(Text of brochure distributed at recent anti-war protests in Madison, WI by the Madison General Membership Branch (GMB) of the Industrial Workers of the World)

Bosses wage war to make money and workers are the ones who die in the process.

This fact should be obvious to most people. Yet many workers – along with their supposed unions – end up stoking the engines of an infernal war machine.

While many may secretly question the sanity of a capitalist system that sacrifices them and their children as cannon fodder on the altar of corporate profit, few are willing to challenge the power system behind such relentless warmongering.

This coming week is the anniversary of the Paris Comune. Here we reproduce a short pamphlet to remind working people of our world history. It is being produced by some members of the Melbourne Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, PO Box 145, Moreland VIC 3058.

Hard copies will be distributed at a commemoration organised by the @narchist Age Weekly and the www.seditioncharter.org crew outside the French Consuls Melbourne Office 150 Queen Street, Melbourne (cnr- Bourke & Queen Sts) 12.30pm Wednesday 28th March 2007. Roll up and collect your own copy!!

A brief history of the world's first socialist working class uprising.

The workers of Paris, joined by mutinous National Guardsmen, seized the city and set about re-organising society in their own interests based on workers' councils. They could not hold out, however, when more troops retook the city and the rich ordered the massacre of 30,000 workers in bloody revenge.

Who are we? The IWW is an international union over a century old. The first Australian branch was formed in Adelaide in 1907. The Wobblies were the genesis of many of today's major trade unions. Many current unions organize on the basis of wobbly philosophies and using wobbly methods. The IWW is thoroughly democratic – all delegates are rotated, recallable and unpaid. We only have one modestly paid official worldwide. Unlike trade unions, the wobblies are syndicalist which means that we believe in independent, truly democratic organizing. We believe that every workplace has the right to determine their own actions and should not be controlled by top-heavy bureaucratic union bosses.

by Housefly

The only people who talk about class based politics these days in
federal parliament are Tony Abbott and Peter Costello the two ultra
conservative contenders for the top job. Both of these 'good buddies'
from student days at Sydney Uni are on Hansard lecturing the country
that the class war is over and its time to move on. At the same time
they are throwing every thing they have in their power into locking
the country down against its own work class resistance.

The new Terrorism laws that Howard wants in place before Xmas will
allow police to snatch people from the streets and hold them without

To fan the flames of discontent

The Industrial Workers of the World is a union open to wage and salary workers in all industries, and to members of the working class in all countries.

Our aim is to enable workers to resist being used against each other either:

• to undermine each other's jobs in peacetime or
• kill each other in war.

Our hope is to make this planet a good place for all of us. We seek to beuild a new world in the shell of the old through direct control of industry by workers on the job.

The IWW was founded in 1905 by unions in North America concerned with industrial organising to prevent each trade union from being used against the others. In Australia it was built from 1908 by unionists worried by the weakness of trade unions and the arbitary divisions inspired between workers by conservative union bosses.

How To Sack Your Boss - A Workers' Guide to Direct Action

The indignity of working-for-a-living is well-known to anyone who ever has. Democracy, the great principle on which our society is supposedly founded, is thrown out the window as soon as we punch the time clock at work. With no say over what we produce, or how that production is organised, and with only a small portion of that product's value finding its way into our paychecks, we have every right to be pissed off at our bosses.