Inspiration
Where did initial inspirations for the Wobbly philosophy come from? Historian Melvyn Dubofsky is worth quoting at length:
Wobblies ... took their basic concepts from others: from Marx the concepts of labor value, commodity value, surplus value, and class struggle; from Darwin the idea of organic evolution and the struggle for survival as a paradigm for social evolution and the survival of the fittest class; from Bakunin and the anarchists the "propaganda of the deed"* and the idea of direct action; and from Sorel the notion of the "militant minority." Hence, IWW beliefs became a peculiar amalgam of Marxism and Darwinism, anarchism and syndicalism — all overlaid with a singularly American patina.
However, Dubofsky also identifies American traditions "dating back to the era of Jefferson and Jackson" from which the Wobblies derived inspiration, particularly the concepts of a society divided into "producers and nonproducers, productive classes and parasites". Paul Brissenden likewise stated that, "he main ideas of I.W.W.-ism—certainly of the I.W.W.-ism of the first few years after 1905—were of American origin, not French, as is commonly supposed.
Wobblies sought to familiarize theoretical terminology for a worker audience of varied educative experience. A proletarian became a prole, and a plutocrat was a plute. Bill Haywood, in particular, had the ability to translate complex economic theories into simple ideas that resonated with working people. He would frequently preface his speeches with the statement, "Tonight I am going to speak on the class struggle and I am going to make it so plain that even a lawyer can understand it." The Marxian concept of surplus value, Haywood conveyed simply as "unpaid labor." He distilled the voluminous work of Karl Marx into a simple observation, "If one man has a dollar he didn't work for, some other man worked for a dollar he didn't get."
- *Philip S. Foner disagreed with Dubofsky on this one point, stating, "he I.W.W. did not, as did many, if not all, anarchists, advocate 'propaganda of the deed'." Taft and Ross likewise appear to disagree with Dubofsky, stating in more general terms, "violence in labor disputes was seldom inspired by the doctrine of 'propaganda by the deed,' whose self-defeating nature convinced many of its exponents of its fallacy." The difference may depend upon how 'propaganda of the deed' is defined.
Read more about this topic: Industrial Workers Of The World Philosophy And Tactics, Wobbly Understanding of The World
Famous quotes containing the word inspiration:
“Poets should be lawgivers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead, the civil code, and the day’s work. But now the two things seem irreconcilably parted.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)