I’m not saying strikes didn’t bring results, only that today they are less useful than they used to be. (perhaps largely as a result of their past effectiveness)
What will a million peaceful demonstrators achieve? Mostly nothing, or at best the lukewarming of a controversial law. Nowadays demonstrations are means of expression more than action, useful as a morale boost and social gathering for the movement mostly.
We will see. General strike means: no end, no work. The damage to every connected system would be immeasurable, compared to a normal protest. I think we might have different ideas on what a general strike means.
What can be defanged are people’s ability to do a strike. If people do it anyway, the effectiveness is no less today than it was a century ago. The issue is recent laws prohibiting certain types of strike actions and threatening gaol for those who engage in strikes, which can discourage solidarity. It makes striking a higher risk for the worker, but if they do it anyway, there’s no real way to get around the fact that the business needs workers to…well, work.
Agree with all your points, but I think our world being bigger and more interconnected does blunt strikes: not only are corporations bigger and have better access to capital (helping wait out the strike), but also alternatives are more readily available if a worker stops producing.
What I mean is back in the day if the coal mine stopped then all local industry, heating, cooking, etc. would stop, so there would be immense social pressure on ending the strike. But nowadays downstream consumers would just switch to an other source. In fact it is an argument often used: “if the local steel mill workers strike, they’ll just close it down and move production to China, and they’ll be worse off”.
Also police and media handling of strikes is much smarter, the media is more effective at vilifying them and police riot control can effectively disperse them without so much violence that it would only increase anger and make public opinion sympathetic, like would happen a century ago when policemen would open fire instead of using rubber bullets, CS gas, water cannons and such.
I’m not saying strikes didn’t bring results, only that today they are less useful than they used to be. (perhaps largely as a result of their past effectiveness)
What will a million peaceful demonstrators achieve? Mostly nothing, or at best the lukewarming of a controversial law. Nowadays demonstrations are means of expression more than action, useful as a morale boost and social gathering for the movement mostly.
We will see. General strike means: no end, no work. The damage to every connected system would be immeasurable, compared to a normal protest. I think we might have different ideas on what a general strike means.
Strikes per se are not and cannot be defanged.
What can be defanged are people’s ability to do a strike. If people do it anyway, the effectiveness is no less today than it was a century ago. The issue is recent laws prohibiting certain types of strike actions and threatening gaol for those who engage in strikes, which can discourage solidarity. It makes striking a higher risk for the worker, but if they do it anyway, there’s no real way to get around the fact that the business needs workers to…well, work.
Agree with all your points, but I think our world being bigger and more interconnected does blunt strikes: not only are corporations bigger and have better access to capital (helping wait out the strike), but also alternatives are more readily available if a worker stops producing.
What I mean is back in the day if the coal mine stopped then all local industry, heating, cooking, etc. would stop, so there would be immense social pressure on ending the strike. But nowadays downstream consumers would just switch to an other source. In fact it is an argument often used: “if the local steel mill workers strike, they’ll just close it down and move production to China, and they’ll be worse off”.
Also police and media handling of strikes is much smarter, the media is more effective at vilifying them and police riot control can effectively disperse them without so much violence that it would only increase anger and make public opinion sympathetic, like would happen a century ago when policemen would open fire instead of using rubber bullets, CS gas, water cannons and such.