this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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Helen Cox Richardson advises general strikes cause division among the organized groups striking (possibly in what terms as appropriate to relent), that targeted boycotts seem to prove more effective in the United States.
I can't be sure, having never seen general strikes manifest or boycotts that lasted. Boycotts also rule out those of us who live in poverty who can't afford to have opinions. Or as Marge Simpson put it We can't afford to shop at any store that has a philosophy. We just need a TV.
So boycotts are revolution by the petite bourgeoisie, rather than by the third estate, which is why France still contends with capitalism and authoritarian drift.
I, personally, don't know the right answer, or the most effective strategy against the current regime. I'd argue both are good methods, but maybe we should look for third and fourth fronts of attack.
For a General Strike to work, there does need to be a somewhat unified vision of what the strike is against. That means getting workers educated about the situation as much as possible.
A boycott can sometimes work against individual corporations, but a boycott to make the government listen would require sustained participation from a massive section of the population, which seems unlikely to say the least. In contrast, a general strike only needs workers in critical unionized industries to join in to cause a virtual halt of economic activity (dock workers, train workers, truckers, etc). This lowers the numbers needed to be effective by an order of magnitude, and is thus much more feasible. History has shown it to be the most effective non-violent tool we have for over 100 years, and so far nothing else has come close.
Prefiguration could be considered a 3rd method. Building the alternative systems we want to see and use in the world to lower our dependence on the current system facilitates the ability to enact general strikes, boycotts, and reduces the leverage they have over us to not enact resistance.
A fourth method would be perhaps more extreme, like collectively destroying all of the world's databases that contain financial debt records, Fightclub/Mr.Robot style. But that would require extreme coordination between established capable groups, and currently is not a feasible option.