Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/28

28 of the World. Founded in 1905 as an industrial union to help introduce Socialism according to the Socialist Labor Party's idea of the process, it approached at the beginning very close to the Bolshevik position. Though the I. W. W. was not to affiliate with any political party, its preamble called for action on the political as well as the industrial field. The revolution was to be the act of the industrial organization aided by the protection of a political party. But this idea was abandoned in 1908, the organization changing its preamble and its policies. Since that time, the I. W. W. has committed itself solely and without reserve to industrial action alone. It looks upon industrial action—sabotage, the strike, the general strike, the strike on the job, etc.—as the means of preparation for the revolution towards common ownership. The revolution is to be obtained by locking out the employers, and thus taking over industry and social control. Considering industrial action alone as fundamental to the revolution, and aiming at an industrial State based on common ownership, the I. W. W., since 1908, has been a Syndicalist organization, that is to say, it relies upon the action of labor unions to accomplish a communist revolution. It is not strictly Bolshevik because it considers political action unnecessary. Bolshevism employs both political and industrial action to seize the power of the State; the I. W. W. uses industrial action alone for the direct purpose of seizing industry, and thus seizing indirectly the power of the State.

But the fact that the leaders of Bolshevism invited the I. W. W., as well as other foreign syndicalist organizations, to the Moscow or Communist International hints at the close affinity of Bolshevism and Syndicalism. Bolshevism relies very much upon economic action; both the I. W. W. and Bolshevism look forward to a Socialist society with the occupational groups as the constituencies of the new kind of State; both aim at the seizure of political power and not at a political victory at the