In the Vietnam War, for example, the picture most people had was of middle-class radicals, the New Left, fighting against the war and the hard-hats supporting it and beating up the antiwar students. Yet more war production was stopped by workers carrying on ordinary strikes in the course of their lives in the plants than by the whole antiwar movement put together. There were strikes at Olin-Matheson, which made munitions, at McDonnell-Douglas, which made fighter planes, on the Missouri Pacific railroad, which transported war materials for shipment from the Pacific coast. In a few instances, strikes lasted a couple of weeks, and the shortage of planes and war material reached the point where the Johnson administration was getting ready to take over the plants to stop the strikes. 

This was not because the workers were anti-war. Many workers were, but many weren’t. What the workers were doing was trying to live as human beings in the process of production. It is important to understand two things about working-class struggle. First, it is an inherent necessity and takes place all the time whether the means are socially approved or not. And second, the bourgeoisie is constantly aware of that fact, and the related potential for major social upheaval, and goes to great lengths to protect against it, to derail it, and to prevent it.