General Strike
A general strike is a strike action by an entire labour force in a country or region. In the late 19th century, the growing international labour movements advocated general strikes for industrial or political purposes.
General strikes are effective because of the wide-reaching disruption they cause. Few official services continue to run in a general strike because other workers will often be pressured by strikers and labour organisations to join the strike.
A large-scale strike like a general strike requires a high level of labour organisation. Often a galvanising motive like widespread economic hardship or social unrest is necessary to provoke one.
Many leftist and socialist movements have hoped to mount a "peaceful revolution" in a country by organizing enough strikers to completely paralyze it. With the state and corporate apparatus thus crippled, the workers would be able to re-organize society along radically different lines. This philosophy was favored by the anarcho-syndicalist labor organization Industrial Workers of the World, especially in the early twentieth-century.
Chronological list of general strikes
- Seattle general strike of 1919
- Winnipeg general strike of 1919
- UK general strike of 1926
- San Francisco general strike of 1934
- Italian general strike of 2002
- Spanish general strike of 2002
See also: direct action
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