gen strike vs mass strike

what are the key differences between these two?

I think you have that a bit confused, Zimmerwald. In fact nearly exactly the wrong way round. Let's go back to what Luxemburg wrote on it;

The general strike, in the Bakuninists’ program, is the lever which will be used for introducing the social revolution. One fine morning all the workers in every industry in a country, or perhaps in every country, will cease work, and thereby compel the ruling class either to submit in about four weeks, or to launch an attack on the workers so that the latter will have the right to defend themselves, and may use the opportunity to overthrow the old society.

If, therefore, the Russian Revolution* teaches us anything, it teaches above all that the mass strike is not artificially "made," not "decided" at random, not "propagated," but that it is a historical phenomenon which, at a given moment, results from social conditions with historical inevitability. It is not, therefore, by abstract speculations on the possibility or impossibility, the utility or the injuriousness of the mass strike, but only by an examination of those factors and social conditions out of which the mass strike grows in the present phase of the class struggle–in other words, it is not by subjective criticism of the mass strike from the standpoint of what is desirable, but only by objective investigation of the sources of the mass strike from the standpoint of what is historically inevitable, that the problem can be grasped or even discussed.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxe...rike/index.htm

The mass strike is the organic development of the class struggle towards a climax. The general strike is something that workers are instructed to do from above. A good comparison would be the mass strike in Poland in 1980 with yesterday's one day general strike in Greece.

Devrim

*This refers to the 1905 revolution.

Unfortunately, neither strike form poses the question of power.

They sound very similar...

OK. A general strike is called by trade unions (or syndicalist unions) and is planned in advance. It is artificial. It remains within the union prison, thus on a bourgeois terrain.

A mass strike is much more spontaneous and is characterised by workers taking control of the struggle away from the unions (who may have called the strike) and into their own hands through general assemblies and workers' councils. The best example of mass strikes have been 1905 in Russia and 1981 in Poland. See:

The Mass Strike in Poland
http://en.internationalism.org/taxonomy/term/218

1905: The soviets open a new period in the history of the class struggle
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/122_1905

B.

Yeah, the difference was made much more clear after reading Luxemburg's article that Devrim linked.

The best example of mass strikes have been 1905 in Russia and 1981 in Poland.

It is interesting that the ICC rarely talk about the mass strike in Iran in the period before the Shah's overthrow. I would like to ask why.

Devrim

we did write about them at the time. i don't think these articles are online but I will look up the issues of World Revolution and the International Review. Certainly we saw a very clear tendency not only for the working class to organise independently, but also to provide a focus for the revolt of other strata, even if this was eventually buried under the 'Islamic revolution'.

Yes, I am sure that you did write about them. It always seems though that Poland is the example held up, not Iran. Why not Iran when the mass strike was possibly deeper there.

Devrim