The paradox of the first blow: Why strategic strikes often unleash uncontrollable conflict

“ Especially must the strike strategist understand ho to apply the theory of the offensive in the early stages of a struggle that has the earmarks of becoming far-reaching and bitter. We must learn how to start strikes successfully. In strikes, as in many other things, "Well begun is half done." In all kinds of fights an effective first blow is often decisive. Hence, an initial shattering attack must be fundamental part of our strike strategy.
When workers are about to strike in a plant, a sort of strike fever runs among them from department to department. ”

“ We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen, Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few,—not omitting even scaffolding,—or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in,—in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.
It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska Bill the people of a State as well as Territory were to be left "perfectly free," ”

“ In Lebanon, assassins took the life of Pierre Gemayel, a prominent participant in the Cedar Revolution. Hezbollah terrorists, with support from Syria and Iran, sowed conflict in the region and are seeking to undermine Lebanon's legitimately elected government. In Afghanistan, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters tried to regain power by regrouping and engaging Afghan and NATO forces. In Iraq, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists blew up one of the most sacred places in Shia Islam -- the Golden Mosque of Samarra. ”

“ There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences. ”

“ You will speedily discover that the strike of a few of our railway employés is simply being used by the mob violence, which some of your people are permitting or encouraging, to effect other purposes, which, if successful, will destroy many of your leading local interests. The strike on our road at Pittsburgh was inaugurated without any notice to or conference with the officers of our company as to the existence of a grievance. ”

“ The past decade has seen the UK embroiled in many bloody wars, paying a high price in treasury and blood, and failing to secure any peace. The middle east is in a very precarious state as we speak. We must learn well from those mistakes. I want to place it on the record that our support for the official Opposition’s amendment today does not in any way imply that we shall in any way vote for a military strike in due course, unless the evidence supports it. ”

“ Brute force is bad all around, and even threats of it are not always the best or quickest remedy for evils.
Q. Have you any knowledge of the causes leading to the strike?
A. I have no personal knowledge. I had, however, some knowledge of the causes which had been gathered for some months before, and which were familiar in people's mouths about the time—the reduction of wages and the bitter feeling that existed between the employés and officers of the roads. ”

“ When newspapers lie about a strike, they lie about every one of the strikers, and every one of these strikers and their wives and children and friends know it. When they see deliberate and long-continued campaigns to render them odious to the public, and to deprive them of their just rights, not merely as workers, but as citizens, a blaze of impotent fury is kindled in their hearts. And year by year our newspapers go on storing up these volcanic fires of hate-against the day when labor will no longer be impotent! ”

“ Again, Eurybiades lifting up his staff as if he were going to strike, Themistocles said, "Strike if you will, but hear;" ”

“ Now he realized the truth; that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective office, it was like an inheritance of power—to certain people at certain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee but a responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentum might drag him down to ruin—the passing of the emotional wave that made it possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on an island of despair. ”

“ For the building of a strong strike morale we must base our strike strategy on the theory of fighting upon the offensive. We must attack always, or at the worst be preparing to attack. This theory applies as well to the class war in industry as to military war on the battlefield. The workers, like soldiers, (and they are the same human beings and subject to the same psychological laws) fight best on the offensive. They are then fired with a sense of power and victory; defensive fighting demoralizes them and fills them with defeatism. ”

“ A strike strategy based on the theory of the offensive often gives the workers the advantage of the element of surprise. Military strategists are keenly aware of the value of surprising their enemies. They are constantly seeking to catch them napping, and to deliver attacks against them when they are unprepared. Strike strategists must bear the same principle in mind, for the class struggle offers many opportunities to the workers to strike unexpected blows against the employers. ”

“ Professor Smith, of Tulane University, is spokesman for thousands of respectable and educated men when he says: “Atrocious as such forms of rudimentary justice undoubtedly are, and severely reprehensible, to be condemned always and without any reserve, it cannot be denied that they have a certain rough and horrible virtue. Great is the insult they wreak on the majesty of the law and brutalizing must be their effect upon human nature, yet they do strike a salutary terror into hearts which the slow and uncertain steps of the courts could hardly daunt. ”

“ The workers are always confronted with the practical question, "Are we in a position to strike successfully, or must we settle?" This vital question can be answered correctly only if they penetrate the employers' elaborate system of bluff, get a line on their real position, and thus base their policy upon actualities. A correct grasp of the forces at play is the foundation of strategy, no less at the conference table than in actual strikes. ”

“ Strike strategy, no less than military strategy, must give close concern to the question of morale. This is because strikes, like military campaigns though in a lesser degree, are tests of the courage and endurance of their participants. The tenacity, durability, discipline, and general effectiveness of a strike largely depend upon the morale of the workers involved. The power of resistance of a body of strikers, like that of an army in the field, can be measured pretty much by the state of their fighting spirit. ”

“ When the employés—brakemen, trainmen, conductors, and engineers will agree not to run a railroad in this country, that is the end of traffic, and they can starve out whole communities. They discovered that fact, and then it was on Saturday evening, that labor sympathizing with those people, they partook of the strike, and helped to burn cars and carry on the work of destruction. ”

“ Half a million coal-miners have struck, a court injunction has forced the leaders to call off the strike, the miners are refusing to obey their leaders—and the newspapers of the entire United States are concealing the facts. For a week it has been impossible for me to learn, except from vague hints, what is happening in the coal-strike. And at the same time, because of false newspaper stories from Centralia, Washington, a “white terror” reigns in the entire West, and thousands of radicals are beaten, jailed, and shot. ”

“ What about the millions of patient strikers who obey the law, who wait, day after day, month after month, starving, seeing their wives fading, their little ones turning white and thin—and still restrain themselves, obeying the laws of their masters? What about the strike-leaders who plead day in and day out—I have heard them a hundred times—“No violence! No violence!”—what about them? Why, nothing; just nothing! The Associated Press will let a big strike continue for months and never mention it—unless there is violence! For example, the great coal-strike in West Virginia. ”

“ From his book, entitled “The Battles of Labor,” is quoted the declaration that “in some of the great historic strikes the employers themselves have instigated acts of violence;” that manufacturers have deliberately provoked strikes in order to get rid of surplus stock; and that freight cars have been burned by employers' agents during railroad strikes in order to increase disorder. It was out of these secret agents of the employers that the Black Hundreds arose; and it was they, in turn, that later became that terrible weapon of the Oligarchy, the agents- provocateurs. ”

“ If we do not break the wicked power of those two men, there is no picture of national calamity to be found in the past that can realise the worst."
"It is their game," said Mr Tubes bitterly. "The cowards are striking at the women and children through the men."
He ignored the fact that his party had struck the first blow, and had had the word "War!" figuratively nailed to the staff of their red banner for years. In war one usually strikes some one, and on the whole it is perhaps less reprehensible to strike women and children through men than vice versa. ”

“ IN THE STRIKE STRUGGLE (Continued) .
1—The Fight Against Hunger.
The most powerful of all the weapons employed by the capitalists in ordinary strikes is that of hunger. They seek to starve the workers, their women and their children; to shut off their supply of life necessities until their courage is broken and they come back to work upon the employers' terms, defeated. It is a cold and brutal business, but it is one of the many barbaric many the employers use to maintain their power to rob and exploit the workers. Starvation in all its forms in strikes is a morale breaker, a scab breeder. ”

“ In the group-struggle over the division of the joint product, labor utilizes the union with its two great weapons, the strike and the boycott; while capital utilizes the trust and the association, the weapons of which are the black-list, the lockout, and the scab. The scab is by far the most formidable weapon of the three. He is the man who breaks strikes and causes all the trouble. ”

“ But the scab takes the place of the striker, who begins at once to wield a most powerful weapon, terrorism. The will “to live” of the scab recoils from the menace of broken bones and violent death. With all due respect to the labor leaders, who are not to be blamed for volubly asseverating otherwise, terrorism is a well-defined and eminently successful policy of the labor unions. It has probably won them more strikes than all the rest of the weapons in their arsenal. This terrorism, however, must be clearly understood. ”

“ Experience has demonstrated of strikes, 1st, that they are usually unsuccessful; 2d, that they lessen the employer’s ability to maintain even the wages paid before the strike, by giving an advantage to his competitor in other countries which he cannot always recover; 3d, that where they are fought out to the end they cause suffering and develop disease in the weak, and in women and children, which no wages can pay for or cure ”

“ No strike is ever wholly lost. Even the least effective of them serve the most useful purpose of checking the employers' exploitation. They are a protection to the workers' standards of life. Better by far a losing fight than none at all. An unresisting working class would soon find itself on a rice diet. But the steel strike has done more than serve merely as a warning that the limit of exploitation has been reached; it has given the steel workers a confidence in their ability to organize and to fight effectively, which will eventually inspire them on to victory. ”