In 1924 the Industrial Workers of the World was torn apart by scandal. Some argue that the Communist Party was at the root of it. Others argue the root of it was repression from after the first World War. But a recent look at the history from that time and the primary documents that are now available online indicates it was very likely a failure to deal with grifters in the IWW’s own ranks.
The IWW was blown open over a debate over whether the IWW was centralized or decentralized. However, this was largely a distraction from the fact that two industrial unions, IU440 metal and mine workers and IU520 marine transport workers, were found to be engaging in behaviour that looked an awful lot like corruption. The response by those who were accused was to throw up a smoke screen about how the organization was on a path to tyranny, due to the investigations into the large amounts of union cash paid to their officers for personal expenses. The charges included things like billing nice hotels, booze, cigarettes, and meals in expensive restaurants on the IWW’s dime.
There are some hints these grifters were set upon the IWW by the US Government to destroy the union, but definitive proof is not yet there. Nor does it matter much because the real issue here is that a union does not recognize any authority higher than its own membership and so must hold its officers to account on its own.
This question points us in the direction of how to spot anti-social behavior in labor organizations and poses new problems: how to manage conflict so the organization can continue to grow despite disagreement and how can the members at large spot problematic behaviour that goes beyond simple disagreement?
The IWW’s ambition (wanting to supplant the nation state and capitalism) led to problems many unions step back from, relying on government regulatory bodies to sort out for them. Organizations like the IWW would do well to take these concerns seriously.
Psychology, Conflict and the Left
We should say right out the gate that politics should not be left to the experts, but the business of diagnosing individuals should be left to psychologists. There is also a lot of history of pathologizing dissent and non-conformity and any organization that wants to end capitalism and not replace it with a new tyranny should be careful of throwing around individual accusations that someone is not right psychologically.
But there is also no shortage of books and scholarship on anti-social behavior in organizations (especially workplaces) that speak to these issues. This isn’t an article on academic or clinical psychology but I would encourage anyone interested in the subject to read up on the literature themselves.
The crossroads of these two concepts, politics and psychology, also almost always has some kind of a liberal standing in the middle telling everyone a different world is impossible “because of human nature.” This of course is nonsense. But the point remains that 5 percent of the population, according to many credible mental health researchers, have some degree of diagnosable anti-social behaviour.
Even the most pro-capitalist literature points to things any organization can do to address people who are problematic for all sorts of reasons. From people who just can’t tell the difference between a truth and a lie to full blown psychopaths, the answer is more openness in accounting for shared resources, more formal processes for decision making, and an open honest political culture where positions of responsibility are elected directly from the membership.
Often witch hunts and pillorying people for bad behaviour is treated as a reasonable response to this problem. Ironically this kind of chaos is where those who are the worst behaved thrive. The alternative to clear processes is to close ranks, to treat all political business as “state” secrets, and to retreat into cliques. Neither witch hunts nor trusted cliques address the actual problems. Usually they make them worse.
Signs Of Anti Social Behavior In Organizing Projects
It is worth repeating as many times as necessary that there are practices that allow bad actors to wreck organizations but we can’t prove that some Fellow Workers are narcissists, psychopaths or chronic manipulators–nor should we. We are not psychologists.
Instead we need to assume that the vast majority of people are more less acting in good faith but an extremely damaging minority can act with impunity without proper checks and balances. Many of them are well-intentioned and wrong. Making accusations is pointless but watching out for these red flags can save us a lot of problems later.
Constant Exceptions
Organizations have rules for a reason. The constitution of an organization isn’t just a bunch of tinkering by old beards. Almost every line of a constitution is the result of some kind of lesson learned and written down by Convention. It is also a contract between the organization and its members and unlike contracts with our enemies (like the bosses) the contracts we sign with each other must be treated as sacred.
Of course sometimes convention gets it wrong and the members at referendum can get it wrong. When this happens we may put a bad rule in place.
But the answer to that is not to just set aside the rules because we don’t like them but rather to have an open debate about the rule and to change it by majority vote.
Skipping steps like taking a vote and then following the decision of the group is basically an admission that the working class as a whole are too stupid to manage their affairs themselves.
If we take seriously the idea that unions like the IWW are “the structure of the new society within the shell of the old” we need to accept the authority of our own rules. The flip side of this is equally important: we shouldn’t create rules just for the sake of it.
When an organizing project wants an exception to the constitution or bylaws, they only have to wait a year or two to make the case at convention and then send the item to referendum. Then the organization gets to decide if they want to continue the rule or get rid of it.
The more ambiguity about the rules there is in an organization, the easier it is to say, for instance, that money wasn’t misspent, or that the office space has always been a social leader’s living space and that the organization’s funds are there to promote the pet projects of influential staff members–even if those projects have nothing to do with the organization itself.
Not Reporting to Avoid Accountability
If an organizing project can’t say how many members they have, it’s a major red flag if they are handling money. Any organization should have clear criteria for membership. The rights of members are what determines if an organization is controlled by the membership or someone else (ie. staff, a permanent paid officer clique or grant funders).
Of course volunteer and membership organizations can sometimes be lax or have spotty reporting, but that’s not the point.
If a body of an organization asks for funds, there should be questions. If the answers are vague or don’t make sense, it’s the obligation of the members in positions of responsibility to press for more details.
Sometimes, like in the example from the 1924 IWW split, the questions lead to emotionally charged accusations, introducing unrelated politics or statements that this is a personal emergency for those involved. ”Decentralization” is an important political commitment, but it can also be a smoke screen to avoid a conversation about where the money went.
In cases like that, people should be treated with empathy, but also the organization should stay on track. If every crisis leads to a major blow up and a collapse of basic questions of accountability, then the revolutionary organization is not ready for revolution.
Claiming Ignorance
It’s okay to say you don’t know. But when you ask for money from an organization, questions like “what did you do with the money last time?” should require a clear answer before more money is given. This isn’t tyranny, this is exactly how we build a world where we supplant the divine right of bosses with the working class conquering and owning the productive capacity of society. Like it or not, workers allocating resources democratically means we are getting rid of bosses by taking that role and putting in our own hands to manage through our organizations.
The main point of an organization is to take in dues money and then to spend that money based on the priorities of the members. If those priorities are building playgrounds in your neighborhood you need to provide receipts so everyone knows you didn’t use it to pave your mom’s driveway.
In a revolutionary organization you need to show what the money was spent on so you can make sure the mission of the organization was carried out.
Green Flags
There are lots of organizational practices that indicate a healthy political culture and these things are as important as talking about “what not to do” they are:
Clear Decision-making Processes
Does the organization have a handbook with how decisions are made? (In the IWW this is the Constitution, Manual of Policies and Procedures, and Roberts or Rusty’s Rules of Order).
Is this shared with the members of the organization? Does the organization make clear motions or proposals and have a clear process for determining if they have enough support to be implemented? (ie. majority vote, how many?)
Some groups may just adopt Roberts Rules and list the exceptions, which is fine. If they say “consensus” decision making is used what do they mean? Are there guidelines for minutes and documenting proposals? Grifters love activist consensus decision making as the blurred lines allow for all sorts of ambiguity and chaos.
Bylaws that require proposals to be written down, standard minute taking processes and how many people need to be in favour for a proposal to pass in a meeting are a powerful tool for keeping an organization on track and power in the hands of the members. Ambiguity lets people decide important things in a small group chat or at the bar. Informal groups are a natural part of any organization but the actual decisions need to be made openly and in a formal way.
Investigations and Findings
When a complaint of misconduct is brought forward does the organization have standing rules for how these things are handled? Are the investigations handled exclusively by leadership or is someone elected from the rank and file to look into it and publish a report? Is there a charges process and are the members who do investigations elected independently or appointed by the people being investigated?
Many scandals on the left in recent memory were the result of an impulse to politically manage bad behaviour and to bury mistakes. This is much harder to do where complaints are investigated and the findings are presented by groups of rank-and-filers.
Elections of Officers and Administration
Does the organization have clear roles for running the organization? These should basically be job descriptions that are written in the bylaws. Are there clear boundaries between tasks and limits on the authority of officers? How much of the membership ratifies the budget? An organization should have oversight over its own budget and how the money is spent.
There are practical limits to this, the larger an organization gets but it’s important that the members themselves can look at a budget and compare it to the stated priorities of the organization and argue about whether or not the resources of the organization reflect the direction they have agreed on.
Conclusion
In 1924 the Industrial Workers of the World made it as far as they ever have. They fell short not because of outside political actors (like the Communists), and not because people were mean to each other (in some cases they may not have been mean enough). Instead the IWW came apart because it underestimated how hard it is for a working class movement to govern itself.
Determining what bad behaviour is and how to handle it is one of the most difficult things an organization can do. When we are asked how the world will work when the workers take over we need to be able to point to the democracy we practice now as an example. Failing to address this problem won’t just hold us back in the future; it will make organizing tremendously difficult right now. There may come a time again when we face hundreds of thousands of members under a banner that reads “Abolition of the Wage System.” We will also then face the fact that our treasury is large enough to be a good target for some bad actors. How we handle small problems now is the only way we can prevent that from happening again.
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.