On strikes (V.I. Lenin)

At the end of 1899, Lenin wrote an article entitled ‘On Strikes’, relating to the strikes that were developing at the time in Russia[1] Although more than a century has passed since this article was written, making it inevitable that some of the ideas it contains are outdated or redundant due to historical development, others not only retain their full validity but are also of definite interest considering the potential dynamic of the class struggle in the current period. This is particularly the case for the part of the article that replies to the question ‘What is the role of strikes?’ which we are reproducing below.

Why is this text by Lenin of interest in the current period?

The strikes of the late 1890s mentioned by Lenin are part of a dynamic of struggle in Russia and Europe that would lead to the mass strike of 1905 in Russia with the emergence of the soviets. For Russia alone, the following are recorded particularly for this period: the general strike of the textile workers of Saint Petersburg in 1896 and 1897; the Batoum strike in the Caucasus in March 1902; the massive general strike in December 1904 in the Caucasus, in Baku.

Lenin's text highlights the following characteristics of these struggles, which can largely be transposed politically to the current period:

• It is the workers who produce or set in motion the means of production that are indispensable to the life of society, which gives the strike a means of pressure against the bosses;
• Strikes are a necessity, not only as a means of defending the living conditions of the working class, but also as a time to challenge an exploitative society;
• strikes teach workers to unite;
• The struggle for demands, through collective action, allows the working class to become aware of its strength, gives it confidence in its collective action and, therefore, the ability to make the bourgeoisie back down;
• Strikes have a moral influence on all workers who ‘cease to be slaves’;
• Despite the privations, sacrifices and repression, the struggle itself is the first victory of the strike because it gains self-esteem and the esteem of one's comrades-in-arms; it thus prepares for battles, no longer only against a boss, but against the class of bosses for another society, socialism.
• The struggle to defend the immediate interests of the working class contributes powerfully to the politicisation of the workers by making them aware that the capitalist class as a whole is the enemy of the working class as a whole, and that the latter can only rely on its collective strength.
• Moving from isolated strikes to the struggle of the working class as a whole leads to an awareness of the need for the emancipation of all workers.
• In this movement, which is increasingly a political struggle, the need for a working-class party is emerging.

Today, more than twelve decades after the 1890s, the working class must once again go through the school of struggle for the basic defence of its living conditions, whereas in the past it had ‘historic’ experiences of struggle during the first world revolutionary wave of 1917-23.

The problem is that the defeat of this revolutionary wave was followed by a global counter-revolution, lasting almost half a century, which momentarily erased the memory of the achievements of its historical experience among the masses.

Subsequently, initiated by the eruption of massive strikes and the great mobilisations of 1968 in France, a new dynamic of international class struggle ended this period of counter-revolution, thus opening the way for class confrontations. But 20 years later, the new dynamic eventually came up against the limits imposed by the working class's difficulties in further politicising its struggle. Neither of the two antagonistic classes was then in a position to impose its solution to the crisis of capitalism: world war for the bourgeoisie, revolution for the proletariat. This resulted in a stalemate between the classes and the onset of the phase of decomposition of capitalism, involving increased difficulties for the proletariat.[2]

However, the proletariat did not suffer a decisive defeat, and faced with ever more massive economic attacks, it finally emerged from its previous quasi-passivity to revive the development of its struggles in the main industrialised countries, the first expression of which was the wave of struggles in the United Kingdom in the summer of 2022. Thus, “These struggles are not simply a reaction to immediate attacks on working conditions but have a deeper historical dimension. They are the result of a long process of “underground maturation” of class consciousness that has progressed despite the enormous pressures exerted by the accelerated decomposition of capitalist society”[3].

It is precisely in this new situation, where the working class must reconnect with its methods of struggle, that the lessons learnt by Lenin, more than 120 years ago, constitute valuable indicators for the working class today[4]. They come to hammer home the point that the main gain of the struggle is the struggle itself, which is of the utmost importance in a situation where it is by pushing the struggle to its extremes in defence of its living conditions that the proletariat will be able to develop its consciousness of the necessity to overthrow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Indeed, “we are heading for a situation in which the economic crisis will be the most serious in the history of capitalism, exacerbated not only by the central economic contradictions of capital (overproduction and falling rates of profit), but also by the growth of militarism, the spread of ecological disasters and the increasingly irrational policies of the ruling class”[5].
 

What is the role of strikes (or walkouts) in the struggle of the working class?
(extract from Lenin's article “On strikes”[6]

To answer this question, we must first take a closer look at the strikes. The wages of a worker are determined, as we have seen, by an agreement between the employer and the worker, and if, under these circumstances, the individual worker is completely powerless, it is obvious that workers must fight jointly for their demands, that they are compelled to organise strikes either to prevent the employers from reducing wages or to obtain higher wages. It is a fact that in every country with a capitalist system there are strikes of workers. Everywhere, in all the European countries and in America, the workers feel themselves powerless when they are disunited; they can only offer resistance to the employers jointly, either by striking or threatening to strike. As capitalism develops, as big factories are more rapidly opened, as the petty capitalists are more and more ousted by the big capitalists, the more urgent becomes the need for the joint resistance of the workers, because unemployment increases, competition sharpens between the capitalists who strive to produce their wares at the cheapest rate (to do which they have to pay the workers as little as possible), and the fluctuations of industry become more pronounced and crises[7] more violent. When industry prospers, the factory owners make big profits but do not think of sharing them with the workers; but when a crisis breaks out, the factory owners try to push the losses on to the workers. The necessity for strikes in capitalist society has been recognised to such an extent by everybody in the European countries that the law in those countries does not forbid the organisation of strikes; only in Russia barbarous laws against strikes still remain in force (we shall speak on another occasion of these laws and their application).

However, strikes, which arise out of the very nature of capitalist society, signify the beginning of the working-class struggle against that system of society. When the rich capitalists are confronted by individual, propertyless workers, this signifies the utter enslavement of the workers. But when those propertyless workers unite, the situation changes. There is no wealth that can be of benefit to the capitalists if they cannot find workers willing to apply their labour-power to the instruments and materials belonging to the capitalists and produce new wealth. As long as workers have to deal with capitalists on an individual basis they remain veritable slaves who must work continuously to profit another in order to obtain a crust of bread, who must forever remain docile and inarticulate hired servants. But when the workers state their demands jointly and refuse to submit to the money-bags, they cease to be slaves, they become human beings, they begin to demand that their labour should not only serve to enrich a handful of idlers, but should also enable those who work to live like human beings. The slaves begin to put forward the demand to become masters, not to work and live as the landlords and capitalists want  them to, but as the working people themselves want to. Strikes, therefore, always instil fear into the capitalists, because they begin to undermine their supremacy. “All wheels will stop, if your strong arm wills it,” a German workers’ song says of the working class. And so it is in reality: the factories, the landlords’ land, the machines, the railways, etc., etc., are all like wheels in a giant machine - the machine that extracts various products, transforms them as required and delivers them to their destination.

The whole of this machine is set in motion by the worker who tills the soil, extracts ores, makes commodities in the factories, builds houses, workshops, and railways. When the workers refuse to work, the entire machine threatens to stop. Every strike reminds the capitalists that it is the workers and not they who are the real masters, the workers who are more and more loudly proclaiming their rights. Every strike reminds the workers that their position is not hopeless, that they are not alone. See what a tremendous effect strikes have both on the strikers themselves and on the workers at neighbouring or nearby factories or at factories in the same industry. In normal, peaceful times the worker does his job without a murmur, does not contradict the employer, and does not discuss his condition. In times of strikes he states his demands in a loud voice, he reminds the employers of all their abuses, he claims his rights, he does not think of himself and his wages alone, he thinks of all his workmates who have downed tools together with him and who stand up for the workers’ cause, fearing no privations. Every strike means many privations for the working people, terrible privations that can be compared only to the calamities of war - hungry families, loss of wages, often arrests, banishment from the towns where they have their homes and their employment.

Despite all these sufferings, the workers despise those who desert their fellow workers and make deals with the employers. Despite all these sufferings, brought on by strikes, the workers of neighbouring factories gain renewed courage when they see that their comrades have engaged themselves in struggle. “People who endure so much hardship to break the resistance of one single bourgeois will also know how to break the power of the whole bourgeoisie,”[8] said one great teacher of socialism, Engels, speaking of the strikes of the English workers. It is often enough for one factory to strike, for strikes to begin immediately in a large number of factories. What a great moral influence strikes have, how they affect workers who see that their comrades have ceased to be slaves and, if only for the time being, have become people on an equal footing with the rich!

Every strike brings thoughts of socialism very forcibly to the worker’s mind, thoughts of the struggle of the entire working class for emancipation from the oppression of capital. It has often happened that before a big strike the workers of a certain factory or a certain branch of industry or of a certain town knew hardly anything and scarcely ever thought about socialism; but after the strike, study circles and associations become much more widespread among them and more and more workers become socialists.

A strike teaches workers to understand what the strength of the employers and what the strength of the workers is based on; it teaches them not to think of their own employer alone and not of their own immediate workmates alone but of all the employers, the whole class of capitalists and the whole class of workers. When a factory owner who has amassed millions from the toil of several generations of workers refuses to grant a modest increase in wages or even tries to reduce wages to a still lower level and, if the workers offer resistance, throws thousands of hungry families out into the street, it becomes quite clear to the workers that the capitalist class as a whole is the enemy of the whole working class and that the workers can depend only on themselves and their united action. It often happens that a factory owner does his best to deceive the workers, to pose as a benefactor, and conceal his exploitation of the workers by some petty sops or lying promises. A strike always demolishes this deception at one blow by showing the workers that their ‘benefactor’ is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

A strike, moreover, opens the eyes of the workers to the nature, not only of the capitalists, but of the government and the laws as well. Just as the factory owners try to pose as benefactors of the workers, the government officials and their lackeys try to assure the workers that the tsar and the tsarist government are equally solicitous of both the factory owners and the workers, as justice requires. The worker does not know the laws, he has no contact with government officials, especially with those in the higher posts, and, as a consequence, often believes all this. Then comes a strike. The public prosecutor, the factory inspector, the police, and frequently troops, appear at the factory. The workers learn that they have violated the law: the employers are permitted by law to assemble and openly discuss ways of reducing workers’ wages, but workers are declared criminals if they come to a joint agreement!

Workers are driven out of their homes; the police close the shops from which the workers might obtain food on credit; an effort is made to incite the soldiers against the workers even when the workers conduct themselves quietly and peacefully. Soldiers are even ordered to fire on the workers and when they kill unarmed workers by shooting the fleeing crowd in the back, the Tsar himself sends the troops an expression of his gratitude (in this way the Tsar thanked the troops who had killed striking workers in Yaroslavl in 1895). It becomes clear to every worker that the Tsarist government is his worst enemy, since it defends the capitalists and binds the workers hand and foot. The workers begin to understand that laws are made in the interests of the rich alone; that government officials protect those interests; that the working people are gagged and not allowed to make known their needs; that the working class must win for itself the right to strike, the right to publish workers’ newspapers, the right to participate in a national assembly that enacts laws and supervises their fulfilment. The government itself knows full well that strikes open the eyes of the workers and for this reason it has such a fear of strikes and does everything to stop them as quickly as possible.

One German Minister of the Interior[9], one who was notorious for the persistent persecution of socialists and class-conscious workers, not without reason, stated before the people’s representatives: “Behind every strike lurks the hydra of revolution.” Every strike strengthens and develops in the workers the understanding that the government is their enemy and that the working class must prepare itself to struggle against the government for the people’s rights.

Strikes, therefore, teach the workers to unite; they show them that they can struggle against the capitalists only when they are united; strikes teach the workers to think of the struggle of the whole working class against the whole class of factory owners and against the arbitrary, police government. This is the reason that socialists call strikes “a school of war”, a school in which the workers learn to make war on their enemies for the liberation of the whole people, of all who labour, from the yoke of government officials and from the yoke of capital. “A school of war” is, however, not war itself. When strikes are widespread among the workers, some of the workers (including some socialists) begin to believe that the working class can confine itself to strikes, strike funds, or strike associations alone; that by strikes alone the working class can achieve a considerable improvement in its conditions or even its emancipation. When they see what power there is in a united working class and even in small strikes, some think that the working class has only to organise a general strike throughout the whole country for the workers to get everything they want from the capitalists and the government. This idea was also expressed by the workers of other countries when the working-class movement was in its early stages and the workers were still very inexperienced. It is a mistaken idea.

Strikes are one of the ways in which the working class struggles for its emancipation, but they are not the only way; and if the workers do not turn their attention to other means of conducting the struggle, they will slow down the growth and the successes of the working class. It is true that funds are needed to maintain the workers during strikes, if strikes are to be successful. Such workers’ funds (usually funds of workers in separate branches of industry, separate trades or workshops) are maintained in all countries; but here in Russia this is especially difficult, because the police keep track of them, seize the money, and arrest the workers. The workers, of course, are able to hide from the police; naturally, the organisation of such funds is valuable, and we do not want to advise workers against setting them up. But it must not be supposed that workers’ funds, when prohibited by law, will attract large numbers of contributors, and so long as the membership in such organisations is small, workers’ funds will not prove of great use. Furthermore, even in those countries where workers’ unions exist openly and have huge funds at their disposal, the working class can still not confine itself to strikes as a means of struggle. All that is necessary is a hitch in the affairs of industry (a crisis, such as the one that is approaching in Russia today) and the factory owners will even deliberately cause strikes, because it is to their advantage to cease work for a time and to deplete the workers’ funds.

The workers, therefore, cannot, under any circumstances, confine themselves to strike actions and strike associations. Secondly, strikes can only be successful where workers are sufficiently class-conscious, where they are able to select an opportune moment for striking, where they know how to put forward their demands, and where they have connections with socialists and are able to procure leaflets and pamphlets through them. There are still very few such workers in Russia, and every effort must be exerted to increase their number in order to make the working-class cause known to the masses of workers and to acquaint them with socialism and the working-class struggle. This is a task that the socialists and class-conscious workers must undertake jointly by organising a socialist working-class party for this purpose. Thirdly, strikes, as we have seen, show the workers that the government is their enemy and that a struggle against the government must be carried on. Actually, it is strikes that have gradually taught the working class of all countries to struggle against the governments for workers’ rights and for the rights of the people as a whole. As we have said, only a socialist workers’ party can carry on this struggle by spreading among the workers a true conception of the government and of the working-class cause. On another occasion we shall discuss specifically how strikes are conducted in Russia and how class-conscious workers should avail themselves of them.

Here we must point out that strikes are, as we said above, “a school of war” and not the war itself, that strikes are only one means of struggle, only one aspect of the working-class movement. From isolated strikes the workers can and must go over, as indeed they are actually doing in all countries, to a struggle of the entire working class for the emancipation of all who labour. When all class-conscious workers become socialists, i.e., when they strive for this emancipation, when they unite throughout the whole country in order to spread socialism among the workers, in order to teach the workers all the means of struggle against their enemies, when they build up a socialist workers’ party that struggles for the emancipation of the people as a whole from the yoke of government and for the emancipation of all working people from the yoke of capital, only then will the working class become an integral part of that great movement of the workers of all countries that unites all workers and raises the red banner inscribed with the words: “Workers of all countries, unite!”

 

Notes:

[1]  Unfortunately, this article was not published for the first time until 1924 in Proletarskaya Revolutsia No. 8-9.

[2]  Immediately after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the ICC drew attention to the perspective of increased difficulties for the class struggle, both as a consequence of the worsening of the decomposition caused by this historic event and also due to the ideological campaigns of the bourgeoisie exploiting the lie identifying the collapse of Stalinism with the collapse of communism. On this subject, read our article 'Collapse of the Eastern Bloc: New difficulties for the proletariat'  (International Review no. 60).

[3]  'The historical roots of the “rupture” in the dynamic of the class struggle since 2022 (Part I)'

[4]  As we pointed out earlier, some characterisations have become redundant. This is true of the way in which the text considers civil servants as servants of the capitalist class, which is no longer applicable to today where civil servants are salaried employees, the majority of whom are exploited by the capitalist class. Only some of the State's civil servants are directly caught up in the defence of capitalist order, particularly within the forces of repression.

Similarly, to designate the class enemy, the text often uses the expression ‘the bosses’ class’. Since the first revolutionary wave, while the working class still has to deal with bosses in many sectors, the fact remains that it is the capitalist state that is the main defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

[5] ‘The historical roots of the “rupture” in the dynamic of the class struggle since 2022 (Part I)’

[6] The full version of Lenin's article “On Strikes” is available online (on marxists.org).

[7]  “We shall deal elsewhere in greater detail with crises in industry and their significance for the workers. Here we would simply point out that business has been very good for Russian industry in recent years, it has been ‘prospering’, but that now (at the end of 1899) there are already clear signs that this ‘prosperity’ will end in a crisis: difficulties in selling goods, bankruptcies of factory owners, the ruin of small business owners, and terrible hardship for the workers (unemployment, reduced wages, etc.)”. (Note by Lenin).

[8]  F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England

[9]  The Prussian Minister of the Interior was von Puttkamer