A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions of political, social, and labour organizations and may also include rallies, marches, boycotts, civil disobedience, non-payment of taxes, and other forms of direct or indirect action. Additionally, general strikes might exclude care workers, such as teachers, doctors, and nurses.
Historically, the term general strike has referred primarily to solidarity action, which is a multi-sector strike that is organised by trade unions who strike together in order to force pressure on employers to begin negotiations or offer more favourable terms to the strikers; though not all strikers may have a material interest in each other’s negotiations, they all have a material interest in maintaining and strengthening the collective efficacy of strikes as a bargaining tool.
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel can turn
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong
In America, … the anti-union Taft–Hartley Act … outlawed actions taken by unionized workers in support of workers at other companies, effectively rendering both solidarity actions and the general strike itself illegal.
So, a general strike is illegal in the USA.
But, remember the history of unions. The Luddites were textile workers who were upset that the mill and factory owners were breaking the law and denying their rights. With the government ignoring their rights and the owners trampling over them, the Luddites prepared to fight:
The Luddites met at night on the moors surrounding industrial towns to practice military-like drills and manoeuvres.
Then they broke things:
They wrecked specific types of machinery that posed a threat to the particular industrial interests in each region
And they killed:
Four Luddites, led by a man named George Mellor, ambushed and assassinated mill owner William Horsfall of Ottiwells Mill in Marsden, West Yorkshire, at Crosland Moor in Huddersfield.
And the government killed them:
The harsh sentences of those found guilty, which included execution and penal transportation, quickly ended the movement.[5][35] Parliament made “machine breaking” (i.e. industrial sabotage) a capital crime with the Destruction of Stocking Frames, etc. Act 1812
The point is, trade unions were a compromise. Get rid of trade unions and what you get instead is mob violence against factory owners. People die.
“Meet our demands or we’re going to walk around outside holding signs instead of working.”
vs.
“Meet our demands or we’re kill you and destroy your equipment.”
If a general strike is illegal, then why stop at a strike? “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
This is exactly why I think that this thought of a single day of “no spending” is complete and utter bullshit. It’s a stop-gap that allows the elites to plan and workaround, plus it placates the complacent to get them back into their usual spending habits the very next day.
Doing a single day is essentially just punishing a corporation with a fine, which recent history shows is completely and utterly useless.
No, I am not OK with any of that. The time for being nice was over more than a decade ago. People that don’t see this are only enabling the oligarchies to continue to grow.
To those that think I’m wrong about Feb 28th: Go ahead and be complacent, but you better stop complaining about how bad fascists are if you can’t be bothered to change your habits and take away their power in the only way we can short of murder. Why wait until the 28th, and why stop on Mar 1st?
Yeah, a single day with no spending would only hurt small businesses that are very cash poor and can’t afford any kind of interruption. A big company will just shrug it off.
Much better are targeted boycotts with no expiry date. For example, nobody should be buying any ULINE stuff ever again.
If you read the last part of the explanation general strikes are official strikes of one union to support another, so general strikes are acceptable as long as it’s not an official strike and can be organized by a union or group of people.
The act made it illegal for one union to go on strike to support another. Hence, the definition and practice of a general strike changed in modern times to mean periodic days of mass action coordinated, often, by unions, but not an official or prolonged strike
Sure, there are some technicalities. But, the whole “rule of law” hardly matters in the US these days. Most likely the Trump junta would declare any general strike to be illegal. After all, it involved “antifa”, a known terrorist organization.
The general point is that the more that reasonable and measured dissent and protest are not allowed, the more pressure is going to build up, and eventually you’re going to get chaotic and violent riots.
See also: The Winnipeg General Strike , a proud piece of my city’s history.
