All Eyes on France

[RED DAVE]

Comrades, stop speculating about reforms, pension and that kind of bullshit.

And let's take out eyes away from Nepal and Greece.

A potentially revolutionary situation is developing in a major industrial country. The working class is in the streets. The students and petitt-bourgeoisie are falling in behind them. The bourgeoisie is temporarily politically paralyzed.

Now is the time to watch the movement of the labor bureaucracy, the social democratic and other "official" left parties and the left wing groups. This is potentially the greatest historical moment since May-June 1968.

RED DAVE

[Os Cangaceiros]

Really? I thought that it was primarily a battle against austerity measures.

But I haven't really been following it too closely.

[IndependentCitizen]

Let's hope our countries unions follow suit, and then this can be a pan-Europe revolution.

[another breath]

Let's hope our countries unions follow suit, and then this can be a pan-Europe revolution.
Why do we need to wait for the unions?

[RadioRaheem84]

I hope something comes out of this.

Sarkozy is already planning on pressing on with the reforms despite the strikes.

What do you think will happen? France will be shut down or will the French accept the bitter pill?

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

I hope something comes out of this.

Sarkozy is already planning on pressing on with the reforms despite the strikes.

What do you think will happen? France will be shut down or will the French accept the bitter pill?
A look at France's current action and their history tells me that they will not lay down and accept this bullshit.

Maybe it is optimism, but I can't see them going back to work after Sarkozy puts his foot down.

To the guillotine!

[Saorsa]

Are you sure you aren't being a bit premature and overenthusiastic?

I mean, this is major class struggle. It's a truly inspiring event and if the CGT doesn't sell out it could be a real milestone. But to talk about this being a revolutionary situation... what are you basing that on?

[RED DAVE]

Are you sure you aren't being a bit premature and overenthusiastic?

I mean, this is major class struggle. It's a truly inspiring event and if the CGT doesn't sell out it could be a real milestone. But to talk about this being a revolutionary situation... what are you basing that on?Mass mobilization of the working class, backing of the working class by sections of the students and petit-bourgeoisie. Could there be a sell-out? Sure. Most likely. But it indicates that the ruling class in a major industrial country has lost hegemony, even if it's temporary.

Latest from France:


“If this disorder is not ended quickly, the attempt to paralyze the country could have consequences for jobs by disrupting the normal functioning of the economy,” Mr. Sarkozy told his cabinet. Unions are considering another day of demonstrations on Tuesday. But some union leaders acknowledged that time was running against them, and some quietly acknowledged concern that the largest and most radical French union might be pushing the protests too far.

That union, the C.G.T., was once allied with the Communist Party. It is the largest union among refinery, port, gas and power workers, some of whom are more radical than the union’s leadership.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/world/europe/22france.html?src=mv

If the sell-out comes, here's the direction it's coming from.

RED DAVE

[zimmerwald1915]

Are you sure you aren't being a bit premature and overenthusiastic?
Yes. Then again, this is an internet forum. Not only that, this particular subsection exists so that people can cheer enthusiastically and less critically than they otherwise might.


I mean, this is major class struggle. It's a truly inspiring event and if the CGT doesn't sell out it could be a real milestone.
So what you're saying is that the CGT's influence is great enough that its own decisions could make or break the movement? Because that sounds to me like a weak-ass movement if it's dependent on union decision-making rather than forcing the union to walk a particular line. Big working-class mobilizations are certainly important events with which we should concern ourselves, but you're right that we shouldn't get carried away.

Is there any indication that events are moving out of the CGT's control?

[Ivan Jansa]

I just read on Al-Jazeera that the government will start initiate a "tougher action" against the protesters and there were a few pictures with cops with guns :confused:

Does anyone has any first hand reports from the streets? This is getting serious now. Poor workers :(

[ckaihatsu]

Everyone here's acting like France is an island separated from the rest of the world. Instead of just *watching* what's going on within its borders we should be making *conclusions* about events there -- does the rest of the world *agree* with what Sarkozy is doing to the strikers, or what???

[Stephen Colbert]

Why do we need to wait for the unions?

Da working class is in them! hoe!

[KC]

Are you sure you aren't being a bit premature and overenthusiastic?

I mean, this is major class struggle. It's a truly inspiring event and if the CGT doesn't sell out it could be a real milestone. But to talk about this being a revolutionary situation... what are you basing that on?

One of the main reasons that the 68 revolt failed was because of this. But that was because the bourgeoisie was able to "buy them off". This is a case where the state has absolutely no choice but to go through with these austerity measures, and so they don't have the bargaining room like they had in 68.

This is a very serious crisis and I don't think it is possible for the CGT leadership to sell them out. I think if that would happen the rank and file would simply depose them.

But perhaps I'm being overly optimistic.

EDIT: I mean fuck, Sarkozy has already admitted that he won't back down and the state has already mobilized for the overt breaking of the blockades to the fuel depots. I think this could very quickly turn into all out class warfare. By attempting to overtly put down the strike, which is what will likely happen in the near future, the state itself is posing the question of state power to the workers and their allies. In such situations conclusions can be reached very quickly and consciousness can develop in great leaps.

Such action could spark further movement in other countries that have had workers take to the streets for the past couple weeks/months (Spain, Greece). All it really takes is one pass of the tipping point for the whole house of cards to start falling. But again, perhaps I'm overly optimistic.

[RadioRaheem84]

Let it tip! Spill over to the USA!

[the last donut of the night]

Comrades, stop speculating about reforms, pension and that kind of bullshit.

And let's take out eyes away from Nepal and Greece.

RED DAVE

While by all means we should have our eyes on France, we shouldn't "take our eyes away" from Nepal and Greece. I think you're being a bit too over-enthusiastic (I mean, I'm excited too, but c'mon), and to just forget Nepal and Greece would be a huge mistake.

[Saorsa]

It's also a very strange way to put forward the issue. Why does major class struggle in France mean we should take our eyes away from major class struggle in Greece or Nepal?

Things really seem to be heating up in France. These are exciting times!

[RadioRaheem84]

any news from france guys?

[RedScare]

I can't help but be a little pessimistic about this, after what happened with May 68. I'll get excited when things really heat up. France has had huge strikes every decade or so over something or another, and while we can hope for more out of this one.... there's a historical precedent for this stuff and it's not a good one.

[RadioRaheem84]

Sometimes I become pessimistic too but that is mostly because of my cynical nature and lack of faith in the people to band together to overcome obstacles. But I think that the crisis has awoken a large swathe of an unruly crowd that is fed up with the rich restoring their class power to the old heights of pre-WWII days.

We just have to wait and see. I really hope that the French stay strong and raise hell is Sarkozy decides to pass the reforms.

Please, France, be the spark. We need this!

[Achara]

2pac would be proud of this thread title.

[ckaihatsu]

---





The workers’ opposition has immense support in the population as a whole, which overwhelmingly opposes the cuts and supports the strike movement. It is critical, however, that the struggle be consciously conducted as a political fight for power—to bring down the Sarkozy government and replace it with a workers’ government.

The first prerequisite for victory is a break with the trade unions and the establishment of new, democratic organizations of working class struggle. The World Socialist Web Site urges workers in France to form committees of action, independent of the unions and the existing “left” parties, to broaden the strike movement, unite all sections of the working class—the employed and unemployed, native-born and immigrant, union and non-union, young and old—and mobilize behind the immense social power of the working class all of the oppressed layers of society.

The committees will provide a means for French workers to reach out to workers across Europe and internationally who face the same attacks from the same source—the international capitalist class. The crisis can be solved only on a European-wide and worldwide basis, through the revolutionary unification of the international working class.

The committees of action will fight for a general strike to bring down Sarkozy. As the mass movement develops, these committees can be broadened into workers’ councils, which will become the organs of working class political power.

Only on this basis can revolutionary socialist policies be carried out to harness and expand the productive forces for the benefit of the people, and end their subordination to corporate profit and the personal enrichment of a tiny elite.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/pers-o22.shtml

[Thirsty Crow]

What interests me is the role of the revolutionary organizations in this series of important events.
Let me illustrate this interest of mine with an example: Croatian national television showed footages from the strikes and protests, and the only visible symbols were those of the CGT. Now, not that I disrespect this union, but where are the revolutionary organizations? Where is the NPA (or NAP?), where are the Communists? I understand that the footages where carefully framed, there is a lack of information regarding potential revolutionary outcome of this situation...so comrades, can you provide me with that information?

[Delenda Carthago]

First of all,I think CGT are communists.Matter of fact I think they are stalinists.

Secondly,

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xf9ct4_octobre-2010-la-cnt-dans-l-action_news

[RED DAVE]

Update on French Strikes by Richard Greeman


(Montpellier, France. Oct. 21, 2010) I ended my last week’s report
(below) with the hope the ‘the French people, who are always full of
surprises, will find some way out of this impasse in which their
“representatives” – the union leaders and the official Left parties –
are apparently their worst enemies.’ A week later, biggest ‘surprise’
is the entrance en masse of French youth, considered ‘apolitical,’
into the arena of the social struggle. All over France, high schools
are being blocked by their students, while the presence of beautiful
young faces is overwhelming in the huge nation-wide street
demonstrations that keep intensifying. I’m not sure you’re getting
these exciting images on U.S. and British TV, but you can view some at

http://www.liberation.fr/societe/01012297576-les-jeunes-en-renfort

A poll in yesterday’s Paris daily Libération indicated four out of
five French people think the government should give in and negotiate,
while 69% support the demonstrators, who are demanding the withdrawal
of the bill putting full retirement off to age 67. (Curiously, only
43% actually favor outright withdrawal. I assume most of the other
consider themselves ‘realists’ and hope for a favorable compromise
with the inevitable, considering the move toward ‘austerity’ all
across Europe).

‘Youth+Labor=People Power?”

Actually, this massive mobilization of French youth should not come as
a surprise. Last year there were weeks of strikes and protests among
high school and university students against education cutbacks, and in
November 2005 there was serious rioting among mostly French-Arab and
French-African youth in the ghetto-like projects that surround Paris
and other French cities (when Sarkozy, then Minister of Interior, made
a name for himself by call them Racaille [‘Scum’] and threatening to
scrub them with a high-pressure hose.) In 2006 the French youth revolt
went more political, when the right-wing government passed the CPE
(First Job Contract) bill, a labor ‘reform’ (presumably aimed at
encouraging the hiring of youth) which deprived workers under 26 of
their legal rights as workers. All over France, students blockaded
schools, went down into the streets, attempted to block trains and
eventually dragged the reluctant unions to support their
demonstrations. In addition, the outpouring of us parents and
grandparents in support of the kids was massive, and after six weeks
of chaotic disruptions, the Villepin government was forced to throw in
the towel and withdraw the bill.

A recurrence of 2006 is Sarkozy’s worst nightmare, and he was recently
quoted as saying in private: ‘As long as the young people don't get
involved, I can handle the movement against my pension reform.’ The
government’s response to the youth involvement has been to try to
drive a wedge between the generations by provoking violent incidents
around the high schools and encouraging mysterious ‘casseurs’ to burn
cars, presumably in the hope of alienating the adults with the specter
of ‘violence.’ At the same time, Sarkozy’s spokesmen paternalistically
maintain that teenagers shouldn’t be meddling with an adult issue they
don’t understand, especially since the reform is actually designed
help young workers by lowering Social Security payments. On the Left,
the head of the Force ouvrière union, equally paternalistic, was
quoted rejecting the help of the youth as ‘the weapon of the weak
(presumably like ‘women’s’ tears’)! On the other hand, generational
solidarity is strong in France, as witness a hand-made sign reading:
“(Son, 26): Mom, what’s work? (Mother, 57): You’ll find out when your
67!”

Elites versus Masses

The massive entrance of the youth into the arena has changed the
balance of forces in today’s stand-off between an intransigent
Right-wing administration and most of the population. The second
‘surprise’ since last week has been the mobilization of the truckers
(mostly independent) and the refinery workers, which has resulted in
gasoline shortages at service stations all over France and deliberate
slowdowns (‘snail actions’) by trucks on the highways. This is all the
more remarkable in that the French truckers, who can retire at 55
under a special dispensation, are striking purely out of solidarity.
More and more, the movement is in the hands of local committees and
worker assemblies, who vote to continue and expand the symbolic
one-day strikes called by the cautious national union leaderships. In
Marseille and elsewhere, there are ongoing tugs of war between
demonstrators, who block refineries and gas depots, and the police,
who disperse them only to find them back the next day.

The deepest fears of both the official Left (union leaders and
Socialist politicians) and the Right are that the movement will ‘get
out of hand.’ Editorialists wring their hands about a tragic descent
into chaos. In place of the traditional struggle between Left and
Right within the institutions, today’s struggles are between the
established elites and the rank-and-file, what in the U.S. we
prudishly call ‘the working middle class.’ The French, with typical
Gallic irony have adopted as their identity a government Minister’s
contemptuous slur by calling themselves ‘les Français d’en bas’ (‘the
Frenchmen at the bottom of the heap’).

Different Interests, Different Tactics

As I see it, these struggles -- between establishment Leftist and
Rightist on the one hand and on the other between elites and ranks –
are being carried out in parallel, but they have different goals, and
thus need different tactics. The goal of the strikers and the masses
in the streets is clear. They want Sarkozy withdraw the ‘reforms.’
Period. Their tactic is equally simple: all-out unlimited mass strikes
until the government yields -- as it did in 1995 (when the
union-initiated movement against an earlier pension ‘reform’ got out
of hand) and in 2006 (when the CPE went down in flames).

On the other hand, the goal of the official Left (Socialists,
Communists, and their affiliated unions) is to weaken Sarkozy, bring
the government to the negotiating table and re-legitimize themselves
as a viable alternative to the Right with a view toward the 2012
Presidential election. Their tactic: prolong the crisis by measured,
periodic shows of force. Of course, this delaying tactic resulted in
defeat for the workers in 2003, when the strikes predictably petered
out during summer vacation and the government raised the minimum
number of years you have to work to earn a pension from 37 to 42
(which particularly hurt women who have taken off years for
childbearing). Nonetheless, after the success of yesterday’s sixth
successive national mobilization of up to 3.5 million in the streets,
the union leaders are calling not one more but two more spaced
symbolic one-day national strikes: one in a week and the other in two
weeks!

Meanwhile, the whole country is going wild, and no one knows what will
happen between now and two weeks from now. On the government side
Sarkozy, ever more intransigent, is pushing up the date of the final
vote of his reform in the Senate, while among the youth and workers in
transportation, petroleum, chemicals and other key industries the
ongoing strikes and spontaneous, daily, local actions are intensifying
all over France. One reformist union leader was quoted saying ‘by
marginalizing us, Sarkozy turned the power over to the streets.’ So
why did Sarkozy put his Presidency on the line by uniting the
fractious French unions against him, freezing them out of the action
and refusing to negotiate?

My Analysis

Short answer: ‘France has the stupidest Right in the world,’ well
represented by this little man with the big inferiority complex.
(Demonstrators slogan: ‘Carla, we’re like you: we both get fucked by
the head of state.’) Long answer: ever since 1995 when the Gaullists
got back into power after Mitterrand’s 14-year long ‘Plural Left’
(Socialist-Communist) administration, the Right has been looking for a
showdown with organized labor in an attempt to duplicate the
neo-liberal triumphs of the 1980’s when Thatcher, after stocking coal
for years, crushed the miners’ union in a prolonged strike and Reagan
fired all the Air Controllers. The Gaullists’ first attempt at cutting
benefits unilaterally under the Chirac administration was the
ill-fated Juppé Plan of 1995, which provoked a runaway general strike
and had to be rescinded. Villepin’s 2006 attack on the labor rights of
youth (CPE) had the same fate. In both cases, the Premier took the
rap, and the President saved face. It took an egomaniac like President
Sarkozy to take personal responsibility for the cuts and thus paint
himself into a corner.

Today’s Right forgets that the official Left is their best ally.
During the May-June 1968 General Strike, the Communist Party its
affiliated CGT union leaders saved capitalist France by blocking the
striking students from making contact with the striking workers,
negotiating a modest wage-hike with the government on behalf of the
strikers, officially ‘ended’ the strike despite a mass vote to
continue it, and agreed to channel the movement into parliamentary
elections which the Right won. Indeed, going further back in French
labor history, in 1936 during the general strike and factory
occupations, the CP-CGT leader Maurice Thorez famously declared: ‘You
have to know how to end a strike.’ Ditto in 1944-45 at the time of the
Liberation when the workers were still armed and the French
capitalists, having collaborated with the Nazi occupiers, should have
been expropriated. The same Thorez joined de Gaulle’s government and
told French workers to ‘roll up their sleeves’ and rebuild the country
under capitalism. Despite these betrayals and sellouts, the French
working class has not been seriously defeated by capitalism in the way
that British and American labor has, and the French have learned the
lessons that solidarity works, that resistance pays off and that mass
strikes are their strongest weapons.

There is no predicting what may happen as this conflict moves toward a
showdown – desired both by Sarkozy and by the vast majority of the
rank and file French, who in polls favor an unlimited general strike
to bring the crisis to a head (even if half of them accept the
necessity of pension cuts). So stay tuned for future developments.This was posted by me a few days ago.

Richard Greeman’s First Report on French Strikes


(Montpellier, France, Oct. 15, 2010) People ask me what’s it like
living in France during these massive one-day strikes and popular
mobilizations against the conservative Sarkozy government’s pension
‘reforms.’ These cuts would push the minimum retirement age forward
from age 60 to 62 and the minimum age for receiving full benefits from
65 to 67. For details:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/europe/14france.html?ref=todayspaper

On the one hand, it is thrilling to see millions of citizens taking to
the streets as well as hundreds of thousands of workers striking in
defense of their hard-won social rights defying an increasingly
reactionary government. Indeed, what is most heartening is that the
‘troops’ seem to be more radical than their official leaders, the
union chiefs and Socialist Party politicians. Recent polls showed the
French public not only supports the one-day strikes (which make life
Hell for commuters and parents of schoolchildren); nearly half are in
favor of an open-ended general strike to make the government yield --
a strategy advocated by the far-Left parties like the NPA as well as
by militant rank-and-file workers and local unions who are chomping at
the bit.

Once again I am reminded about what I love about France: a
still-living revolutionary tradition of popular mass mobilization and
struggle that goes back to the sans-culottes of 1789, the revolutions
of 1830, 1848, and 1871 (the Paris Commune), the sit-down strikes of
1936, and in my own lifetime, the nationwide student-worker uprising
of May-June 1968 and the1995 nationwide strike of public employees
that went ‘wildcat,’ paralyzed France for two months (during which
Parisians cheerfully commuted by bike and event boat) and forced an
earlier conservative government to withdrawn its unpopular welfare
‘reforms.’ It’s also a great pleasure to see a nasty right-wing s.o.b.
like Sarkozy humiliated by millions of angry, jeering citizens
blocking the trains and taking over the streets.

On the other hand, I also have a disheartening feeling of déjà vu.
Why? Because the unions used the same dilatory tactics of spaced
one-day work public sector stoppages in 2009, and the government
simply bided its time until summer, when the French go on vacation,
and rammed the cuts through parliament late one August night. And this
wasn’t the first time these tactics failed.

Indeed, ever since the runaway general strike of 1995, every time the
French have massively demonstrated and gone on national strikes in
opposition to government attacks on their labor and welfare rights (as
in 2009, 2008 and 2003), the official leaders of the unions have
imposed the delaying tactic of spaced one-day national work-stoppages
and demonstrations – marches and counter-marches designed quite
precisely to ‘demonstrate’ to the government their ability to call out
their troops (and thus presumably to reign them in). These
demonstrations are great for letting off steam, but inevitably they
run out of steam. Time is always on the side of the government and the
capitalists in the class struggle. The masses’ only strength is in
numbers and resoluteness, and their most effective tactic, once they
are mobilized, is to stay mobilized, spread the movement to all
sectors of the economy, go for broke and paralyze the country until
the bosses give in. As they did in 1936, 1968 and 1995.

The apparent purpose of the leadership’s military-style maneuvers is
to make a show of force and induce the government to invite the union
leaders to a round table -- thus recognizing their legitimacy as the
official representatives of labor. This plays out in the media through
competition over how many demonstrators went into the streets in each
successive demonstration. Social struggle reduced to sports
statistics. The unions count 3.5 million people, the police count less
than half. The union leaders go on TV and call it a success: the
government says it is not impressed and won’t budge. Then the
politicians get into the act. With presidential elections looming and
Sarkozy’s popularity at an all-time low, the Socialists, who in power
also imposed neo-liberal cuts, grandstand their support for the
movement. They, too, have an interest in prolonging the struggle
against Sarkozy as they hope of reaping the results of his
unpopularity at the polls. Former Socialist presidential candidate
Segolène Royale encourages the youth, specifically high schoolers, to
join the demonstrations. The Right (which has been cutting back
teachers like mad) cries ‘scandal.’ Another political horserace.

The goal of the mass movement quite different. The strikers and
demonstrators sincerely want to use their mass power to force the
government to rescind the cuts, as the Chirac-Juppé government was
forced to do in 1995, when rank-and-file assemblies ignored the
unions’ cautious tactics and took matters into their own hands. Those
1995 strikes got out of hand and continued for two weeks until they
achieved complete victory and the cuts were rescinded. Paradoxically,
this victory was a stinging defeat not just for the government but
also for the unions, who were de-legitimized as responsible ‘social
partners’ unable to control of their troops.

This is worrisome for the brass at the CGT, CDFT and other
federations, since only about 23% of French workers belong to unions,
which are supported not by dues but by government allocations. Since
1995, the unions have tightened their control over the movement to
prevent another wildcat breakaway. And you can’t cynically turn mass
enthusiasm and anger on and off like a water tap without exhausting
it, so such tactics inevitably spell defeat for working people whose
dream of retiring keeps receding into the future while they remain on
the treadmill.

Similar masses struggles are happening all over Europe, where the same
neo-liberal cutbacks are being imposed in the name of paying ‘the
debt’ (created by bailing out the banks). Yet here again, the Left
politicians and union leaders, far from seeking strength through
international solidarity, remain staunchly isolated within their
national boundaries, despite the obvious fact that the European Union
has created a common economic zone! But the unions and left parties
depend for their ‘franchise’ on the national state, which subsidizes
them directly.

One hopes the French people, who are always full of surprises, will
find some way out of this impasse in which their ‘representatives’ –
the union leaders and the official left parties – are apparently their
worst enemies.RED DAVE

[Triple A]

Too bad the Sarkozy fascists friends are taking illegal measures to stop the protests.
It is sad to see all european countries going trough this exploitation of the workers and France is the only country trying to fight the government.

[cb9's_unity]

Being only 20 years old, I feel like what is going on in Europe right now is my generations first chance to observe a massive incident of class struggle as it is happening. True breakdowns of the capitalist system are something I've only read about in history books, and open class struggle is something completely out of the public consciousness where I live. (And yes I recognize there are important movements in the third world, but seeing major capitalist powers faltering as they currently are is novel in my lifetime).

And the larger this movement in France grows, the better it will be for my generation. Right now liberalism is failing in the U.S (and it is unlikely liberals will get as much control as they have had in the past 2 years any time soon), and social democracy is failing in Europe. With the right wing sacrificing any intellectual credibility it once feigned, it could be a time where the socialist left could actually be appealing. Only our theory's explain the corporate hegemony that was once hidden to the American mainstream, but have now become increasingly blatant to even the most moderate observers. And what has happened in Greece and France both show that not only do class politics still exist, but that they can take hold of entire nations.

Obviously what is happening in France is far more important to the french than to some college student in Massachusetts. And I honestly don't have the theoretical or concrete knowledge to make any decent predictions about where things will go from here in France. But it will be important to have a fresh example of capitalist crisis and class struggle across the developed world.

[Red Commissar]

There is a nice collection of pictures over at boston.com-

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/10/france_on_strike.html

I mean just seeing how the unions banded together and shut down that country- So much potential and energy if the trade union bureaucracy and bourgeois parties don't sabotage it first. It's funny seeing American media portray the event over here, in fact media anywhere. It's obvious they'll try anything to cast the strikers in a bad light- despite their populist ranting at other times standing up for the "working man".

Edit: French senate passed the pension and retirement "reform" packages just recently. Hopefully strike action will increase from here.

[Amphictyonis]

Too bad the Sarkozy fascists friends are taking illegal measures to stop the protests.
It is sad to see all european countries going trough this exploitation of the workers and France is the only country trying to fight the government.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/european-workers-distance-t143088/index.html

[BeerShaman]

Is there any french student active in the recent events in France? Please contact. Or even somebody that can communicate with 'em.

[Ocean Seal]

It's also a very strange way to put forward the issue. Why does major class struggle in France mean we should take our eyes away from major class struggle in Greece or Nepal?

Things really seem to be heating up in France. These are exciting times!
I agree, I think we should keep our eyes on the revolution worldwide and France is a new hotspot but Greece and Nepal are still hotspots.
Also can we but in a request for a The Situation in France subforum? In order to make the news a bit more accessible.

[the last donut of the night]

I think that, for me, the most inspiring thing for me in these demonstrations are the youth rebelling. As a teenager myself, I see too much apathy in my age here in the US, and hearing the old ditty that teenagers are apathetic, materialistic hedonists always pisses me off. Seeing lycee students block off school entrances is beautiful.

[The Grey Blur]

Is there any french student active in the recent events in France? Please contact. Or even somebody that can communicate with 'em.
i'm here at the moment on a foreign exchange. the students at my faculty blocked most of the campus and turned one major ampitheatre into a 'general assembly' where anyone can speak and debate the strike and proposed measures of solidarity. next week are the holidays so there won't be the same on-campus militancy but today there was yet another demonstration, with the numbers hovering around the same mark (where i am, in clermont-ferrand, in the 50-70,000 range). if people would like i could do some interviews with students here, some trade unionists, and translate the demands the 'general assembly' at my university published.

i actually have quite a lot of thoughts on the current situation, based on what i've witnessed here and my own analysis. being a classical entryist trotskyist, i don't think abandoning the communist party or the cgt is useful but rather to push a revolutionary marxist line within these organs so in that sense i'm probably not in accord with the majority of posters here or articles cited. anyway, i'll do my best to get some interviews or writing done in the coming week.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

FUCKING GO FRANCE!!!!!!

Please please please can we go get our national unions to declare publically declare massive solidarity with the french all across europe n shit,

i'm so mad i'm not french

[Martin Blank]

I spent two hours today in a discussion with striking French workers organized by the Worker-Communist Initiative. They are starting a campaign to raise funds for the strikers so they can keep going (apparently, they don't really have strike funds in the French unions). As soon as I find out more about how to donate and such, I'll post it. Also, any questions you might have I can pass on.

[KC]

I think the best thing we could get is an assessment from the ground of the overall situation, including the energy of the rank-and-file and their determination to see this through, the position of the union bureaucracy on this manner and the rank-and-file's willingness to depose them if necessary, the show of military force by the French state against the strikers, the extent of student involvement, etc...

Honestly being in the US I'm having trouble finding any information on this, aside from the usual rehashed articles published by the major news sources. The above information is obviously excluded, and I haven't found any of it on socialist sites, either.

Seriously, even Le Monde is lacking on this. They have about as much information as CNN or Al Jazeera. It's like they all just copy/paste each other. :( Are there any French language papers or blogs that are covering this more fully?

[Martin Blank]

Are there any French language papers or blogs that are covering this more fully?

engreve.wordpress.com (http://engreve.wordpress.com/)

[RadioRaheem84]

So is that it? Is it over? Sarkozy won? The French People lost?
:crying: Please tell me that can't be it.

[zimmerwald1915]

So is that it? Is it over? Sarkozy won? The French People lost?
:crying: Please tell me that can't be it.
"The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers."

Even if the government wis not forced to withdraw the pension reforms, at least we can hope that the French workers learn some lessons from this struggle. About how to organize and who is on their side.

[Barry Lyndon]

I agree, I think we should keep our eyes on the revolution worldwide and France is a new hotspot but Greece and Nepal are still hotspots.
Also can we but in a request for a The Situation in France subforum? In order to make the news a bit more accessible.

Well, basically theres a refusal to even have a Situation in Venezuela subforum, so I don't think you'll get very far......

[Tavarisch_Mike]

It seems to me that the radicalness among the french preltariat has increassed over the last years, like in 2006 when the reform that would make the job market more insecure was attacked by the people, they fought until they won. Since the crisse hitted the world in 2008 the class struggle in France have just intenssified, if you looked over all the struggle has been going on for years, so the "stop" now is probably nothing more then just a break.

[mossy noonmann]

The unions have called another day of strike action for thursday and another day of demos on the saturday. The Two big union federations leaderships (CGT CFDT) are hoping that thu will be smaller and they can call off the action afterwards.

The real news is that in certain places the strikes are ongoing and are not controlled by the union hierachies but by workers on the ground. The laws being used to force people back to work in the refineries are a short term measure that could easily backfire by increasing resentment. France is producing no petrol. the govt is using the strategic supply and importing fuel, this can't go on for long.

A big turnout on thursday would give confidence to the workers on strike and force the union leaderships to do something else.

[LeninBalls]

My girlfriend in France told me that she tried going to her university but a group of protesters denied her entry and threatened to hit her if she kept trying to. She said as well lots of her friends experienced bad encounters with both the protesters and the police.

I'm not exactly what sure this means in the grand scheme of things (or why I bothered telling you), just that the workers are really pissed off I guess, which is good as long as it's directed in the right direction.

Also as a note she's still sympathetic towards the strikers. She, totally apolitical, even said herself she hopes the revolution will finally just happen already. I asked her is there many citizens who disagree with the strikers and she said none. This is pretty good news and allows me to be optimistic for once, but I don't think I'm alone in thinking that these strikes will achieve nothing significant due to the lack of a strong revolutionary left in France and the wider first world.

[¿Que?]

My girlfriend in France told me that she tried going to her university but a group of protesters denied her entry and threatened to hit her if she kept trying to. She said as well lots of her friends experienced bad encounters with both the protesters and the police.

I'm not exactly what sure this means in the grand scheme of things (or why I bothered telling you), just that the workers are really pissed off I guess, which is good as long as it's directed in the right direction.

Also as a note she's still sympathetic towards the strikers. She, totally apolitical, even said herself she hopes the revolution will finally just happen already. I asked her is there many citizens who disagree with the strikers and she said none. This is pretty good news and allows me to be optimistic for once, but I don't think I'm alone in thinking that these strikes will achieve nothing significant due to the lack of a strong revolutionary left in France and the wider first world.
I'm sorry, but why was she going to school? Going to class during a mass strike such as this is the equivalent to scabbing, imo. They should be angry, and I would guess that they threatened violence only because she insisted. Either that or French leftists are dicks.

[LeninBalls]

I'm sorry, but why was she going to school?

I don't know, probably because med school is pretty important for her and like I said she's apolitical and isn't really involved with the strikes and wants to continue with her daily life. As much as I'd love for her to be on the streets protesting, she's not.

I never even implied the strikers are at fault, I think they are justly angry and of course this is going to reflect.

[¿Que?]

I don't know, probably because med school is pretty important for her and like I said she's apolitical and isn't really involved with the strikes and wants to continue with her daily life. As much as I'd love for her to be on the streets protesting, she's not.

I never even implied the strikers are at fault, I think they are justly angry and of course this is going to reflect.
Yes, but don't you think the jobs that workers do, the ones that are on strike, don't you think those jobs are pretty important to the workers. Do you think going to med school is more important to your girl than stable employment is for a worker? I don't think you do. In fact, I'd bet on it.

Tous en greve, bro.

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/greve_10_22/g37_25490123.jpg

[LeninBalls]

Yes, but don't you think the jobs that workers do, the ones that are on strike, don't you think those jobs are pretty important to the workers. Do you think going to med school is more important to your girl than stable employment is for a worker? I don't think you do. In fact, I'd bet on it.

Tous en greve, bro.

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/greve_10_22/g37_25490123.jpg

I don't get what you're trying to argue. My side is obviously with the workers. I only posted trying to be as informative as I could with what I know with my only connection in France with regards to today's turmoil.

I don't see what this has to do with, or why you trying to make this into a debate whether I prefer my girlfriend or workers.

[La Comédie Noire]

Tous en greve, bro.

Including you?

[¿Que?]

I don't get what you're trying to argue. My side is obviously with the workers. I only posted trying to be as informative as I could with what I know with my only connection in France with regards to today's turmoil.

I don't see what this has to do with, or why you trying to make this into a debate whether I prefer my girlfriend or workers.
I'm not trying to argue with you. But it seems your attitude is the strikes are ok so long as they don't disrupt people's ability to continue with their daily lives. That wouldn't be too effective, now would it?

Including you?
Believe me, if anything remotely resembling France was happening in my school, I'd be all over it. You want me to go on strike by myself?:confused:

[S.Artesian]

This is just the beginning in France and elsewhere. The bourgeoisie are no way out of the mess they've created and must push austerity to drive wages below the level of the value of labor.

Even if, in this episode, the pension reform goes through, even if workers are forced to abandon the roadblocks and picket lines, the struggle itself is just beginning. It interrupts itself, disperses, retires, regroups and re-erupts.

[The Grey Blur]

to echo what leninballs said above, the student protestors do sometimes descend to a pretty petty level. some anarchists are just giving themselves a bad name with stupid aggro shit. when i was going to uni one day i saw a bunch of lycée kids descending into a fight amongst themselves. and if she's a med student it fits in with the general trend i've noticed that the hard science students are nowhere near as militant as the social studies/arts/humanities lot. there are 4 campuses here, 3 are blocked while the geology/biology/medical one sees barely any protest. even there though the students aren't against the strike, just mostly apolitical.

the idea that we abandon all self-critical analysis during an upswing in militancy is bullshit. anyway, more protests (seperately organised by the student and worker unions) planned throughout the weeks coming, though with the half term holidays the school/uni students might not be out in force.

[ckaihatsu]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 423 .... October 25, 2010
_______________________________________________

The Revolt Shaking France

Strikes and protests have spread to every corner of France as President Nicolas Sarkozy pushes for a final vote in parliament on his proposal to ‘reform’ the country's national pension system. Every day last week has seen strikes, blockades and demonstrations. Police attempted to break up blockades at oil refineries and supply facilities after weeks of oil workers and their supporters stopping fuel deliveries, but the actions frequently resumed after police left. Almost all of the country's ports are still struck – according to reports, 52 oil tankers are at anchor off the coast of Marseilles, still waiting to unload.

The biggest actions have come when the unions have called nationwide strikes, but rolling walkouts and protests continue every day. This week, police have lashed back at youth demonstrators, fighting running battles in cities around the country – with the media parroting Sarkozy's denunciations of “lawbreakers.”

Sarkozy's proposal would raise the minimum age for retirement from 60 to 62 and the age when retirees can get full benefits from 65 to 67. The measure was passed by the country's Assembly and is being considered in the Senate – a vote was scheduled for October 20, but was delayed, though the Sarkozy government insists one will take place soon. Even if the measure passes, however, more protests are already planned, including at least two nationwide strikes and days of action at the end of October and early November.

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[S.Artesian]

Check this out:

http://felisniger.blogspot.com/

[Ravachol]

Refinery workers rounded up by the paramilitary police and FORCED to return to work under a so-called "sate of national emergency" law is not only unconstitutional, it is also an indication that the class struggle has reached new heights in Europe.
The news from Granpuits has shoked and angered union members throughout France.


The fact that they have to resort to these kinds of measures proves that recuperation and negotiation aren't as big a danger as one might initially assume. What is necessary, however, is for this movement to evolve to something beyond "demands", beyond the desire to "stop the austerity measures" or "stop the reforms" and to turn into full-fledged aversion of this order.

I'm also pretty interested to see how people will cope with the increasing police repression and the relation of the student movement to the worker's movement as well as how the social dynamite that is the banlieus will fit into this general climate of resistance.

[LeninBalls]

I've been told that most protests have stopped, little by little. Apparently, they're not given media attention anymore.

The refineries are still on strike though, there's not a lot of petrol going around.

[Reznov]

Let it tip! Spill over to the USA!

Even if it did, Thanksgiving week is almost here and you already know everybody would stop.

[MellowViper]

They should bring back the Paris Commune.

[RadioRaheem84]

Americans stomp on each other to get the latest deals at the mall, but they won't fight for rights?

Topsy Turvy world. :crying:

[Thirsty Crow]

I've been told that most protests have stopped, little by little. Apparently, they're not given media attention anymore.

The refineries are still on strike though, there's not a lot of petrol going around.
They should blow up them refineries if the scum will not yield.
And I'm only half kidding.

[mossy noonmann]

some naughty people cut off the electricity to the finance and budget ministries this morning :D

[Kiev Communard]

So is that it? Is it over? Sarkozy won? The French People lost?
:crying: Please tell me that can't be it.

That's what happens with the movement lacking strategic perspective and relying on faith in existing institutions (official and postmodernist "left", trade union leadership, etc.). The French workers should have created their own grass-roots political and organizational structures (more active workers' assemblies, committees of action, etc.), but the decades of legalism and "parliamentary cretinism", unfortunately, bore their fruit. I hope, though, that in the future, as it would be apparent that this "reform" was just the beginning, more rank-and-file workers will get radicalised and see the error of tred-iunionism.

[Saorsa]

It ain't over.

[Martin Blank]

Support the French Workers' Strikes!

For over a month and a half, French workers have mobilized against President Sarkozy's so-called “reform” of the retirement age. We have seen demonstrations with up to 3.5 million people in the streets, strikes at thousands of businesses and workplaces, road blocks put up everyday in all the business centers, and the impressive strike of oil refinery workers, supported by all of the working class in France, to create an oil shortage. But now this movement needs solidarity from workers all over the world.

In France, being on strike means you get no wages at all, because there’s no tradition of strike pay or wages being subsidized by the unions. This is a major problem for the strike, because many people are tending to “delegate” others sectors to go on strike for them. But now, some union and workers’ organizations are beginning to set up solidarity funds to help the strike continue for weeks or months, if necessary.

Sarkozy’s government tries to ignore the oil shortage, because he fears total economic paralysis. He uses any means for that, including importing oil refined in others countries. Already, the CGSP union in Belgium has declared they will call for a strike to stop any attempts to import oil from Belgium or through Belgium, in order to help French workers win their demands and defeat Sarkozy’s government.

In Brazil and England, working people have organized demonstrations in front of French embassies to express their support for French workers. Working-class organizations have sent statements of support.

It is important to organize world solidarity among workers, as our class faces the same struggle all over the world.

This is why we are calling on all the workers’ organizations of the world to:


Express their solidarity with the strike movement in France
Organize demonstrations in front of French embassies, consulates or businesses
Call for strikes against any attempt to export oil to France and to stop these exports
Help financially support the workers on strike in the most strategically important sectors (refinery and other branches with a strong economic impact)



Worker-Communist Initiative of Europe - www.communisme-ouvrier.info (http://www.communisme-ouvrier.info/)
Abroad Committee of Worker-Communist party of Iran [Hekmatist] - www.hekmatist.com (http://www.hekmatist.com/)
Worker-Communist Party of Iraq - www.wpiraq.net (http://www.wpiraq.net/)
Worker-Communist Party of Kurdistan - www.hkkurdistan.org (http://www.hkkurdistan.org/)
Red Star Society of the United States - www.redstarsociety.com (http://www.redstarsociety.com/)
Workers Party in America - www.workers-party.com (http://www.workers-party.com/)



If you or your organization wish to add your name to this statement, contact party[at]workers-party.com ([email protected]) and/or contact[at]communisme-ouvrier.info ([email protected]). Information on where to send donations is forthcoming.

[mossy noonmann]

Don't bother sending your cash they have gone back to work

[S.Artesian]

Don't bother sending your cash they have gone back to work

WTF? How do you think these things unfold? You think it springs full grown from somebody's oversized forehead? This conflict is just starting.

[Martin Blank]

Don't bother sending your cash they have gone back to work

Did the workers at the five Total refineries on strike vote to return to work? Did the dock and port workers return to work? Are the methane terminals at Fos operating again? Are the blockades at oil depots and refineries down? Have the garbage collectors in Paris and Toulouse went back to work? If not, then there is still a need for a strike fund.

Even in the longer term, there is a need for a strike fund for workers in France. It is the height of stupidity that the main union federations don't already have strike funds and leave workers to fend for themselves economically during actions. And since there's little doubt that French workers will be striking again in the near future (presuming they are no longer doing so or will stop in the coming days), the need for a permanent assistance network for French workers on strike is still necessary.

[Martin Blank]

Did the workers at the five Total refineries on strike vote to return to work? Did the dock and port workers return to work? Are the methane terminals at Fos operating again? Are the blockades at oil depots and refineries down? Have the garbage collectors in Paris and Toulouse went back to work? If not, then there is still a need for a strike fund.

Even in the longer term, there is a need for a strike fund for workers in France. It is the height of stupidity that the main union federations don't already have strike funds and leave workers to fend for themselves economically during actions. And since there's little doubt that French workers will be striking again in the near future (presuming they are no longer doing so or will stop in the coming days), the need for a permanent assistance network for French workers on strike is still necessary.

I've now heard that the refinery workers and dock workers have voted to return to work. It appears that the CGT and CFDT are succeeding in forcing Sarkozy's "reform" down the workers' throats. I think one can rightly say that this is a real defeat for the French working class, and it will reverberate throughout the Great Power imperialists, including in the United States.

I don't think it negates the need for a dedicated strike fund for French workers by any means. But this defeat will make it more difficult.

[mossy noonmann]

Did the workers at the five Total refineries on strike vote to return to work? Did the dock and port workers return to work? Are the methane terminals at Fos operating again? Are the blockades at oil depots and refineries down? Have the garbage collectors in Paris and Toulouse went back to work? If not, then there is still a need for a strike fund.


yes yes yes yes mostly yes apart from the guerilla blockades for ah hour or two, yes but still on strike at ivry.

[S.Artesian]

Well yeah, and the hell with those Russian workers because they didn't take power during the July days of 1917. Matter of fact, to hell with them because they didn't take power in 1905.

And fuck the Spanish workers for putting down their weapons at end of the civil war in Spain.

And the Italian workers-- not worth a damn after the defeat of the Turin strikes of 1980.

Right... save your money, buy yourself a new Ipod, put the earplugs in, pay no attention to noise from waves that ebb and flow.

[KC]

I've now heard that the refinery workers and dock workers have voted to return to work. It appears that the CGT and CFDT are succeeding in forcing Sarkozy's "reform" down the workers' throats. I think one can rightly say that this is a real defeat for the French working class, and it will reverberate throughout the Great Power imperialists, including in the United States.

Only three of the refineries have returned to work, last I checked, and those refineries weren't operable. Paris garbage workers were still on strike, too.

[RadioRaheem84]

I hope France stays in for the long run.

[Reznov]

Anyone know when the French workers are supposed to go on Holiday?

I keep hearing when their vacation holidays come up, the strikes are going to end. (And I can really see this happening and I think it will.)

[Martin Blank]

Anyone know when the French workers are supposed to go on Holiday?

I keep hearing when their vacation holidays come up, the strikes are going to end. (And I can really see this happening and I think it will.)

IIRC, the All Saint's holiday week is this one coming up. The union officials are looking to have all strikes, blockades and other workers' actions completely suppressed by the November 4 funeral procession ... err, I mean, "day of action".

[RED DAVE]

Latest report from France by Richard Greeman


The Crisis in France: Third Report by Richard Greeman

(Montpellier, France, Nov. 1, 2010) For months working people all over
Europe have been mobilizing – more or less successfully -- to defend
their livelihoods against austerity measures imposed by the central
banks. On the pretext of a sudden and exaggerated panic over the debt,
European capital is imposing a take-back of whatever social advances
working people may previously have won in terms of salaries, job
security, public services, health, retirement and unemployed benefits.
These austerity measures are embodied in directives from the European
Union and IMF, and the required cuts are being imposed by governments
of both Right and Left. (Greece’s Papandreou and Spain’s Zapatero are
both Socialists).

Popular resistance has been strong: Greece was in turmoil for most of
the Spring, and September 29 was marked by a one-day general strike in
Spain as well as a mass international demonstration at European Union
headquerters in Brussels. Nowhere has this conflict been sharper than
here in France, where an undefeated, un-Thatcherized working class
conscious of its long revolutionary traditions has for months been
defying the rigid right-wing government of Nicolas Sarkozy with a
series of nationwide general strikes and massive demonstrations of
historic dimensions. (Please see my earlier reports, below).

Eerily Quiet Streets

However, as I write these lines, things are eerily quiet here in
Montpellier, with stores closed, highways un-crowded and city streets
near-empty. Alas, the reason for this vacuity has nothing (and
everything) to do with the mass agitation and national strikes over
pension cuts that have brought France to the brink of crisis over the
past few weeks. Today is le Toussaint, an obscure Roman Catholic
festival (think Tishibov) celebrated as a National Holiday by the
officially secular French Republic with a three-day weekend and a
two-week school vacation. The French, 90% of whom never see the inside
of a (tax supported) Catholic church, are nonetheless a pious people,
and Vacances (vacation) is the name of the god they worship.

This disappointing dénouement to the tension that has been building
here for months was alas all too predicable, and the Sarkozy
government was openly counting on the vacances-effect when it
deliberately brought the crisis to a boil by rushing the final version
of the pension-reform law through the Senate last week, creating a
fait-accompli. The angry, determined, consciously anti-capitalist
social movement that has been coming to a boil for months has now
dispersed, and it is difficult to imagine it resuming with the same
intensity ten days hence. On the other hand, Oliver Besancenot of the
New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) is confident the movement will
‘rebound’ on Saturday Nov. 6, when the unions have programmed yet
another one-day nationwide mobilization.

Be that as it may, last Thursday’s national strike/demonstration (Oct.
28), much less well-attended then the previous six, already had
something autumnal and valedictory about it. It was of course the
seventh in the series of spaced one-day general strikes orchestrated
by the leaderships of the various French union federations (CGT, FO,
CFDT, CFTC, Sud-Solidaires). This stop-and-go strategy of ‘attrition’
has mainly served to ‘let off steam’ -- rather than building up the
pressure against the arrogant, intransigent Right-wing government of
the much-hated Sarkozy; it may well have run out of steam, as I feared
it would in my first report (Oct. 15, below). Nonetheless, the level
of anti-capitalist consciousness, self-organization,
inter-professional and inter-generational solidarity attained by this
mass movement has reached historic levels with over three million in
the streets. This experience will not be forgotten...

What Kind of Society?

What I love about the French is that although more than two thirds
have consistently voiced support for the demonstrators and strikers
(despite real inconveniences like closed gas stations and cancelled
commuter trains) only 43% actually agree with their goal -- withdrawal
of the ‘reforms’. Remember when U.S. liberals used to condemn our
anti-war and Civil Rights protests with bullshit about 'I agree with
your goals, but object to your methods' ? Here the public approves of
the radical means, even when they don’t really believe in the goal!
What this not-so-silent French majority is saying to Sarkozy is
simple: 'Don't play us for fools. We know you're a bunch of corrupt
politicians and super-rich profiteers, and we refuse to work until we
die to pay off your gambling debts while you dine with bankers at
Fouquet's and go off on their yacht.'

This was precisely how the arrogant President-elect celebrated his
2005 election victory (snubbing his own Party’s celebration), and
Sarkozy’s open contempt of democracy has not been forgotten. ‘Take a
good look at your Rolex: it’s time for revolt!’ is a popular slogan.
The French – both Right and Left -- are very conscious of their
history, and this sense of history reinforces the very open
class-consciousness – and class hostility -- on both sides. Ancestral
memories of civil wars between sans-culottes and aristos are part of
French identity. Indeed, the word ‘guillotine’ has recently been
bandied about (Sarkozy famously boasting it was out of style).

Obviously, these strikes have been about much more than pension cuts –
which in any case are generally perceived as the first of many such
‘reforms’ all designed to definitively tear up the post-WWII ‘social
contract’ between labor and capital. ‘Dignity’ is the word on
everyone’s lips. ‘If I can be tried as an adult at 13,’ reads a sign
held by a high school student ‘I’m old enough to demonstrate at 16.’

La Grogne (generalized popular grumbling) has been in the air for
months, as the pleasure-loving French see their lives getting worse
under this neo-liberal offensive. The economic slogan of the Sarkozy
administration is ‘Work More, Earn More,’ but work has become hell for
thousands of employees through the introduction of Kafka-esque
management techniques designed to isolate each individual worker and
make her personally responsible for constantly receding, arbitrary
‘goals.’ This management-imposed sense of failure, combined with
arbitrary re-assignments designed to de-skill and de-professionalize
employees, has lead to more and more frequent suicides in the Post
Office and the Electric company, where my neighbor, a highly skilled
line-man proud to work way up on high-tension transmission pylons, got
transferred to a humiliating job behind a computer keyboard with a
70-minute daily commute from his home. In ‘Suffering at Work,’ a book
and TV documentary, prominent psychiatrist Christophe Dejours revealed
how French management uses psychological pressure to destabilize its
employees and literally drives them crazy.

At stake ultimately for the French is the question of what kind of
society they want to live in: a society based on social solidarity or
one based on ‘greed-is-good’ individualism? The demonstrators’ answer
to Sarko’s ‘Work More, Earn More’ is ‘Work Less, Live Better.’ Like
Britain’s Thatcher in the ‘80s, the French President is aggressively
provoking class war from the top down in order to break the resistance
of the working classes and impose the neo-liberal agenda once and for
all. With two or three million in the streets and 70% against him in
the polls, the French people are telling Sarko: Fous le camp, pauvre
con! (‘Fuck off, Little Prick!’).

The Class-Conscious French

Another thing I love about France is the clarity with which class
interests get articulated in the political arena (as opposed to the
U.S. where bankers and bus drivers are all ‘middle class’). Since 1789
(and on through the revolutionary struggles of 1830, 1848, 1871, 1936
and 1968) France has been an ideal ‘Marxist laboratory’ for the study
of class conflict. Today, France is basically still ruled by the
legendary ‘200 Families’ – a restrictive caste of landed aristocrats
intermarried with industrialists and bankers who live in exclusive
neighborhoods, graduate from elite schools, belong to exclusive clubs
etc. It expands slowly by marriage, merger and cooptation and is
almost impossible to penetrate from the outside.

This financial and industrial oligarchy, today represented by Sarkozy
and the MEDEF (Chamber of Commerce) has been tightly organized since
the 19th Century, when it used its influence on the state not just to
discipline labor but to grant French industrialists profitable arms
contracts at higher than world-market prices. In June 1936, this tight
little oligarchy had the shit scared out of them when a wave of sit-in
strikes broke out all over France upon the election of a Popular Front
government led by Socialist Leon Blum. Blum immediately negotiated a
compromise including the 40 hour week and France’s first paid
vacations, and from then on, it was ‘Better Hitler than Blum’ as far as
the ‘200 Families’ were concerned. This attitude (reinforced by
traditional French Right-wing, anti-Semitic nationalism) goes a long
way toward explaining France’s 1940 military debacle and the willing
(and profitable) collaboration of French industrialists with the Nazi
occupiers while thousands of French workers were being deported to
slave labor in Germany. Yet today, Sarkosy’s party brazenly dares
advertize itself as the ‘Shameless Right.’

The oligarchy had a lot to answer for in 1944-45 when France was
liberated. The Resistance took power under the Gaullist-Communist
coalition, and collaborators were being tried and sometimes executed.
Some big industries were nationalized, but there was no general
expropriation of collaborators’ property. The Communists, under orders
from Moscow, supported de Gaulle in saving France for capitalism, but
at a price. The elite was forced to agree to the ‘social pact,’ and
the French Constitution that emerged from the Liberation defined
France as a ‘social republic’ under which workers have economic rights
and where salaries are defined as including both cash and a ‘social
salary’ of defined benefits – including retirement.

These benefits are considered constitutional rights, and since the
return to power of the Right in 1995, working people all over France
have been fighting a rear-guard action to preserve them. The issue is
clear to all: Sarkozy and the MEDEF are out to replace the social
republic with the dictatorship of the market, that is to say of the
banks. At last Thursday’s demo here in Montpellier I saw a little boy
carrying a sign that read La Bourse ou la Vie (‘Your Purse or Your
Life’) with a play on the word Bourse (‘Purse’) which also means ‘The
Stock Exchange.’ (He told me his father helped him).

Politics Rears its Ugly Head

Rather than gloating over his apparent victory, Sarkozy has for once
remained low key. With a view toward the 2012 election, the
paternalistic President is now hinting he might make a few unilateral
changes in the pension law (which cruelly punishes women, who
typically are out of the labor force for several years of
child-bearing and might not be eligible to retire until 70.)

Meanwhile, with the angry French masses forced to wait until the 2012
election to dethrone their hated President, the Socialist Party seems
to be emerging as the other ‘winner’ in this crisis. Sarkozy’s
potential Socialist presidential rivals, Ségolène Royale and Martine
Aubry, have recently promised to abrogate the pension cuts if elected
in 2012 -- forgetting that they had previously accepted the cuts as
inevitable (with minor modifications). The other Socialist
presidential contender, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has made no such
promise. In 2007 on Sarkozy’s recommendation he was named President of
the IMF responsible for imposing these and similar austerity cuts on
the European level.

Thus the official Left plays party politics, using the strikers and
demonstrators as pawns on the electoral checkerboard. The millions of
angry workers and youth in the streets were not thinking about 2012
when they told the ‘Little Prick’ to ‘Fuck Off.’ On Sept. 23, at the
height of the movement in Paris, there was talk of coming back the
next day, surrounding the National Assembly and bringing down the
government. Didn’t strikers topple Juppé’s government in 1995 and
Villepin’s in 2006? Didn’t their great-great-great grandmothers march
with their kitchen-knives to the Palace at Versailles in 1789 and drag
the King and Queen back to Paris? However, the CGT vetoed this move on
the grounds that it would be too ‘political’ (!) Militants were
advised to lobby their representatives back in their constituencies
(although they were all in Paris, the Assembly being in session). I
guess there’s ‘politics’ and politics.

Whom Do Union Leaders Represent?

Thus, the union leaders have once again, as in 2003 and 2007, managed
to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by tactics designed to
disperse and dissipate, rather than unite the energies of three
million militant working people and students backed by the huge
majority of the population. How do they get away with these repeated
sell-outs? If one were paranoid, one might even imagine the union
leaders who imposed these defeatist tactics on the mass movement were
actually ‘in the pay of the government!’

Technically speaking they are. In France full-time officers and staff
of the various union federations (Communist, Socialist, Christian
etc.) are entitled to government-funded salaries as well as
professional expenses and something like civil servant status. French
‘pork-choppers’ are paid on the basis, not of their actual dues-paying
union memberships (which on the average are down to U.S. levels), but
of the number of votes their union gets in work-place elections. Union
reps may thus be seen as functionaries serving as transmission-belts
between groups of employees and government or management.

In case of conflict, these union bureaucrats represent their
federations on the intersyndical (inter-union committee) where,
through various compromises between more or less militant unions, they
come to agreement on both the objectives and the tactics of national
(or for that matter local) actions. It is this highly bureaucratized
intersyndical that has called this series of one-day national strikes
cum mass demonstrations, whose official goal was not the actual
withdrawal of Sarkozy’s reforms (which is what the strikers want) but
an official role for the union leaders in negotiating the cuts
(accepted in as inevitable).

It costs the intersyndical nothing to call a symbolic one-day strike
to pressure for inclusion. On the other hand, unlike unions in the
U.S. and U.K., French unions don’t have strike funds, so employees who
participate in these symbolic one-day national work-stoppages lose a
much-needed day’s pay – which is why the mobilizations are more
popular when called on a Saturday.

The problem for the union bureaucrats is to keep the pressure on while
keeping it from getting out of hand. So strikes are limited to one day
and widely spaced. Moreover, these mass mobilizations are organized in
such a way as to maintain the division between public and private
sector workers, between members of the various union federations,
between different trades and professions, between different regions
and between workers and students. They take the form of long parades
led by blaring sound systems, with the demonstrators herded into
successive separate ranks by category. Nobody gets to see the other
groups or measure the strength of the whole demonstration, and when
these marches reach their destination, they are dispersed before
people can get together to discuss the day, exchange information --
much less hold a rally or general assembly.

Another missing element in the unions’ dis-unity strategy is any
visible move toward uniting European workers’ resistance to these
cuts, which are imposed by the European Union and Central Bank. While
the European bankers and capitalists are united in making the workers
pay the bill for the Crash, the Left and the unions — whether in
Greece, Spain, France or Britain — confine their struggles within
narrow national limits. Their Leftist leaders sing ‘The
Internationale’ at rallies, but in practice the dis-unite the workers
of Europe, who face a united European bankers’ Internationale.

The great frustration in this situation is that, assuming I am not
totally misreading the ‘mood of the masses,’ there is a real potential
here in Europe for militant, international popular struggles,
including cross-border actions and mass strikes that aren’t just
one-day symbolic affairs. (Even a one-day international general strike
would scare the bejezus out of the ghoulish bankers attempting to suck
the life substance out of European labor.) The stage is set for a
showdown. On the one hand, ‘shameless’ Right does not deign to hide
its objectives. On the other, the masses are angry and ready for a
fight. It is the shameless Left, beginning with the Communist CGT,
that disarms the masses, diverting the power of the militant millions
into establishment channels like negotiations and elections, confining
it within local and sectorial boundries, and disregarding its most
potent weapon: the open-ended mass strike.

How do they get away with this scam? Many rank-and-file militants are
aware of the situation, but remain frustrated by a union apparatus
that holds most of the cards when it comes to controlling the
movement. However, they remain isolated because no organization unites
them. Neither Besancenot’s NPA, nor the Trotskyist Lutte ouvrière (LO)
have taken any initiatives to expand and intensify the movement, for
example by setting up rank-and-file coordinating committees or for
calling general assemblies or mass meeting at the end of the official
parades. On the contrary, rather than denouncing the defeatist tactics
of the CGT and its shameful history of sell-outs, the
‘anti-capitalist’ far-Left organizations uncritically endorse the
spaced, one-day symbolic strikes proposed by the unions, while
abstractly calling for greater militancy.

Despite the sell-outs of 1995 and 2003 (never mind 1936 and 1968!) the
CGT remains sacred cow, and no one on the Left dares criticize it much
less unmask the Communists’ historic role as what the U.S. Socialist
Daniel DeLeon used to call ‘labor lieutenants of the bourgeoisie.’
This self-censorship -- call it ‘anti’ anti-communism -- is a form of
political correctness left over from Cold War days, when the
Communists were persecuted and still got 25% of the vote and when
Sartre refrained from criticizing the gulag.

The cream of the jest is that the French CP, now down to 2% of the
vote, long remained the most rigidly Stalinist CP in the West,
ignoring Khrushchev’s 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin. The CPF
defended the Russian tanks crushing of the Hungarian workers’ councils
in 1956 and the invasion of reformist Czechoslovakia in 1968, remained
aloof from the reformist Eurocommunist trends of the ‘80s, and never
engaged in serious self-criticism. Yet the CGT remains a sacred cow,
and even the ‘Trotskyist’ NPA and L.O continue to tail-end it ‘from
the Left,’ concentrating their fire on the reformist Socialists (SP)
while seeking alliances with the equally reformist CP.

Of course, the struggle is far from over, and the French (and
European) workers remain full of surprises. One can only share Olivier
Besancenot’s hope that the mass movement will ‘rebound’ on Nov. 6 and
develop into a full-fledged, open-ended, Europe-wide general strike.
But if it does, it will not be thanks to any help from the official
Left or its far-Left apologists.


Update on French Strikes by Richard Greeman

(Montpellier, France. Oct. 21, 2010) I ended my last week’s report
(below) with the hope the ‘the French people, who are always full of
surprises, will find some way out of this impasse in which their
“representatives” – the union leaders and the official Left parties –
are apparently their worst enemies.’ A week later, biggest ‘surprise’
is the entrance en masse of French youth, considered ‘apolitical,’
into the arena of the social struggle. All over France, high schools
are being blocked by their students, while the presence of beautiful
young faces is overwhelming in the huge nation-wide street
demonstrations that keep intensifying. I’m not sure you’re getting
these exciting images on U.S. and British TV, but you can view some at
http://www.liberation.fr/societe/01012297576-les-jeunes-en-renfort

A poll in yesterday’s Paris daily Libération indicated four out of
five French people think the government should give in and negotiate,
while 69% support the demonstrators, who are demanding the withdrawal
of the bill putting full retirement off to age 67. (Curiously, only
43% actually favor outright withdrawal. I assume most of the other
consider themselves ‘realists’ and hope for a favorable compromise
with the inevitable, considering the move toward ‘austerity’ all
across Europe).

‘Youth+Labor=People Power?”

Actually, this massive mobilization of French youth should not come as
a surprise. Last year there were weeks of strikes and protests among
high school and university students against education cutbacks, and in
November 2005 there was serious rioting among mostly French-Arab and
French-African youth in the ghetto-like projects that surround Paris
and other French cities (when Sarkozy, then Minister of Interior, made
a name for himself by call them Racaille [‘Scum’] and threatening to
scrub them with a high-pressure hose.) In 2006 the French youth revolt
went more political, when the right-wing government passed the CPE
(First Job Contract) bill, a labor ‘reform’ (presumably aimed at
encouraging the hiring of youth) which deprived workers under 26 of
their legal rights as workers. All over France, students blockaded
schools, went down into the streets, attempted to block trains and
eventually dragged the reluctant unions to support their
demonstrations. In addition, the outpouring of us parents and
grandparents in support of the kids was massive, and after six weeks
of chaotic disruptions, the Villepin government was forced to throw in
the towel and withdraw the bill.

A recurrence of 2006 is Sarkozy’s worst nightmare, and he was recently
quoted as saying in private: ‘As long as the young people don't get
involved, I can handle the movement against my pension reform.’ The
government’s response to the youth involvement has been to try to
drive a wedge between the generations by provoking violent incidents
around the high schools and encouraging mysterious ‘casseurs’ to burn
cars, presumably in the hope of alienating the adults with the specter
of ‘violence.’ At the same time, Sarkozy’s spokesmen paternalistically
maintain that teenagers shouldn’t be meddling with an adult issue they
don’t understand, especially since the reform is actually designed
help young workers by lowering Social Security payments. On the Left,
the head of the Force ouvrière union, equally paternalistic, was
quoted rejecting the help of the youth as ‘the weapon of the weak
(presumably like ‘women’s’ tears’)! On the other hand, generational
solidarity is strong in France, as witness a hand-made sign reading:
“(Son, 26): Mom, what’s work? (Mother, 57): You’ll find out when your
67!”

Elites versus Masses

The massive entrance of the youth into the arena has changed the
balance of forces in today’s stand-off between an intransigent
Right-wing administration and most of the population. The second
‘surprise’ since last week has been the mobilization of the truckers
(mostly independent) and the refinery workers, which has resulted in
gasoline shortages at service stations all over France and deliberate
slowdowns (‘snail actions’) by trucks on the highways. This is all the
more remarkable in that the French truckers, who can retire at 55
under a special dispensation, are striking purely out of solidarity.
More and more, the movement is in the hands of local committees and
worker assemblies, who vote to continue and expand the symbolic
one-day strikes called by the cautious national union leaderships. In
Marseille and elsewhere, there are ongoing tugs of war between
demonstrators, who block refineries and gas depots, and the police,
who disperse them only to find them back the next day.

The deepest fears of both the official Left (union leaders and
Socialist politicians) and the Right are that the movement will ‘get
out of hand.’ Editorialists wring their hands about a tragic descent
into chaos. In place of the traditional struggle between Left and
Right within the institutions, today’s struggles are between the
established elites and the rank-and-file, what in the U.S. we
prudishly call ‘the working middle class.’ The French, with typical
Gallic irony have adopted as their identity a government Minister’s
contemptuous slur by calling themselves ‘les Français d’en bas’ (‘the
Frenchmen at the bottom of the heap’).

Different Interests, Different Tactics

As I see it, these struggles -- between establishment Rightist and
Leftist elites on the one hand and on the other between elites and
ranks – are being carried out in parallel, but they have different
goals, and thus need different tactics. The goal of the strikers and
the masses in the streets is clear. They want Sarkozy withdraw the
‘reforms.’ Period. Their most effective tactic is equally simple:
all-out unlimited mass strikes until the government yields -- as it
did in 1995 (when the union-initiated movement against an earlier
pension ‘reform’ got out of hand) and in 2006 (when the CPE went down
in flames).

On the other hand, the goal of the official Left (Socialists,
Communists, and their affiliated unions) is to weaken Sarkozy, bring
the government to the negotiating table and re-legitimize themselves
as a viable alternative to the Right with a view toward the 2012
Presidential election. Their tactic: prolong the crisis by measured,
periodic shows of force. Of course, this delaying tactic resulted in
defeat for the workers in 2003, when the strikes predictably petered
out during summer vacation and the government raised the minimum
number of years you have to work to earn a pension from 37 to 42
(which particularly hurt women who have taken off years for
childbearing). Nonetheless, after the success of yesterday’s sixth
successive national mobilization of up to 3.5 million in the streets,
the union leaders are calling not one more but two more spaced
symbolic one-day national strikes: one in a week and the other in two
weeks!

Meanwhile, the whole country is going wild, and no one knows what will
happen between now and two weeks from now. On the government side
Sarkozy, ever more intransigent, is moving up the date of the final
vote of his reform in the Senate, while among the youth and workers in
transportation, petroleum, chemicals and other key industries the
ongoing strikes and spontaneous, daily, local actions are intensifying
all over France. One reformist union leader was quoted saying ‘by
marginalizing us, Sarkozy turned the power over to the streets.’ So
why did Sarkozy put his Presidency on the line by uniting the
fractious French unions against him, freezing them out of the action
and refusing to negotiate?

My Analysis

Short answer: ‘France has the stupidest Right in the world,’ well
represented by this little man with the big inferiority complex.
(Demonstrator’s slogan: ‘Carla, we’re like you: we both get screwed by
the head of state.’) Long answer: ever since 1995 when the Gaullists
got back into power after Mitterrand’s 14-year long ‘Plural Left’
(Socialist-Communist) administration, the Right has been looking for a
showdown with organized labor in an attempt to duplicate the
neo-liberal triumphs of the 1980’s when Thatcher (after stocking up on
coal for years) crushed the miners’ union in a prolonged strike and
Reagan fired all the Air Controllers. The Gaullists’ first attempt at
cutting benefits unilaterally under the Chirac administration was the
ill-fated Juppé Plan of 1995, which provoked a runaway general strike
and had to be rescinded. Villepin’s 2006 attack on the labor rights of
youth (CPE) had the same fate. In both cases, the Premier took the
rap, and the President saved face. It took an egomaniac like President
Sarkozy to take personal responsibility for the cuts and thus paint
himself into a corner.

Today’s Right forgets that the official Left is their best ally.
During the May-June 1968 General Strike, the Communist Party (CP) its
affiliated CGT union leaders saved capitalist France by blocking the
striking students from making contact with the striking workers,
negotiating a modest wage-hike with the government on behalf of the
strikers, declared the strike officially ‘ended’ (ignoring a massive
vote among the workers to continue it), and agreed to channel the
movement into parliamentary elections which the Right won.

Indeed, going further back in French labor history, in 1936 during the
general strike and factory occupations whose slogan was ‘Everything is
Possible,’ the CP/CGT leader Maurice Thorez famously declared: ‘You
have to know how to end a strike.’ The CP/CGT, allied with de Gaulle,
saved French capitalism in 1944-45 at the time of the Liberation when
the workers were still armed and French big business, having
collaborated with the Nazi occupiers, should have been expropriated.
The same Thorez told French workers to ‘roll up their sleeves,’
rebuild the country, and put off the revolution until after the
recovery. Despite these betrayals and sellouts by the official Left,
the French working class has not been seriously defeated by capitalism
– at least not in the way that British and American labor has, and the
French have learned the lessons that solidarity works, that resistance
pays off and that mass strikes are their strongest weapon.

There is no predicting what may happen as this conflict moves toward a
showdown – desired both by Sarkozy and by the vast majority of the
rank and file French, who in polls favor an unlimited general strike
to bring the crisis to a head (even if half of them accept the
necessity of pension cuts). So stay tuned for future developments.RED DAVE

[Kiev Communard]

Yes, the trade unions long ago (most definitely in early 1900s) lost any inclinations towards revolutionary socialist politics. What is needed is general workers' assemblies, organized outside the narrow limits of corporate legalism, and lacking entrenched bureaucratic hierarchies, uniting both socioeconomic and political aims in their actions.

[RED DAVE]

Yes, the trade unions long ago (most definitely in early 1900s) lost any inclinations towards revolutionary socialist politics. What is needed is general workers' assemblies, organized outside the narrow limits of corporate legalism, and lacking entrenched bureaucratic hierarchies, uniting both socioeconomic and political aims in their actions.In France in '68, the working class organized, both spontaneously and at the urging of left groups, so-called comites de base (rank-and-file committees), which fulfilled the functions you are describing so long as th revolutionary moment moved forward. However, these committees were never able to link up nationally or effectively link up with the student revolt.

RED DAVE

[Bilan]

In France in '68, the working class organized, both spontaneously and at the urging of left groups, so-called comites de base (rank-and-file committees), which fulfilled the functions you are describing so long as th revolutionary moment moved forward. However, these committees were never able to link up nationally or effectively link up with the student revolt.

RED DAVE

Could you cite evidence on this?
It sounds familiar but I don't remember where I read such a thing.
There were numerous other problems which damaged the movement in 68. In particular, the sabotage conducted by the unions in breaking up the strikes (See Cohn-Bendit, D. Obsolete Communism: The Left Wing Alternative (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=et0xcQhhlCUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false))

[Blackscare]

Say what you want about the relative merits of 1st-world radicalism vs 3rd-world radicalism, Dave, but I hope you feel just a bit silly about totally brushing off the importance of established and relatively powerful revolutionary/Socialist movements in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere, in favor of a movement in France that looks like it will be outlasted by my current haircut.

[RED DAVE]

Say what you want about the relative merits of 1st-world radicalism vs 3rd-world radicalism, Dave, but I hope you feel just a bit silly about totally brushing off the importance of established and relatively powerful revolutionary/Socialist movements in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere, in favor of a movement in France that looks like it will be outlasted by my current haircut.I am not brushing off what you are calling "3rd-world radicalism." What I am saying is that a working class upsurge in a major industrial country is extremely important. The likelihood of such an upsurge leading to a socialist revolution is, in my opinion, far greater than the movements in Nepal and India.

At present, the Nepalese Maosts seem hell-bent to enter a bourgeois government and create state capitalism. The Naxalites have some kind of control over approximately 3% of the land area of India with no obvious presence in the huge Indian cities which have a genuine working class.

RED DAVE

[The Grey Blur]

reflections on the situation in france by a class militant there (i made this into a thread but it was ignored): http://felisniger.blogspot.com/2010/10/reflections-on-situation-in-france.html

for the moment the strikes have abated but it isn't a straight defeat. a lot of anger was expressed and workers and young people have seen how they can shake the government. they will know better for next time.

[S.Artesian]

Say what you want about the relative merits of 1st-world radicalism vs 3rd-world radicalism, Dave, but I hope you feel just a bit silly about totally brushing off the importance of established and relatively powerful revolutionary/Socialist movements in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere, in favor of a movement in France that looks like it will be outlasted by my current haircut.

You think? I'm sure that's what the bourgeoisie would like to believe, but his struggle in Europe is just beginning, unless of course, you think capitalism is on the verge of another recovery, and all this austerity talk and legislation will disappear with your current haircut.

[RedTrackWorker]

"Neither Besancenot’s NPA, nor the Trotskyist Lutte ouvrière (LO)
have taken any initiatives to expand and intensify the movement, for
example by setting up rank-and-file coordinating committees or for
calling general assemblies or mass meeting at the end of the official
parades. On the contrary, rather than denouncing the defeatist tactics
of the CGT and its shameful history of sell-outs, the
‘anti-capitalist’ far-Left organizations uncritically endorse the
spaced, one-day symbolic strikes proposed by the unions, while
abstractly calling for greater militancy."
--Richard Greeman

I think this passage is key. While material support and moral solidarity with struggles is another country is key, the point of a forum like this is political debate. Struggles like those in France put politics to the test in new ways.
It does not seem hard to draw the conclusion that the union bureaucracies blocked and are still blocking the struggle from spreading, instead confining it to "let off the steam" one-day actions, when the obvious direction is for a general strike to beat back the attack. How are they able to do so? A key element (and in the final analysis, the key element I think) is the far left parties in France and internationally. Greeman illustrates above the "link in the chain" role the NPA and LO have played in this struggle--their "step to the left" attitude functioning as a left cover for the union bureaucracies.
And what of other groups on the left internationally?
Take the biggest in the U.S.--the ISO. They have written lots about the NPA--featuring articles and interviews from and with NPA activists and leaders--and I have yet to see any criticisms or even thoughtful comments on the NPA. I've been at previous ISO conferences where I dared to criticize the NPA and the commment was viewed like the fly in the ointment. And in their articles on the current events, I have not found any analysis of the NPA's actions, much less a political evaluation that draws conclusions like those above.
The CWI has a section/tendency in the NPA and calls for the general strike but without commenting on the NPA's policy! (http://www.gr-socialisme.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=427&Itemid=60) As the CWI continues it calls for new mass parties, like the NPA, which is playing the role of an obstacle (see the link in sig on no to new reformist parties).

[mossy noonmann]

do you really think the NPA is an block on working class action?

[S.Artesian]

do you really think the NPA is an block on working class action?

I don't know if he does, but I sure think the NPA will prove to be a block on working class self-organization, on working class revolutionary struggle-- just as almost every official "Marxist" party has proven to be before it.

[RedTrackWorker]

do you really think the NPA is an block on working class action?

Yes. See link on "No to new reformist parties" in my sig for my detail on the general method. On the particular issue of the NPA, their role in this current struggle is the surest evidence of that. (Which is not to say that it is therefor wrong to be working as a tendency within it necessarily, but to do so without criticizing it on its role in this struggle is politically wrong--see CWI.) I don't have the detail to trace the exact and changing nature of the relationship of the NPA to the "general strike to win" (or indefinite/unlimited general strike or whatever formulation), but the evidence is that 1) they raised it after the unions already felt pressured to call it and 2) they stopped raising it after the unions decided it was time to clamp down. There is evidence a majority of the population supported an all-out general strike to stop the pension change, and the NPA did not lead on that slogan, it tailed and then tailed in its withdrawal by the CGT.
The particular forms of this relate to French history I think--there's a strong syndicalist tradition, the idea of "this is union turf" and "this is political party turf" that is used to justify a political party not having an all-out critique of a union leadership's policies. And the union formation associated with the NPA--the SUD--enshrines that as one of its principles! So besides the role the NPA played in this struggle, the role of the CGT above all, but the other unions as well, in playing a role to contain the struggle was predictable--and what did the NPA do to prepare workers for that? Greeman's reports on the strike and other reports point to that the NPA did not prepare workers for dealing with the union bureaucracy's role, and as such the NPA plays its own role as a block to workers' self-organization and struggle.
This does not mean there are not forces within the NPA that can be won to a different perspective--there surely are some, how many I do not know but doubt its a majority. The effects of this pension struggle, win or lose, will contribute to revolutionary-minded workers around the world evaluating different political tendencies in France and out, which is a victory in and of itself.

[ckaihatsu]

I'll defer to RTW's empirical analysis here on the *specifics*,








...but these two analyses bear some *general* commentary:





do you really think the NPA is an block on working class action?





I don't know if he does, but I sure think the NPA will prove to be a block on working class self-organization, on working class revolutionary struggle-- just as almost every official "Marxist" party has proven to be before it.


In general we shouldn't get caught up in potential sectarianism or political dismissiveness, respectively, when we should all know by now that political forces are *relative* in nature -- akin to dozens of lightbulbs of different colors and intensities placed side-by-side in a row.

We should concentrate on how well or poorly various lightbulbs are illuminating the correct policy at any given time, and not get too hung up on the "ins and outs" of each revolutionary grouping's internal organizational politics (especially in relation to *other* revolutionary groupings), nor "throw out the baby with the bathwater" by blithely dismissing the work in the right direction that comrades *are* doing.





the exact and changing nature of the relationship of the NPA to the "general strike to win" (or indefinite/unlimited general strike or whatever formulation),


This is the crux of the issue for France right now -- we can start with ourselves, and look to see how various revolutionary left organizations are lining up relative to this correct / needed stance (policy) of 'indefinite / unlimited general strike'. Spreading out, we can seriously inquire why the conventionally all-determining trade unions aren't fully under this umbrella as well (although we know from theory *why* they're not -- their 'balancing middleman arbiter' position). Unique historical events have given us the benefit of the French public holding up the umbrella in common with 2/3 of their population -- now there's no excuse to *not* be under it.

[RedTrackWorker]

In general we shouldn't get caught up in potential sectarianism or political dismissiveness, respectively, when we should all know by now that political forces are *relative* in nature -- akin to dozens of lightbulbs of different colors and intensities placed side-by-side in a row.

We should concentrate on how well or poorly various lightbulbs are illuminating the correct policy at any given time, and not get too hung up on the "ins and outs" of each revolutionary grouping's internal organizational politics (especially in relation to *other* revolutionary groupings), nor "throw out the baby with the bathwater" by blithely dismissing the work in the right direction that comrades *are* doing.

I have no clear idea what your lightbulb metaphor is about, but it sure sounds all wrong to me.
I'm against sectarianism and dismissive-ness, but I'm for telling the truth to workers. I have no idea what all political forces being "relative" means--how is something "relative in nature"? A unitary judgement of a political force might be wrong--a political force may have contradictory aspects that defy placing it in one category, or viewing being in that category as having the same significance as other forces in that category.
I'm against "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" but that doesn't mean don't throw out the bathwater! In other words, it doesn't mean that just because a group of comrades are doing some things right that we cannot evaluate the overall tendency in a negative way. How, according to this relativist method, does one evaluate a movement like the Tea Party, which cannot be reduced to being "right-wing" in every aspect but some elements opposed some things (like the healthcare bill) out of correct working-class anger at its problems? Or do they just contribute fewer lumens than other bulbs in an off-shade?

But to step back a bit, we're not just talking about these particular French struggles, but revolution. Even minimal study of past revolutions shows the the theories, methods, tactics and strategies of what were thought to be insignificant political groupings can have a decisive impact on success and defeat. I believe it should not be hard to understand that people live and die based upon correct and incorrect ideas in the class struggle. While errors of dogmatism and sectarianism (along with opportunism and many other kinds of errors) surely occur in the fight over ideas, I do not think that changes the fact that devotion to the cause of the liberation of the working class and of the fight to end all oppression requires vigorous, difficult and unremitting combat in the realm of ideas.


This is the crux of the issue for France right now -- we can start with ourselves, and look to see how various revolutionary left organizations are lining up relative to this correct / needed stance (policy) of 'indefinite / unlimited general strike'. Spreading out, we can seriously inquire why the conventionally all-determining trade unions aren't fully under this umbrella as well (although we know from theory *why* they're not -- their 'balancing middleman arbiter' position). Unique historical events have given us the benefit of the French public holding up the umbrella in common with 2/3 of their population -- now there's no excuse to *not* be under it.

If you agree that is the key issue, why do you qualify the condemnation of the NPA, which is confused about this key issue and has no right to be? I don't thing the interesting question is the position of the top union leadership which is not doing anything new but how can people who claim their allegiance is to the revolution--the interests of the entire working class--and who know that the top union leadership would play this role, how can those groupings justify their existence? I think the answer in broad outline relates to the record of working-class defeats since the early 70's, coupled with the much more historic defeats of the 30's and 40's and the cynicism arising from that. I said earlier that this French struggle, win or lose, will clarify for revolutionary-minded workers the nature of various political tendencies. The statement is incomplete because a loss would mean the continued disorientation of the majority along with the further political clarification for a tiny handful, while a clear-cut victory would provide much more favorable terrain for the political clarification of the "vanguard." And I do not think this difficult process of selecting and training revolutionary workers for the task of revolution is made helpful by hiding political judgement of various organizations and tendencies like the NPA or the attitude that "we're all in this together" (different color lightbulbs).

[ckaihatsu]

I have no clear idea what your lightbulb metaphor is about, but it sure sounds all wrong to me.


Heh -- sounds like an implicit request for *yet another* diagram from yours truly...(!)





How, according to this relativist method, does one evaluate a movement like the Tea Party, which cannot be reduced to being "right-wing" in every aspect but some elements opposed some things (like the healthcare bill) out of correct working-class anger at its problems? Or do they just contribute fewer lumens than other bulbs in an off-shade?


Yeah, this is a good way of putting it -- that further-right orientations and positions will "contribute fewer lumens" -- if *any* -- towards lighting up the stance that we know to be correct for / in the best interests of the working class.





We should concentrate on how well or poorly various lightbulbs are illuminating the correct policy at any given time,


I'd prefer to not even *mention*, much less discuss, the Tea Party, since it's nationalist and electoralist at its core. No working-class basis = no "lumens" given to what will actually *benefit* people who have to work for a living, like a living wage, legislated increases in benefits, free expanded social services, an immediate end to imperialist wars, and card-check rank-and-file union organizing, for starters.





I'm against sectarianism and dismissive-ness, but I'm for telling the truth to workers. I have no idea what all political forces being "relative" means--how is something "relative in nature"?


Thanks for asking, but I don't think you're unfamiliar with this dynamic -- anyone who's been to a single protest knows that a *variety* of revolutionary and reformist left groups will coalesce around certain political issues of importance that they all support. In this way their support for the issue will be *relative* -- we could hypothetically quantify this support just by seeing how many hours out of the working day each organization spends on that particular issue (plus material resources, etc.).

I have a linear "political spectrum" for your perusal that places various leftist orientations in a line, relative to each other: (also attached at the end of this post)


Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

http://i48.tinypic.com/1zxm51g.jpg





A unitary judgement of a political force might be wrong--a political force may have contradictory aspects that defy placing it in one category, or viewing being in that category as having the same significance as other forces in that category.


This *is* an astute point, and I account for it by positing 'platforms' that may vary in length according to the breadth of support given over an expanse of political positions. Furthermore the platforms may provide multi-position support for actual activities taken -- plans-in-common put into motion. These could be called 'strategies', 'tactics', and 'execution', and are represented in the illustration with the visual metaphors of an anvil, catapult hammer, and hammer-blow, respectively:


Ideologies & Operations

http://i46.tinypic.com/ndoaau.jpg





I'm against "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" but that doesn't mean don't throw out the bathwater! In other words, it doesn't mean that just because a group of comrades are doing some things right that we cannot evaluate the overall tendency in a negative way.


Certainly.





But to step back a bit, we're not just talking about these particular French struggles, but revolution. Even minimal study of past revolutions shows the the theories, methods, tactics and strategies of what were thought to be insignificant political groupings can have a decisive impact on success and defeat. I believe it should not be hard to understand that people live and die based upon correct and incorrect ideas in the class struggle. While errors of dogmatism and sectarianism (along with opportunism and many other kinds of errors) surely occur in the fight over ideas, I do not think that changes the fact that devotion to the cause of the liberation of the working class and of the fight to end all oppression requires vigorous, difficult and unremitting combat in the realm of ideas.


Yes.





If you agree that is the key issue, why do you qualify the condemnation of the NPA, which is confused about this key issue and has no right to be?


If you'll look back to what I stated, I did *not* qualify any concrete condemnation of the NPA, because my comments were in response to S.Artesian's *dismissiveness*, *in prediction* of the NPA in relation to the best interests of the working class:








I don't know if he does, but I sure think the NPA will prove to be a block on working class self-organization, on working class revolutionary struggle-- just as almost every official "Marxist" party has proven to be before it.





In general we shouldn't get caught up in [political dismissiveness] when we should all know by now that political forces are *relative* in nature -- akin to dozens of lightbulbs of different colors and intensities placed side-by-side in a row.


To clarify in a constructive direction, I am in agreement with your empirical analysis of the NPA in relation to the continuing strikes in France:








I don't have the detail to trace the exact and changing nature of the relationship of the NPA to the "general strike to win" (or indefinite/unlimited general strike or whatever formulation), but the evidence is that 1) they raised it after the unions already felt pressured to call it and 2) they stopped raising it after the unions decided it was time to clamp down. There is evidence a majority of the population supported an all-out general strike to stop the pension change, and the NPA did not lead on that slogan, it tailed and then tailed in its withdrawal by the CGT.





I don't thing the interesting question is the position of the top union leadership which is not doing anything new but how can people who claim their allegiance is to the revolution--the interests of the entire working class--and who know that the top union leadership would play this role, how can those groupings justify their existence? I think the answer in broad outline relates to the record of working-class defeats since the early 70's, coupled with the much more historic defeats of the 30's and 40's and the cynicism arising from that. I said earlier that this French struggle, win or lose, will clarify for revolutionary-minded workers the nature of various political tendencies. The statement is incomplete because a loss would mean the continued disorientation of the majority along with the further political clarification for a tiny handful, while a clear-cut victory would provide much more favorable terrain for the political clarification of the "vanguard."


Agreed.





And I do not think this difficult process of selecting and training revolutionary workers for the task of revolution is made helpful by hiding political judgement of various organizations and tendencies like the NPA or the attitude that "we're all in this together" (different color lightbulbs).


Of course all revolutionary leftists should strive to attain their own discriminating senses of political judgment. At the same time, though, we will *empirically* find similarly-minded "colleagues" -- if you will -- in the political arena, in the heat of battle, and these should not be given a sectarian or dismissive treatment, though they may be limited to one issue in common and may subsequently flit away like schools of fish. Any incidental togetherness gives us revolutionaries opportunities to demonstrate why we position ourselves as we do, as evidenced in the context of real-world events.

[The Grey Blur]

and another movement of the working-class ends with internet trotskyists bickering over the sectarian scraps. you people are pathetic.

[ckaihatsu]

and another movement of the working-class ends with internet trotskyists bickering over the sectarian scraps. you people are pathetic.


You haven't *begun* to see "bickering", but it looks like you're doing everything you can to kick it off....

[Kiev Communard]

I don't think that the French movement has ended. The situation is such that Sarkozy can't stop at "pension reform", and his new attacks, together with union leaders showing their true colours more often, may lead to more pronounced radicalization of the workers. Besides, even though this weekend's day of action was less massive, it is still pretty much impressive, considering the failure of the previous efforts to stop the "reform".

[mossy noonmann]

one of the good things to come out of this, has been the cooordination between groups of workers at a local level bypassing the national confederations.

[chegitz guevara]

Resistance always starts unevenly, haltingly, and meets with early setbacks.

[Martin Blank]

Note: I'm posting this here for the benefit of those comrades interested in helping with building solidarity actions. Please take the appeal and call into your organizations and see if they would be willing to organize or join in a protest in your area. Let us know if you're going to have a protest, too, so that the information can be sent to workers in France. -- Miles

Appeal for Workers’ Solidarity

Statement of the C.C. Bureau of the Workers Party in America, November 9, 2010

Brothers and sisters! The Workers Party is reaching out to you to ask for help and solidarity. This is appeal is not for us, but for our brother and sister workers in France. We ask for your help in building a day of action to support them and their struggles.

As many of you know, French workers of all ages have organized and mobilized over the last two months against the legislation pushed by President Nicolas Sarkozy to raise the retirement ages to 62, for a partial pension, and 67, for a full benefit. Workers and their organizations staged powerful strikes in key sectors of the economy (most notably the oil refineries), and built marches and protests involving hundreds of thousands. Young workers still in school also organized protests, as well as occupations of buildings and public spaces.

Even though Sarkozy succeeded in pushing this “reform” of retirement through the National Assembly and the Senate, the workers’ struggle is not over. Many workers remain on strike, workers’ blockades of transport and industries continue to be raised, and workers, both young and old, continue to hold protests against the austerity demanded by the government and its corporate paymasters. While most of the unions, through their officials, have given up on continuing the struggle, preferring instead to plead for “renegotiation” with the government, new bodies of struggle and working-class action have stepped into the breach.

Across France, local General Assemblies have emerged as membership-based alternatives to the main union federations. These Assemblies are committees of action that embrace all sectors of the working class: organized and unorganized, the unemployed, young people and retirees. Their goal is to not let the fight for workers’ rights and livelihoods die out or be strangled, now that the union officials are looking to make peace with the bosses.

Last weekend, the first national meeting of the General Assemblies took place in Tours. The delegates and observers at the meeting drafted a declaration and call for support and solidarity. (See the last issue of WPA for the full text.) Among the calls made from the Tours conference was an appeal for international solidarity protests to be held on November 15.

We are reaching out to you to ask for your help in organizing solidarity protests across the U.S. on that day. Such actions can include protests in front of the French embassy in Washington, D.C., as well as in front of French consulates across the country. It can also include informational pickets in front of French businesses and banks with facilities in the U.S.

We understand that this appeal comes at short notice. We know there is not much time to organize an event. However, any action, large or small, will have a profound effect on the morale and consciousness of our brothers and sisters in France. Now more than ever, working people in France need to know they are not alone in the fight against capitalist austerity.

If you or your organization is interested in building a solidarity protest, please do so. Because Nov. 15 is a Monday, it would be best to organize a late-afternoon event to allow for working people here in the U.S. to attend. But time and place are for you to decide, just as you would be welcome to bring your own signs, banners and slogans to the protests. These protests are for the benefit of French workers, not any one organization or its viewpoint.

If you or your organization do build a solidarity protests, please be sure to take pictures that can be sent to France. You can either send them to us by e-mail at [email protected], with a guarantee that all photos will be sent, or you can send them directly to France by e-mail at [email protected] But do send us a copy, if you would, please.

------------------------------

This is No Time to Give Up!

Call of the national meeting of General Assemblies, Tours, November 6, 2010

On November 6, mandated delegates or observers from 25 local cross-industry General Assemblies, General Assemblies from particular disputes, joint union committees open to non-unionized workers, struggle collectives, inter-sector coordinations met in Tours.

Workers from the public and private sectors, unemployed people, pensioners, and high school and university students have been massively protesting, striking, demonstrating, and blockading streets, motorways or petrol stations, for the withdrawal of the so-called “pension reform”, with the support of the majority of the French population. To these protests the government has only responded with contempt, disinformation, repression, violation of the right to strike, and now it has decided to try to impose a fait accompli.

The fight against the “pension reform” is at a crucial point. While the government and media are announcing the end of the mobilization, blockades and solidarity actions are still going on across the country, and demonstrations are still massive. This law must be repealed. We refuse to bury the movement after the passing of the law.

The strategy of the joint union committee at national level has led to a failure. But we are not going to give up: we are committed to continue the fight. In many towns, those who struggle, members of different unions and non-unionized workers too, have met in General Assemblies and collectives in order to discuss and act together: to inform, to support the sectors which are struggling, to extend the strikes, and to organize blockades. We want this process of self-organization and joint action to be sustained, amplified and coordinated.

This movement is part of a broader struggle to stop the offensive of the government and the bosses, who are preparing new attacks, especially on health insurance. The only way to win is to blockade the economy and organize a general strike.

We call for a common front against the increasing brutal repression used against the social movements.

We have held this national meeting to start discussing, coordinating and carrying out joint actions.

We call all those in struggle to organize general assemblies, if they have not already done so in their localities.

We call on all local cross-industry General Assemblies, General Assemblies from particular disputes, joint union committees open to non-unionized workers etc., to attend the next national meeting in Nantes on Saturday, November 27, 2010, and send mandated delegates.

We invite all trade unions to send observers.

We call for the following actions, in order to reinforce those which are already taking place daily:


A symbolic action on November 11 at 11 a.m. for the repeal of the law and as an homage to all those who die at work before having the possibility of retiring;
A day of economic blockade on November 15, with international support;
A symbolic burning of the text of the law on the day of its promulgation.

[ckaihatsu]

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/pers-n11.shtml


Lessons of the European strike wave
11 November 2010


The betrayal of the strikes in France against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension cuts underscores the need for a political balance sheet of the struggles waged against social cuts adopted by European governments amid the global economic crisis.

The outbreak in October of a port and oil strike in France, supported by widespread high school protests, galvanized working class opposition to Sarkozy and rapidly led to a severe gasoline shortage. The strikes were effective and highly popular, and the government soon found itself politically isolated.

Nonetheless, Sarkozy succeeded in using riot police to break the strike and has ignored continuing protest marches by hundreds of thousands of workers and youth.

The French strikes are part of the initial stages of an international resurgence of the class struggle, which has again demonstrated the immense social power of the working class. On Saturday, over 100,000 people marched in Lisbon against the social cuts of Socialist Prime Minister José Sócrates. Yesterday, a student protest in London against a three-fold increase in university fees gathered 50,000 marchers, some of whom occupied Conservative Party headquarters and clashed with riot police.

The brutal fact, however, is that despite massive opposition to social cuts and the willingness of workers and youth to do battle, working people everywhere have been thrown back.

Governments, both conservative and social democratic, are imposing savage cuts with total disregard for public opinion. Workers throughout Europe find themselves in a battle not only against their employers, but in a political struggle against the state, for which an entirely new perspective and new organizations of struggle are required.

The main reason for the workers’ defeats has been the bankrupt perspective of pressure politics imposed on them by the unions and the existing “left” parties. Such a perspective has nothing to offer under conditions where the state and the ruling class, driven by a capitalist crisis unprecedented since the 1930s, do not intend to concede anything.

In Greece, as in Portugal and Spain, unions called several one-day national protests, ostensibly aimed at pressuring the social democratic government to modify cuts it was imposing to satisfy its creditors during this spring’s Greek debt crisis. Predictably, the government, which is supported by the unions, ignored the protests, which entailed only a brief interruption of economic life.

The results have been disastrous for workers. According to press estimates, Greek workers have on average taken a 30 percent wage cut.

In France, the government and the press treated similar protests with open contempt. One commentator told Le Monde that they were “an episode in the process of producing the reforms.” A union official, seeking to express workers’ frustration with the impotence of such protests, explained that they were “fed up with simply strolling through the streets.”

Middle-class ex-left parties, such as SYRIZA in Greece or the New Anti-Capitalist Party in France, nonetheless insisted that workers’ main task in fighting the cuts was appearing in large numbers at these rallies. With this cynical policy, they sought to appeal to the population’s desire to fight reactionary governments while simultaneously channeling it behind the unions, despite rising frustration in the working class with the dead end of union-organized protests.

The outbreak of protracted industrial struggles by the working class has torn the mask off these organizations, which in times of real struggle function as agencies of the state. In Greece, the unions openly backed PASOK’s use of the army to break the July-August truckers’ strike. French unions made no move to organize solidarity strikes to halt Sarkozy’s strike-breaking against the refineries last month.

Elsewhere, the unions have declined to even organize token protests. In Ireland, the public sector unions negotiated a four-year no-strike pledge this April, while the state prepared mass layoffs and attacks on working conditions.

In Britain, unions have made no plans for nationwide strike action to protest the policies of the recently-elected government of Prime Minister David Cameron. He has pledged to make ₤83 billion in spending cuts, including eliminating 500,000 public-sector jobs, which is anticipated to lead to overall job losses numbering in the millions.

The middle-class parties are accomplices in the betrayals by their silence on the unions’ policy of isolating strikers and suppressing the class struggle. This is bound up with their opposition to any movement of the working class that escapes the unions’ stranglehold.

The most critical question is developing the political perspective and new organizations needed to draw broad layers of the working class into industrial and political struggle against the capitalist governments in Europe and internationally. For this reason, the WSWS calls on workers to form committees of action independent of the unions and based on a struggle for socialist policies.

The post-war social gains achieved by workers throughout Western Europe are being shredded, as the ruling class enriches itself by forcing workers into a downward spiral of competition against their class brothers in Europe and around the world. This is combined with the promotion of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant chauvinism throughout Europe, to poison the political climate and divide the working class.

Workers’ struggles against austerity are not national struggles, but European and global struggles and must be fought on that basis. Workers cannot defend their living standards by pressuring governments through organizations wedded to the service of the ruling class. Nor is it a matter of bringing alternative bourgeois governments to power in individual countries, under conditions where all parties are committed to imposing historic cuts.

Workers must fight to bring down the anti-democratic bourgeois governments as part of an international struggle to establish workers’ governments based on socialist policies. In Europe, the program must be based on the overthrow of the capitalist European Union and establishment of the United Socialist States of Europe. This struggle, in turn, is bound up with the fight for workers’ power and socialism internationally.

The working class faces the task of organizing itself and building a party to wage a political struggle against the international offensive being waged by the financial aristocracy. The World Socialist Web Site encourages workers in Europe and around the world to read its coverage, contact the WSWS, and fight to build the International Committee of the Fourth International as the revolutionary party of the European and world working class.

Alex Lantier



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