Most people in their work and community life are forced to be passive—submitting to control from above. They are also largely atomized—separated from each other. What we see in mass strikes is the beginning of a transformation of people and their relationships from passivity and isolation to collective action. The tendency toward self-management in working-class history is rooted in the simple truth that unless people direct their own activities, somebody else will direct them, in ways that prevent them from pursuing their own ends. Self-management is the only alternative to management by somebody else. At one level, this tendency arises out of the immediate needs of the struggle--keeping the workplace closed, feeding strikers, and the like. At a more profound level, all the actions of a mass strike are responses to the fact that when a small minority manage society, they will generally do so in a way that conflicts with the needs of the majority. Mass strikes are thus implicitly an attack on elite domination of society. Strike!, Jeremy Brecher, 282-3
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 03:12:16 +0000
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