The Result of the Belgian Mass Strikes

The political mass strike is not a means of struggle that can always be applied in the same way like a certain mechanism according to a fixed recipe. It is just as multifarious as the political struggle in general; instead of being juxtaposed as forms of the same method of struggle that flow into one another, it is sometimes juxtaposed as absolute opposites, as completely different things that bear no relation to one another. Each new application of the mass strike shows, as it were, a new type, and each adds a new experience to the experiences of the proletariat.

The ten-day Belgian mass strike is the continuation of the strike movements of 1893 and 1902 in the conquest of universal suffrage. The mass strike of 1893, which for the first time revealed to the Socialist International the importance of this means as a complement to parliamentarism, frightened the bourgeoisie so much that it granted universal suffrage in dismay and fear of revolution. But when in 1902 the workers went on strike in even greater numbers to abolish the plural suffrage of the propertied class, the government and the bourgeoisie remained steadfast; the movement had to be broken off without result. At the time, Rosa Luxemburg rightly pointed out how the political alliance with the liberals had paralyzed the strength of the movement – this alliance documented the political weakness and immaturity of the Belgian proletariat. And things did not get any better afterwards; for ten years the party, under reformist leadership, chased after the phantom of conquering political power and equal suffrage together with the Liberals by parliamentary means. It was only when the electoral defeat of the previous year completely dashed these hopes that the party resorted to the old means and decided to prepare a new mass strike.

The Belgian proletariat held up magnificently in this struggle; ever new groups joined in, and when after ten days the strike was lifted by a decision of the extraordinary party congress, the number of strikers amounted to 450,000, one and a half times as many as in 1902. But what was the result, the immediate outcome of this great struggle? Basically: Nothing. The strike of 1913 was just as inconclusive in terms of political achievements as the strike of 1902.

However, the reason given for calling off the strike was a vote by Parliament, according to which a commission set up to revise the local and provincial electoral law should be authorized to seek a better formula for the chamber electoral law. That such a microscopically tiny concession, which coincides with the minister's later denied statement before the strike, means very little is clear from its very wording. If Comrade Vandervelde sees in this the proof that the revision is from now on Marxian, then he is showing the same optimism that he already expressed in 1902 after the second strike. At that time he stated in the “Neue Zeit” that the leader of the reactionary right, the soul of the resistance, Mr. Woest, who three weeks earlier did not want to hear of a constitutional revision, felt compelled to make the following statement at the moment of the vote: “We know that institutions are not immutable. The laws are changeable, and if the parties were willing to consider the problems of suffrage without passion, and to seek a solution different from the one now in force, without giving up to the simple, equal, universal suffrage, I am convinced that a large part of us would decide on such a consideration.” And Vandervelde concluded from this statement: “It seems that the right will soon have to resign itself to revision. The left is fully in favor of the same, and once the revision is decided, we are absolutely certain that it will end with the victory of universal suffrage.”

This was written in 1902. Eleven years have passed since then – eleven years of bloc politics, to be sure – and nothing has come of these expectations. There is no better way of showing how worthless the reference to the concession won was as a justification for calling off the strike. The question of whether a real concession could have been won and whether the breaking of the strike itself in the middle of its greatest development was right or wrong is of course a different matter; only the Belgian comrades themselves could decide this question. There was nothing surprising in the fact that at that moment nothing more had been gained; although the employers had suffered great losses, social life had not been thrown out of joint, no great economic catastrophe had occurred, no terror had seized the bourgeoisie; the surprise of 1893 would not be repeated. No one can decide with certainty whether such phenomena would have occurred if the strike had continued, which could have forced the government to capitulate completely. But those who want to blame the persuasive power of the three parliamentary leaders at the Congress for the fact that the masses gave up the struggle without victory overlook the fact that in this case the inner weakness of the movement would be revealed precisely by the fact that the majority of the Congress allowed itself to be determined by these speeches. And finally, there is a general reason for the view that even if the strike had continued, the goal could not have been achieved immediately; what has been neglected and spoiled by decades of wrong tactics cannot be put right all at once by a mass strike.

The mass strike is not a machine which, properly set in motion, produces as a result universal suffrage or any other desired right. It is a means of expressing the real power of the working class, when the constitution and suffrage reflect this power in too falsified a manner; its tremendous pressure serves to bring the constitution into conformity with the real relations of power. It cannot therefore replace parliamentarism, but only secure its foundations. The power of the proletariat, which is what matters here, consists essentially in its political training, its socialist knowledge and its firm organization; as long as it does not know how to defeat all resistance of the bourgeoisie, both the cunning deceit of the progressive and the violence of the reactionary bourgeoisie, it cannot open the gates to political rule for itself. It was emphasized at the congress itself that strengthening the trade union organization is the urgently needed first task. But political education can only be acquired through years of parliamentary political struggle – the mass strike contributes significantly to this education and enlightenment, but can only take place in exceptional cases – therein lies the great value of parliamentarism. But in Belgium, under the rule of revisionism, it worked in precisely the opposite way. A proletariat that allows itself to be beguiled by the liberal section of the bourgeoisie, or, if it itself has a strong class feeling, does not have the ability to force its parliamentarians to adopt a tactic of class struggle, does not yet possess the great inner strength that could force a change in the political expression of the power relations. That is why this mass strike could not lead to the hoped-for goal.

Nevertheless, it was not fruitless. But its importance lies in another area, not in its immediate result, but in the fact that it took place; in its character as a demonstration. After a decade of entrenched parliamentary compromise politics, it demonstrated the unanimous determination of the Belgian workers to return to a vigorous struggle of the masses themselves against the bourgeoisie. This is why, in contrast to 1902, a confident mood of victory dominated the Congress. In this strike, which was undertaken against the will of the most influential parliamentary leaders, was expressed the turnaround, the upward movement that has become increasingly noticeable in recent years. The leading intellectual and organizational backwardness of the Belgian proletariat is being increasingly eliminated; the education system is laying the foundations for Marxist fighting tactics and a conscious opposition is already emerging against the bloc policy. Thus, in contrast to parliamentary reformism, the political insight, class consciousness and self-confidence of the Belgian workers is developing; on the one hand, this development has been greatly promoted by the mass strike, and on the other hand, it ensures the possibility of making it even more impressive next May. The most important positive result of the last mass strike lies in this joyful certainty which fills the Belgian workers and raises their self-confidence, in the certainty of being able to wield this old weapon more powerfully than ever in an emergency.