It is always a good time to organize. Some times, however, are better than others, and we are entering a period that appears promising. The political and cultural consensus of neoliberalism is breaking down and the imperial state has been forced to blink. Unlike the early 2010s and 2016, there is little liberal energy from the NGO sector cluttering the media or the streets. This creates a unique opening to build lasting institutional power and presence in the working class. However, an essential part of this strategy will be resisting the gravitational pull of adventurism and other distractions. Rather, we must double down on commitment to building institutional capacity and worker power.
The distinction between adventurism and committed organizing can best be illustrated by small, fringe activist groups. These tend to be much more adventurist in the sense that they are small, undisciplined, often built around a dysfunctional social group, and typically engage in high-risk, low-reward activity like street fights with right wingers. This carries a lot of negative consequences, primarily that it repels less “intense” people. Without a sustainable growth strategy and only social bonds keeping the group together, the organization tends to shrink and fracture rapidly. This is especially true when internal discord occurs, which tends to happen often because high-risk, low-reward actions tend to attract egotistical or otherwise maladjusted men.
On the other hand, organizations that build up around shared class or material interests and whose activity focuses on low-risk, high reward action tend to fare much better. Well-defined organizational structures built around these, such as democratic processes, officership, conventions, transparent disciplinary bodies, transparent finances, etc., help drive sustainable growth without putting up too many barriers to entry.
Now, the contours of risk and reward are complicated and probably best left to open discussion. Plus, there is a point down the line when we will need to take greater risks and more decisive action to win bigger demands, like universal health care or a 4 day work week, much less seizing the means of production and living in harmony with the Earth. But we won’t be able to get there if we aren’t building organization for the long haul.
What does building for the long haul look like? For one thing, let’s draw a distinction between mobilizing and organizing, because the two are often confused despite being largely separate activities. Mobilizing is using the organization you have built to take action and try to notch a win. Organizing is the longer, slower, steadier work of creating the relationships, membership, organizational structures and events, and communications networks to effectively turn out a successful mobilization. Less experienced unionists or activists tend to look only at the mobilizations and try to throw as many mobilizations at the wall as possible, then burn out because there is no sustainable organization in place to strategically guide activity and prevent burnout. The immediate experience of the 2017-2020 IWW bears this out, where we experienced a large rush of inexperienced members motivated by progressive ideals and anger at injustice, which proved difficult to incorporate. On the other hand, a longer-term, slower, more intentional and less intense strategy of building out worker committees, starting with smaller actions and demands to gain experience and build toward bigger ones has proven more successful.
Consider weight lifting or a team sport as a metaphor. In order to develop your strength or skills from nothing, you must first start small. This includes stretching, walking, jogging, light weight lifting, and basic skills practice for your sport. As you gain more strength, conditioning, and confidence, you can increase your training load–more miles, more weight, more advanced skills. Then you practice together with your team, scrimmage, play against teams or individuals at your skill level, and eventually get good enough to level up to a higher league or level of play. At the beginning of every training session, you still do the same things: stretch, warm up, practice the fundamentals. Only after putting in the hours and hours of practice off the court can you mobilize for a big game and compete for the wins.
You must also recover effectively–that is, rest so your body can continue to perform at the same level or take on more training load. Your mental health and the morale of your team must also be kept up to prevent falling apart under pressure, and to keep each other in good spirits and push each other to perform at your best.
Organizing is all of the practice, communications, relationships, and building up the team to mobilize for a win on the field. For the IWW, our teams are committees and branches, decision making. Our practice is doing one-on-ones, having effective committee meetings, developing demands. And our field is the workplace, the shop floor.
No baseball team will win the World Series by grabbing a bunch of random baseball fans out of the stands and throwing them on the field. Similarly, we won’t get to winning major demands by taking random workers and throwing them at a class conflict. We must build our team, practice, and execute. We will get wins and losses along the way, but that will make our team stronger.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not purport to represent that of the IWW or Industrial Worker as a whole.
This article originally appeared in the 2026 Summer edition of Industrial Worker.