The General Strike

[Sand Castle]

OK, so I searched the forum for answers to this, but I couldn't find much. Then again, some things I want to search are used so often that threads about it are hidden in a sea of unimportant comments and such. Then there are the keywords that are too short. Anyway.

This should spark an interesting debate, not that I want to see anymore fighting. Then again, stirring shit on a political forum is like dying. No matter how hard you try to avoid doing it, it will happen regardless. :lol:

So I was reading a short speech by Bill Haywood on the general strike. I figured I should learn some more about IWW and their revolutionary theories. Does any veteran Wobblie care to explain them? I ask out of curiosity, not meanness.

So they believe in organizing a big general strike that would shut down the system, right? And this would take place beyond the workplace as well, such as in the community in general? But some people aren't just going to step down from power. Do they think some manner of force, to go along with the general strike, would be needed to make revolution?

Please tell me all about the revolutionary/industrial union concept, I'm interested.

I haven't heard of a general strike actually bringing down a bourgeois government before. Though there have been vanguard parties that have. But what role did general strikes play in such revolutions, like the Russian or Chinese ones, for example? Strikes must have had some role in Russia at least.

Do the Leninists here think revolutionary unions like IWW are helping or hindering a revolution?

This will be an interesting discussion. I can't wait to hear what everyone has to say. Hopefully you all won't be mean to each other. :o

[Stranger Than Paradise]

First of all I'd like to say that I don't agree that the IWW is a "revolutionary union". It's model of organisation seeks to be independent and encourages direct democracy within its organisation. As well as being militant and not discriminating based on trade. Nonetheless a revolutionary union is the organisation which exists in a time of heightened class consciousness and becomes the model of worker's self management which would be upheld in a period of revolutionary struggle.

On the point of a general strike, Rudolf Rocker thought that the actual takeover of the means of production and of workplaces by the workers could be done relatively peacefully during a general strike. It was after this that he expected the real backlash from the Capitalist class to have to be fought.

[ComradeOm]

The 'myth of the general strike', much nourished by the likes of Sorel and early syndicalists, was essentially the idea that there was an alternative to violent/organised revolution. That when the entire proletariat simply refused to turn up to work one day they could bring capitalism to its knees by undermining, in one apocalyptic stroke, their ability to produce. It was to be the unions' equivalent of the nuclear option and was central to syndicalist theory in the late 19th and early 20th C

Of course when the general strike was actually employed in the 20th C (both the great general strikes from 1917 onwards and the smaller wave of pre-1914 anti-war strikes) they proved to be completely ineffectual in affecting change, radical or moderate. At a stroke the entire myth was shattered. This failure of industrial unionism's primary weapon was as important as the apparent success in Russia of explaining the wave of 'Bolshevikisation' that swept across Europe following 1917. From then on the idea that industrial action alone could bring about revolution was largely discredited. Sorel himself understood that his 'myth', like syndicalism in general, was never anything more than an empty promise


I haven't heard of a general strike actually bringing down a bourgeois government before. Though there have been vanguard parties that have. But what role did general strikes play in such revolutions, like the Russian or Chinese ones, for example? Strikes must have had some role in Russia at least.Strikes (particularly the 'political strikes' that became so common in Russia) are a vitally important means of mobilising the working class and building class conciousness. Most notably they're great for bringing the factories onto the streets. They are not, however, in themselves a viable strategy for effecting revolutionary change or bringing the bourgeoisie to their knees

(With particular reference to Russia, its notable that in 1917 almost all the political advances were made by political bodies, particularly the soviets. The unions and factory committees - while unquestionably revolutionary in their own right and willing to take political stances - played a backseat in formulating or pushing for revolutionary change on a national level, and tended to restrict themselves to affairs within the factories)

The one example that I can think of that even slightly conforms to the promises of the general strike was the response to the 1920 Kapp Putsch in Germany. Here a massive general strike rendered the coup d'etat untenable by paralysing the country's infastructure. On the flipside, this was in support of the SPD and the bourgeois Weimar Republic. A pity that Rosa never lived to see the irony

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Ineffectual is inaccurate.

The power of the general strike can be revolutionary and has won many advances for the working class. The 1919 Barcelona General Strike won the eight hour day. The Right Wing Monarchist Kapp Putsch of 1920 was defeated by a general strike. The 1968 General Strike in France involved 11 million workers and brought the economy to a standstill.

There have been ineffectual general strikes characterised by the class character of the strikes and the level of class conscious workers involved.

Obviously a revolutionary general strike can't appear out of a vaccum.

[The Grey Blur]

didn't you read om's post? he said that strikes in themselves can't be effectual as a method of revolution, not that they don't have a force as a means of protest or confrontation. politics has to extend beyond just the workplace. that said anarcho-syndicalists apart from their fetishes are at least worker-aligned anarchists.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The 'myth of the general strike', much nourished by the likes of Sorel and early syndicalists, was essentially the idea that there was an alternative to violent/organised revolution. That when the entire proletariat simply refused to turn up to work one day they could bring capitalism to its knees by undermining, in one apocalyptic stroke, their ability to produce. It was to be the unions' equivalent of the nuclear option and was central to syndicalist theory in the late 19th and early 20th C

Of course when the general strike was actually employed in the 20th C (both the great general strikes from 1917 onwards and the smaller wave of pre-1914 anti-war strikes) they proved to be completely ineffectual in affecting change, radical or moderate. At a stroke the entire myth was shattered. This failure of industrial unionism's primary weapon was as important as the apparent success in Russia of explaining the wave of 'Bolshevikisation' that swept across Europe following 1917. From then on the idea that industrial action alone could bring about revolution was largely discredited. Sorel himself understood that his 'myth', like syndicalism in general, was never anything more than an empty promise

But "all power to the soviets" is in fact a descendant of Bakunin's general strike theory. It wasn't Sorel who coughed this up, but the uncredited Bakunin. Sorel, in turn, influenced Pannekoek, Gorter, and Luxemburg, and they in turn influenced the likes of Trotsky.

The real underlying premise of the general strike is that mass political action necessarily creates bureaucracy, that workers are only conscious when "moved into action," etc. but when the workers are on strike instead, the bureaucracy can be subordinated by strike committees, soviets, etc. "All power to the soviets" follows this same logic, and has proven to be illusory when necessarily employing former bureaucrats. The Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918 against non-Bolshevik-but-socialist soviets proved decisively that party-movements are the organs of workers power.

It's all in Mike Macnair's Revolutionary Strategy. :D

Now, as for the applicability of the theory itself, I do believe it has a place as an option within the DOTP, not before when it's merely conning the workers towards taking power.

[Zanthorus]

Sorel, in turn, influenced Pannekoek, Gorter, and Luxemburg, and they in turn influenced the likes of Trotsky.

Pannekoek, Gorter and Luxemburg's advocacy of 'mass action' may have had more to do with the SPD pulling the plug on any forms of illegal action and struggles for political reform in Germany because of it's links with the trade-union bureaucrats and a pathetically opportunist legalism that rejected anything that might have them outlawed by an act similar to Bismarck's anti-socialist laws than their reading of Sorel, the latter being a claim which you have no evidence for...

[Die Neue Zeit]

Pannekoek, Gorter and Luxemburg's advocacy of 'mass action' may have had more to do with the SPD pulling the plug on any forms of illegal action and struggles for political reform in Germany because of it's links with the trade-union bureaucrats and a pathetically opportunist legalism that rejected anything that might have them outlawed by an act similar to Bismarck's anti-socialist laws than their reading of Sorel, the latter being a claim which you have no evidence for...

I never dismissed the need for illegal action. However, theirs was also based on growing political struggle out of economic struggle, which was the same line as Bakunin. I would think that Sorel completely dismissed political struggle altogether when he revived Bakunin's line as a myth, and that the later advocacy within Marxism is closer to Bakunin than Sorel.

Again, Bakunin goes uncredited here. Perhaps he wasn't well-read on this subject except by Sorel himself, so naturally any advocacy within Marxism came from inspiration from Sorel somehow.