The Difficulties of the Mass Strike

The modern labor movement differs from earlier social movements in that it has a much greater degree of clarity about its own nature, about the cause and goal of its struggle. Men are always instinctively moved and impelled to action by mighty social forces awakened by economic development – this is as true for us as it was for earlier generations. But while we suffer these powerful effects with heart and soul and must follow them with will and action, we also understand them with our heads. In Social Democracy, in its theory and its tactics, this self-consciousness of the workers' movement is realized. The great clashes of the classes do not come to it unexpectedly, like catastrophes dropped from the sky, but social democracy foresees them; its task is to recognize the conditions and circumstances of these struggles as far in advance as possible and to prepare the masses for them. Therefore it cannot be satisfied with the general knowledge that mass strikes will one day break out as violent conflicts between capital and labor, but it must become as clearly aware as possible of the difficulties and dangers that these conflicts entail.

As a rule, these difficulties and dangers have been emphasized above all by the opponents of the mass strike. The expressed or unspoken meaning of this reference was then that one should not think of mass strikes for the time being, or for a long time, or at all. Of course, this conclusion is wrong; for a workers' movement that has to fight its way up against a superiority of enemies, neither difficulties nor dangers can offer a reason to refrain from struggle – quite apart from the fact that these struggles do come, because they are necessary and unavoidable. Therefore, it cannot occur to us to deny the difficulties and the dangers to the opponents of the mass strike, as if it only required a bold act to eliminate all spectres and worries at once. On the contrary, it must be our task to emphasize and examine what is justified in these warnings so that they can be reduced to the right measure. Then it will also become clear how the practice, the bold deed, solves the difficulties: not all at once, but through the process of becoming.

The objections raised against the mass strike can be summarized in two words: we are too weak and the enemy is too strong. The first makes the matter difficult, the second makes it dangerous. Let us leave aside for the moment the latter objection, which touches on the whole nature of the struggle between the means of power of the state and the organization of the proletariat, and deal with the former first. Our party has only a third of all voters behind it, and the trade-union organizations do not yet include half of all wage-workers; besides, many workers are organized in opposing associations, in Christian or yellow associations, and these will do everything to prevent our actions. Under such circumstances, there can be no question of a cessation of all social life. This is all true: it does not mean, however, that mass strikes are impossible at all, but only that the idea of a mass strike which, once it breaks out, suddenly sweeps the whole proletarian state along like wildfire and brings down the whole of capitalist rule in a single life-and-death struggle, is an untenable fantasy. It does not mean that the idea of a mass strike should be shown to be impracticable at all, but only poses the question of how the practice of the mass strike will remove these obstacles in the process of development.

First of all, it should be noted that it is not necessary for the whole of social life to come to a standstill. The mass strike is a political demonstration that aims to exert pressure on the ruling class, pressure that can range from a gentle reminder to a “knee on the chest”. A work stoppage, even of only 2 million organized or red-voting workers, would, despite the fact that not everything is shut down, already have an enormous demonstrative significance. If it is objected that the Reichstag election is already such a demonstration of much larger masses, and yet has not had much effect, it must be replied that in a strike demonstration a much greater energy of will and readiness to fight comes to light than in the usually completely harmless insertion of a piece of paper, which only demonstrates an attitude. No difficulty stands in the way of such a demonstration strike, which can be organized by the party at suitable moments.

But at the same time it prepares larger and more powerful actions through its influence on the other workers. Comrade Luxemburg and others have repeatedly pointed out the importance of the unorganized masses in future mass actions, citing examples from the Russian revolution and from American workers' struggles. This does not mean that we simply transfer the Russian pattern to Germany; we know quite well that the great difference is that in Russia the masses had to lead the struggle without a predetermining organization, whereas here in Germany a great organizational force, an army of millions of men who have absorbed the organization as a firm unshakeable force, stands ready and will form the nucleus of all action. But it means that this nucleus will not remain alone; it will sweep along much larger masses and rally them around itself. These masses are not unorganized because they are satisfied or indifferent, but because they lack the tenacious strength to build their organizations under the present conditions. Comrade Adolf Braun has already pointed out that various circumstances, such as poverty or the unassailable power of big business, which exploits them, make it difficult for even the most depressed workers to organize. But when great actions, decided upon by the organized nucleus of the proletariat, shake up the whole of society, they will seize this opportunity of struggle; their hatred and resentment will vent themselves when the possibility of shaking the power of capital arises, and, as far as one may judge from foreign examples, they will hardly be inferior to the organized in perseverance and solidarity. By participating more quickly or more slowly in the struggle, the actions will gain much greater momentum.

This also applies to the opposing organized workers. One cannot simply draw a sharp line between them and the members of the free trade unions, in the sense that there only cold egoism, treachery and bourgeois sentiment should prevail, here only sublime idealism and selflessness. In the atmosphere of today's unchanging conditions, where important decisions are not made through great revolutionary struggles that shake up the whole of society, the pursuit of small advantages dominates all attention. The pressure and favor of entrepreneurial power, as long as it seems untouchable, often appear to the individual as a stronger force than workers' solidarity; and sometimes even comrades whose convictions were unsuspicious have had to give in to the pressure that sought to force them into yellow associations. The last miners' movement has repeatedly been cited as an argument against the possibility of mass strikes; if the Christian workers were not even prepared to strike for such a tangible direct interest, they will be even less willing to participate in a struggle for abstract political rights. But this logic is not correct. Just the reverse is true: if it is only a question of immediate advantage, the most crude egoistic calculation will be decisive; and for the Christian miners the decisive factor in their betrayal, apart from fear of the machine-guns, was undoubtedly that they hoped for more as a reward from the mine-owners than they expected from a common struggle. But when a struggle is waged for greater things, for more rights, more freedom, for a struggle against the whole system of police and capitalist oppression, then something comes to life in these slaves of capital that lifts them above the flat egoism of everyday life. In revolutionary times, new forces of solidarity, self-sacrifice and idealism spring up that would otherwise never develop. Then most of the antagonisms rooted in the calculating egoism of unrevolutionary times, which now play such an important role in the organizations, fall away. The mistake of the so-called practitioners is usually that they transfer the practice of today to other conditions without further thought.

Of course, this participation does not occur all at once, but only gradually, the more bourgeois society is shaken by the proletarian actions. So while the first actions have the character of partial actions, of simple demonstrations, the later ones will increasingly gather the whole proletarian mass and thus achieve much more powerful effects.