Book Review: The Great San Francisco General Strike

A.D. Nachalo

The Great San Francisco General Strike | by William F Dunne | Prairie Fire Publishing

This vivid account of the heroic struggles of the US proletariat has been masterfully reprinted and formatted by Prairie Fire Publishing. With it, a real treasure has been returned to the libraries of working people. The Great San Francisco General Strike was derived from collections of William F. Dunne articles originally published in The Daily Worker and other communist organs. It provides a gripping account of working class audacity, the type which longs to come back.

The new printing is reformatted to greatly improve readability. It is seasoned by important notes made by the comrades at Prairie Fire Publishing, making historical works easy to understand for any reader, often left behind by anachronisms, so that even those who have never looked into the rich history of class struggle in this vast country can easily keep up.

“The general strike was not defeated. It was betrayed from within.” The veteran Communist leader Dunne considers the strike on the basis of the law of contradiction, examining the internal contradictions among the strike—mainly between the striking workers and the official union brass who served the boss. He looks at how the strike causes internal contradictions among capitalists as well.

From the humorous accounts of workers sending back the police department’s donation and flowers after the murder of two dock workers, to the underhanded deals of the business unions against the masses of their rank-and-file workers, Dunne’s account can only inspire today’s labor organizers to think beyond narrow self-interests to what is achievable.

The strike was portrayed by the bourgeois press and not the Communist press as a “communist revolution” in a desperate attempt to justify brutal strike breaking terror; this only rallied the masses to the strike—even going so far as to demoralize the National Guard assigned to do the dirty work of the capitalists.

Comrade Dunne masterfully details the strike breaking tactics of the ruling class and how attacks on Communist Party are combined political tools to subdue the economic demands of the working people. The reader can discern not only Dunne’s deep grasp of the role of proletarian journalism but his use of the revolutionary press to further the strike and counter enemy attacks.

Dunne demonstrates how the contradictions among the enemy can be exploited by highlighting that, even though the Party press was essentially banned, the Hearst monopoly and other newspapers of the ruling class enticed by scandal could not resist reprinting long quotes from it and other party organs in an effort to promote anti-communism. This backfired when many workers were again able to read the words of the Communist newspapers.

Revolutionary journalists as well as readers of The Worker can greatly benefit from studying this small book; taking note of how Dunne writes news for the workers, his use of quotation and analysis of the enemy press, how he uses what they say, and what they don’t say, to dispel the web of lies they weave to deceive working people.

Of particular interest today is the skill with which Dunne exposes attacks on foreign born workers as attacks on the class itself. As today with the new wave of reaction, such attacks are used to swindle the class against its own interests into the pockets of the filthy rich who control the current administration.

One by one Dunne takes on the labor aristocracy, identifying and exposing their class position. It was the radical influence among the rank and file union members, mainly the American Federation of Labor, which made the unions a critical trench of struggle and increased the ruling class’s desperation to control them. He exposes how, when forced, the labor bureaucrats will endorse the general strike so as to derail it and end it short if its demands, exposing the machinations they and the revisionists still use today.

The small book makes a clear portrayal of the friends and enemies of the working class and answers the first question of revolution. It powerfully illustrates the bonds between striking and unemployed workers, dashing to pieces the dark dreams of the reactionaries who hope that by throwing people out of work they can increase competition to the intensity of ending strikes. As today’s ruling class responds to the same type of crisis in the same way, we workers stand to learn a lot from the old pit bull William F. Dunne who never let go of his grip on the demands of the workers.

Dunne himself was an epic heroic figure in the US communist movement. This man was a titan of thought and action and one of the best class leaders American workers have ever had. Thanks to the comrades at Prairie Fire Publishing, Dunne’s name will not be forgotten by this generation of up-and-coming young Reds, much to the chagrin of the wretched bastards in power today.

As the central committee of the Communist Party remarked:

“The history of these battles must be thoroughly studied and their lessons assimilated by the entire revolutionary movement and the whole working class.”

As true today as it was then, this book will be most useful in capable hands. Order your copy here.

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