What should a legit general strike effort look like?
As followup to the previous post, let me ask myself and readers: “What should a legit general strike effort look like?”
It would be scheduled for far enough in the future to adequately organize, but not so far ahead that it seems pointlessly remote. Roughly six months lead time sounds about right.
If you’re going to call it a “general strike”, it should be a bit more ambitious than a glorified “everybody call-in sick” day. Either you’re just fetishizing ‘68 without a clue how to actually accomplish anything of significance, or you’re for real. Make it an honest-to-gawd strike — stay out of work or school until demands are met.
What demands? There are so many political matters of grave concern from these past few years that one could reference, that it almost seems hopeless to narrow it down to something achievable. The General Strike 9/11/07 site mentions several such matters of concern, but without any way for a strike coalition to agree that its concerns have been addressed in terms of explicit demands. With no way to define a victory, it’s unclear who would sign on to such a project and why. For agorists, though, the matter of prioritization seems clear — the war itself.
If the date is to be one of any significance at all, it should NOT be September 11th because of the potential ambiguity that brings to the message. Interestingly, just past the edge of the six month timeframe mentioned, we come to the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq — March 20th. Also interestingly, from mid-August to the September release of the Petraeus Report gives us a few weeks lead time to do an “exploratory committee” type thing and then announce as a response to the Petraeus Report.
How would we formalize an anti-war demand as something that could be acted on quickly? Despite the ruling class sympathies of the Democrats, Congress always controls the purse strings. An Emergency War Defunding Bill, effective immediately, seems about right. Either Congress passes the bill or the strikers stay on strike.
How would we promote such an effort? Like the 9/11 General Strike site, we’d make an M20 General Strike site, outlining the (superior) case for the effort. The 9/11 General Strike effort seems focused around Facebook. More like the early Ron Paul campaign, we’d have the main site link to a defined tag URL on several social networking sites.
The core group of strike organizers would produce a “map” of online communities to systematically hit with a “virtual canvassing” operation — with activists possibly dividing up into 3 person Electronic Propaganda Teams organized not around geographic proximity, but temporal and topical proximity.
Am I pushing this now? No, not yet, but I might. Let’s talk about it. Feedback?
Share This
[...] What should a legit general strike effort look like? [...]
A true agorist would not advocate for a general strike.
An agorist would advocate that people do work and not report it to the government for taxation, confiscation, and regulation. An agorist would advocate that people develop a private fair monetary system. Trading with Federal Reserve Notes only increases the government’s power, even if you’re trading off the books.
A general strike is a waste of time. It is not possible to reform the current economic and political system via strikes, voting, or political activism.
There is no need to set aside a specific time to perform agorist economic activity. There is no point in holding a public rally, since the goal is to operate without the government noticing you. You should do it as often as possible.
I’m afraid that you’re not going to get a lot of public buy in if you push for the “Make it an honest-to-gawd strike  stay out of work or school until demands are met.”
There are a lot of people who are dissatisfied with their government(s) on multiple levels and for multiple reasons, but unless they are really good and angry good old fashioned personal survival instinct is going to kick in if their livelihoods are on the line….. and I just don’t think there are enough people at that stage yet to pull off an extended strike.
One day however, is something that I think people could rally around and if this sort of action is going to be contemplated, and I believe that it should, maximum buy in is an absolute must. A few tens of thousands is not enough, and few hundreds of thousands might make the politicians at least being to pay attention.
[1] the economic impact of even a one day general strike would be significant
[2] the message sent to governments, at all levels, would also be significant.
What message would a one-day strike send? The message it would send to the government would be “we should assassinate or arrest the people who organized this strike”.
re: state suppression of a strike effort
There’s a Ben Franklin quote the Ron Paul people made use of recently…
‘Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you.’
re: “A true agorist would not advocate for a general strike.”
I disagree, at the very least in the specific case of war. My rationale is based on my reading of this Konkin piece (also linked above). Otherwise, you’re mostly correct about the basics.
re: “I’m afraid that you’re not going to get a lot of public buy in [if you call for a real general strike]…”
My point is that the 9/11 General Strike effort may technically be a “general strike” effort, but calling it a “general strike” is deceptive in terms of the associations that normally go with that term. Refer to my comment about “fetishizing ‘68″.
A general strike or sabotaging the state is a waste of effort at this time. It might be worthwhile later, but certainly not right now.
Suppose you had a magic technique where you could cause $1M of damage to the state at a cost of $100 to yourself, with no possibility of anyone getting injured and no risk of getting caught. Would it be worth doing it?
Looking at the (practically nonexistent) agorist community collectively and the state collectively, the state has more than 10,000 times more resources than the agorist community. You would cause negligible damage to the state (from the state’s point of view), and you would still be out $100.
The above “magic technique” would only be “profitable” once the agorist community had 0.01% as many resources as the state has. As far as I can tell, the agorist community is still at 0%. Right now, the agorist community needs to focus on building itself up, more than sabotaging the state. Further, the riskless “magic technique” mentioned above probably doesn’t exist.
True enough, unless the agorists believed they would be able to leverage the concerns and potential actions of a larger community. I’m not definitely asserting that we can, but simply that the matter of whether or not we might or might not be able to is one of the main things that should be looked at when evaluating the notion.
I think the strategy you’ve laid out is good, Brad, and I’d be interested in contributing to any campaign you want to put together along these lines.