this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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We need Unions everywhere, how does one unionize with the government dead set against it, and the internet locked down? I think a general strike. We should start some general strikes worldwide, the more they get suppressed, the more they could spread, and together, the entire working world, demand concessions from the ruling classes, because they've arrogantly taken more and more from us, as if everything they have isn't taken from us. As if there is nothing we can do about it because they control armies of goons that will hurt anyone they tell them to.
But not if we all just stop working. It's our only real play at this point.
A general strike is part of the end goal of organizing. Not a means how to get people organized.
That's like wanting the grown-up version of your child to ask for parenting advice.
Strikes are the only tool available to the put upon workers of the world in repressive one party states. In 1905 in Tsarist Russia, there was no way to effect anything most often, than not showing up for work collectively. For every group of picketers or protesters they put the cossacks on, the strike would spread to new groups, acheiving a general strike of a sort, and in the end wringing major concessions from the tsar, rendering it more of a constitutional monarchy as their western counterparts had long achieved more controls on the monarchy with a sort of parliment curtailing behavior and ok-ing spending.
Obviously the first world war put the kaibosh on all of that, with their 5 million casualties and starvation and revolution, but there is a lesson to be learned there anyway, in a brutally repressive one party state, with an unquestioned ruler able to order death to any for any reason at any moment, only strikes were able to achieve any moderation of their behavior.
Your argument here is ignorant of both history and their situation.
Here's the most important word of your comment:
How are you going to organize a general strike if the people aren't organized? You act as if these strikes come up naturally, like mushrooms. Meanwhile, you're ignoring endless hours of face-to-face organizing that happened before.
Does the vanguard party declare a "general strike"? /s
Stop trying to nitpick, you aren't very good at it, and have nothing here. This is ad hoc anyway, what's your real reason for this?
Because "let's do a general strike!" Is waaaay too abstract for agitation. It's clicktivism, at best.
In the time you explained how a general strike would save us all, you could have organized with your co-workers (agitating them in the process).
I never said that strikes aren't the sharpest tool for the proletariat. But strikes come from real-world organizing. Not annoying each other to death on the fediverse.
You are the one misunderstanding what I'm saying to make me look like an asshole here.
So then, try again: What exactly is it that you're trying to suggest?
Wildcat strikes, wildcat unions, in areas where they can't form unions officially. Everyone just stay home, and the more they force people back to work the more the strikes can spread.
What else would you do in China? I don't see any other tools available to them.
It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg-problem. People don't do wildcat strikes (based, btw.) without them thinking that they can pull it off. You need organizing for that.
I don't know enough about China to have a solution. I just mistook you for some "general strike romanticist".
Yeah well there are no great options after you get to the point of a one party state having total surveillance and control over speech.
But their protests to end the zero covid policy sure got the government to backtrack quickly, some of those turned violent too, and spread to the Han Chinese, the ruling party's faction of citizenry. The majority too I believe like white protestants here.
But I do think general strikes could spread internationally and we could deliver demands and force concessions, a New Magna Carta. So yes I guess I am sort of a dreamer in that regard. I want to re-establish the Tribunate in fact, in the west.
In 500 BC, and then 350 BC the Roman Plebiscite went on general strikes until their demands were met. Including a written set of laws, before the patricians were just making shit up as they went. But mainly establishing the Tribunate, where the tribes would get a tribune that had veto power over the senate. He could offer sanctuary to those wanted, and so forth. Elected to one year positions usually. The second general strike in 350 AD expanded the tribunate and it's powers. Not to be confused with military tribunes these are People's Tribunes.
Sorry, youlost me at ancient rome. 😅
Ahh, I am shocked a user with the screen name of prunebutt isn't more enthusiastic about discussing the history of the labor movement.
I'm all for discussing the labour movement. I'm just not the right type of neurodivergent to be too interested in events that far back.
Now, if you produced a podcast on it, on the other hand...