.The barbarians have crashed thegate, and the looting has begun.When the state has finally givenup the pretense to protect thecitizens from the industries, thetechnical term for the govern-ment is fascist.By the time this is read, the newpresident of the USA will likelyhave been decided. Should Obamabe the victor, many on the left willbe relieved. But we cannot assumethat any candidate will help usachieve our goal: the eliminationof the wage system. The IWW hasrejected even involvement, at theunion level, in 'normal' electoralpolitics. But we also believe thatwhat we are seeing now amountsto merely the clarification of whathas long been the case: capitalistinterests march hand in hand withthe power of the state. Their un-ion is strong, but consists of onlyone real relationship: the powerof calling one's violence legal alliedwith the violence required to takemore than your share of whatother people produce.Our union is stronger, based onour opposition to our sharedoppressions, and made rich and

continued on page 5

THE ORGANIZER

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Why the IWW Stays Away from Politics

The Industrial Workers of the World began life as anavowedly political organization. That wasn’t what mostof the founders wanted, but the organization dependedin the beginning on the money and resources of theSocialist Workers Party, and the support of politicianslike Eugene V. Debs and Daniel De Leon, so they madea compromise. The original Preamble declared,"Between [the working class and the employing class] astruggle must go on until all the toilers come togetheron the political, as well as on the industrial field, andtake and hold that which they produce by their laborthrough an economic organization of the working classwithout affiliation with any political party."It’s a clumsy sen-tence, drawn by acommittee, and youcan tell their heartsweren’t really in it.Political quarrelsimmediately begandividing the union,as two socialistparties struggled for control, each hoping to use thenew union as its labor wing. In an effort to defuse theconflict, the second convention amended the last sen-tence of the Preamble to read, “Therefore without en-dorsing or desiring the endorsement of any politicalparty, we unite under the following constitution: . . . .”This change of wording had about as much effect onactual events as most other changes of wording, andpolitical conflict continued.Finally, at the historic 1908 convention, the organizationdecisively threw politics out of the Preamble and thepoliticians out of the union. Vincent St. John later wrotean essay, “The IWW and Political Parties”, that ex-plained the thinking at the time. The first point he madewas this: a little investigation will prove to any workerthat while the workers are divided on the industrialfield, it is not possible to unite them on any other fieldto advance a working class program.Political unity in the working class is impossible unlessthe workers have achieved industrial unity.

But even if the working class could unite politically, the Saint wenton, it would do us no good.

Political strength derivesfrom economic power, and workers’ parties can bepowerful only insofar as the workers’ economic or-ganization is strong.

As long as the political system iscontrolled by capital, any laws that the workers’ repre-sentatives might push through would be nullified when-ever and wherever capital was strong enough eco-nomically to enforce its will.The only way to counter the economic power of capi-tal, St. John argued, is through the economic organiza-tion of workers within industry,such that workers can eventuallystop production except on termsacceptable to themselves.In modern times, since the decla-ration that “the personal is politi-cal,” the term “politics” has cometo embrace far more than elec-tions and legislatures, and therehave been efforts since St. John’sday to use the IWW to furthervarious political causes withouttying it to any specific party. ButSt. John understood that tempta-tion as well. The advocate of po-litical action, he wrote, has nobetter argument than “the prohi-bitionist, the anti-clerical, theKKK, or the Knights of Columbus,or any other advocate of themany schools that claim theworker can better his conditionby their particular policy,” for di-verting the IWW from its singlefocus on building power in theworkplace.-FW Jim Crutchfield

The IWW’sNon-ElectoralPurpose

I write this just a few days fromthe U.S. presidential election. TheIWW doesn't take a position onwhom people should vote for, orwhether or not they should voteat all. Some people think that theIWW should oppose electionsaltogether, saying that electionsare a tool of the capitalist class.Others think that the IWWshould support some candidate.People are welcome to think ei-ther of these things. Members of the IWW are welcome to try andmake the organization take a posi-tion, using our democratic proc-esses. Right now, though, officiallythe IWW doesn't take any posi-tion on the elections.And in my opinion, it's a strengthof our organization that we don'ttake any position on elections. Forone thing, this means our organi-zation welcomes everyone whoworks for wages, as long as theyagree to abide by our constitutionand preamble. If you want tostruggle against bosses in order toimprove your life and the lives of other workers, you're welcomehere.In the long run, one official goal of the IWW is to abolish the wagesystem. Not every member of theIWW is required to believe this. Ittakes some workers a while toget to this point. It's a process.Through discussion, participatingin actions, and reflection, all of uschange in the IWW. This is part of why we shouldn't take positionson elections. We don't need tofight about those things, or letthem divide us. We should buildrelationships based on sharedexperiences in struggle, and usethose relationships to improveourselves.The other reason why the IWWshouldn't take a position on elec-tions is that elections don't havemuch to do with what the overallgoal of our union should be. Ourgoal in the IWW should be tobuild a powerful organization of working class people committedto getting more economic powerin the short term and abolishingcapitalism in the short term. Thatshould be our single purpose. Theelection is neither here nor therewhen it comes to that purpose.I say that the IWW should haveone purpose, but that does notmean that nothing else matters.Other things matter a lot. Thething is, the IWW doesn't have toaddress every important issue. If we had more members and morepower then we might take onother issues. IWW members arefree to belong to other organiza-tions and work on other goals.For instance, in addition to beingin the IWW, I belong to two po-litical organizations. I used to beactive in other causes than build-ing economic power for workers,and when I get more free time Iplan to be involved those causesagain.-FW Nate Holdren

THE ORGANIZER

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