originally published 23 December 2024 on Fire with Fire, accessible here: https://firewithfire.blog/2024/12/23/mini-review-jeremy-brechers-strike/
Of all the sweeping US labor histories out there, Jeremy Brecher’s Strike! is the best one I’ve read. It balances dramatic story-telling with political analysis in exactly the right proportion. It carries you through all of the major periods of mass strikes, including the late 19th century insurrectionary strikes, the post-World War I and II labor uprisings, the 1930s general strikes and sit-down strikes, and the wildcats of the 1960s and 70s. In between these eruptions he teases out the longer trends that tie this history together.
Also unique for a labor book of this scope, Brecher tells the story more from the vantage point of the rank-and-file. The decisions and actions of union leaders are noted where they are important, but Brecher avoids the lionization of union officials that pollutes so much otherwise decent labor history. He repeatedly elevates the voices of the rank-and-file struggling without or even against their formal leaders. This is not only a political choice but is also good and accurate historiography, as unions in the US have always been riven with these tensions and divisions which more often than not gets glossed over.
Brecher maintains a skepticism towards mainstream unionism that is more than justified by the episodes he chronicles. To give a couple of indicative excerpts:
“The growth of a unionism based on collective bargaining contracts tended to counteract rank-and-file solidarity and made workers think of their struggle in terms of their own industry or workplace alone, rather than in terms of their class as a whole. Further, the contracts themselves operated as a powerful barrier to the tendency of strikes to spread to wider and wider groups. This contrasts markedly with such nineteenth century labor organizations as the Knights of Labor and the American Railway Union, which considered sympathetic strikes and labor solidarity among their basic principles.”
And later:
“Of course, not all strikes challenge the organization of corporate power. Classic trade union bargaining strikes take existing power relations as given and play only on the marginal disadvantage a strike causes the employer in the market place. It is precisely to the extent strike actions go beyond this framework that they challenge the existing organization of power.”
The book does have some shortcomings. While the chapters covering US labor history from 1877 – 1950 are superb, the strength of the storytelling and analysis falls off as the strength of unions in the US declines, especially from the 1970s onward. While the chapters covering up to 1970 were published in the first edition of the book in 1972 (available for free download here), later chapters were added for later editions. Brecher’s radical tone softens significantly as the later chapters proceed. At one point, he notes how in the context of declining union density in the early 21st century, “conflict between union leadership and their rank and file, while not eliminated, became a less significant aspect of worker activity.” That’s certainly not my experience in one of the largest unions in the country, nor does it fit my perception of the other main segments of the labor movement today. Rather, I think Brecher’s earlier trenchant analysis of mainstream unionism, such as is contained in the quotes above but which disappears in the later chapters, apply at least as well to contemporary conditions.
In the last few chapters he focuses less on workplace struggles themselves, seemingly because there aren’t enough good ones, and rather narrates more workplace-adjacent struggles, like the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall St. As interesting as those movements are, they seem out of place given the content, tone, and force of the history told before.
One of the few major labor movements he does cover from the last 30 years are the public education strikes of the 2010s, starting with Chicago in 2012 and moving through the state-wide strikes in 2018. But if the book has one inexcusable error it is the total ellipse of public sector strikes, and educator strikes in particular, from the 1960s and 1970s, which dwarfed what happened in the 2010s. That history is less well-known than the private sector strikes of the mid-20th century, but plenty of scholars have worked on it.
Minor complaints aside, the 50th anniversary edition published in 2020 gives today’s unionists an important window into the mass strikes of the past. As the working class has again tested its capacity for larger strikes in recent years (the educator strikes, the 2023 UAW strike, etc…), it remains to be seen whether we can go even further or if capital will maintain its dominance. One of Brecher’s themes is that class consciousness is generated not so much by labor leaders. Rather, the nature of class relations is learned through, on the one hand, the workplace relationships between fellow workers and, on the other, by the condescending and domineering posture of the bosses. With talk of a 2028 general strike echoing around the halls of labor today, this book is the best one we can recommend to fellow workers about what we can do when we have the determination, courage, and solidarity to fight.
Brecher quotes a report on the conditions that led to the momentous 1919 steel strike, which could also apply to the possibilities of the next few years: “Strike conditions are conditions of the mind.”