Solidarity Forever
Encyclopedia
"Solidarity Forever", written by Ralph Chaplin
in 1915, is perhaps the most famous union
anthem. It is sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body
" and is inspired by "The Battle Hymn of the Republic
". Although it was written as a song for the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW), other union movements, such as the AFL-CIO
, have adopted the song as their own. The song has been performed in recent years by musicians such as the late Utah Phillips
, and was redone by Emcee Lynx
. It is still commonly sung at union meetings and rallies in the United States
, Australia
and Canada
, and has also been sung at conferences of the Australian Labor Party
and the Canadian New Democratic Party
. This may have also inspired the hymn of the consumer
cooperative
movement, "The Battle Hymn of Cooperation
", which is sung to the same tune.
.
The Preamble begins with a classic statement of a two-class analysis of capitalism
: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” The class struggle
will continue until the victory of the working class: “Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.” The Preamble denounces trade unions as incapable of coping with the power of the employing class. By negotiating contracts, the Preamble states, trade unions mislead workers by giving the impression that workers have interests in common with employers.
The Preamble calls for workers to build an organization of all “members in any one industry, or in all industries.” Although that sounds a lot like the industrial unionism
developed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations
, the IWW would oppose John L. Lewis
’ campaign to split from the American Federation of Labor
and organize industrial unions in the 1930s. The Preamble explains, “Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,’ we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wage system.’” The IWW embraced syndicalism
, and opposed participation in electoral politics: “by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”
The outlook of the Preamble is embodied in “Solidarity Forever,” which enunciates several elements of the IWW's analysis. The third stanza (“It is we who plowed the prairies”) asserts the primacy of the role of workers in creating values. This is echoed in stanzas four and five, which provide ethical justification for the workers’ claim to “all the world.” The second stanza (“Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite”) assumes the two antagonistic classes described in the Preamble. The first and fifth stanzas provide the strategy for labor: union solidarity. And the sixth stanza projects the utopian outcome, a new world brought to birth “from the ashes of the old.”
Chaplin was not pleased with the widespread popularity of "Solidarity Forever" in the labor movement. Late in his life, after he had become a voice opposing (State) Communists in the labor movement, Chaplin wrote an article, “Why I wrote Solidarity Forever,” in which he denounced the “not-so-needy, not-so-worthy, so-called ‘industrial unions’ spawned by an era of compulsory unionism.” He wrote that among Wobblies “there is no one who does not look with a rather jaundiced eye upon the ‘success’ of ‘Solidarity Forever.’" "I didn't write 'Solidarity Forever' for ambitious politicians or for job-hungry labor fakirs seeking a ride on the gravy train. . . . All of us deeply resent seeing a song that was uniquely our own used as a singing commercial for the soft-boiled type of post-Wagner Act industrial unionism that uses million-dollar slush funds to persuade their congressional office boys to do chores for them.” He added, “I contend also that when the labor movement ceases to be a Cause and becomes a business, the end product can hardly be called progress.”
Despite Chaplin's misgivings, "Solidarity Forever" has retained a general appeal for the wider labor movement because of the continued applicability of its core message. Many singers do not sing all six stanzas of "Solidarity Forever," typically dropping verses two (“Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite”) and four (“All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone”), thus leaving out the most radical material.
A variation from Canada goes as follows:
The centennial edition of the Little Red Songbook includes these two new verses credited to Steve Suffet:
Ralph Chaplin
Ralph Hosea Chaplin was an American writer, artist and labor activist. At the age of seven, he saw a worker shot dead during the Pullman strike in Chicago, Illinois. He had moved with his family from Ames, Kansas to Chicago in 1893...
in 1915, is perhaps the most famous union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
anthem. It is sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body
John Brown's Body
"John Brown's Body" is an American marching song about the abolitionist John Brown. The song was popular in the Union during the American Civil War. The tune arose out of the folk hymn tradition of the American camp meeting movement of the 19th century...
" and is inspired by "The Battle Hymn of the Republic
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a hymn by American writer Julia Ward Howe using the music from the song "John Brown's Body". Howe's more famous lyrics were written in November 1861 and first published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. It became popular during the American Civil War...
". Although it was written as a song for the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
(IWW), other union movements, such as the AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
, have adopted the song as their own. The song has been performed in recent years by musicians such as the late Utah Phillips
Utah Phillips
Bruce Duncan "Utah" Phillips was a labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet and the "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest". He described the struggles of labor unions and the power of direct action, self-identifying as an anarchist...
, and was redone by Emcee Lynx
Emcee Lynx
Lynx, or Emcee Lynx is an anarchist hip hop artist in Vallejo, California who has achieved significant popularity and name-recognition in the West Coast hip hop and underground hip hop scenes and among anarchists and other radicals around the world...
. It is still commonly sung at union meetings and rallies in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and has also been sung at conferences of the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
and the Canadian New Democratic Party
New Democratic Party
The New Democratic Party , commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada. The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in...
. This may have also inspired the hymn of the consumer
Consumer
Consumer is a broad label for any individuals or households that use goods generated within the economy. The concept of a consumer occurs in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary.-Economics and marketing:...
cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
movement, "The Battle Hymn of Cooperation
The Battle Hymn of Cooperation
Sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic , this song was widely popular throughout the American consumers' cooperative movement from the 1930s onward...
", which is sung to the same tune.
Lyrics
- When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
- There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
- Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
- But the union makes us strong.
- CHORUS:
- Solidarity forever,
- Solidarity forever,
- Solidarity forever,
- For the union makes us strong.
- Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
- Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
- Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
- For the union makes us strong.
- Chorus
- It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
- Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
- Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;
- But the union makes us strong.
- Chorus
- All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
- We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
- It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
- While the union makes us strong.
- Chorus
- They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
- But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
- We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
- That the union makes us strong.
- Chorus
- In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
- Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
- We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
- For the union makes us strong.
Composition
Ralph Chaplin began writing “Solidarity Forever” in 1914, while he was covering the Kanawa coal miners’ strike in Huntington, West Virginia. He completed the song on January 15, 1915, in Chicago, on the date of a hunger demonstration. Chaplin was a dedicated Wobbly, a writer at the time for Solidarity, the official IWW publication in the eastern United States, and a cartoonist for the organization. He shared the analysis of the IWW, embodied in its famed “Preamble,” printed inside the front cover of every Little Red SongbookLittle Red Songbook
thumb|180px|right|The Little Red SongbookSince the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the IWW, songs have played a big part in spreading the message of the One Big Union...
.
The Preamble begins with a classic statement of a two-class analysis of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” The class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
will continue until the victory of the working class: “Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.” The Preamble denounces trade unions as incapable of coping with the power of the employing class. By negotiating contracts, the Preamble states, trade unions mislead workers by giving the impression that workers have interests in common with employers.
The Preamble calls for workers to build an organization of all “members in any one industry, or in all industries.” Although that sounds a lot like the industrial unionism
Industrial unionism
Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
developed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
, the IWW would oppose John L. Lewis
John L. Lewis
John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960...
’ campaign to split from the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
and organize industrial unions in the 1930s. The Preamble explains, “Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,’ we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wage system.’” The IWW embraced syndicalism
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
, and opposed participation in electoral politics: “by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”
The outlook of the Preamble is embodied in “Solidarity Forever,” which enunciates several elements of the IWW's analysis. The third stanza (“It is we who plowed the prairies”) asserts the primacy of the role of workers in creating values. This is echoed in stanzas four and five, which provide ethical justification for the workers’ claim to “all the world.” The second stanza (“Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite”) assumes the two antagonistic classes described in the Preamble. The first and fifth stanzas provide the strategy for labor: union solidarity. And the sixth stanza projects the utopian outcome, a new world brought to birth “from the ashes of the old.”
Chaplin was not pleased with the widespread popularity of "Solidarity Forever" in the labor movement. Late in his life, after he had become a voice opposing (State) Communists in the labor movement, Chaplin wrote an article, “Why I wrote Solidarity Forever,” in which he denounced the “not-so-needy, not-so-worthy, so-called ‘industrial unions’ spawned by an era of compulsory unionism.” He wrote that among Wobblies “there is no one who does not look with a rather jaundiced eye upon the ‘success’ of ‘Solidarity Forever.’" "I didn't write 'Solidarity Forever' for ambitious politicians or for job-hungry labor fakirs seeking a ride on the gravy train. . . . All of us deeply resent seeing a song that was uniquely our own used as a singing commercial for the soft-boiled type of post-Wagner Act industrial unionism that uses million-dollar slush funds to persuade their congressional office boys to do chores for them.” He added, “I contend also that when the labor movement ceases to be a Cause and becomes a business, the end product can hardly be called progress.”
Despite Chaplin's misgivings, "Solidarity Forever" has retained a general appeal for the wider labor movement because of the continued applicability of its core message. Many singers do not sing all six stanzas of "Solidarity Forever," typically dropping verses two (“Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite”) and four (“All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone”), thus leaving out the most radical material.
Modern lyrics
Since the 1970s women have added verses to "Solidarity Forever" to reflect their concerns as union members. One popular set of stanzas is:- We're the women of the union and we sure know how to fight.
- We'll fight for women's issues and we'll fight for women's rights.
- A woman's work is never done from morning until night.
- Women make the union strong!
- It is we who wash dishes, scrub the floors and clean the dirt,
- Feed the kids and send them off to school - and then we go to work,
- Where we work for half men's wages for a boss who likes to flirt.
- But the union makes us strong!
A variation from Canada goes as follows:
- We’re the women of the union in the forefront of the fight,
- We fight for women’s issues, we fight for women’s rights,
- We’re prepared to fight for freedom, we’re prepared to stand our ground,
- Women make the union strong.
- Through our sisters and our brothers, we can make our union strong,
- For respect and equal value we have done without too long,
- We no longer have to tolerate injustices and wrongs,
- For the union makes us strong.
- When racism in all of us is finally out and gone,
- Then the union movement will be twice as powerful and strong,
- for equality for everyone will move the cause along,
- for the union makes us strong.
The centennial edition of the Little Red Songbook includes these two new verses credited to Steve Suffet:
- They say our day is over; they say our time is through,
- They say you need no union if your collar isn't blue,
- Well that is just another lie the boss is telling you,
- For the Union makes us strong!
- They divide us by our color; they divide us by our tongue,
- They divide us men and women; they divide us old and young,
- But they'll tremble at our voices, when they hear these verses sung,
- For the Union makes us strong!
See also
- Industrial Workers of the WorldIndustrial Workers of the WorldThe Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
- Little Red SongbookLittle Red Songbookthumb|180px|right|The Little Red SongbookSince the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the IWW, songs have played a big part in spreading the message of the One Big Union...
- Union OrganizerUnion organizerA union organizer is a specific type of trade union member or an appointed union official. A majority of unions appoint rather than elect their organizers....