Coercion always comes from above; for the General Strike it will come from below

Under the current capitalist regime, workers are subjected to constant coercion.

The manufacturers begin by firing the initiators of all social movements with the sole purpose of coercing those who try to continue their association plans.

If, despite this, the workers manage to come to an agreement to demand an increase in wages or a reduction in working hours, the employers respond in the negative, certain that the penny will not be able to stand up to the banknote: manifest coercion.

When the heroic penny tries to raise its head, the Mausers, the merciless sabres or the police bar come to commit the most infamous coercion.

Coercion is still the same that the working class itself inflicts on its splinters, the fatal product of the cursed capitalist regime. Coercion is what the bourgeois press, monarchical or republican, does, and also the socialist press with its systematic desire to flatter the powerful, advising moderation or making them expect everything from the public powers.

Coercion, but disguised coercion, is what certain professional politicians exercise who interfere under the guise of protection to preserve endangered prestige or to prepare future electoral campaigns.

Finally, coercion is, and the greatest, that insecurity of tomorrow in which the possessing class constantly has the disinherited, threatening them with hunger and persecution.

And do not tell us now that the exploited always commit coercion in times of strike.

Four sticks here, a broken head there, a box of tools scattered about, and some bourgeois junk lying around here and there, what does all this represent in comparison with the employer’s coercion protected and supported by the authorities and protected by the public force?

It would be a different matter if the productive force were fully aware of its power.

In any case, the avenging coercion will come when, all false prestige having disappeared, the proletariat wants to stop being an instrument of enrichment and become the absolute owner of its work.