France

In July our comrade Claude died from respiratory problems at the age of 60. In this article we pay tribute to a devoted militant of the workers movement.

We are publishing here an article written by our French section in Revolution Internationale 420 in response to the very widespread debate about the tactic of the oil refinery blockades during last autumn’s struggles against pension ‘reforms’.

Hundreds of thousands of workers on strike. Public transport completely paralyzed.

These last few months, the French media have reported copiously on the suicides of France Telecom employees (33 in 18 months, almost two per month). It's not the first time that the news has headlined cases of suicide at work or because of work. The same thing happened two years ago at Peugeot and Renault.

Twenty-three suicides (plus 13 attempted) in eighteen months at France Telecom! Here's a new, tragic testimony to the fact that proletarians are more and more confronted by a climate of terror and unbearable pressures at work.

On 23 September, in Calais, a whole phalanx of journalists and cameramen took part in a major media carnival organised by the French government: the evacuation of the ‘Jungle' a refuge for thousands of migrants living in abject misery in tents or under trees, barely surviving thanks to a few benevolent souls.

We are publishing an article from Revolution Internationale about a strike against threatened redundancies that took place earlier this year. Even though it was only a strike in one local factory in Toulouse it has a wider significance, particularly because it shows how workers' efforts to organise themselves come up against the union obstacle in a very concrete and daily manner.

France: Coordinations in the vanguard of sabotaging the struggle

The young generation of the working class faces some of the worst attacks on its living standards, shows the tendency to search for solidarity with other workers, to organise itself in assemblies. Recent student struggles in France and Barcelona reinforce the lessons of struggles in Greece last December and against the CPE in France three years ago.

The strike that began on 20th January in Guadeloupe has made its mark in Martinique from the 5th February and threatens to spread to Reunion and Guyana, the other overseas ‘départements' of the old French empire. This is not an exotic conflict: it is truly an authentic expression of the international resurgence of class struggle.

This is a report on the recent congress of our section in France, looking back at the developments in the class struggle and the activity of revolutionaries since the events of May 1968.

Following May 68 new groups appeared that drew on the experience of the communist left. In fact, the elements who understood that Trotskyism had become a sort of left wing of Stalinism turned much more towards councilism than towards the Italian Left. There were several reasons for this.

In the majority of the numerous books and television programmes on May 1968 that have occupied the media recently, the international character of the student movement that affected France during the course of this month has been underlined.

Last autumn, at the height of the movement against the law on the ‘Liberties and Responsibilities of Universities'(1), 36 universities were ‘disrupted' (in the journalists' terminology) by picket lines, blockades or occupations. These methods have often provoked long and passionate debates inside the general assemblies. (GAs). Let's leave to one side the groups who oppose any ‘disruptions' to the colleges,

The strike of transport workers (SNCF and RATP) which ended November 22 (and which unfolded simultaneously with the struggle of students against the law of "autonomy of the universities" aiming to accentuate the inequalities between working class students and those from the bourgeoisie) constituted the first significant response of the working class in France against the attacks of the government of Sarkozy/Fillon/Pecresse and associates.

According to our rulers, the struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie is an outmoded idea. So when workers, fed up with the continuing attack on their living standards, engage in strikes or demonstrations to defend themselves, they are invariably portrayed as narrow-minded, backward looking, and above all selfish interest groups who just don't understand the need for ‘reforms'...

In the name of ‘a fairer society' Sarkozy and his billionaire buddies have the nerve to ask us to accept the suppression or alteration of ‘special pension regimes' and to make everyone work 40 years for their pension. What the railway workers, the RATP employees, the gas and electrical workers are demanding was expressed clearly in their general assemblies: they don't want ‘privileges', they want 37 and half years for everyone!

As we have already shown in our press, the attacks being imposed on the transport, electricity and other workers around the ‘special pension regimes' are just the first stage of an assault on the conditions of the working class as a whole. Tomorrow, the pensions of all workers will be put into question. At the same time, the new medical charges are part of a wider attack on social benefits.

On Monday 19 November, in a large provincial town, a small group of students who had been to our last public meeting took a delegation of older politicised workers, members of the ICC, to two railway workers' general assemblies. Since the unions had taken care to divide up the assemblies into different sectors, our comrades split up to speak at the two assemblies: one of the station staff and one of the drivers.

It’s back to harsh reality for the working class after months of an intense barrage of propaganda pushing them towards the ballot box, with glittering illusions about ‘a change’, ‘a break’ through the election. And for what? The Sarkozy government has taken office and set to work, and the bourgeoisie does not even need to wait for the legislature to announce the future which they have in store for workers: attacks and ever more attacks...

As we go to press, and the day after the first round of the Presidential elections, we have learned that the workers of the Airbus factories have again expressed their anger against the attacks of capital.

This article first appeared in the April issue of Revolution Internationale. It describes a situation in which, following some initial spontaneous reactions by Airbus workers in France (and Germany) to the announcement of massive redundancies across Europe, the trade unions had resumed control of the situation through a series of classic manoeuvres. However, as can be seen from a follow-up article, translated from the May issue of RI (‘Spontaneous walk-outs at Airbus: the workers make their voices heard’) the unions have by no means exhausted the anger of the workers or their capacity to respond to further attacks by the company by taking their struggle into their own hands.

In France recently, there has been a huge amount of media publicity about the ‘anniversary’ of last year’s riots in the banlieues(1) There’s been a lot of speculation about whether it’s all going to kick off again, and TV coverage of tough police raids in various tower blocks – often showing that the police have come to the wrong door and ended up terrorising innocent mums and kids.

These Theses were adopted by the Congress of the ICC's section in France while the movement was still under way - they place the movement in its historical context and show that, in comparison with May 68, it represents a potentially far deeper development in the consciousness and organisation of the working class.

This text introduced the ICC public meeting of 11th March in Paris, at which students and militants involved in the recent events debated their experience and the best means for spreading the movement.

University and high-school students, future unemployed, future part-time or temporary workers: All together in the struggle against capitalism!

Since early February, despite being dispersed by the school holidays, university and high-school students have mobilised in most of France’s major cities to express their anger at the government and the bosses’ economic attacks, and against the CPE (Contrat Première Embauche). And this is happening despite the blackout by the media  (especially by the television), which have preferred instead to focus their attention on the sinister exploits of the "Barbarian gang".

In recent years world capitalism has supposedly been battered by widespread popular struggles particularly in what the bourgeoisie likes to call the “developing world”. It is high time that revolutionary marxists contrast this chimera of revolution with the authentic movement of social transformation that is usually starved of media attention: the class struggle of the world proletariat.