from the mayor of Seattle, after the 1919 general strike there:
“The so-called sympathetic Seattle strike was an attempted revolution. That there was no violence doesw not alter the fact…The intent, openly and covertly announced, was for the overthrow of the industrial system; here first, then everywhere…True, there were no flashing guns, no bombs, no killings. Revolution, I repeat, doesn’t need violence. The general strike, as practiced in Seattle, is of itself the weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything; stop the entire life stream of a community…. That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt–no matter how achieved.”
[quoted in Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States]
Rosa Luxemburg could’nt have said it better.
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