The General Strike: A Weapon of Class War

Dear Scoialist Party (UK)Reply to yours on  the  General Strike  and Workers Councils (Apr / May 2016  Soc. Standard Mags.) , First, Your article on the General  Strike weapon  (May Pg. 10-11)whilst informative and  useful  is quite   faulty on a few key points .First, you grossly  underestimate, and demean  the importance of workers class  consciousness  growing  which set the basis of the workers advances from mere legal /truncated trade/craft  union actions  . General strikes tend to  move  affected  parts of the class and allies to more militant , anti-capitalist wider fightback and their own demands  and build  socialist clarity ..  Second , you contradict , by your own emphasis on narrow  parliamentary activities  negating that many advances to General Strikes also  incorporate political trends and tendencies, socialists work,  gettting a favorable and influencial hearing from masses of active / combined workers.The workers in  combined actions , working, co-operating, in  spreading support brings more workerst o see in reality the latent power of their own class unleashed from capitalisms legalist jails & electoral illusions, and raising the needed spirit of organizing as a wider , united class. against waged slavery and capitals  wider hegemony over society . . . Third, you try to separate, almost  with a Chinese wall almost the whole  economic struggle from the political conflict with  capitalist rule. In fact at whatever the level of struggle , class conflict needs to raise BOTH  fronts of battle to the the fore, in  the terrain of the worker lives for them  to strengthen their educating and organizing as a class against the bosses rule economically and thru the the capitalist state machine.monopoly  of controls. The is no guarantee of immediate advance to revolution and workers taking the power. But the training of industrial and  bonifide socialistic political education  and action  raises the workers to be serious challengers to the rule of the bosses dominance, exploitation  robbery, racism and wars.. In your snipes on the *Soviets*, (Apr, Reveiw, pg 20),  the  workers  councils advanced  struggles , your prejudice against mass combined industrial political tactics leads you to distrort the history of the workers councils risings.. Your  asserting that workers councils just arise 'spontaneously ' and in less developed countries  is flat out wrong ! The workers councils did not just step onto history in 1905 and 1917 in Russia , but also in rebellion to the imperialist World War 1 in advanced industrial nations as  Germany , Austria and  Italy , etc and played a huge role in forcing the bourgeois rulers  to halt the carnage of WW1  and both the workers, as large sections of the armed forces  in councils  rebelled  against the continuing barbarism.and after. That their efforts went furthest in Russia  but could not advance to full socialism is hardly the western  workers/farmers  fault,  Given the amount of repression , counter revolution, isolation , capitalist intervention and blockades & state capitalist controls resulted  in the  defeat  of the huge revolutionary waves by the early 20s.. In Germany , Austria, Hungary , Italy , etc  the workers councils had not he time to  deepen political understanding assisted  by their new Marxist  revolutionary parties like the experienced  Bolsheviks, as had happened in Russia, The Western European  workers councils  , soldiers/sailors and workers included strong influences of reformists , careerists and fakers in addition to harmful  influences of nationalist  reaction too., Thus these councils occupations , mass actions,  General strikes   and near civil war not achieve the tactical and strategic clarity they  had in Russia, at least  for a few years . Also as a result of illusions in bosses  'democracy' slick parliamentary facades, followed by  political division , repression  , and  isolation , their diffuse  attempts to establish workers rule were  defeated bythe ruling  exploiter classes.  Finally, is not at least a tad of wooden and ossifed thinking for you to say that the workers councils, (albeit in different forms & experiences ) cannot again emergein countries like the UK or the USA, etc.,   especially in periods of capitals  crises/plunder  that will probably be even deeper, bloodier , more global in scope ?

"Trust and ye shall be betrayed.” After all the lessons of the past the same “leaders" were entrusted with power, and acted along the same lines as before. Which was to be expected. The workers have still a fair road to travel before they will get rid of the superstition of "Leadership" or the dope of "good" and "bad" leaders. But the splendid solidarity of the rank and file, along with their steady refusal to follow the maniacs who advise the formation of "Workers' Defence Corps" and other methods of crude force, are healthy signs of the beginnings of an understanding of their slave position that forms the first step in the work of establishing Socialism.