In Britain since June the cry has echoed from strike to strike:

"Enough is enough!"

This massive movement, dubbed the "Summer of Anger", has become the Autumn of Anger, and then the Winter of Anger.

The wave of strikes in the UK is a symbol of workers' combativity that is developing all over the world:

- In Spain, where doctors and paediatricians in the Madrid area went on strike at the end of November, as did the airline and rail sectors in December. Further strikes in the health sector are planned for January in many regions.

- In Germany, where soaring prices are causing employers to fear the consequences of an unprecedented energy crisis. The large metal and electrical industries underwent a series of slowdowns in November.

- In Italy, a strike by air traffic controllers in mid-October was added to that of EasyJet pilots. The government even had to ban all strikes on public holidays.

- In Belgium, where national strikes were called on 9 November and 16 December.

- In Greece, where a demonstration in Athens in November brought together tens of thousands of workers from the private sector, shouting "The cost of living is unbearable".

- In France, where, in recent months, there have been successive strikes in public transport and hospitals

- In Portugal, where workers are demanding a minimum wage of 800 euros, compared to the current 705. On 18 November, the civil service was on strike. In December, there were strikes across the transport sector.

- In the United States, the House of Representatives intervened to break an industrial dispute and avoid a rail freight strike. In January, thousands of nurses struck in New York.

The list would be endless because, in reality, there is everywhere a multitude of small strikes, isolated from each other, in different businesses and in the public sector. Because everywhere, in every country, in every sector, living and working conditions are deteriorating, everywhere there are soaring prices and poverty wages, everywhere there is precariousness and flexibility, everywhere there are hellish work rates and not enough workers, everywhere there is a terrible deterioration in housing conditions, particularly for young people.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, hospitals have become the symbol of this daily reality for all workers: being understaffed and overexploited, to the point of exhaustion, for a wage that can no longer pay the bills.

The extended wave of strikes that has since June been hitting the UK, a country where the proletariat seemed resigned to its fate since the Thatcher years, expresses a real break, a change of attitude within the working class, not only in the UK, but internationally. These struggles show that in the face of the deepening crisis, the exploited are no longer prepared to be pushed around.

With inflation at over 11% and the announcement of an austerity budget by the Sunak government, there have been strikes in almost every sector: Transport (trains, buses, tube, airports) and health, Royal Mail postal workers, civil servants in Defra, Amazon employees, school workers in Scotland, North Sea oil workers... The scale of the mobilisation of health workers has not been seen in this country for over a century! And teachers are expected to strike from February.

In France, the government has also decided to impose a new "reform" making the legal age of retirement later. The aim is simple: to save money by squeezing the working class like a lemon, all the way to the cemetery. In concrete terms, it will mean working old, sick, exhausted or leaving with a reduced and miserable pension. Often, moreover, redundancy will cut the knot in this dilemma before the fateful age.

The attacks on our living conditions will not stop. The global economic crisis will continue to worsen. In order to get by in the international arena of the market and competition, every bourgeoisie in every country will impose increasingly unbearable living and working conditions on the working class, invoking "solidarity with Ukraine" or "the future of the national economy".

This is even more true with the development of the war economy. An increasing proportion of labour and other resources is directed to the war economy. In Ukraine, but also in Ethiopia, Yemen, Syria, Mali, Niger, Congo, etc., this means bombs, bullets and death! Elsewhere, it means fear, inflation and accelerated work rates. Every government is calling for "sacrifices"!

Faced with a capitalist system which plunges humanity into misery and war, into competition and division, it is up to the working class (wage-earners in all sectors, in all nations, unemployed or working, with or without qualifications, working or retired...) to put forward another perspective. By refusing these "sacrifices", by developing a massive united struggle, it can show that another world is possible.

Divided, we are weak

Divided, we lose.

For months, in all countries and in all sectors, there have been strikes. But they have been isolated from each other. Everyone in their own strike, in their own factory, their depot, their business, their part of the public sector. There is no real link between these struggles, even when it would be just a matter of crossing the street for the strikers from the hospital to meet those from the school or the supermarket opposite. Sometimes this division borders on the ridiculous when, in the same business, strikes are divided by corporation, or team, or unit. You have to imagine office workers on strike at different times to technical staff, or those on the first floor on strike on their own without any connection to those on the second floor. Sometimes this is what actually happens!

The dispersal of strikes, locking everyone in their own corner, plays the game of the bourgeoisie - it weakens us, reduces us to impotence, it exhausts us and leads us to defeat.

That's why the bourgeoisie puts so much energy into maintaining it. In all countries, the same strategy: governments divide. They pretend to support this or that sector to better attack the others. They highlight one sector, or even one company, by making promises that they will never keep, in order to conceal the onslaught of attacks that is taking place everywhere else. In order to better divide, they provide limited support to one group and reduce the rights of all the others. Branch by branch and company by company negotiations are the rule everywhere.

In France, the announcement of the pension reform, which will affect the entire working class, is accompanied by a deafening media "debate" on the unfairness of the reform for this or that section of the population. It should be made fairer by acknowledging the particular qualifications of apprentices, certain manual workers, women... Always the same trap!

Workers must take the struggle into their own hands

Why is there this division? Is it only government propaganda and manoeuvres that succeed in dividing us in this way, keeping the strikes and struggles of the working class separate from each other?

The feeling that we are all in the same boat is growing. The idea that a massive united struggle with widespread solidarity can change the balance of forces between the classes is becoming clearer. So why do we see divisions between workers over many months in every country and in every sector?

In the UK, striking workers traditionally picket outside their place of work. For several months, organised pickets have not been far apart, sometimes taking place only a day apart, sometimes struggles have happened at the same time but with the pickets separated by a few hundred metres but with no attempt to link up together. All on strike, but stranded on the picket line. Without fighting this dispersion, without developing a real unity in the struggle, this could exhaust our fighting spirit. In recent weeks the deadlock and the danger that this situation presents has become more evident. Those workers who have been on 'rolling strikes' over the last six months could now be feeling weary and powerless.

However, on several picket lines we have visited, workers expressed to us their feeling of being involved in a much broader struggle than just with their employer, their department, their sector. There is a growing sense of needing to struggle together.

But for months, in all countries, in all sectors, it is the unions that have been organising all these fragmented struggles. The unions decide the strategy that divides and isolates, and advocates that negotiations take place branch by branch, sector by sector. The unions choose to set out specific demands and the unions warn, above all, that "we will dilute our own struggle if we make common demands".

And yet, the unions have become aware that anger is growing, that it risks overflowing and breaking the barriers that they have built between and within the private sector and public sector. They know that the idea of "a common struggle" is maturing inside the class.

That's why, for example in the UK, unions are starting to talk about joint actions across sectors, which they had been very careful to avoid until now, and the words "unity" and "solidarity" are beginning to appear in their speeches. They won't stop dividing workers, but in order to continue to do so, they are taking up the concerns of the class. In this way they keep control over the direction of struggles.

In France, faced with an attack on the class with the announcement of the pension reforms, the unions displayed their unity and their resolve; they called for big street demonstrations and for engagement with the government. They have demanded that this reform must not pass, that millions of people must reject it.

So much for the rhetoric and the promises. But what is the reality? To explain this, we only need to recall the movement that fought against Macron's pension reform bill of 2019-2020. Faced with the rise in combativity and the growth of solidarity across the generations, the unions used this same strategy, advocating the "convergence of struggles", creating an illusory unitary movement, where demonstrators were called by sector and by company, not all mixed in together, but one behind the other. The trade union banners and the union stewards divided the marchers by sector, by company and by plant. Above all, there were no discussions and no meetings. The message at the end: "Disperse with your usual co-workers and go home, until the next time". The sound system was on full blast to make sure that workers couldn’t hear each other because what really makes the bourgeoisie tremble is when workers take their struggles into their own hands, when they organise themselves, when they start to meet up, to debate... to become a class in struggle!

In the UK and in France, as elsewhere, to affect the balance of forces that will enable us to resist the constant attacks on our living and working conditions, which tomorrow will become even more violent, we must, wherever we can, come together to debate and put forward those methods of struggle that unify and strengthen the working class and have allowed it, at certain moments in its history, to shake the bourgeoisie and its system:

- in the search to broaden support and solidarity beyond the workplace, the company, the institution, the sector of activity, indeed city, region and country;

- in workers’ self organisation of the struggle, particularly through general assemblies, without surrendering control to the so-called struggle "specialists”, the unions, and to their organisation;

- through the widest possible discussion on the general needs of the struggle, on the lessons to be learned from past struggles and also from their defeats, because there will be defeats ahead, but the greatest defeat arises from not reacting to the attacks. The entry into struggle is the first victory of the exploited.

In 1985, under Thatcher, British miners fought for a whole year, with immense courage and determination, but the forces of the state and the unions isolated them and they were rendered powerless and locked in their sector; their defeat was one for the whole working class. We must learn from our mistakes. It is vital that the weaknesses that have undermined the working class for decades, and that have marked a succession of defeats, are now overcome, specifically the trap of corporatism and the illusion that trade unions are working class organs. The self organisation of the struggle, its broad unity and solidarity, are indispensable ingredients in the preparation of tomorrow's struggles!

For this, we must recognise ourselves as members of the one same class, a class united by its solidarity in struggle: the working class. Today's struggles are indispensable not only in defending ourselves against attacks but also in recovering our class identity on a global scale, preparing the eventual overthrow of this bankrupt system that is synonymous with deprivation and disasters of all kinds.

Capitalism has no solution: either to the destruction of the planet, nor to continual war, nor to unemployment, nor to precariousness of work, nor to pauperisation. Only the struggle of the world working class supported by all the oppressed and exploited of the world can open the way to an alternative, that of communism.

The strikes in the UK and the demonstrations in France, are a call to struggle for proletarians across the world.

International Communist Current [2], 12 January 2023

"Enough is enough" was the cry heard during the first day of mobilisation on 19 January against the pension "reform". This "enough is enough" can only echo the "Enough is enough" that has been spreading since June in Britain, strike after strike.

For several months now, inflation has been reaching levels not seen in decades around the world. Everywhere in the world, the increase in the price of products and basic goods, such as food, gas, electricity or housing, is hitting the exploited hard, and an ever-larger proportion of them can no longer afford to live decently, even in the most developed countries. The accelerated deterioration of the economic situation can only lead to increasingly difficult and even miserable living conditions for millions of people.

The anger of more than a million demonstrators in France was therefore a clear expression, beyond the issue of the pension reform alone, of a more general frustration, and the reality of the return of the combativity of the exploited in many countries in the face of the increase in the cost of living, the deterioration of working conditions and precariousness. The massiveness of this first day of mobilisation only confirms the change of mind that is taking place on an international scale, the signal for which was given by the working class strikes in the UK since last summer.

Pension reform is a necessity for the bourgeoisie

Why, then, is the French bourgeoisie undertaking such an attack on the working class? The delay of the French bourgeoisie in "reforming" the pension system for several years remains a major weakness vis-à-vis the competing bourgeoisies. This need increases all the more as the intensification of the war economy imposes an inexorable intensification of the exploitation of labour power. [1] After failing a first time in 2019, Macron and his clique are making this new attempt a stake in their credibility, a proof of their ability to play their full role in defending the interests of national capital.

First planned for the summer of 2023, then advanced to the end of 2022 and then postponed to January 2023, the government chose what it considered to be the best moment to carry out this attack, knowing that it can still count on the multiple "tariff shields" that allow it to partially cushion the shock of the crisis.

If the bourgeoisie was determined to strike another blow on pensions and to impose longer working hours, it also knows that the previous attempt, in 2019-2020, ended in massive protests for almost two months. And although the anger and combative spirit expressed then was stopped short by the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, this was not experienced as a "defeat" in the eyes of the working class. On the contrary, in the meantime, the anger and the will to fight remained intact. This new attack on pensions in France therefore had every chance of mobilising a large part of the working class in the streets and on strike. And it did! It is, in fact, a direct and even harder attack, and it affects the whole working class.

Therefore, although the bourgeoisie is well aware of this situation, and especially of the combativity expressed on an international scale (across the Channel and elsewhere), the success of the attack could prove more delicate than expected. This is why, for months, meetings between the government and the unions have been taking place, in order to work out the most effective strategy to adapt and respond to a foreseeable reaction by the workers.

Faced with division, let's fight back with unity and solidarity

After the well-attended inter-professional demonstration of 29 September, the unions have not stopped holding one day of strikes after another, sector by sector. During the autumn, the concerted action of the government, the left and far-left parties as well as the unions, had no other aim than to weaken and prevent as much as possible, for as long as possible, any real unity, any solidarity in the different sectors of the working class. This was, for example, the case in October 2022, at the time of the strike in the refineries: by praising the merits of a real negotiation, the "social partners", chief saboteurs of the struggles, allowed the state to appear as a responsible arbitrator in front of the bosses, and the CGT and FO to be presented by the media as determined, radical, inflexible, and therefore credible for the struggle... whereas these agencies are themselves state organs, perfectly institutionalised. [2]

While the possibility of solidarity in the struggle is becoming more and more apparent, the unions have the organisation of the movements under their control, and they scatter and separate into innumerable corporations, sectors and specific demands, thus playing on all possible divisions to hinder the struggles and stop their development.

This will to thwart any class impetus was verified during the strike of the SNCF controllers last December. Faced with the stoppage of work by more than half of the controllers, the unions did everything to bring the movement to an end as quickly as possible. This led to negotiations with SNCF management and the satisfaction of some of the demands, in order to lift the strike notice for the New Year's Day weekend. The unions thus worked to prevent any attempt at autonomous struggle. We had seen the same thing in 1986 in the struggle at the SNCF where the birth of coordinations independent of the trade union centres had led the CGT to create, at the very beginning of the movement, "anti-strike" pickets, physically opposing the strikers, only to change tack later on. These coordinations, however "radical" they were, could not overcome a narrow corporatism, like that of the train drivers at the time, and this was firmly supported by the Trotskyist organisation Lutte Ouvrière. Today, despite a certain mistrust of the union leadership, the weight of corporatism has kept the controllers and railway workers very vulnerable to other, more "radical", more "unofficial" forms of unionism, such as the "Collectif National des Agents du Service Commercial Train" (CNASCT), but which is just as corporatist.

Since 10 January, the date of the announcement of the pension reform, on all the television and radio platforms, the trade unions took turns to call for "everyone to take to the streets", trumpeting "trade union unity", the supposed symbol of their will to repel the attack. In reality, these were the unmistakable signs of their will to contain the anger that was to be expressed in the streets. Thus, alongside their misleading speeches, the unions had undertaken a whole work of fragmentation of struggles:

- Call for a strike and a specific mobilisation of an important sector of the working class, education... but on 17 January, that is to say two days before the day of action of the 19th, to better demobilise this sector on that day!

- Strike called in hospitals from 10 January…

- Strike at the RATP on 13 January...

- Strike in the oil sector at the end of January, then at the beginning of February...

- A "black day" organised in Parisian public transport for the day of 19 January, called by the unions, to prevent many people from going to the demonstrations.

After that, the trade union sound systems had no problem shouting a hypocritical "All together, all together" on 19 January!

In addition, on the same television and radio programmes, there was a deafening "debate" on the unfairness of the reform for this or that category of the population. It should be made fairer by better integrating the particular profiles of apprentices, certain manual workers, women, taking better account of long careers, etc. In short, it's always the same trap, to push everyone to look out for their own situation, while only highlighting the fate of the most disadvantaged "categories" in the face of this attack!

But in the end, all these counter-fires, set up during the last three weeks, did not work. And the combativity expressed by one to two million demonstrators is now forcing the unions to adapt to the situation. Hence the postponement of the next day of mobilisation from 26 to 31 January. If the "social partners" of the bourgeoisie justify this change by the necessity "to build a lasting movement", in reality, it's a question of giving themselves time in order to pursue the enterprise of division and sabotage of the struggle. Moreover, since 20 January, they have hastened to call on the "bases to get organised" by launching calls for totally sterile methods of struggle such as "going in front of a prefecture to make a noise", "cutting off the power to the offices of the deputies" or "going to demonstrate one's bad mood in front of them". All this without forgetting to isolate the sectors from each other by calling, for example, for a one-day strike in the refineries on 26 January. So many gesticulations that only aim to organise dispersion, to exhaust and weaken the balance of forces between now and 31 January. There is no doubt that mobilisations sector by sector will also multiply between now and then.

Workers must take the struggle into their own hands

How, in contrast to this preventive sabotage of struggles, can we create a balance of forces that will enable us to resist the attacks on living and working conditions?

- By seeking support and solidarity beyond one's corporation, one's company, one's sector of activity, one's city, one's region, one's country.

- By organising autonomously, particularly through general assemblies, without leaving control to the unions.

- By the widest possible discussion on the general needs of the struggle, on the lessons to be learned from the fights and also from the defeats. Because there will be defeats, but the greatest defeat would be to suffer the attacks without reacting.

The entry into struggle is the first victory of the exploited. Autonomy, solidarity and unity are the indispensable milestones in the preparation of tomorrow's struggles. For the current struggles are not only expressions of resistance against the deterioration of living and working conditions. They are also the only way to regain the consciousness of belonging to one and the same class. They form the main furrow through which the proletariat can glimpse an alternative to capitalist society: communism.

Stopio, 21 January 2023

[1] Like his foreign counterparts, Macron has just announced a considerable increase in the budgets allocated to armaments.

[2] See "Strikes in the French refineries and elsewhere... Solidarity in the struggle is the strength of our class", [3] Révolution internationale No. 495.

The war in Ukraine is getting bogged down in barbarism, an irrational and infernal spiral where death and ruins are piling up. The "high intensity" war has taken hold in Europe, giving a colossal boost to all the damage that has already struck the world before it. Militarism and imperialist tensions are increasing, as we have seen, for example, between China and the US last summer over Taiwan, with the corollary of increasing global chaos.

War accentuates the fragmentation and disorganisation of world production and trade; it fuels inflation and generates new shortages. The economic crisis, also aggravated by the increase in military expenditure, has led to new trade wars between every country, to the point where certain strategic decisions, such as the adoption by the United States of a $369 billion programme designed to attract business, was interpreted by its European rivals as a veritable "act of war", a situation which made them fear the massive de-industrialisation of the Old Continent. Everywhere, shortages are threatening vital sectors such as energy or medicines, and even certain foodstuffs.

The deepening of the crisis is itself contributing to the increased plundering of resources and, ultimately, to the multiplication of "natural" and industrial disasters. Fires that have devasted entire regions, droughts and record temperatures, floods and other extreme climatic phenomena have all worsened the state of society as a whole.

At the same time, the Covid pandemic has spread with the Omicron variant. It poses the threat of further mutations from China, where millions of infected people and hundreds of thousands of additional victims are evidence of the worsening of the already dire conditions of an economy in crisis, further damaging depleted health systems.

The year 2022 is not just a dramatic confirmation of these dynamics and miasma, a mere annus horribilis. It marks a further step in the deadly trajectory of capitalism. Society is sinking deeper and faster into chaos at all levels and no one can believe the rhetoric of the ruling class, asking for more belt tightening for a more than hypothetical "better future".

In reality, the logic that generates the disasters combined in a real spiral of destruction comes from the crisis and the historical limits of the capitalist mode of production and not from "bad leaders" or from "neoliberal mismanagement", so much denounced by the left-wing parties of the bourgeoisie. It is the product of the contradictions of capitalism which, like all modes of production of the past, is a transitory system, now obsolete. It is through its irreversible decline that capitalism plunges humanity further into the abyss. After having plunged the African continent and the Middle East into chaos and barbarism, the decomposition of capitalism is now brutally striking the most powerful countries on the planet.

With no perspective or solution other than to see its own system sink into barbarism, the bourgeoisie only generates despair and the idea of “every man for himself”, turning inward and fortifying its borders, pushing for the rejection of migrants, castigating "super-profits" to better justify and make people accept exploitation and growing pauperisation. The populist demonstrations, mirroring these rotten ideologies typical of the period of decomposition of capitalism, pushed Trump's fanatical supporters to violently enter the Capitol two years ago, with only vandalism as an outlet. More recently, the vindictive gangs of supporters of Bolsonaro also attached government premises, leaving in the background the spectre of a civil war with incalculable consequences.

Faced with these scourges, which make the world unbearable to live in and the ruling class nervous, only the working class can offer a perspective by developing its struggles against the attacks of capital and against this world in ruins. Thus, the recent demonstrations and strikes around the world, after years of apathy, have been a reminder that class struggle is still a necessity. In the UK, with the continuing strike wave, those in the US and Europe that have taken place in many sectors, the huge demonstrations that mobilised between one and two million people on 19 January in France against the pension reform, all these movements show the way to take confidence in our own forces and try to recover, in the long term, a lost class identity.[1]

However, this arduous struggle is already strewn with pitfalls. The proletariat must be wary of its false friends, the unions and the left and far-left parties of the bourgeoisie, state forces whose role is to contain and sabotage the struggles.

The long road of the class response highlights, moreover, the particular responsibility of the most experienced and concentrated fraction of the world proletariat, that of the working class bastions of Western Europe. The working class will only be able to assert itself on the basis of this historical experience, that of an autonomous struggle, on a firm class terrain. It must not allow itself to be drawn into sterile movements, without perspective and dangerous for its unity and its consciousness. On the contrary, it must be wary of "popular" revolts or inter-classist struggles which drown the interests of the proletariat in the "people of the nation" and hand it over hand and foot to the settling of scores between fractions of the bourgeoisie. The working class must turn away from movements like those in Iran, China this autumn and Peru more recently, movements in which proletarians find themselves trapped on the terrain of the bourgeoisie: the defence of bourgeois democracy or struggles around feminism, i.e. demanding that the ruling class kindly "reform" its rotten system. While these movements may express legitimate anger, such as the intolerable situation of women in Iran, they nonetheless drag workers behind petty-bourgeois ideologies or behind some bourgeois clique, thus diverting the proletariat from its autonomous struggles, an essential aspect of the development of class consciousness.

Revolutionaries have an enormous responsibility here and an indispensable role in warning the working class of these many pitfalls and dangers. They must defend the future that belongs only to the class struggle and its specific methods of combat. Let's come together! Let's take charge of our struggles through collective discussions and initiatives! Let’s defend our own class autonomy! Proletarians of all countries, unite!

WH, 19 January 2023

We publish below an extract from a letter sent by one of our readers, Robert, after an online meeting he attended, followed by our reply.

… Concerning the struggles of proletarians: should revolutionaries denounce the struggles of proletarians who make mistakes, use methods that are not their own, or just criticise them? Because in my opinion, there is a difference between denouncing and criticising. Denounce means to point out as guilty. To publicly report dishonest, immoral or illegitimate practices. To condemn: "to declare (someone) guilty", "to blame something", "to close, prevent", "forbid". Criticize: "capable of discernment, judgement", "separate", "choose", "decide", "sift".

If we look at these three definitions, in my opinion, we must condemn and denounce the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois organisations that mislead the proletariat. But we must criticise a movement led by proletarians by offering more clarification, with the aim of removing it from bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influence. If we denounce a proletarian struggle, we denounce it to whom? To the police, to the justice system? The state in general? Or denounce proletarians to other proletarians? For example, denouncing black proletarians, on the pretext that their movement is framed by bourgeois organisations, to white proletarians? To tell white proletarians that you have to support your black brothers but on a class basis? Or tell them no, it's an interclass movement, you have to denounce it? To criticise is to go through a struggle to see its strengths and weaknesses.

Let's see what Marx says about this, and I stress that I learned this phrase from the ICC, to criticise the PCInt, and I think it is right. Marx says: "Hence, nothing prevents us from making criticism of politics, participation in politics, and therefore real struggles, the starting point of our criticism, and from identifying our criticism with them. In that case we do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.”

When Marx says that we don't say: "Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle ". This means, in my opinion, that Marx does not denounce or even condemn the struggles of the proletarians, even if the proletarians are wrong. But Marx adds: "We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to." This means, in my opinion, that revolutionaries must critique the struggles of proletarians and make sure that they are oriented towards class goals, towards the final goal which is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

For partial struggles and the role of revolutionaries: "No more than one judges an individual by the idea he has of himself, one cannot judge such an epoch of upheaval by its self-consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained by the contradictions of material life, by the conflict that exists between the social productive forces and the relations of production" (Karl Marx). What I understood from this sentence is that revolutionaries must not limit themselves to the outward appearance of struggles, but must look for the causes that push proletarians to engage in interclassist struggles. For the meaning that bourgeois and petty-bourgeois organisations and proletarians give to slogans is not the same. When proletarians speak of liberty, equality and fraternity, they mean dignity, bread, peace... Even if the words are ambiguous.

Robert

ICC response

To begin with, we would like to welcome the letter from the comrade who wished to continue the debate and bring other arguments to those developed in the discussion at the meeting. We can only encourage this type of initiative and it is in this context that we are responding to the comrade.

The questions raised by the comrade are of great importance: it is a question of determining how revolutionaries should orient their intervention in the face of protest movements of all kinds. The first thing we have to emphasise here is the question of class terrain.

Capitalist society offers a considerable number of possibilities for indignation, anger and protest, so innumerable are the horrors, violence and misery that it generates. This leads to a whole series of scattered movements in which proletarians, refusing to accept all these expressions of barbarism without flinching, can find themselves. It also happens that proletarians, sincerely indignant, support and participate in movements demanding rights and legislation for oppressed categories (women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, etc.). But these are real traps set by the bourgeoisie, very often by its left-wing groups and parties, which instrumentalise the obvious disgust caused, for example, by the situation of African Americans in the United States or violence against women. These proletarians therefore find themselves trapped in fragmented movements, and consequently enlisted behind purely bourgeois demands.

Two examples can illustrate these situations. Many proletarians are worried about the future of the planet in the face of global warming and the increase in so-called "natural" disasters. But by getting involved in struggles for improved action by the state towards nature, these workers ally themselves with all layers of society in the illusion that improvements within capitalism are possible. They thus miss the only effective fight to save the planet: the fight for the destruction of capitalism! A fight that only the working class can lead.

In the same way, police violence in many developed countries, some of it highly publicised, has deeply outraged many proletarians. But by going to fight for laws and procedures to guarantee police behaviour that is more "respectful of individual rights", workers simply put themselves at the mercy of the bourgeoisie and its state, forgetting that police forces are always the military wing of the bourgeois state in the repression of the proletariat's struggles, as the history of the workers' movement has shown on many occasions.

We cannot therefore characterise a movement by the sociological fact that proletarians participate in it. As individuals, proletarians are potentially sensitive to all causes and represent nothing in terms of social force. The only social force capable of fighting capitalism is the working class, and this class is not the simple sum of the individuals who compose it, it is not a sociological entity which exists only through the individuals who compose it. The working class exists through its economic and political dimensions within capitalism, through its struggle against the exploitation of its labour power through wage labour. In other words, as an exploited and revolutionary class. It finds its strength in its history, its struggles, its international character. Consequently, it is as a collective force, whose bond is international class solidarity, that it can truly establish a balance of forces against the bourgeoisie.

Similarly, revolutionaries are not missionaries who intervene with proletarian individuals to save them from the dominant ideology, as this would be impossible anyway, as no individual can resist the steamroller of the dominant ideology alone. Revolutionaries are the most determined and conscious part of the working class. They represent an organised force whose task is to develop class consciousness and allow the proletariat to take the path of confrontation with capitalism.

In this framework, the intervention of revolutionaries can only be understood as addressing the working class as such. It's when the working class struggles as a class that it can best hear and assimilate what revolutionaries have to say to it, notably denouncing the traps that the bourgeoisie sets for it to lead it to defeat. But also to remind it of the tools and methods it has developed throughout its history to fight its battles, in particular the fact that only its conscious unity and autonomy can preserve it from the traps of the bourgeoisie and establish a balance of forces in its favour.

Therefore, we have to characterise a movement first of all by its demands and its methods of struggle. This does not mean waiting patiently for a "pure" movement, but it does mean identifying two things that are necessary to orientate the intervention:

- on what terrain is the struggle situated?

- in a movement, is it the working class that is mobilised or individuals who are undifferentiated and mixed up with other social strata in society?

At present, the vast majority of workers' struggles are organised by the unions. The latter, in accordance with their function within the state, are constantly dividing the proletarians in order to lead the working class to defeat. If the unions put themselves at the head of struggles, it's because the bourgeoisie sees the awakening of anger and combativity. Thus, during strikes or in demonstrations, demands that belong to the working class, such as better pay or better working conditions, are taken up by the unions. It's by taking up demands that belong to the working class that the unions manage to present themselves as the experts in the struggle and to keep control of it. It is therefore up to revolutionaries to denounce these practices of sabotage and to defend the self-organisation of the class through sovereign general assemblies. In short, as the comrade says, it is a question of "orienting" struggles towards "class goals" and above all "towards the final goal" which is communism.

When, on the other hand, movements are situated on an inter-classist, or even downright bourgeois, terrain, what should revolutionaries do? They must warn the working class against the temptation to find a short cut to developing its struggle and its consciousness. This does not mean, as the comrade thinks, that we "denounce" or attack the individual proletarians who participate in it. What we denounce are the practices that lead to dead ends, the demands that do not belong to the class terrain of the proletariat. It's not like the rebuke of a head teacher, it's the only means we have to make disoriented workers aware that the cause they believe to be just (demanding rights from the bourgeoisie) is in fact a trap which ultimately leads them to defend capitalism (often in the wake of the petty bourgeoisie). We also know that these movements, not being situated on a class terrain, do not allow the working class to be present as a class, because it finds itself drowned or diluted, without any autonomous strength. Our intervention towards the proletarians directly involved is all the more inaudible, incomprehensible. This means that we have to assume that we are going against the tide, because revolutionaries have the serious task of trying to guide the working class towards the most favourable path for the development of its consciousness without ever losing sight of the goal of revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

However, the denunciation of this type of movement does not exempt revolutionaries from reflecting on the reasons why a more or less significant number of workers participate in these movements. This is notably what the ICC did in its analysis of the "yellow vests" movement in France.

Of course, the working class is not a disembodied entity, nor is it a homogeneous being. It is criss-crossed by currents, movements, debates, reflections and struggles. Within it and at each period, the propaganda of revolutionaries has a more or less important echo on a more or less extended part of the class. This is why our intervention must be conceived on a collective, class basis and not on an individual one. The level of consciousness of the working class at a given moment is not the sum of the individual consciousnesses that make it up, but the result of this permanent effervescence of reflection and debate which has allowed, sometimes in a few weeks, as in 1905 and 1917 in Russia, illiterate workers with no interest in politics, to create the conditions for an insurrection and to invent the methods for the exercise of power by the proletariat by creating workers' councils.

It's not an exact science, but a methodology to determine the class nature of a movement and to orient the intervention of revolutionaries within it. But starting from the individual is, on the other hand, a dead end because the individual on the political level does not exist in capitalism. To defend the contrary would be to deny the real conditions of capitalist production and to give credence to the democratic ideology which, starting from the votes of individuals in the polling booth, builds the myth of the "will of the people".

What is most important is to start, on the contrary, from the historical and international dimension of the proletariat, to detect in each struggle the way in which the working class fits into this framework, to measure the extent it is able to develop its struggle by defending its own interests. It is a question of taking stock of the development of combativity, of the search for solidarity and unity.

GD, 11 November 2022

Almost a year of war in Ukraine... Russia is well and truly bogged down and trapped.[1] Sucked in to the cycle of militarism, faced with a surprisingly well-prepared Ukrainian army, and Western powers that had not anticipated the timing but knew the aims of the cornered Kremlin, beleaguered Russian imperialism embarked on a suicidal "special" adventure. Today it finds itself stunned and very much weakened by this conflict which could only drag it under the wreckage.

A scorched earth policy

The thinly veiled aim of the US and NATO, by skilfully pushing Moscow into the trap, was to break the fragile link between Russia and China, to weaken and further isolate Putin on the international scene. All this at the cost of a scorched earth policy in which the Western powers are clearly complicit, arming and pushing their Ukrainian ally into bloody resistance, set for a chaos with unpredictable and potentially disastrous consequences. From July onwards, Russian troops have marked time, showing signs of weakening, unable to make progress against the Ukrainian army reinforced by artillery whose sophisticated weapons come largely from Western allies. The Russian army's failures were further accentuated in September when Ukrainian troops achieved a spectacular victory in the province of Kharkiv and to the north of Sloviansk. This surprising turnaround was confirmed as soon as the Ukrainian army captured Kherson, a city declared "forever Russian" only a month earlier by Putin and then abandoned without resistance.

Today, the toll of this terrible war is horrifying. By the beginning of December, 200,000 people had been killed or wounded by the warring factions. 40,000 civilians have died in Ukraine and refugees number nearly 8 million.[2] Sadly, soldiers and civilians will still be condemned to further mourning, other sufferings, physical and psychological violence from both sides: deportation, torture, rape, summary execution, indiscriminate bombing (particularly with highly lethal cluster bombs). Added to this is misery, hunger and cold on a daily basis, the terror spawned by the Ukrainian state, its national coalition, with its controls, the police checkpoints carried out by its zealous minions.

Desperately trying to break the morale of the Ukrainian people, the Russian army is stepping up its violence and bombings, already having deprived the population of heating, water and electricity for the winter. Ukraine has become a mass grave and wasteland, a concentration of hatreds. A city like Mariupol, for example, 90% razed to the ground, is a tragic symbol of this. Entire civilian neighbourhoods, thousands of schools, hundreds of hospitals and factories are damaged or destroyed in many cities, such as the capital Kyiv, but also Lviv, Dnipro and Ternopil, in retaliation for the destruction of the Crimean Bridge. The destruction is such that it would cost at least $350 billion to rebuild the whole country.[3] The Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, has even suggested $750 billion. But this patriotic zeal and the estimation of such figures will not prevent the resulting ruins and corpses!

A powerful accelerator of the decomposition of capitalism

While the Covid 19 pandemic has been devastating the world economy for the past two years, which was already showing signs of being in the red, the war in Ukraine is giving a huge boost to global stagnation, forcefully and qualitatively accentuating all the phenomena of the decomposition of the capitalist system by precipitating them into a really destructive vortex. A direct impact on the world situation that is already manifesting itself at different levels in a totally unprecedented bleak scenario. In the first place, by the sudden surge in world inflation linked not only to colossal indebtedness and a financial crisis, but also and above all to the explosion in military expenditure for this conflict and future "high intensity" fighting. In addition to industrial bankruptcies in Russia, there is the jump in state-specific spending since the beginning of the war, military and civilian budgets in support of Ukraine have become a financial black hole: "Between 24 February and 3 August, at least 84.2 billion euros were spent by forty-one, mainly Western, countries.” The United States alone paid out €44.5 billion (one third of Ukraine’s GDP in 2020).[4] Of course, this does not stop poverty from exploding in this war-torn country, going from 2 to 21% of the population. Such a situation necessitates attacks on all workers, generating a growing pauperisation that is taking hold everywhere, even in the richest countries of the globe. Foodstuffs, like the energy that is essential for everyday life, have sometimes become unaffordable, real weapons of war between thugs with contempt for the populations that have to struggle to feed and heat themselves. For example, wheat harvests in Ukraine, where prices have been exploding, have been deliberately destroyed by the Russian army. The world market is becoming more fragmented, in a crisis that affects trade and the very basis of production.

The crisis and the war are also fuelling the climate and environmental catastrophe. The impact is already visible in Ukraine. Military vehicles, bombing of civilian and industrial buildings, arson, have generated very serious pollution: high emissions of CO2, asbestos, heavy metals and other toxic products. Rivers, like the Ikva, are heavily polluted, contaminated with ammonia. Flora and fauna are very seriously affected: "900 protected natural areas in Ukraine have been affected by Russia's military activities, i.e. about 30% of the country's total protected areas". And "almost a third of Ukraine's crops may be unusable after the war".[5] The scandal of the sabotage of Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea alone reveals that: "the infrastructure released about 70,000 tonnes of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, equivalent to the emissions of Paris for one year"[6]. The threat of a nuclear disaster from the shelling of both sides in Zaporizhzhia further darkens this grim picture, yet it is far from complete.

The unleashing of militarism and chaos

Even if, in general, the military can demonstrate undeniable expertise, the acknowledged capability of capitalist states, even if they are able to score diplomatic points at this or that moment with ingenious global visions to defend their own interests, all their most rational calculations are at the service of narrow interests, marked by a mode of production in its death throes, where the logic of profit and the economy are swallowed up by the senseless needs of war. This totally irrational spiral of military barbarism coldly planned by capitalist states is perfectly illustrated by the intentions surrounding the war in Ukraine. It fully confirms the absence of any possible economic motivation or advantage: "the capitalist world, having historically exhausted all possibility of development, finds in modern imperialist war the expression of its collapse, which can only engulf the productive forces in any abyss, and accumulate ruin upon ruin in an ever accelerating rhythm, without opening up any possibility of the outward development of production". [7]

Thus, it is now abundantly clear that "the war in Ukraine vividly illustrates how war has lost not only any economic function but even its strategic advantages: Russia has embarked on a war in the name of defending Russian speakers, but it is massacring tens of thousands of civilians in predominantly Russian-speaking regions while turning these cities and regions into ruins and suffering considerable material and infrastructural losses itself. If, at the end of this war, it captures the Donbass and south-eastern Ukraine, it will have conquered a wasteland, a population that hates it and suffered a consequent strategic setback in terms of its great power ambitions. As for the United States, in its policy of targeting China, it is led here to pursue (literally even) a "scorched earth" policy, with no economic or strategic gains other than an immeasurable explosion of economic, political and military chaos. The irrationality of war has never been more apparent."[8] In the face of Russia's military debacle, there have been discrete diplomatic signals that have been interpreted as Putin's willingness to possibly 'negotiate'. Similarly, in the West, primarily in the United States, there are concerns about the outcome of a conflict that could possibly lead to the unwanted handling of a catastrophic Russian implosion. But whatever the intentions or policies of the various parties, whatever the duration of this war, the outcome of which we do not yet know, or the ravages to come, one thing is certain: the dynamics of the acceleration of every man for himself and of chaos and militarism will only be exacerbated. Capitalism is indeed leading humanity towards its downfall and even its destruction. Only the world revolution of the proletariat will be able to put an end to the insanity of capital which is now taking on the appearance of the Apocalypse. 

(WH 20 December 2022)

Blank sheets of paper symbolise the demand for "free speech" and other democratic illusions

The deteriorating health crisis and the sharp economic downturn in China have led to an explosion of popular discontent, but also to the emergence of major working class movements. After the protests of thousands of buyers duped by the bursting of the property bubble and the collapse of various large developers (such as the Evergrande Group), the continued mass confinement of hundreds of thousands of people in all parts of China, with the appalling deterioration of living conditions that it implies, was the spark that ignited the conflagration.

First there was the death on 18 September 2022 of 27 people in a quarantine bus in the Guizhou region, then the massive protests by 200,000 workers at the huge factory of the Taiwanese giant Foxconn that assembles Apple's iPhones, protesting against inhumane confinement and non-payment of wages, and the death in a fire in Urumqui (Xinjiang) of 10 people because confinement conditions prevented firefighters from acting. Following these protests, demonstrations broke out in Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing and Shanghai. In China's economic capital, a large crowd gathered on Sunday 27 November to shout "Xi Jinping resign! CCP resign!".

The different mobilisations across the country are characterised by the following aspects:

- these mobilisations took place in a large number of Chinese cities; however, the media only report "hundreds" of people, which suggests that, in the face of repression and police threats, there is indeed a great deal of unrest, but that participation in the demonstrations is still relatively limited;

- they are a mixture of genuine workers' actions, for example at Foxconn, where there were clear wage demands and a fight against inhumane working conditions, and student or citizen mobilisations protesting against the outrageous confinement measures and demanding an end to controls and censorship;

- the dynamic that dominates and unifies these gatherings is not that of a massive development of mobilisation and workers' solidarity, but that of the rejection of the Stalinist regime and the defence of a democratic alternative, in continuity with the riots in Hong Kong in 2019 or those in Beijing in 1989.

We must therefore note that the perspective opened up by this sudden explosion of demonstrations is not that of a development of workers' struggles but rather that of a mobilisation on the bourgeois terrain of struggle for democratic reforms (even if occasional exceptions exist). Admittedly, these movements pose serious problems for the Chinese bourgeoisie: in the greatest haste, the latter was obliged to abandon in a few days the "zero Covid" policy that it maintained against all odds. However, they do not in any way present a perspective for the proletariat. On the contrary, the proletariat risks being diverted from its class terrain and engulfed either in a desperate citizen's movement against the Stalinist party and for democratic reforms, or in a struggle between bourgeois factions within the CCP.

While keeping a sense of proportion, we can say that the situation of the Chinese workers is comparable to what has been happening for several months in Iran, where the murder of a young girl by the morality police has provoked a tidal wave of riots, demonstrations and also numerous workers' strikes. Despite the very combative character of the Iranian working class, the dissolution of the workers' struggles into the popular movement against the religious autocracy and for democratic reforms is an imminent and constant threat. In fact, the use of proletarians as a mass of manoeuvre in the struggle between bourgeois factions (democrats, "enlightened" religious leaders, regional parties) or even between imperialisms (Kurdish, Turkish, Arab...) is a mortal danger and it is the responsibility of revolutionaries to warn the class about it.

Now, it is basically the same danger of dissolution of its struggles in popular revolts that the working class in China is facing. It is therefore important first of all to warn the Chinese workers against the siren songs of popular revolts for more democracy, but also and above all to arm them against "the idea that ‘anything is possible at any moment, in any place', as soon as sharp class confrontations arise at the peripheries of cap­italism; this idea is based on an identification between combativity and the maturation of class consciousness". [1]

In China, all the elements of the situation point to the beginning of a destabilisation of the regime. Even if the state momentarily manages to bring the situation back to normal, the fuse of new protests will remain lit. In this context, even if the Chinese proletariat develops its combativity and acquires a weight in the situation, its terrible political backwardness and its vulnerability to democratic mystifications constitute a considerable obstacle. Therefore, it is necessary to be clear about the prospects for the working class there: "The ICC rejects the naively egalitarian conception which holds that any country can be the point of departure for the revolutionary dynamic. This conception is based on the anarchist belief that, given the example of the revolu­tionary general strike, all countries could simultaneously initiate a revolutionary process.” [2]

In fact, despite its combativity, the working class in China, as in Iran or in other parts of the world, will have difficulty in strengthening its struggles on its class terrain and developing its consciousness as long as the proletariat of the Western countries does not show the way. For if all fractions of the world proletariat can and must make their contribution to the struggle against capitalism, those in Western Europe, through their experience of struggle but also of the democratic and trade union mystifications of the bourgeoisie, have a key importance for the revolutionary process. This only underlines the decisive responsibility of the Western European proletariat.

R.H., 14 January 2023

[1] ‘Resolution on the critique of the theory of the weakest link’ [7], International Review n°37 (1984).

[2] Ibid.

While many observers claimed two years ago that China was the big winner in the Covid crisis, recent events underline that it is instead confronted with the persistence of the pandemic, a significant slowdown in economic growth, the property bubble, major obstacles to the development of the "New Silk Road", strong imperialist pressure from the US: in short the prospect of major turbulence.

China's inability to control the health crisis
Since the end of 2019, China has been suffering from a pandemic crisis that has largely paralysed its population and its economy. For the past three years, the "zero Covid" policy advocated by President Xi has led to huge and interminable confinements, as in November 2022, when no less than 412 million Chinese were locked up under terrible conditions in various regions of China, often for several months. By claiming that China would be the first to tame the pandemic through its "zero Covid" policy, Xi and the CCP rejected international anti-Covid strategies and medical research. As a result, they have found themselves stuck in an economically and socially catastrophic logic, with no real alternative: Chinese vaccines are largely ineffective, the hospital system is unable to absorb the wave of infections resulting from a less restrictive policy (Cuba has four times as many doctors and hospital beds per capita as China), especially since the corruption of the political administration in the provinces makes it impossible to obtain reliable data on the evolution of the pandemic (a tendency to disguise the figures to avoid political disgrace)

The Chinese authorities are therefore up against a brick wall. Faced with an exploding social protest against the horrific inhumanity of mass confinement, they abruptly abandoned the "zero Covid" policy without being able to propose the slightest alternative: without significant levels of acquired immunity, without effective vaccines and lacking sufficient stocks of drugs, without a policy of vaccinating the most vulnerable, without a hospital system capable of absorbing the shock, the inevitable catastrophe did indeed take place: sick people are queuing up to get into overcrowded hospitals and corpses are piling up in front of overcrowded crematoria, tens of thousands of people are dying at home, morgues are overflowing with corpses, the authorities are totally overwhelmed and unable to cope with the tidal wave: projections foresee 1.7 million deaths and tens of millions of people heavily affected by the current explosion of the virus.

Aggressive US pressure adds to economic difficulties

For several years, China has been under intense economic and military pressure from the United States, both directly in Taiwan and through the formation of the AUKUS alliance, but also indirectly in Ukraine. Indeed, the longer the war in Ukraine drags on, the more damage China suffers through the collapse of its main partner on the imperialist scene, Russia, but above all through the disruption of the European routes of the "New Silk Road" project.

On the other hand, the explosion of chaos and every man for himself, intensified by the aggressive policy of the United States, also weighs heavily, as shown by the plunge of Ethiopia, one of China's main pivots in Africa, into civil war. Plans to expand the "New Silk Road" are also in trouble because of the deepening economic crisis: almost 60% of the debt owed to China is now owed by countries in financial difficulty, up from just 5% in 2010. In addition, economic pressure from the United States is intensifying, in particular with the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips in USA Act, decrees that subject exports of technology products from various Chinese technology firms (e.g. Huawei) to the United States to heavy restrictions through protectionist tariffs, sanctions against unfair competition, but above all the blocking of technology transfer and research.

Repeated lockdowns and then the tsunami of infections leading to chaos in the health system, the property bubble and the blocking of various "Silk Road" routes by armed conflicts or the surrounding chaos have caused a very sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy. Growth in the first half of this year was 2.5%, making this year's 5% target unattainable. For the first time in thirty years, China's economic growth will be lower than that of other Asian countries. Large technology and business companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com and iQiyi have laid off between 10 and 30% of their staff. Young people are feeling the pinch, with an estimated 20% unemployment rate among university students looking for work.

The "neo-Stalinist" model of the Chinese bourgeoisie in great difficulty

Faced with economic and health difficulties, Xi Jinping's policy had been to return to the classic recipes of Stalinism:

- economically, since the administration of Deng Xiao Ping, the Chinese bourgeoisie had created a fragile and complex mechanism to maintain an all-powerful single party cohabiting with a private bourgeoisie, stimulated directly by the state. Now, "by the end of 2021, Deng Xiaoping's era of reform and openness is clearly over, replaced by a new statist economic orthodoxy”[1] The dominant faction behind Xi Jinping is thus tending to reinforce absolute state control over the economy and to close the prospect of economic renewal and the relative opening of the economy to private capital.

- on the social front, with the "zero Covid" policy, Xi not only ensured ruthless state control over the population, but also imposed this control on regional and local authorities, which had proved unreliable and ineffective at the beginning of the pandemic. As recently as the autumn, he sent central state police units to Shanghai to impose order on local authorities that were liberalising control measures.

However, while the policy of the Chinese state since 1989 has been to avoid at all costs any large-scale social turbulence, the flight of buyers scared by the difficulties and bankruptcies of the property giants, but above all the widespread demonstrations and riots in many Chinese cities, expressing the population's exasperation with the "zero Covid" policy, have given Xi and his supporters cold sweats. The regime was forced to back down in great haste in the face of the rumbling social unrest and to abandon in a few days the policy it had maintained for three years against all criticisms. Today, the limits of Xi Jinping's policy, a return to the classic recipes of Stalinism, are apparent at all levels: health, economic and social, while the man who imposed it, the same Xi Jinping, has just been re-elected for a third term after complex behind-the-scenes negotiations between factions within the CCP.

In conclusion, it appears today that if Chinese state capitalism was able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by its passage from the "Soviet" bloc to the American bloc in the 1970s, by the implosion of the "Soviet" bloc and the globalisation of the economy advocated by the United States and the main Western powers, the congenital weaknesses of its Stalinist-type state structure are now a major handicap in the face of the economic, health and social problems facing the country and the aggressive pressure of US imperialism it is under.

The situation in China is one of the most characteristic expressions of the "whirlwind effect" of the concatenation and combination of crises that mark the 20s of the 21st century. This 'whirlwind' of upheaval and destabilisation is putting heavy pressure not only on Xi and his supporters within the CCP, but more generally on China's imperialist policy. A destabilisation of Chinese capitalism would have unpredictable consequences for global capitalism.

R. Havanais, 15 January 2023

[1] "Foreign Affairs", reprinted by Courrier international n° 1674.