June 7 2016

FRANCE

 

The “French May” begins to stand up

Hollande and the large employers’ class insist on their war against workers, snatching them all labor gains.

The Union bureaucracies and the parties that are servants to the imperialist Fifth Republic cannot prevent millions from getting to the streets and entering combat

The working-class enters battle: pickets, action committees, the strike and the worker-student unified action go on spreading and increasing their ranges

 

In recent weeks class struggle in France has deepened every day. The working class makes feel its weight with its methods of struggle. The country has filled with committees of factory, picketing and strike committees of action of workers and students. Base assemblies spread which vote for strikes in more and more sectors, going beyond the direction of union bureaucracies.

A new French May is getting underway. To the attack by the Government of Hollande and the imperialist Fifth Republic, the French working-class, exploited youth, students and the whole of the working people have opposed it a struggle in the streets with strikes, work stoppages, mobilization of masses, barricades, sabotage, camping in squares and before enterprises, occupations of factories and establishments. 
Every day the revolutionary masses come up a new step in their struggle; far from stopping they organize and reorganize their forces to confront the Government and its anti-labor attack.

This is so since Hollande dispatched in March the El Komri Bill of "labor reform" to Parliament, which in fact means the liquidation of all labor conquests. The response of workers and youth was swift with strikes and actions of fight to the streets, conquering on March 31 a general strike. And while the Government and the big bosses claimed that they would give up neither in a coma of the law, French workers and their youth not yielded in their fight but were deepening it every day for two months. It was the policy of the Union bureaucracies and social-imperialist left to bring those energies of masses, which were beginning to unfold, at the foot of the Parliament, seeking to press it for voting against the bill.

But such scam against the working class and the exploited was exposed when Hollande announced May 5 he would impose the law by Decree. Parliament and all political parties of the imperialist Fifth Republic ensured “censorship clause" would not be imposed on this Decree. The mask fell off and the big plot of all the enemies of the working class to snatch their conquests got under the light. French imperialism is betting great stakes on imposing on its own proletariat terrible conditions of labor precarization and maquila by means of that law. The fact is the French transnational need France to be a whole sweatshop to be able to compete in European and world markets with the rest of the imperialist powers. The Atlantic Treaty with the United States that is underway means the opening of customs and borders for products and goods from the European and USA transnationals. All these monopolies are vying openly. Then, attacking their working class is a question of life and death for French big firms.

Before this attack, the working class responded with the huge day of fight on May 12 and the subsequent ones on May 17, 19 and 26 while daily new sectors of workers and the exploited joined the revolutionary torrent.
The Union bureaucracies called centralized actions to control the tide of struggle and the offensive of the working class on those hot days of May. They tried to unzip the movement calling every ten days actions of strikes and demonstrations that although they are convened to 2 pm are taken in their hands by the exploited masses that transformed them into real active strikes to strike against the Government.
The French May began to stand up in an open political mass struggle against the Government of Hollande and the French employers, breaking the dams of containment which the trade union bureaucracy sought to build up at every step to stop this true irruption of masses that has begun.

When each day ends, the trade union bureaucracy dry the perspiration from their brows and take a deep breath thinking that they have been able to decompress the situation. But the Government does not grant any concessions. There is no scope for reform, even to make up the alms as reforms. The telltale ends of the treacherous bureaucracy of trade unions about "buffering" or "regulating" the attack. The telltale of "real democracy" lies bare that the left has been selling. Combat becomes class against class. Two barricades are clearly established: the Government, the employers and the French imperialist infamous regime on one side, and on the other the working class and youth presenting battle.
After each day of fight called by the bureaucracy of the unions (which is used by the masses to centralize their combat), the workers and exploited are maintained on war footing and new stoppages are developed by trade, Union, companies; hard fights, battles of barricades, pickets, clashes with the police and together with the youth they multiply their action committees and strengthen their coordination in the cities and neighborhoods. New sectors joining the movement go to new battles. The bases impose enormous struggles as in the railway, in the mail, at nuclear plants and power centrals, including coming to enable electric power to the poor who cannot afford it.

From the grassroots and assemblies the unity of the factory and workplace councils of the various unions is imposed. Strike committees that unify all workers in struggle are conquered. Emerging are organs suitable for combat that grouped the masses entering the fight, question that unions can't do, because they represent a tiny minority of the working class in their ranks.

The exploited have started to take their problems into their own hand; they have identified their enemies and began to put up their adept organs for the political fight that has been raised. A new French May is getting up, at which the masses are deploying a huge capacity of combat and a willingness to fight, despite and against their leaderships.

The immediate task, which is none other than to defeat El Khomri Law puts at the order of the day -and is inextricably linked to- the task of pulling down the Government of Hollande which imposed it through a Bonapartist decree.

This fight has only two possible outcomes: either the working class defeats the great imperialist firms in a decisive battle, or the bourgeoisie exerts a brutal defeat to the masses due to the betrayal of their addresses.  Employers only give something if they see that they lose all... The masses are beginning to understand this while at the same time they are taking confidence in their forces. The dynamics of this offensive inevitably leads to a huge upheaval that if it develops will put in question the very existence of the Fifth Republic and all its institutions of domination.

In this new French May, the role of Stalinism, the union bureaucracies and social-imperialist parties is to prevent the working class from going up new levels in its combat so this dynamic does not lead to the beginning of the French Revolution dislocating all institutions of domination of imperialism and its infamous regime.

The general staffs of trade unions and the worker parties never prepared nor organized this offensive of masses, which has escaped completely from the hands of these leaderships. The issue is clear: all of them, from the bureaucracy of the CGT and FO to all neo-Trotskyist groups to Stalinism and the "new left" called to put pressure on Parliament so this stopped El Khomri bill from becoming a law and that’s why their policy was of pressure strikes and other actions.

They told lies to the working class. They prepared it for a fight in a "time of peace", while in reality the bourgeoisie had declared a brutal war to the exploited and was –is- coming to get everything. Today the working class and the masses are imposing a fight at the height of the attack of the capitalists. All those who chattered yesterday about the "benefits" of the struggles of pressure on the French Parliament, today have had to swallow their own medicine as the masses and those at the bottom not have taken it.

People who for years forgot about revolution, socialism, 1968 French May and the Paris Commune and had buried this under seven keys, now... they start to talk about the "new French may", of "anti-capitalist struggle", etc. They seek to rearrange themselves to the new situation. That is the cynicism of the reformer:  they dress in "red" when the masses come in revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary times.

Currents as the NPA, Lutte Ouvriére and all European and world left are beginning to discuss the "appearance of red flags in the streets," about "the relationship between this new onslaught of masses in France and its analogy with 1968 French May", and "whether the term ‘general strike’ is in the agenda". Those who then sold out the struggle for socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat today go seek them to the old trunks and carefully dust them. Who buried the proletarian revolution and the struggle for power, suddenly try to talk about them... but they stutter. The situation has exceeded them. They wobble as dizzy guys. They miss their old politics in times of peace. They don't feel comfortable in the new pre-revolutionary situation.

But the question is specific: the immediate need of the masses is to defeat the law, the Government that imposed it and the employers who developed it and want it applied at all costs.
And here the "new romantics of the French May" break their teeth. They fill their mouths with "red flags" and the like, but they not prepare or organize the masses to pull down the Government and its jobs precarization law and clash with the employers, their State and repressive forces, or move a finger to develop, extend and coordinate organs of self-determination and dual power that the exploited have began to put up in embryo.

These directions speak of  “1968 French May”, but are closing the way to a victory of the masses who have put this French May on its feet. It is about giving it a revolutionary orientation which raises the defeat of the El Khomri law and of the Government and the development and generalization of the organs of self-determination, self-defense and direct democracy of the masses. The clash between classes is already critical.

For this purpose the urgent task is to deepen the way by multiplying the fighting spots, climbing new levels in the revolutionary struggle; not stopping the mobilization for one moment, and strengthening and centralizing the fighting organizations the masses are creating as the Action Committees, coordinating them by city, region, Department and at the national level, in order to put in place the power of the exploited to defeat the power of the exploiters.

 

The task of the moment: defeating El Khomri Law by pulling down the Government of Hollande
For a Revolutionary General Strike!
Open the way to the Paris commune all over France!

Before the radicalization of the fight, the Government and the great bosses again affirmed they will not give up. Therefore they commandeered a brutal escalation in repression, sending the order enforcement forces to evict the worker pickets from routes and the public building takeovers carried out by the youth and violently suppress any demonstration, and even banned them beforehand in some cities. The greatest example of this were the mobilizations of the riot police who won the streets May 18 against the masses, in a real provocation organized by the Government of Hollande and mounted by the CGT’s Stalinist bureaucracy, who heads one of the police unions.

 
The situation in France is as revolutionary as the reformist nature allow of the leaderships the masses have at their head. The masses have carried out huge battles while the bureaucracy and the reformist parties who lead the Intersidical (CGT, FSU, FO, Solidaires, UNEF, UNL, FIDL) want to make them believe that with pressure strikes (as called on June 14 ) they will push back the government and conquer taking out the law.
Despite this, the exploited are setting up their fighting bodies, they need to face the attack, they start setting up their own power, opposite to the power of the exploiters. These are the Action Committees which tend to organize and coordinate the fighting masses beyond their union, student center or neighborhood assembly.
The union bureaucracy is the enemy for these action committees to coordinate and centralize in the neighborhood, Department and Region throughout France because it would mean the emergence of a fighting body with direct democracy, which would be a real power of the exploited where the fighting working masses could elect their leaders and they could replace them at each step to conquer the victory.

That is how the Trotskyist Transitional Program poses this question: "Trade unions, even the most powerful, embrace no more than 20 to 25 percent of the working class, and at that, predominantly the more skilled and better paid layers. The more oppressed majority of the working class is drawn only episodically into the struggle, during a period of exceptional upsurges in the labor movement. During such moments it is necessary to create organizations ad hoc, embracing the whole fighting mass: strike committees, factory committees, and finally, soviets."(bold ours) This is what is happening.

The urgent task now is to set up the organizations like the Commune. We must end the division imposed by the union bureaucracy even within each industry. The working class in this struggle guarantees the unity of the working base with the method of assembly and factory committees as the rail workers are showing to do. It is necessary to coordinate with unions and the Action Committees to impose THE Revolutionary General Strike to defeat Khomri Law and Hollande’s government.

We must generalize assemblies and action committees in each school, university, factory and workplace! For unemployed and immigrant workers committees!
It is necessary to block each route, occupy every square and take the streets across the country! Let’s the factory occupation return again, attacking the property of the slaver bosses! Factories are for the workers they are the ones who make the production! Expropriation without compensation and under workers controls of all factories which closure, suspend or dismiss! We must expropriate without compensation and under workers control all transnational companies and bankers!

It's them or us! The French working class is facing a decisive battle. If they defeat the law and tear down Hollande’s government, we will be at the door of a great revolutionary crisis of the ones above and it will be posed who really is the owner of France and who is submitted: if the great imperialist bosses or the working class. The question of power will arise adamantly. The struggle for the victory of the Commune will be posed in the agenda. Reformism and left agents of the capital know this perfectly. Preventing the fall of the law and government at the hand of the masses is the task of these addresses of the union bureaucracy and social-imperialist parties. But the stubborn and persistently masses do not accept the attack. The bosses have not gone back. The need for a revolutionary leadership of the masses at the level of the fight becomes a life or death question.

Class clashes are very tough. As we said, last May 18 the bosses set up a provocation calling to support the riot police who repress the working class and the people all the time. In France there is a state of siege. The judges prohibit demonstrations and sent thousands of intimation telegrams and letters threating the youth and workers to go to jail do they not to participate in the demonstrations. The confrontation between classes is already physical. The youth Action Committees and pickets are the ones leading the self-defense bodies of the masses. We must coordinate them now to confront the brutal repression that will only become more acute by the security forces and fascist gangs which are already in the streets to support the murderous police. The bosses will not hesitate to arm these fascist gangs with police forces and army officers working overtime. In order to move forward into new steps in this French May, it is necessary to generalize and coordinate without time to waste the pickets and the youth Action Committees.

Out with Hollande, the 5th Republic of the boss French and the imperialist Maastricht!

The working class and the French youth is not alone in this fight, the best allies are the workers and youth of the oppressed peoples by French imperialism. This is what the union bureaucracy and the social imperialist left currents want to hide, they are servant of the butchers of the 5th Republic, supporting the plunder of French imperialism against their colonies and semi-colonies and are enemies to pose this struggle path to the workers in France. Any people that oppress another one can free itself! In order to conquer a unified struggle of the French working class, it must take in its own hands the demands of the workers of the French colonies and the struggle to stop the slaughter of Assad and Putin in Syria on account of the imperialist powers.
Down with the business and the sale of military technology from France with Putin that is used to slaughter the Syrian people! We must paralyze the imperialist war machine! OUT with NATO from Syria! Down with the agreements and businesses of the French state with the Zionist fascist state of Israel! Out France from Mali and Central Africa! In the imperialist powers, the enemy is at home! For the withdrawal of all the French troops and military bases in Africa and all the colonies! For 35 hours a week and all the conquests of the working class of the metropolis in the overseas territories! Equal pay for equal work and working conditions!

Let’s call on workers all across Europe to fight together. The Hollande attack is the same attack that Merkel, Tsipras and the European governments against their own working class and tens of thousands of refugees inside true concentration camps at the borders. Thus, for the imperialist pirates of Maastricht is a life and death question that the French working class doesn`t defeat the attack on the part of the government and the V Republic.
For a single class, a single enemy, a single struggle against the imperialist Maastricht, his banks and transnational companies. Expropriate the capitalists and their banks! Down with the Europe of Maastricht! European General strike! Open the borders!

 

For an internationalist revolutionary leadership for the new French May to succeed
as a single European socialist revolution

 

The crisis of leadership is the overabundance of treacherous leaderships. It is the major enemy masses have to develop a revolutionary offensive. The trade unions’ and social imperialist left parties’ leaderships that wanted to subjugate the working class to the bourgeois parliamentary are who have given a “democratic coverering” to the bonapartist decreet of Hollande imposed by the El Khomri Law.  

During the new French May’s previous periods, the renegades of trotskyism and their political parties did not prepare masses to these decisive combats or for the revolution. Since several years, they have only focused on erasing the revolutionary program for masses. They respected and respect the treacherous union bureaucracy or they are part of it directly. The crisis of revolutionary leadership of the working class is the great handicap the French boss and regime have in their favour in the current class clashes.

But nothing will be the same in France where this new “May of 1968” is taking place. The branch where reformism is leaned on is falling down. Masses are seeking anxiously to set up their self determined organs up to the struggle like the Action Committees or companies committees of the trade unions unified under the discipline of the assembly and rank and file’s direct democracy. By setting up those organs of worker and exploited power, the most determined militants of the working class and youth will stand out from the rest.

Neither the boss nor the French imperialist regime will reach peace and calm without defeating the working class. Meanwhile they will live under jumpiness as the reformism is experiencing now. New splits in those obsolete apparatus will be at the order of the day. By fighting for setting up those self-determined organs and preparing from the current struggle the Commune, the revolutionary cadres will gather to set up an Internationalist Revolutionary Party for the European and French revolution.  A party that will restore and set up again the internationalist program for revolution of 1938 IV International.
This Party will be the voice of the exploited and those massacred by the French imperialism in his adventures all across the colonial and semi-colonial world. This party will pose the war cry “the enemy is at home!” and that the working class is the ally of the workers of Maghreb and Middle East, Chad, Mali, Sub-Saharan Africa and plundered Latin America, the Chinese masses enslaved by the imperialist bosses and French transnational companies in particular. A revolutionary party that proves that the French working class they have the forces to win in those allies; and that the fight to defeat the murderous police and imperialist army, and the military bases that defend the pillage of the imperialist pirates in the semi colonial world is in the unified combat in the streets of Paris.  

 

A fresh air wind is sending the revision of marxism made by the liquidators of trostkyism to the old junk’s container, as it will send to the trash the union CP bureaucracy and Stalinism to whom the usurpers of the IV International sustained during years.

The fight to develop the internationalist forces in the European and world working class to put the French question first in their tasks, their struggle and forces will create the conditions so that the French section of the IV International can emerge again and be set up. This will be on the ruin and rubble of the left “sellers of smoke” of the renegades of Trotskyism who sold out the banners to the Stalinism.
The French section of the IV International that will declare honourable citizens in the trade unions and fighting organizations to the refugees today jailed in concentration camps in Calais in France or in army headquarters imprisoned by Syriza in Greece.
A revolutionary party that declares war against the labor aristocracy and union bureaucracy and their political parties that live due to the scraps that falls down from the table of the pillage done by the imperialist bankers on the colonial and semi colonial world.

The French section of the IV International that will fight for the best detachments of the European and French working class to break the fence on the Syrian, Egyptian and Yemeni masses  and be able to be the spear head of their liberation from the fascist and counterrevolutionary forces created, sustained and financed by the imperialist Maastricht and Wall Street.
An internationalist revolutionary party that will call to break the fence on the Donbass workers in Ukraine, to light the spark of Athens so that it can burn the whole imperialist Europe and for the return of the war cry “For the return of the URSS!” without Stalinist bureaucrats and under the regime of the revolutionary soviets.

Open the road to the socialist revolution in France!
Open the road to the unity of the European working class that have the key for the victory of the tormented masses of the oppressed people all across the world!

 

Luisa Campos and María Batista,
Correspondents of the International Workers Organizer in France