I was debating with someone and they brought this up.
In capitalism if all the workers in a company decide to stop working, the company can die but others will take its place. In communism, a sector can't fail or everyone starves, so if workers go on strike, the government must agree with their demands, even I unreasonable. How can this be avoided?
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What reason would there be for workers to strike under full-communism?
Under communism, the workers should own and control the means of production, so it should never come to a strike. If they're simply striking to be disruptive, or leverage some key part of the economy to gain special privileges, the strike is simply broken. If they're striking because they feel that's the only way to get reasonable demands met, something has gone horribly wrong.
I don't see a problem with that
Under genuine socialism there shouldn’t be any strikes, since industry would be directly under their control. However if there are strikes, it means one of two things (or even both at the same time): either external/reactionary elements are trying to sabotage socialism, or the worker’s state and/or industry aren’t genuinely under worker control but are bureaucratized or controlled by revisionists. Perhaps most disturbingly, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and can both be true simultaneously. Perhaps the greatest question of socialism in practice is how to distinguish between unrest that is the result of failures of the worker’s state and unrest that’s the result of reaction/subversion.
Easy. If there is no ruling class, the strikes are reaction. If theres a ruling class, and strikes threaten them, then the strikes are reaction.
Groups can refuse to work, but they must allow others to get in and are not allowed to sabotage the means of production.
Except in 20th century socialism there was a ruling class, which insisted that there was no ruling class apart from the workers. No ruling class will ever admit to being the ruling class, aside from maybe aristocrats.
The Soviet Union clearly did with all the strike breaking that went on
see pic related
If workers have so little recourse that striking would ever happen then whatever system it is would be so far removed from communism that to call it communism would be for the word to mean nothing whatsoever.
Exactly. So the strikes were reactionary. So the ruling class put them down.
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If the demands are reasonable then it should be easy to come to a concession. If the demands are unreasonable, and the sector failing puts everybody in jeopardy, then it will be less about the government as an entity breaking the strike and more about every other sector that also has a say in the government, and who also has a vested interest in not starving, breaking the strike out of their own self-interest. The dynamic of people exercising their own will and acting together in their collective material interest doesn't disappear in socialism, demand and pressure still exist. Industry doesn't exist in a vacuum, especially in socialism. Just like society both sets and demands a certain social standard be kept (We agree cannibalism, necrophilia, indecent behavior, etc. should be illegal), society as a whole can also demand, as a reality of power and not ideal circumstances, that industries and necessary work be kept operational to prevent collective starvation or a significant reduction in quality of life. Sometimes difficult decisions must be made and made without consensus, especially in war time, but the decision to not starve is generally one shared by many. Pressure and power does not disappear in socialism.
The only reasons to strike in communism would be related to working conditions or counterrevolution. Since everyone is paid the same or similar wages, and gets the same healthcare and benefits, those are off the bargaining table. If it's working conditions, the DOTP will quickly fix it, probably even before the strike begins. So in many cases, a strike would be genuinely counterrevolutionary.
That's… not how socialism works user.
Many. Maybe it's the best way to bring government attention to a social problem, or ask for better working conditions, Be aware that work conditions is on a line of increase of quality that basically have no roof. Everyone in every job will always complain about working conditions, from the guy who is working in a metal industry under health danger, to the writting designer that works on a video game studio that looks like an adult day care 3 hours a day 5 days a week. or maybe even as means to show discontent with their administrators.
Means of production under the control of the workers in socialism is nothing but a judicial fiction. The reality is that it belongs to the government and is being directly administrated by representatives of the state, that regulates work hours, functions, shifts, management, and if it isn't a competence of people in higher positions then him, the compensation. The workers are still under the orders of this administration representative, if they weren't mostly would just show up once at every two weeks, manufacture something just for his family group, and then leave straight away.
To the point of view of the worker, he is under the commands of some authority, and under this authority there will ALWAYS be something to complain about. Work hours, shifts, compensation that doesn't equal to the ammount of effort, and so on.
Now we are getting somewhere! Hopefully the current industry owners listen to these great ideas!
Best archived thread about strikes in the DotP
8ch.net
Again, socialism doesn't exist in a vacuum. To strike with unreasonable demands would mean having to contend with the pressure put upon you by the rest of society who requires you to do it for their OWN well-being. The workers in one industry aren't the only workers in society. When production is put into the hands of the workers, it also means the ability enact standards and enforce rules which ensure a certain level of production is kept for the common benefit, in the same way we enact standards now for social behavior which are enforced. In this way a sort of "socialist social contract" is formed to ensure a necessary production, not by ideal but by as a reality of conditions.
Wew
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The government will be under control of the masses and there would most likely be some sort of labor council that is by extension controlled the masses it would probably fall under their digression. The dispute can be analyzed and a decision made on whether to break the strike, meet the demands, compromise etc. We can't pretend there won't be labor disputes so we have to find ways allowing society to mmanage itself and its affairs and that includes worker strikes.
This. If you even believe that there's such a thins as roof in quality of life, how can you even be a red?
No, seriously: during Marx's time plenty of people thought things were great already. It might sound like nonsense to us now, but you really think our currently dreaded 8h a day was a stupid utopia for people that worked 12h a day? For those people it was either that or starving.
If your communist gov has to deal with a strike your gov ought to get fucked.
People here are speaking nonsense about crushing strikes as if all it would take for a "reactionary" strike is one porky on a hardhat handing a bag with a dollar sign in it.
Strikes demand thousands, if not millions of people, and they simply do not occur unless the workers can be convinced that their situation can be improved. For fucks sake, the reason most workers don't strike now a days is that most people that have stable jobs are already in a far better situation than most people and are convinced that what they have is as good as it is gonna get.
There were a few situations of counter-revolutionary strikes? Kinda. There was those trucker strikes against Allende. But those were very few trucks in important areas of the road in collusion with the press. It's not fucking ten people on a factory like some dumb asses here are suggesting. Also: those truckers were not wrong. Allende's projects of nationalization and social democracy did not represent the needs of these workers that relied on the private sector, and Allende not only didn't offer them anything in return, but decided to use some scifi computer bullshit (synco, I belive) to get some gov. trucks to contort the strike, feeding the "population"(let us not pretend that a considerable part of it went to supermarkets) while being completely indifferent to them.
Simply put: that trucker's strike was Allende's government's fault as much as it was it's opposition.
I do not understand how you all manage to tie yourselves into ENDLESS knots about things like this! "Things like this", of course, being questions/ideas that are incredibly, almost infinitely open ended.
I mean, seriously, the question is so just… incredibly loaded from the start.
That is not what happens. Does anyone even have a single example of workers striking to the point that their company is destroyed? Wherein they all stop working to the point where they lose their livelihoods? They exhaust ALL of the companies resources to such a degree that it can no longer function? This doesnt happen, and for the ~three times it might have "happened", those are hardly representative of Capitalism functioning as a whole.
"A sector cant fail or everyone starves"…. You guys read this, went to the comment box and thought "This is a reasonable premise to grapple with". Amazing.
Are you aware of how much labor goes into a whole sector of production? Especially agriculture? You are literally talking about hundreds of millions of people. You are talking about millions of people going on strike. When have millions of people gone on strike to such a degree that they STARVED. Do you know how people starve? It takes, at the barest minimum, a week or two. You would have to just keel over and die as a society to achieve a strike like this! No one could stand up and say "I wont starve", because that would literally be enough to undo the entire death-strike you have here. Not to mentiom that a real, societal "deathstrike" would take months on end instead of weeks. Literal mo ths of people deciding "I am going to die for better….".
And that brings me to my next point, what could POSSIBLY be SO terrible as to cause millions of people to decide to stop working in a way that will kill themselves, BUT is also such a nonissue that they will not revolt!?
Seriously, in what situation does an ENTIRE INDUSTRY go on strike to the point of death?!
Furthermore,
When, in the entirety of history, has an entire industry brought itself to its knees in the pursuit of unreasonable demands? The kind of mass insanity that would require would be absolutely apocalyptic.
You are seriously suggesting that an issue in Communist society could be an apocalyptic, industry killing, mass starvation strike for unreasonable demands? I mean…. wow… you guys have really benefited from reading. The average person would never even think to say something so stupid!
And then, hilariously
Yes, fellow leftists, how can an apocalyptic, societal hunger strike be avoided?
This question is so detached from reality it is insane. You guys literally live in a Capitalist society. You KNOW people do not strike for no reason, and you know that people really dont strike even when thay have good reasons to. I want to go on but I think everything has been said. These questioms are out of line with reality, and you are being a humungous retard if you are arguing with somebody over these ridiculous premises. Here, I have a new thread idea. "What if, like, all the proletariat decided to rape their children. You wouldnt want a dictatorship of the proletariat now, would you?"
"Well, simply put, the proletariat are the revolutionary class so yeah, socialists should advocate for pedophilia"
"Actually, we should critically ally with the bourgeoisie to protect our children"
Stop it. Quit being stupid, quit trying to intelligently analyze questions with no basis in reality.
Here is, by the way, the only reasonable response if the question had been reasonable.
This is basically impossible to know, as there are far too many variables to answer this. It depend on what they are striking for, the conditioms of the Communist society, and so on. It is quite obviously an incredibly broad topic, and there are so many ways/reasons a strike could occur, and the response would really have to be tailor made for every time it happened.
Basically, this question is just asking for imaginary "'But what if' navelgazing". As Communists, it is not our purpose to endlessly gaze into our own minds to divine answers to imaginary problems. It is our purpose to bring about the end of Capitalism, and its replacement with Communism.
Plus, you look like a total fucking ape when you argue about imgainary strikes and imaginary solutions
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That's exactly an argument in favor of communism. When workers decide to strike there's usually a valid reason for it. To believe that workers constantly organize strikes for no rational reason at all is a typical liberal idiocy based on total lack of respect for the working class.
Also, as others have pointed out, the conditions that drive workers to strike typically only occur when a sector is liberalized/privatized
Fighting against a worker's state and a bourgeois state are two very different things.
I'm not so sure about that. There was certainly no liberalization going on in the GDR in 1953 and yet there were still massive strikes that required Soviet intervention to repress. There are many legitimate reasons why worker's would strike under socialism, especially if the government is undemocratic like in ML states. The real trouble is weeding out genuine concerns and legitimate worker action from reactionary subversion.
Here's my answer. Can you tell me what you think of it? It involves a lot of conclusions I came to myself.
The management of enterprises under socialism must always belong to the people that operate them.
For this reason, there are two kinds of strikes that may occur. Either some faction within an enterprise puts down work because they disagree with the policy of this enterprise as determined by its majority, or an entire enterprise puts down work out of disagreement with the collectively determined plan.
Both are entirely legitimate, and further, form the very basis of the socialist system.
Agreement and refusal to work for another person is the mechanism by which the socialist subject exerts his political and economic power. His voice in worker democracy, and thus the entire socialist political order, must be understood as secondary to this first right. The right to your self and your labor.
Capitalism artificially parcels up the world, and instead of giving the right of dominion over things to those who work and live with them, they abstract from the immediacy of property (as that which is proper to a person) and turn it into an ossified legal institution (as that which a person has a historic claim to).
Socialism reverses this and gives the ultimate right instead to the person himself. From this moment, the only economic power one person holds over another is the value of his living contribution in labor. He cannot withhold goods from another that he doesn't personally use. These goods are always held in common by the local community. His only power his his ability to establish and break relations of mutual aid.
By choosing to break such relations, he only exercises his power over society, and this is normal and just. In order to promote its own democratic basis, socialist society must provide services to its population in order to make such actions bearable.
When a strike emerges, however, this is to the detriment of the whole of society. When workers put down their work this means productive capacity is lost, and that the usual channels of economic activity need to be circumvented.
A good planning mechanism must seek to prevent such occasions, without in any way making life difficult for potential strikers. It produces plans that all participants agree on voluntarily.
Worker democracy is defined as that system which workers establish in order to sublate the pushing and pulling of economic boycotts. It gives a means for productive members of society (and those unproductive members whose opinions they value, such as the elderly or disabled) to engage in their disputes without herein hindering the harmonious functioning of society. It is what you get when the violence of the Hobbesian state of nature is understood to be silly, and replaced with a civil discourse that performs the same function.
Retarded children like this are the reason why everytime I like everytime socialism takes two steps forward with people, it then go two steps backwards
Dunno about the thread question but workers did have comparatively massive power over their "administrators" in the USSR, due to all of the legislation in place enforcing wage standards, vacations, various rights, no-fire policy etc.
I mean to rephrase this: how could industrial action work in a workers' cooperative? Should jointly-owned enterprises even be unionised?
Kek
That's where you are wrong kiddo
If workers can't democratically control their workplace then it's not communism
can't have use-value production without democracy faggot.
Who would they be striking against? In communism, they would be the bosses. Before that is fully implemented, socialism as a transitory state of economy is expected to be rougher and less efficient.
Sounds fine
Strikes are only necessary when the workplace is not democratically organized, or the state is insufficiently democratic for workers to have their voices heard if its a state problem rather than a workplace problem. Additionally, I don't know why you think that communism wouldn't produce any surplus. It wouldn't produce an insanely reckless amount of surplus for profit, but no surplus at all anywhere would be extremely stupid even leveraging today's computer systems to perfectly calculate what is needed.
Basically, if there's strikes in the first place, what you have might not be capitalism, but I wouldn't call it any variation of socialism either. And if there's a strike that is so severe that it causes famines or other systemic breakdowns, you 100% have some kind of bizarre command economy run by a moron and not socialism
It's called taking a break.
But that's wrong, retard. People have different opinions, it happens. And if there is a conflict between some local unit and the state, how could you magically know that it is always the state that must be in the wrong. Different local units can have conflicting opinions about what they should obtain in terms of resources, some big evil and wrong state rep demanding this or that from them isn't even necessary to have a conflict.
Imagine one trillion people in an intergalactic federation, and if any group goes on strike, no matter how tiny the group is, you'll say that isn't real socialism. You are dumb. Prepare to get bullied.
They will not be their own bosses, that is ridiculous. They may manage their own workplace but society subjugates the individual, the individual does not subjugate society.
so called workers that go on strike against the commune are no different than porkies and get the gulag
As somebody who normally hates Mao you can take me seriously when I say you niggers need to read Mao.
marxists.org
And who's best to judge if the state is truly a worker's state if not the workers? Some fresh from university pencil pushers?
A bunch of people in this thread pointed that out, but it is a useful discussion so we decided to not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Your argument as to the power of the worker in a socialist society is his labor since all property is a common good is so elegant that I'm mad I've never heard of it.
That's not how mass production works. This view of work is the socialism of beggars.
Bosses are not the same as leaders.
It is though. Are you stupid?
Read Gotha Program
What part of Gotha program contradicts "same or similar wages?" I've read it, and you can not find any part of it that contradicts that, you imbecile. As well, in actually existing socialism, everyone HAS been paid "same or similar wages," and also had equal access to healthcare, education, etc greatly contributing to inequality.
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I don't think it's in Gotha Programme but in the beginning of Kapital (I could be wrong). something along the lines of "in this mode of production [ie dictatorship of the proletariat] the worker will take out essentially whatever he puts in"
Lenin made it very clear that "every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given to it." and the USSR under Stalin functioned under a piece-rate system, in which you were paid relative to how much work you completed.
Meant to say "Lenin also" but you get the idea
nvm
proved me wrong.
Would have to be illegal imo
Unfortunate, but if people have a lot of guaranteed services and guaranteed employment striking is much easier and could destabilize production too much. If you aren't happy with your rations or working conditions, go vote to better represent workers in your industry.
IE, they are paid the same for the same amount of work. The same wages.
I mean, I suppose? The way you worded it though made it sound like you were implying every worker is paid the exact same regardless and every position was paid the same. The USSR also had differently paid positions btw.
What about a situation where workers in a particular industry had different (immediate) interests than society as a whole? Imagine, for example, coal miners striking against environmental regulations. Or imagine that a city is going through seriously tough times and the workers' government is forced to scale back the maintenance budget for some workplace, leading the workers to strike? What if a new technology makes a skilled trade obsolete? In each case the workers' frustration is understandable, but their demands are not necessarily reasonable. Do you then replace them with "scabs" (for lack of a better term), or do you let your economy suffer? Just a hypothetical. Hopefully, guaranteed employment, relatively easy movement between jobs, and benefit programs would mitigate these issues.
You answered it yourself. We organize new work for these people without interrupting their employment. Perhaps we can retrain enterprises in groups, if they want to, and then have the same organization do different work. Otherwise we give them temporary positions for a while, making no change in their compensations, retrain them, and then find them another permanent solution.
where is that flag from?
This is what's categorized as a "non antagonistic" contradiction, ie one that can be resolved peacefully and in a way that satisfies everyone. A simple solution would be to downsize industries like coal, and as workers get laid off they get paid leave and access to free re-training and priority hiring in new industries. Basically you could lay off coal miners and send them to work in a solar panel factory.