Sarajevo 1914; Ciénaga 1928; Minneapolis-St Paul 2026
Image: the organisers of the strike that led to the Ciénaga banana massacre by United Fruit.1
First of May went down in history as the day of labour: it was the day on which, in 1886, labour organisers in Chicago were hanged by the neck in what has gone down in history as the Haymarket affair. Their lynching by the authorities was justified by the ultimate goal, as they would have it, of subduing communism and the red scare. The most Brobdingnagian of acts will always be justified by some inspirational, higher aim, whose link to the act is often, on reflection, questionable. The result is frequently murder in the name of narrative. Those who fight for human rights, for labour rights and against oppression must never forget what they fight for, even if the capitalist so often does: he does not fight to put down communism; he fights to preserve his wealth. The worker does not fight to defeat capitalism; he fights for a world in which fairness is respected.
Today could be a red-letter day in American labour relations. Minneapolis is entering a day of general strike. We shall see where it leads to. Just as the world was to see what the shooting of that Archduke in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip would lead to. A strike is often cited as being the last-resort tool of the labour organiser; of the socialist, if you will. By contrast, 7 January already showed us that the last-resort tool of capital is the last-resort tool of Princip: murder.
Colombia 1928 showed us that the last-resort tool of capital is not just a single murder: the massacre of 2,000 banana pickers by the forerunner of the Chiquita fruit company. In fact, capital has far more tools at its disposal even when it sits outside of government, such as ordering the invasion of Haiti in 1915 (Citicorp). But, when it is within government, the tools at its disposal are effectively limitless. United Fruit, as it then was, conceded the deaths of 47 strikers; it is contrary estimates that place the figure at 2,000. It is hard to appreciate, 97 years on from the massacre, that even 47 murders is a small reaction. That’s 47 Renee Goods. Forty-seven MLKs. Forty-seven JFKs. Forty-seven people. For bananas.
The organisers of the 1934 strikes in San Francisco, Toledo, and Minneapolis–St Paul among longshoremen (stevedores), teamsters (lorry drivers) and auto (car)-workers sought to forge alliances with the unemployed before launching their strikes, in order to mitigate the effect of strike-breakers. Of course, for an unemployed man whose family is destitute and starving, a strike comes as a propitious opportunity: the chance of work. Not without its dangers of course. Because a strike is when work turns to war and, if you switch sides in a war, that doesn’t mean you’re out of danger.
A capitalist who might baulk at shooting his workforce dead will nevertheless turn not a hair at working them to death, whether with long hours, short breaks, dangerous conditions and no toilet opportunities, holiday allowances or benefits. But actually shoot them? What would be the point of that? Unless, of course, they refused to work anyway. Shooting a few might encourage the rest. So a strike is not an industrial dispute; it is war. And it is a war in which no prisoners are taken.
If the point of war is to create in its aftermath a land fit for heroes, the strike-breaker need labour under no misapprehension that he will count as a hero in the aftermath of a strike. If he is lucky, he may secure employment in replacement for one of those who were murdered, but once he has helped to break the strike, he need not imagine that his conditions of employment will be any better than those that led to the strike in the first place. An unemployed person who would be recruited as a strike-breaker is placed in the hardest dilemma of all. But if the purpose of the strike is to break the will of capital to denigrate the worker and subjugate him to the lowest possible tolerable level, then all breaking the strike will do is lower that level of tolerance even further. One thing strike-breaking does not do is accord the strike-breaker the rank of the capitalist himself, no matter how sweet the wooing might be.
People may die today. And some of them may be strikers. And some strikers’ dreams may die today. Whether people, strikers or dreams, let them not have died in vain.
By Unknown author - https://nacla.org/news/2018/12/18/photos-we-don%E2%80%99t-get-see-photo-essay, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88521277.