In 1912 the G. E. B. had assured the membership that they were "not unmindful of the danger that will ever live in centralized power," but they asserted that "it does not follow that to centralize the administrative machinery of your organization necessarily means a centralized power," and that "the only means by which centralization of power can be avoided is by correct education and a thoroughly intelligent membership...."[636]
A writer who favored the decentralists says that their defeat was due very largely to their "crudity and inexperience." "Possessed of a red-hot issue, they failed," he said, "to make good with it" partly "because of their unfamiliarity with the principles of decentralization."[637] Alexander Berkman, one of the most prominent anarchists in the United States, regretted the victory of what he might have called the "entrenched oligarchy" at Chicago.
The question of local autonomy [he says], in itself such an axiomatic necessity of a truly revolutionary movement, has been so obscured in the debates of the convention that apparently sight was lost of the fact that no organization of independent and self-reliant workers is thinkable without complete local autonomy. It does not speak well either for the intelligence or spirit of the convention delegates that the efforts of the decentralists were defeated. The convention has given a very serious blow to the ... spirit of the social revolution by [passing] the resolution that the publications of the I. W. W. should come under the supervision of the General Executive Board. That is centralization with a vengeance.... We consider the convention ... a sad failure [and] ... we sincerely hope that the real militants and revolutionists of the I. W. W. will take the lesson to heart and exert all their energies to stem the tide of conservatism and faint-heartedness in the I. W. W. organization.[638]
In a very interesting article Ben Reitman, another anarchist, has set down his more personal impressions of this eighth I. W. W. convention. After assuring us that 98 per cent of the "extremely interesting crowd" of delegates had in all probability been in prison, but that none of them were criminals, he continues: