Siegfried Nacht

“ As one of the first, undoubtedly unconscious, apostles of the General Strike, we can consider Mirabeau, when he in 1789, in the National Convention of the Privileged, thundered towards them: "Look out! Do not enrage the common people who produce everything; who only need to fold their arms to terrify you!" ”

“ The conduct and the result of the General Strike do not depend upon all workers laying down their tools. It would certainly be worth while to endeavour to educate all classes of working men so well that, on the day on which the General Strike began, the proletariat of all countries would leave its factories and mines like one man, and through the expression of its united will throw off the chains of slavery. This ideal of propaganda will, however, in spite of its beauty, always be a dream. ”

“ The General Strike is a Utopia. It will never be possible to so thoroughly organise the proletariat that all working men will go on strike like one man; and if it were so well educated, and imbued with solidarity, and so well organised as to be able to declare a General Strike, then it would not need any General Strike; then it is the power in the country ”

“ But it will also be the work of the Trade Unions in future to take production into their hands, and by this they are to be not only the element of education and the battle of the social future, but also the embryos of production and reorganisation after the death of capitalism. This great aim will undoubtedly lead thousands of new vigorous and enthusiastic workers to join the organisations in their good work.
The General Strike idea once taken up by the working people is, as even Jaures himself admitted, in itself already a power, because it is a continuous terrible dread. ”

“ In small bodies the soldier has time to think; he is torn away from the brutal, sanguinary intoxication of large masses of troops, armed to the teeth. He is no more in contagious contact with the school of murder, he hears no more the exciting war music and war songs of brutalised soldiers. All around him he will hear the songs of revolt against the oppressors and exploiters, which will remind him that he belongs to the people, from whom he was torn by force, and not to the side of tyranny. ”

“ In the same manner the General Strike in itself contains the demand for the direct seizure of the means of production by the Trade Unions, a common teaching, created by and born from the people; while the teachings of the conquering of political power are created by those who want to conquer this power for themselves, who strive personally for the dictatorship, which, by the way, they certainly exercised unlimitedly in the old International. ”

“ The General Strike idea puts an efficient and sure remedy in place of the craving for the "Mother of Freedom, Revolution"; in place of fruitless Social Democratic declamations about evolution in distant futures in which no one dares to believe, which seem to us like veiled ideals, suspended far distant, and which, at one time or another, after a long wait, we are told, will come to us "over the mountains"; a remedy which will remove capitalism and bring freedom and welfare for all. ”

“ It was always the energetic and enthusiastic minority only that revolted against tyranny and oppression, thereby giving the initiative to the large, indolent masses, who were dissatisfied and complained of their fate, but did not have the courage to revolt. It is quite a distance between dissatisfaction and open rebellion. In every revolution it was the force of the energetic minority that aroused the courage of the timid masses. ”

“ For the revolutionising of the present order of society, anti-militarism and its propaganda is an absolutely necessary supplement to the General Strike.
This is the overwhelming superiority of the social revolution, which started as a peaceful General Strike, and carried the revolution over the whole country. As the spread of the revolution is a vital necessity to its victory, so is the dispersion of the military forces the cause of the army's destruction. ”

“ In the country districts the success of the General Strike would not be merely a Utopia, because the immense expansion of large farming enterprises, as many cases in Hungary, Galicia, Russia, Italy, and Spain have shown, makes it possible to-day to inaugurate immense strikes of farm workers.
Nothing is so contagious and suggestive as rebellion. The farm workers and the poor farmers might imitate the workers of the cities and seize the possessions of great landowners. ”

“ While every wage strike, even if it be a General Strike of a whole industrial branch, can only reckon on success during a favourable business conjunction, the Social General Strike has the most favourable prospects during a bad business crisis, which, as is very well known, is only the result of relative over-production—that is, the storing away of products which surpass the buying power of the consumers, the masses. Karl Marx taught that every revolution always followed an economic crisis, which increased the misery of the masses and aroused their revolutionary spirit. ”

“ If the Labour Unions now reply supporting the strikers through mutual understanding and aid, we then have no more a struggle of a particular working men's Union against a particular number of capitalists, but the struggle of the whole working class against all the capitalists. In this way, forced by the continually growing feeling of solidarity among the working people, we have the largest and strongest type of strike, and that is the strike in which the whole class of workers finally refuse to work for the whole class of capitalists—that is, the Social General Strike. ”

“ What numbers of martyrs did every new truth cost! How many of the greatest men, of the apostles of truth, have met death at the stake, on the gallows, on the wheel, on the guillotine, in the underground prisons, or in the snows of Siberia? ”

“ The working people will cast off these cowardly speculations and prove that they have not lost all courage, and will risk everything for freedom. Death or the loss of limbs in the revolution, with which they always scare the proletarians, is it not hourly around them in this present system of capitalistic exploitation? French statistics show the terrible number of 174,000 killed yearly on an average by accidents and diseases due to social conditions; not counting the innumerable daily injuries and maimings in the workshops and factories, to which little attention is paid. ”

“ The original idea of all political revolution has been deductive—that power should be seized by single individuals, that they might hand down from above liberty for all the people.
The General Strike idea, however, is in its negative as well as positive part consistent all the way through it builds itself entirely upon the logic of modern science. The General Strike takes no dialectical roundabout ways, does not jump back and forth in logic-chopping, but leads to the goal organically and direct, without the aid of political agents. ”

“ The most elementary experience in mass psychology teaches us that the single person in big masses will allow himself to be pushed to perform deeds of heroism, or let a few, especially such as have an influence over him, lead him to do deeds which would otherwise be repulsive to him. This is what they mostly reckon on in militarism.
The soldier amongst a large body of troops, excited by the military music, in fear of the officers, whom he thinks to be superior beings, loses his clear senses, his individuality, and obeys, as if hypnotised, the most inhuman, the most barbaric orders. ”

“ The most necessary products are often made in such a manner that they not only go through twenty or thirty hands in the same factory, but often pass from one factory to another in order to be completed. The raw material for the manufacture of these articles often comes from distant places, and railroads, mails, and telegraphs are vital to production. Now, if it happens that one wheel of this enormous mechanism of society stops, the whole of this particular industry is laid idle. ”

“ In order to defeat the workers of a branch or a factory, the united employers do not hesitate to lock out innocent working men, in order to force the strikers to go back to work, and in this manner destroy their organisation. ”

“ It is the passive obedience, the submission of the working people, upon which the power of the ruling classes rests; just as the political power of the ruling classes depends upon the weapons which we forge, and which we carry to protect our exploiters against ourselves. Their whole splendour and their wealth depend upon our work. If our obedience be discontinued, their power will be broken. ”

“ Death in the most terrible form haunts him, however, when he is without work; in starvation or suicide, he is driven to it by despair. On the other hand, too, workers have to think that at any time they may be called in and mustered to go to war, and kill their innocent brothers; to fight for the interest of their enemies, their oppressors, and be a thousand times surer of death than in any revolution.
In one single battle often more people are killed than in all revolutions put together. In the battle of Leipzig 143,000 were killed, at Waterloo 46,000, at Koenigsgraetz 40,000. ”

“ A new idea, a new weapon of the struggling proletariat, has pushed itself vehemently to the front, and stands to-day on the bulletin of all discussions in the Labour movement. This idea, which forces itself everywhere upon the international proletariat, is that of the "General Strike." Until of late the general belief in the success of Parliamentarism has been unshaken amongst the working men. ”

“ After this period of transition, work again will become an art, because it will be executed free from compulsion and restraint, and as art it will, as every art does, give pleasure and satisfaction to the worker, and so the mere pleasure to produce will be the mightiest impulse and surest guarantee for all working artists, and a splendid inspirer, sufficient for all necessities. ”

“ A much more definite result will the Trade Unions have made their object, when they no more are satisfied to reduce the oppression of capitalism, but will use their organisations as a weapon to do away with oppression entirely, when they write upon their banner the complete emancipation of the working people from wage-slavery. ”

“ All the columns which remind us of victories in war, of the highway robbers of the Middle Ages, whom history politely calls knight robbers, all the monuments which were erected for the "rei bombas" and "Kartätschenprinz," will have to be smashed to pieces; and monuments of real heroes of humanity, of fighters, alas so frightfully numerous, the martyrs of freedom, of poets and thinkers who have led humanity from darkness and oppression to light and freedom, will have to take their places. ”

“ In order to destroy the existing State, according to the Marxian theory, it is necessary first to conquer the power of the State. It opposes the present State, but at the same time raves about State monopoly, a condition in which the working men would be still more oppressed and exploited than by private capitalism.
The struggle of the Marxists and the form of their politics entirely correspond with the deductive dialectic system of their theory. The incorporation of the means of production shall not come out of the people and be operated by the people ”

“ The proletarians can stop production, but they cannot stop consumption. In this way they would during the transition do the same thing as the ruling classes have done uninterruptedly for thousands of years—that is, "consume without producing." This action of the ruling classes the working class calls "exploitation"; and if the proletarians do it, the possessing classes call it "plundering," and Socialists call it "expropriation." ”

“ Your sons do not need to join the army; they can stay at home and help you in the fields; those fields, which are the fruits of your labour, belong to you. Do not fear the soldiers; they have all they can do in the cities, at the railways; they have no time to help the landlords; they can't harm you." In this way order and the safety of property could also be threatened in the country.
It would be an immense task for the army to prevent all this and to protect not only the political, but what is far more difficult, the economic power of the ruling classes. ”

“ In this way capitalism kills more proletarians in one year in order to save the expense of proper arrangements to protect working men, than all previous revolutions. Death surrounds the workers all day, at every hour. ”

“ In all plants work is interrupted through the strike of a minority, which forces the rest to lie idle, partly by its hostile attitude towards them, and partly by open threats to injure them.
As soon as the bakers and butchers quit working, the General Strike will be felt much more intensely, and it will probably be the first time that the ruling classes will understand and feel what it means to be hungry. ”

“ Other masses of the working people, who never paid any attention to this matter, who never have been aroused by the ballot, and who would never have followed the call of the revolution, because their life never was anything else but a uniform vegetating between obtuse slumber and enervating labour, are now at once put on the street, facing the question "for or against," and they would instinctively feel themselves forced to take part in the movement. ”

“ In September, 1904, there occurred a General Strike in Italy. Inside of two days the General Strike broke out in a hundred cities as a protest against the use of soldiers and firearms in Labour troubles. Again, without any organisation, against the will of the Social Democratic leaders, propagated and managed by the Anarchists, the General Strike was declared in Milan, and later on all large cities and industrial centres joined in with unanimous enthusiasm. ”