How could one make the IWW reformist by 1952?

[Localist Distributist]

So, I've been thinking about ideas for a timeline, and one of the things that's different is a surviving Populist Party. I wanted to try and see if they could become the party affiliated with the IWW, but theres a problem, the IWW aint reformist. The Populist Party in my timeline also has ties to Huey Long and his affiliates due to Huey's ideological roots being tied to William Jennings Bryan. I've had some ideas, like getting the Knights of Labor to officially join the founding of the IWW, having the Socialist Party of America and Socialist Labor Party not schism from the IWW, and potentially getting the unions that in OTL formed the CIO, to instead join into the IWW, as well as using some butterfly-killing to keep the IWW crackdown that crippled them heavily in the 1910s and still having the CPUSA steal many radicals from the IWW, SLP and SPA. And making sure Haywood still leaves with the treasury, so as to get a more financially desperate IWW to be more willing to allow business money from Populist Party donors. But I feel as though it still seems, strange. I have some other smaller PODs that I didn't mention, some im unsure of and others I just find small enough to leave out. I wanted to know if theres anything else I could do to help make them moderate their views and tame them.

 

[Sam R.]

The Chicago IWW weren’t parliamentary cretins.

The Detroit IWW were.

Industrial success and being used as a regulator of labour over the long term will make any workers organisation reformist. If the IWW survives and gains stable contracts, refuses the most revolutionary demand (“MORE”) you soon see them hankering after the leather benches where the labour movement goes to die

I cite the fall of Sydney IWW gaolees to cretinism in the ALP.

 

[Localist Distributist]

The Chicago IWW weren’t parliamentary cretins.

The Detroit IWW were.

Industrial success and being used as a regulator of labour over the long term will make any workers organisation reformist. If the IWW survives and gains stable contracts, refuses the most revolutionary demand (“MORE”) you soon see them hankering after the leather benches where the labour movement goes to die

I cite the fall of Sydney IWW gaolees to cretinism in the ALP.

Okay, any way to increase this tendency in the Chicago IWW?

 

[David T]

The best way to make the IWW reformist is to have William Z. Foster stay with it--"boring from within" as it were--instead of leaving to form the Syndicalist League of North America and eventually (after working with Gompers and helping to sell Liberty bonds in World War I) the arch-reformist TUEL. True, after Foster and the TUEL were absorbed into the Communist party, and the Party by the late 1920's took a "revolutionary" "dual union" position, Foster talked "revolutionary" but he had no problem when the CP led the "red unions" back into the AFL as the new Comintern line demanded in the mid-1930's . Indeed, for a time he was even hesitant to support the CIO, warning that it should avoid a split with the AFL.

 

[Localist Distributist]

The best way to make the IWW reformist is to have William Z. Foster stay with it--"boring from within" as it were--instead of leaving to form the Syndicalist League of North America and eventually (after working with Gompers and helping to sell Liberty bonds in World War I) the arch-reformist TUEL. True, after Foster and the TUEL were absorbed into the Communist party, and the Party by the late 1920's took a "revolutionary" "dual union" position, Foster talked "revolutionary" but he had no problem when the CP led the "red unions" back into the AFL as the new Comintern line demanded in the mid-1930's . Indeed, for a time he was even hesitant to support the CIO, warning that it should avoid a split with the AFL.

would they support a Huey Long type populist in an election?

 

[Sam R.]

I

would they support a Huey Long type populist in an election?

I don’t think that The wobs who burnt Sydney ended up supporting Lang Labor. So it would take such a populist dominating the party that acted as a “labourist” polarity in parliament. Ie: Lang remains inside pissing out.