The Ability to Stop Production
Consumer movements and election campaigns are not weapons. They are merely ways of exerting pressure within the framework of bourgeois politics. Consumer movements remain in the sphere of circulation. Capital arises not from consumer choice but from the private ownership of the means of production. Boycotts strike only a portion of realized profit, not the extraction of surplus value itself. Election campaigns are worse. They supply legitimacy to the bourgeois state apparatus while dispersing the political energy of the working class into extra-class causes. Elections are meaningful only as a field of propaganda, not as a field of struggle.
The weapon of the working class converges on one fundamental axis: the ability to stop production. Capitalism rests on the commodification of labor power. Refusing to sell labor power—this is the only weapon that can halt capital at its heart. Everything else is auxiliary or preparatory to this axis. But stopping production is not a single act; it is a stratified arsenal. The first line is direct cessation of production: the capacity to escalate from partial strikes to a general strike. What matters here is who goes on strike. Workers in the defense industry and key infrastructure are not merely many workers; they are strategically positioned. The strike of five thousand dockworkers can be more fatal to capital circulation than a strike of a million service workers. Work-to-rule and slowdowns are the prelude to strikes and a means of continuous disruption when strikes are impossible. Simply adhering to regulations literally can collapse productivity, because capital's normal operation depends on countless violations of rules. Sabotage is controversial but historically a constant in working-class struggle: how Russian workers stopped machines in 1917, how European resistance disrupted production during World War II, how US soldiers engaged in fragging during the Vietnam War. Attempting to make direct intervention into capital's physical means of production a moral taboo is an ideology of bourgeois legal order.
The second line is operational disruption and the germ of dual power. Demanding open books is not just a request for information. When worker representatives demand the right to inspect company books while capital claims it cannot raise wages, this breaks the secrecy of management, the core of private property rights. The Profintern had already formalized this as a key weapon of factory committees in 1922. One step further leads to factory committees and workers' control: not merely stopping production but beginning to run production with one's own hands. The resolutions of the Second Congress of the Comintern defined this as a transitional measure. When workers step in to manage raw material supply and finances, the bourgeois class and government will take the most powerful coercive measures; therefore, the struggle for workers' control of production inevitably leads to the struggle for state power. This is the crux: workers' control does not begin under favorable conditions; the very attempt itself forces the question of state power. Added to this is the need for self-defense squads. Without physical defense organizations against strikebreakers and police violence, strikes are impossible. That the Profintern program defined this as a matter of life and death was not romantic fantasy but sober recognition of reality. The more effective a strike, the more directly state violence intervenes. Without an organization to stop it, a strike is a fiction.
International solidarity must also be reconstructed on the same principle. It is not enough to meet each other and join nice campaigns. While capital fragments production internationally, integrates supply chains, avoids taxes, and pits workers against each other across nations, confronting it with solidarity statements is like pricking a watermelon with a needle. Substantive international solidarity must strike back against capital's international division of labor. First, simultaneous strikes and supply chain disruption: if Samsung's factory in Vietnam stops, Samsung's factory in Gumi also stops. A logistics workers' strike in one country halts assembly lines on another continent. Organizing this consciously is the highest form of international solidarity. In the past, the Profintern produced real effects during the 1920s British miners' strike through wage donations by Soviet workers and refusal of solidarity by international transport unions. Today's International Trade Union Confederation has lost this function because the centralized interests of national trade unions take precedence over the logic of international solidarity. New forms of international worker organization—global networks by enterprise and industry—are needed. Second, indirect transfer of technology, knowledge, and funds: just as drone technology spread open-source during the Ukraine war, strike organization know-how, encrypted communication tools, legal templates, and money laundering routes must cross borders. This goes beyond the framework of legal solidarity. Third, transnational organization mediated by migrant workers: capital moves labor power internationally while reinforcing ethnic divisions. Migrant workers in South Korea, South Asian workers in the Gulf, and refugee workers in Europe are nodes that can simultaneously connect to class struggle in two countries. A Pakistani worker with experience organizing a strike in one country organizing a strike on a UAE construction site, a Vietnamese migrant worker in South Korea returning home to form a union in a Samsung subcontractor factory—this is how capital's international movement of labor power can be transformed into class solidarity.
The current strike by Samsung Electronics' union, which began on the 18th, is the touchstone of this arsenal. Can it go beyond simple wage negotiations to raise the question of workers' control at the heart of South Korea's comprador-monopoly capital? Can it advance to the fundamental demand for workers' right to verify management decisions? And can it connect to other nodes of the global electronics supply chain—workers at Samsung factories in Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico? The weapons are abundant. The question is whether there is the organization and strategy to wield them.
The weapon of the working class converges on one fundamental axis: the ability to stop production. Capitalism rests on the commodification of labor power. Refusing to sell labor power—this is the only weapon that can halt capital at its heart. Everything else is auxiliary or preparatory to this axis. But stopping production is not a single act; it is a stratified arsenal. The first line is direct cessation of production: the capacity to escalate from partial strikes to a general strike. What matters here is who goes on strike. Workers in the defense industry and key infrastructure are not merely many workers; they are strategically positioned. The strike of five thousand dockworkers can be more fatal to capital circulation than a strike of a million service workers. Work-to-rule and slowdowns are the prelude to strikes and a means of continuous disruption when strikes are impossible. Simply adhering to regulations literally can collapse productivity, because capital's normal operation depends on countless violations of rules. Sabotage is controversial but historically a constant in working-class struggle: how Russian workers stopped machines in 1917, how European resistance disrupted production during World War II, how US soldiers engaged in fragging during the Vietnam War. Attempting to make direct intervention into capital's physical means of production a moral taboo is an ideology of bourgeois legal order.
The second line is operational disruption and the germ of dual power. Demanding open books is not just a request for information. When worker representatives demand the right to inspect company books while capital claims it cannot raise wages, this breaks the secrecy of management, the core of private property rights. The Profintern had already formalized this as a key weapon of factory committees in 1922. One step further leads to factory committees and workers' control: not merely stopping production but beginning to run production with one's own hands. The resolutions of the Second Congress of the Comintern defined this as a transitional measure. When workers step in to manage raw material supply and finances, the bourgeois class and government will take the most powerful coercive measures; therefore, the struggle for workers' control of production inevitably leads to the struggle for state power. This is the crux: workers' control does not begin under favorable conditions; the very attempt itself forces the question of state power. Added to this is the need for self-defense squads. Without physical defense organizations against strikebreakers and police violence, strikes are impossible. That the Profintern program defined this as a matter of life and death was not romantic fantasy but sober recognition of reality. The more effective a strike, the more directly state violence intervenes. Without an organization to stop it, a strike is a fiction.
International solidarity must also be reconstructed on the same principle. It is not enough to meet each other and join nice campaigns. While capital fragments production internationally, integrates supply chains, avoids taxes, and pits workers against each other across nations, confronting it with solidarity statements is like pricking a watermelon with a needle. Substantive international solidarity must strike back against capital's international division of labor. First, simultaneous strikes and supply chain disruption: if Samsung's factory in Vietnam stops, Samsung's factory in Gumi also stops. A logistics workers' strike in one country halts assembly lines on another continent. Organizing this consciously is the highest form of international solidarity. In the past, the Profintern produced real effects during the 1920s British miners' strike through wage donations by Soviet workers and refusal of solidarity by international transport unions. Today's International Trade Union Confederation has lost this function because the centralized interests of national trade unions take precedence over the logic of international solidarity. New forms of international worker organization—global networks by enterprise and industry—are needed. Second, indirect transfer of technology, knowledge, and funds: just as drone technology spread open-source during the Ukraine war, strike organization know-how, encrypted communication tools, legal templates, and money laundering routes must cross borders. This goes beyond the framework of legal solidarity. Third, transnational organization mediated by migrant workers: capital moves labor power internationally while reinforcing ethnic divisions. Migrant workers in South Korea, South Asian workers in the Gulf, and refugee workers in Europe are nodes that can simultaneously connect to class struggle in two countries. A Pakistani worker with experience organizing a strike in one country organizing a strike on a UAE construction site, a Vietnamese migrant worker in South Korea returning home to form a union in a Samsung subcontractor factory—this is how capital's international movement of labor power can be transformed into class solidarity.
The current strike by Samsung Electronics' union, which began on the 18th, is the touchstone of this arsenal. Can it go beyond simple wage negotiations to raise the question of workers' control at the heart of South Korea's comprador-monopoly capital? Can it advance to the fundamental demand for workers' right to verify management decisions? And can it connect to other nodes of the global electronics supply chain—workers at Samsung factories in Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico? The weapons are abundant. The question is whether there is the organization and strategy to wield them.