Political Mass Strikes: Counter-Mobilization to State Capitalist Interventions

• In Event: 312 - Regular Session. Labor/Labor Movements: Labor Movements in Global, State and Local Contexts

Abstract

Despite the dynamic reemergence of political mass strikes on the world stage prompted by ongoing, neo-liberal capitalist crises, few discussions of political mass strikes examine its significance as a distinctly class-based mode of collective action or its contemporary application. This article seeks to contextualize political mass strikes in the historical development of the capitalist world system through an in-depth analysis of the distribution of political mass strikes around the world between 1919 and 2010.

Preliminary analyses find that there are swings in the distribution of political mass strikes across the world system between 1919 and 1944, 1945 and 1975, and 1976 to 2010. The shifting locus of political mass strike occurrences between the core and periphery suggest that changes in political-economy and the overall organization of the international division of labor affect “where” and “when” political mass strikes are deployed. Moreover, the countries with the most political mass strikes in each of the periods are countries with states that actively intervene in the economy to safeguard capitalist accumulation in manners consistent with larger developments in the world system. Between 1919 and 1975, state intervention in the capitalist economy was characterized by state-led modernization and industrialization; this role was in large part necessitated by the redevelopment of the capitalist world system’s infrastructure following each of the world wars. After 1976, state intervention in the capitalist economy was characterized by states’ implementation of neo-liberal reforms seeking to privatize public goods, deregulate markets, and retrench social services.

Author

• Fernando Cortes Chirino, University of California-Irvine