From the "mass general strike" to the "furious cow strike".

Abstract

This article objective is to argue that the strike is a collective construct, incorporating definitions, concepts, and historical variations. The intention is to investigate the strike in the world of the work, while recognizing that it also has a wider relevance. From the birth of capitalism, theoretical formulations have addressed the validity or not of the use of the strike as a weapon of the labour movement. A controversy is the use of the strike as revolutionary; capable of political victories. After particularly the Belgian and Russian, the concept of the strike as an instrument of politics was established. Strikes possess a fluid nature rendering difficult their precise characterization, but partial characterization is possible by objective consideration of the contexts. The strikes has changed over the course of
time. At the present time the concept of the political strike cannot be seen as previously, as having the ability or not to bring down the State; the concept has widened. However, despite the changes, strikes remain a fundamental tool of the working classes. As effective collective action can reveal aspects of the nature of capitalist society, so it demonstrates to the workers the limitations of democracy and the bourgeois State.