Humanaesfera

Strike and free production

November 2014

https://libcom.org/library/strike-free-production

When most workers are in the service sector, does the striking tactic make sense if the proletariat use such services in their daily lives? How can we encourage class solidarity in this case?

Given that:

A) strikes in service sector leave the rest of the proletariat in more trouble than the bosses themselves. For example, in health, transport (cargo and passengers), groceries, etc.

B) this entails that the rest of the proletariat tends to regard these strikes not as affirmations of their class but of petty-bourgeois, petty corporate interests. (Only very indirectly, through a long and tortuous chain of reasoning, do some proletarians come to the conclusion that this trouble is the side effect of a struggle that can benefit everyone).

C) furthermore, since one hundred years ago, the strike is a method of struggle hugely domesticated by bosses and the state, through the unions. And even against the unions (wildcat strikes), the demands of the strikers, if met, are soon overcome, for example by inflation and by incessant and permanent employer reprisals, etc. (In addition, today virtually all employers practice "investment diversification", that is, each invests simultaneously in many other companies, stock market, other countries etc so that they are affected very little by the strike.)

Against all this, we stand up for:

1) overcoming the strike by the tactic of free, gratuitous production;

2) opening the means of production to the population of the city, calling her to decide what to do and participate in the production (making the words "employment", "unemployment" and "enterprise" meaningless). This, in a single act, reduces the working day and relieves the rest of the proletariat from the hardships imposed by the owners (unemployment, unsatisfied needs and entrepreneurial terrorism);

3) productions that prove to be scarce will be submitted to the democratic decision of the population. Because the scarcity causes conflicts (scarce is what is not enough for all those who wish it, which causes pettiness and private property) need to be resolved - for example, we must decide whether it is fair that a production must meet first the needy, or whether it should serve the population by other criteria considered fair (Eg, raffle, equal distribution, games, distribution according to the most needy, or according to participation in some specific activity seen as necessary by all, or even store to endure some period of difficulty ... or very simply who arrives first ... the possibilities of criteria are numerous);

4) productions that prove abundant, will be enjoyed in a communist fashion: "No one votes; neither the majority nor the minority ever makes the law. If a proposition can gather enough workers to put it into operation, whether they be in the majority or the minority, it is carried out, so long as it accords with the will of those who adhere to it." (Joseph Déjacque , Le Humanisphère, 1857). In this way, the work as such is surpassed, along with the spectacular consumption.

Dynamics:

These points can be understood as hops conditioned to the exponential diffusion of the struggle. If, in doing point 1, we perceive an increasing adhesion by the rest of proletariat to the same free production tactic against the bosses, we pass to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th points. Simultaneously, there is a need to spread (breaking the "industrial secret") the knowledge of how production and material flows are interconnected and interdependent worldwide. On the basis of this, we show the need for the rest of the proletariat from other cities and other continents to adopt the same tactic. The proletariat constitute itself as a class when it surpass all frontiers (nations, enterprises and identities) invented as "natural facts" by the bosses and privileged, in an internationalist struggle against them (a struggle capable of ending all wars).

Objective:

The purpose of free production is the immediate solidarity of the rest of proletariat, favoring the adoption of the same tactic everywhere. The proletariat, by establishing himself as an autonomous class, forces the ruling class and politicians (it´s indifferent if left or right) to concede far more than we can imagined nowadays. Moreover, if it becomes a permanent and generalized situation of no return, it is in itself a new mode of production in which human desires, needs and capacities determine, in free association, production. A mode of production consisting of the self-realization and self-satisfaction of freely associated individuals without frontiers makes the labor market completely obsolete (and, consequently, makes capitalism obsolete, whether particular capitalism, like US, or nationalized capitalism, like Cuba). I.e., they make disappear the material conditions that forced the population to accept to submit for wages in exchange for the sale of its capabilities – capabilities to think, feel and act - under the command and whim of the money owners (capitalists: bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians. ..).

Humanaesfera, November 2014

[For a way how this can work indefinitely until the powerful surrender, see: Against the metaphysics of scarcity, for the practical copiousness and Against strategy]

(The original portuguese version: http://humanaesfera.blogspot.com.br/2014/11/greve-e-producao-livre.html )

Bibliography:

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