soreff (02/21/83)
I don't believe that the right to strike should (in theory) be considered a SOCIALIST right. In order for there to a free labor market, it must be possible for employers and employees to terminate jobs freely. If employers can conduct or threaten mass layoffs then employees must be able to quit or threaten to quit en masse. In practice, of course, "authoritarian" "capitalist" countries tend to discourage strikes more forcefully than they discourage mass layoffs. Even in the US, some of methods used to discourage strikes in the past have been quite bloody. -Jeffrey Soreff (hplabsb!soreff)
turner (02/24/83)
#R:hplabsb:-137800:ucbesvax:7100005:000:3219
ucbesvax!turner Feb 23 23:15:00 1983
Jeff,
I agree with this, and I hope that nothing I've said so far makes
you think that the "right" to strike (a little more complicated than
that, I'll allow) is a strictly socialist idea. In fact, there is over-
whelming evidence that unions dominated by Communist and socialist
parties have often played the role of strike-breaker, when this was
the only way they could get their hands on state power.
Solidarity is only the most recent example of this. There were
and are unions in Poland apart from Solidarity, but they were party-
controlled. Italy, France, and Spain would seem to be different, in
that they are not Soviet satellites, and their respective Communist
parties have never held total state power. But in each of these non-
Communist states, the CP holds fantastic power over union activity.
In Italy, the CP formed the "Historic Compromise" coalition with a
center-RIGHT Christion Democrats, with the understanding that it would
take part in a general crackdown on leftist groups and autonomous [i.e.
non-CP-aligned] unions -- under the general smear campaign of "Wipe Out
Terrorism". For a while there [1977-1980], Italy led NATO in the number
of persons held in prison without charge (around 1200).
In France, the CP has a similar degree of union control. In 1968,
during a general strike, the CP had to face the very real possibility
of a revolution in which they were not necessarily guaranteed any
resulting power. That is, workers were striking WITHOUT BEING TOLD.
This scared the French CP so much that they hastily began to look for
solutions to the crisis which would keep the Gaullists in power -- who
were, at least, a known variable.
In Republican Spain (1935-49?), the CP took its orders from Stalin,
who did not want a revolution. He wanted a stable Mediterranean/Atlantic
trading partner for the USSR. The result is quite well documented in
George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia". In Spain today, after Franco, the
party plays a similarly regressive role, but very large (>100,000 people)
wildcat strikes did take place in the mid-to-late seventies, showing
that the party's hold is not so strong.
In all these countries, there are worker's movements which are
quite radical, while at the same time hostile to doctrinaire "party
line" reasoning about what they should or should not be doing. This
makes them incoherent, disorganized, faltering, and sometimes violent.
But so much depends (to my mind) on the ability of workers to think,
work, and act for themselves, that I certainly don't blame them for
wanting to dump the hoary ideologues of old left-wing parties and
the hardened career bureaucrats of unions which don't represent them
anymore.
No ideology can make a particular moral claim on the right to
organize and strike. The appropriateness is entirely situational.
Those who would impose some over-arching theory over this right will
almost always ending up repressing it themselves.
(Why am I flaming at YOU about this? Oh, well: reponses are
welcome in any case.)
Michael Turner