This could be facilitated by Labor Unions, NGOs, Social Service organizations, schools and educational institutions, state and local political offices, various other types of collectives or agencies or non-profits, the independent press, social media, and hundreds of thousands of volunteers to name a few. Education of the public as to what a general strike is would be an absolute necessity in planning for and initiating one.
For Americans, the two most difficult aspects of a general strike are:
1. It requires not working and not participating as much as possible in the economy. Limiting buying to pay mostly for necessities. And,
2. a general strike could take a long time to achieve the stated goals and objectives of the strike. It requires a siege mentality to stick it out and survive. So, people need be prepared to do that. It would require planning and setting up a plan.
A general strike in the United States would not be like other great general strikes in history because it would not involve being confined or defending against violence. It would simply be stopping work, not paying federal taxes, and not buying most things except for necessities. The point is to make it be felt in the economy.
Another thing about a general strike in the United States is that one of its key objectives would be to demand, and not relent in our demands, until Congress does what we are demanding and gives us a fair tax code that does not favor the rich by giving them a set of benefits in regards to deductions for luxury items like yachts/private jets/show horses, etc, which the rest of us do not have, loopholes, waivers, exemptions, tax cuts, tax havens that allow them to hoard cash in offshore accounts etc., etc. that the rest of us do not have.
A new tax code, one that I am calling a fair tax code, would be a tax code that no longer has benefits that go only to the wealthy that the rest of us do not have. A new tax code that is fair does not reduce taxes on those who do not need tax breaks; it raises them. The rich can certainly pay more taxes without it causing them any real harm in terms of financial or monetary security. After tax increases on them, they will still remain very rich. A fair tax code does not impose high taxes on people who are hurt by them and cannot afford higher taxes. The only taxation that is fair is taxation that taxes according to the ability to pay them. The only justification for tax waivers, tax breaks, and exemptions to paying taxes is to give them to the poor or marginally poor who barely make ends meet because they are the only genuinely needy and deserving people when it comes to tax “relief.”
The simple rule of thumb for Congress to adhere to when writing a fair tax code is that it has to be uniform and not give one class of people, the rich, benefits that the rest of us do not have or get, and to eliminate benefits that the rich get that the rest of the population do not get. It’s a very simple and unambiguous concept.
Getting back to the difficulties of Americans living during a general strike:
We would have to accept that a general strike means shutting work down. A strike is always temporary. But it could last for a long time. Employers would know that workers are striking to achieve specific economic and political goals and objectives and that it is not personal. It is a cultural goal and aspiration and need. During the Covid shutdown/slowdown, many businesses had to shut their doors, many permanently. That is a risk. In the undertaking of any major social movement there are always shifts and changes and shocks. But, as it is true with nature when it is no longer being assaulted by damaging activities done to it by people, it can and does re-equilibrate and begin to stabilize and heal itself over time after the event has concluded. That happened with the Covid epidemic. Eventually many businesses reestablished a strong footing post Covid.
Small and medium-sized businesses might be better positioned during a general strike to stay open on a limited basis if the business is one of proving essential needs. But as people will have to reserve and stretch the funds they have for the duration of the strike they will probably not be consuming as much during a strike as they normally do other than on essentials.
An important consideration for the success of a general strike is for it to be a whole community inclusive event. Every individual would have to be involved and I would hope that every business would also consider itself part of the community. As part of a whole community, businesses could do what they can to help people sustain the strike.
Small and medium-sized and possibly even corporate businesses might, in reality, become an ally to a general strike if they can dialog with their employees about a possible return to work at the conclusion of the strike if the businesses can sustain a prolonged stoppage without going out of business altogether. It would save them from having to reestablish business from scratch after the strike. And it could be a bond between employer and employees.
We know that Americans often have from 3 to 7 career changes in a lifetime. And we saw that after the Covid lockdown and epidemic people returned to work. Sometimes in the same jobs they had before the epidemic. Sometimes in a different career altogether. So, we know that we can do this. Americans already do it anyway as part of the way they live. It’s not preferable to have to start all over in a new career. But it is doable.
Americans must consider coming together in their communities to help and look after one another and to help those who need it. I believe this is what has occurred in past general strikes that have been successful. Come together. Pool resources. Help your neighbors. Be part of a community. Be together in this.
There are plenty of reasons to engage in a general strike at this time in our history of the United States, when there is so much at risk because of the dangerous government we have.
We risk losing our democracy to a kleptocratic autocrat and his entourage of opportunistic, nihilistic enablers and administration, a very slim sliver of the American population, and the United States could possibly end up as a society of the tiny few “haves” and the vast bulk of the population of “have nots.” Any intelligent and thinking rich person would know that a poor population does not sustain prosperity for the rich or bode well with the continuation of a flourishing economy.
A general strike has to have goals and objectives. There are many causes of alarm and concern that engulf us at this time:
We have a unitary executive president and a Supreme Court that made it possible and put him above the law.
We have a unitary executive president whose immediate goal seems to be to create an army to harass and disappear immigrants without due process and to quell protest and the petitioning of grievances and opposition by citizens, a right guaranteed by the first amendment.
We have a DoJ that has become the personal property of the unitary executive president.
We have a non-ethical, religiously-biased, corporate-owned, partisan and political Supreme Court majority that has made it a habit of degrading the Constitution, the document that they all swore to uphold, protect, and defend who are using their role “to interpret” the Constitution to destroy it.
We have a conservative Supreme Court that is rolling back, eroding, and eliminating voting rights and full voting participation by all eligible voters by allowing states to use many tactics to disenfranchise voters on specious grounds, dismantling human rights, including the right for women to make their own reproductive decisions, allowing gerrymandering, and allowing for the continued degradation and destruction of the Earth’s environment. All in service to corporate and special interests.
We have a tax code that is going to add trillions of dollars to the federal budget to make the rich even richer at the expense of the rest of the population and a president who is illegally imposing tariffs to help pay for the ballooning deficit caused by the engorged enriching of billionaires via the enormous tax cuts to the rich and shifting the cost of tariffs to regular consumers to do so.
We have gross economic inequality that threatens us with real damage economically and culturally.
We have an unjust Justice system.
We have a corporate mainstream legacy media that has dismissed its obligation to be a free and independent press and no longer serves to truthfully inform the population and that serves an increasingly fascist government and moneyed special interests, most especially including their own interests.
This is my own partial individual personal list of concerns that I believe really need to be addressed and dealt with politically and thus my belief that at some point a general strike may become necessary to achieve a list of political goals and objectives.
Given the many areas of grave concern and problems that we as a nation are facing, I believe the list should be an officially endorsed document outlining political goals and objectives that have been arrived at through a consensus of the largest possible number of strike participants. That seems to me the only way to democratically go about carrying out a general strike.
If you are still reading, thank you. I know it’s a lot. Probably too much. But it’s also why so many people are feeling so stressed out and hopeless. But I write this with the hope that something good can come out of it. Possibly many good things can come out of it.
I’ll end with my own short list of goals and objectives that I would like to see the American people be able to achieve to move on to a better future. Most, if not all of these things would require Congress to do them:
- Eliminate the unitary executive president with common sense laws that limit the president’s power.
- Restore an independent DoJ and make it free of the president’s control. Proscribe the use of National Guard reservists and the US military for illegal or unconstitutional law enforcement activities and for policing American cities when there is no emergency and only if it has been approved by Congress. Require that law enforcement officers not be allowed to wear masks and are required to identify themselves as legitimate law enforcement officers when asked to do so. Abolish ICE .
- Reform the Supreme Court with term limits. Create a Supreme Court code of ethics that is enforced by laws of Congress, not by the court’s own relaxed self-protective half measures. Eliminate life-long terms of employment for justices and institute term limits. (A life-long term of employment was never a good idea and is a guarantee that almost all people do NOT have in almost all work. It’s an outdated convention of privilege that belongs in the trash.) Establish an IA for the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, that can investigate allegations, indict, and prosecute possible violations and has a mechanism to remove judges found guilty of gross misconduct from the bench.
- Make taking gifts and bribes by any judge or elected official an illegal activity like it used to be. Ensure and enforce that elected officials taking bribes and gifts results in termination.
- End all stock trading by members of Congress while they are serving as members of Congress.
- End Citizen’s United and get money out of politics.
- Limit campaign spending and implement public funding of campaigns. Shorten the duration of political campaigns.
- Scrap the current tax code. Congress start fresh and write a new fair tax code. See above.
- End gerrymandering. Abolish all currently gerrymandered districts nationwide and require that voting district maps be redrawn by independent map makers who do not use racial or other prejudicial criteria to draw maps.
That is my short wishlist of the political goals and objectives that I would propose be included in any officially endorsed declaration for a general strike. But that document could be anything and have as many or as few demands as agreed upon by a consensus of participants.
I have hope for the future. If things get bad enough then possibly the country might need to consider the need to have a general strike. General strikes have been used in the past to make difficult political change possible and have helped their countries move on to a more positive future. So, it’s something to have in mind.
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