Mass Strike Threat and Mass Strike Refusal

The mass strike is the method of struggle of the proletariat which is most adapted to its social nature, which can only be applied by it, in which the essential elements of proletarian power are expressed, and which will therefore play an extremely important role in the conquest of political power. It has only been applied a few times so far with more or less success; therefore, there is hardly anything more important for the workers than to study every new experience in this field and see what can be deduced from it in terms of prospects, preconditions and details of the method.

Two countries were to be the scene of such a struggle this spring: Belgium and Hungary; in both, the mass strike was to serve as a weapon in the struggle for universal equal suffrage. In agrarian Hungary, a still weak proletariat, which is only in the early stages of organization and political consciousness, is fighting a heroic battle against a rotten, aristocratic clique regiment that seeks to maintain its rule over the other peoples and classes through an untenable privileged suffrage. Last year there were already fierce and bloody struggles, and large classes of the population, even a part of the lower nobility, which forms the opposition in Parliament, are, if not in favor of the democratic suffrage which the workers desire, at least in favor of a change in the electoral law. In big industrial Belgium, it was last year's electoral defeat that impressed upon the workers that it was not an electoral cartel with the liberals, but only the resumption of the suffrage struggle that could bring them the fulfillment of their social demands. At the congress of the Workers' Party it was therefore decided to prepare for a mass strike for the conquest of equal suffrage, the date of which was subsequently set for April 14, the day on which Parliament convened.

What was special about this Belgian electoral dispute was the long, planned preparation. This was precisely the reason for the decision at the congress: In the face of the Walloon workers' urge to strike out immediately, it was said: we are not yet strong enough, so we must first arm ourselves. What should the armament consist of? The mass strike, as was emphasized here shortly after the Belgian elections in an article entitled “The Belgian Lessons”, is no more a miracle cure than the ballot paper; it can bring the full force of proletarian power to bear like no other method, but it cannot replace a lack of real power. Raising the real power of the proletariat, namely trade union organization and political insight, must be the real armament; but that is a process of years. At the congress something else was meant by armament: technical preparation, in the sense that a powerful agitation is developed, and that the workers save and gather supplies so as not to suffer hardship during the strike period. Now, as is well known, the question of such technical preparation was one of the main points of the earlier international and German party congress discussions, and the opposition of the opponents of mass strikes was most concerned with it. The beautiful picture of a revolutionary mass strike once painted by Jack London, where the workers with their full larders quarrel comfortably and the capitalists, who could get nothing for money, have to become thieves, will probably not be regarded by anyone as the picture of a possible reality. A mass political strike cannot drag on for many weeks; it usually breaks out for some reason or other at a time of great excitement, and a few days decide its success. It will be possible to endure the shortage for so many days, and it does not constitute a serious danger in times of sharp class conflict. It may therefore be assumed that the otherwise lacking strength of a mass strike cannot come from preparation in the sense of gathering supplies. Nevertheless, the Belgian struggle deserves the greatest attention as an experiment that can show in what respect planned preparation can strengthen the power of the strike, or whether this is offset by the fact that the government is also preparing and arming itself.

The first result of the two mass strike threats was highly disappointing. In Belgium, a retreat from worthless mediations, which had to be reversed by the Easter Congress – which of course did not benefit the inner strength of the movement. And in Hungary even a complete fiasco: in the face of the government's preparations, which threatened to crush the movement with bloody violence, the party leadership abandoned the planned mass strike when the parliamentary opposition, on whose help it had counted, failed completely and abandoned the workers at the last moment. The reason for this mass strike was exactly the same in both cases; in both cases the same common weakness of the movement emerged, in Hungary openly and visible to everyone, in Belgium easily recognizable beneath the surface: the alliance with the bourgeois opposition. When these allies, or consideration for them, determine the tactics, the offensive power of the mass strike is lamed. For the mass strike is a specifically proletarian weapon, which even the most progressive bourgeois are not quite comfortable with, and which they would therefore prefer to thwart.

Does this mean that we should not cooperate with sections of the bourgeois class in the suffrage struggle, and that their position is completely meaningless? It has often been pointed out, not without justification, that in the two great successful political strike movements, in Belgium in 1893 and in Russia in 1905, broad sections of the bourgeoisie sympathized with the mass strike. On these great fundamental questions the ruling class and its followers never form a united reactionary mass; they always fall into two factions, one of which seeks to violently crush the proletariat, the other to disarm, lull and weaken it with concessions, preferably sham concessions. Thus, although bourgeois of the latter kind often fight for the same demands as the workers, they are not suitable allies for us; for while our tactics in this struggle are aimed at strengthening the strength and power of the proletariat, they must advocate methods of struggle that paralyze the self-confidence of the workers and weaken their strength. And since the mass strike is precisely the strongest expression of the self-confidence and self-help of the workers, since it challenges the entire bourgeois order and intensifies the class antagonism, they will try to thwart it as far as possible – except in extreme emergencies, in order to bring an overly obstinate and untenable government to its senses, in which case their first concern immediately after achieving the goal will be to contain the workers' exuberance again. Their politicians will try to make it clear to the leaders of the workers' movement, their friends, that a mass strike will only damage the common cause, that the sympathy of wide circles can only be lost, and that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And so the leaders will vacillate back and forth between consideration for these political friends and consideration for the masses who are urging them to fight.

The bourgeois friends of suffrage, who seek to avert the sharp clash of the classes by mediation, are most useful to us when they influence the government on the other side and divide the ruling class and make it insecure. They do us harm when they first join the army of the attack, have their say, and then divide it and make it insecure. They always weaken the side where they stand first. If a suffrage movement advances victoriously, this is shown by the fact that parts of the bourgeoisie join it and break the unity of the resistance. Conversely, if a firm political alliance is formed between the bourgeois opposition and the proletariat, it can only spoil the strength of the movement, and the joyful declaration of war, as was the case in Hungary and threatened for a moment in Belgium, turns into a vicious retreat.

The government's foolish deceit, like the Liberals' attempts at mediation, was no more able to hold the Belgian workers back from the struggle. Of course, they cannot be under the illusion that they can achieve everything in one fell swoop; but there is no doubt that the strike on April 14 marks the opening of a powerful period of struggle, the first step on a new path that will lead the Belgian proletariat to ever greater power and the achievement of its fighting goal.