With labor unions came the ability to strike. Socialists see the trade union strike as an instrument of social change. Engels, in his 1845 treatise Conditions of the Working Class, describes union strikes as “the expression of the social war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, as the training ground for the fighting proletariat to fight its class battles.” The general strike is one of its most powerful weapons for destroying the economy of a capitalist state. Marx envisioned striking labor unions as having the potential to force an entire country into submission to the revolutionary elite in control of the unions.

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