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The
Preamble to the IWW Constitution
The working class & the employing class have nothing
in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger & want are
found among millions of working people & the few who make up the employing
class have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until
the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth
and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.
We find that the centering of management of the industries
into fewer and fewer hand makes the trade unions unable to cope w/ the
ever-growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster
a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against
another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one
another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aide the employing
class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have
interest in common w/ their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the
working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that
all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary,
cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof,
thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage
for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary
watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do
away w/ capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not
only for the everyday struggle w/ capitalists, but also to carry on production
when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially
we are forming the structure of the new society w/in the shell of the old.
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