General Strike

It's Time

Iranians bury their dead.

How about a one-day general strike calling for the removal of the president and the immediate cessation of American attacks on Iran?

At least we would be keeping faith with the people in the photo above.

I understand that many people tend to disparage general strikes. And it's true that they can be turned around by the bosses, who standardly like to portray the strikers as greedy and selfish.

But recently I ran across a 1913 book by John Spargo, entitled Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism and Socialism. I was leafing through it to see if there was anything interesting, and Chapter III caught my eye with the heading Syndicalism and the General Strike. There is a long list of general strikes that failed to achieve their objectives. One strike that is generally considered a success took place in Belgium in 1893. Its aim was not economic, but political. It sought universal male suffrage.

As Spargo notes (p.115), "the demonstration was so far successful that in the course of a few days a new suffrage bill was introduced and passed, which, while it did not grant universal suffrage, did abolish some odious property qualifications and greatly extend popular suffrage."

Spargo goes on to critique the strike: "The 'strike' was short. It was really a demonstration of power. The workers did not attempt to measure their strength against that of the capitalist State. It was for an object with which a great part of the middle class fully sympathized as well as the working class as a whole, union or non-union, radical or conservative. The object, suffrage  reform, was not one the attainment of which would have destroyed capitalism. As in the English struggle for popular suffrage, many members of the capitalist class joined in the demands of the workers." (Pp. 115-116. For a modern story on this strike, click here.)

We need to do something. The Republicans are frozen like deer in the headlights. People are dying. There's a sense that things are spinning out of control. Because they are. We need to bear witness. After the March 28 march, it's time for a general strike.

I'm not expecting a replay of the events of May 1968 in Paris. But I wouldn't mind being pleasantly surprised.

See also How the Dam Breaks, Somotomo, We Will Not Let Them Down.