IWW+&+Socialism

The **Industrial Workers of the World** (**IWW** or the **Wobblies**) is an international [|union] currently headquartered in [|Cincinnati, Ohio], [|USA]. 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 and government repression. Today it is actively organizing and numbers about 2,000 members worldwide, of whom fewer than half (approximately 900) are in good standing (that is, have paid their dues for the past two months). IWW membership does not require that one work in a represented workplace, nor does it exclude membership in another labor union. The IWW contends that all workers should be united within a single union as a class and that the [|wage] system should be abolished. They may be best known for the //Wobbly Shop// model of [|workplace democracy], in which workers elect recallable delegates, and other norms of [|grassroots democracy] ([|self-management]) are implemented.

Socialists mainly share the belief that [|capitalism] unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls [|capital], and creates an [|unequal] society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.[|[1]]
 * Socialism** refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the [|means of production] and distribution of goods, and the creation of an [|egalitarian] society.[|[1]][|[2]] Modern socialism originated in the late nineteenth-century [|working class] political movement. [|Karl Marx] posited that socialism would be achieved via [|class struggle] and a [|proletarian revolution] which represents the //transitional// stage between [|capitalism] and [|communism].[|[3]][|[4]]

Union formed in 1905 that opposed capitalism