Cutting through the Babble

 

The UK's branch of the Industrial Workers of the World has been stepping up its publications. One of the newest is a journal called Wobbly Times. The theme for the first issue which will be released soon was "Workers of the World United" a great choice, but at the time they were calling for submissions I could not think of anything to fit it.

Yesterday I attended an IWW writers workshop and this idea came to me.

You may recall that I used to work in a cold factory producing frozen foods. There's a stereotype of a factory proletarian being this salt of earth man full of muscles, the reality was that the workforce was the most diverse I've ever encountered. Many women, every age from "are you sure your 18?" To "Shouldn't you have retired already?" Workers with mental and physical disabilities including me, and workers from many ethnic backgrounds and many being immigrants.

The canteen and the outside corner where the smokers gathered and the bike shed were full of accents, slang and languages. 

The langauge barrier is a serious obstacle to international and even intranational co-operation, at the factory even though we were all polite and friendly to each other groups formed around first language for the most part. Revolutionary groups have struggled with how to overcome this obstacle, some invest heavily in translation departments, others promote a 'workers language' either Russian, Spanish, English or Esperanto etc.

I don't have a silver bullet for this problem, but I do have some observations. While outside of work the differences were obvious they largely disappeared on the factory floor. Lack of fluency in English or any other langauge didn't matter so much since it was simply too loud to talk in a meaningful way.

Conversations were short with only the most important words and punctuated with pointing and gestures. Body langauge was also heavily reduced since we were all covered in the same white overcoats and gloves and hair nets. If you were clean shaven you could still use your face to smile or look concerned but if you had any peach fuzz you had to cover your snout with a snood. 

In a strange way the tempo and organisation of the factory leveled the differences between us and we spoke a common langauge. There were of course limits to this language, there wasn't much room for abstraction and elaboration. But it was still a useful tool in building some links between us all. We gave warnings about bits of machine that liked to bite and grab, laughed at terrible supervisors who thought they were cool and tough, helped out the newbies or the ones who were having trouble.

I still think that communication is serious obstacle to building a movement capable of challenging the global capitalist order, but I am atleast confident that it is an obstacle that can be overcome with enough effort.