Tag Archives: strike

Jared Marcel Pollen: “How the 1905 Revolution Inspired Rosa Luxemburg’s Vision of Emancipation”

Review of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume IV: Political Writings 2, “On Revolution” (1906–1909), edited by Peter Hudis and Sandra Rein (Verso, 2022)

Billy Anania: “The General Strike in Modern Art”

“A massive strike wave in the 19th and 20th centuries redefined how painters, illustrators, and photographers advocate for the working class.”

CrimethInc: “Columbia: A general strike as insurrection”

“Despite brutal state repression, Colombia’s general strike has continued strong now for 23 days. The revolt has largely been leaderless and solidarity has expanded to include an impressively wide array of Colombian society: Indigenous and Afro-Colombian movements, queer and trans people, workers, students, people whose precarious employment has been lost to the pandemic. As in many other recent uprisings around the world, this one has been driven first and foremost by youth who know that their only hope to have any future at all is to fight for it. Millions are united in their rejection of unlivable conditions and horrific police violence.”

“‘We Can’t Stand It Anymore’: Bolivian Protesters Demand Quick Elections”

“The highway blockades are organized by labor unions alongside rural and indigenous groups allied to the socialist party of ousted former president Evo Morales.  Last week, they launched an open-ended campaign of strikes, marches and barricades in a bid to pressure Bolivia’s unelected interim government to bring forward presidential elections after electoral authorities twice postponed these, citing the coronavirus.”

Kali Akuno: “The Floyd rebellion: pathway to a revolution?”

The Floyd rebellion, if followed by a general strike and People’s Assemblies, can blossom into an instrument of dual power that could radically transform society.”

Kali Akuno: “From Rebellion to Revolution”

“What we have been proposing, and will offer in this process, is that we organize and build towards the execution of a general strike. The beginning of a general strike under current conditions starts with People’s Assemblies in the streets debating and voting on having a general strike. This is how a largely street protest movement can blossom into an instrument of dual power that could radically transform society.”

Paul Le Blanc: “Rosa Luxemburg and the actuality of revolution”

“If we take these ideas of Luxemburg, Lukács, and Gramsci seriously, we must realize that all of them were making reference to a context that no longer exists in 2019.  A hundred years ago there existed a substantial global labor movement, profoundly influenced by the theory of historical materialism, and with a dynamic and influential left wing infused with the sense of the actuality of revolution.  That was obliterated between the First World War and the twilight of the twentieth century. Something like it remains to be rebuilt.”

“Chile under a state of emergency”

‘Every protest against inequality, or the perceived assault on former “equality” and the arrogance and blindness of politicians, is today a potential spark for rebellion and insurrection. Today it is chile, lebanon, hong kong; just yesterday, it was ecuador, haiti, nicaragua, france. And if we push back the calendar to the beginning of this century, then it may rightfully be said, with Alain Badiou, that we live in times of riots.’

Verónica Gago: “Eight Theses on the Feminist Revolution”

“1. The tool of the feminist strike maps new forms of the exploitation of bodies and territories from a perspective that is simultaneously that of visibilization and insubordination. The strike reveals the heterogeneous composition of labor in a feminist register, recognizing tasks that have historically been disregarded, showing its current imbrication with generalized precarization and appropriating a traditional tool of struggle to overflow and reinvent it.”

Livia Gershon: “Did Black Rebellion Win the Civil War?”

“Historians are giving credence to W.E.B. DuBois’s assertion that enslaved workers coordinated a general strike, which helped end the Civil War.”