Following the public meeting on 14 December (see message du 21 décembre), nous nous interrogeons aujourd'hui sur la signification du concept de Grève générale .
Cela fait maintenant quelques années (1995, mais surtout 2003) que l'idée de grève générale est sur toutes les lèvres, dans toutes les têtes. Cette idée semble aujourd'hui presque naturelle : une grève générale serait l'expression d'un moment fort venant au bout d'un processus de luttes pour faire aboutir des revendications...
On a entendu parler de Grève générale récemment en Grèce, en Espagne, etc. Les média aiment bien utiliser le mot... pour l'étranger. Cela permet de le banaliser. Ce à quoi we have seen is nothing more than "action days" fashionable hexagonal, more massive, given the capital intensity of attacks against those countries.
And if the general strike was something else ... something larger ...
We must return to the genesis of the idea. And for that, talk about the history of the labor movement, a little forgotten. Who knows Emile Pouget, Fernand Pelloutier Victor Griffuelhes? Yet these are among the founders of the CGT ... and CGT was founded on the idea of General Strike.
(Obviously, the CGT was careful today to refer these ancestors then ... Yet to whom could she turn? Jouhaux? But it was he who created CGT-FO ... The CGT would she born with Benedict Frachon (forgotten too ...) The CGT would it been at all times a central union stalin ... er ... Communist? Well no, the revolutionary syndicalist CGT was born! Things were a little more complex, certainly, and reformist currents were important, but even the Reformers, the CGT was fighting "for the abolition of employer and worker" ... A whole era ... abolished in 2000 by a Congress of the CGT, erasing the Charter of Amiens in its statutes. This small cross-road lights just the positions of the CGT today ...)
The General Strike in the spirit of revolutionary syndicalists, was a continuation of the idea of the "strike of crossed arms" which runs from the Chartists English, in the fighting of 1831-32 Canuts Lyon, through the First International, ended in the first period CGT. They believe that workers should guard against two dangers: electoral politics (which is to entrust its class interests of the bourgeoisie), and partial strikes (local) which can only turn to the ultimate benefit of employers ( which will take sooner or later the accrued benefits). It seems strange today: CGT refuted the claims for increased purchasing power: it was just the carrot that is put in front of the donkey to move forward, carrot quickly eaten by the increase prices. Were they really wrong?
For the CGT, the General Strike was ... revolution. Not the palace revolution (or other winter season ...), but the Revolution in that the labor movement expropriated owners, and was organizing itself to work the machine produces its own use . The general strike, it was not something else that self-management! And self-management, is not another name for the revolution?
And how that would happen? These militants were not utopian. They did not think that the general strike could declare overnight, any more than Bakunin, earlier (unlike Engels sarcasm). For this he had to organize the productive forces, apart from the bourgeoisie, far from it, to be ready one day to spend with her. The CGT does not think like a "social partner", but as an opponent of both the bourgeoisie and its iron hand: the state. Hence a political union based on anti-parliamentarism, anti-statism (anti-patriotism, anti-militarism). You must read the texts of the union time to realize the violence of the propaganda on these topics there. For
Pelloutier, to reach the general strike, it was necessary for workers to acquire "the science of their distress," to be aware of their status in the economic process, to transform it. No general strike of workers without education, not education "intellectual", but practical, popular education. The Labour Exchanges were to have this feature : Putting in masses of workers ability to do the "big bang", not necessarily a "big night", but over time (although Pouget Pelloutier and others did not ignore the violence probably necessary at one time or another: the haves do not like being robbed!)
The general strike was therefore a horizon more than a slogan on time. Georges Sorel was what called a "founding myth" of the labor movement, ie a fund "cultural", without which the proletarian movement could not exist as such. In this he was opposed to the deterministic view of Marx : The working class was not, in itself, and inevitably, the gravedigger of capitalism. It was not enough to wait for the final crisis, he was working there.
It is understandable that all forces allied to the bourgeoisie, or wishing to replace the user to turn their domination over the workers, did not see the idea of a general strike in the better eye. The reformist socialists, communists authoritarian, to mention only those self-proclaimed "representatives" of the working class, had no words strong enough to defuse the myth that ultimately only listed this beautiful Expression of the First International : "L'Émancipation des travailleurs sera l'œuvre des travailleurs eux-mêmes."
On trouva le moyen — trouble — d'éliminer cette équipe fondatrice de la CGT : Pelloutier était mort en 1901 ; Griffuelhes démissionna sur des calomnies, Pouget, écœuré, fit de même. Nous étions en 1909. La CGT des origines, syndicaliste révolutionnaire, avait vécu. Léon Jouhaux prit les rênes de la CGT, la vendit à la bourgeoisie, et, malgré le combat acharné des Merrheim, des Pierre Monatte, envoya la classe ouvrière, sous prétexte d'Union sacrée, se faire étriper dans les tranchées en 1914.
Et bien, aujourd'hui to hear about General strike indiscriminately, it begs the question: What is meant by that?
For us, it is clear: we fit the line of Pouget, of Griffuelhes, the Pelloutier. The general strike is the self-management is expropriating the Revolution.
It is prepared when?
And how?
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To go further:
* General Confederation of Labour (Commission of propaganda of the general strike), "The revolutionary general strike", journal Agone, 33
* Emile Pouget
The genesis of the idea of a general strike
http://www.pelloutier.net/dossiers/dossiers.php?id_dossier=111&idparent=43
* anarchie23:
The General Strike
http://anarchie23.centerblog.net/6582848-La-Greve-Generale
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