CLOSELY connected with this conception of the mass strike as an action decreed as a general strike by the conductor's baton is the meticulous differentiation made by comrade Kautsky between the different types of strikes: protest strikes, strikes of compulsion, economic strikes and political strikes. Comrade Kautsky requires that they be sharply separated, since if the propaganda is not clear enough the masses may misunderstand us. Instead of holding the protest strike which we intend, they may unexpectedly hold a 'strike of compulsion'. For him, the merging of economic demands, or even demands for the eight hour day, with the movement for the franchise, could only damage the latter.
Now such strict definitions and classifications of the different types and sub-types of the mass strike may all be very well on paper, and may even be adequate for the usual everyday activity in Parliament. However once a time of great political unrest and great mass actions begins, these distinctions become muddled in real life. To a very great extent this was, for example, the case in Russia where protest strikes and combat strikes followed one another and where the perpetual interaction between political and economic action was precisely the defining characteristic of the Russian revolutionary struggle and was what gave it its strength. Of course, Comrade Kautsky rejects the example of Russia because at the time "revolution held sway in Russia". As he puts the Russian events under the heading of 'revolution', they are supposed to have no validity for other countries. But the closer we in Germany come to violent struggles by the proletariat against the prevailing reaction, the more the factors in a revolutionary situation come to be valid for us as well.
But even without considering Russia, we can see the inapplicability of this lifeless schema. We can see exactly the same in the suffrage struggle in Belgium, where neither war nor revolution occurred. Comrade Kautsky is of the opinion that "life has so far been sufficiently pedantic" to separate clearly economic and political struggles, at least "in the suffrage struggles of Western Europe the economic and political elements have been sharply separated up till now." Comrade Kautsky is wrong.
The Belgian movement for the right to vote began in 1886 and, what is more, originated in a whole flood of economic struggles. First an ordinary miners' strike gave the signal for the upheaval. In almost all other towns and industries, the miners' strike was followed by other strikes, in which wage demands were predominant. The mass movement for suffrage in Belgium was born out of these purely trade union struggles. Almost everywhere the demand for universal suffrage was soon raised alongside the wage demands. By using the tremendous enthusiasm generated by the economic struggle, the young Belgian social democracy was able to call its first mass demonstration in support of universal suffrage, which took place on the 15th of August 1886 in Brussels.
This was repeated later. The great political mass strike of 1891 which forced the suffrage bill from the government, arose in connection with the struggle for the eight hour day, as an immediate result of May Day. The strike was the product of a series of trade union actions: another massive wage struggle by the miners, followed by strikes in the iron and steel works, and then strikes of carpenters, joiners, dockers and others. Out of these sectional strikes, there came, under the bold and firm leadership of the Belgian party chiefs of the time the first mass strike for the franchise, which also brought the first success. After the political mass strike was over because of concessions by the government, the miners in Charleroi continued their strike for a shorter working day and higher wages.
Throughout 1892 there was a latent crisis in Belgian industry, which produced great activity among the workers and led to several strikes to ward off wage reductions. By the end of the year there was widespread unemployment. On the 8th of November 1892, the day the Parliament was opened, the party in Brussels organised a protest strike in all the factories. Yet in December of the same year Belgian social democracy took up the cause of the unemployed and organised some large-scale demonstrations of the unemployed. Thus the great mass strike for suffrage that followed and the decisive struggle of 1893 were prepared by a constant interaction of the protest strike and the "strike of compulsion", of economic and political action. Comrade Kautsky strangely tries to belittle this victory by pointing out that "Belgium has still not achieved universal suffrage". This well known fact is only an argument against those who recommend the political mass strike as a panacea which will win everything at a stroke, rather like an anarchist recipe.
For the present, we should recognise that the mass strike served excellently to allow the Belgian proletariat to be represented in Parliament at all and to enable it to win a fifth of the seats in the first elections it fought. We should also recognise that economic struggles played the major role in this movement for the franchise and formed the starting point and basis of the political mass strike.
But our own experiences have also contradicted Comrade Kautsky's premises up until now. At present we have the great struggle in the building trade. According to the above schema we should clearly separate this economic struggle from our movement for the right to vote, and indeed it would have been preferable for the struggle to be avoided if possible, as damaging to the interests of the movement for suffrage. In reality this separation just cannot be made, and it would probably be the most stupid thing we could attempt. On the contrary, in every meeting on the fight for the franchise, the speeches naturally take up the question of the lock-out in the building trade, in every meeting and demonstration those locked out form a part of our audience, and under the impact of the brutality of Capital in the building trade, every word of criticism of existing conditions gains a lively resonance in the masses. In a word: the test of strength in the building trade contributes to raising the fighting spirit for the right to vote, and conversely the general sympathy and arousal among the masses in the suffrage struggle benefits the building workers.
Likewise we have actually already sinned against this schema by having linked up the struggle for suffrage with May Day, and thus with the struggle for the eight-hour day, when we made the May Day celebrations a demonstration directly for the right to vote. But everyone understands that making this link was a simple imperative of Social Democratic tactics, and that precisely through making the link with the May Day slogans of international socialism our Prussian struggle for the suffrage was put into the correct context as a proletarian class struggle.
Here lies the very heart of the question. If we want to conduct our Prussian suffrage movement as a purely poli-tical constitutional struggle, in the spirit of bourgeois liberalism and in alliance with it, then a sharp separation of this movement from all economic struggles against Capital is certainly in place. And then the strictly political mass strike is condemned from the outset as a half-measure condemned to a fiasco, as shown by the fate of the Belgian mass strike of 1902. This might perhaps explain to Comrade Kautsky why "on the other hand, Belgium has even today not yet achieved equal suffrage".
If, on the other hand, we want to conduct the suffrage struggle in the spirit of purely proletarian tactics, i.e. as a partial manifestation of our general socialist class struggle, if we want to base it on a comprehensive critique of the general economic and political class relationships and make its foundation the proletariat's own power and class action alone, then it is clear that a 'sharp separation' from the economic interests and struggles of the proletariat is counter-productive and even impossible. It would then mean artificially paralysing the strength and the impetus of the suffrage movement and making it poorer in content, if we did not want to take up everything in it, if we did not let it be borne along by everything which affects the vital interests of the working masses and lives in the hearts of the masses.
Last updated on: 14.10.2026