Strike action

“ 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. ”

“ The "universal strike" arrives when so many workers go out in any country as to disable the main sources of production. At any point along the route, the "irritation strike," quick and mysterious in action, is a sort of gymnastic exercise to train and educate our coming masters. ”

“ They have been so because, poor as they are, they have been a means whereby a certain section of the workers have been able to bring their united force to bear directly upon their masters, and so get for themselves some portion of what they wanted -- of what their conditions dictated to them they must try to get. The strike is their natural weapon, that which they themselves have forged. It is the direct blow of the strike which nine times out of ten the boss is afraid of. ”

“ A FIRST consideration in strike strategy is the development of unity and solidarity among the workers involved in a given action against the employers. Potentially the workers constitute a tremendous force. The 26,000,000 or more organizable workers, when once united, will be irresistible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our problem is to know just how to combine the two, spontaneity and organization; to learn to strike the blow when the workers' spirits are at their highest and when they have enough organization to effectively mobilize them into the strike. ”

“ 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. ”

“ IN THE STRIKE STRUGGLE.
UNDER present conditions in the United States strikes are the very heart of the class struggle. They are brutal and open fights between exploiters and exploited. It is in strikes that the conflicting interests of the two classes are most manifest. The employer in his limitless greed and desire to exploit the workers even more intensely than the present unexampled rate, seeks to break their spirit and to force them to work upon his terms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Likewise, in great strikes of workers in basic and key industries, such as the railroads, coal mining, etc., partial settlements are usually unwise and often disastrous. They destroy the political effect of such strikes. They are a confession of weakness, of failure to achieve the original aim of the strike, which was to defeat the government, or, the whole body of employers. ”

“ The degree to which the employers use this great instrument of legalized violence against the workers depends upon the urgency of their need.
If the strike is a small one they may confine their violence to the thuggery of their private plug-uglies and local police. If the strike is more important they will call in the courts, with their train of injunctions, jails, and the rest of it. And if the strike is a great one of far-reaching political significance they will use the troops if need be to crush it. Ever and always when they need it they use the state against the workers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A comprehensive strike strategy must include not only effective means for carrying on strikes, but also for settling them. Fundamental it is for the left wing to learn when and how to settle, no less than when and how to strike. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The employers are more and more giving a political character to strikes, especially those in key industries and during crises by using all branches of their state power against the workers. Thus an imperative phase of our strike strategy must be to develop a political consciousness and activity among the workers in their struggles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They head "back-to-work" movements, frame up acts of violence to jail the leaders or discredit the strike, and in numerous other ways seek to break the ranks of the workers. The policy of organized under-cover men in an organization of the workers may vary from time to time. ”

“ As usual, the reactionary trade union leaders, with their traditional policy of abandoning the unemployed to their own devices, assist the employers in using them as a weapon against the employed workers. Many a strike has been lost from this cause. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ That the daily bread and home comforts of tens of thousands of men depend on the secret and irresponsible decision of a little knot of agitators, sending out their verbal and often ambiguous written orders by a walking-delegate or two, is one of the monstrosities of Strikes often witnessed in the United States. The laborers sometimes do not know even the causes of the strike. ”

“ They believe that the normal relationship between employers and workers is one of harmony and collaboration. They look upon strikes as deplorable misunderstandings. Hence, they consider strike settlements as real settlements. Thus they disarm the workers for the intense struggle that goes on in many forms after the settlements. ”

“ Woe be to the general strike if it is headed by reformist leaders who refuse to recognize its political character, or by syndicalist visionaries who believe it can be won simply by the strikers folding their arms. In either case the capitalists will tear the strike to pieces and administer a crushing defeat to the workers, The general strike is no toy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This course brings us into violent conflict with the conservative trade union bureaucracy, who refuse to recognize the growing political character of strikes, and to arm the workers with the necessary consciousness and political organizations for the struggle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our strike strategy must aim at the elimination of these misleaders and the creation of a body of militant, fighting leaders. These must be able to sway the masses, to develop their fighting spirit. They must be honest, courageous, resourceful. Especially they must be honest and courageous. Nothing inspires the workers so much as loyal and brave leaders. ”

“ Less and less can the strike strategist depend upon the spontaneity of the masses to bring them into revolt against their exploiters, more and more he has to figure on substantial preliminary organization, conceived planfully and carried through almost like a military strategy. Within the past 15 years American employers have become very able and skillful in checking spontaneous mass revolts amongst their workers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ METHODS OF INDUSTRIAL WARFARE.—Both capital and labor back up their demands by a powerful organization using a variety of weapons. The trade union generally attempts to enforce its demands by threat of, or use of, the strike. A strike is a concerted stoppage of work initiated by the workmen as a group. Sometimes accompanying the strike is the boycott, which may be defined as a concerted avoidance of business relations with one or more employers, or with those who sympathize with those employers. ”

“ Today, when the powerful employers see a threatening discontent among their workers, which manifests itself by a spreading spontaneous strike or an active organizing campaign, they commonly seek to check the agitation by granting concessions to their workers in wage increases, welfare systems, etc. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In strikes, notably of the unorganized, the under-cover men blossom forth primarily as disrupters and betrayers. Especially is this the case in the later, more difficult stages of these struggles. They then spread defeatism among the workers. ”

“ The essence of good leadership in strike situations is to conduct a successful fight to establish and maintain the unity of the strikers in the face of innumerable splitting and disintegrating tendencies. The fighting policy of the employers aganst the workers is well-expressed by the time-honored axiom of all strategists, "Divide and Conquer." And their ways to divide and weaken the workers are many, devious, and difficult to defeat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is impossible to sanction the participation of our members in any strike that is not directly connected with their employment. We do not associate ourselves with the principle of the sympathetic strike, for it would mean that our members were involved in all industrial disputes. ”

“ The General Strike can disturb society most severely because it attacks its vitality, its main support: production and consumption.
3. The General Strike is the clearest, most direct and unveiled expression of revolt of the proletariat, and is the result of the development of its everyday means of battle, "The Strike."
4. Owing to the division of labour, it is sufficient that only a few wheels stop in the complicated mechanism of modern production, to bring whole series of machines, factories, even whole industries to a standstill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I cried, “why don't the outsiders do the striking? Whose jobs will be lost in this strike—our jobs or the outsiders' jobs? If the man who started this strike has a job that won't be lost in the strike, then I claim that we have made a bad mistake. And if we're making a mistake, men, what are we going to do about it?” ”

“ The outstanding features in the strike now in its seventh week are lack of violence and disorder, the refusal of the employers to meet or confer with the strikers, aggressive repression by the police and the city government and the efforts of citizens to bring about a settlement. Although practically all the workers in the major industry of the city are on strike, there has been little disorderly conduct attributable to the strikers. ”