Location:
Jura Books
440 Parramatta Road
Petersham NSW 2049
 

Contact Name:
IWW Sydney

Contact Email:
iww@iww.org.au

Description:

IWW Sydney Branch Meeting Preamble to the IWW ConstitutionThe working class and the employing class

have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are

found among millions of the working people and 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 means of production,

abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.



We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and

fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with 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 aid the employing class to mislead the workers

into the belief that the working class have interests in common with 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 with capitalism.

The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle

with 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 within the shell of the old.