Below is an excerpt from a pamphlet called "The General Strike" by revolutionary unionist and IWW member Ralph Chaplin. Sadly, social/political/economic conditions are strikingly similar in the 2010s as to how they were in the 1930s, when Chaplin wrote this. To read the whole pamphlet, please see this link: [
link to www.iww.org]
from "The General Strike":
"Every intelligent person now realizes that there is something radically wrong with the social system under
which we are living. Everyone, excepting the beneficiaries of this system, agrees that something ought to be done about it. The trouble is that people at present seem unable to agree on any common program of action. Some accept their unhappy lot with a patience and fortitude worthy of a better cause, others theorize ineffectually and do little, while still others complain bitterly and strike out blindly. Nearly everyone rushes hither and thither seeking escape but without having any clear-cut objective in view. Considering the control of the press and all media of misinformation and propaganda by the present ruling class this situation is not to be wondered at.
Let us examine briefly the things people in general are saying and doing about the desperate situation now
confronting society: One group says: "Let us be patient until pressure of public opinion brings about a change or at least a betterment of conditions." Another group says: "As long as we have the ballot let us use political action to bring about whatever changes are necessary." Still another group states: "We cannot wait any longer. Only a violent upheaval . . . armed insurrection!"
These groups, regardless of their differences of opinion, are composed of men and women who have given some thought and study to the subject. They deserve credit for trying to find a solution for the baffling problem confronting them. No matter how mistaken they may be their efforts are at least directed toward making the world a fit place to live in. Unfortunately a majority of the population have not gone this far. The majority still lives and suffers in a condition of unthinking bewilderment. They simply do not know what it is all about. Just as they have done, for ages past, they are content to work like robots or starve like dumb beasts without daring to organize to put a stop to the system that is crushing them. And, what is worse they are actually misled into supporting this system.
But there is still another and far more significant group. This group represents the viewpoint of the awakened and class-conscious working class. Its opposition to the present order is unalterable and its methods and objective distinctly those of the world's revolutionary proletariat. This group takes the position that, in the face of the present disintegration of the profit or wage system, public opinion, political action and armed insurrection are too unwieldy, too uncertain and too unscientific to serve in so great an emergency. This group advocates a General Strike of the world's army of production and its managerial staff as the means of putting an end to capitalism, and inaugurating in its place an era of scientific industrialism and industrial democracy.
The argument for the General Strike is based on the persistent and very logical working class conviction
that the ruling class will refuse to permit itself to be dispossessed by any power weaker than its own and that public opinion, political action and insurrection therefore will not be permitted to be developed or used to any appreciable extent. It is, further, based on the firm belief that Labor alone can save the world from chaos during and following the period of transition. As long as the production of goods under any system depends on the disciplined solidarity of the producing class it is evident that this solidarity alone is capable of stopping the operations of the old order or of starting and continuing those of the new. [...]
The General Strike, compared with the transient ameliorative slogans and platforms of political parties is
as firm and unshakable as the Rocky Mountains. It is as basic as the instinct to live and as fundamental as
industry. All the panaceas and nostrums of the politician and labor union reformer sound shallow and meaningless when considered side by side with industrial action of such magnitude and possibilities."
United States
