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Freedom: The Only Cause Worth Serving
Ben Covington, Charles Radcliffe, Franklin and Penelope Rosemont, Nat Turner, Emiliano Zapata, IWW
Rebel Worker #6 (May 1966)
This 6th issue of The Rebel Worker is being produced in London, several thousand miles from its customary home in Chicago. We hope this issue, and subsequent ones, will help give our ideas a wider audience than they have had so far in Britain. 'The Rebel Worker' is an incendiary and wild-eyed journal of free revolutionary research and experiment devoted principally to the task of clearing a way through the jungle of senile dogmas and aiming towards a revolutionary point of view fundamentally different from all traditional concepts. We belive that almost all political propaganda is useless, being based on assumptions which are flase and situations which do not exist. We are tired of the irrelevant concepts and the old platitudes. The revolutionary movement, in theory and practice, must be rebuilt from scratch. many of us around 'The Rebel Worker' are members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), once one of the largest and most powerful rank-and-file revolutionary organizations the world has ever seen. We have joined the IWW because of its beautiful traditions of direct action, rank-and-file control, sabotage, humor, spontaneity and unmitigated class struggle. It is those principles that constitute our editorial basis, but out task is not limited to mere recruitment. Our role is to promote; 'Whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self-activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification.' Paul Cardan, 'Modern capitalism & revolution' (Solidarity). We want and support revolutionary direct action on every level – in the factories, on the docks, in the fields, in schools, in colleges, in offices and in the streets. But this is not enough. Revolutionary action should be accompanied by theoretical understanding. The Revolution must be made by men, women and children who know what they are doing. Consciousness and desire must cease to be perceived as contradictions. The Revolution, for us, cannot be limited to economic and political changes; these are urgent and absolutely necessary, it is true, but we see them as a beginning rather than as an end; we see social liberation as the essential prerequisite, the first steps, in the total liberation of man. It is especially to young people – young workers, students, drifters, draft-dodgers, school dropouts – to whom we address ourselves and our solidarity. Youth are one of the largest and most oppressed sectors of our society, and it is you who must make the Revolution. What we want, and what The Rebel Worker is about, in short, is Freedom – 'The only cause worth serving' André Breton.
This is the first English 'edition' of The Rebel Worker.
Charles Radcliffe, 13 Redcliffe Rd, London SW 10.
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