The “bloquons tout” (“block everything”) movement has called for a nationwide shutdown on September 10 to protest the French government’s policies, and Jean-Luc Mélénchon, the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed party, is calling for a “general strike”. This concept played a major role in the revolutionary rhetoric of the early 20th century before falling into oblivion. What role have strikes played in French trade union and political history? What meaning do they have today?
While strikes do not occur more often in France than elsewhere in Western Europe, their place in the history of the French labor movement is nonetheless unique. For trade unions, strikes were once a preferred means of improving everyday life, and also at the heart of their revolutionary utopia. In other words, they were aimed at the overcoming of capitalism.
Over time, strikes have become firmly established as a central feature of social relations in France, but their utopian function has faltered. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, like other expressions of class struggle, it has even been significantly devalued.
