2026-02-17.4_B Haywood and S Wright - industrial unionism

“For the IWW, the struggle between capital and labour at the point of production was by definition a political struggle, uniting the socially marginalised even as it attacked the rate of surplus value. As ‘Big Bill’ Haywood put it in 1911:”industrial unionism is the broadest possible interpretation of the working-class political power, because by organizing the workers industrially you at once enfranchise the women in the shops, you at once give the black men who are disenfranchised politically a voice on the operation of the industries; and the same would extend to every worker.” (Haywood 1911: 50)”

“It was not a sign of corruption by the capitalist Mammon to fight ‘bread and butter’ struggles for more money and less work. The real problem, Haywood claimed, lay with a system which placed the machine – a potential source of collective freedom from toil – at the disposal of a minority committed to nothing more than their private gain (Bock 1976:121).” - pg. 178

• Bill Haywood & Steve Wright, Storming Heaven, emphasis mine