OWING to the many industrial battles fought by Syndicalists to gain an advance of wages or reduction of the working day, it is often forgotten that such temporary gains are not the ultimate aim of Syndicalism. Such fights are but skirmishes or means of training for the Last Battle — the Social General Strike and Workers’ Control of Industry.

The Social General Strike should not be confused with the T.U.C. parody, the British General Strike of 1926. Before that strike, the employers and their government were given nine months notice; plenty of time to organise stocks, blacklegs, transport and special police, then some of the workers were asked to strike. Although a million others joined in, the strike was doomed to failure for it striking by the trade union method, the workers left the industries, mines, power, railways, food, and all the means of life in the hands of the enemy. On the other hand the workers left themselves unarmed and outside of the control of economic means by which society lives.

The Syndicalist General Strike is not a passive affair in which the workers remain at home or at the street corners and public libraries for three, six or nine months, returning defeated by starvation. The Syndicalist method is one by which the workers take possession of the Industry and economic services of society and run these as producers co-operatives, distributing the goods and services to the workers and blockading the ruling class and its lackeys. The Social General Strike has often been called, perhaps more correctly, the General Lock-Out of the employing class, for it is the employer and not the workers who, in this case, is on the wrong side of the factory gate.

Against this action we hear raised the Social Democratic wail “if you do that, the bosses will shoot and baton you.” We reply, if you don’t, they will shoot and baton (and starve) you, but with much greater success, as the history of passive starvation strikes shows. But in order to bash the workers, they must first start knocking about their own property, as they discovered in the 1937 automobile stay-in-strike in the U.S.A.

Further, let us never forget that it is the worker who makes the guns, shells, aeroplanes and tanks; it is the worker who produces the fuel and transports the means by which an army lives. Every soldier requires at least ten industrial workers to maintain his military value.

CAN IT BE DONE?

Still afraid, the political Socialist mumbles his fears. Let not the worker share his timidity. A fistful of experience is worth a bagful of theory, someone says, The thing has been done! In the summer of 1920 the Italian metal workers were presented with a notice of reduction of wages and a lock-out to enforce it. Instead of submitting to the lock-out they took possession of the engineering factories and locked-out the employers. The factories were barricaded and barbwired, even electrified wire being used. Workers’ militia were organised, and the weapons made in the armament works distributed while other factories quickly improvised arms.

Inevitably someone asked “but how are the stay-in strikers to be fed?” Nothing could have been simpler to the Italian workers of 1920. The millers ground the wheat and the peasant syndicates collected food for the strikes, and the food was delivered to the factories by the transport workers syndicate. In the same way the electrical power workers, the railmen and others supplied the other needs of the factories.

Much the same happened in France in 1936. Indeed the strikers there were even more widespread, even the shop girls of the fashion house (considered the most backward of workers) joined in by locking out the customers. And the bloodshed, the vast sea of gore predicted by the Socialist? None! The employing class prefers to shed the blood of defenceless workers.

In Italy, the government, the police, army an Fascisti were powerless. Here is the evidence of a well known bourgeois journalist George Seldes:

“Not a safe was cracked. Not a skull ... Commotion everywhere except in Italy.

“It is true that day by day more and more factories were being occupied by the workers. Soon 500,000 ‘strikers’ were at work building automobiles, steamships, forging tools, manufacturing a thousand useful things, but there was not a shop or factory owner there to boss them or to dictate letters in the vacant offices. Peace reigned.

“It was holiday. Crowds came in automobiles and wagons or walked by the thousands to see the great sight ... Tourists caught in the midst of the revolution, when their first fears were over, and not a rifle-shot disturbed the sunny calm, ventured out, too, and saw nothing unusual.

“For us of the press, it was a terrible disillusion. There was simply no story ... Sometimes a patrol of working-men would go by. The police let them alone even when they bore arms. There was much joyful singing.”

THE “JUNE DAYS” IN FRANCE

In the French stay-in strikes of 1936, we see the same lack of bloodshed. But it was not the peaceful nature of the French capitalist which was the cause of the peace. The French are among the most blood-thirsty and reckless of human life, of any of the capitalist species; the campaigns in the Riff and Syria and the actions of generals like “Butcher” Nivelle in 1917, prove that. Bloodshed was avoided because of the militant mood and the strong strategic position of the French workers.

Leon Blum, Prime Minister in 1936, stated, at the recent Riom trial, that no attempt was made to oust the workers from the factories, because of the danger to the State that such action would have brought. The French Government was helpless.

Not only are governments with their police and conscript armies helpless, but such bodies as the Fascist Militia looked like Boy Scouts in the face of a rising working class. I am aware of the lie spread by Socialists, Socialists of ALL brands, that in 1920 the Italian Fascisti turned the workers out of the factories and then marched on Rome and seized power.

Here are the facts. In the stay-in strike of 1920 Mussolini and his militia were so helpless as to be ignored. In order to gain popularity to be in the swim, he spoke, and, in his paper Popolo d’Italia, wrote in defence of the seizure of the factories. Of course, only in order to later betray them.

Only later when the workers had returned to the owners the possession of the factories, and turned to parliamentary methods, did the inevitable reaction and apathy give to Mussolini his opportunity. The “March on Rome” and his coming to power followed in 1922. In order to maintain their lie, the Socialists (of ALL brands) not only twist the facts and invent actions, but jump history a couple of years.

In France much the same happened. There the workers, not fully class-conscious, had returned to power a “People’s Front” government, backed by a majority of Liberal, Socialist, and Communist M.P.s. The “People’s Front” immediately (in the name of Anti-fascism, as the Italian reaction did in the name of Fascism) began the re-conquest of all the gains of the strikes, until all were gone.

THE BALANCE SHEET

What successes and failures have we to record of these two great strikes?

In Italy, the metal-workers prevented a wage reduction, gained a wage increase and many lesser gains.

In France, the workers gained a wage increase, and 40 hour week, treble pay for overtime and holidays with pay.

In both cases these advantages were later lost because the workers, instead of continuing to look only to their own strength, looked to politicians to supplement their victory.

But, also, in both cases defeat came because the strikers returned to the employers the possession of industry in return for such concessions as wage increases. The propaganda of the Syndicalist minority had been only partly successful.

It is not the Syndicalist aim to return to the employing-class the means of production and distribution, but to retain them in the hands of the workers. Operating them by the principle of Workers’ Control of Industry. Distributing utilities to the workers according to their needs; abolishing the wages system. In short — our aim is the General Lock-Out of the Boss; the Expropriation of the Expropriators.