Organizing is a diverse and complex subject. We cannot possibly hope to cover every aspect in a short time.
There are many useful books on the subject of organizing at the point of production, strategic non-violence, rank & file workers' activity, self-management, collective bargaining, and more. No single text is perfect or exhaustive.
The following list of books are generally not written or endorsed by the IWW, but workers may find them useful. Books that the IWW sells and/or texts that are featured elsewhere on this site are indicated by links. Books are organized alphabetically first by author and then by title.
Solidarity Unionism
Punching Out & Other Writings - Martin Glaberman; edited & introduced by Staughton Lynd; Charles Kerr, 2002.
Glaberman is the most important writer on labor matters in the United States during the second half of the Twentieth century. He developed distinctive concepts concerning the nature of trade unionism; the unfolding of working-class consciousness; and the forms of revolutionary organization appropriate to modern industrial society.
The New Rank & File - Edited by Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, ILR Press, © 2000
[From a review by Andy Piascik] The New Rank and File is, as the Lynds say in the introduction, more a book about worker self-organization and the labor movement than it is about the union movement. The distinction is important, for the emphasis is on workers taking control of the most important aspects of their work lives.
Solidarity Unionism: Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below - Staughton Lynd; Charles Kerr, 1993.
[From AK Press April 3, 2006] Solidarity Unionism takes no easy comfort from faith in an assured future but rather draws strength from the fact that working people learn solidarity from their jobs and even from their defeats. It seeks neither a strategy to capture the leadership of the existing AFL-CIO unions nor one to destroy them and build upon their ruins. Instead it looks for ways that labor organizations can be structured so that they are the incubators, and not the prisons, of the impulse toward solidarity.
Democracy is Power: Rebuilding Unions from the Bottom Up - By Mike Parker and Martha Gruelle, Labor Notes, © 1999
Democracy Is Power will be engaging - often challenging - for anyone interested in labor strategy, and a vital resource for those active in reforming their own union, as a rank and file member or as a local officer.
Class War Lessons; From Direct Action on the Job to the '46 Oakland General Strike (Unions With Leaders Who Stay on the Job) - Stan Weir; Insane Dialectical Editions, 2006.
Singlejack Solidarity - By Stan Weir; University of Minnesota, © 2004.
Blue-collar intellectual and activist publisher, Stan Weir devoted his life to the advocacy of his fellow workers. Weir was both a thoughtful observer and an active participant in many of the key struggles that shaped the labor movement and the political left in postwar America. He reported firsthand from the front lines of decisive fights over the nature of unions in the auto industry, the resistance to automation on the waterfront, and battles over racial integration in the workplace and within unions themselves.
Written throughout Weir’s decades as a blue-collar worker and labor educator, Singlejack Solidarity offers a rare look at modern life and social relations as seen from the factory, dockside, and the shop floor. This volume analyzes issues central to working-class life today, such as the human costs of automation, union policies, mass media images of work, and intergenerational relations in working-class families. It also provides humorous commentaries, historical vignettes, and moving portraits of people Weir encountered, including James Baldwin, C. L. R. James, and Eric Hoffer.
A Troublemaker's Handbook, How to Fight Back Where You Work--And Win! - Edited by Dan LaBotz, Labor Notes, 1991.
A Troublemaker's Handbook 2, How To Fight Back Where You Work and Win! -- Edited by Jane Slaughter, Labor Notes, 2004
This unique resource of organizing and leadership lessons, tactics, and strategies is a collaboration of several dozen authors and hundreds of activists. No matter how seasoned an activist you are, this book will show you new ways to fight back where you work and win!
Strategic Nonviolence
The Politics of Nonviolent Action - Gene Sharp, © 1973 by Gene Sharp, Porter Sargent.
- Part 1 - Power and Struggle
- Part 2 - The Methods of Nonviolent Action
- Part 3 - The Dynamics of Nonviolent Action
[From Wikipedia April 3, 2006]: Sharp's key insight is that he revived the idea earlier stated by the 18th century philosopher David Hume, that power is not monolithic, that is, it does not derive from some intrinsic quality of those who are in power. For Sharp, political power, the power of any state - regardless of its particular structural organization - is derived from the subjects of the state. His fundamental belief is that any power structure is based on the subjects' obedience to the orders of the ruler(s). Therefore, if subjects do not obey, leaders have no power.
Miscellaneous Titles
Strip the Experts - Brian Martin, Freedom Press, 1991
[From the Introduction] In modern society, scientific experts are the new priests. They pronounce on all manner of things with the ultimate authority: scientific knowledge. To challenge the experts is heresy.
Yet it can be done. The experts are vulnerable in a variety of ways. You can dispute their facts. You can challenge the assumptions underlying their facts. You can undermine their credibility. And you can discredit the value of expertise generally. Their weaknesses can be probed and relentlessly exploited.
This booklet is designed for people who oppose a gang of scientific experts and want to strip them naked. It describes various methods you can use to do this, with examples such as nuclear power, fluoridation, creation science, smoking and health, and nuclear winter. Each of these shows how a small number of critics can mount remarkably effective challenges to a powerful scientific establishment.
