Throughout the entire history of the American labor movement, there have been numerous attempts to construct independent, class-conscious trade unions. The New Labor Organizing Committee happens to be the most recent; however, the Industrial Workers of the World predates it by over a century. Because of this, and the IWW’s prestige and influence among a sector of the independent labor movement, it is worth examining the differences in the line and methods of the modern IWW and the NLOC, and the factors that drove the IWW from a mass, revolutionary labor organization to its present state as a minority group of reformists inside the state union system. This criticism is necessary not just to clearly demarcate the New Labor camp from the “militant” reformist camp, of which the contemporary IWW is a part, but also to strengthen any opposition in the IWW’s present line and prevent modern opportunist IWW leaders from hiding behind the principled history of the IWW.

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