Strikes became politically powerful only with industrialization

Evidence

Think, for a moment, of the feudal system from which industrial capitalism emerged: Back then, there was no such thing as a peasant strike. Feudal peasants could not “paralyze the machine” of feudal power because feudal power was not mediated by machines. Sure, peasants could revolt. But the food they refused to cultivate was the same food they then didn’t get to eat. This limited their leverage. But it was only with industrialization that the refusal to work, exercised independently of violence (torches, pitchforks, slave revolts), became a genuinely powerful way to push back against oppression. When the factories stopped churning, it placed the owners in a vise. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 456

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Withholding labor only gained real power with industrialization because production then ran through machines. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 456