From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- A Lesson In The History Of Class Struggle   

 

 

COMMUNISTS AND THE GENERAL STRIKE

By Leon Trotsky

The signal for a review of the international tasks of Communism was given by the March 1921 events in Germany. You will recall what happened. There were calls for a general strike, there were sacrifices by the workers, there was a cruel massacre of the Communist Par­ty, internally there were disagreements on the part of some, and ut­ter treachery on the part of others. But the Comintern said firmly: In Germany the March policy of the Communist Party was a mistake. Why? Because the German Party reckoned that it was directly con­fronted with the task of conquering power. It turned out that the task confronting the party was that of conquering not power, but the working class. What nurtured the psychology of the German Communist Party in 1921 that drove it into the March action? It was nurtured by the circumstances and the moods which crystallis­ed in Europe after the war.

In 1919 the German working class engaged in a number of cruel and bloody battles, the same thing happened in 1920, and during the January and March days of 1920 the German working class became convinced that heroism alone, that readiness to venture and to die, was not enough; that somehow the working class was lack­ing something. It began to take a more watchful and expectant at­titude towards events and facts. It had banked in its time upon the old Social Democracy to secure the socialist overturn.

The Social Democracy dragged the proletariat into the war. When the thunders of the November 1918 revolution rolled, the old Social Democracy begins to talk the language of social revolution and even proclaimed, as you recall, the German republic to be a socialist republic. The proletariat took this seriously, and kept pressing for­ward. Colliding with the bourgeois gangs it suffered crushing defeats once, twice and a third time. Naturally this does not mean that its hatred of the bourgeosie or its readiness to struggle had lessened, but its brains had meanwhile acquired many new convolutions of caution and watchfulness. For new battles it already wants to have guarantees of victory.

And this mood began to grow increasingly stronger among the European working class in 1920-22 after the experiences of the in­itial assault, after the initial semi-victories and minor conquests and the subsequent major defeats. At that moment, in the days when the European working class began after the war to understand clearly, or at least to sense that the business of conquering state power is a very complicated business and that bare hands cannot cope with the bourgeoisie—at that moment the most dynamic section of the working class formed itself into the Communist Party.

But this Communist Party still felt as if it were a shell shot out of a cannon. It appeared on the scene and it seemed to it that it need­ed only shout its battle-cry, dash forward and the working class would rush out to follow. It turned out otherwise. It turned out that the working class had, upon suffering a series of disillusions con­cerning its primitive revolutionary illusions, assumed a watch-and-wait attitude by the time the Communist Party took shape in 1920 (and especially in 1921) and rushed forward. The working class was not accustomed to this party, it had not seen the party in action. Since the working class had been deceived more than once in the past, it has every reason to demand that the party win its confidence, or, to put it differently, the party must still discharge its obligation of demonstrating to the working class that it should follow and is justified in following the party into the fires of battle, when the party issues the summons. During the March days of 1921 in Germany we saw a Communist Party—devoted, revolutionary, ready for struggle—rushing forward, but not followed by the working class. Perhaps one-quarter or one-fifth of the German working class did follow. Because of its revolutionary impatience this most revolu­tionary section came into collision with the other four-fifths; and already tried, so to speak, mechanically and here and there by force to draw them into the struggle, which is of course completely out of the question.

In general, comrades, the International is a wonderful institution. And the training one party gives to another is likewise irreplaceable. But generally speaking, one must say that each working class tends to repeat all the mistakes at the expense of its own back and bones. The International can be of assistance only in the sense of seeing to it that this back receives the minimum number of scars, but in the nature of things scars are unavoidable.

We saw this almost the other day in France. In the port of Havre there occurred a strike of 15,000 workers. This strike of local im­portance attracted the nation-wide attention of the working class by its stubbornness, firmness and discipline. It led to rather large con­tributions for the benefit of the strikers through our party's central organ, L 'Humanite: there were agitational tours, and so on. The French government through its police-chief brought the strike to a bloody clash in which three workers were killed. (It is quite possible that this happened through some assistance by anarchist elements inside the French working class who time and again involuntarily abet reaction.) These killings were of course bound to produce great repercussions among the French working class.

You will recall that the March 1921 events in Germany also started when in Central Germany the chief of police, a Social Democrat, sent military-police gangs to crush the strikers. This fact was at the bottom of our German party's call for a general strike. In France we observe an analogous course of events: a stubborn strike, which catches the interest of the entire working class, followed by bloody clashes. Three strikers are killed. The murders occurred, say, on Fri­day and by Saturday there already convened a conference of the so-called unitarian unions, i.e., the revolutionary trade unions, which maintain close relations with the Communist Party; and at this con­ference it is decided to call the working class to a general strike on the next day. But no general strike came out of it. In Germany dur­ing the (so-called) general strike in March there participated one-quarter, one-fifth or one-sixth of the working class. In France even a smaller fraction of the French proletariat participated in the general strike. If one follows the French press to see how this whole affair was carried out, then, comrades, one has to scratch one's head ten times in recognising how young and inexperienced are the Communist parties of Western Europe. The Comintern had accused the French Communists of passivity. This was correct. And the German Com­munist Party, too, had been accused prior to March of passivity.

Demanded of the party was activity, initiative, aggressive agita­tion, intervention into the day-to-day struggles of the working class. But the party attempted in March to recoup its yesterday's passivity by the heroic action of a general strike, almost an uprising. On a lesser scale, this was repeated the other day in France. In order to emerge from passivity they proclaimed a general strike for a work­ing class which was just beginning to emerge from passivity under the conditions of an incipient revival and improvement in the con­juncture. How did they motivate this? They motivated it by this, that the news of the murder of the three workers had produced a shocking impression on the party's Central Committee and on the Confederation of Labour. How could it have failed to produce such an impression? Of course, it was shocking! And so the slogan of the general strike was raised. If the Communist Party were so strong as to need only issue a call for a general strike then everything would be fine. But a general strike is a component and a dynamic part of the proletarian revolution itself.

Out of the general strike there arise clashes with the troops and the question is posed of who is master in the country. Who controls the army—the bourgeoisie or the proletariat? It is possible to speak of a protest general strike, but this is a question of utmost impor­tance. When a dispatch comes over the wires that three workers have been killed at Havre and when it is known that there is no revolu­tion in France but, instead, a stagnant situation, that the working class is just beginning to stir slightly out of a condition of passivity engendered by events during the war and post-war period—in such a situation to launch the slogan for a general strike is to commit the geatest and crudest blunder which can only undermine for a long time, for many months to come, the confidence of the working masses in a party which behaves in such a manner.

True enough, the direct responsibility in this case was not borne by the party; the slogan was issued by the so-called unitarian, that is, revolutionary trade unions. But in reality what should the party and the trade unions have done? They should have mobilised every party and trade union worker who was qualified and sent them out to read this news from one end of the country to the other. The first thing was to tell the story as it should have been told. We have a daily paper, L'ffumanite, our central organ. It has a circulation of approximately 200,000—a rather large circulation, but France has a population of not less than 40 million. In the provinces there is virtually no circulation of the daily newspaper, consequently, the task was to inform the workers, to tell them the story agitationally, and to touch them to the quick with this story. The -second thing needed was to turn to the Socialist Party, the party of Longuet and Renaudel with a few questions—no occasion could have been more propitious—and say: "In Havre three worker strikers have been kill­ed; we take it for granted that this cannot be permitted to go un­punished. We are prepared to employ the most resolute measures. We ask, what do you propose?"

The very posing of these questions would have attracted a great attention. It was necessary to turn to Jouhaux's reformist trade unions which are much closer to the strikers. Jouhaux feigned sym­pathy for this strike and gave it material aid. It was necessary to put to him the following question: "You of the reformist trade unions, what do you propose? We, the Communist Party, propose to hold tomorrow not a general strike but a conference of the Com­munist Party, of the unitarian revolutionary trade unions and of the reformist trade unions in order to discuss how this aggression of capitalism ought to be answered."

It was necessary to swing the working masses into motion. Perhaps a general strike might have come into it. I do not know; maybe a protest strike, maybe not. In any case it was far too little simply to announce, to cry out that my indignation had been aroused, when I learned over the wires that three workers had been killed. It was instead necessary to touch to the quick the hearts of the working masses. After such an activity the whole working class might not perhaps have gone out on a demonstrative strike but we could, of course, have reached a very considerable section. However, instead there was a mistake, let me repeat, on a smaller scale than the March events. It was a mistake on a two by four scale. With this difference that in France there were no assaults, no sweeping actions, no new bloody clashes, but simply a failure; the general strike was a fiasco and by this token—a minus on the Communist Party's card, not a plus but a minus.

(From the Report on the Fifth Anniversary of the October Revolu­tion and the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International. Moscow, October 20th 1922)

New International, September-October 1934

James P. Cannon

The Strike Wave and the Left Wing

(September 1934)

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Source: New International, Vol.1 No.3, September-October 1934, pp.67-68.
Transcription/Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan.

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THE wide shift of the American working class to the Left, prepared by the ravages of the five year crisis, found its expression primarily in the two strike waves which swept the country since the inception of the NRA. This shift has been more or less steadily gaining in scope and tempo. All signs point to a deepening of the process of radicalization and stormier manifestations of it in the near future. The fighting energy of the insurgent workers has not been spent, nor have their immediate minimum demands been satisfied. They have not been defeated in a test of strength, but rather tricked and manoeuvred out of their first objectives. The net result is that the dissatisfaction and resentment of the workers is multiplied, the antagonism between them and the leaders who thwarted them is sharpened, and their faith in the Roosevelt administration is more violently shaken.

All this speaks for the assumption that a still mightier strike movement is in the offing and that it will clash more directly with the main agencies which have balked the great majority of the strikes: the Government and the AF of L bureaucracy. Roosevelt’s “truce” – to be arranged by conferences with small groups of those truly representative of large employers of labor and large groups of organized labor – will have far less prospect of success than the Hoover truce of 1929. The workers were passive then; they are moving now.
The second strike wave under the NRA, climaxed by the general strike of the textile workers, went far beyond the wave of 1933, involved many more workers and reflected a more earnest mood. State intervention with armed force, supplementing the mediation machinery of the NRA, became the rule rather than the exception. Violent conflicts occurred; many were killed and injured, more arrested. The cold brutality of these police and military attacks, and the courage with which they were resisted, cannot have failed to leave a deep mark in the working class mind. The experiences of these recent months have been important preconditions for a great political awakening.
The open resistance to the conservative labor bureaucracy at Minneapolis and San Francisco, and the disillusionment ensuing from the systematic treacheries in the other situations – in averting strikes that were due and in wrecking those which could not be prevented – presage a widespread revolt against the reactionary officialdom.
A remarkable feature of the 1934 strike wave has been the popular support of the strikes, manifested by the workers not directly involved, as well as by the “little fellows” of the lower middle class who have been squeezed, first by the crisis and again by the monopoly-aiding features of the NRA cure-all for the crisis. At Toledo and Milwaukee this ardent and demonstrative support of the masses played a decisive role. In Minneapolis, also, public sympathy and the solidarity of the trade unionists proved to be a tremendous reservoir of support for the famous strikes of Local 574.
Public sympathy in nearly every instance has taken an active form. The strike sympathizers picketed, paraded, fought with the scabs, police and militia. This phenomenon undoubtedly has a deep significance. It indicates a deep-seated mass dissatisfaction with things as they are and as they have been in recent times. The spontaneous movement of the masses to the side of striking workers argues for the idea that the workers can find ready allies in the lower middle class when they strike out against capital and lead the way. Fascism begins to make real headway with the aggrieved petty bourgeoisie only when they lose faith in the determination and ability of the workers to lead.
Public sympathy, including the sympathy of other workers, for strikers gave the main impetus to the sentiment for local general strike action in support of the Toledo strike, the May strike in Minneapolis, and the Milwaukee strike. The general strike became a popular slogan. It was looked upon as the certain way to victory. Finally, for the first time in fifteen years, the general strike was realized in San Francisco in sympathy with the marine workers. The disastrous outcome of this action put the damper on general strike agitation, for the time being at least, and impelled the advanced workers to a more sober and critical examination of the possibilities and limitations of general sympathetic strike action. Far from discrediting the idea of the general strike, the ’Frisco struggle revealed that such a radical weapon requires a sure hand to wield it if it is to bite deeply and effectively.
The ’Frisco experience demonstrated with cruel emphasis that the general strike by itself is no magic formula. There, it was a two-edged sword that cut more sharply against the embattled marine workers. The leadership came into the hands of the reactionary officialdom. They transformed it into a weapon against the marine workers and against the “Reds”. Having shifted the center of gravity and control from the marine unions to the general strike committee which they dominated, the reactionaries then deliberately broke the general strike and pulled the marine strike down with it. A wave of reactionary persecution followed as a matter of course. The Stalinists, who advocated the general strike as a panacea and were among the first victims of its tragic result, have not understood to this day what happened and why.
The ’Frisco debacle does not in the least prove the contention of president Green that the general strike, being a challenge to government, is bound to lose. (These dyed-in-the-wool lackeys of capital never even dream of the workers being Victorious in a contest with the capitalist government.) From this example, however, it is necessary to conclude that the general strike is not to be played with carelessly or fired into the air to see what will happen. It must be well organized and prepared. Its limitations must be understood and it must aim at definite, limited objectives. Or, if the aim is really to challenge the government, the general strike cannot be confined to one locality and there must be the conscious aim to supplement the strike with an armed struggle.
The slogan of all the labor traitors, first proclaimed by John L. Lewis in calling off the mine strike in 1919 – “You can’t fight the Government!” – is correct only in one sense: You can’t fight the Government with folded arms. In any case, serious agitation for a general strike should presuppose the possibility of removing the reactionary leadership or, at least, of being able to deprive it of a free hand by means of a well-organized Left wing. That was lacking in San Francisco. The general strike revealed in a glaring light the wide disparity between the readiness of the workers for radical and militant action and the organization of the Left wing.
The same contradiction was to be seen in the general strike of textile workers which marked the peak of the strike wave and ended too abruptly and ingloriously. This was the greatest strike in American labor history in point of numbers, and the equal of any in militancy. Called into being by the pressure of the rank and file at the convention against the resistance of the leadership, it was frankly aimed at the NRA and the whole devilish circle of governmental machination, trickery and fraud. The workers, the majority of them new to the trade union movement, fought like lions only to see the fruits of their struggle snatched from their hands, leaving them bewildered, demoralized and defeated – they knew not how.
But, for all the tragedy of the outcome, the general textile strike was distinguished by an extraordinary vitality, and some distinct features that are fraught with bright promise for the future of the textile workers and the whole working class of the country. Within the framework of one of the most decrepit and reactionary unions, hundreds of thousands of textile workers waged a memorable battle. The “new” proletariat of the South, steeped in age-long backwardness and superstition, came awake, prayed to God and then went out to fight the scabs, the gunmen and the militia. From North to South the battle line extended. The mills were shut down. The big push of the bosses to reopen the mills a few days before the strike was called off came to nothing except a demonstration of the strikers’ dominance of the situation.
With their ranks unbroken, with the universal sympathy of the workers throughout the country, with victory in their grasp – the textile strikers saw the strike called off by their own officers without a single concession from the bosses, and without having a chance to express their own wishes in the matter. And most significant of all – the key to the fatal weakness of the trade union movement today – this monstrous betrayal could be perpetrated without a sign of organized resistance. There was no force in the textile workers’ ranks to organise such resistance.
That is the general story of the second strike wave under the NRA, as of its precursor last year. The workers, awakening from a long apathy and ready for the militant struggle to regain their lost standards, have not yet found a leadership of the same temper. Minneapolis is the one magnificent exception. There a group of determined militants, armed with the most advanced political conceptions, organized the workers in the trucking industry, led them through three strikes within six months and remain today at the head of the union. It was this fusion of the native militancy of the American workers, common to practically all of the strikes of this year, with a leadership equal to its task that made the strikes of a few thousand workers of a single local union events of national, and even international, prominence; a shining example for the whole labor movement. The resources of the workers, restricted and constrained in the other strikes, were freely released and deliberately stimulated by the leadership in Minneapolis. One example, of many: the textile workers, half a million strong, had to depend on the capitalist press for information – Local 574 of Minneapolis published a daily paper of its own! What miracles will the workers in the great industries be capable of when they forge a leadership of the Minneapolis caliber!
The year, approaching its last quarter, has been rich in experience which can and will be transformed into capital for the future. The lessons, once assimilated, will ensure that the future struggles will take place on higher ground and with brighter prospects. The striking workers, and great masses seething with strike sentiment but restrained and out-manoeuvred by the leaders and the politicians of the Roosevelt Administration, have for the most part failed to gain their objectives. But they have not been really defeated; they have not been overwhelmed. The struggles, despite their severity, were only tentative. The real tests are yet to come, and the workers will face them stronger as the result of the experiences of the first nine months of 1934. .
Five years of crisis have done their work. The workers, half-starved on the job, are no longer afraid of risking the job in a strike. It has been demonstrated on a nation-wide scale that the unemployed will not scab if the trade unions establish a proper connection with them. On the contrary, the unemployed can be organized as a powerful ally of the strikers. At Toledo this was first demonstrated effectively by the initiative of the American Workers Party in organizing the unemployed for mass picketing. Taking a leaf from this experience, the Communist League members, the dynamic force in the leadership of the Minneapolis strike, adopted the same policy in regard to the unemployed, with no less telling effect. The members of the MCCW (the Minneapolis organization of the unemployed) played a big part on the heroic picket line of the strike of Local 574. One of them, John Belor, paid for it with his life. The necessity of a close union of the employed and unemployed is one of the big lessons in strike strategy to be derived from the experiences of the recent months.
The political parties and groups have been tested. The advanced, thinking workers can appraise them more accurately now on the basis of their performances in the strike wave. The balance sheet of the Stalinists is zero, symbolized by the abject capitulation of their bankrupt “Red” textile union to the UTW on the eve of the general strike. They wrought a great work of destruction; they strangled the Left wing that had been under their leadership for a decade and left the reactionaries a free field to strangle the strikes. The socialist Militants displayed a considerable activity in the strike movement, offset by a complete silence in the face of the greatest treacheries of the labor bureaucracy. They have not even begun to criticize the labor traitors, to say nothing of organizing a determined struggle against them.
The Communist League and the American Workers party, despite the limited forces at their disposal, took advantage of such opportunities as they had and demonstrated in practise, notably in Minneapolis and Toledo, that they are the bearers of the trade union policies and methods around which the Left wing of tomorrow will crystallize. The fatal weakness in the labor movement today is precisely the lack of a genuine Left wing. This Left wing can come to life only on a new basis, with a new policy that is free from every taint of reformist cowardice and degenerate Stalinism.
The mainspring of the new Left wing can only be a revolutionary Marxian party. Its creation is our foremost task.