Industrial Workers of the World

War on Capitalism - The Reduction of Output

(Tom Barker – Direct Action 15 February 1915)

The present European crisis has resulted in an unparreled augmentation in the numbers of unemployed workers in Australia. In all directions, the employing class are taking every advantage of the over supply of labour, and aided by the politicians and law courts they are either delberately ignoring, or setting asside the decisions laid down at various times by the Arbitration Courts of this country.

The Federal and State Governments, in spite of all their former statements to the contrary, are admitting their utter ineptitude, and also admitting with more or less acidity, that they are entirely in the hands of the international financiers, who hole the purse strings and call the tune.

Large employers gave donations to the Patriotic Fund, and then, in order to emphasise their thorough-going Imperialism, reduced the number of their staffs. Three hundred men were dismissed at the Ranwick workshops a fortnight ago, and more are to follow.

Thousands are unemployed, and daily their numbers are augmented and swollen by government, skilled and unskilled alike. The position in New South Wales is becoming so precarious, that even the diplomatic shuffling of Mr. Holman, the "not at home" strategy of Mr. Cann, and the kettle like outbursts of Mr. Griffiths, will not stem the rising tide of hunger, misery, and dissatisfaction. The Labour Parties are at last reaping the wirlwind; the aftermath; and the natural product of years of systematic misrepresentation, plausibility, and side-tracking.

Their "power," their "democracy," their armies of docile, lamb-like voters, were mere superstitions when confronted by the Napolians of international finance. Nietsche was right when he said, "whatever the State saith is a lie, whatever it hath is theft, even its bowels are counterfeit."

Delegated "power" is no power at all, the whole belief in the State, in the Parliamentary institutions is a childish superstition, it is what Redbeard would define as "awasting cranial disease."

But nevertheless, there is a solution to this all important problem of unemployment. That is Industrial Unionism, or the systematic education of the working class, to control the industries, the sourse of all wealth.

As an immediate weapon, we of the IWW emphatically advocate the reduction of output on the part of the workers. Systematic propoganda on these lines will breed a gradual slackening on the part of the workers expending their energy.

This slowing down process will create a demand for more labor, which will reduce the number of unemployed, which it turn will reduce the amount of competition amongst the workers, and naturally result in a corresponding rise in wages, and improvement in conditions.

Therefore, despite all muddled pseudo economists and their teachings the IWW says, "The less work you do, the more you will get for doing it."

In these days of machine productions and "psychotechnicks" the machine has become predominant to man, the pace is made by the machine, and the man has become a mere steriotype, a piece of the mechanism. Such a man is a virtual slave.

The IWW claims that flesh and blood is higher and grander than the leviathan of steel and iron, and to that end we propogate the slow down process, by which conscious, deliberate action the worker became the master of the machine, he begins to exercise gradually his ascendency to the enslaving influences of the workshops.

By this slowing down process, and the reduction of the hours of labour, he is meeting with conscious and awakened power, the baneful effects of each new labour-saving device; he is reducing the amount of unpaid labour time; which provides the ruling class and their lackies with their means of life and their power; he is weakening the power of the State, and every other institution that binds him down to present-day slavery, that jail, starve and persecute him, he is strengthening himself by weakening his masters, and by developing his controling power over the means of wealth production.

And, finally, in attacking surplus value, he is carrying on the only scientific campaign against War and its effects.

Workers of Australia, carry the message of the IWW far and wide. Slow down, slow down, slow down.

Refuse to be slaves, and bulwarks of scabbery and unemployment. Refuse to be things, with a machine for your master.

Down with the masters of bread, the plunder patriots, the lords of hoarded gold: Up with the One Big Union of the Working Class; the Industrial Workers of the World. Free yourselves.

As Redbeard said, -

"There's nothing grand in a horny hand,

"There's nothing free in a bended knee.

"There's nothing bold in a lack of gold."

Tom Barker