If Foster's "Strike Strategy" argues for "breaks of the workers with capitalism," what foundational assumptions about economic systems and power dynamics must be true for such a strategy to be considered both necessary and effective?

From the book

kers, as to keep them pretty well contented with the present capitalistic order of society. But this is a passing phase. Just as British capitalism, which was also once powerful and able to still the demands of the skilled workers with concessions, is now on the decline, so will American capitalism, however strong it may he now, go the same way downward because of the contradictions inherent in capitalist production and distribution. The industries will shut down, great masses of workers will become chronically unemployed, their standards of living will be reduced; the concessions won from or…

← Foreword Strike Strategy by William Z. Foster Chapter I: Strikes Chapter 2 → 4279086 Strike Strategy — Chapter I: Strikes William Z. Foster ​ Strike Strategy By Wm. Z. Foster Chapter I. STRIKES. S TRIKES, even when small and weak, constitute breaks of the workers with capitalism. They are living refutations of the time-worn conservative trade union slogan that the interests of capital and labor are’ identical. They are expressions of the irreconcilable quarrel between the workers and the employers over the division of the workers' products. They are skirmishes in the great class war,…

list class and set up their own state. This will inevitably involve a bitter struggle for power between the two classes. But a fundamental discussion of this basic problem lies beyond the scope of this booklet, which is to elaborate a system of strike strategy applicable under present conditions. ​ Although the complete solution of the use of the state and the employers' private forces against the workers awaits conquest of power by the latter, nevertheless much can be done under present conditions to ward off, counter, prevent, and weaken such attacks of the employers. The strike strategist…

idious ways. In their quiver the employers have many deadly arrows of disruption to shoot into the ranks of the workers. To defeat the employers' many-phased policy of driving wedges between the different categories of workers, of starving, terrorizing, demoralizing, and bribing them; to ​ maintain a solid, unbreakable unity of the strikers in spite of all these attacks, is the prime task of working class strike strategy. It is the sine qua non for winning strikes. And this can be accomplished by intelligent and loyal application of the general line of strategy above outlined. American…

ated and disorganized enemy. All great generals of history have been masters of this strategy of the militant offensive. Working class strike strategists, patterning after the brilliant Lenin, must also learn to apply its general principles in the class struggle. It will be by the supreme application of this strategy some day against a weakened and demoralized employing class that the American workers will take their first great step toward emancipation, by abolishing the capitalist system. THE END.