Since Saturday, a deluge of fire and steel has been raining down on the people living in Israel and Gaza. On one side, Hamas. On the other, the Israeli army. In the middle, civilians being bombed, shot, executed and taken hostage. Thousands have already died.

All over the world, the bourgeoisie is calling on us to choose sides. For the Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression. Or for the Israeli response to Palestinian terrorism. Each denounces the barbarity of the other to justify war. The Israeli state has been oppressing the Palestinian people for decades, with blockades, harassment, checkpoints and humiliation, so revenge would be legitimate. Palestinian organisations have been killing innocent people with knife attacks and bombings. Each side calls for the blood of the other to be spilled.

This deadly logic is the logic of imperialist war! It is our exploiters and their states who are always waging a merciless war in defence of their own interests. And it is we, the working class, the exploited, who always pay the price, with our lives.

For us, proletarians, there is no side to choose, we have no homeland, no nation to defend! On either side of the border, we are class brothers and sisters! Neither Israel, nor Palestine!

There is no end to war in the Middle East
The twentieth century was a century of wars, the most atrocious wars in human history, and none of them served the interests of the workers. The latter were always called upon to go and be killed in their millions for the interests of their exploiters, in the name of the defence of "the fatherland", "civilisation", "democracy", even "the socialist fatherland" (as some presented the USSR of Stalin and the gulag).

Today, there is a new war in the Middle East. On both sides, the ruling cliques are calling on the exploited to "defend the homeland", whether Jewish or Palestinian. The Jewish workers who in Israel are exploited by Jewish capitalists, the Palestinian workers who are exploited by Jewish capitalists or by Arab capitalists (and often much more ferociously than by Jewish capitalists since, in Palestinian companies, labour law is still that of the former Ottoman Empire).

Jewish workers have already paid a heavy price for the war madness of the bourgeoisie in the five wars they have suffered since 1948. As soon as they emerged from the concentration camps and ghettos of a Europe ravaged by world war, the grandparents of those who today wear the uniform of the Tsahal (Israel Defence Forces) were drawn into the war between Israel and the Arab countries. Then their parents paid the price in blood in the wars of '67, '73 and '82. These soldiers are not hideous brutes whose only thought is to kill Palestinian children. They are young conscripts, mostly workers, dying in fear and disgust, who are forced to act as police and whose heads are filled with propaganda about the "barbarity" of the Arabs.

Palestinian workers, too, have already paid a terrible price in blood. Driven from their homes in 1948 by the war waged by their leaders, they have spent most of their lives in concentration camps, conscripted as teenagers into Fatah, the PFLP or Hamas militias.

The biggest massacres of Palestinians were not carried out by the armies of Israel, but by those of the countries where they were parked, such as Jordan and Lebanon: in September 1970 ("Black September") "Little King" Hussein exterminated them en masse, to the point where some of them took refuge in Israel to escape death. In September 1982, Arab militias (admittedly Christian and allied to Israel) massacred them in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut.
 

Nationalism and religion, poisons for the exploited
Today, in the name of the "Palestinian homeland", Arab workers are once again being mobilised against the Israelis, the majority of whom are Israeli workers, just as the latter are being asked to be killed in defence of the "promised land".

Nationalist propaganda flows disgustingly from both sides, mind-numbing propaganda designed to turn human beings into ferocious beasts. The Israeli and Arab bourgeoisies have been stirring it up for more than half a century. Israeli and Arab workers have constantly been told that they must defend the land of their ancestors. For the former, the systematic militarisation of society has developed a psychosis of encirclement in order to turn them into "good soldiers". For the latter, the desire was ingrained to do battle with Israel in order to find a home. And to do this, the leaders of the Arab countries in which they were refugees kept them for decades in concentration camps, in unbearable living conditions.

Nationalism is one of the worst ideologies invented by the bourgeoisie. It is the ideology that allows it to mask the antagonism between exploiters and exploited, to unite them all behind the same flag, for which the exploited will be killed in the service of the exploiters, in the defence of the interests and privileges of the ruling class.

To crown it all, to this war is added the poison of religious propaganda, the kind that creates the most demented fanaticism. Jews are called upon to defend the Wailing Wall of Solomon's Temple with their blood. Muslims must give their lives for the Mosque of Omar and the holy places of Islam. What is happening today in Israel and Palestine clearly confirms that religion is "the opium of the people", as the revolutionaries of the 19th century put it. The purpose of religion is to console the exploited and oppressed. Those for whom life on earth is hell are told that they will be happy after their death provided they know how to earn their salvation. And this salvation is exchanged for sacrifice, submission, even giving up their lives in the service of "holy war".

The fact that, at the beginning of the 21st century, ideologies and superstitions dating back to antiquity or the Middle Ages are still widely used to lead human beings to sacrifice their lives speaks volumes about the state of barbarism into which the Middle East, along with many other parts of the world, is sinking.

The great powers are responsible for the war
It is the leaders of the great powers who have created the hellish situation in which the exploited people of this region are dying in their thousands today. It was the European bourgeoisie, and particularly the British bourgeoisie with its "Balfour Declaration" of 1917, which, in order to divide and conquer, allowed the creation of a "Jewish home" in Palestine, thus promoting the chauvinist utopias of Zionism. It was these same bourgeoisies who, in the aftermath of the Second World War, which they had just won, arranged for hundreds of thousands of Central European Jews to be transported to Palestine after leaving the camps or wandering far from their region of origin. This meant that they did not have to take them in at home.

It was these same bourgeoisies, first the British and French, then the American bourgeoisie, who armed the State of Israel to the teeth in order to give it the role of spearhead of the Western bloc in this region during the Cold War, while the USSR, for its part, armed its Arab allies as much as possible. Without these great "sponsors", the wars of 1956, 67, 73 and 82 could not have taken place.

Today, the bourgeoisies of Lebanon, Iran and probably Russia are arming and pushing Hamas. The United States has just sent its largest aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean and has announced new arms deliveries to Israel. In fact, all the major powers are participating more or less directly in this war and these massacres!

This new war threatens to hurl the entire Middle East into chaos! This is not the umpteenth bloody confrontation to plunge this corner of the world into mourning. The sheer scale of the killings indicates that the barbarity has reached a new level: young people dancing at a festival mowed down with machine guns, women and children executed in the street at point-blank range, with no other objective than to satisfy a desire for blind revenge, a carpet of bombs to annihilate an entire population, two million people in Gaza deprived of everything, water, electricity, gas, food... There is no military logic to all these atrocities, to all these crimes! Both sides are wallowing in the most appalling and irrational murderous fury!

But there is something even more serious: this Pandora's box will never close again. As with Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, there will be no turning back, no "return to peace". Capitalism is dragging ever larger sections of humanity into war, death and the decomposition of society. The war in Ukraine has already been going on for almost two years and is bogged down in endless carnage. Massacres are also underway in Nagorno-Karabakh. And there is already a threat of a new war between the nations of the former Yugoslavia. Capitalism is war!

To put an end to war, capitalism must be overthrown.
The workers of all countries must refuse to take sides with one bourgeois camp or another. In particular, they must refuse to be fooled by the rhetoric of the parties which claim to be working class, the parties of the left and extreme left, which ask them to show "solidarity with the Palestinian masses" in their quest for their right to a "homeland". The Palestinian homeland will never be anything but a bourgeois state at the service of the exploiting class and oppressing these same masses, with cops and prisons. The solidarity of the workers of the most advanced capitalist countries does not go to the "Palestinians" just as it does not go to the "Israelis", among whom there are exploiters and exploited. It goes to the workers and unemployed of Israel and Palestine (who, moreover, have already led struggles against their exploiters despite all the brainwashing they have been subjected to), just as it goes to the workers of all the other countries of the world. The best solidarity they can offer is certainly not to encourage their nationalist illusions.

This solidarity means above all developing their fight against the capitalist system responsible for all the wars, a fight against their own bourgeoisie.

The working class will have to win peace by overthrowing capitalism on a global scale, and today this means developing its struggles on a class terrain, against the increasingly harsh economic attacks levelled at it by a system in insurmountable crisis.

Against nationalism, against the wars your exploiters want to drag you into:
Workers of all countries, unite!

ICC, 9 October 2023

“We have to say that enough is enough! Not just us, but the entire working class of this country has to say, at some point, that enough is enough” (Littlejohn, maintenance supervisor in the skilled trades at Ford’s Buffalo stamping plant in the United States).

This American worker sums up in one sentence what is ripening in the consciousness of the entire working class, in every country. A year ago, the "Summer of Rage" broke out in the United Kingdom. By chanting "Enough is enough", British workers sounded the call to take up the fight again after more than thirty years of stagnation and resignation.

This call was heard beyond borders. From Greece to Mexico, strikes and demonstrations against the same intolerable deterioration in our living and working conditions continued throughout the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023.

In mid-winter in France, a further step was taken: proletarians took up the idea that "enough is enough". But instead of multiplying local and corporatist struggles, isolated from each other, they were able to gather in their millions in the streets. To the necessary fighting spirit they added the force of massive numbers. And now it is in the United States that workers are trying to carry the torch of struggle a little further.

In the United States, a new step forward for class struggle
A veritable media blackout surrounds the social movement that is currently setting the world's leading economic power ablaze. And with good reason: in a country ravaged for decades by poverty, violence, drugs, racism, fear and individualism, these struggles show that a completely different path is possible.

At the heart of all these strikes shines a genuine surge of workers' solidarity: "We've all had enough: the temps have had enough, long-serving employees like me have had enough... because these temps are our children, our neighbours, our friends" (the same New York employee). This is how the workers stick together, between generations: the "old" are not on strike just for themselves, but above all for the "young" who are suffering even worse working conditions and even lower wages.

A sense of solidarity is gradually growing in the working class as we realise that we are "all in this together": "All these groups are not just separate movements, but a collective rallying cry: we are a city of workers - blue-collar and white-collar, union and non-union, immigrant and native-born" (Los Angeles Times).

The current strikes in the United States are bringing together far more than just the sectors involved. "The Stellantis complex in Toledo, Ohio, was abuzz with cheers and horns at the start of the strike" (The Wall Street Journal). "Horns support strikers outside the carmaker's plant in Wayne, Michigan" (The Guardian).

The current wave of strikes is of historic importance:
- scriptwriters and actors in Hollywood fought together for the first time in 63 years;
- private nurses in Minnesota and Wisconsin have staged the biggest strike in their history;
- Los Angeles municipal workers went on strike for the first time in 40 years;
- workers from the "Big Three" (General Motors, Ford, Chrysler) led an unprecedented joint struggle;
- Kaiser Permanente workers, on strike in several states, led the largest demonstration ever organised in the health sector.

We could also add the many strikes in recent weeks at Starbucks, Amazon and McDonald's, in aviation and railway factories, or the one that has gradually spread to all hotels in California... all these workers are fighting for a decent wage in the face of galloping inflation that is reducing them to poverty.

With all these strikes, the American proletariat is showing that it is also possible for workers in the private sector to fight. In Europe, until now, it has been mainly public sector workers who have mobilised, the fear of losing their jobs being a decisive brake for employees in private companies. But faced with increasingly unbearable conditions of exploitation, we are all going to be forced to fight. The future belongs to the class struggle in all sectors, together and united!

Faced with division, let's unite our struggles!
Anger is rising again in Europe, Asia and Oceania. China, Korea and Australia have also been experiencing a succession of strikes since the summer. In Greece, at the end of September, a social movement brought together the transport, education and health sectors to protest against a proposed labour reform designed to make employment more flexible. October 13 marks the return of demonstrations in France, on the issue of wages. In Spain too, a wind of anger is beginning to blow: on 17 and 19 October, strikes in the private education sector; on 24 October, a strike in the public education sector; on 25 October, a strike by the entire Basque public sector; on 28 October, a demonstration by pensioners, etc. Faced with these forecasts of struggles, the Spanish press is beginning to anticipate "another hot autumn".

This list not only indicates the growing level of discontent and combativeness of our class. It also reveals our movement's greatest current weakness: despite growing solidarity, our struggles remain separate from each other. Our strikes may take place at the same time, we may even be side by side, sometimes on the streets, but we are not really fighting together. We are not united, we are not organised as a single social force, in a single struggle.

The current wave of strikes in the United States is another flagrant demonstration of this. When the movement was launched in the "Big Three" auto plants, the strike was limited to three "designated" plants: Wentzville (Missouri) for GM, Toledo (Ohio) for Chrysler, and Wayne (Michigan) for Ford. These three plants are separated by thousands of miles, making it impossible for the workers to get together and fight as one.

Why were they so scattered? Who organised this fragmentation? Who officially supervises these workers? Who organises the social movements? Who are the "specialists in struggle", the legal representatives of the workers? The trade unions! All over the world, they are scattering the workers' response.

It was the UAW, one of the main unions in the United States, that "designated" these three factories! It is the UAW which, while falsely calling the movement "strong, united and massive", is deliberately limiting the strike to only 10% of the unionised workforce, while all the workers are loudly proclaiming their desire to go on strike. When the Mack Truck (Volvo trucks) workers tried to join the "Big Three" in their struggle, what did the unions do? They rushed to sign an agreement to end the strike! In Hollywood, when the actors' and scriptwriters' strike had been going on for months, a management/union agreement was signed at the same time as the car workers joined the strike.

Even in France, during demonstrations which bring millions of people together in the streets, the unions divide up the processions by having "their" union members march grouped by corporation, not together but one behind the other, preventing any gathering or discussion.

In the United States, in the United Kingdom, in France, in Spain, in Greece, in Australia and in every other country, if we are to stop this organised division, if we are to be truly united, if we are to be able to reach out to each other, to pull each other along, to extend our movement, we must wrest control of the struggles from the hands of the unions. These are our struggles, the struggles of the whole working class!

Wherever we can, we must come together in open, massive, autonomous general assemblies, which really decide how the movement is run. General assemblies in which we discuss as broadly as possible the general needs of the struggle and the most unifying demands. General assemblies from which we can set off in mass delegations to meet our class brothers and sisters, the workers in the nearest factory, hospital, school or administration.

Behind every strike looms the hydra of revolution
In the face of impoverishment, in the face of global warming, in the face of police violence, in the face of racism, in the face of violence against women... in recent years there have been other types of reaction: the "Yellow vests" demonstrations in France, ecological rallies like "Youth for Climate", protests for equality like "Black Lives Matter" or "MeToo", or cries of rage like during the riots in the United States, France or the United Kingdom.

But all these actions are aimed at imposing a fairer, more equitable, more humane and greener form of capitalism. That's why all these reactions are so easy for governments and the bourgeoisie to exploit, and they have no hesitation in supporting all these "citizens' movements". What's more, the unions and all the politicians are doing everything they can to limit workers' demands to the strict framework of capitalism, by emphasising the need for a better distribution of wealth between employers and employees. "Now that industry is recovering, [workers] should share in the profits" even Biden declared, the first American President to have found himself on a picket line.

But by fighting against the effects of the economic crisis, against the attacks orchestrated by the States, against the sacrifices imposed by the development of the war economy, the proletariat is rising up, not as citizens demanding "rights" and "justice", but as the exploited against their exploiters and, ultimately, as a class against the system itself. This is why the international dynamic of the working class struggle carries within it the seeds of a fundamental challenge to the whole of capitalism.
In Greece, during the day of action on 21 September against labour reform, demonstrators made the link between this attack and the "natural" disasters which ravaged the country this summer. On the one hand, capitalism is destroying the planet, polluting, exacerbating global warming, deforesting, concreting, drying out the land and causing floods and fires. On the other, it is doing away with the jobs that used to look after nature and protect people, and prefers to build warplanes rather than Canadairs, i.e.firefighting planes

As well as fighting against the deterioration in its living and working conditions, the working class is engaged in a much broader reflection on this system and its future. A few months ago, in demonstrations in France, we began to see signs rejecting the war in Ukraine, refusing to tighten our belts in the name of this war economy: "No money for war, no money for weapons, money for wages, money for pensions".

The economic crisis, the ecological crisis and the barbarity of war are all symptoms of the deadly dynamic of global capitalism. The deluge of bombs and bullets raining down on the people of Israel and Gaza as we write these lines, while the massacres in Ukraine continue, is yet another illustration of the downward spiral into which capitalism is driving society, threatening the lives of all humanity!

The growing number of strikes shows that two worlds are clashing: the bourgeois world of competition and barbarity, and the working class world of solidarity and hope. This is the profound meaning of our current and future struggles: the promise of another future, without exploitation or social classes, without war or borders, without destruction of the planet or the quest for profit.
 

International Communist Current, 8 October 2023

While the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are attracting the attention of newspapers around the world, in the background there is always the confrontation between the two major powers of today, the United States and, facing them, their main challenger, China, which is intensifying in an increasingly open and violent way. Within the American bourgeoisie, the main factions are united in the view that China must at all costs be prevented from strengthening its position as a world power with ambitions to dethrone the United States: "The USA’s reaction to its own decline and the rise of China has not been to withdraw from global affairs, on the contrary. The US has launched its own offensive aimed at restricting China’s advance, from Obama’s ‘pivot to the East’ through Trump’s focus on trade war, to the more directly military approach of Biden (provocations around Taiwan, downing of Chinese spy-balloons, the formation of AUKUS, the new US base in the Philippines, etc). The aim of this offensive is to build a fire-wall around China, blocking its capacity to develop as a world power." (Resolution on the International Situation, 25th ICC Congress [2], point 4, International Review 170, 2023).

The Chinese bourgeoisie under pressure from the US offensive

Militarily, despite an impressive build-up of its armaments over the last decade or so, China is still largely inferior to the United States and is therefore developing a long-term strategy aimed at laying the global economic foundations for its rise to imperialist power. In short, what China needs is time, and that is precisely what Uncle Sam is absolutely unwilling to give it.

The United States has greatly weakened Beijing's "strategic ally", Russia, which it has trapped in an increasingly destructive war in Ukraine. China has understood the Americans' warning message and has reacted cautiously, as it does not want to be subjected to sanctions that would make its economic situation even more complicated. The spread of the war chaos and the accumulation of debts by the states involved have led to stagnation, or even blockage, of its pharaonic imperialist project, the New Silk Road, which is another factor putting China in difficulty. On the other hand, the trade war, initiated under the Trump administration and intensified by Biden, is exerting a suffocating pressure on the Chinese economy: we need only think of the ban on Huawei using Google's systems and the customs duties on Chinese aluminium, or the ban on American investors investing in China in the development and production of microprocessors and the pressure on "allied" states not to export to China machines that can be used to manufacture microchips.

On the military front, the United States has fine-tuned its blockade of the Chinese coastline, thereby stepping up the pressure on China. In August, a mutual defence treaty was signed at Camp David between Japan, South Korea and the United States. Biden reiterated the United States' commitment to defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack and is providing massive arms supplies. Lastly, China's aggressive attitude in the China Sea has enabled the Americans to strengthen their ties with the Philippines and Vietnam, in particular through Biden's visit to Hanoi in September to propose a "strategic alliance" to a country with which American military companies such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing already have major economic links. If we add to this the US bases on the islands of Okinawa and Guam, it is clear that the American advance is increasingly limiting China's ambitions in terms of maritime routes. Finally, QUAD (Japan, India, the United States and Australia), a "mutual defence" group aiming to make the Indo-Pacific a place of "peace and prosperity" (sic!), declared at its recent meeting in Hiroshima in May: "We strongly oppose destabilisation or unilateral actions to change the status quo by force or coercion". While there is no mention of China and its threats against Taiwan, the message is nevertheless unambiguous.

All-out reactions from the Chinese bourgeoisie

Faced with such a situation, Beijing is obliged to react, but the hypocritical mix of provocation and diplomacy on the part of the Americans (they have sent 13 delegations to Beijing over the last 3 months with the aim of "negotiating") is leading China to react in different directions.

On the one hand, its military actions towards Taiwan are becoming increasingly threatening: China is stepping up military exercises in the Taiwan Strait to give credence to the idea that a possible invasion is being prepared, and it is also building artificial islands on controversial reefs in the China Sea to house new military bases, with the particular aim of controlling an area where 60% of the world's naval trade passes through. It is also stepping up the arms race to strengthen its military apparatus, particularly its war fleet. Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe declared: "If anyone dares to separate Taiwan from China, we will not hesitate to fight. We will fight at all costs and to the bitter end. It's the only option".

China's aggression is not only directed at the United States, but also at its neighbours: Beijing is embroiled in a territorial dispute with India that regularly leads to armed clashes; China's reaction to Japan's discharge of radiation-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean is another example of the acrimony in relations between the two nations, the former having banned Japanese seafood products from entering its territory, given that the Japanese fishing industry is very important to the Japanese economy. On the economic front, China has also taken retaliatory measures against the United States, for example, by deciding at the beginning of September to ban the use of iPhones in its public services. While this immediately caused Apple to lose $200 billion on the stock market, the irrationality of the measure is highlighted by the fact that China is the main manufacturer of these mobile phones and that Apple may have to hire Chinese workers as a result.

On the other hand, China has embarked on a large-scale diplomatic operation aimed at showing that it is a "force for peace" and that it is the Americans who are pursuing a policy of war: it was the architect of the spectacular reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia and has even offered its good offices for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. At the recent BRICS meeting in South Africa, Xi Jinping pushed for the expansion of the BRICS by proposing 6 new members and the creation of a common currency; while the latter proposal met with hostility from India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Argentina were included as new members. This Chinese policy reveals its growing influence in the Middle East. In the absence of a military capability to rival that of the United States, China is mainly using "financial credit diplomacy" to gain influence in the world. However, this weapon carries many risks. For example, the bankruptcy of Sri Lanka is preventing China from cancelling Pakistan's debt for the time being, given the risk of the repayment problem spreading.

Xi Jinping's absence from the G20 meeting in New Delhi in September was a first for the Chinese president, who had always attended meetings of this group of countries, and clearly illustrates the dilemma in which China finds itself: On the one hand, Xi wanted to show that he no longer wishes to recognise the world order dictated by the United States and resulting from the Second World War; but fundamentally, his absence is an admission of weakness in the face of American aggression in the Indo-Pacific, the strengthening of relations between the United States and Modi's India, and his own economic and political difficulties.

Faced with the American offensive, China is manoeuvring to gain time, but the Americans are not prepared to give it. American provocations and their policy of containment are increasing, aiming to strangle the Chinese dragon. This can only accentuate the unpredictability of the situation and the risk of irrational reactions that will multiply warlike confrontations and intensify the chaos.

Fo & HR, 9.10.23

This article was written before the terrible events in Derna, Libya, after floods stirred up by Storm Daniel swept through ill-maintained dams on the Wadi Derna and caused unimaginable levels of destruction. Over 11,000 are known to have died, thousands more are missing and those left in the ruins face starvation and disease. Nothing could more clearly illustrate the growing impact of climate change and capitalism’s total inability to build a “dam” against it, as the article below clearly shows.  

The year 2023 is demonstrating once again the scale of the environmental disaster into which the bourgeoisie is dragging all of humanity. The devastating forest fires in Canada and Hawaii, the floods in Asia, the shortages of drinking water in Uruguay and Africa, the devastating storms in the United States, the irretrievable melting of the glaciers... all these "natural disasters" are directly linked to global warming.

A disaster on a global scale
Not only is global warming real, it is accelerating at a dizzying and catastrophic rate. July 2023 was the hottest month on record for the planet. The month of August has seen the hottest day on record ever for this period. Forecasters are predicting that 2024 could well exceed these woeful records. The collapse of the system of ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, an essential regulator of the planet's climate, could, if confirmed, drastically alter the Earth's climate and considerably weaken the human species in the space of a few decades; it's a new threat yet to be confirmed, but one that could be added to all those already hanging over humanity!

The bourgeoisie can no longer deny this reality, even though it has deliberately sought to reduce or even conceal the risks for many years in order to protect its profits![1] But the acceleration and accentuation of the consequences of climate change means they can no longer hide the truth: the global climate is heading for a catastrophic situation that will make more and more areas of the planet uninhabitable. Apart from totally irrational "climate sceptics" like Trump and the European far right, the most "responsible" heads of state are all promising, hand on heart, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to develop a more environmentally-friendly economy. Of course, these commitments are never met, or fall far short of what's at stake, or are utterly laughable (banning plastic straws, sales receipts, etc.).
Consequently, the bourgeoisie is having to change its tune and to start preparing us all to face the unthinkable by introducing measures of "adaptation". The latest comments, but certainly not the last, are from France's new health minister, Aurélien Rousseaux, who, faced with a new heatwave that hit half the country in August, had nothing better to say than: "We have to get used to living with these extremely high temperatures". Needless to say, as with the case of the past and future pandemics, the bourgeoisie is showing unspeakable incompetence and is not seriously preparing for the catastrophe. Behind these so-called "adaptations", the ruling class is above all preparing people for austerity and shortages of supplies in the name of adjusting to "environmental requirements".

The bourgeoisie has no solution to the environmental crisis
Under the pretext of "adapting" to increasingly unsustainable climatic conditions, the bourgeoisie is starting to reshape its economy... but certainly not to preserve the planet! Several countries are planning to reactivate coal-fired power stations or (like France) are unscrupulously tampering with quotas to avoid shutting them down! The French government is very close to authorising new oil drilling in the Gironde, symbolically located at the place where the forests were ravaged last year! States are fighting to avoid putting excessive constraints on their economies, and are using the environment as an imperialist weapon to vilify each other's inaction, to protect their own markets and try to weaken their competitors with, for example, high-profile lawsuits against competing car manufacturers for infringing environmental rules... As a result, the European law on the protection of nature, adopted on 12 July, contains a provision introducing an economic safeguard clause: if the economy suffers as a result of misconceived measures set out in the law, these should be cancelled! For capital, there should be no constraints on the expansion and intensification of its economy. Environmental destruction has to take second place.

At the same time, preventive measures are not being taken, with the obvious risk of accelerating the scale of disasters. The fires in Hawaii, for example, were uncontrollable because the electric power lines were still not buried underground and the risk of overhead lines spreading the fires led the authorities to cut off the electricity, which immediately disconnected the pumps supplying the firefighters' hoses with water. In Asia, the lack of medicines to combat malaria and dysentery played a large part in worsening the human toll of the floods. In Uruguay, with a drop in the capacity to supply enough drinking water to people's taps, it was replaced with salt water! In Mayotte, a French overseas territory, no provision was made to deal with a drought depriving the population of drinking water.

Protecting the environment is not profitable...
This is not a matter of "choice" or "lack of political will", but the very logic of capitalist accumulation, which forbids any questioning of the ultra-polluting dynamics of bourgeois society. For it is capitalism that is responsible for these problems; it is capitalism that forces every capitalist to produce more and more, and at lower cost, even if this production leads to more pollution and health hazards. Capitalism needs to sell. And that's all there is to it! An anarchic and short-term approach. In fact, it's suicidal. Selling is not about satisfying human needs, it's about profiting from market demands.

It is therefore pointless and self-deceiving to imagine that this system is capable of suddenly inventing a long-term vision and a reasoned organisation; it is not capable of this and never will be. The fierce competition that distinguishes it may have been a powerful engine of progress for the productive forces from its inception, but when it reached the limits of solvent demand, in other words of the markets, this fierce competition transformed itself into a machine of war: economic war, military war, for world domination at any cost, including the very cost of destroying the environment.

Today, the research and development of the productive apparatus are much more about servicing the military sector than protecting the environment and meeting human needs. Global military spending now exceeds 2,000 billion dollars and has never been so high since the end of the Cold War. This spending is a complete waste, its sole aim that of destroying and killing or, at best, leaves machinery rusting away in some hangar. They deploy thousands of brains in order to destroy and spread chaos and death. The acceleration of imperialist tensions since the end of the Cold War shows very clearly that this trend is still far from having reached its peak.
 

Only communism can offer humanity a future
Saving the planet will not be achieved through "frugality" or "degrowth", which amounts to nothing more than an admission of impotence, or even a fantasy of a return to a pre-capitalist society. No, saving the planet will require the conscious abolition of the capitalist economy and its now obsolete relations of production, and the construction of a society capable of producing for human needs in a way that is both rational and respectful of the whole environment. Only the proletariat can bring an end to capitalism, because it is the only social force with the bulk of the world's production apparatus in its hands; a force that , at the same time, suffers from the impact of the crisis and exploitation and therefore has no interest in the perpetuation of this system.

Time is clearly no longer on our side and capitalism could, in due course, considerably threaten the existence of civilisation, if not humanity as a whole. But human and material resources do exist to reorganise production on a global scale in a way that respects the environment and human life and this while the untapped possibilities of science and technology are still immense.

Only the proletariat, once it has seized power on a world scale, will be able to free the productive forces from the capitalist constraints that shackle them. Only the proletariat is capable of conceiving, deciding and implementing, on an international scale, a policy that will free this world from the laws of profit and rebuild a society on the ruins that capitalism is bequeathing to humanity. By putting an end to the capitalist competition that contaminates the world, it will free the productive forces from the domination of the military sphere, which is directing all human ingenuity towards the work of destruction. It would also free them from the permanent waste of capitalist production: useless and polluting overproduction, programmed obsolescence, unproductive expenditure linked to mass unemployment, industrial espionage, etc. Finally, it will be able to raise human consciousness and the human spirit by developing an education that is no longer geared towards immediate profit, but towards human emancipation and a harmonious relationship with nature.  As Engels wrote in “The Role of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man”: We  “by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly”.

 

Guy, 28 August 2023

Tensions are reaching boiling point everywhere because of the horribly violent clashes between the Hamas regime in Gaza and the state of Israel. An atmosphere of hysteria is being stirred up in both camps. As revenge for the terror attack by Hamas, on one level, armed Jewish settlers on the West Bank have already killed five Palestinians in this first week of the war, while the Israeli military masses to obliterate Gaza. In such an oppressive atmosphere it is very difficult to follow the internationalist path that refuses to choose one or the other side. It requires courage to publicly defend a consistent proletarian perspective.

But fortunately there are some internationalist voices making themselves heard. Even if we do not share all the positions developed in their articles, they are a light in the darkness of the present barbarism unleashed by the international bourgeoisie.

Among these voices there are two other organisations of the communist left. The first one is the Internationalist Communist Tendency with the statement “The Latest Butchery in the Middle East is Part of the March to Generalised War [3]”. The second one is Il Partito Comunista with the article “War in Gaza, Against the imperialist warfare, for the revolutionary class warfare [4]”.

But there are also at least two anarchist groups that have published an internationalist position against the atrocities committed by capitalism in the Middle East. The first one is the Anarchist Communist Group that has published the article “Neither Israel nor Hamas! [5]” The other article is by the Anarcom Network called “Neither one State nor two States!  No ‘State’ will end the slaughter of our Class!” [6]

So, despite the deafening campaign by the governments of the USA, the UK and others, and of the bourgeois left to support the “Palestinian cause”, several organisations in Europe and North America have remained loyal to the internationalist principles of the world proletariat.

We will come back to some of the positions adopted by the different groups in due course.

WR 14.10.23

Since 2020, there has been one coup d'état after another in West and Central Africa, from Guinea to Gabon, via Mali, Burkina-Faso and Niger. Not to mention the "constitutional coups" that have also taken place in the Ivory Coast and Chad.

An increasingly unstable region

In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the corrupt and bloodthirsty regimes supported by France have been overthrown by (equally corrupt and bloodthirsty) military factions, to the cheers of crowds fed up with being starved to death by unscrupulous predators and their Western accomplices. But the demonstrators are deluding themselves: neither the coup plotters nor the candidates lining up to replace France in its traditional zone of influence (the Wagner group, China, etc.) are concerned about the fate of the population. On the contrary, these putsches are the expression of an accelerated destabilisation of the region and promise only ever greater misery.

The Sahel region, in which Niger occupies a central place, is characterised by growing instability, caused in particular by the acute economic distress of the populations, the deterioration of the security situation, the rapid increase in the population, the massive displacement of migrants (4.1 million displaced persons in 2022 alone) and the terrible degradation of the environment.

The Sahel region as a whole is experiencing a devastating upsurge in attacks by Islamic armed groups, which take advantage of porous and extensive borders. Over the last five years, in the central Sahel, the number of security incidents has increased sixfold and the number of deaths by almost eightfold. These terrorist groups regularly attack state institutions, target communities and block urban centres by cutting off roads and supply lines. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are among the ten countries most affected by terrorism.

According to the State Fragility Index, the Sahel countries are among the 25 most fragile states in the world. Most of these governments are unable to control their territory. In Burkina Faso, for example, armed Islamist groups control up to 40% of the territory. Despite the Wagner group's "support" for the Malian government, Islamic State (IS) has doubled its territory in that country in the space of a year.

An expression of growing chaos

After Mali and Burkina Faso, French imperialism was forced to evacuate Niger with arms and baggage, to the booing of demonstrators. Niger was considered a "safe country", relied on by various imperialist powers, in particular France and the United States, to protect their interests: "Niger, which neighbours Libya, has since become an important geopolitical location for its mineral wealth, including uranium and oil, and for the passage of migrants to Europe [...]. The Niger army seemed to be more attractive and more combative to the Americans, who installed two drone air bases in Niamey and Agadez, which has provided information to forces acting under ‘Operation Barkhane’ (a French-led anti-insurgency operation), but not to the Sahelian states themselves" (1).

But, contrary to what the bourgeois press may claim, this coup d'état (like those which recently preceded it in Mali and Burkina Faso) is not a simple reversal of alliances such as we saw during the Cold War, with the coup plotters now preferring to deal with Russia or China rather than Western countries. In reality, it is the expression of a sharp acceleration in the decomposition of bourgeois society, which is tending to sweep the weakest links in capitalism into absolute chaos.

Far from an imperialist reorientation in favour of a new "partner", we are instead seeing totally irresponsible bourgeois factions taking advantage of the destabilisation of governments and the fragility of states to "try their luck". They adopt any rhetoric that will enable them to gain power and are ready to ally themselves with whoever is in a position to support them at the time. In Niger, the putsch was carried out openly against the former colonial power, with the support of Mali, Burkina-Faso and the relative support of the Wagner group, Russia's weapon for stirring up chaos. But no one can rule out the possibility that the junta in power will back down and end up negotiating with France.

Every man for himself increases the chaos

Today, the major imperialist powers are concerned not with the fate of the people or the maintenance of "democratically elected" governments (what a huge joke!) but with the consequences of coups d'état for the defence of their own sordid interests. In Gabon, for example, the coup plotters pushed Ali Bongo, a great defender of French interests, out of office, without calling into question the enormous French influence in the country. This coup was therefore described by the Western press as an "adjustment" and did not arouse any "strong emotion" from the Quai d'Orsay (the French foreign affairs ministry). In Niger, on the other hand, the coup plotters were threatened with economic sanctions and military intervention.

But the reactions of the big imperialist sharks also took place in a context where every man for himself reigns. Paris immediately tried to organise a military intervention, but once again demonstrated its powerlessness. Macron tried to flex his muscles by claiming to be "intractable" and "inflexible" on the "return to legality", even though everything indicates that he does not have the means to do enforce his claims: "France is pushing ECOWAS to intervene, along with its ally in this affair, Nigeria. But it is also trying to get its European partners on board. The problem is that the Germans are not convinced of the benefits of intervention, and neither are the Italians, who have not forgotten France's tragic mistakes in Libya. As for the United States, it wants to hold on to its positions in Niger" (2) Meanwhile, "French diplomats and military officers bitterly point to the 'murky game in Niger' being played by Washington, which did not even use the term 'coup d'état' [...] an American general replied: 'From Niger we are fighting against the influence and pressure of Russia, via Wagner, and China. And against international terrorism in the Sahel’." (3)

The chaos in Niger is so extreme, and the inability of the West to act in concert so glaring, that it is forcing even the imperialist powers to review their positions on the ground so as not to lose too many feathers. This is true of Washington, which sees Niger as a central pawn in its fight against the influence of China and Russia in the region, but is not sure it can count on the putschists.

To put it plainly: "In Niger, the West is not in a position to support an invasion, even one led by regional states that are themselves in need of domestic legitimacy. These states would in any case be seen to be acting under the leadership of the West" (4) Above all, "the West" no doubt remembers its disastrous military intervention in Libya in 2011, one of the consequences of which was the spread of "jihadist terrorism" throughout the Sahel and the collapse of a state in a situation that is still inextricable.

All the imperialists present in the Sahel are therefore repositioning themselves to better defend their interests, even if it means accelerating chaos and accentuating imperialist turbulence.

Amina, 25 september2023

 

1 "Niger: toute la région plonge dans le chaos", Courrier International n° 1710 (10 August 2023).

2 Le Canard enchaîné (16 August 2023).

3 Le Canard enchaîné (23 August 2023).

4 "Niger : “Il est temps de rompre avec la pratique du paternalisme envers les Africains… ", Le Monde (20 August 2023).

Over the past year, major workers' struggles have erupted in the core countries of global capitalism and around the world. This series of strikes began in the UK in the summer of 2022, and workers in many other countries have since taken up the struggle: France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, the United States, Korea... Everywhere, the working class is raising its head in the face of the considerable deterioration in living and working conditions, the dizzying rise in prices, systematic insecurity and mass unemployment, caused by the accentuation of economic destabilisation, ecological constraints and the intensification of militarism linked to the barbaric war in Ukraine.

A wave of struggle unprecedented for three decades
For three decades, the world has not seen such a wave of simultaneous struggle in so many countries, or over such a long period. The collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989 and the campaigns about the supposed "death of communism" had provoked a deep ebb in the class struggle at the world level. This major event, the implosion of the Stalinist imperialist bloc and of one of the world's two greatest powers, the USSR, was the most spectacular expression of capitalism's entry into a new and even more destructive phase of its decadence, that of its decomposition[1]. The rotting of society on its feet, with its growing violence and chaos at all levels, the nihilistic and desperate atmosphere, the tendency towards social atomisation ... all this in turn had a very negative impact on the class struggle. We have thus witnessed a considerable weakening of combativeness compared to the previous period, beginning in 1968. The resignation that hit the working class in Britain for more than three decades, a proletariat with a long experience of struggle, illustrates the reality of this retreat. Faced with attacks from the bourgeoisie, extremely brutal "reforms", massive de-industrialisation and a considerable fall in living standards, the country's workers have not seen any significant mobilisation since the stinging defeat inflicted on the miners by Thatcher in 1985.

While the working class has occasionally shown signs of combativeness and tried to reappropriate its weapons of struggle (the fight against the Contrat de Premier Emploi (CPE) in France in 2006, the Indignados movement in Spain in 2011, the first mobilisation against pension reform in France in 2019), proving that it had by no means been taken off the stage of history, its mobilisations have largely remained without a follow up, incapable of re-launching a more global movement. Why was this? Because not only did the workers lose their fighting spirit over the years, they also suffered a profound decline in class consciousness in their ranks, which they had fought so hard to acquire in the 1970s and 1980s. Workers had largely forgotten the lessons of their struggles, their confrontations with the unions, the traps set by the "democratic" state, losing their self-confidence, their ability to unite, to fight en masse... They had even largely forgotten their identity as a class antagonistic to the bourgeoisie and carrying its own revolutionary perspective. In this logic, communism seemed well and truly dead with the horrors of Stalinism, and the working class seemed to no longer exist.

A break in the dynamic of class struggle
And yet, faced with the considerable acceleration of the process of decomposition[2] since the global pandemic of Covid-19, and even more so with the massacres of the war in Ukraine and the chain reactions that this has provoked on the economic, ecological, social and political levels, the working class is raising its head everywhere, taking up the fight and refusing to accept sacrifices in the name of the so-called "common good". Is this a coincidence? A one-off epidermal reaction to the attacks of the bourgeoisie? No! the slogan "Enough is enough!" in this context of widespread destabilisation of the capitalist system clearly illustrates that a real change of mindset is taking place within the class. All these expressions of combativeness are part of a new situation that is opening up for the class struggle, a new phase that breaks with the passivity, disorientation and despair of the last three decades.

The simultaneous eruption of struggles over the past year did not come out of nowhere. They are the product of a whole process of reflection in the class through a series of previous trial-and-error attempts. Already, during the first mobilisation in France against pension "reform" at the end of 2019, the ICC had identified the expression of a strong need for solidarity between generations and different sectors. This movement had also been accompanied by other workers' struggles around the world, in the United States as well as in Finland, but had died out in the face of the explosion of the Covid pandemic in March 2020. Similarly, in October 2021, strikes broke out in the United States in various sectors, but the momentum of the struggle was interrupted, this time by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, which initially paralysed workers, particularly in Europe.

This long process of trial and error and maturation led from the summer of 2022 onwards to a determined reaction by workers on their own class terrain in the face of the attacks arising from the destabilisation of capitalism. The British workers have opened a new period in the international workers' struggle, in what has been called the "summer of anger". The slogan "enough is enough" was elevated to the symbol of the entire proletarian struggle in the United Kingdom. This slogan did not express specific demands to be met, but a profound revolt against the conditions of exploitation. It showed that the workers were no longer prepared to swallow pathetic compromises, but were ready to continue the struggle with determination. The British workers' movement is particularly symbolic in that it is the first time since 1985 that this sector of the working class has taken centre stage. And as inflation and crisis intensified around the world, greatly exacerbated by the Ukrainian conflict and the intensification of the war economy, health workers in Spain and the United States also went on the offensive, followed by a wave of strikes in the Netherlands, a "megastreik" of transport workers in Germany, more than 100 strikes against wage arrears and redundancies in China, a strike and demonstrations after a terrible train crash in Greece, teachers demanding higher wages and better working conditions in Portugal, 100. 000 civil servants demanding higher wages in Canada, and above all, a massive movement of the proletariat in France against pension reform.

The highly significant nature of these mobilisations against capitalist austerity also lies in the fact that, in the long term, they also include opposition to war. Indeed, if the direct mobilisation of workers against the war was illusory, the ICC had already pointed out in February 2022 that the workers' reaction would manifest itself in resistance to attacks on their purchasing power, which would result from the intensification and interconnection of crises and disasters, and that it would also run counter to campaigns calling for the acceptance of sacrifices to support the "heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people". This is also what the struggles of the past year bear the seeds of, even if workers are not yet fully aware of it: the refusal to sacrifice more and more for the interests of the ruling class, the refusal to make sacrifices for the national economy and for the war effort, the refusal to accept the logic of this system which is leading humanity towards an increasingly catastrophic situation.

We need to fight united and in solidarity!
In these struggles, the idea that "we're all in the same boat" began to emerge in the minds of workers. On the picket lines in the UK, strikers told us that they felt they were fighting for something bigger than the corporatist demands of the unions. The banner "For all of us" under which the strike took place in Germany on 27 March is particularly significant of the general feeling developing in the class: "we are all fighting for each other".  But it was in France that the need to fight as one was most clearly expressed. The unions did try to divide and rot the movement in the trap of the "strike by proxy" behind supposedly "strategic" sectors (like energy or rubbish collection) to "bring France to a standstill". But the workers did not fall into the trap en masse, and remained determined to fight together.

During the thirteen days of mobilisation in France, the ICC distributed over 150,000 leaflets: interest in what was happening in the UK and elsewhere never waned. For some demonstrators, the link with the situation in the UK seemed obvious: "it's the same everywhere, in every country". It was no coincidence that the unions at the "Mobilier national" had to take charge of strike action during the (cancelled) visit of Charles III to Paris in the name of "solidarity with British workers". In spite of the inflexibility of the government in France, in spite of the failures to make the bourgeoisie back down or to really obtain better wages in Great Britain or elsewhere, the greatest victory of the workers is the struggle itself and the awareness, undoubtedly still in its infancy and very confused, that we form a single force, that we are all exploited people who, atomised, each in their own corner, can do nothing against capital but who, united in the struggle, can become the greatest social force in history.

Admittedly, workers have still not regained confidence in their own strength, in their ability to take the struggle into their own hands. The unions everywhere kept control of the movements, speaking a more combative language to better sterilise the need for unity, while maintaining a rigid separation between the different sectors. In Great Britain, workers remained isolated behind the picket lines of their companies, although the unions were forced to organise a few parodies of supposedly "unitary" demonstrations. Similarly, in France, when workers came together in gigantic demonstrations, it was always under the absolute control of the unions, who kept workers huddled behind the banners of their companies and sectors. Overall, corporatist confinement remained a constant in most struggles.

During the strikes, the bourgeoisie, particularly its left-wing factions, continued to pour out their ideological campaigns around ecology, anti-racism, the defence of democracy and so on, designed to keep anger and indignation on the illusory terrain of bourgeois "rights" and to divide the exploited between white people and people of colour, men and women, young and old... In France, in the midst of the movement against pension reform, we saw the development of both environmentalist campaigns around the development of "mega-pools" and democratic campaigns against police repression. Although the majority of workers' struggles have remained on a class terrain, i.e. the defence of workers' material conditions in the face of inflation, redundancies, government austerity measures, etc., the danger posed by these ideologies to the working class remains considerable.

Preparing for tomorrow's struggles
Struggles have diminished in several countries at the moment, but this does not mean that workers are discouraged or defeated. The wave of strikes in the UK continued for a whole year, while the demonstrations in France lasted for five months, despite the fact that the vast majority of workers were aware from the start that the bourgeoisie would not give in to their demands immediately. Week after week in the Netherlands, month after month in France and for a whole year in the UK, workers refused to throw in the towel. These workers' mobilisations have clearly shown that workers are determined not to accept any further deterioration in their living conditions. Despite all the lies of the ruling class, the crisis is not going to stop: the cost of housing, heating and food is not going to stop rising, redundancies and insecure contracts are going to continue to abound, governments will continue their attacks...

Unquestionably, this new dynamic of struggle is only at its very beginning and, for the working class, "All its historical difficulties persist, its capacity to organise its own struggles and even more so to become aware of its revolutionary project are still very far away, but the growing combativity in the face of the brutal blows dealt by the bourgeoisie to living and working conditions is the fertile ground on which the proletariat can rediscover its class identity, become aware again of what it is, of its strength when it struggles, when it shows solidarity and develops its unity. It's a process, a struggle that is resuming after years of passivity, a potential that the current strikes suggest."[3]. No one knows where or when significant new struggles will arise. But it is certain that the working class will have to continue to fight everywhere!

Millions of us fighting, feeling the collective strength of our class as we stand shoulder to shoulder in the streets - that's essential, but it's by no means enough. The French government backed down in 2006, during the struggle against the CPE, not because there were more students and young people on precarious contracts in the streets, but because they had taken control of the movement from the unions, through sovereign, massive general assemblies, open to all. These assemblies were not places where workers were confined to their own sector or company, but places from which massive delegations set off for the nearest companies in order to actively seek solidarity. Today, the inability of the working class to take the struggle actively in hand by seeking to extend it to all sectors is the reason why the bourgeoisie has not retreated. However, reclaiming its identity has enabled the working class to begin to reclaim its past. In the marches in France, references to May '68 and to the 2006 struggle against the CPE have multiplied. What happened in '68? How did we get the government to back down in 2006? In a minority of the class, a process of reflection is underway, which is an essential means of learning the lessons of the past year's movements and preparing for future struggles that will have to go even further than those of 1968 in France or those of 1980 in Poland.

Just as the recent struggles are the product of a process of the subterranean maturation that has been developing for some time, so the efforts of a minority to learn the lessons of the recent struggles will bear fruit in the wider struggles that lie ahead. Workers will recognise that the separation of struggles imposed by the unions can only be overcome if they rediscover autonomous forms of organisation such as general assemblies and elected strike committees, and if they take the initiative to extend the struggle beyond all corporatist divisions.

A & D, 13 August 2023
________________________________________
[1] Cf. “Theses on decomposition [7]”; (May 1990)", International Review n°107 (2001).
[2] See "Update of the Theses on Decomposition (2023) [8]", International Review n°170 (2023).
[3] “Report on class struggle for the 25th ICC congress [9]”, International Review n°170 (2023).
 

 

 

Our comrade Antonio left us this spring, on the eve of the 25th International Congress of the ICC. He was one of the old founding militants of Révolution Internationale (RI - the French section of the ICC) still present in the organisation. The Congress paid a first tribute to him, highlighting "his courage and modesty", both in his personal life and as a militant.

The influence of May 68 and the Communist Left

In 1965, like other students at the University of Madrid who were concerned by the development of workers' struggles in Asturias, he began to involve himself in politics in a context where the class point of view had to find its way through the ambient confusion of the siren songs of the "democratic opposition" to the regime. Antonio distrusted the PCE (Spanish Communist Party) because of its Stalinism, but he also had to learn to distrust the discourse of the handful of Trotskyist and Maoist groups that emerged at that time and which, although appearing more open and "left" than the PCE, were merely a more radical version of the left of capital and just as counter-revolutionary. This interest in revolutionary positions led to his emigration to France, where he arrived in Toulouse in 1967.

His cultural preoccupations - at the time he was doing Spanish-language theatre - were ones he would never abandon, even if they often had to give way to family or political constraints. In the atmosphere of political effervescence, reflection and discussion before 1968, and especially during the events of that year, he found answers to the questions he was asking himself. In this context, he was able from the outset to adopt a genuinely internationalist perspective, interested in the historical experience of the proletariat while avoiding the trap of being locked into an 'immigrant' approach fixed on the situation and history of the country of origin.

As he himself says, the first discussion in France that helped him to break away from the leftist atmosphere in Madrid was the one he had with some of the founding members of Révolution Internationale on the imperialist nature of the Vietnam war, on the necessary defence of proletarian internationalism and workers' solidarity, and this in opposition to the idea of a "revolutionary war" defended by the Trotskyites and Maoists.

He later met Marc Chirik (MC) at a meeting in 1968 with the other founding members of Révolution Internationale and some situationist "militants". MC defended the proletarian nature of the Russian revolution of 1917, the reality of the working class as the revolutionary subject of history and the need for revolutionary organisation. That same year, he also took part in the meeting which approved the first platform of Révolution Internationale, based on the political principles of Internationalismo which MC had inherited from the Gauche Communiste de France and then passed on.

He returned to France in 1969, at a time when the initial core of Révolution Internationale was dwindling in strength as a result of a number of resignations, but also because most of the militants from Toulouse had moved to the capital.

Behind a facade that might appear hesitant, Antonio was driven by a deep commitment and militant conviction…

Although he later said, "I was not a militant", referring to the 1968 period, he returned to full activity in Révolution Internationale in 1970, then in 1972 took part in the regroupment with the Cahiers du Communisme de Conseils de Marseille and the Clermont Ferrand group, from which emerged the 2nd platform of RI as a political group with a territorial base seeking international contacts. In 1975, he took part in the first ICC Congress and remained a militant for the rest of his life. At a time when the class struggle movement in Spain was at its height and the state was speeding up its policy of "democratic transition", the publication of Acción Proletaria (AP) in Spain could no longer be guaranteed.

To deal with this, the ICC decided at its first international congress to maintain regular publication of AP, producing the paper in France and then smuggling it into Spain in the last days of Francoism. His collaboration on this publication was particularly appreciated at the time because of his ability to analyse the democratic manoeuvres of the "transition" in Spain in detail, and to denounce them in depth. Because of his mastery of two languages - he was a Spanish teacher in France - from 1975 he was also involved in the Spanish-language production of the International Review. The comrade always placed the fulfilment of these responsibilities in an international and historical perspective.

In order to organise and systematise Spanish-language intervention and the search for contacts in the Spanish-speaking world, the newly-formed ICC took the initiative of appointing a Spanish Language Commission with Antonio as a member. As a result, Antonio regularly took part in trips to Spain and discussions with contacts, bringing his conviction and assimilation of CCI positions. The comrades who travelled with him were able to appreciate his great sympathy, his vast encyclopaedic knowledge and above all his humour. We'll come back to that!

Antonio took part in virtually all the ICC's international Congresses, where he was part of remarkably efficient simultaneous translation teams - so much so that scientists who had been invited to a Congress session were impressed by the quality of the work. But they were also surprised by Antonio's comments during the breaks, intended to enlighten fellow members of the Spanish, Mexican or Venezuelan delegations on parts of the speech they had misunderstood, .... but they were also surprised by Antonio's use of the microphone to make jokes.

Unwavering loyalty to the organisation and the cause, in the most varied of circumstances
In the difficult moments of the organisation's struggle against the circle spirit and for the party spirit, Antonio always chose to defend the organisation. Although he had a natural tendency to form bonds of affinity with comrades, he never allowed himself to be blindly carried away by "defending his friends" against the organisational principles of the ICC. And when some of them left the organisation with resentments towards it, Antonio maintained his loyalty to the CCI even if this meant distancing himself personally from his former friends.

Antonio's 'Antonionades'

While acknowledging some of his mistakes or negligence, occasional lack of attention or involvement, the comrade often categorised them as his 'Antonionades'. In fact, this category was broad enough to include sketches in which the comrade liked to play the 'clown' for the amusement of us all.

So often, at festive gatherings such as new year, our comrade was able to show off his good humour, never caustic but often teasing, subtle and friendly towards his comrades. Indeed, his repertoire included a number of improvised sketches featuring friends and colleagues from the organisation. In the service of his 'art', he knew how to exploit the subtleties and pitfalls of the French and Spanish languages - sometimes even Occitan. As a result, he could spend hours hosting friendly get-togethers with his comrades and sharing his good humour.

But the 'Antonionade' could also manifest itself in completely different situations, which had nothing festive about them and reflected a particular boldness in our comrade.

For example, in the 1980s while leafleting campaign the docks in Marseille - a citadel for the CGT guardians of capitalist order – an ICC team quickly came up against a patrol of CGT "heavyweights" who wanted to get us out of the way. At times like these, the aim is to hold out as long as possible in order to distribute as many leaflets as possible, which is no easy task, especially when only a trickle of people are allowed in. And Antonio laughed, to everyone's amazement, "ah but I can't give up, I have a mandate that I have to fulfil. I've got to finish this distribution!”

The stunned effect this produced in the ranks of the union squad enabled us to gain precious minutes of  time for the distribution, at the end of which the flow of dockworkers entering the workplace protected us from intimidation.
Nevertheless, his militant life was not made up of Antonionades alone, as shown by his regular involvement in the life of the organisation and the fact that it is the same Antonio who was involved in an episode defending a demonstration against attempts by the cops to break into it to take away a young man who had been guilty of spray painting a wall. On this occasion, the cops were thwarted[1].

In his professional life, some of his 'antonionades' were pure humour, as reported and illustrated by one of his university colleagues who came to his funeral and who also emphasised the extent to which Antonio respected his students: one day, when the students seemed not to be listening to his lecture, chatting amongst themselves in the lecture hall, Antonio made no particular remark but interrupted himself. The surprised students stopped their chatter, wondering what was going on. Then Antonio spoke again, telling them: "Today, I feel like I'm in a bar in Spain. In bars in Spain, the TV is on all the time, but nobody watches it or listens to it. But if someone does turn it off, there's always someone there to say, 'Who turned the TV off? Today I'm the bar's TV". What tact and pedagogy!

Antonio, a loving father and companion, committed in the face of adversity

He first had a daughter who has always supported his militancy and maintained political sympathy with the ICC. His second child was born with a severe physical and intellectual disability. In order to be able to communicate with him, Antonio learnt sign language and was always careful to ensure that his son's disability did not keep him away from everything and everyone. And, together, the family succeeded! Not least because of Antonio's unwavering commitment. Our comrade's commitment to his family was even greater when his partner became seriously ill. For years, they fought side by side against a cancer that she finally succumbed to, exhausted by the battle.

The tension between Antonio's personal and militant responsibilities was stretched to the limit on many occasions. As he said himself, he was several times on the point of abandoning the political struggle but, in the end, he kept his loyalty to himself, his family and the organisation, directing his life and the care of his family on the basis of what was his passion and conviction: communist militancy.

We would like to add here that the life of this comrade, who managed to maintain his militancy for more than half a century (from 1968 to 2023) against all kinds of pressures, is an example of what we must pass on to the new generation of militants.

Although for long periods he was forced to reduce his militant involvement, in recent years he had been able to rediscover the flame of that passion by taking part in joint meetings with comrades from AP (Spain), RI (France) and Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy), and getting involved in organisational responsibilities.

Another of our comrade's paradoxes, or an expression of his great modesty or lack of self-confidence: on several occasions he told comrades that he found it difficult to internalise the meaning of our concept of "putting militancy at the centre of our lives". Yet that's what he managed to do throughout his life!

Antonio's last "Antonionade".
Shortly after the death of his partner, Antonio had a heart attack which he dealt with on his own by going to A&E in the middle of the night. A day later, he emerged with his arteries unblocked and ready for use again. It turned out that he had other heart problems, which were subsequently treated and not considered critical, but which may nevertheless have been the cause of his sudden death a short time later. When we urged him to keep us more regularly informed about his state of health, he replied that, in his home village, some people who said "I'll keep you informed" really meant "I'll keep you out of the loop". Another Antonionade! The last one.

Even if the comrade was concerned not to 'disturb' others, he was nevertheless perfectly aware - and had already proved it - of the social and political need to call on the organisation and its militants whenever necessary. In fact, he kept us regularly informed about his health.

However, we were all surprised by his "hasty departure". Farewell comrade and friend.
On the other hand, we were not surprised by the large number of people who attended our comrade's funeral, including some of his former colleagues, who gave touching, but not surprising, testimonies about Antonio's great respect for his students.

The ICC will be organising a political tribute to our comrade Antonio in the coming months. Comrades wishing to take part should write to the ICC and we will inform them of the date and venue.

ICC 8.8.23

As the most advanced part of the working class, revolutionaries have a responsibility to intervene in struggles. But unlike the leftists and the excitable elements of the petty-bourgeoisie who see the spectre of social revolution behind "everything that moves", revolutionaries, in order to carry out a coherent intervention, must have a compass, a method learnt from marxism, based on the experiences of the history of the workers' movement over nearly two centuries. It is precisely this method which alone enables them to understand and intervene in the struggles of the working class with a historical and long-term vision, so as not to fall into the trap of impatience, of waiting for immediate results and finding themselves trailing in the wake of the organisations of the extreme left of capital or of rank and file unionism.

So, in the summer of 2022, the ICC analysed the outbreak of struggles in Britain not as a simple local event but as a phenomenon of international and historical significance. The resumption of workers' struggles, on a scale not seen in the UK since the 1980s, marked a real break in the dynamic of class struggle. Faced with such an event, the ICC decided to produce an international leaflet in which we affirmed that the massive strikes in the UK were "a call to struggle for proletarians everywhere".

This was fully confirmed in the months that followed, when, as well as continuing struggles in many sectors in the UK, strikes and demonstrations broke out in several European countries and on other continents. For the most part, these too were on a scale not seen since the late 1980s, confirming a real return of workers' fighting spirit after several decades of stagnation on a global scale.

During the autumn of 2022, the ICC took part in demonstrations and picket lines. The section of the ICC in Britain took part in 8 picket lines, mainly in London and Exeter, distributing several hundred leaflets. It also took part in the London Anarchist Book Fair. The ICC was also present at the cross-industry day of action in France on 29 September 2022.

During the discussions on demonstrations and at the picket lines, we defended the international dimension of the attacks and therefore the need for everyone to fight together, acting in a unified way and avoiding getting bogged down in local struggles, within one's own company or sector.

At the same time, the ICC regularly published articles in its press (website, papers, International Review) highlighting the openly proletarian terrain of these various struggles, but above all their historical significance, by emphasising that they formed a real springboard for reclaiming class identity.

The outbreak of the struggle against pensions reform in France in January gave new impetus to this dynamic of international struggles. Almost every week for nearly 6 months, millions of workers took to the streets to oppose a vile attack by the bourgeois state. During the 13 days of demonstrations, both in Paris and in the provinces, the ICC mobilised all its forces, rallying its supporters around it, to disseminate its press as widely as possible, distributing nearly 130,000 leaflets and dozens of newspapers.

The quality of the intervention depended on the ability of the ICC to adapt to the evolution of the class’s response on an international level, but also to the more specific evolution of the struggle in France. This is why the ICC has produced both leaflets with an international scope and more "territorial" leaflets when necessary. This was done in order to respond as effectively as possible to the needs of the movement, not only in France, but above all on an international level, since struggles broke out during the same period in many countries, and in which the ICC was also able to intervene. To varying degrees, this was the case in Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Mexico.

What, then, were the main themes defended in the demonstrations, both through leaflets and territorial papers and during discussions?

-  In January 2023, a new international leaflet entitled “How can we fight together in a massive united movement?” highlighted the need to counter the work of division undertaken by the unions by developing solidarity beyond one's corporation, company, sector, town, region or country.

- Subsequently, while continuing to defend the same necessity, the ICC placed at the heart of its intervention the defence of self-organisation and methods of struggle that would create a balance of forces with the bourgeois state. The leaflet of 2 February "It’s not enough to come out in large numbers, we have to take control of our struggles!" and the third international leaflet “Everywhere the same question: How to develop the struggle? How to make governments back down?", was a response to this concern, which was being expressed more and more over the weeks, particularly in the discussions we had in demonstrations. In particular, we defended the need to create forums for discussion such as sovereign mass meetings open to all.

- Despite their many weaknesses, all these struggles did indeed express an attempt to create a collective force, united in solidarity, not as isolated individuals but as an exploited class confronting its exploiter.

The echoes of the struggle in France among British and German workers fully illustrated this.

So, one of the responsibilities of revolutionaries is precisely to contribute to the development of this effort to recover class identity. That's why we've always stressed the need to reappropriate the experience and history of the working class. Especially since this concern was spontaneously expressed in the struggle in France through the slogan “You give us 64, we'll give you May 68” brandished in every march from the beginning to the end of the movement. Or in the resurgence of the memory of the struggle against the CPE in 2006.

The leaflet “How did we win in 2006?” defended the experience of sovereign general assemblies, which had contributed to the movement's expansion and ultimately led to the government's retreat. A few weeks later, the fourth international leaflet, "Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, China…. We have to go further than in 1968!", extended this effort, but above all made it possible to defend more explicitly the historic challenge of the resumption of workers' struggles and the challenge it posed: the overthrow of capitalism and the victory of the proletarian revolution for the survival of humanity.

Overall, our various leaflets were always well received, the headlines often hitting the mark, and provoking reactions from demonstrators: "Yes, we're all in the same boat!", "Yes, we must all fight together!", "I've come from Germany and there are struggles there too!", "We're from Italy, and we've come to demonstrate with the French workers", "I was there in May '68, we must do the same thing again!", "Oh yes, we must indeed make the revolution!” These were the most significant reactions to the many discussions we were able to have. Of course, they remain a minority, and sometimes confused, but they express the effort of reflection that is taking place in the depths of the working class to recognise itself as a class, to take the struggle into its own hands and to develop the struggle that will enable the working class to take the road to revolution.

It was this historic dynamic at work that we highlighted in the leaflet taking stock of the struggle against pension reform on the last day of demonstrations on 6 June, when the desire to fight and struggle continued unabated. On several occasions, demonstrators agreed with the title of the leaflet, even telling us “We’ve lost a battle, but we haven't lost the war". So yes, "the fight is well and truly ahead of us!”

Our intervention was also accompanied by the distribution of hundreds of copies of the Third Manifesto of the ICC[1] which, faced with the ever more deadly and destructive spiral of capitalist society, defends tooth and nail that the future of humanity is in the hands of the working class. We believe that it is the responsibility of revolutionary organisations to explain to the working class, as clearly as possible, the historical conditions in which its struggle is taking place and what is at stake.

With the same approach, the ICC also organised two series of public meetings on the international class struggle in a number of countries. The first was on the theme: "We are not alone in mobilising... There are workers' struggles in many countries!” The second: “Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, China"… We need to go further than 1968!”[2].

These meetings were driven by a clear desire for clarification through a confrontation of the different positions involved. They were real proletarian debates where support, nuances, doubts and questioning, and even disagreements with the ICC’s positions were expressed. This active participation in the debates is an illustration of the slow maturation of consciousness which is taking place in depth within the world working class, and which is particularly evident among small minorities, often belonging to a new generation who are gradually renewing their links with the experience of the workers' movement and the Communist Left.

By intervening actively in the demonstrations, as well as in our web and paper press, the ICC has fully fulfilled its political responsibilities within the working class. The fruits of this intervention have been seen in the fact that new elements seeking class positions have made contact with the ICC and some have even come to take part in our public meetings.

While since last June, the momentum that began in the summer of 2022 in the United Kingdom seems to have reached a kind of "pause", the outbreak of strikes in the automobile sector in the United States clearly shows that the dynamic of struggle is continuing. For the ICC, these economic struggles are the privileged terrain for the class to develop its reflection and consciousness. It is the responsibility of revolutionary organisations to participate fully in these struggles in order to bring to maturity this vital effort for the development of the revolutionary struggle.

 

Vincent, 1 October 2023.