William Z. Foster: A Critical Examination of his Theories and Politics

Nick Driedger joins the show to discuss the legacy and ideas of William Z. Foster, former president the Communist Party USA and trade unionist involved in the early IWW and AFL.

We adopt a critical lens discuss Foster's concepts of a "militant minority" and "boring from within" as a strategy for pulling conservative unions to the left. Driedger also explains the reaction and criticism leveled against Foster's ideas when he presented them to the IWW in 1911.

This and more on the latest episode of Laborwave Radio.

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The Future of the IWW: Building One Big Union w/ Nick Driedger & Marianne Garneau

The IWW is 115 years old! In celebration we invited Marianne Garneau & Nick Driedger from Organizing Work to discuss the nuts and bolts of organizing within the IWW and our future as a union.

What accounts for the recent upsurge in IWW organizing campaigns? How do we make more universal for all Wobblies our educational documents and training programs? What, if any, strategic industries should we focus on and should we target smaller workplaces or larger ones to build power? Finally, how much should we branch off from organizing in the workplace to forms of organizing outside of it?

We discuss all of the above questions, as well as the challenges we face in building one big union, including the dominant presence of business unions and increasing precarity of workers in North America.

Transcript forthcoming!

Links:

Laborwave Radio patreon

patreon.com/laborwave

Organizing Work

https://organizing.work

Join the IWW! (but you have to promise to organize your coworkers!)

https://iww.org

The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor by Steve Early

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/350-the-civil-wars-in-u-s-labor

Music:

Thee Oh Sees- Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster (intro)

The Traditional Fools- Get Off Of My Back (outro)

Ep. 2 Comrades Read Together w/ Nick Driedger: No Shortcuts, But to Where?

Join the conversations around this book in our Laborwave Discord by becoming any type of patron of the show at patreon.com/laborwave!!!

This is our second episode of Comrades Read Together where we're discussing, chapter by chapter, the book No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age.

We follow up our conversation tackling the introduction and chapter 2 with a review of the book by Nick Driedger, labor activist and contributing writer to Organizing Work!

Driedger asks the tough questions about the political horizons achievable under a labor relations framework, and whether it's possible for "business unions" to break out of such constricting frameworks. He also argues that McAlevey's ultimate aims in labor organizing leads us down the path of left electoral politics, where the power that has been built by workers through these deep organizing methods are undercut by the top-down system of politics available within the electoral realm.

We also talked about the IWW approach, why it succeeds and why it fails, and speak about the prospects for independent radical unions.

Read his full review, No Shortcuts, But to Where? at organizing.work/2019/12/no-shortcuts-but-to-where/

We're continuing with this series by reading chapters 3-4 and engaging with folks on our Laborwave Discord!