Postwar strikes were political demands for workers’ self-government, not mere wage disputes

Evidence

The “strikomania” that spread across Italy and Great Britain in 1919 drove an unusually large number of workers to put down tools and to fight for fewer working hours and higher wages. As an official British communiqué explained, workers were “no longer prepared to acquiesce in a system in which their labour is bought and sold as a commodity in the labour market,” and demanded to be treated “not as ‘hands’ or part of the factory equipment” but “as human beings with a right to use their abilities by hand and brain in the service not of the few but of the whole community.” — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 185 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The primary goals of the Red Biennium were to abolish the exploitative wage relationship in favor of horizontal participation in production and to abolish production for profit in favor of production for need. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 186 (#expands, via linked claim)

Th e Socialist of January 1919 announced: “the striking masses have spontaneously created the workers’ committees, the basis of the workers’ state … these committees representing every department in every mine, mill, railway, or plant, contain the elements of an organization which can transform capitalism into a Soviet Republic… . All Power to the workers’ committees” (Th e Socialist, January 30, 1919, reprinted in Hinton 1973, 302). … Th at same year, the Italian worker Mario Montagna expressed similar optimism for his own country: “we believe that the construction of the workshop councils (consigli di offi cina) represents the fi rst concrete affi rmation of the communist revolution in Italy and that these councils of peasants and workers are the basis for the whole future system” (Montagna 1919, 202– 3). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 479 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Works councils failed to dominate as workers’ representatives by the late 1950s — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2072; Workers’ participation demands focused on pay and immediate job matters, not structural control. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2073; Postwar workers explicitly rejected the treatment of labor as a commodity — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 185 (+18 more)

Related

• Postwar workers explicitly rejected the treatment of labor as a commodity (similarity 0.87)
• Postwar labor radicals saw workers’ councils as the seed of a Soviet republic (similarity 0.87)
• Postwar workers demanded meaning and agency in production. (similarity 0.87)
• Postwar British and Italian strikes demanded workers’ control of production. (similarity 0.87)
• Postwar workers rejected labor as a commodity and demanded democratic control of production (similarity 0.84)
• Workers’ control of industry climaxed as a core demand in 1919-1920 (similarity 0.84)
• Postwar British and Italian strikes aimed to build democratic production relations (similarity 0.83)
• Postwar labor resistance ranged from reformist unionism to revolutionary council occupation. (similarity 0.83)
• Postwar labor claims turned political out of hostility to capitalism itself (similarity 0.82)
• Postwar labor unrest aimed at revolution, not just wages. (similarity 0.82)
• Works councils failed to dominate as workers’ representatives by the late 1950s (similarity 0.81)
• Postwar social tension forced state officials to concede citizenship rights to workers (similarity 0.81)
• Workers’ self-governance sought to abolish the wage relationship and production for profit (similarity 0.81)
• Italian agricultural workers won practical workplace self-governance through mass strikes in 1920 (similarity 0.80)
• Postwar Italian labor leaders recast the worker as indispensable and rights claims as settled (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Postwar workers rejected labor as a commodity and demanded democratic control of production #corroborates (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 185
• Workers’ self-governance sought to abolish the wage relationship and production for profit #expands (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 186
• Postwar labor radicals saw workers’ councils as the seed of a Soviet republic #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 479
• The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association combined trade unionism with demands for self-government #exemplifies (0.80)
• Workers’ wartime indispensability empowered postwar demands to transform the economic system #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 174