The I. W. W. was organized, as the constitution expressed it, to "subserve the immediate interests of the working class and effect their final emancipation." The attempt to realize this "final emancipation" was the thing which marked off the I. W. W. from the typical craft union. This latter body is _craft_ conscious; the I. W. W. is _class_ conscious. The structural and organic form it assumed at the first convention made for the stupefaction of craft consciousness and the stimulation of class consciousness. The idea of the class conflict was really the bottom notion or "first cause" of the I. W. W. The industrial union type was adopted because it would make it possible to wage this class war under more favorable conditions.
It is true the Socialist and Socialist Labor parties are working for the ultimate freedom of the working class, but the (Chicago) I. W. W. considers their method--political action--a snare and a delusion, and (here both the Detroit and Chicago factions came together) absolutely impotent when used alone. It is rather significant that every member of the provisional board elected at the convention was a member of the Socialist party. But they emphatically declared that the Socialist party was not to be involved in any way; and it never did become involved except as an enemy. On the other hand, the Socialist Labor party did, through the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, indirectly affect the work of the first convention.
The anarchist element was weak in 1905, and the anarchistic leanings now so prominent in the direct-actionist wing of the organization were then quite overshadowed by the socialistic and industrial phases of the movement. Carlton says that "the Industrial Workers may be compared with the Knights of Labor shorn of their idealism and saturated with class-conscious Socialism";[177] and he might have added, with their decentralized administrative system replaced by a very strongly centralized one--this constituting a fundamental distinction between the I. W. W. and the _Confédération Générale du Travail_, a decentralized organization. Nor should the Industrial Workers of the World be quite shorn of idealism. That must surely be idealistic which is "saturated with class-conscious socialism." This was amply demonstrated at the constitutional convention. Their idealism was given more of a pragmatic character by the persistent tendency to place socialism on an industrial rather than a political basis. The immediate struggle must take place primarily in the shop--at the point of production--only secondarily at the polls.