General strike

“ And that is why I have always interpreted a general strike not as a means of violent action, but as one of the most gigantic means of legal pressure that the educated and organised proletariat can bring to bear for great and definite ends. ”

“ These reformists, who are opposed on principle to directly attacking capitalism, have always rejected such a drastic weapon as the general strike and are only too eager to seize the slightest pretext to discredit it. In reality, the general strike is one of the most powerful of the workers’ weapons. ”

“ When the workers of a given country in a deep crisis, as in Great Britain, declare a general strike in all the key and basic industries it constitutes a direct challenge to the ruling class and its state. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we look at the essential points of the theory and the hope of a certain number of those who see in the general strike an instrument of revolution, we shall see that the above is a true representation of their attitude. In their minds the general strike is a method of revolutionary training applied to a proletariat too much of whose power would remain inert without the brutal excitement of events. ”

“ But whether the strike was to be lost or won it has been clear that it would interest the world’s millions of Socialists more deeply than ever in the possibilities and the limitations of the general strike. ”

“ The battle would become still more intense as soon as the workers tried to gain possession of the means of production. In this way the General Strike is not only the introduction of the revolution, but is the social revolution itself. ”

“ Some imagine, it is true, that the general strike, breaking out at many points simultaneously, would oblige the capitalist and proprietary government to spread its armed force over such a large area that it would be practically absorbed by the Revolution. ”

“ Every general strike will necessarily bring about disorders in economic relations; it will upset many traditions and go counter to many interests. The opinion of the mass of the nation (and even of that very considerable portion of the wage-earning class who will not have taken part in the movement) will therefore be very emphatically ranged against those on whom rests the responsibility for a prolongation of the conflict. ”

“ Those at the head of the general strike must realize beforehand that the capitalists will employ these violent methods to break the strike, and they must be prepared to counter such methods by mobilizing the full political power of the workers for the struggle. ”

“ Although the risk which the proletariat runs during a General Strike represents only a small fraction of what it has run in earlier revolutions, candour demands that we do not deceive ourselves about it; that yet in the various small but nevertheless unavoidable skirmishes, caused by the military forces, there will necessarily be sacrifices on the side of the workers. ”

“ The Congress, without believing in the possibility of completely renouncing partial strikes, recommends the workers to devote their efforts to achieving an international organization of trade bodies, which will enable them to undertake some day a general strike, the only really efficacious strike to realize the complete emancipation of labor. ”

“ The revolutionary method of the general strike is the exact opposite. Precisely because it gives an economic turn to the combat in the beginning, it does not supply the working-class forces with a single central aim on which they can unite. ”

“ The general strike will last a short while, and its repression will be impossible; as to intimidation, it is still less to be feared. The necessity of defending the factories, workshops, manufactories, stores, etc., will scatter and disperse the army.... ”

“ The policy of the right wing union leaders to keep our strikes on a purely economic basis disarms the workers and is fatal to success in the struggle.
The experience in the British General strike, where the leaders stubbornly refused to recognize the political character of the strike even when the capitalists were using the whole governmental power against the workers, sufficiently signalizes this danger and the necessity for arousing the workers to conscious political action and organization. ”

“ Even the common laborers and all unorganized labor ceased work. The strike had tied everything up so that nobody could work. Besides, the women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike. They set their faces against the war. They did not want their men to go forth to die. Then, also, the idea of the general strike caught the mood of the people. ”

“ But they think that the general strike, perfectly legal in its beginnings, will very quickly be led to arming itself with its gun or any other violent weapon that comes to hand. As a matter of fact, then, they count on the revolutionary force of events to supplement or complete the insufficient revolutionary force of men. ”

“ From the above it can readily be seen that the military forces could not very easily rehabilitate order in the beginning of the General Strike, as was done in the street revolts heretofore, as in the year 1848, where the soldiers only needed to be drawn together in the centre of the large cities, and simply shoot into the masses, which were crowded before the muzzles of their guns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ President Sovereign of the Knight’s of Labor threatened to inaugurate a general strike. A sympathetic strike, to be a factor in the settlement of a direct strike, must be so related to it as to directly influence the person against whom the direct strike is waged, either by preventing him from manufacturing his goods or else from disposing of them. ”

“ We condemn all wars, and, for the prevention of such, we proclaim the anti-militarist propaganda in time of peace, thus promoting class solidarity among the workers of the entire world, and, in time of war, the General Strike in all industries. ”

“ All peace so long as the wage system lasts, is but an armed truce. At any favorable opportunity the struggle for more control of industry is renewed.
As the organization gains control in the industries, and the knowledge among the workers of their power, when properly applied within the industries, becomes more general, the long drawn out strike will become a relic of the past. A long drawn out strike implies insufficient organization or that the strike has occurred at a time when the employer can best afford a shut down—or both. ”

“ This contention that workers fight best on the offensive is no contradiction to the statement previously made that most of the desperate strikes in American labor history have been to ward off attacks of the employers. The general aim of the war or strike may be defensive, such as a defense of the homeland or against a wage reduction (when soldiers and workers both fight the best) but the tactics in the struggle itself must be based upon the theory of the offensive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Q.—Well, I heartily believe in the general strike if it is a first step toward the revolution, and I believe in what you intimate—that the workers are damn fools if they don't take what they want, when they can't get it any other way. ”

“ But we, on the contrary, have invented nothing at all, and even assert that nothing can be invented; we have limited ourselves to defining the historical bearing of the notion of a general strike. We have tried to show that a new culture might spring from the struggle of the revolutionary trades unions against the employers and the State ”

“ The third type is the revolutionary mass strike, typical of a declining capitalist system, such as the post-war strikes in Germany and the British general strike, when the workers, more or less clearly, seek to destroy the capitalist system and to set up a proletarian order of society. The first period produces semi-revolutionary unions, the second period reformist unions, and the third period revolutionary unions. ”

“ This policy of concessions, duplicity, and terrorism, coupled with the fact that the industries in general have been active for the past few years and have provided at least a modicum of work for the workers, weakens the factor of spontaneity. Determined, organized effort becomes increasingly more necessary, altho an occasional spontaneous strike still occurs. ”

“ Against a real General Strike, the military can do [Pg 242] nothing. Oh, true, if you have a Socialist Briand in power, he may declare the workers "public officials" and try to make them serve against themselves! But against the solid wall of an immobile working-mass, even a Briand would be broken. ”

“ Often it happens that during the strike the related industries and branches join in, spreading the strike over ever-increasing territories and amongst ever-growing masses of labourers. The example of the strike is, in fact, suggestive and contagious to the masses. ”

“ They applied the most unscrupulous measures: threatening, and hiring strike-breakers; and as all that was in vain, they put the soldiers in the workshops, mines, bakeries, etc. The working people now found themselves forced to give up their waiting position, and apply more energetically their strenuous will to prevent absolutely all production and communication. ”

“ We workers who have organized our petty strikes, and found nine out of ten of the strikers wavering and timidly wondering if they were quite justified in so upsetting the work-a-day world; we who have sometimes, in a strike, known a comrade to break a window or seen a policeman's bludgeon answered by a well-aimed bottle, and then have had to listen to the apologies of the labor leaders and the timid among the strikers, who declare that such actions are confined to hooligans and outsiders ”

“ 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. ”

“ One is the "direct action" of working men, by which they can speedily obtain their objects through a general or partial strike paralyzing the food supply or other national necessities. This is obviously a dangerous and double-edged weapon, the adoption of which by other sections of the community—the Army and Navy, for instance, or the medical profession—might mean national dissolution. ”

“ It was an easy task for the minority of the members of the International (about 3,000) to make all working men, more than 10,000, go on strike and in this manner to produce a general tie-up. In the struggle with the police and armed bourgeoisie the working men were victorious ”

“ And even supposing that a general revolutionary strike does succeed in closing all ports, in immobilising all locomotives, in destroying railroads, even in occupying as sovereign certain regions that are especially given over to the labouring class, and in menacing and reducing the food-supply of certain great cities and of the capital ”

“ We might, in fact, be led to ask if our official Socialists, with their passion for discipline, and their infinite confidence in the genius of their leaders, are not the authentic inheritors of the traditions of the royal armies, while the anarchists and the upholders of the general strike represent at the present time the spirit of the revolutionary warriors who, against all the rules of the art of war, so thoroughly thrashed the fine armies of the coalition. ”

“ I beg each war worker to remember that every slackening of their efforts, every reduction of output, every day wasted, every stoppage of work, inevitably encourages the enemy, prolongs the war, keeps men chained [ix] to the misery of the trenches, piles up the casualties, continues the loss of life. A strike, or the threat of a strike, may win for the workers their 121⁄2 per cent. ”

“ The workers, however, when aroused to struggle in strikes, often take little account of capitalist-made legal "rights," and American labor history is filled with instances of militant action of strikers. More than in any other country, perhaps, has sabotage been used by American strikers in their bitter battles with the employers.
↑ Strikes of related groups of unions present many difficult problems which must be studied and borne in mind in our strike strategy. ”