The massive mobilisation of students in France against the attacks of the Chirac/Villepin/Sarkozy government which wants to impose the “Contrat Première Embauche”[1] [1] (CPE) by force, is part of the present resurgence of the international proletarian struggle. This movement is nothing like previous inter-classist movements of young students. It is part of the struggle of the whole working class. From the outset, this movement has been firmly on a working class terrain, against economic attacks, against the “no future” that capitalism promises the younger generations. The students in struggle have been able to put to one side their own specific demands (such as the reform of the system of LMD diplomas) and instead have put forward a common demand of the whole working class: “No to the CPE! No to precarious work, to lay-offs and unemployment!”.
The movement’s strength lies above all in the growing and active SOLIDARITY in the struggle. The students (and the high school students) have understood that unity is strength, and have closed ranks to put into practice that old slogan of the workers’ movement: “All for one, and one for all!”. This is how they have been able to draw in behind them the teachers and office personnel who have held their own general assemblies (“assemblées générales” or AG). The students in the universities have opened their AG to their own parents and other workers, and even to pensioners (at Paris 3 Censier in particular). They have asked them to speak and to help with their “ideas”. A kind of “suggestions box” has been carried around in the street, in the AG, in supermarkets, at workplaces, on the Internet, etc. This is how the most conscious and determined battalions of the movement have been able to make solidarity come alive and widen their struggle to take in the whole working class!
The day following the 7th March demonstration mass student general assemblies spread throughout the universities of Paris and the provinces: Villepin,[2] [2] the “man of iron”, stuck to his hard line; the CPE was voted in by the National Assembly because it was out of the question that the “street should rule” (as the ex-prime minister Raffarin said in 2003, when he pushed through his reform of the pension system in order to throw old wage slaves into poverty after enduring 40 years of exploitation!) The students have not given in. The lecture halls where the AG are held have been filled to overflowing, the spontaneous demonstrations have multiplied, especially in the capital. The students have lifted the media blackout and forced them to break their law of silence and lies.
The ten days from the 8th March to the 18th have “shaken the world” of the French ruling class. The students have increasingly organised in one direction and one only: SOLIDARITY and UNITY with the whole working class.
In the capital this dynamic has spread out from Censier, which has been in the vanguard of the movement towards the extension and the centralisation of the workers’ counter-attack.
In the AG the workers who were “passing by” have been welcomed with open arms. They have been invited to participate in the discussions, to contribute their own experience. All those who have taken part in the AG in Paris and in several other provincial towns (notably Toulouse) have been astonished by the capacity of the young generation to place its creativity at the service of the class struggle. At Censier especially, the richness of the discussion, the sense of responsibility of the students who have been elected by the strike committee, their ability to organise the movement, to run the assembly, to allow all those who want to expresses their point of view to do so, to convince others and to unmask the saboteurs through the confrontation of arguments in the discussion has fully confirmed the vitality and the strength of the young generations of the working class.
The students have constantly defended the sovereign character of the AG, with their delegates who are elected and revocable (on the basis of mandates and the giving back of mandates), by open votes in the assembly. Every day a different team (including both unionised and non-unionised students) chairs the discussions.
In order to be able to share out the tasks, to centralise, to coordinate and to keep the control of the movement, the strike committee of Paris 3 – Censier has decided to elect different commissions: Press, “Animation and Reflection” to think about wider issues, Welcome and Information etc.
It is thanks to this real “democracy” in the AG and the centralisation of the struggle that the students have been able to decide on what action to take, with their principle concern being how to spread the movement to the workplace.
The students have clearly understood that the success of their struggle is in the hands of the wage workers (as one of the students said during a meeting of the Île de France Coordination of 8th March “if we remain isolated, they’ll make a meal of us”). The more the Villepin government refuses to budge, the more determined the students become. The harder Sarkozy[3] [3] hits the more angry the workers get and the more the “voters” grumble.
The wage workers most accustomed to the class struggle (and the less stupid fractions of the bourgeoisie) know that this confrontation carries with it the threat of the mass strike (and not the general strike put forwards by certain unions and the anarchists) if the ruling “rabble” remains caught up in its present irrational “logic”.
This dynamic towards the movement’s extension, towards the mass strike, has appeared since the outset of the students’ mobilisation and has been expressed throughout the country, through large delegations to workers near the places of education.[4] [4] They have come up against the unions’ “blockage”[5] [5] and the workers have remained shut up in their workplaces without being able to discuss with the student delegations. The “little Sioux”[6] [6] of the Paris universities have been very imaginative in finding means to overcome the union blockage.
In order to mobilise the workers, the students have proved rich in imagination. Censier have used a cardboard box called the “box of ideas”. In some universities (such as Paris Jussieu), they have had the idea of taking to the street, to address passers-by about the reasons for their anger, and asking for ideas for the “box” because “all ideas are worth looking at”. This has been particularly the case in relation to the workers who have passed by or who have come to show their solidarity, who the students have asked to place their ideas in the “box” in order that they can try to put them into practice. Thanks to their experience, they have been able to sort out the “good ideas” (which go in the direction of strengthening the movement) from the “bad ideas” (which weaken and sabotage the struggle in order to leave the students open to repression, as we saw with the idea of “occupying the Sorbonne”).
In many universities, and especially those at the forefront of the movement, the students have opened the lecture halls where the AG are held to wage workers, the unemployed, and even pensioners. They have asked them to pass on their experience of the workplace. They are eager to learn from the older generations. And the “elders” have been eager to learn from the “youngsters”. As the “youngsters” have gained in maturity, the “elders” have rediscovered their youth! This osmosis between the generations has given a whole new impetus to the movement. The struggle’s greatest strength, and its finest victory, is the struggle itself! It is the solidarity and the unity of the whole working class in all its generations and in every sector.
This victory has been won not in parliament but in the university lecture halls. Sadly for the government, its spies in the AG have understood nothing. They have been unable to give Mr Villepin any “ideas”. The Villepin/Sarkozy/Chirac infernal trio have run out of “ideas”. They have thus had to show the true face of bourgeois democracy: repression.
The student movement is far more than a simple protest against the CPE. As a teacher from Paris-Tolbiac University said at the 7th March demonstration “The CPE is not only a real and specific economic attack, it is also a symbol”. It is indeed a symbol of the bankruptcy of the capitalist economy.
This is also an implicit response to the police “errors” (which in the autumn of 2005 caused the “accidental” death of two young innocents denounced as “ burglars” by a “citizen” and chased by the cops). Putting a pyromaniac (Sarkozy) in charge of the Interior Ministry has demonstrated the bourgeoisie’s inability to draw the lessons of its own history: it has forgotten that police “errors” (amongst others, the death of Malik Oussékine in 1986[7] [7]) became factors in the radicalisation of the workers’ struggles. Today, the repression of the students of the Sorbonne who only wanted to hold an AG (and who did not burn books as the mendacious Mr de Robien has tried to claim) does nothing but strengthen the students’ determination. All the bourgeoisie and its hired media hacks have been endlessly spreading lies about the students being “hoodlums” (or “rabble” to use Sarkozy’s gentlemanly term for the youth of the suburbs).
But the lies have been too gross, and the working class has not been taken in. The violence of the hoodlums of the bourgeoisie has revealed the violence of the capitalist system and its “democratic” state. A system that has thrown millions of workers onto the street, which has reduced pensioners to poverty after exploiting them for 40 years, a system that imposes its “law and order” with police truncheons. Mr Villepin continues to play deaf, and has demonstrated the truth of the old joke: “dictatorship means ‘shut your mouth’, democracy means ‘talk all you like – we’re not listening’”. But the Villepin/Sarkozy/Chirac trio has gone one better: they’ve invented the slogan “talk all you like and shut your mouth”.
And as they hang on to power these gentlemen have enjoyed the “solidarity” of the media, and above all of its prime instrument of ideological intoxication: the TV news. The media’s ignoble pictures aim to stir up an exhibitionist fascination for pointless violence, to manipulate the crowds, and to corrupt the workers’ consciousness. But the more the TV piles it on to intimidate and paralyse the working class, the more they turn our stomachs (to the point where they even disgust the electorate of the Right).
It is precisely because the new generations of the working class and its most conscious battalions hold the key to the future, that they have refused to fall for the provocation of the police state (and the imprisoning forces of the unions). They have refused to use the pointless and desperate violence of the bourgeoisie, of the young rioters in the suburbs, or of a few over-excited “anarchos” and “leftists”.
The children of the working class who are in the vanguard of the student movement are the only ones who can open up a perspective for the whole of society. This perspective, the working class can only develop thanks to its historical vision, to its confidence in its own strength, thanks to its patience and also its humour (to use Lenin’s words). It is precisely because the bourgeoisie is a class with no historic future that the Villepin clique is panicking and can only use the same pointless violence of “no future” as the young rioters.
Mr Villepin’s determination not to give way to the students’ demands (the withdrawal of the CPE) shows one more thing: the world bourgeoisie will never give up power through the pressure of the ballot box. If it is to get rid of capitalism and to build a real human world community, the working class will be obliged, in the future, to defend itself by force against the violence of the state and all the hangers-on of its repressive apparatus. But proletarian class violence has nothing whatever to do with the methods of terrorism or with the riots in the suburbs (as the bourgeoisie’s propaganda would have it, to justify its policing, its repression of the workers, of the students and of course, of real communist militants).
In order to try and push through its economic and police attacks the bourgeoisie has laid mines around the counter-attack against the CPE. First, they counted on the university and school holidays to disperse the students’ anger. But the students are no goody-goody choirboys (even if some of them still go to church, or to the mosque). They kept up their mobilisation and have reinforced it since the holidays. Obviously, the unions have been present in the movement from the outset and have done their utmost to infiltrate it.
But they never foresaw that they would completely lose their grip in most of the university towns.
In Paris for example, more than a thousand students gathered outside Paris 3 Censier to go together to the demonstration. When they discovered that the CGT[8] [8] had already unfurled their banners at the front of the demonstration in order to lead it, the students used all sorts of transportation and the vitality of their own legs to get to the front of the unions. At the head of the demonstration, they unfurled their own banners, emblazoned with unifying slogans: “University and school students, unemployed workers, workers of the private and public sectors, temporary workers, all in the same struggle against unemployment and insecure work!”.
The CGT was made to look ridiculous. It found itself tailing the students behind a multitude of banners: “CGT Engineers”, “CGT RAPT”,[9] [9] etc., etc. Behind each of the CGT’s enormous red banners were to be found a handful of militants, completely disoriented. To beef up their troops, the cadres of the Stalinist party of Maurice Thorez (who after World War II asked the striking miners and Renault workers to go back to work and to “roll up their sleeves” because “strikes are a weapon of the monopoly trusts”) tried to shout a few radical slogans. They tried to drown out the students with their loudspeakers. The cadres of the CGT and the FRENCH “Communist” Party tried to stir up their troops by getting them to sing the Internationale. The old Stalinist dinosaurs only made themselves look still more ridiculous. Many demonstrators and passers-by on the sidewalks roared with laughter. You heard comments like “It looks like Spitting Image”.[10] [10]
That same night the leader of the CGT Bernard Thibault said on TV: “it is true that there was an unforeseen aspect to the demonstration”.
The unions have unmasked themselves with their own manoeuvres. And Mr de Robien has still not understood this with his “indignation” at the acts of vandalism by the “students” at the Sorbonne (waving a few books torn up by the bourgeois specialists in manipulation) and his pretence that “the students’ revolt is being led by a tiny minority”. Mr Robien has put his glasses on the wrong way round. It is indeed a small minority that runs, not the movement, but the whole of human society. A minority that produces nothing but exploitation and repression against the great majority of the productive class.
The unions, CGT and FO,[11] [11] have not gotten over their nasty surprise on 7th March. This is why some of the more intelligent TV journalists have been saying that “the unions have been humiliated”. They have also been humiliated by the students spontaneous demonstrations on 14th March. Incapable of restraining their fury against their “humiliators”, against the workers who have shown their active solidarity with the students during the demonstration of 16th March, the unions have ended up revealing in public, and in front of the cameras, their complicity with the troops of Mr Sarkozy.
In Paris, the stewards provided by the CGT (linked to the Stalinist party) and by FO (founded after World War II with CIA funding) were at the head of the demonstration, hand in hand, facing the CRS.[12] [12] Suddenly, the union cordon disappeared as if by magic to let a few petty “kamikazes” who had infiltrated the demonstration move off towards the Sorbonne in order to play cat and mouse with the cops. All those who saw the new scenes of violence first hand have said that it was thanks to the unions’ march stewards that Villepin/Sarkozy could get out their truncheons and fill up the Black Marias.
Above all, the constant TV images of violent confrontations that have followed the Paris demonstration have been used to generate fear before the demonstration of 18th March. There are many workers and youths who intended to take part and who may now give up for fear of this violence.
The TV news anchormen have been able to announce the good news: the movement is “dying down” (according to the TV news on 16th March).
Those who want the movement to die down are the accomplices of Sarkozy, the forces of union control. And the working class is beginning to understand this. Behind their “radical” and hypocritical talk, the unions want to save the government’s skin.
The Stalinist party and its CGT deserve their place in the pantheon of Jurassic Park (alongside the brontosaurs of the UMP).[13] [13] If until the unions have been unable so far to play their part as social firemen, it’s because the pyromaniacs Sarkozy/Villepin set fire to their banners on 16th March.
And if the workers have come to support the students in struggle, it is because they have seen the unions in their workplaces contributing to the media blackout of the mass general assemblies.
Since the 7th March demonstration, the unions have dragged their feet, they have twisted and turned in every way imaginable to paralyse the workers. They have carried out all sorts of manoeuvres in order to divide and dissipate the workers’ anger. They have tried to sabotage the students’ movement. They have radicalised their language – very late in the day – by “demanding” the withdrawal of the CPE before opening negotiations (this does not mean that they have stopped negotiating behind the workers' backs). They have even threatened a “general strike” in order to make the government “give in”. They have openly declared that they do not want the workers to mobilise in solidarity with the students. Their backs are to the wall, and now they have tried to slip the ace of trumps out of their sleeves: by using a few over-excited kids to keep the violence going.
The only way out of this political crisis for the French bourgeoisie, is to clean up the façade of the republican state. And this present is being offered to Mr Villepin on a sliver platter by the PS/PCF/Greens[14] [14] who have all united to “put their case” against the CPE to the Constitutional Council.[15] [15] This “helping hand” from the PS may let the government may let the government off the CPE hook by appealing to the “12 wise men”:[16] [16] then it could stick to the Raffarin formula “it’s not the street that rules”, with the addition that “it’s the 12 pensioners of the Constitutional Council who do”!
In wanting to “power-cleanse” the Sorbonne students (and their comrades who had come to bring them food) Mr Sarkozy has opened a Pandora’s box. And the Villepin/Sarkozy government have pulled out of this box of “black ideas” the workers’ “false friends”: the unions.
The world proletariat can therefore thank the French government. By brandishing the scarecrow of Le Pen[17] [17] at the last presidential elections, the red-white-and-blue ruling class has managed to put in power the world’s most imbecile Right-wing. A Right-wing that has adopted policies worthy of a “banana republic”!
However this movement plays out, it is already a victory for the whole working class.
Thanks to the new generation, the working class has succeeded in breaking the unions “blockage” of class solidarity. Every sector of the proletariat, especially the new generations, have lived through a rich experience that will leave a profound mark on their consciousness.
This experience belongs to the world proletariat. Despite the blackout of the “official” media, the “parallel” media, “untamed” cameras and other “free” radios – as well as the revolutionary press – will make it possible for the world proletariat to make this experience their own. For this is only one episode in the world wide struggle of the working class. It is part of a whole series of struggles that have taken place since 2003 and that have confirmed that the working class throughout the industrial countries are overcoming the retreat that they have suffered due to all of the campaigns unleashed by the bourgeoisie after the 1989 collapse of the Eastern bloc and of all the regimes that claimed to be working class and socialist. One of the essential characteristics of these struggles has been the revival of solidarity between workers. Thus in two of the most important countries in the capitalist world – the United States and United Kingdom – this solidarity has lain at the origin of workers’ struggles. Just before Christmas 2005, the New York transit workers went on strike not for themselves but in order to preserve for young workers who would be hired in the future the same retirement benefits that they enjoy today. Similarly the strike, during several days in the autumn of 2005, of the baggage handlers at London Heathrow airport, was in solidarity with the workers in the catering sector who were the victims of an brutal attack by their employer Gate Gourmet.
These strikes were particularly significant of an unfolding tendency towards the development of struggles that has not stopped since the end of the 2003 movements for the defence of pensions in France and in Austria, which saw its biggest street demonstrations since World War II. The same tendency found expression in 2004 in Germany in the car workers’ struggle (at Daimler-Chrysler and at Opel especially) which clearly posed the question of workers’ solidarity against lay-offs. The same tendency was once again confirmed in Spain, in December 2005, at SEAT in Barcelona where the workers fought outside of and against the unions who had signed “the deal of shame” behind their backs to lay off of 600 of their comrades.
The students’ movement in France is therefore part of a struggle that is developing on a historical scale and whose final outcome will allow the human species to escape the dead-end of capitalist barbarism. The young generations who have engaged in the struggle on the terrain of the working class today have opened the door to this future. We can have confidence in them: all over the planet, they will continue preparing a new world freed from competition, profit, exploitation, poverty, and bloody chaos.
Clearly, the road that leads to the overthrow of capitalism will be long full of difficulty and dangers of every kind, but it has begun to be cleared.
International Communist Current, 17th March 2006
[1] [18] Whose main measure is to allow employers to fire their workers without notice or motive during the first two years of the contract.
[2] [19] French Prime Minister.
[3] [20] Nicolas Sarkozy, Interior Minister in charge of the police who has made himself famous in particular by declaring his intention to "power-cleanse” the suburbs of their “rabble”.
[4] [21] In Tours, for example, the students used university equipment to print off 10,000 leaflets calling for solidarity with the movement, which they distributed at workplaces around the town.
[5] [22] A play on the word “bloquer" – in other words picketing the universities.
[6] [23] An untranslatable expression referring to the supposed guile of the Red Indians.
[7] [24] A student killed by the police during protests against the “reform" of the universities.
[8] [25] Confédération Générale du Travail: the trades union still dominated by the Stalinist French “Communist” Party.
[9] [26] RATP is the Parisian transport system.
[10] [27] In France, a nightly satire on the TV news called “Les Guignols de l’Info".
[11] [28] Force Ouvrière.
[12] [29] Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (riot police).
[13] [30] Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (sic!). The governing party of Jacques Chirac.
[14] [31] i.e. by the Socialist Party, the French "Communist” Party, and the Greens.
[15] [32] The idea is that the Constitutional Council should find a face-saving way out for the government by declaring the CPE “unconstitutional”.
[16] [33] i.e. the Constitutional Council.
[17] [34] Leader of the fascist Front National, who came second to Chirac in the first round of the presidential elections.
As we went to press, the situation in New York City transit remains unresolved. The tentative agreement which ended the 3-day strike that paralyzed New York before Christmas was narrowly rejected by a 7-vote margin out of more that 22,000 votes cast (more than 11,000 workers did not vote). The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) responded to the contract rejection with a provocation, proposing an offer even more onerous than the original one they had quickly abandoned at the beginning of the first round of negotiations, declaring an impasse and requesting that the state impose binding arbitration. The state public employees labor relations board put this request for binding arbitration on hold for two weeks, and directed the two parties to resume negotiations. There are indications that both management and the union leadership may wait out the uproar and push the rejected contract through in another ratification vote. Meanwhile workers, who already lost wages for the 3 days they did not work in December, are now receiving legal notice from the MTA that they will forfeit an additional 2 days wages each day they were on strike, for a total of six days wages. These wages will be deducted from their checks during March.
As we noted in our statement on the MTA strike published on the internationalism.org Website, this “was the most significant workers’ struggle in the U.S. in 15 years,” because of its international context, the development of class consciousness exhibited by the striking workers, and the potential impact of the struggle on other workers (the importance of solidarity, resistance to further attempts to slash pensions). Events since December confirm the validity of this analysis.
The transit struggle occurred in an international context in which the working class worldwide is going through a process of returning to class struggle after a decade and a half of disorientation since the collapse of the imperialist bloc system that had prevailed since the end of World War II. The deepening global economic crisis and the escalation of attacks on the working class standard of living has pushed the proletariat into action in an increasing number of countries, including the U.S. As we noted in December, “The primary task posed by these nascent struggles in many countries was not the extension of struggles across geographic and industrial sector lines, but the reacquisition of consciousness at the most basic levels, of class self-identity and solidarity.”
This process was clearly demonstrated in the transit strike, by the clarity by which workers refused to accept the time-honored management-union tactic of trading the erosion of wages and pensions for future workers in exchange for wages for currently employed workers. Instead they willingly defied the repressive New York State Taylor’s prohibition of public sector strikes and imposition of mandatory forefeiture of two days’ wages for each day of strike, and waged the struggle to defend the pensions of the next generation of workers.
The contract rejection reflects the confluence of several factors. First many workers clearly understood the sell out by the union, which originated the crucial proposal that led to the tentative agreement: offering to have workers contribute 1.5% of their wages to help finance medical benefits if management withdrew the demand to have future workers contribute 6% of their wages to the pension fund. In this instance the union proposed to trade the wages of the currently employed workers to finance the pensions of future workers, which is just as unacceptable as the original proposal. Management actually bragged that the tentative agreement was better for them financially over the life of the three year contract than their original plan to have new employees contribute to the pension fund, as it traded the 6% of the salaries of the relatively few new workers that would be hired each year for 1.5% of the wages of the entire 34,000-member workforce.
Second, many workers were angered by the bourgeoisie’s unrelenting propaganda campaign which tried to drive home the message that struggle does not pay. Over and over the media broadcast the message that the strike had been lost, that the workers were losing more by striking in terms of the Taylor law fines and 1.5% payment for medical benefits than if they had accepted management’s offer.
Third, a minority faction on the executive board played opportunistically to this disenchantment with the contract settlement by campaigning for a “no vote.”
Like all “votes” under capitalism, the contract referendum was a no-win proposition for the workers. No matter what the result the workers would inevitably be screwed: ratification would validate a 1.5% salary cut; rejection would leave the workers in the current predicament of being without a contract, with the momentum for struggle definitively broken, and little perspective to improve the contract. This explains why fully one-third of the workers chose not to vote.
The current confluence of events, including the unrelenting MTA propaganda against the contract which attempted to minimize any notion that workers had “won,” and the factional disputes within the union, ironically opened the door to questioning the credibility of the unions, which had not really been posed during the struggle in December. It did so by exposing very clearly the nature of the union sell-out, originally presented, as always, as a union “victory” by union leadership, and by exposing the dead-end offered by union dissidents. Having eked out a triumph in the ratification vote, the dissidents had nothing to offer, no strategy, no tactics, just posturing. It won’t be surprising if union and management stall for a while and then resubmit the same agreement for another vote. Workers have to take struggles into their own hands and go outside the union straight jacket to advance their struggle.
Meanwhile the example of the transit workers resistance to attacks on theis pensions has resonated with other workers in all sectors, especially the public sector. Municipal union leaders in New York have expressed worries that their members will now become increasingly difficult to control, as the threat of the Taylor Law prohibiting strikes has proven ineffective in staunching the militant will to struggle. This is particularly significant as contracts for public sector workers come up for negotiation in the months ahead, in New York, in other cities around the U.S. and even in other countries, where the transit struggle has stood as a shining example of workers’ solidarity.. -JG, 25/3/06.
To illustrate the lengths to which the so-called “democratic” bourgeoisie will go in using repression against the working class for defending itself against its class interests, we publish this excerpt from a letter sent by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City to 34,000 transit workers who went on strike for three days in December. The workers have already been docked three days wages for the days they were not a work. In addition, this letter notifies them that they an additional two days wages for each day of the strike (six in total) will be deducted from the March pay checks. And it seems like only yesterday that the American ruling class used to denounce Russia for denying workers the right to strike. -- Internationalism Re: Notice of Taylor Law ViolationYOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED that it has been determined by the Chairman, Executive Director and the President, New York City Transit Authority and Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority that you committed a violation of Section 210 of the Civil Service Law (Taylor Law) by engaging in a strike which commenced on December 20, 2005 and continued through December 22, 2005. Therefore, in accordance with Section 210 (2)(f) of the Taylor Law, a deduction will be made from your compensation of twice your daily rate of pay for each of the three days or part thereof that you committed a violation of Section 210 of the Taylor Law. This penalty will be deducted over two ore more consecutive pay periods commencing with the payroll checks issued in March. Pursuant to
paragraph (g) of Section 210 (2) of the Taylor Law, you have the right to
object to the determination by filing an objection with the Chief Executive
Officer. Such objection should be
addressed to Chief Executive Officer, MTA New York City Transit, c/o Office of
Labor Relations, at 2 Broadway, 13th floor, Taylor Law Review Unit, |
George W. Bush is worried about the future. He thinks there are too many of us living too long and if we live to too ripe an old age we’re going to break the government’s piggy bank, draining all that money out for social security pensions and medicare. Having failed last year to slash the living daylights out of the social security system, now he’s ordered the creation of a special commission to investigate the impact of the impending retirement of millions of baby boomers. What the pension crisis shows unequivocally is that capitalism is mired in economic crisis, is bankrupt and offers no future for humanity. It is no longer fit to rule.
In response to growing global economic crisis, the capitalist state in every country pursues policies designed to make the working class bear the brunt of the crisis. This includes above all a concerted effort to slash to the bone the social wage—that portion of the cost of reproduction of the working class paid directly by the state. In nation after nation the ‘welfare state’ is being dismantled wholesale, cutting the standard of living to make the working class bear the brunt of the economic crisis. In the U.S. the government and its media deprecate these “benefits” by talking about the need to trim “entitlements” from the federal budget, as if we were spoiled children with inappropriate expectations of what we’re entitled to.
At the same time that the government is trying to rid us of our false sense of entitlement, contributory pension plans at the workplace, both in the public and private sectors, are under fierce attack. The pension crisis is so serious that a recent New York Times editorial reported, “traditional corporate pension plans are disappearing” (NYT Feb. 5, 2006). In the troubled airlines industry, company after company has been permitted by the state to simply abandon financial obligations for their pension plans as part of their bankruptcy court settlements. Pension plans in the auto industry, at GM and Ford, will soon follow suit. Of course the state has an entirely less charitable and forgiving attitude about permitting financially strapped workers to walk away from their financial obligations, as evidenced by the recent federal legislation tightening up personal bankruptcy policies.
So serious is the trend towards collapse of private pension funds, that the federal agency that bails out these failed pension plans and assumes responsibility for payments to retirees (paying perhaps 25% of what workers were legally entitled to) has paid out so much, and is now operating with more than a $24 billion deficit. IBM has announced a freeze on its pension plan, and, like the government and other private companies is trying to put the onus for retirement income on workers themselves by pushing employees to open up 401(k) retirement saving account, which have now become the norm. But this is an impossible solution. Since the standard of living is so much under attack, American workers and other strata are increasingly forced to live beyond their means, accumulating massive personal debt to the point where in 2005 for the first time since 1933, there was a negative savings rate. According to the Times, 401(k)’s are “now the main retirement plan for 42 million Americans, about half the work force.” However, at the same time, “half of the people with 401(k)’s have saved less than $20,000; and about one-third of households have saved nothing for retirement” (NYT Feb. 5, 2006).
In a nutshell, the message is work until you drop. This applies especially to the poorest sections of the working class, whose life expectancy is well below the national average.
Remember the ‘leisure society’? Not so long ago we were being told that with the increase in automation we would all have much more leisure time. Unfortunately things don’t work like that under capitalism, which can only squeeze profit from living labor power, and which uses technological developments to intensify its exploitation. Far from having a laid-back leisure society, we have seen massive global unemployment on the one hand, and a brutal lengthening of the working day on the other. The current attempt to lengthen working lives is just another prong of this same attack.
None of it is justified on the criterion of human need. If we could end the gigantic waste of human labor power that capitalism pours down the drain of unemployment, of military production, and a whole host of useless unproductive activities (advertising, bureaucracy, etc…); if new machines could be used to reduce the burden of work rather than speed it up – then there could be massive reductions in the working day, or the working week, or the working life. And if, in Marx’s words, labor was transformed from “a means of life to life’s prime need”, to a truly creative activity, there would in any case be no more need for this rigid separation between work and leisure and work and retirement.
All this, however, can only come about through the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a world communist society. This in turn will only become a real possibility through a vast development of class struggle and of class consciousness. But the capitalist crisis and the attacks on workers’ living standards provide the material foundations for this development. The attempt to ‘reform’ pensions, in particular, has already led to large-scale mobilizations of workers in France and Austria, and the recent strike by transit workers in New York shows that the same could happen in the U.S. These attacks are directed against all workers: they can thus help workers see the need for a united response. They are being spearheaded by the state: they can thus help workers see that the state is not their protector but the boss of all the bosses, their principal enemy. And they are an assault on our very future: they can thus help workers see that they must make their own future.
In 1880, when Germany’s ‘Iron Chancellor’ Bismarck introduced a national insurance system, he said: “Whoever has a pension for his old age is far more content and far easier to handle than one who has no such prospect” and will “put up with much more because he a has pension to look forward to”.
What the pensions crisis is showing is that workers have less and less to look forward to from capitalism.—Internationalism
Canada’s recent federal election has brought the Conservative Party, under Stephen Harper, to power for the first time in 13 years and sealed the collapse of the Liberal regime mired in corruption scandals. The bourgeois media and political pundits across Canada have been buzzing with anticipation of what changes the new Conservative government will bring to a nation proud of its international reputation for “tolerance,” “openness,” “peace,” and a generous social welfare system.
The ruling Liberal minority government was forced to call the election in December 2004 when it lost a vote of confidence in Parliament after the NDP(New Democratic Party) refused to support its budget proposal following the publication of the Gomery commission’s report into the Quebec “sponsorship” scandal. This report detailed the involvement of high-level Liberal Party figures in a corruption scheme that saw large sums of money diverted from a federal program to promote federalism in Quebec into the hands of Liberal Party hacks.
The Liberal Party, already mired in Quebec corruption scandal, narrowly won a minority victory in the last election during the summer of 2004, and clung to power with the support of the left NDP, as it beat back several attempts by the newly united and energized Conservative Party – with occasional help from the separatists of the Bloc Quebecois—to bring down the government. Faced with a need to rejuvenate its electoral mystification after 13 years of Liberal rule, growing corruption scandals undermining the government’s legitimacy, and a need to stabilize the government, the Canadian bourgeoisie clearly saw the necessity to change the ruling team, even if it did not see the need for a drastic change in either international or domestic policy.
In order to accomplish this, the Canadian media went to work making sure to stoke enough anger over the corruption scandal to bring the Liberal government down, but at the same time instill enough fear over an unchecked Conservative government (the only other party capable of winning enough votes to form a government) to make sure they did not win enough of a mandate at the polls to enact the most radical elements of their domestic agenda.
In the months leading up to the election, the media and the various opposing parties ran a two-prong scare campaign, which on the one hand fed the anger over the corruption scandal, while on the hand warned sober-minded Canadians that a Conservative government could mean greater restrictions on the right to an abortion, an end to the recognition of gay marriages, the returns of the death penalty, further attacks on the national health system, the possible secession of Quebec, increased subservience to the U.S., and Canadian participation in American imperialist adventures.
Even the media in the United States got into the act, welcoming a new Conservative government as a step toward repairing the two countries’ relationship, which had become severely strained under the Liberal governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin and the Bush administration.
The result of the media campaign would seem to be just what the Canadian state ordered: a minority Conservative government –a new ruling team with a new face, but lacking the national mandate necessary to enact its most radical domestic program.
Despite the campaign hype, the ascension of the Conservative Party to power will not change the historic situation of the working class in Canada, nor will it significantly alter the dynamic at work in the international relations between capitalist states, which is pushing even the Canadian bourgeoisie to increasingly go its own way, to look out for its own interests and formulate its own imperialist policy distinct from its erstwhile allies.
Immediately after being sworn in as Prime Minister it became clear that Stephen Harper possesses little desire to see his nation’s imperialist interests subsumed to the U.S. One of his fist acts in office was to call for the construction of a fleet of military icebreakers to patrol the Northwest Passage –the series of straits and bys surrounding Canada’s Arctic islands that link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans—in order to defend against the incursion of military submarines from other nations, especially the U.S.!
While this may seem like a minor issue in the scope of the imperialist confrontations rocking the globe today, the Northwest Passage is expected to become an increasingly important shipping lane, as global warming melts the ice cap that currently engulfs much of the area for the better part of the year. Canada’s current attempt to assert its sovereignty over these waters represents a clear effort to send a message to all other nations that it will defend these waters in the future, with force if necessary. Harper’s announcement was immediately met with a public rebuke from the U.S. ambassador, who forcefully stated his country’s case that the Passage is international waters.
In fact the row over the Northwest Passage represents a continuity with, and the latest entry, in a growing list of Canadian provocations against the U.S. that began under the Liberal regime. From the dispute over fishing rights in the Dixon Entrance, to Canadian protests against the U.S.’s alleged violation of the NAFTA treaty by imposing duties on softwood lumber; from vocal public outcry over the acquittal of U.S. fighter pilots who “accidentally” bombed Canadian troops in Afghanistan while high on speed, to Martin’s refusal to participate in the Bush administration’s plan for a continent-wide “ballistic missile shield,” the Canadian government has taken an increasingly provocative stance against its southern neighbor in a way that has gotten the attention of an American bourgeoisie, until recently basically content to ignore Canada.
As a result, the U.S. has fired back, banning imports of Canadian beef on several occasions over fears of Mad Cow disease, loudly criticizing Canada’s supposedly lax immigration policies that have allegedly allowed terrorists to infiltrate the continent, and going public with a plan to require Canadian citizens traveling to the U.S. to present passports by 2007. Canada has not allowed these slights over the border to pass without retaliation. Harper has announced plans to arm Canadian border officials in response to the growing number of “criminals” crossing into Canada from the U.S. Moreover, crossing into Canada is no longer a simple affair for many American tourists, who now often have to undergo extensive questioning at the border.
While Harper has announced plans to cooperate more closely with the U.S. in the “war on terror,” strengthen and re-equip the Canadian military and take a more active role in Afghanistan, this should not be seen as a major reversal from prior Liberal policies. In fact, any increased “cooperation” with the U.S. will in reality only serve as an umbrella under which the Canadian state attempts to strengthen its own hand and play its own imperialist card. In this sense, Harper’s plan to take Canada out of the Kyoto environmental accords is not a capitulation to U.S. pressure, but an attempt to assert Canadian independence against both the U.S. and Europe.
On the domestic level, the new Conservative government is unlikely to take the country in any dramatically new direction either. In fact, the major issues affecting the working class-that the media focused on during the campaign to stoke fears about what might have happened under Conservative rule --were actually policies first formulated by the Liberal regime. Chief among these is the dire warning about the progressive dismantling of Canada’s previous comparatively generous social wage system, primarily through cuts to the country’s expensive national health care system that the Conservatives would supposedly implement. However, what this propaganda fails to explain was that this attack on the healthcare system, and on other elements of the social wage in general, was already well under way under the Liberals. Harper’s policies, and those of his provincial protégés in Alberta, are little more than advanced expressions of the logic rooted in the very nature of the global capitalist economic crisis itself that forces the bourgeoisie to progressively attack the living and working conditions of the working class throughout the world. Canada is no exception.
The Canadian media was to some degree successful in lining the Conservatives’ policy on healthcare to the ideology of the “right-wing movement” in the U.S., through the themes of “privatization” and “neo-liberalism,” further feeding fears that the Conservative government would accelerate Canada’s assimilation with the U.S. Nevertheless, these policies do not differ in any fundamental way from what a Liberal or NDP government would be compelled by the very logic of capitalism to do: attack the living standard of the working class.
On the social level, the excitement about abortion, gay marriage and crime was used to maximum effect during the election campaign to divide and distract the working class from class issues. On crime, Harper has announced plans to “crack down” on gun crime and other violent offenses that are becoming increasingly more common in Canada’s large cities. These are the same cities hailed as safe, multi-cultural utopias in American leftist Michael Moore’s film “Bowling for Columbine.” In fact, Winnipeg’s violent crime rate is about the same as New York City, while Toronto has witnessed several high profile shootings involving youth, and Vancouver is becoming a central hub for violent Sikh and other Asian gangs.
While growing crime clearly reflects the effects of capitalist social decomposition, it is without doubt that the Canadian state’s attempts to strengthen its repressive apparatus will do little to make the cities safer. In fact, they will only give the state more tools to crack down on the working class, when the later begins to respond to capitalism’s attacks on its own class terrain.
When all is said and done, the recent
Canadian elections mean no qualitative change for the condition of the working
class in that country. Moreover, while the Canadian bourgeoisie may have
succeeded in reviving its electoral mystification for the short term, it
remains in a very difficult predicament. Canada, even more so than the U.S., is
a very divided nation, as the election showed. While the Conservatives won a
plurality of the vote, and were thus able to form a government, the majority of
Canadians voted for “left of center” parties. Moreover, the Canadian
bourgeoisie itself is very divided along linguistic and regional lines, and the
specter of Quebec’s secession is a serious threat to the country’s very
geographic integrity. All this makes the situation for the current Conservative
government very precarious. Nevertheless, due to the global nature of the
capitalist crisis, it will have no choice but to continue most of its Liberal
predecessor’s main policies, attack the social wage, continue to forge an
independent imperialist policy and challenge the domination of its southern
neighbor. - Henk, 24/3/06
The following report on Internationalism’s March 10 public meeting is extracted from a lengthier posting on the Commie Curmudgeon blog (nomorebigwheels.blogspot.com)
March 13. This past Friday night, I was faced with a somewhat difficult choice – go help the people of the New SPACE with their/our table at the Left Forum, or go to an open ICC Meeting in Brooklyn instead. A couple of weeks ago…I said that I would not be able to do the latter. But as it turns out, after giving it some thought…I went to the ICC meeting after all. And I am glad that I made that choice – I think the ICC meeting provided a lot more good information, and was overall a far more interesting (and intellectually intense) experience, than I would have been likely to get attending those sessions of academic-leftist schmoozing, networking, and/or star-gazing that comprise the Left Forum…
…The specific subject of this meeting was the Meaning of the New York City transit strike. This extended into some lively discussion about unions in general, the increase of workers’ solidarity (especially separate from, or one might say in spite of, the official dealings of the trade unions), and the possiblities for workers to further build “consciousness” at a time when the true nature of capitalism is becoming more blatant and brutal as capital tries to defend itself against increasing crises (which the ICC maintains are actually part of capitalism’s decline)...
At a later point, we discussed the issue of what kinds of workers’ groups might best contribute to future radical or revolutionary struggle, and I was pleased to hear my ICC comrades say that real revolutionary groups or organizations would probably have to be temporary entities specifically springing up to meet a high moment of struggle or revolutionary challenge. They would not be permanently established worker’s groups, such as “anarchist unions,” which almost always end up falling into the same role as trade unions, especially during times when the struggle has subsided, functioning in ways that at best compromise (if not work directly against) their supposed revolutionary purpose. (This, by the way, is not a quote, but my own summary of the dialogue. Maybe the ICC can say this better/more forcefully.) I might add that this is the sort of viewpoint that I have been leaning toward more myself, after trying for some time to work with the idea of traditional revolutionary syndicalism - especially anarchosyndicalism - which I have found less and less convincing in recent years. These syndicalist unions are certainly preferable, at least in principle, to trade unions, but I’ve arrived at the opinion that neither form of established workers’ union will ever provide a good means by itself to radically challenge the system, especially not in the present age.
Toward the close of the meeting, I asked a little about the idea of capitalist decadence. This is the idea that capitalism is not simply going through one crisis in a never-ending series of crises but is actually in long-term decline as a result of certain built-in contradictions in the system that were discussed by Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, etc. This idea was raised in the ICC’s formal presentation during the meeting, because it is a significant part of their critique, along with their idea of a newer phase of capitalist decomposition, which is a later and even more critical stage in capitalism’s decline.
I wondered whether the ICC sees the decomposition of capitalism as following a sort of timeline, and whether they shared the idea with some proponents of decadence theory that there will be a specific moment of final collapse which revolutionaries should be preparing for. (I believe that Loren Goldner subscribes to this idea to some extent, focusing especially on the impending crises from the unprecedented explosion in dependence on fictitious capital and world debt.) And, as I’d correctly surmised, the ICC isn’t about to specify a deadline or moment of ultimate collapse but does see the danger of a sort of timeline running out, due to the present condition of capitalist decomposition, if there is no genuine socialist revolution – the danger being that, as mentioned by Rosa Luxemburg (which was based on something said earlier by Engels), without achieving socialism, we will enter a state of total barbarism.As I told the ICC, I find the notion of capitalist decadence, as well as decomposition, to be very intriguing, but I can’t say that I’m 100 percent behind it yet. Certainly, I see signs of deterioration and regression everywhere as well as impending crises…. There is a passage in Chapter 15 of Marx’s Grundrisse which the ICC cites as a major source for this theory of decadence…. However, I have spoken to other people, who are far more versed in Marxian theory than I am, who say that they wouldn’t interpret that passage in the same way at all. Personally, the idea of capitalist decadence and decomposition is something that I am very enticed to believe, but I also know that an idea like this can be dangerously comforting to those of us who are yearning to see some sort of end to the awful story that capitalism has been creating over the past several centuries. So, though this might seem a bit too wishy-washing/wavering, I’m not going to close myself off to the other side of the debate completely right now.
I do look forward to going to more ICC meetings, where I can participate in more fascinating discussions, learning and sharing revolutionary ideas. // posted by RS
It is impossible to clarify communist positions without an active exchange of different points of view, without a debate. Therefore we welcome letters from readers and regularly publish them alongside our response in the press of the ICC with the aim of generating discussion around our work and political positions. With this in mind we encourage readers to contact us if they have a comment on, or criticism of, a position defended in our press, even if it is just a few lines.
We recently received a letter from Germany, which deals with the question of human behavior and in particular, comportment. How we behave with others is a central aspect of social life, of what it means to be human. The letter conveys that its author is not merely dwelling on general problems of being human, but is especially interested in the question of social comportment. The letter also looks at the perspectives for the class struggle. Essentially it deals with the question of whether or not the working class today and in the future will be able to stand up to the pressure of competition –the central theme of capitalist thought and comportment – and put forward its own social perspective.
What are the preconditions for the proletariat developing its own specific class forms of behavior, which can live up to the final goal of its struggle – communism? In what context does a specific kind of behavior evolve? Which emotions are an expression of this?
This letter makes it perfectly clear that our reader has not just posed major a question but that he has gone a step further and has begun to provide an answer. We consider the questions raised by the comrade as extremely important and vital for the working class as a whole. Below we publish extracts from the comrade’s letter followed by extracts of our response.
“What influence, what function and what
cause does confidence, will, solidarity, organization, feeling of
responsibility and personal history have? What actually causes us to behave in
a specific manner and how can we consciously influence our behavior? How
arbitrary is the question of comportment? What meaning does comportment have
within society? Whose interests does it serve? And is it possible to build a
collective consciousness?
“The connection between these
questions must be made within the given social reality. Today, due to social
decomposition, there is a danger that,
if the proletariat does not succeed in developing a class perspective,
more and more parts of the working class will become lumpenized. Low paying
jobs and short term contracts are linked to this danger, because workers have
to take up such jobs in fear of unemployment and poverty. Another face of
capitalist decomposition is increasing criminality as an expression of the
capitalist idea of everybody for him- or herself and against the rest of the
world. If the working class gives in and forgets about its collective
consciousness, its solidarity and confidence and its class interests as a world
wide class in the face of its momentary weakness, then there is the danger that
the balance of forces will turn towards capitalist decomposition and towards a
loss of a communist perspective....In a society in which the ruling class owns
all the means of production and where competition is actually the ruling
ideology, this ideology certainly does
not serve the class interests of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie as a whole
has the main interest of expanding the exploitation of man as labor power. The
exploitation of the proletariat is in fact a necessity for the bourgeoisie to
exist. Competition is not part of the class nature of the working class.
Nevertheless each worker is forced to compete with other workers for a job in
order not to fall beneath the minimum standard of living. It is a matter of
fact that there are not enough markets. Therefore unemployment and low paying
jobs will increase. Of course the working class as a whole has to defend itself
against this situation. The proletariat has to do so by developing the
perspective of communism through collective consciousness, international mass
strikes, the creation of soviets and a yet-to-be created communist world party.
This shows that even though on the surface it may appear that the question of
comportment is a general, cross class issue, you do in fact need to give an
answer that is necessarily class specific. According to the way the
“democratic” policy answers this question of comportment with the help of sociology,
psychology, neurobiology, and philosophy, there is supposedly no general
difference between classes. The only differences to be found are between female
and male, old and young, rich and poor, social
and antisocial, stupid and intelligent,…losers and winners, good genes and bad
genes, good and bad, ill and healthy. So that at the end of the day behavior is
measured and selected according to how well you function as a worker, to be
exploited. Within these capitalist criteria of the functionality of the workers
– which obviously biased in favor of the interest of the ruling class’ ideology
– there remains no room for the common interests of wage workers.
“The working class as a whole and its political organizations have to stand up against the ruling ideology, and draw lessons from past experiences, and use its knowledge for its class interests. Emotions such as envy, jealousy, meanness and ambition are expressions of property relations and therefore part of bourgeois society, as well as the ruling ideology. They are also to be found within the working class but only when competition situations create it. Competition among workers is not abstract, but a concrete reality. It is, thus, in the interest of the international proletariat to fight to put an end to its exploitation. In consequence, the more the proletariat gains collective awareness, the more the ideology of general competition is unable to prevent the strengthening of the working class. This broad and far reaching perspective is necessary, so that we can defend ourselves against this increasing exploitation today….”
The comrade has posed questions of great complexity and relevance. Issues of comportment have been researched and controversially discussed in scientific studies. As a communist organization we do not feel able to develop in great detail the origin and historic development of a great number of forms of comportment, which humanity has produced. We want to limit ourselves to naming some important principles, which the Marxist workers movement has worked out on these questions. These few general ideas may help contribute a framework for the discussion our reader has opened up.
The comrade wrote that feelings like envy, jealousy or ambitions are an expression of property relations and therefore part of bourgeois society. We agree that these feelings, in their form today, are also part of the property relations and thereby also of capitalism. Nevertheless Marxist authors such as August Bebel or Leo Trotsky repeatedly stated that a feeling like ambition would still exist in a future communist society. They were convinced of the fact that these feelings would not be a driving motor of competition, as in capitalism, of each against all but rather a form of ambition which would serve the whole society as much as possible. Therefore it would play an extremely positive role. This shows that according to Marxism the history of humanity does not necessarily develop in such a way that every form of society comes up with its own, completely new forms of emotions. If this were the case this would mean that there would be no continuity in history at all but rather merely a series of breaks and beginnings. However, the dialectical method teaches us that every great leap forward does not just mean a restart; at the same time it constitutes building on existing emotions on a higher level than before.
One and the same feeling can have different effects depending on the organization of society. An emotion, which in a given context can rather serve a notion of hostility amongst human beings, is capable of strengthening the social bond in changed living conditions. Obviously we should be cautious not to make things too easy for ourselves by saying that feelings lead to more competition in a society based on competition but in a society of truly social bonds, feelings would automatically have the opposite effect. This cannot be the case because the basic feelings of human beings are not always in harmony with each other. They can get into a clinch because they serve different purposes. The so-called maternal instinct for instance can collide with the instinct of self preservation, when a mother risks her life in order to protect her children. Apart from which, it is also obvious that not all emotions can foster the unity of society to the same extent, such as the example of jealousy given in the comrade’s letter. We actually do not know how old the emotion of jealousy is. Engels did not consider it an inherent social impulse in humans, but rather a cultural product. Anyhow it appears to be a very old feeling. Since it is quite difficult to reconcile the notion of jealousy with preserving social ties in society at the same time, different societies have had to develop various means in order to keep jealousy under control. If a communist society should still be confronted with such a problem, it is quite likely that it will find more effective and culturally more advanced means to deal with it.
In the letter the comrade asks about the causes and the social relativity of comportment. “Which influence, which function and which causes do confidence, will, solidarity, organization, feeling of responsibility and personal history have?” The main concern in the letter is a better understanding of those emotions, which are most needed in course of the struggle of the proletariat. The letter expresses the fear that capitalism might finally destroy all these positive qualities.
We think that this worry is fully justified.
The fact that probably the most severe cruelties in history happened in the
last 100 years is directly linked to the fact that capitalism –like no other
system of production – destroys the bond
between and the compassion amongst man, by turning all human beings into
competitors within an impersonal market mechanism. As written in the letter,
capitalist decomposition speeds up this process. Do these emotions still exist,
which for 200 years were an undoubting sign of proletarian class struggle?
Where do its roots lay?
Let us take the example of the
feeling of social responsibility mentioned in the letter. In her article on the
writer Korolenko, which Rosa Luxemburg wrote in prison during the First World
War, she demonstrates how this feeling of social responsibility developed from
the 1860s onwards in Russia, where generations of heroic revolutionaries
emerged:
“That
attitude towards society which enables one to be free of gnawing self-analysis
and inner discord and considers ‘God-willed conditions’ are something
elemental, accepting the acts of history as a sort of divine fate, is
compatible with the most varied political and social systems.… In Russia, this
‘imperturbable equilibrium of conscience’ had already begun to crumble in the
1860’s among wide circles of the intelligentsia. Korolenko describes in an
intuitive manner this spiritual change in Russian society, and shows just how
this generation overcame the slave psychology, and was seized by the trend of a
new time, the predominant characteristic of which was the “gnawing and painful,
but creative spirit of social responsibility””. (Rosa Luxemburg Speaks.
Pathway Press, New York, p. 343).
It becomes clear that it is the power
of consciousness that arouses people. This consciousness, as well as
solidarity, is a sign of the social being of humanity. The fact that man was
able to achieve a higher level of consciousness and outgrow animality, is
directly connected to the highly developed social predispositions of our species. The manifestation of these social
predispositions itself – common labour, common language etc. – has not weakened
our social dependency but rather increased it incredibly.
Of course it is true that capitalism undermines social impulses and makes active solidarity more difficult. But at the same time it has given birth to a class which per definition, due to its position in production – unlike any prior class in history – is capable of rediscovering these common social feelings in class struggle and taking them to a higher level. This class is the modern proletariat. The working class is able to do this, not because workers are better humans, but rather because the proletariat is the first class, which produces collectively without owning any means of production.
The letter is absolutely right in saying
that there is the danger that unemployment, by increasing the competition on
the tight labour market, can lead to opening the door within the ranks of the
proletariat for the idea of everybody for him- or herself“. It was already back
in the 1840s that Friedrich Engels said in his “Elberfelder Speeches,” that the
workers only start acting as an active class as soon as they line up their own solidarity
against capitalist competition.
Even more so: according to Engels it is only by doing so that the workers
actually regain their own humanity. Towards an undefeated generation of the
working class, unemployment is a particularly good means to uncover the
revolutionary nature of the proletariat. Firstly, because unemployment turns
class solidarity more and more into a question of survival. Secondly, because
the bankruptcy of capitalism unveils the incompatibility of wage labour and
human dignity.
As Rosa Luxemburg wrote in her
“Introduction to National Economy”, the struggle of the proletariat
against being made superfluous by
machines, in other words, against the consequences of the inner tendency of
capitalism – the fall of relative labour rate, the increase of capital power,
an overflowing army of unemployed – is a struggle against the system itself.:
“The workers cannot oppose anything to the technical progress of production, to discoveries, the introduction of machines, to steam and electricity, to the improvement of the means of transport. The effect of all these steps forward on the relative wage is a purely mechanical product of commodity production and the commodity character of labor power. This is why even the most powerful trade unions are quite powerless against this tendency of the relative wage to rapidly fall. The struggle against the drop in relative wages is thus no longer a struggle on the terrain of the commodity economy, but a revolutionary, insurrectional offensive against this economy itself, it is the socialist movement of the proletariat.” (ICC translation from the German original)
The letter is right in stressing that the proletariat – in
opposition to the bourgeoisie - is capable of overcoming the bourgeois ideology,
which tries to hide its reality, because of its own class interests.
Social feelings as well as the power of human consciousness are incredible
forces. Marxist confidence in the working class is also confidence in human
nature.
Translated from Weltrevolution (Germany).
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn1
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn2
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn3
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn4
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn5
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn6
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn7
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn8
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn9
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn10
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn11
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn12
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn13
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn14
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn15
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn16
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftn17
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref1
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref2
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref3
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref4
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref5
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref6
[24] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref7
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref8
[26] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref9
[27] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref10
[28] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref11
[29] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref12
[30] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref13
[31] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref14
[32] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref15
[33] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref16
[34] https://en.internationalism.org/inter/138_france_students#_ftnref17
[35] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/french-students-movement
[36] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[37] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/canada
[38] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/readers-letters