General Strike - Concept

Concept

Ralph Chaplin, editor of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) newspaper Solidarity and later, of the Industrial Worker, identified four levels of general strike,

• A General Strike in a community.
• A General Strike in an Industry.
• A national General Strike.
• A revolutionary or class strike—the General Strike.

In the 1905 pamphlet The Social General Strike, published in Chicago in 1905, Stephen Naft had previously acknowledged the same four levels of the general strike:

is often used to designate the strike of all branches in one trade; for instance the general strike of the miners; when helpers and hoisting engineers, etc. are all out. Then it is used as: General Strike of a city, i.e., "General Strike in Florence", or a General Strike in a whole country or province, for the purpose of gaining political rights, i.e., the right to vote; as in Belgium, or Sweden.

The profoundest conception of the General Strike, however, the one pointing to a thorough change of the present system: a social revolution of the world; an entire new reorganization; a demolition of the entire old system of all governments...

Naft's 1905 pamphlet (translated from the German language) traced existing sentiment for this goal of the general strike to proletarians of Spain and Italy.

The premise of The Social General Strike is that no matter how powerfully the working class organizes itself, it still has no significant power over a congress, or the executive (which has military force at its beck and call). Therefore a general strike called by an "energetic and enthusiastic" minority of workers, may be embraced by the mass of workers who remain unorganized. Thus it may be possible,

...to completely interrupt production in the whole country, and stop communication and consumption for the ruling classes, and that for a time long enough to totally disorganize the capitalistic society; so that after the complete annihilation of the old system, the working people can take possession through its labor unions of all the means of production...

The Social General Strike noted the complexity of modern industry, identifying the many stages in the manufacturing process and geographic dispersal of related manufacturing locations as weaknesses of the industrial process during any labor dispute. The pamphlet notes the problem of hunger during a general strike, and recommends where warehouses are available for the purpose, that proletarians,

...do the same thing as the ruling classes have done uninterruptedly for thousands of years: that is, "consume without producing." This deportment of the ruling classes the working class calls exploitation, and if the proletarians do it, the possessing classes call it plundering—and socialism calls it expropriation.

However, the pamphlet asserts that,

The immense advantage of the general strike is that it begins entirely lawfully and without any danger for the workers, and for this reason thousands will take part...