Richard Marklew
Beat & Wobbly Crossings in the Revolutionary Wilderness
Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 19 (2025), pp. 101-118

Abstract: The Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) are a radical labor union with an ever-changing, pluralistic ideology that combines elements of anarchism, syndicalism and Marxism. Ever since the Beat Generations’ emergence as a countercultural force, the I.W.W. have had a complicated relationship with the Beats. This relationship was most prominently discussed by a reviving and resurgent I.W.W. in the 1960s. This paper frames the relationship between the Beats and Wobblies through Snyder’s concept of Wilderness. Stressing the importance of physical bodies, spontaneous behavior and non-hierarchical, self-organization, Snyder’s concept sums up a lot of the political and aesthetic theory of the New Left. However, the relationship between the Beats and Wobblies pushes both a perspective on Snyder’s social philosophy further as well as illuminates embodied aspects of radical subjectivity. Looking at Ginsberg, Kerouac and Snyder’s relationship to the Wobblies in more depth gives us insight into the contours of their political thought and poetics. Beat writers create rhetorical distance to the Wobblies in order to turn their sayings and principles into mythopoetic stories loose enough to steer new political battles. Wobbly writers of the 1960s take an approach to the Beats that stresses the embodied aspects of crossing between movements through time as well as the tension between individual and collective action. It is through their writings that the revolutionary wilderness comes out as a force of self-organization that works through instantiating habits in political agents.

Keywords: Industrial Workers of the World, Wobblies, Beats, Counterculture, Radical Politics,
Wilderness, Spontaneity, Embodiment.

DOI: 10.7311/PJAS.19/2025.08

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