For three months, the French working class, with enormous days of mass political struggle, has been facing the retirement reform that the Macron Government wants to impose. In 20 days of national strike and mobilization since 12/5, metro workers, Paris City whole transport, railway workers all over, energy workers, state workers, health personnel, lawyers, teachers, professors, air traffic controllers, firefighters, garbage collectors, water sanitation workers, along with the Yellow Vests, Black Vests, immigrants, pensioners and combative students took the streets throughout France.
They were tired of having their conquests taken away from them; today the French working class has said Enough! to the French Fifth Imperialist Republic. Not a single step more, the pensions are not to be touched!
Thus, from the grassroots, the French working class forced the union leaderships to call for these days of strike. Likewise, it has set up direct democracy organizations, with factory committees, with general assemblies where the workers have unified their ranks independently of the unions to which they belong. From there, they have guaranteed strikes, gate blockades and road blocks, cutting off the access to industrial areas such as refineries and even ports, where the bureaucracy did not guarantee a strike. From these Committees, Assemblies and strike pickets the workers organized massive marches, confronting the repressive forces and actions that throughout these 90 days of struggle kept Government and the employers in suspense. The working class and the exploited masses made everything, including barricades, local committees of struggle, assemblies by city and even some Coordinating bodies by sector such as the one that brings together all transport workers (trains, subways and buses) of Paris.
In strategic places such as power plants, garbage collection services, in refineries, the workers refused to provide emergency services, despite opposition of the bureaucracy. This shows that at every step the workers collide with the leadership they have at their head. That is why on January a transport sector on strike got into the offices of the CFDT (union central related to the government- shouting: "You do not represent us!”, "Don't sign anything in our name!”, and in another occasion they came into another office displaying as many forces as in May 1968. But the CGT bureaucracy with Stalinist Martinez at its head, together with other centrals are those that prevent at every step this struggle from deepening and advancing in the path of imposing a new French May that ends up defeating the Government.
In spite of all this they still fail to get the masses out of the streets, and therefore, this hated Government could not, in these 90 days, impose its attack on pensions. Also in January, it had to retreat on the central point of his reform, which was to take the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
But thanks to the support of the bureaucracy, Macron did not fall, and now the government is trying to make law of the pension reform using the article 49.3 of the Bonapartist Constitution of the Fifth Republic, with which the executive has passed the reform project directly to the Senate, without debating it in the National Assembly (House of representatives). Thus, Macron tries to get it quickly before summer holidays, when the Parliament closes its sessions. Before this new onslaught by the Government, the union bureaucracy called for a day of strike and mobilization across the country… for March 31! Meanwhile, they only mobilized to pressure the Parliament to reject Article 49.3. Enough of submission to the institutions of the regime!
We cannot allow they rob us of our pensions in the same way they did with the 35 hours working week by imposing the El Khomri law when the Hollande-Valls government used this same ruse.
Enough! They have already taken too much away from us, now we go for everything back and more!
It is already clear that in order to defeat the attack on pensions, we have to throw Macron down, as he is the representative of the whole French imperialist bourgeoisie. There is no time to lose, to obtain the withdrawal of the pension reform bill and recover everything that was stolen from us, we have to fight for everything. Therefore, a decisive fight must be organized, a revolutionary general strike that embraces the path toward a French May that will throw down Macron and blow up the regime of the Fifth Republic.
Down with 49.3! Down with the pension reform! Macron, get out!
For what we have conquered with our struggle in the streets not to be stolen, we must overcome the containment dikes of the bureaucracy.
It is about unifying all sectors in struggle. Therefore, it is necessary to expand, develop, centralize and coordinate all the Factory Committees, Struggle Committees, the Assemblies by region, all the organizations that fight at local, regional and national level. Let's establish a National Struggle Coordinating body that brings together not only workers from different sectors on strike, but also the broad masses that have entered the struggle. Thus we will conquer an organism of dual power and direct democracy, to get rid of the union bureaucracy.
Let's open the path to the Coordinating organs and Factory Committees, the Struggle Committees of the Yellow Vests, the Black Vests, the immigrants, the undocumented, the pensioners, the combative youth, the ruined middle classes and all the Action Committees. The power of those who fight must be built up!
That is the way to conquer a single statement of demands for all the workers and the impoverished masses.
In these organizations of struggle, let's vote self-defense Committees to defend ourselves of the brutal repression of this Government.
Enough with repressing the people! Dissolution of the murderous police and all the repressive forces of the State!
We cannot fight with fighters of our class taken hostage in the dungeons of French imperialism. Freedom to all prisoners for fighting! All charges against them must be dropped!
The combat of the French working class at the head of the ruined classes is a trench of combat against imperialist Maastricht and against the union bureaucracies and reformist leaderships of the whole Old Continent that divide us country by country and make us kneel at the feet of the imperialist bourgeoisie: Unity of the working class across the European continent! We have the same enemy and it is the same fight! For a revolutionary general strike across Europe! Down with Maastricht!
Today, thousands of Syrian refugees are fleeing from one of the most terrible massacres and knock on the doors of Europe. We have to take in our hands the fight to open the borders! Decent work, housing and papers for all refugees, immigrants, undocumented migrants.
Only united with the European working class and facing the plunder of French imperialism in the semi-colonial world will the workers of France be able to maintain their gains. That is why it is essential to unify the combat with our class siblings from Mali, an African nation plundered by French imperialism, where Macron has just sent more troops to and where the exploited have just won the streets to the cry of "Out with the French troops!" We need a unified struggle comprising the workers of the metropolis and the oppressed countries to put in check the Fifth Republic. That is the way to liberate the exploited from the colonies and carry out our demands to the victory. The enemy is at home! Out with the French imperialist troops and military bases from the entire Africa.
Ana Negri and Luisa Campos
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Mural honouring Steve, killed by the French police
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