Charles: "General strikes: {list}"
[WS:] Any data on economic significance of these strikes? The list is long, but these events strike me as rather marginal vis a vis the scale of global capitalist economy. What is the share of total global workforce involved in these events? What is the share total global output being affected. To put it in a proper scale, capitalist speculators are capable of undermining economies of an entire countries, as cases of Greece, Thailand, or Ireland demonstrate. Can labor do it? I do not think so, not even close, as the case of a trully massive waves of strikes in France painfully demonstrates.
It is not to argue that the struggle against capital is over. It is to argue that the struggle against capital as it was fought in the 19th or 20th century is over.
Wojtek
^^^^^
CB: As I say , I think Somebody is posing an interesting and provocative thesis. (sort of like u do all the time, Wojtek) . So, I took up the bait and responded. The googled items seem to contradict the proposition that working class struggle is completely dead in the Third World, even if it is in an ebb. It would be pretty much impossible to prove that all forms of working class struggle won't pickup again and even succeed in a final conflict in the future.
As far as the capitalists winning the class struggle, this ignores that today's workers retain their winnings of much higher living standards than their predecessors. So in that sense the capitalists have not at all won the class struggle. Britain doesn't look anything like the working class of Engels' _The Condition of the Working Class in England_ or Dickens' novels. In the US and Europe, the working class struggle has been such a success that it contributes to the current , relative quiescence, class collaboration and opportunism. Working class struggle is a victim of its own success.