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Special pages :
A Necessary Supplement
| Author(s) | Leon Trotsky |
|---|---|
| Written | 9 January 1930 |
L'Humanité of January 7 published statistics of strikes in France from 1919 to 1928, based on official data more recent than we had. We reproduce the table in full:
| Year | Number of Strikes | Number on Strike |
| 1919 | 2,111 | 1,211,242 |
| 1920 | 1,911 | 1,462,228 |
| 1921 | 570 | 451,854 |
| 1922 | 694 | 300,59 |
| 1923 | 1,114 | 365,868 |
| 1924 | 1,083 | 274,865 |
| 1925 | 931 | 249,198 |
| 1926 | 1,060 | 349,309 |
| 1927 | 443 | 120,551 |
| 1928 | 943 | 222,606 |
This table introduces some changes into our study of the strikes of the last three years. But it is not difficult to show that these changes don't weaken but strengthen our conclusions. The year 1927 is the lowest point for the whole decade in the strike movement in France. In 1928 there is a certain rise. From the data in the Communist press we had estimated the approximate number on strike in 1928 to be between 400 and 450 thousand. For 1929, l'Humanité gives a figure of half a million on strike, a figure not justified by its own data, and from that it draws the conclusion of a rapid growth in strikes for 1929 compared with the preceding year. That doesn't prevent the paper saying that the official figures for 1928 are an underestimate. So from the same figures, two diametrically opposite conclusions are drawn. Meantime, if we take l'Humanité's own figures for the last two years, we find not a rise but rather a certain decline in the strike movement for 1929. This unexpected result is to be explained apparently by the simple fact that l'Humanité's exaggerations for 1928 were more generous than for 1929. We don't have the government's or worldwide figures for 1929. Therefore, the conclusion that the number on strike in the year that has passed has doubled in comparison with the preceding year is reached on the inadmissible comparison of the figures overestimated by I'Humanité with the figures underestimated by the government.
From the official table given above, it clearly emerges that 1928, which has been proclaimed the first year of the revolutionary upsurge, has had — 1927 apart — the lowest number on strike in the decade. Yet the diagnosis of the "third period" which had put France in what was claimed to be the 'leading position in the revolutionary upsurge" was based, above all if not exclusively, on the facts of the strike movement.
The conclusion remains the same: with such weapons and with such a way of going about things, one marches only to meet defeats!