The main obstacle is the average American being brainwashed into thinking they are living the best life possible on the planet and that they too can be a millionaire if only they work 60+ hour weeks while sick.
Essentially same situation as North Korea, just less extreme (at least in some aspects).
American sees something American happening Americanly in America: “What are we, a bunch of ASIANS?!?!???”
Workers in DPRK actually have things like housing, healthcare, and retirement. The burger reich is nothing like DRPK.
Isn’t that the entire point? lol
Imagine this conversation in 18th century France.
Peasant: Should we do a revolt?
Other peasant: Are you kidding? I’m down to my last loaf of bread over here, no way!
No class consciousness, and americans are cowards. Next question
Only 10% of the US is in a union. Who’s going to lead it?
The biggest of those unions I’d guess would be AFL-CIO, which I suppose did a okay job leading the Minnesota strike
Roughly one in four Minnesota voters either participated in the January 23 day of shutdown and protest against ICE, or have a loved one who did…Of those participants, 38% percent stayed off the job, either because they did not go to work, or because their employer closed for the day of action… 45% of voters “generally support the call for no work, no school, no shopping as a form of protest.” https://inthesetimes.com/article/labor-general-strike-minnesotans-ice-protest-trump-cbp
Keep in mind those numbers are voters in minnesota, not super great for a bunch of “progressive” people.
Even the national strike on the 30th wasn’t terrible, but neither had any economic effect. There just isn’t enough organization, especially in key industries. People aren’t educated on unions, even in communist circles a ton of us are running around without a clue what good union organizing looks like.
nearly a century of coordinated, targeted anti-union operations by corporations and the federal government will do that.
More than a century honestly, that shit goes as far back as the 1800s
That’s fair. I was mostly thinking about how coordination between the federal government and corporations really ramped up in response to the NLRA
Lack of class consciousness and education in general
how do 3 men in their 30’s not have $500 between them?
Not hungry enough
Keep the serfs destutute so they can’t organize against the rich, disgustingly lavish aristocracy is a tale as old as time. We’re literally seeing ruling philosophies Medieval kings used and people say this is the best system.
Destitution didn’t stop the French, it emboldened them.
The other half of it is conditioning a society to be so dependent on convenience and little luxuries (yes, even poor people in US have luxuries compared to other parts of the world) that they technically could strike, but doing so would be so below their standard of living that it would not be sustainable.
Fear and propaganda.
Join your local chapter. Volunteer for mutual aid groups. Help establish a strike fund for your local chapter. Get. Involved.
I’m in a good union and people would actively die if my power plant went down.
Enough unions to organize it.
Lack of grassroots, well-structured organizing to kickstart a movement in an economy of 250 million workers.
The fact that a general strike hurts smaller and less-wealthy businesses first and hardest. It only further consolidates wealth and market share into the hands of mega corporations.
Loud, terminally online leftists need to stop romanticizing Eastern Europe in the 1950s and address the landscape in front of us today. Economies and the culture we face now is distinct from those in the past and require different tools to dismantle.
People in more precarious positions than now organized and that’s how they got every concession ever. The conditions may be different, but it will only get worse without organizing and striking.
Debt servitude works better than any whip or chain.
I like the idea of a government shutdown, rather than a General Strike. A Strike hurts us, a shutdown hurts them. Strikes might work in other countries, because they don’t have a mechanism to shut down the government , but we do.
I was all for keeping it locked down last Fall, and all through 2026, and making the Midterm Election Campaign a giant national Food and Health Care drive. Show the nation who really cares, while MAGA loses their minds.
But as soon as the shutdown hit the airports, and the Donor Class couldn’t move their operatives around the country, the MAGA comedy act of Schmuck & Jeffries surrendered. We were winning that battle, but we got literally NOTHING in exchange. No wonder MAGA has such disrespectful disdain toward the weak cowardly Democrats. They deserve every bit of MAGA derision.
They aren’t going to care if we go on strike and get fired from our jobs and go homeless. But they’ll care if we shut down the MAGA government and hurt THEM.
A general strike absolutely hurts the owning class because the value their companies produce is created by the workers. When the workers stop working, then production stops and that is the single most direct way to hurt capitalist interests.
Again, workers take the hit. I don’t want self-inflicted wounds, and hope that the Sociopathic MAGA government will take pity on us, and change. They won’t change, they’ll just laugh at our morality.
I want to hurt MAGA, not citizens, and the best way to do that is take away their money, which is the ONLY thing they really care about.
Like I said, most countries don’t have a mechanism to shut down their nation’s government, so they have to default to a General Strike. But we have an alternative strategy that truly hurts them where they care the most, with less damage to the Citizens. Shouldn’t we start there?
We can always start with a Government Shutdown, and add the General Strike to it if we need to tighten the noose.
Again, you should read the history of the US because mass strikes and militant labour organization was precisely how workers wrestled concessions from the ruling class in the past. The idea that most countries don’t have a way to shut down their government is also nonsense. That’s just a strike carried out by government workers. Any country can do that.
Meanwhile, the type of a government shutdown you’re talking about can only be carried out by the politicians and it’s entirely out of the hands of the workers.
The labor strikes of the 30s were a almost a century ago, against a different kind of enemy, with different objectives. That was to obtain better wages, conditions, and workers rights. That has to be directed at the corporation that supplies those things.
But today, our first, and biggest beef is with the government. If we want to force them to react, we have to hit them directly. And remember, it’s MAGA, and they are really stupid. They require a 2x4 across the face, just to get their attention.
The government represents the class that holds power in society, and that’s been capital owning class both in the 30s and today. There’s been no fundamental change in how the system functions.
