General strike

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Vorwärts announcing a general strike in Germany on 9 November 1918, at the beginning of the November Revolution.

A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants. It is also characterized by participation of workers in a multitude of workplaces, and tends to involve entire communities. The general strike has waxed and waned in popularity since the mid-19th century, and has characterized many historically important strikes.

Contents

[edit] The Belgian experience and Rosa Luxemburg

Belgium was likely one of the first important industrial countries where a general strike happened, at least in Europe;[1] first in 1886, the Walloon Jacquerie of 1886[2], then the Belgian general strike of 1893.[3] In his book about Rosa Luxemburg Paul Frölich quotes several experiences of general strikes and among them the Belgian general strike for the universal suffrage in 1893. The strike succeeded. But absolute equality of suffrage had yet to be obtained, and in 1902 the Belgian Labour Party launched an other strike but this latter failed. Then many German social democrats thought such experiment were absurd. Rosa Luxemburg had a completely different view and criticized the Belgian Labour Party: A general strike forged in advance within the fetters of legality is like a war demonstration with cannons dumped into a river within the very sight of the enemy.[4] Carl E. Schorske wrote about the same Belgian phenomenon studied by Luxemburg as well as the German opposition to it: In German Social Democratic circles, the general strike suffered from the hereditary taint of its anarchist origins (...) Rosa Luxemburg, who studied the Belgian strike, was particularly impressed with its success in activating the political consciousness of the backward portions of the population. She was not yet however, prepared to give it European-wide significance. Luxemburg felt it to be appropriate only in countries in which industry was geographically concentrated.[5] The Walloon author Claude Renard explained the relative successes of the general strike by the relative small territory of Belgium (and especially Wallonia where the industry was concentrated). He quoted also Rosa Luxemburg who criticized Le Peuple, the official newspaper of the Belgian Labour Party who was again in favour of the German method after the General strike of 1902 failed. In Die Neue Zeit, she pointed out the small territory of Belgium, the fact that only 3 or 400 thousand workers were able to make a country strike-bound. But she insisted also about a climate of liberty and democracy where the working class is really stronger, in France as well as in Belgium.[6] For several historians, it would be possible that Wallonia sprang from these strikes[7] and likely from the last Belgian general strike the 1960-1961 Winter General Strike

[edit] After the World War I

The term "general strike" is sometimes also applied to large-scale strikes of all of the workers in a particular industry, such as the Textile workers strike (1934). Those "general" strikes, however massive they might be, involve workers only in a particular workplace. The classic general strike, by contrast, involves also workers (and members of the working-class) who have no direct stake in the outcome of the strike. For example, in the San Francisco General Strike of 1934, both union and non-union workers struck for four days to protest the police and employers' tactics that had killed two picketers and in support of the longshoremen's and seamen's demands.

The distinction is not always that clear. In the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, as an example, many building trades unions and organizations of unemployed workers in federal work projects struck in sympathy with striking truck drivers and to protest the police violence against picketers. Thousands of others participated in demonstrations to support the strikers. Those sympathy strikes, while sizable, never acquired the scope necessary to amount to a "general strike", however, and the organizers of the Teamsters' strike did not describe it as such.

[edit] Syndicalism and the general strike

Some in the labour movement hope to mount a "peaceful revolution" by organizing enough strikers to completely paralyse the state and corporate apparatus. With this goal achieved, the workers would be able to re-organize society along radically different lines. This philosophy, known as syndicalism, enjoyed modest support amongst the radical sections of the labour movement in the late nineteenth and early 20th century.

The United States, Britain, and (to a lesser extent) Australia had this trend culminate in the growth of the Industrial Workers of the World. General strikes were frequent in Spain during the early 20th century, where revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism was most popular. The largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country – and the first general wildcat strike in history – was May 1968 in France.[8] The prolonged strike involved eleven million workers for two weeks in a row,[8] and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of the de Gaulle government.

Georges Sorel published Reflections on Violence in 1908, in which he promotes an understanding of the myth of the general strike:

To estimate, then, the significance of the idea of the general strike, all the methods of discussion which are current among politicians, sociologists, or people with pretensions to political science, must be abandoned. Every-thing which its opponents endeavour to establish may be conceded to them, without reducing in any way the value of the theory which they think they have refuted. The question whether the general strike is a partial reality, or only a product of popular imagination, is of little importance. All that it is necessary to know is, whether the general strike contains everything that the Socialist doctrine expects of the revolutionary proletariat.

Sorelian ideas helped the emergence of national syndicalism and right-wing groups like the Cercle Proudhon.

[edit] Notable general strikes

[edit] See also

Syndicalism.svg Organized labour portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ Carl Strikwerda (1997). A house divided: Catholics, Socialists, and Flemish nationalists in nineteenth-century Belgium. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 109. ISBN 9780847685271. http://books.google.com/books?id=RlR0B7Nkq-EC. Retrieved 23 September 2010. 
  2. ^ But without an actual leading political organisation
  3. ^ Many Riots in Belgium, New York Times, 13 April 1893
  4. ^ Paul Frölich (August 1994). Rosa Luxemburg, ideas in action. Pluto Press. p. 141. ISBN 9780902818194. http://books.google.com/books?id=pIA7AYyZPfkC&pg=PA338. Retrieved 23 September 2010. 
  5. ^ Carl E. Schorske (1983). German social democracy, 1905-1917: the development of the great schism. Harvard University Press. p. 34. ISBN 9780674351257. http://books.google.com/books?id=VH5zW6GOAIoC. Retrieved 23 September 2010. 
  6. ^ Rosa Luxemburg, The Belgian Experience, Die Neue Zeit, 14 may 1902, pp. 47 and the following pages. Quoted by Claude Renard, La conquête du suffrage universel en Belgique, Editions de la Fondation Jacquemotte, Bruxelles, 1966, pp. 224-226.
  7. ^ Marinette Bruwier 1886, La Wallonie née de la grève,Colloque Université de Liège, Editions Labor, Bruxelles, 1990 ISBN 2-8040-0522-4
  8. ^ a b The Beginning of an Era, from Situationist International No 12 (September 1969). Translated by Ken Knabb.

[edit] External links

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