The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-07-28
Liberal Viewpoint
by DR.. HARRY ELMER BARNES

THE labor crisis makes it timely to refresh
l. our knowledge of the worlds experience
with the general strike. An excellent survey Of
the subject can be found in Wnfrid Harris
Crooks book, The General Strike" Chapel
Hill n c., 1880.
Such strikes fall into three categories: %
revolutionary attempts TO change the economic
and social order; p sympathetic strikes to bet
ter local labor conditions or end specific abuse;
and 80 strikes organized to force reform legisla-
ton or constitutional concessions to the masses.
Precisely speaking the term general strike
probably should be reserved for the first of these
interpretations. This conception Of universal
walkout of labor to wind up capitalism has been
chiefly the work of anarchists, SyndlcalstS and
communists. Chartist leader in England, Will
liam BenboW, proposed in 1882 grand national
holiday of the working classes" A generation
later similar walkout was recommended by the
anarchist, Michael Bakunin. But the general
strike was brought to the fore in radical dis
cussion chiefly by the French syndicallstS, whose
intellectual leader was Georges Sorel Q847-1922).
Sorel was warmly backed up in 1888 by the
then radical Aristide BRAND. William =. Hay
wood brought the idea to the United States in
connection with the I. w. w brand Of syndical-
ism.
THE syndicaiists' program is to ruin as many
i employers as possible by peaceful sabotage
all kinds of annoying activities and devices to
y
they propose "a general cessation of work, which
would place the country in the rigor of DEATH
whose terrible and incalculable consequences
would force the government to capitulate at
once"
Thereupon the radicals would put an end to
private property and the profit system, and
establish the syndicalist system. Communists
accept much the same strategy.
The radical type of general strike used
by Lenin and TrOtSky part Of their strategy
in bringing the Boshevik regime to power in
1917 Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg used
it in Germany in 1918 and 1919, but the strike
collapsed and its leaders we're aSSassinated.
Aside from these two, the nearest approach
to anything of the kind was strike engineered
by the Swedish Federation of Labor in 1909
aimed at ending use of the lockout The work
ers lost but the strike scared the country enough
to help on the progressive movement which has
since gained great Roadway in Sweden.
Revolutionary aims and mere labor oppor-
tunism were intermingled in the general strike
in Catalonia Spain, in 1909; in France in 1910;
in Dublin in 1913; in Italy in 1914; in the Argen-
tine in 1919, and in Great Britain in 1926. In
none of these instances did the leaders have in
mind the unseating Of the capitalistic system.
TINE sympathetic general strike by conserva-
L tive unions is a bird of different feather
from the general strike of the radicals. 1t in
wolves no effort to change the existing order. 1t
becomes a general strike simply because other
unions than those involved in the original dis
pute over labor conditions join in out of SYM
pathy.
Among the many sympathetic general strikes,
few stand out. The first was the general strike
for the eight-hour day in the United States, ap-
proved by the knights of Labor in 1885, This
collapsed when the Haymarket riot and other
cases of violence, justly unjustly, discredted
the labor movement
The dramatic sympathetic strikes Of 1919 in
Winnipeg and Seattle are still fresh in memory.
The British general strike of 1926 was funda-
mentally a sympathetic strike-a protest against
the lockout of the coal miners Though 100000
workers responded the strike failed, partly
through harshness of the British Conserva tiveS
and partly because of false promises made to
the workers by Sir Herbert Samuel and other
Liberals.