Leaflet given out by the ICC at the recent massive demonstrations in France
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On January 19th and 31st, more than a million of us took to the streets to mobilise against the new pension reform. The government claims that this anger is due to a "lack of explanation", to a "lack of education". But we all understand very well! With this umpteenth reform, the goal is clear: to exploit us more and more and to cut the pensions of all those who, because of redundancy or illness, will not be able to complete their years of service. Working until exhaustion for a miserable pension, that's what awaits us
But "at some point, enough is enough! ". This expression came up so often in the processions that it was picked up by the front pages of the press. This is almost word for word the phrase that strikers have been putting forward for months in the UK: "Enough is enough". This is not a coincidence. The link that unites us is obvious: the same degradation of living and working conditions, the same attacks, the same inflation, and the same growing combativity. Because, yes, "enough is enough". The pension reform, the soaring prices, the infernal pace of work, the understaffing, the miserable wages... and what about the new reform of the unemployment insurance, a revolting measure that reduces the duration of compensation by 25% and will allow the beneficiaries to be deregistered in no time! And this for the sake of statistics and lies about "reducing unemployment".
Massive struggles show our solidarity
By being more than a million in the streets on January 19, more on January 31, the working class demonstrates once again what makes its strength: its capacity to enter massively into struggle. Unemployed, retired, future workers, employees, of all professions, of all sectors, public or private, the exploited form one and the same class animated by one and the same feeling of solidarity: One for all, all for one!
For months, there have been small strikes everywhere in France, in factories or in offices. Their multitude reflects the level of anger in the ranks of the working class. But because they are isolated from each other, these strikes are powerless; they exhaust the most combative sectors in hopeless struggles. Corporatist and sectorial strikes only lead to the defeat of all: each one loses in their corner, each one in turn, one after the other. The organisation of corporatist and sectoral struggles is only the modern incarnation of the old adage of the ruling classes: "Divide and rule".
Faced with this dispersal, under the impact of constant attacks on our living and working conditions, we feel more and more that we must break this isolation, that we are all in the same boat, that we must fight all together. On January 19 and 31, with more than a million people in the streets, sticking together, there was not only joy but also a certain pride in experiencing working class solidarity.
To be truly united, we must regroup, debate and decide together
With more than a million people in the street, the atmosphere takes on a new mood. There is the hope of being able to win, of being able to make the government back down, to make it bend under the weight of numbers. It is true, only the fight can stop the attacks. But is being numerous enough?
In 2019, we were also massively mobilised and the pension reform passed. In 2010, against what was supposed to be the last pension reform, we swore and swore, we held fourteen days of action! Nine months of struggle! These processions gathered millions of demonstrators several times in a row. For what result? The pension reform has been passed. However, in 2006, after only a few weeks of mobilisation, the government withdrew its "Contrat Première Embauche" (CPE). Why? What is the difference between these movements? What frightened the bourgeoisie in 2006, to the point of making it retreat so quickly?
In 2010 and 2019, we were many, we were determined, but we were not united. There may have been millions of us, but we marched separately, one behind the other. The demonstrations consisted of coming with your colleagues, walking with your colleagues under the deafening noise of the sound systems, and leaving with your colleagues. No assembly, no debate, no real meeting. These demonstrations were reduced to the expression of a simple parade.
In 2006, the precarious students organised massive general assemblies in the universities, open to workers, the unemployed and the retired, they put forward a unifying slogan: the fight against casualisation and unemployment. These assemblies were the lungs of the movement, where debates were held, where decisions were made.
Result: Each weekend, the demonstrations gathered more and more sectors. Waged and retired workers joined the students, under the slogan: ‘Young lardons, old croutons, all the same salad’. The French bourgeoisie and the government, faced with this tendency to unify the movement, had no choice but to withdraw its CPE.
The big difference between these movements is therefore the question of the workers themselves taking charge of the struggles!
In the processions today, the reference to May 68 is regularly recurring: "You talk about 64, we reply with -May 68," could be read on many posters. This movement has left an extraordinary trace in the workers' memories. And in 1968, the proletariat in France was united in taking its struggles into its own hands. Following the huge demonstrations of May 13 to protest against the police repression suffered by the students, the walkouts and general assemblies spread like wildfire in the factories and all the workplaces, leading to the largest strike in the history of the international workers' movement, with nine million strikers. Very often, this dynamic of extension and unity had developed outside the authority of the unions, and many workers tore up their union cards after the Grenelle agreements of May 27 between the unions and the employers, agreements that had buried the movement.
Today, whether we are talking about waged workers, unemployed, retired, precarious students, we still lack confidence in ourselves, in our collective strength, to dare to take our struggles in hand. But there is no other way. All the "actions" proposed by the unions lead to defeat. Only coming together in open, massive, autonomous general assemblies, really deciding on the conduct of the movement, provides the basis of a united struggle, carried by the solidarity between all sectors, all generations. It’s in these general assemblies that we feel united and confident in our collective strength.
There is no room for illusions, as history has shown a thousand times: today the unions display their "unity" and call for a general mobilisation, tomorrow they will oppose each other to better divide us and better demobilise us. In fact, this work of division has already started:
- On the one hand, the unions classified as "radical" focus on the need to block the country's economy. In concrete terms, this means that the workers in the most combative sectors at present, such as the oil refiners or the railway workers, will find themselves locked in their workplaces, isolated from their class brothers and sisters in the other sectors, who will be reduced to striking by proxy. Just like in 2019!
- On the other side, the so-called "reformist" unions are already preparing for disunity by repeating "We are not against pension reform. We are not unaware. It is well known that we must maintain a system of financial equilibrium in this pay-as-you-go pension plan. [...] However, we do not want a reform that is unfair.” (Geoffrey Caillon, CFDT TotalEnergies coordinator). And so they call on the government to "hear" the discontent and negotiate. In other words, the government and the unions have long been planning adjustments to the reform to make it work. Just like in 2019!
The future belongs to the class struggle!
Pension reform is done in the name of budget balance, justice and the future. On January 20, Macron announced with great fanfare a record military budget of 400 billion euros! This is the reality of the future promised by the bourgeoisie: more war and more misery. Capitalism is an exploitative, global and decadent system. It is leading humanity towards barbarism and destruction. Economic crisis, war, global warming, pandemic are not separate phenomena; all of them are scourges of the same moribund system.
Thus, our current struggles are not only a reaction to the pension reform, nor even to the degradation of our living conditions.
Basically, they are a reaction to the general dynamics of capitalism. Our solidarity in struggle is the antithesis of the competition to the death which marks a system divided into competing companies and nations. Our intergenerational solidarity is the antithesis of the no future and the destructive spiral of this system. Our struggle symbolises the refusal to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of the war economy. This is why every strike carries the seeds of revolution. The struggle of the working class is immediately a questioning of the very foundations of capitalism and exploitation.
Our current struggle prepares the way for the struggles to come. There will be no respite. As the world economic crisis deepens, in its mad race for profit, each national bourgeoisie will continue to attack the living and working conditions of the proletariat.
The most combative and determined workers must regroup, discuss, and reappropriate the lessons of the past, in order to prepare the autonomous struggle of the whole working class. It is a necessity. This is the only way.
International Communist Current (February 2, 2023)
Gather and debate
Marching one behind the other, then everyone leaving separately in their corner is sterile. To be truly united in the fight, you have to meet, debate, learn from the present struggle and past struggles. We must take charge of our struggles.
Wherever possible, in workplaces or here, on the sidewalks, now or at the end of the event, we have to regroup and discuss.
If by reading this leaflet, you share this desire to reflect together, to organise, to take control of the struggles then do not hesitate to come to our meeting at the end of the demonstration to continue the debate.
The emancipation of workers will be the work of the workers themselves.
We were a bit surprised to see our organisation mentioned briefly in an article by Gavin Mortimer, published in the British magazine The Spectator on 22 January. A few years ago the Daily Mail, a sensationalist tabloid, not known for its honesty and high-mindedness, believed that it had unmasked the ICC as the brains behind a student plot to trash the Conservative Party HQ in Britain. You will be shocked to know that this was a gross lie which we denounced in our press in 2010[1]:
This time, nothing of the sort. It was just a brief mention, vaguely mocking, in a very serious conservative magazine. It was not seeking to make a scandal. But since Gavin Mortimer has inadvertently passed the baton to us, we will take the opportunity to make a few points clear.
In his account, Gavin Mortimer presents the recent demonstrations against the pension reforms as the expression of the French way of life, a sort of national curiosity illustrated by our leaflet, alongside the Yellow Vests and a merguez vendor.
At the risk of disappointing our dear Gavin, our leaflet wasn’t a bit of local colour provided for tourists looking for something a bit spicy. The ICC distributes leaflets in all countries where its militants are present: in French, Filipino, Spanish, Hindi, Italian, Germany and even…in English!
We advise him to read our leaflet on the strikes in the UK[2] published in August 2022, which received a favourable response from some of the strike pickets in the “mother country”. Nine months of struggle on both sides of the Channel have largely confirmed what we put forward in the leaflet: “It is not possible to predict where and when the workers' combativity will re-emerge on a massive scale in the near future, but one thing is certain: the scale of the current workers' mobilisation in Britain is a significant historical event. The days of passivity and submission are past. The new generations of workers are raising their heads”.
Everywhere in the world, and not only in France, the exploited are returning to the path of struggle faced with the inexorable degradation of their living and working conditions, with poverty, precariousness, the rising cost of living.
As Gavin Mortimer, in his own way and with his particular prejudices puts it, “They are working class and middle class, young and old, and their anger has been building for years. Raising the age of retirement to 64 is a cause around which they can all rally but their ras-le-bol (despair) is far more profound”. Indeed, the demonstrations in France express more than just a rejection of the pension reform. Even if the proletarians are not yet conscious of it, the struggles in France and Britain are a reaction to the spiral of chaos and poverty which capitalism is inflicting on humanity.
We find nothing to despise in seeing the “young” mixed together with “greying boomers”. Because these struggles also express the beginning of solidarity between the different sectors of our class, between “white collars” and “blue collars” as well as between generations. Its because industrial workers and white collar workers, young and old, in all sectors and in all countries, share the same conditions of exploitation that the class struggle is fundamentally international.
This is why revolutionaries aim to show that each struggle must encourage the next across all frontiers, despite the silence of the bourgeois press and the systematic deformation of what’s going on. To fight against its lies, our leaflets, like our press, has never stopped showing the link between the “enough is enough” of the strikers in Britain with the “ça suffit” of the demonstrators in France. We have thus welcomed the mobilisation of the workers in Britain because, dear Gavin, these massive strikes are an appeal to struggle, addressed to workers in all countries.
EG 2.2.23
Small children freezing to death in cold damp houses, schoolkids pretending to eat from empty lunch boxes – these are among the most graphic illustrations of the “cost of living crisis” which, since it took off in 2021, has been hitting the working class. Food price inflation, the spiralling rise in gas and electricity costs, are all a concrete reality for millions of workers.
The intolerable impact on the working class
According to official statistics, a quarter of the population, 14.5 million people, live in food poverty. This includes 4.3 million children, 2.1 million pensioners and 8.1 million of working age. The number of food banks in Britain has been increasing; there are now more than 2500, which are feeding new categories of “poor” people, including employed workers. And they have recently been running out of supplies, partly because of the demands made on them, and partly because of difficulties in making donations. Families are having to limit what they eat – forced to choose between eating or heating. Unheated homes are bad for your health. At the same time, “More than 5 million households are in fuel poverty, which means that they spend more than 10% of their income on gas and electricity, struggling to afford to keep their homes warm. Large families could even be spending a quarter of their disposable income on energy”. [1] The Resolution Foundation has forecast that absolute poverty (when household income is below the level to meet basic needs) will rise from 17% in 2021-2022 to 22% in 2022-2023. This means an increase in absolute poverty of over 3 million working class households. It is suggested that 3.2 million of adults in Britain are in hygiene poverty, that is not being able to afford hygiene and grooming products.
Over the last decade the working class in Britain had seen a relentless deterioration of its living standards, through cuts in the social wage - health and social services, housing, pensions, reduction in claimant payments - and a slow deterioration of the purchasing power for those still in employment. Median wage growth between 2007 and 2021 was 20.1% in the US, 11.7% in France, 15.7% in Germany, but only 4.8% in the UK. In the last few years, the effective wage cuts have become simply unbearable. Wages are not predicted to return to their 2008 level until 2027. This sounds very optimistic when wage increases are currently at 6.4% (and only 3.3% in the public sector) while inflation is in double figures. On top of all this, there could also be an increase in unemployment of more than half a million, with major implications for the incomes of laid-off workers.
Inflation: the figures speak for themselves
Inflation has risen to double-digit levels for the first time in 40 years: from around 5.4 % in December 2021 to 10.1% in July 2022 (11.1% in October). It’s only the fourth time in 70 years that inflation has gone beyond 10% (the other periods being 1951-52, 1973-77 and 1979-82.) Some economists forecast that inflation will continue to rise during 2023. The latest official statistics (The inflation rate for the Retail Price Index in December 2022) show inflation at 13.4%, with food inflation rising to 16.8%.
Gas and electricity costs have risen to unprecedented levels. According to the IMF, UK households have been hit harder by the energy crisis than most European countries. But this brutal development of the crisis in Britain is not just because of the coronavirus pandemic, or the war in Ukraine, which has affected all countries in Europe.
Many products that have been going up at a faster rate: in July 22 petrol was running at over 45%, low fat milk is currently up by 46%, many other foods up by figures of 20 to 40%. Food inflation directly attributable to Brexit was already at 6%. Last August, the Bank of England predicted a period of recession lasting for a period of two years. More recently they have said the recession will just be for a little more than a year, and that maybe the worst of inflation is behind us. Whatever explanations they have, and whatever predictions they might make, inflation took off rapidly in a short time and, with the unpredictability of energy prices, supply chains, and developments in the war in Ukraine, there is no stable basis for government or businesses to make policy.
The historic weakness of the British economy
There’s a focus in the British media on how the situation in the UK is worse than anywhere else. So, for example, when the IMF found that households in the UK were being the worst hit in Western Europe by the energy crisis, it received appropriate publicity. But Britain, compared to other European countries, has been lagging behind for decades, because of long-standing weaknesses. From being the strongest economy in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century, exporting manufacturing goods all over the world, the British economy has since deteriorated and diminished.
Back in 1934 the comrades of the communist left who published Bilan analysed the “Evolution of British Imperialism”. “The sectors which supplied the essential of British exports were coal, iron and steel, textiles, precisely the ones which were to be the most affected (…) by the decomposition of the British economy, as well as by the chronic depression which (…) gnawed at the productive apparatus like a cancer.”[2] The trade deficit increased considerably in those years. Between 1924 and 1931: “The volume of imports grew by 17%, whereas the volume of exports plummeted by 35% in the same period. But here we can also see the insouciance of a rentier bourgeoisie, (…) which in 1931, in the midst of the crisis, consumed 60% more foreign goods than in 1913, while three million workers had been ejected from the sphere of labour. A violent contrast typical of decaying capitalism.”[3]
This was the context in which the British bourgeoisie increasingly favoured the financial sector over the needs of the relatively uncompetitive manufacturing sector, a decision that did not solve the worsening of its economy, but only meant a further plunge into the abyss of credit and fictitious capital, intensifying the contradictions of its economy.
After World War 2, despite the post-war boom, marked by an increase in public spending in the health sector, infrastructure and education, the British economy continued to recede. British exports as a percentage of world trade fell from almost 12% in 1948 to around 4% in 1974. Britain’s trade deficit was £200 million in 1948, but reached £4.1 billion by 1974.
With the return of the open economic crisis the continuous low productivity and the lack of competitiveness compelled the British bourgeoisie close many sectors of industry and to the biggest de-industrialisation of any major nation. At the same time, it took another step in boosting the British finance sector by loosening the most stringent rules. This deregulation helped London consolidate its position as a major international financial centre.
The deregulation of the financial sector, which gave banks full scope to play with all the fundamental rules of financial management, was a ticking time bomb, which exploded in 2008 and helped to bring the British economy to the brink of collapse. The British economy has never really recovered from the “finance crisis” of 2008. In the following ten years the size of the UK economy fell by 2 % while countries like France and Germany grew by 34 and 27 percent. Britain is the only G7 economy that had failed to reach its pre-pandemic GDP levels by 2022.
As we said in 2008 “London is a major financial centre, and finance is a major part of the service industries that employ 80% of the workforce producing 75% of GDP. Of the 23% of GDP from industrial production, 10% is from primary energy production (gas, oil and the run down coal industry), which is unusually high for a developed country. A lot of industry was lost in the 1970s and 1980s particularly coal, steel and shipbuilding. The development from industry towards services and particularly banking has only increased since the last official recession in the early 1990s. After 10 years of industrial stagnation and recession, services are even more predominant. Between 2000 and 2005 banking assets increased by 75% largely based on housing. Assets of British banks are greater than GDP and their foreign liabilities a significant part of UK foreign liabilities.” [4]
The effect of Brexit
While the government mainly points to international factors (Covid, Ukraine war) to explain the present catastrophic economic situation, the Office for Budget Responsibility is clear that Britain leaving the EU has worsened the reduction of the country’s productivity, as well as its imports and exports. All told, the OBR estimates that productivity will in the long run fall by around 4 percent and imports and exports “will be around 15 percent lower in the long run than if the U.K. had remained in the EU.” And the full effect of Brexit is yet to be felt. The Economist of 19 October 2022 described the current situation as “Britaly – a country of political instability, low growth and subordination to the bond markets", lacking the resilience to recover from economic jolts. “The UK economy as a whole has been permanently damaged by Brexit,” former Bank of England official Michael Saunders told Bloomberg (Nov 14, 2022) - “If we hadn’t had Brexit, we probably wouldn’t be talking about an austerity budget this week. The need for tax rises, spending cuts wouldn’t be there.”
The ruling class has no alternatives
“Policy changes cannot rescue the world economy from oscillating between the twin dangers of inflation and deflation, new credit crunches and currency crises, all leading to brutal recessions.”[5] The actual lurches in the British economy have shown that there are no benign policy changes that can be adopted by the bourgeoisie. Growing inflation means that government borrowing will go way beyond forecasts. Last summer, in the battle between Sunak and Truss to become Prime Minister, all their economic policies tended to lead toward further debt. Whether for the financing of tax cuts by Truss or tackling the effects of inflation by Sunak, the public deficit was bound to continue to increase.
The press of the bourgeoisie is full of dire predictions about the future of the economy (along with their favoured ‘solutions’) but it is the task of revolutionaries to show that while the crisis of the economy is serious (and has been long-lasting), it is one aspect of the crisis of a mode of production in which imperialist war has become a basic part of its functioning and environmental degradation a natural consequence of what and how it produces. The British economy is faring the worst of the G7, which is one of the reasons the attacks on living standards are more brutal. The weaknesses in the British economy lie in the historic decline of British capitalism that was under way long ago and identified by Bilan in the 30s, and in the workers’ movement before that. Lenin, for example, in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917) observes that “On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before; but this growth is not only becoming more and more uneven in general, its unevenness also manifests itself, in particular, in the decay of the countries which are richest in capital (Britain).” The crisis in Britain today is still following the overall downward trend of world capitalism, and this trend has only been accelerated by Britain’s historic weaknesses, as well as the impact of Brexit, of the coronavirus pandemic, the war in the Ukraine, and the international energy crisis.
Edvin, 1 February 2023
We publish here a statement by some comrades in Turkey on the earthquake which has hit Turkey and Syria. We salute the comrades’ rapid response to these awful events, in which the official death toll has already passed 21,000 and is likely to climb much higher, including those who survived the initial quake but now face hunger, cold and disease. As the statement shows, this “natural” disaster has been made far more deadly by the callous demands of capitalist profit and competition, which has obliged people to live in totally inadequate, flimsy housing. The particularly catastrophic effects of the recent earthquake illustrates the accentuation of the bourgeoise’s contempt for the lives and suffering of the working class and the oppressed today in the period where the capitalist mode of production is decomposing in every respect. In particular, the fact that this disaster is taking place in the middle of a theatre of imperialist war is considerably worsening its impact. The epicentre of the quake was in Maraş, in the mainly Kurdish region long subject to the conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish nationalists. In northern Syria, a large number of the victims are refugees who have tried to take shelter from the murderous war in Syria, and who were already living in hellish conditions, exacerbated by the Assad regime’s deliberate bombing of hospitals in cities like Aleppo. The ongoing confrontation between warring capitalist factions in the region will also act as a political and material barrier to the already meagre rescue efforts.
However we want to point out two problems in the text, which the comrades have acknowledged. The first is the title, which should rather have been something like: “Turkey: The name of the disaster is capitalism – only its overthrow can spare humanity from such suffering”. And the following phrase is also not correct: “Already, around the world, workers and search and rescue teams are showing solidarity to help the survivors. This solidarity, as one of the greatest weapons of the proletariat, is a vital necessity”. In fact, with the exception of the first few days, the emergency services dispatched to the spot have been professional bodies.
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It is not yet possible to know exactly to what extent the destructive effects of the earthquake that took place in Maraş (February 6, 2023), which also struck neighboring provinces and Syria. Already, the media states that more than ten thousand buildings have been destroyed, thousands of people have died under the rubble, and tens of thousands of people have been injured. Communication with some cities has been cut off since the last two days. Roads, bridges, airports were destroyed. It is reported that a fire broke out in the Iskenderun port. Electricity, water and natural gas connections are cut off in many areas. Those who survived the earthquake are now struggling with hunger and cold under harsh winter conditions. There is also very grave news from the earthquake zones in Syria, which has been under the military occupation of Turkey.
Two major earthquakes in a row are certainly unusual. However, contrary to the claims of the ruling class and its parties, this does not mean that the destruction caused by earthquakes is normal. The sickening calls for "national unity" by both the opposition and the ruling capitalist parties cannot hide the fact that everyone knows: capitalism and the state are the main culprits of this destruction.
1- We know that the proletariat, as a class, will show all kinds of solidarity in action with those who became homeless, injured and lost their relatives in the earthquake areas. Hundreds of mine workers have already volunteered to participate in search and rescue efforts in the earthquake zone. Already, around the world, workers and search and rescue teams are showing solidarity to help the survivors. This solidarity, as one of the greatest weapons of the proletariat, is a vital necessity. The proletarians have no one to trust but each other. We can only expect emancipation through our own class, through unity, not from the ruling class and its state.
2- The past earthquake experiences in Turkey are proof of the destructive and deadly effects of urbanisation that has developed with the aim of the social reproduction of capital. The only reason for quake-incompatible construction, people being squeezed into multi-storey buildings and densely populated cities in earthquake zones, is to meet the abundant and cheap labor needs of the capital. After the Gölcük and Düzce earthquakes that took place 20 years ago (in the Marmara region), this earthquake once again demonstrates the shallowness of all the "measures" taken by the state and the crocodile tears shed by the ruling class. This earthquake and its effects are already painfully proving that the main reason for the existence of the state is not to protect the poor and proletarian population, but to protect the interests of the national capital.
3- So why doesn't capitalism build a permanent and solid infrastructure, even though disasters regularly and systematically destroy its own production infrastructure? Because under capitalism, buildings, roads, dams, ports, in short, infrastructure investment in general, is not built with permanence or human needs in mind. In capitalism, all infrastructure investments, whether made by the state or private companies, are built with the aim of profitability and the continuation of the wage labour system. Dense populations are squeezed into uninhabitable cities. Even if there is no earthquake, unhealthy concrete buildings that can last for 100 years at the most fill cities and rural areas. The terrible capitalist urbanisation of the last 40 years has turned cities and even villages across Turkey into such concrete tombs. The capitalist system based on the production of surplus value can only be sustained by employing as much living labor as possible, i.e. proletarians, and keeping fixed capital investments, i.e. infrastructure, to a minimum. In capitalism, construction is a continuous activity, the permanence of the building, its harmony with the environment, and its response to human needs, are wholly ignored. This is the rule in advanced western capitalism as well as in the weaker capitalisms of Africa and Asia. The sole social goal of capital and its states is to perpetuate the exploitation of an ever-increasing number of proletarians.
4- The capitalist order is not in a position to even come up with solutions that can reproduce its own order of exploitation. In the face of “natural” disasters, capital is not only reckless but also helpless. We see this helplessness even in the lack of coordination of aid organizations under the control of nation states and the incapacity of the state in emergency aid distribution. We see this not only in countries like Turkey, where decaying capitalism has been more deeply affected, but also in countries at the heart of capitalism, such as Germany, which was helpless in the face of floods two years ago, or the USA, whose roads and bridges collapsed in floods due to neglect of infrastructure investments.
5- The fact that some sections of the bourgeois opposition find the state "inadequate" to "help" earthquake victims presents a deceptive perspective on the nature of the state. The state is not an aid agency. The state is the collective apparatus of violence of a minority exploiting class. The state protects the interests of capital. Certainly, since the reign of chaos in a disaster area will both show the weakness of the ruling class and hinder the reproduction of capital itself, the state will be forced to organise a minimum level of "aid". But it seems that the state is incapable of even providing this minimum aid. Whatever the state's intervention in the disaster, its main function is to rein in the proletariat and compete with other capitalist countries in the interests of its own national capital. The state is the ideological and physical machinery aiding capital accumulation, the guardian of conditions that push workers into deadly concrete coffin houses and leave them defenseless in the face of disasters.
6- There is nothing “natural” about the epidemics, famines and wars that we have experienced in recent years and whose effects are felt worldwide. Although the moment of an earthquake cannot be predicted before they happen, earthquake fault lines and possible magnitudes can be predicted with certainty. The main agent responsible for all these disasters is capitalism and nation states, the entire existing ruling class, which organises society around the extraction of surplus value and wage labour, which deepens militarist-nationalist competition, and threatens the existence and future of humanity. As capitalism continues to dominate, as humanity continues to remain divided into nation-states and classes, these catastrophes will continue to happen, getting deadlier, more destructive and more frequent. This is the clearest indication of the exhaustion of capitalism. All over the world, ruling classes are pushing humanity into wars, terrible and uninhabitable cities, hunger and famine, a gigantic global climate crisis.
The earthquake that took place in and around Maraş is the last concrete and painful proof that the ruling class has no positive future to offer humanity. But this should not lead us to pessimism. The solidarity that our class showed and will show in this earthquake should give us hope. Disasters are devastating not because they have no solution, but because our class, the proletariat, does not yet have the self-confidence to change the world and save humanity from the scourge of capital. The resources of humanity and the earth are sufficient to build permanent, secure dwellings and settlements that will protect us from disasters. The path towards this will open once the proletariat, the only force that can mobilise the world’s resources for liberation, develops its confidence in itself and engages in a worldwide struggle to seize power from the corrupt capitalist class.
A group of internationalist communists from Turkey
On February 1st around half a million workers from different sectors in Britain were on strike – rail and some bus networks, civil servants, and in particular workers in education, both schools and universities. This was the biggest number of workers out on one day since the strike wave in Britain began last summer.
Responding to a growing feeling in the working class that “we are all in the same boat” and that we need to struggle together, the more militant union leaders, like Mick Lynch, echoed by their supporters in the extreme left (SWP etc), have for some time been using a more radical language, talking about the need for working class unity and solidarity and even coordinated strike action[1]. And although up till now the unions have been careful to avoid large demonstrations composed of all the different sectors involved in the current movement, on February 1st, in Bristol, a “joint rally” between the education, civil servants and rail workers attracted around 3,000 workers; in London, a much bigger demonstration, probably tens of thousands, gathered at Portland Place and marched to Westminster. Dominated by the banners of the National Education Union and the Universities and Colleges Union, there were also small contingents from the RMT and the health unions and a larger number of civil servants. And there were smaller demonstrations in a number of other cities, such as Leeds and Liverpool.
These demonstrations were very lively, with a strong presence of young workers, many of whom arrived with their homemade placards and who cheered especially loudly when new contingents of workers, from whatever sector, arrived on the scene. Such events are an occasion for workers to gain confidence from being part of a wider movement.
But as the title of the leaflet issued by our section in France put it, “It’s not enough to come out in large numbers, we have to take control of our struggles!”. In France, while the number of strikes is far lower than in Britain, the unions have been calling big demonstrations to protest against the increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64. On the most recent “day of action” perhaps 2 million were on the streets. But our comrades pointed out that in previous struggles against pension reforms, in 2010 and 2019, big demonstrations alone had not forced the government to withdraw its attacks; and the demonstrations themselves became a kind of ritual event, consisting of “coming with your colleagues, walking with your colleagues under the deafening noise of the sound systems, and leaving with your colleagues. No assembly, no debate, no real meeting. These demonstrations were reduced to the expression of a simple parade”.
Exactly the same could be said about the demonstrations in Britain on February 1st. Much of the enthusiasm was generated at the beginning of the marches, as workers gather together and recognise that they are taking part in something bigger than their own workplace or their particular sector, but once the march comes to its pre-organised conclusion, after listening passively to a few speeches by union officials, the vast majority of participants look for the nearest underground station and go home. Once again: no assembly, no debate, no real meeting.
The uses and abuses of pickets
The same process of “disempowerment” can be seen with another characteristic element of the current strike wave: the picket line. The organising of pickets at the entrance to workplaces on strike days is an elementary expression of solidarity, and it’s evident that one of the tasks of these pickets is to persuade as many colleagues as possible to join the strike. And the engagement of workers in the struggle has been shown on many occasions in recent months when scores and even hundreds of workers have turned up on the picket line, routinely ignoring the laws which formally restrict picket lines to 6 strikers.
But, like the rallies and marches organised by the unions, where workers are largely separated in their separate contingents waving their particular union flags, “official” picket lines end up accepting the most important limits to the struggles imposed by so-called “anti-union” laws, which are actually designed to prevent workers’ actions from escaping union control and which are therefore rigorously enforced by the union apparatus. Thus, calling on colleagues at your workplace who belong to a different union or no union at all not to cross the picket line, and in particular sending pickets to other workplaces and sectors and asking them to join the struggle - all this is illegal “secondary picketing” which contains the danger of a real unification of workers’ struggles. The result is that pickets under union control end up acting as boundaries separating workers from one another.
The necessity for workers to organise the struggle themselves
The leaflet from our French section also points out that, whereas the struggles against pension “reforms” in 2010 and 2019 ended in defeat, it was a different story in 2006 in the struggle against the CPE, proposed government legislation that would institutionalise job insecurity for those starting employment: “In 2006, the precarious students organised massive general assemblies in the universities, open to workers, the unemployed and the retired, they put forward a unifying slogan: the fight against casualisation and unemployment. These assemblies were the lungs of the movement, where debates were held, where decisions were made.
Result: Each weekend, the demonstrations gathered more and more sectors. Waged and retired workers joined the students, under the slogan: ‘Young lardons, old croutons, all the same salad’. The French bourgeoisie and the government, faced with this tendency to unify the movement, had no choice but to withdraw its CPE”.
What forces the ruling class to back down - even if it can no longer grant any lasting improvements to the living conditions of the working class – is the sight of a working class that is threatening to break through all the divisions between union and profession and to organise this unity through its general assemblies and elected strike committees, embryos of the future workers’ councils. And the present struggles of the working class in Britain and in other countries – even though still weighed down by corporatist ideology which sees each sector having its own disputes with employers, its own particular demands – contain the potential for this re-emergence of the working class as a real power in society, as a force for radically changing society.
This is why even the smallest gathering of workers, whether on the picket lines or at rallies and marches, who begin to question why the struggles are still so divided, who are not satisfied with the empty rhetoric of the trade unions, who pose the problem of what is the most effective way to struggle – represents an important step in the struggle, and one that revolutionaries should encourage at every opportunity.
Amos 4.2.23
[1] See in particular https://en.internationalism.org/content/17278/unions-dont-unite-our-stru... [8]
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201011/4098/daily-mail-exposes-icc-plot
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17247/summer-anger-britain-ruling-class-demands-further-sacrifices-response-working-class
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17288/citizens-protest-not-class-struggle
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200803/2398/evolution-british-imperialism-bilan-1934
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/200804/2413/bilan-1935-evolution-british-imperialism-part-2
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/12/british-situation
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17062/resolution-international-situation-adopted-24th-icc-congress
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/content/17278/unions-dont-unite-our-struggle-they-organise-its-division