Recall and the General Strike

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. -- Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, 1940

Back in December, I posted Full Employment and the Myth of the General Strike to start the conversational ball rolling about the idea of a general strike. It was the middle post in a three-part series on full employment.

Events move fast in 2017.

In the past two days, op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post and the Guardian taking up the issue of job action -- and the general strike -- as forms of resistance. On Monday, the Guardian published a Comment is Free by Francine Prose, "Forget protest. Trump's actions warrant a general national strike." This morning, "Where’s the best place to resist Trump? At work." by labor lawyers, Moshe Marvit and Leo Gertner, was published as a PostEverything by the Washington Post.

Apparently, a call has gone out for a general strike on February 17, which strikes me (no pun intended) as rather precipitous. But the conversation is rolling.

Another element I would like to throw in is "what are the demands?" That Trump stop doing nasty things? That the GOP house and the GOP senate impeach the one who is going to sign their tax cut bills? I propose recall -- total recall. Not only are the elected officials themselves corrupt, incompetent and unrepresentative but the electoral system that has installed them has been thoroughly corrupted and undemocratic. Throw the bums -- AND THE NAG THEY RODE IN ON -- out.

To give context and American (U.S.) historical resonance to that demand, it is useful to consider Populist and Progressive proposals for "direct democracy," through initiative, referendum and the "imperative mandate" (recall) from over a century ago.

What am I really talking about here? What am I doing? The narrative time dimensions of the revolutionary general strike and of the reformist recall, as conceived by Populists and Progressives, could not be more contrasting. The general strike takes place in what Walter Benjamin referred to as jetztzeit -- "not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now."

The traditional recall proposal is almost exactly the opposite. It refers to a process that appears almost interminable involving amendment of the constitution, enacting legislation in conformity with said amendment, petitioning, litigation and ultimately a recall election.

What I am doing, what I am talking about here, is the necessity of learning to think simultaneously in both dimensions -- to collapse the duration of the recall into "time filled with the presence of the now" and at the same time to extend now time, jetztzeit, so that it endures, becomes everyday, day-to-day.