STRIKE STRATEGY
capitalism, will call the workers out when the latter do not understand the issues at stake or are not prepared to fight to the end for them.
Many examples could be cited of the latter tendency. In France, for example, during the heyday of French Syndicalism (1910–14) several general strikes were called in support of trade demands of individual unions. At first the workers struck fairly well, more as a matter of discipline than anything else, but after a few experiences of this kind they became "strike-tired" and refused to respond to the periodic general strike calls, with disastrous results to the unions. The I, W. W. has made similar mistakes in this country, by calling out the workers in support of demands which they did not understand or feel keenly interested in.
Another left wing mistake is to call indeterminate general strikes when strikes for a specified term would be the proper policy. Typical examples of this error were the Seattle general strike and the national strike to free Tom Mooney. In both these cases highly successful protest or demonstration general strikes for a certain period of time could have been carried through. But the mistake was made of calling the strikes for an indefinite period, with the result that they collapsed, the workers not being interested enough to put up such sustained struggles.
3—Craft and Industrial Strikes.
A major consideration of strike strategy is the broadening out of strikes and trade unions from the traditional craft basis to that of industry. Even as the ideological conceptions of the workers must be raised from the purely economic and opportunistic to the political and revolutionary, so must their organizations and struggles be expanded.
Craft unionism and craft strikes can no longer cope with American capitalism. The workers' fighting front must be broadened out to cover an industry or whole group
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