Sympathetic strike

“ At times of social disturbance the law-abiding citizen is naturally so anxious for peace and order, his sympathies are so justly and inevitably on the side making for the restoration of law, that it is difficult for him to see the situation fairly. He becomes insensible to the unselfish impulse which may prompt a sympathetic strike in behalf of the workers in a non-union shop, because he allows his mind to dwell exclusively on the disorder which has become associated with the strike. ”

“ Workers in other trades are called on to aid this union by a sympathetic strike, either threatened or actually put into effect. Such a boycott as this may therefore be described as amounting to a potential or actual sympathetic strike somewhat strategically planned. If the strike actually comes, it may assist the men in whose cause it is undertaken ”

“ Instead of 'sympathetic strikes,' far more useful sympathy should be shown by other unions working full time steadily and sharing their wages with those fighting for violated rights against the encroachments of combined capital. ”

“ Just here it is proper to place upon record the fact—luminous in the annals of labor strikes—of the loyalty of the men, their devotion to principle, and their unexampled faithfulness to their obligations. As one man they responded to the call. So thoroughly imbued were they with the justice of their cause, that with an unanimity which will forever challenge the admiration of manly men, they surrendered their positions and faced with an unaltering fortitude all the privations incident to a strike, rather than sacrifice their manhood, their independence and self-respect. ”

“ Through all these stages of our agitation we had been punished with the greatest severity, sent to prison like common criminals, and of late years tortured as no criminals have been tortured for a century in civilised countries of the world. And during all these years we had seen disastrous strikes that had caused suffering and death, to say nothing at all of the enormous economic waste, and we had never seen a single strike leader punished as we had been. ”

“ A strike too often partakes of the nature of a social suicide. Capital—that is, labour and money—at war with itself, may be compared to the madman who, in a sudden phrenzy, dashes each of his fists against the other, till both are bleeding and disabled—perhaps for ever.... ”

“ Observation shows that this last conception is maintained with an indestructible vitality in every circle which has been touched by the idea of the general strike: the day when the slightest incidents of daily life become symptoms of the state of war between the classes, when every conflict is an incident in the social war, when every strike begets the perspective of a total catastrophe, on that day there is no longer any possibility of social peace, of resignation to routine, or of enthusiasm for philanthropic or successful employers. ”

“ She saw the threatening faces of the pickets; she half turned, and waved an arm of encouragement, like a general in a battle. “Strike if you want to,” she cried out, in her sweet young voice. “If you want to kill a girl for going back to work to save herself and her friends from starvation, do it. I am not afraid! But kill me, if you must kill anybody, because I am the one that started the strike. Strike if you want to.” ”

“ Is not the social revolution, which will final free all humanity from chains and social misery, an infinitely higher ideal, far more worthy of man, that one should put at stake his whole personality, and, if need be, even his life? Thus the revolution, conducted as a General Strike, threatens less danger for the proletariat; prevents quick concentration of large military forces; makes many collisions with troops unnecessary, even impossible ”

“ Mind, we can do without yer, and we don't want no fuss, that's all. Things have been bad enough up to now, and we don't want 'em to be no worse.'
Outside the gates there was a considerable crowd. Among the crowd were the pickets and a fair leaven of the men on strike; but a large majority of the people might have been described as sympathisers. Unwise sympathisers they for the most part were; more bent on striking than the strikers; more resolute to fight the battle to the bitter end. ”

“ In time people grew tired of talking and reading about the strike, and more than one man wished it might end. The strikers wished it too, for hundreds of them were at the point of starvation. The police courts were constantly crowded, and often overflowed and filled the morgue. Misery, disappointment, want, and hunger made men commit crimes the very thought of which would have caused them to shudder a year ago. One day a desolate looking striker was warming his feet in a cheap saloon when a well-dressed stranger came and sat near him and asked the cause of his melancholia. ”

“ It was marked by complete self-surrender to a cause, emotional endurance, fearlessness and entire willingness to face danger and suffering. The strike at times seemed to be an expression of the woman’s movement rather than the labor movement. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The conception of the general strike, engendered by the practice of violent strikes, admits the conception of an irrevocable overthrow. There is something terrifying in this which will appear more and more terrifying as violence takes a greater place in the mind of the proletariat. But, in undertaking a serious, formidable, and sublime work, Socialists raise themselves above our frivolous society and make themselves worthy of pointing out new roads to the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They counsel strike, and forcible, riotous resistance to the employment of others. It can lead only to tumult, to rioting that brings out the criminal and the desperate classes; outrage results, and the sympathy they might have received goes against them. Their very worst enemies are these men who are posing as strike-leaders. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And yet they sought not the lives of others, but only that they might barely live; and though they had first thought of the welfare of themselves, and those nearest them, yet not the less were they fighting the fight of humanity and posterity in striking in the only way they could, and while yet no one else dared strike at all, against the economic system that had the world by the throat, and would never relax its grip by dint of soft words, or anything less than disabling blows. ”

“ The strike tears off the mask of things,
To mass and class the issue brings.
Say what ye will, the strike is good:
It clears things long misunderstood:
It jolts the social mind awake:
It forces men a stand to take. ”

“ They felt as if, rather than yield to the body of men who were resorting to such cruel measures towards their fellow-workmen, they, the masters, would sooner relinquish all the benefits to be derived from the fulfilment of the commission, in order that the workmen might suffer keenly. They forgot that the strike was in this instance the consequence of want and need, suffered unjustly, as the endurers believed; for, however insane, and without ground of reason, such was their belief, and such was the cause of their violence. It is a great truth that you cannot extinguish violence by violence. ”

“ If it was true that the strike was driving men to crime and women to the streets — and if it was not, as yet, true, it soon must be — who, indeed, was to blame if not he himself, who had said “Fight them!” ”

“ Revolutionary syndicalism keeps alive in the minds of the masses the desire to strike, and only prospers when important strikes, accompanied by violence, take place. ”

“ Every time that we attempt to obtain an exact conception of the ideas behind proletarian violence we are forced to go back to the notion of the general strike; and this same conception may render many other services, and throw an unexpected light on all the obscure parts of Socialism. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The general strike is the “social myth” of the working-class longing for emancipation. It is the expression of the convictions of the working-class “in the language of movement,” the supreme concentration of the desires, the hopes, and the ideals of the working-class. Its importance [Pg 147] for the future of Socialism, therefore, is paramount. The idea of the general strike keeps alive and fortifies in the workingmen their class-consciousness and revolutionary feelings. ”

“ Only, the war of conquest interests them no longer. Instead of thinking of battles, they now think of strikes; instead of setting up as their ideal a battle against the armies of Europe, they now set up the general strike in which the capitalist regime will be annihilated. [24]
The theorists of social peace shut their eyes to these embarrassing facts; they are doubtless ashamed to admit their cowardice, just as the Government is ashamed to admit that its social politics are carried out under the threat of disturbances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ George groaned.
"What's the use of it—or of anything? They hate us and we them. This strike begins to eat into my very being. And the men will be beaten soon, and the feeling towards the employers will be worse than ever." ”

“ Tom Axton made a speech, in which he set forth the grievances of the men, and told them, out of his previous experience, how a strike must be conducted. One thing above all others, they must keep public sympathy with them, by obeying the law and avoiding every suggestion of disorder; this would not be easy, because the Employers’ Federation knew this, as well as the strike leaders, and would do everything possible to provoke the men to violence ”

“ But little by little, this general strike, this strike of a whole class, will necessarily become a great social battle, a revolutionary combat. The spirit of the working people will be roused and their just anger inflamed by suffering, misery, and the inevitable conflicts that will bring capital and labour to grapple all along the line. Even that part of the proletariat that, before the strike was on, would have shrunk from a systematic use of force, will be gradually wrought up to the proper revolutionary heat by the fire of events, by the battle itself and the sufferings it entails. ”

“ Seek not elsewhere than in a profound transformation of the human mind the cause of the tranquillity of a strike in which we behold the placid confrontation of the workingman and the soldier. For all observers endowed with reason and sang-froid, to whatever party they belong, the spectacle is that of the toiling mass reconnoitring the ground and testing its strength. ”

“ On the surface of a serious strike are conspicuous and frisky gaieties. Youth and the irresponsible are so much in evidence that the public does not see the background with its silences and distress. To stagger on, decade after decade, under a self-imposed immolation like this, must have a cause not accounted for by petulant phrases. ”

“ But in eases of bitter and spectacular conflicts, especially where the striking workers are desperately poor, where the employers ruthlessly violate the so-called civic liberties, or where a gigantic and hated trust is involved, they are often moved somewhat in sympathy for the strikers. Their petty bourgeois sentiments of humanitarianism, legalism, and competition are touched. But even in such strikes they give little or no active support. Their chief contribution is to help create a "public opinion" favorable to the strike. ”

“ Now the present movement even in England, where there is so much suffering and so much ignorance, has been marked by a comparative absence of violence, and comparative respect for law. Considering what large bodies of men have been out on strike, how much they have endured in the conflict, and what appeals have been made to their passions, it is wonderful how little of actual crime or disturbance there has been. There were the Sheffield murders the disclosure of which filled all the friends of labour with shame and sorrow, all the enemies of labour with malignant exultation. ”