Jeremy Brecher

Common Preservation in Action

  • Home
  • About
    • Bio
    • Publications
    • Media
  • Writing
  • Projects
    • Common Preservation
      • Human Survival Movement
    • Climate Protection
      • Climate and Labor
      • Climate Insurgency
      • Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual
      • Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs
    • Labor History
      • Strike!
      • Common Sense for Hard Times
      • Building Bridges
    • History from Below: Brass Valley
      • Brass Workers History Project
      • History from Below
    • Public History: Connecticut
      • CT History Radio Programs
      • Documentary Films
      • Roots of Roe
    • Globalization
    • War and Peace
    • Alternatives
    • Stone Soup, Inc.
    • Archival
      • In Memory of Tim Costello
      • In Memory of Ruth and Edward Brecher
      • Global Labor Strategies
      • Commonwork Pamphlets
      • Root & Branch
      • Resources on Death
  • Products
  • Links
  • Contact

  Strike!

Posted by Jamie Cantoni

My first book, Strike!, told the story of “repeated, massive, and sometimes violent revolts by ordinary working people in America.”[1] It focused on the action of rank-and-file workers “thinking, planning, drawing lessons from their own experience, organizing themselves, and taking action in common,” sometimes using “unions and other established organizations” as their means to do so but in other cases having to “organize themselves and act outside institutional channels.”[2]  It used Rosa Luxemburg’s concept of “mass strike” to analyze such peak periods of class conflict in terms of a “mass strike process” marked by three characteristics: “an expanding challenge to established authority in workplaces and beyond; a tendency for workers to take control of their own activity; and a widening solidarity and mutual support among different groups of working people.”[3] This process often emerged in “informal workgroups” that provided the “cell unit” of mass strikes. The book argued that ordinary people can have power because “it is their activity that makes up society.” If they refuse to work, withdraw their cooperation, or take control of their own activity “they have the power to reshape society.” Such power is not “the power of some people to tell others what to do” but the power of “people directing their own activity cooperatively toward common purposes.”[4]

 

Strike! has been repeatedly updated. The 40th anniversary edition published in 2014 included a new final chapter recounting the working class “mini-revolts” of the 21st century, including the “Battle of Seattle”; the “out of the shadows” immigrant rights marches of 2006; the “Wisconsin Uprising”; Occupy Wall Street; the Chicago public education and teachers strike of 2012; and the low-wage workers’ strikes of 2013-14.

In 2012 I wrote a critique of Strike! which found the book marred at points by reductionism but still providing a useful perspective whose flaws were corrected in my later work.[5]

[1] Strike! 2014 edition, 1.

[2] Strike!, 2014 edition, 2-3

[3] Strike!, 2014 edition, 2.

[4] Strike!, 2014 edition, 4.

[5] Save the Humans?, chapters 36-37.

You are here: Home / Projects /   Strike!

ABOUT JEREMY BRECHER

11You and I may not know each other, but I suspect there are some problems that we share -- problems like climate change, war, and injustice. For half a century I have been participating in and writing about social movements that address those problems. The purpose of this website is to share what I've learned. I hope it provides something of use to you in addressing our common problems.

For the record, I am the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements. I have written and/or produced more than twenty video documentaries. I have participated in movements for nuclear disarmament, civil rights, peace in Vietnam, international labor rights, global economic justice, accountability for war crimes, climate protection, and many others.

PROJECTS

Common Preservation

  Human Survival Movement

Climate Protection

  Climate and Labor

  Climate Insurgency

  Against Doom

  Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs

Labor History

  Strike!

  Common Sense for Hard Times

STRIKE! Commentaries on Solidarity and Survival

  • Protecting Workers and Communities–From Below | Part 1: On the Ground
  • New Foundations for the House of Labor?
  • Commentary: The Green New Deal – The Current State of Play
  • Commentary: The Green New Deal in the States – Part 2
  • Commentary: The Green New Deal in the States – Part 1
  • If the Courts Won’t Protect the Climate the People Must
  • The Inflation Reduction Act and the Labor-Climate Movement

EMAIL SIGNUP

Archives

Categories

Copyright © 2023 Jeremy Brecher • Designed by In Touch Solutions • Log in