Towards a General Strike
The road to revolution will be paved by the general strike, a devastating weapon in the hands of the working class. Despite the many half-hearted calls for a general strike in recent years — which both underestimate the necessary level of organizational preparation while overestimating the required scope — the general strike is of extreme revolutionary significance.
General strikes are a key step forward the working class must take on the way to seizing the means of production. They are first and foremost a reversal of the merciless predation of the capitalist class against the proletariat. For centuries the US bourgeoisie, like their European colleagues, have drained the lifeblood of the working class — extracting surplus value and providing nothing in return. The post-WWII imperial plunder that financed “labor peace” for a privileged segment of workers has come to an abrupt end. Unchecked predation has resumed.
Today, over 27 million people in the US lack healthcare due to no ailment but a deficient bank account. 1.3 million people are forced to ration their insulin, taking fewer doses than they need because the cost of the drug is too high. Denied the right to shelter, 700,000 people endure scorching heat and freezing cold. Were the national shame of homelessness not enough, those able to afford a home find themselves at the mercy of landlords (who have none). Drunk on the financial lifeblood of the working class they engorge themselves by taking as much as half the income of nearly 10 million households and a third of the income from a further 20 million households.
Yet even this blood sacrifice is not enough. The fanatical high priests are driven to pile the bodies high on the macabre altar of capital. Driven by automation and ever-increasing pressure, worker productivity has gone up 74 percent since 1973. But due to the unmitigated theft of the capitalist ruling class, workers savor little of this harvest, with wages having risen only a paltry 9 percent over the same time period. As Mao once said, the people are only permitted to feast on bitterness. How can workers be expected to survive given that the price of goods has risen over 200 percent over the last forty years?
It must be understood that the necessary goods and services of life (food, healthcare, housing, and education) are built by the labor of the proletariat and paid for twice over – first in the form of surplus value, and again via taxes. The produced-and-paid-for necessities of life are subsequently plundered by the bourgeoisie. How can the working class be expected to sit idle in the face of the relentless pillaging of the common stores of wealth? At what point does passivity become suicidal?
In this context, the turnabout of the general strike is more than fair play. The revolutionary proletariat throws the brake on the axle of commerce. By freezing the turnover of capital, they send bourgeois machinery into cardiac arrest. To free ourselves, we must prepare to deliver this devastating blow against our class enemy. With the damage only increasing by the day, the bourgeoisie will be forced to sue for peace.
Unlike the paltry concessions tossed out under so-called labor peace, beneath the hammer of the general strike and negotiating from a position of weakness the bourgeoisie will be forced to surrender tangible components of their power. We will finally take from them.
The Dialectics of Revolution
To build towards a general strike, two critical components must be developed: (1) sufficient political consciousness, and (2) organizational robustness.
Sufficient political consciousness is developed when the following are understood: the irreconcilable nature of the contradiction between labor and capital; that the bourgeois state is only an apparatus for the repression of the working class by the capitalist class; that the basic everyday functions of society are maintained almost entirely by the proletariat; that the source of all profit is the surplus value produced by the working class; and that the seizure of the means of production is the only solution to the crisis of capitalism.
Success in the general strike requires broad sympathy for the workers by the majority of the public not engaged in the strike. It is vital that this sympathy exists in critical services such as sanitation, public transportation, and shipping.
Organizational robustness is developed by establishing the structures necessary for the striking workers to sustain themselves, such as a sufficient strike fund, legal defense, a security apparatus, mutual aid covering food, first aid, child care, etc. It is developed and sustained by establishing an organizational body that has an elected leadership, a defined membership restricted to the working class, democratic centralism, convocation of regular general meetings wherein changes in the struggle can be discussed and debated and decisions made, and a core of cadre — party or otherwise — who will tirelessly remain a constant presence among the workers, reminding them of the political content of both the immediate and overall struggle, and keeping them informed of its day-to-day changes.
Building from small strikes to large strikes, from economic strikes to political strikes, from disparate strikes to general strikes, follows a dialectical pattern. We can not go from a demoralized moribund movement to a torrential force of nature by willpower alone. Deliberate development is required.
Put simply, we must organize workers into a cohesive and politicized group, lead them to strike, win concessions, and use those concessions to fuel and expand our organizing work. Expanded organizing work will in turn lead to the organization of larger groups of workers; larger groups of workers can engage in more costly strikes; and more costly strikes can win larger concessions.
This basic dialectical cycle is how our revolutionary struggle can change from a small, weak, and politically undeveloped movement, to a large revolutionary surge. In practice, the struggle will not be linear. There will be inevitable setbacks as well as unexpected sprints. But we will prevail.
Revolutionary Tipping Points
“Never play with insurrection, but when beginning it realize firmly that you must go all the way.” - V.I. Lenin
The general strike is the inflection point, both for the bourgeois state and for the revolution. The Russian Revolution of 1917, which overthrew the Tsar and his capitulationist parliament (the ‘Duma’), developed from a series of general strikes. The communist party painstakingly developed strong political consciousness and an organizational durability which rivaled the administrative state itself. The result was a strike that raged like wildfire:
The year 1917 was inaugurated by the strike of January 9 [Gregorian calendar]. In the course of this strike demonstrations were held in Petrograd, Moscow, Baku and Nizhni-Novgorod. In Moscow about one-third of the workers took part in the strike...
"The idea of a general strike," the Petrograd police reported, "is daily gaining new followers and is becoming as popular as it was in 1905."
Force is not the only tool in the capitalist arsenal. In times of intense revolutionary struggle, the bourgeoisie will send in those who were believed to be allies of the working class to misdirect and mislead the movement:
The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries [akin to the social democrats and democratic socialists of today] tried to direct this incipient revolutionary movement into the channels the liberal bourgeoisie needed. The Mensheviks proposed that a procession of workers to the State Duma be organized on February 14, the day of its opening. But the working-class masses followed the Bolsheviks [the communist party], and went, not to the Duma, but to a demonstration.
The reformists tried to direct the workers to petition the government — a government that had already shown itself to be not just ineffective, but hostile to the people. But the communist party, having won the support of the masses through years of organizing, convinced the workers to focus on disrupting commerce.
On February 22 the workers of most of the big factories were on strike. On International Women's Day, February 23 (March 8), at the call of the Petrograd Bolshevik Committee, working women came out in the streets to demonstrate against starvation, war, and tsar-dom. The Petrograd workers supported the demonstration of the working women by a city-wide strike movement…
The political strikes in the districts merged into a general political strike of the whole city. Demonstrations and clashes with the police took place everywhere. Over the masses of workers floated red banners bearing the slogans: "Down with the tsar!" "Down with the war!" "We want bread!"
The state did of course try to crush the strike, sending out soldiers and police, but the organized mass of workers could not be overpowered:
On the morning of February 26 (March 11) the political strike and demonstration began to assume the character of an uprising. The workers disarmed police and gendarmes and armed themselves…
On February 26 (March 11) the Bureau of the Central Committee [of the communist party] issued a manifesto calling for the continuation of the armed struggle against tsardom and the formation of a Provisional Revolutionary Government….
The workers and soldiers who had risen in revolt began to arrest tsarist ministers and generals and to free revolutionaries from jail. The released political prisoners joined the revolutionary struggle.
When the news of the victory of the revolution in Petrograd spread to other towns and to the front, the workers and soldiers everywhere began to depose the tsarist officials.
The February bourgeois-democratic revolution had won.
It is important to note that in spite of the seemingly rapid sequence of events, the Russian Revolution was not a swift uprising. It was the product of an extended struggle. More than a decade earlier, another uprising of Russian workers had been crushed, but it nevertheless laid the groundwork for 1917:
The First Revolution, that of 1905, had prepared the way for the swift success of the Second Revolution, that of 1917.
"Without the tremendous class battles," Lenin wrote, "and the revolutionary energy displayed by the Russian proletariat during the three years, 1905-07, the second revolution could not possibly have been so rapid in the sense that its initial stage was completed in a few days." (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VI, pp. 3-4.)
Demands - Economic, Political, Revolutionary
Demands form the constellation by which the revolution navigates. They guide the great mass of workers toward a single objective. Revolutionary demands must be based on an analysis of the current exploitation faced by the working class. Given our current conditions, we must demand (1) a 30-hour work week. The labor time expected of the proletariat must reflect our level of productivity. We must not be required to sacrifice the better part of our lives for the profits of the vampire class. (2) We must have an adjusted living wage adequate to meet the needs of the cost of living and automatically adjusted for inflation. A minimum wage will no longer suffice. (3) We must have universal free healthcare. (4) We must have free college, and the cancellation of all student debt. (5) We must have guaranteed subsidized housing to once and for all end the barbaric practice of evicting human beings onto the street for lack of funds. Lastly, (6) we must have uncontested union recognition and the unfettered right to strike for both public and private sector workers.
The bourgeois government is merely the administrative arm of the capitalist class. The capitalist ruling class controls both the economic and political spheres. Therefore, we need not confine our demands to the economic dimension when we go on strike. The full range of political and social injustices to which we have been subjected would be exposed to our revolutionary assault. Revolutionary demands must also push forward towards the construction of socialism.
Therefore, we must also demand (7) the end of mass incarceration, mass deportation, and racial disparities in the judicial system, (8) freedom for all political prisoners and all non-violent offenders, (9) an end to discriminatory laws against the transgender community, (10) closing the gender-based wage gap, and (11) the closure of all foreign US military bases and the end of all combat operations.
These demands are achievable, one way or the other. Move forward with us. Struggle towards the general strike. Struggle towards the socialist revolution.