2. A New Theory of Strikes: Moving Beyond Eurocentrism

In 1975, workers in non-core countries formed 50 per cent of the global industrial workforce, and the percentage went up steeply since then; see Smith 2016, 103. There are different estimations on union density on a global level. The International Centre for Trade Union Rights assumes that 13 per cent of the global workforce is unionised (2005). A more recent study of the International Trade Union Confederation (2014) claims 200 million unionised workers out of a workforce of 2.9 billion which would amount to a global union density of 7 per cent (see also van der Linden 2015, 17ff). This number does (obviously) not include the 230 million members of the ACFTU in the People’s Republic of China.

Although Meiksins Wood distinguishes her position from the one of Louis Althusser, claiming that he denies agency to the working class (1982, 65), their positions converge on the key issues that concern us here: “it is therefore the class struggle, which constitutes the division into classes. (…) You must therefore begin with the class struggle if you want to understand class division (…)” (Althusser 1973, 82). Althusser distinguishes between class struggle as the motor of history (class constitution) and the fact that it is the masses who make history (class formation), while subordinating class formation to the more fundamental process of class constitution (ibid.): “That means that the revolutionary power of the masses comes precisely from the class struggle” (ibid.). While it is the masses that act, their power is based on the specific dynamics of social change in capitalism. Thus, while there is a motor of history, the anti-teleological notion here is that the outcome of this history is open and not pre-determined, and it is in this vein that Althusser claims that history is a “process without a Subject or Goal(s)” (1973, 139).

Ross and Hartman included in the study Germany, France, Great Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Italy, South Africa, India and Japan.

“The rights acquired in strongly organised workplaces (…) have normally been won autonomously, rarely with the involvement of the outside union” (1975, 159), but “it would be wrong to treat this in isolation from the formal trade unions structure” (161).

See also in a similar vein: “More fundamentally, the idea that there is a clear distinction between organised and unorganised conflict is questionable” (Edwards 1979a, 96); “Ignorance of the importance of informal groups in industry led participants to concentrate on such false question as whether the strikes were spontaneous or planned” (1979b, 202).

This differs from the definition given by John Kelly who claims that Luxemburg would qualify a strike wave only as a mass strike if it occurs “during periods of revolutionary struggle” (1988, 36). While such a definition cannot be found in Luxemburg’s work—contrary to the claim of Kelly—it also contradicts with Kelly’s own qualification that “mass strikes did not invariably pass over into political strikes, but only in ‘revolutionary situations’” (ibid., 37). Luxemburg clearly identifies the strikes in Rostov (Russia) in 1902 and in Belgium in the 1890s as mass strikes, and these strikes did not occur in a revolutionary situation. She also unmistakingly underlines, against Kautsky’s insinuations, that the mass strike has no immediate connection with a revolutionary overthrow: “Hat denn irgend jemand an eine plötzliche Einführung des Sozialismus durch den Massenstreik gedacht?” (Luxemburg 1909/10a, 360). Luxemburg characterises this immediate link between mass strike and revolution as the ‘anarchist spectre’ of the mass strike (ibid.); see also Nettl (1966, 152), Weick (1971, 145, 147), Hoffmann (1971, 239) and Haro (2008, 112) for a similar interpretation of Luxemburg’s theory of the mass strike.

See the similar idea of Lenin, formulated in 1899: “Every strike brings thoughts of socialism very forcibly to the worker’s mind. (…) A strike teaches workers to understand what the strength of the employers and what the strength of the workers consists in. (…) Every strike reminds the workers that their position is not hopeless, that they are not alone.” But he also underlines the necessity for a broader political struggle: “Strikes are one of the ways in which the working class struggles for its emancipation, but they are not the only way; and if workers do not turn their attention to other means of conducting the struggle, they will slow down the growth and the successes of the working class. (…) From individual strikes the workers can and must go over (…) to a struggle of the entire working class for the emancipation of all who labour” (1899, 310ff). E.T. Hiller is like Luxemburg focusing on the mobilising and educating aspect of mass strikes: “Mass strikes invite retreat into the incalculable – the surge and emotion of a sympathetic group” (1928, 20); “The strike, though it bring no material gain, is felt to be a triumph if it brings this sense of importance. (…) Success gets its value from the struggle, and victory is always glorious, even if it is not profitable” (22).

Walter Schluep underlines that revolutionary mass strikes would not be covered by labour law: “An industrial conflict aimed at destroying the whole economic system – in the form of permanent confrontation for example – is absolutely unjustifiable because it disrupts the very economic system from which it derives its legitimation. It cannot possibly be justified on the ground that a change in the economic order would inevitably affect (…) conditions in employment” (1974, 73).

See also Brecher (1997, 287): “Before the widespread development of industry and employees, there could be no mass strikes.”

Michael Hughes (2009, 119) claims that the 1905 strike of Ruhr miners in solidarity with the Russian Revolution drew many workers into the movement, leading to a rise of trade union membership. On the other hand, the collapse of the 1912 miners’ strike in Germany led to a decline of union membership.

“It is thus an entirely mechanical, undialectical conception that strong organisations always have to precede the struggle” (own translation), in the German original: “Es ist eben eine ganz mechanische, undialektische Auffassung, dass starke Organisationen dem Kampfe immer vorausgehen müssen” (Luxemburg 1905b, 603).

Lenin underlines in a letter written in November 1905 the significance of the workers’ councils (soviets) that emerged from the strikes. These councils united deputies of the strike committees that had been founded in workplaces. In his view, these organs should complement the political work of the party: “It seems to me that to lead the political struggle, both the Soviet (reorganised in a sense to be discussed forthwith) and the Party are, to an equal degree, absolutely necessary” (Lenin 1905, 21, emphasis in the original).

Nildo Viana (2010) underlines that real wages in Russia decreased in 1903 and 1904 between 20 and 25 per cent which provided one of the underlying causes of the revolution in 1905; see also Floyd (1969). The mass strikes in Russia in 1905 were successful in establishing much shorter working days, but much of the initial gains, that is, on shorter working hours, were reversed in 1906 when the revolution ebbed away. Nevertheless, Lenin shows in a review in 1912 that the wage hikes achieved in 1905 were not rolled back, and the level of real wages remained significantly higher after 1905: “The year 1905 improved the worker’s living standard to a degree that normally is attained during several decades” (1912, 258f). He also demonstrates in other publications that workers in big factories dominated the strike movements between 1895 and 1912, with the workers in the metal industry and the regions of Poland and St. Petersburg taking a leading role (Lenin 1910, 1913, 534ff).

A total of 50,000 strikers were subsequently conscripted into the army. Some authors claim that they were partly responsible for the mutinies in late 1918 that led to the revolution (Bailey 1980, 167). The metal workers who were at the forefront of the January 1918 strike had plans for an armed uprising in January 1919, and then contributed to the revolution that broke out two months earlier (Luban 2008, 25). In the aftermath of the revolution, a two-week-long general strike occurred in March 1919, during which far more than 1000 people were killed, primarily by state security forces (Lange 2012).

Colin Barker, writing from a Marxist perspective, claims that he finds this concept-set useful, because of its allegedly “non-reductionist” (2011, 4) character, but criticises a “theory-practice disconnection” (6)—the theory is not interesting for activists—and a “structuralist objectivism” (ibid.) in how the concepts are used. I would rather claim that the concepts themselves limit the understanding of social movements.