💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › freedom-press-ed-strikes.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 10:21:21. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Strikes Author: Freedom Press Date: June, 1888 Language: en Topics: Freedom Press, Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 2, No. 21, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3143, retrieved on May 8, 2020. Notes: Freedom Press (ed.)
Strikes are a most characteristic form of the struggle between labor and
capital in the present century. Their history is important as reflecting
all the chief changes that take place from time to time in the political
and economic relations between the opposing classes. This history
clearly shows a decided tendency to enlarge the field of action and
resort to more and more decisive means.
At first strikes were sometimes secretly incited by rival manufacturers
and traders to injure some competitor whom they feared. Or, if not
deliberately incited, they were taken advantage of by rival competitors.
The strikers were not alone in the field, and this caused a strike to be
dreaded by the masters. They never knew who was at the back of it, or
who might come to the rescue of their revolted workmen.
This state of things was, however, necessarily temporary; for the
employers soon came to understand that such conduct on their part. was
in the long run too favorable to the interests of the workers and
harmful to their own. It now chiefly takes place when some big
monopolist company is trying to drive the competition of small
capitalists out of the field,---as in the case of the recent glass
workers' strikes in Belgium. But, on the whole, capitalists observed a
practical neutrality towards strikes among other capitalists'
wage-slaves, until this attitude was succeeded by general hostility
towards the strikers, with the result that workmen felt the necessity of
closer organization to gain strength and command respect by numbers, and
that strikes became more and more numerous. The masters on their side
proceeded to organize themselves to oppose the coalitions of workers;
but generally they did so only after a strike had broken out.
Now, however, they are going further, and their associations are
directed, not against some particular strike, but against the workmen's
organizations themselves.
Daily examples of this latest phase of the struggle are occurring in
America and France. The present lock-out at Pantin in the latter country
is a striking example.
The workers in one glass factory there stopped work. Whereupon a
circular was sent by the employers to all the glass-factories of the
Seine and Oise Department, in consequence of which all were closed, and
nearly 3000 men willing to work were thrown out upon the streets. The
reasons given by the proprietors of the glass-works are as follows.
Firstly, the glass-workers raised a small subscription to feed the wives
and children of the men on strike. Secondly, a glass-workers association
exists, which the masters do not like!
This seems to show that capitalists will no longer wait for an attack on
their position of authority and monopoly, but will themselves take the
initiative in the strife. Workmen must fight for the very existence of
their associations or submit to any conditions the capitalist may
dictate. And as their associations will, in the, long run, prove
powerless in mere legal contention against coalitions of capitalists,
they will be driven more and more to face the necessity of extreme
measures, to turn strikes into insurrections, and insurrections into
revolution.