All across the world people expressed horror and revulsion at the Israeli massacres in Gaza. The purpose of this article is not to go over the details again, but the death toll, an estimated 1,200 or more Palestinians and 13 Israelis died in the conflict, shows quite clearly that this was not a struggle between two equal powers, but a massacre pure and simple. This is an important point that needs to be considered when looking at how communists understand conflicts like these.

Although in some countries there was support for Israel's so-called and even some protests supporting the massacres everywhere these were massively outnumbered by those demonstrating against the massacres, with massive demonstrations of hundreds of thousands taking place in Damascus, Madrid, Cairo, Istanbul, and even in Israel itself. Across the world it seems that even though many states refused to condemn or even supported the Israeli attack, there was little public support for it. In the ‘Islamic world' in particular condemnation of the attacks was almost unanimous with the demonstrations in Syria directly organised by the state, and here in Turkey President Gül somehow managing to decide "Israel's bombardment of Gaza shows disrespect to the Turkish Republic", and Tayip managing to become a minor international media star for a moment. In fact in Turkey as well as in the majority of Arab countries all political forces within society were united around the issue.

When this type of ‘national unity' emerges the first questions that revolutionaries need to be asking is whose class interests are being represented here. Invariably the answer will be not those of the working class.

In reality the Turkish political classes and the Israeli ones are in no way different. Anybody who listened to the Israeli politicians justifying the murders committed by their troops would have heard exactly the same line that we in Turkey have been listening to for years. The army was ‘defending innocent civilians against murderous terrorists'. We all know where we have heard those lines before. The lies used by the Israeli state to justify its war are exactly the same one, almost on a word for word basis, as those used by the Turkish state to justify its barbarism in the South-East and in the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq.

Of course, the hypocrisy of the ruling class is blatant for all to see. The arguments of some of the left organisations though are much more subtly. Ultimately they come down to supporting the Palestinian national Liberation movement and in particular HAMAS.  The vast majority of these organisations are well aware that HAMAS is a reactionary anti-working class organisation. Some will even remember the attacks on the teachers and public sector strikes in September 2006. However, they continue to argue that it is necessary for socialists to support HAMAS as they are the only force struggling against the Israelis, and the only force that can protect the Palestinian people.

The facts on the ground tend to dispute this though. The death toll shows that they are absolutely incapable of protecting the Palestinian people. The myth of the Palestinian struggle promoted by the left is one in which eventually these ‘brave national forces' will triumph over the ‘Israeli Zionist regime', and its propaganda tools are pictures of national flags, dead children, and beautiful young women with assault rifles. In fact there only seems to be one main problem with the whole conception, and that is that it has nothing at all to do with reality.

The Palestinian national movement will never be able to destroy Israel by itself. The casualty figures at the start of this article point out the reality very bluntly; for every Israeli that died nearly one hundred Palestinians did. Communists arguing for an internationalist position, no support for either side in the bosses' wars, have been told by members of the leftist organisations that the struggle is absolutely unequal and if you don't support HAMAS' struggle, you are lining up alongside the imperialists. Obviously they have a point here, the sides are unequal. However, whilst supporting the underdog may seem reasonable in a football match, for example when Haccetepe go to Fener, it is not really much of a political analysis.

Imperialism today is not only the USA and its allies. Imperialism is now a world system. All major countries have imperialistic interests. It is not only the USA, the British, and the French. Russia and China also have imperial interests as do much smaller countries like Turkey, Syria, and Iran, and in the struggles between these powers the interests of various national minorities count little more than the interests of pawns on a chessboard. The Kurdish example is a good one. Over the years, Kurdish nationalist organisations have allied themselves with all of the regional and major powers; the example of Syria's past support for the PKK is just one reasonably recent example from this country. National liberation movements in the modern epoch can be little more than tools in the struggles between different powers, and in this case in the struggle of Syria and Iran against Israel.

Let's be very clear about the realities of the situation; there is absolutely no possibility of a Palestinian victory at the moment. The ‘best' that they can hope for is some sort of ‘homeland' like the Bantustans in apartheid South Africa, where Palestinian police enforce Israeli order. At the moment there can not be a military defeat of Israel and its US backers. It is just not going to happen.

The only possibility that such a military defeat could come about would be if there were a massive change in the global balance of power, if the US were knocked down from its throne as overlord of the Middle East. It would need a new power or coalition of powers to arise to challenge American hegemony. Maybe in the future this could be done by China or even a re-emergent Russia. At the moment, though it doesn't seem very likely.

What would it mean if it were to happen? A change in the imperialist balance of power is not something that tends to happen peacefully. At the very least, it would mean a return to the days of the cold war struggle for power with proxy armies confronting each other all across the globe. At worst it would mean generalised war. For the Middle East it would almost certainly mean a further increase in the murderous cycle of national/ethnic/religious conflicts, which are dragging the region deeper and deeper into barbarism. A Palestinian victory in Gaza would mean new massacres, only this time it would be Arabs massacring Jews.

...And for the Palestinian working class? The history of national liberation movements can give us a good idea of what would await them. Victorious nationalist movements have a tendency to turn round and massacre working class or socialist supporters of those movements who want something more. The murder of thousands of workers and communists in Shanghai in 1927 is only one of the best known examples, but it is part of a long history that goes in this part of the world from Mustafa Suphi and the leaders of the TKP to Kurdish nationalists in Iraq shooting down striking cement factory workers today.

It is not the role of communists and revolutionaries to support the weaker side in a struggle. Nor is it their job to mobilise workers to die on behalf of their bosses. We come from a different tradition.

It is a tradition that puts class interests, not national interests first. It is the tradition of Lenin and of the revolutionary upsurges that put an end to the First World War.

It is a tradition that now as then says that workers have no country.

Sabri

A materialist conception of the origins of morals and civilisation 

On the occasion of the bicentenary of Darwin's birth and of the 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species, a multitude of books, each one with titles more mouth-watering than the other, has filled the bookshops. Numerous more or less scientific authors have suddenly discovered an attraction for Darwin, each one trying to earn the best seller of the year slot, especially after the grand success of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (which has sold over two million copies world wide). For the ‘public at large', it is thus rather difficult to find one's bearings among all these books on science. For our part, we have chosen the one by Patrick Tort[1], L'effet Darwin, Selection naturelle et naissance de la civilisation (Editions du Seuil) - The Darwin Effect, Natural Selection and the Birth of Civilisation, which offers us a very enlightening explanation of the materialist conception of morals and of civilisation in Darwin's thought. 

Darwin and the natural selection of social instincts

To our knowledge, Patrick Tort is the only author who has bypassed the media focus on The Origin of Species and presented and explained the second great work of Darwin (less well known and often badly interpreted), The Descent of Man, published in 1871.

Patrick Tort's book shows very clearly how Darwin's epigones grabbed hold of the theory of descent with modification through natural selection, developed in The Origin of Species, and took advantage of Darwin's long silence on the origins of man in order to justify eugenics (theorised by Galton) and ‘social Darwinism' (initiated by Herbert Spencer).

Contrary to an idea that predominated for a long time, Darwin never adhered ideologically to the Malthusian theory of the elimination of the weakest in the social struggle brought about by demographic growth. In The Origin of Species he simply used this theory as a model for explaining the mechanisms of organic evolution. It is thus totally wrong to attribute to Darwin the paternity for all the ultra-liberal ideologies advocating unbridled individualism, capitalist competition and the ‘law of the strongest'.

In his fundamental work, The Descent of Man, Darwin is actually categorically opposed to any mechanical and schematic application of elimination by natural selection to the human species that has embarked on the path of civilisation. Patrick Tort explains in a remarkably well-argued and convincing manner, supported by numerous quotes, how Darwin saw the application of his law of evolution to man and human societies.

In the first place, Darwin connected mankind phylogenetically to the animals, more precisely to the common ancestry it must have had to the catarrhini apes of the distant past. He argued that there was a natural transformation into the human species, showing that natural selection had also fashioned man's biological history. Nevertheless, according to Darwin, natural selection did not only select beneficial organic variations, but also the instincts, and more particularly the social instincts, throughout animal evolution. These social instincts culminated in the human species and have fused together with the development of rational intelligence (and thus of reflective consciousness).

This joint evolution of social instincts and of intelligence was accompanied in man by the ‘indefinite extension' of moral feelings and altruist sympathy. It is the mot altruistic individuals and groups, the ones most capable of showing solidarity, who have an evolutionary advantage over other groups.

As for the supposed ‘racism' which Darwin is accused of to this day, one passage suffices to refute the charge:

"As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately show us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures".

(The Descent of Man, chapter IV)[2]

According to Patrick Tort, Darwin gives us a naturalist, and thus materialist explanation for the origins of morality and culture.  

Concerning the origins of morality in particular, it's in the chapters of The Descent of Man that deal with sexual selection that we find his most striking observations.  Patrick Tort explains that, according to Darwin, the prime vector of altruism among numerous animal species (mainly mammals and birds) resides in the indissolubly natural and social instinct of reproduction. Thus the development and ostentatious display of birds' secondary sexual characteristics (bills, nuptial plumage and other decorative excrescences) carries with it a ‘threat of death': "Covered in its heavy and splendid mating plumage, the Bird of Paradise is certainly irresistible, but can hardly fly any more and is thus in great danger from predators. As for the females, they will take care of their progeny and, in order to defend the offspring, may put themselves in danger. The social instincts thus have an evolutionary history, and contain the possibility of self-sacrifice, culminating in human morality. Darwin thus produces a genealogy of morals without any reference to extra-natural agencies" (Patrick Tort, Darwin et la science de l'évolution, Editions Découvertes/Gallimard).

Finally, contrary to the received idea that Darwin was a fervent promoter of the inequality of the sexes by giving an advantage to the ‘stronger' sex, quite the opposite is the case if you look at it from the perspective of evolutionary tendencies. For Darwin (and it is here that he connects to the vision of Engels in The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, as well as August Bebel in his book Woman and Socialism), it is the females (and by extension women) who are the first bearers of the altruistic instincts: in the animal kingdom, it is the females who choose the reproductive male and, as a result, make an ‘object choice' (the first form of the recognition of otherness), just as it is they who most often expose themselves to predators to protect their young.

The theory of the ‘reverse effect of evolution'

Thanks to his remarkable mastery of the work of Darwin and of dialectics, Patrick Tort comes to develop a theory (which he had already elaborated in 1983 in his book La pensée hierarchique et l'évolution) of the ‘reverse effect of evolution'.

What is this theory?

It can be summarised by a very simple phrase: "through the social instincts, natural selection selects culture, which is opposed to natural selection"

To avoid paraphrases, let's cite a passage from Tort's book:

"Through the bias of social instincts, natural selection, without any ‘leap' or rupture, has thus selected its opposite, i.e: an ensemble of normative, anti-eliminatory forms of social behaviour - thus anti-selective in the sense that the term selection is given in the theory developed in the origin of species. And thus, correlatively, an anti-selective ethic (= anti-eliminatory), translated into principles, rules of conduct and laws. The progressive evolution of morality appears therefore as a phenomenon that cannot be disassociated from evolution, and this is a logical conclusion of Darwin's materialism and of the inevitable extension of the theory of natural selection to the explanation for the destiny of human societies. But this extension, which too many theoreticians, their vision distorted by the screen erected around Darwin by the evolutionist philosophy of Spencer, have hastily interpreted through the false and simplistic model of liberal  ‘social Darwinism' (the application to human societies of the principle of the elimination of the weakest in a context of a generalised competition for survival) can only be understood in a rigorous way through the modality of the reverse effect, which obliges us to see the reversal of the selective mechanism as the basis for accessing the stage of ‘civilisation'....The reverse operation is the correct basis for drawing the distinction between nature and culture while avoiding the trap of a magical ‘break' between the two terms: evolutionary continuity, through this mechanism of progressive reversal linked to the development (itself selected) of social instincts, produces in this way not an effective break, but the effect of a break which derives from the fact that natural selection, in the course of its own evolution, subjects itself to its own law - its newly selected form, which favours the protection of the ‘weak', taking over from the previous form of the elimination of the weak because it is more advantageous. The new advantage is thus no longer of a biological nature: it has become social".

The "reverse effect of evolution" is thus this movement of progressive turnaround which produces the "effect of a break" without thereby provoking an effective break in the process of natural selection[3]. As Patrick Tort explains very clearly, the advantage gained from the natural selection of social instincts is no longer, for the human species, of a biological order, but has developed into something social.

In Darwin's thought, there is thus materialist continuity in the link between social instincts, cognitive and rational advances, and morality and civilisation. This theory of the "reverse effect of evolution" provides a scientific explanation of the origins of morality and culture, and thus has the merit of cutting through the false dilemma between nature and culture, continuity and discontinuity, biology and society, the innate and the acquired, etc.

 

Darwin's anthropology and the perspective of communism

 

In the article published on our website ‘Darwin and the workers' movement', we recalled how marxists welcomed the work of Darwin, particularly his principal work, The Origin of Species. Marx and Engels, as soon as Darwin's book appeared, immediately recognised in his theory an approach analogous to that of historical materialism. On 11 December 1859, Engels wrote a letter to Marx in which he says "Darwin, by the way, whom I'm reading just now, is absolutely splendid... Never before has so grandiose an attempt been made to demonstrate historical evolution in Nature"

One year later, on 19 December 1860, Marx, after reading The Origin of Species, wrote to Engels: "here is the book which contains the basis, in natural history, for our ideas". Nevertheless, some time afterwards, in another letter to Engels dated 18 June 1862, Marx went back on his judgement by making this unfounded criticism of Darwin: "It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘inventions' and Malthusian ‘struggle for existence'. It is Hobbes' bellum omnium contra omnes and is reminiscent of Hegel's Phenomenology, in which civil society figures as an ‘intellectual animal kingdom', whereas, in Darwin, the animal kingdom figures as civil society".

Engels also took up this criticism by Marx in Anti-Duhring (where Engels alluded to Darwin's "Malthusian blunder") and in The Dialectics of Nature.

Because of Darwin's long silence on the question of human origins (he didn't publish The Descent of Man until 1871, eleven years after The Origin of Species[4]), his epigones, notably Galton and Spencer, exploited the theory of natural selection to apply it schematically to contemporary society. The Origin of Species was thus assimilated in a facile manner to the Malthusian theory of the "law of the strongest" in the struggle for survival.

Unfortunately, Darwin's long silence on the origins of man contributed to sowing confusion for Marx and Engels, who, not having become aware of Darwin's anthropology (which was not developed until 1871[5]) mixed up Darwin's thinking with the fundamentalist liberalism or obsession with purification promulgated by two of Darwin's epigones.

The history of the relations between Marx and Darwin, between Marxism and Darwinism, was thus that of a ‘missed rendez-vous' (to use an expression of Patrick Tort's in certain of his public conferences). Not altogether however, because despite his criticisms of 1862, Marx continued to hold Darwin's materialism in great respect. Although he hadn't yet become aware of The Descent of Man, in 1872 Marx offered a copy of the German edition of his major work, Das Kapital, with this dedication "To Charles Darwin, from a sincere admirer". When this book is opened today (it's in the library of the house where Darwin lived) you can see that only the first few pages have been cut. Darwin thus paid little attention to Marx's theory because economics seemed to him to be outside his sphere of competence. However, one year later, in 1873, he gave evidence of his sympathy in a thank-you letter: "Dear sir; I thank you for the honour that you have done me by sending me your great work on Capital and I heartily wish that I was more worthy to receive it, but understanding more of the deep and important subject of political economy. Though our studies have been so different, I believe that we both earnestly desire the extension of knowledge and that this in the long run is sure to add to the happiness of Mankind. I remain, Dear Sir, Yours faithfully, Charles Darwin."

This is how the two rivers, despite the ‘missed rendez-vous', did to some extent mix their waters.

Furthermore, the workers' movement, after Marx, did not take up the latter's criticism of Darwin from 1862. And this was the case even though the great majority of marxist theoreticians (including Anton Pannekoek, in his pamphlet Marxism and Darwinism) rather left The Descent of Man to one side.

Certainly Pannekoek, like Kautsky (in his book Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History) saluted Darwin's theory of social instincts. But they didn't fully understand that Darwin had formulated a theory of the genealogy of morals and civilisation and a materialist vision of their origins. A theory which, in many respects, joins up with the monist conception of history and leads finally to the perspective of communism, that is to say, the aspiration towards the unification of humanity in a world human community. Such was Darwin's ethics, even though he wasn't a marxist and had no revolutionary conception of the class struggle.

In a way, you can say today that if there hadn't been this ‘missed rendez-vous' between Marx and Darwin at the end of the 19th century, it is very probable that Marx and Engels would have accorded to The Descent of Man the same importance as L H Morgan's study of primitive communism, Ancient Society (which Engels drew on heavily on for his Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State).

Neither Morgan nor Darwin were marxists; nevertheless, their contributions (the first in the domain of ethnology, the latter in the domain of the natural sciences) remain a considerable acquisition of the workers' movement.

Today the human species is confronted with the unprecedented outbreak of ‘every man for himself', the ‘war of each against all', of competition exacerbated by the historic bankruptcy of capitalism.

Faced with the decomposition of this decadent system, the world working class, the class of associated producers, must more than ever favour, through its combat against capitalist barbarism, the extension of the social feelings of the human species in order to develop a revolutionary consciousness in its ranks. This is the only way that humanity can go onto the stage that follows civilisation: communist society, the real world human community, founded on unity and solidarity[6].

Sofiane 23. 3 09

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[1] Patrick Tort is attached to the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He is the editor of the monumental Dictionnaire du darwinisme et de l'évolution. He set up and directs the Institut Charles Darwin International (www.charlesdarwin.fr [4]) and has devoted 30 years of his life to the study of the work of Darwin, whose entire work he proposes to translate into French in the framework of the Institut (35 volumes are envisaged , to be published by Slatkine: two volumes have already appeared)

[2] It should also be pointed out that Darwin was ferociously opposed to slavery and on a number of occasions denounced the barbarism of colonisation.

[3] To illustrate his theory, Patrick Tort uses a topological metaphor, that of the Möbius strip, which enables us to understand how, thanks to a gradual reverse process, you can go over to the "other side" of the strip without any discontinuity (see the demonstration of this ‘effect of a break' without a punctual break in The Darwin Effect) 

[4] Darwin didn't want to provoke too quickly a new ‘shock' in the right-minded society of his day. This is why he preferred to wait until the first ‘shock' of The Origin of Species had died down before going any further. It was not at all evident that even among his peers in the scientific community the idea of man having a common ancestor with the great apes would be readily accepted

[5] When Darwin decided to publish The Descent of Man in 1871, Marx and Engels were not paying attention because they were too preoccupied by the events of the Paris Commune and the organisational difficulties in the International Workingmen's Association, which was being subjected to the manoeuvres of Bakunin.

[6] Obviously this ‘communist' society has nothing to do with Stalinism, with the state capitalist regimes which dominated the USSR and the eastern countries up until 1989. Its real contours were presented in the Communist Manifesto of 1848 or Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (Marx, 1875), especially in the following passage: "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"  

 

David Blanchflower was the man on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee who correctly predicted that the official figure for unemployment in the UK would reach 2 million when it did. He now says that rising jobless figures have "the taste of something horrible" and he "could easily see unemployment reaching 4 million."

As this forecast seems perfectly possible there will soon be lots of people being put through the indignities of Labour's New Deal scheme, introduced in 1998. If you're under 25 and have been claiming for more than 6 months, or over 25 and claiming for more than 18 months, you can be put on the New Deal, which at some point leads to a 26 week (if under 25) or 13 week (if over 25) period with a "training provider".

Technically speaking you're no longer signing on as you're supposedly on a ‘course', and, therefore, not included in the unemployment statistics. Figures from a year ago show that 1.25 million under-25s have been on New Deal provisions: 890,000 once, 250,000 twice and nearly 80,000 three times. As for future prospects, while there are, at the moment, officially 150,000 long term unemployed (out of work for more than 12 months), very conservative estimates suggest that this is likely to increase by 300 to 400% over the next three years. So, one way or another, there's a reasonable chance that one day you too will end up on an "Intensive Activity Period option" - just like I am at the moment.

Pressure, threats ... but good company

The reason you go on the "programme" is because your Job Seekers Allowance and any other benefits are under threat if you don't. Right from the start it's emphasised that if you miss sessions, or your time keeping is poor, or any other misdemeanour, you could get "exited" from the "programme", which would mean losing benefits.

You are supposed to have an "individually tailored programme to help you back into work." In reality, you are told that during your 30 hours a week you will apply for 5 jobs a day and get 2 interviews a week. In a period of rising unemployment it's a bit of puzzle how this is going to work out. In the 12 Inner London boroughs there are officially 4,000 vacancies but 71,000 claimants. In places like Hackney, Oldham, Redcar and Lewisham the ratio of jobless to vacancies (using the official figures) is about 30 to 1. It's easy to see how hundreds are often chasing one job, but hard to see how we're all going to get an interview.

The facilities for "Job Search Activities" are limited. There are about 150 of us here, but only 100 computers, most of which have been disabled of all but the most basic functions. The only phones are on the desks of "advisers". This means that a lot of people spend all the day, all the week, just reading the paper, listening to music or chatting with fellow inmates. On Friday there's a bit of excitement as we queue for 45 minutes for the £2.90 we can claim for travel expenses. Sometimes you find something funny online, like the post that was mistakenly advertised at "£19k per hour." Also, a lot of us haven't got over the novelty of Google's Street View yet.

The good thing about the experience is that we're an interesting crowd; everyone has their own story. There is a guy who is retiring in 6 weeks time, but has been told to do as much of the 13 weeks of the "programme" as he can. They even want him to do a 4-week placement for "work experience." There's a man who was taken off a horticulture course so he can sit around here all day doing nothing. A man who just wants to stack shelves won't be helped by the notice on the wall listing websites like woolworthscareers.co.uk. A Nigerian woman, in between searching for jobs, finds out where the Anglo-Saxons came from. A musician works out that King Tubby and Bob Marley were both born on a Tuesday. I'm here sitting writing an article, pleased at having worked out that the Tohono O'odham were called Papago by the Spanish.

At some point you have to do a four week placement, where you work for free in the hope that you might get an up-to-date reference. If you're looking for office work they'll send you to a warehouse. If you're a painter/decorator you'll get sent to a charity shop. In fact a lot of people go to charity shops; next time you're in one you'd do well to remember that the staff aren't necessarily there out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they'll lose their benefits if they aren't.

And after our 13 or 26 weeks is over we'll go back to the Job Centre and make a ‘new' claim. We're no longer part of the long-term unemployed because we've been in detention for 3 or 6 months, when, of course, we didn't count as being unemployed at all.

Doleful 30/3/9

Faced with the strike movement that shook Guadeloupe, Martinique, and, to a lesser extent, La Réunion, the French state finally stepped back and gave in to nearly all the workers' demands.

In Guadeloupe, the ‘Jacques Bino' accord (named after the trade unionist murdered during the riots at the end of February) and signed 26 February, and the general text published on 5 March, containing a 200 euro increase in wages for the low paid and integrating the 146 demands of the LKP[1] on buying power (bread prices, employment of teachers...). In Martinique, a similar agreement was signed on 10 March, containing a rise in wages for the low paid and recognition of the 62 demands of the ‘February 5 Collective'[2]. In La Réunion, the situation is more fluid. At the time of writing, the accord proposed by the state (150 euros for the low paid and nothing very precise regarding the 62 other demands) has not yet been signed by COSPAR[3]. Discussions are still underway. But even if these negotiations don't fully bear fruit, they still indicate a certain retreat by the French bourgeoisie.

Why did the bourgeoisie give in? What was it afraid of? How did the workers manage to win these demands? What was the strength of the movement? Replying to these questions will help us prepare for the struggles of the future.

The strength of the movement in the Antilles

Without doubt, the main strength of the struggle in the Antilles was the breadth of the movement. For 44 days in Guadeloupe and 38 days in Martinique, the working class mobilised itself massively, paralysing the whole economy. Enterprises, ports, shops...everything was blocked[4].

If such a long and intense struggle was possible, it is not only because it was carried forward by enormous anger against growing pauperisation, but also by a profound feeling of solidarity. The first demonstration in Guadeloupe, on 20 January, brought 15,000 people together. Three weeks later, there were over 100,000 demonstrators - nearly a quarter of the population! This growing force was to a large extent the result of the workers' permanent quest for solidarity. The strikers did all they could to extend the struggle as rapidly as possible: from 29 January, roaming groups of strikers regularly went around Point-à-Pitre and its environs, street to street, business to business, in order to draw a growing part of the working class and the population behind the movement.  

The second source of strength was the tendency for the workers to take the struggle into their own hands. It is true that the LKP played an important role, that it drew up the platform of demands and that it led all the negotiations. But this said, in the media, everything was presented as if the working class was blindly obeying the LKP and doing nothing but following Elie Domota, the LKP's charismatic leader. But this was quite false! The LKP was set up to control and channel the discontent and prevent the self-organisation of the struggle by the workers from going too far. Thus, one of the crucial elements of the movement in Guadeloupe was the broadcasting of the negotiations between the LKP and the state on radio and TV. In the chronology of events written by the LKP[5], we can read: "Saturday 24 January: a big surge in the streets of Pointe-à-Pitre - 25,000 demonstrators. Invitation to all parties to attend the negotiations at 16:30 at the World Trade Centre...open discussion on the accord. Exceptional presence of Channel 10 who recorded and then broadcast the proceedings" (our emphasis). The next day, another "big surge" pulled in 40,000 people! The broadcasting of the negotiations mobilised so many people because they felt that this was their struggle and it should not just be in the hands of a few ‘trade union experts' negotiating in secret in the offices of the state. The direct public broadcasting of the negotiations (on Channel 10, RFO and Radyo Tambou) was systematised in the week that followed, up until 5 February. On that day, the secretary of state Yves Jégo, seeing with his own eyes how the struggle was unfolding, demanded that the broadcasts stop right away. The LKP only protested very feebly because this ‘collective' was, due to its trade union nature, much more at ease with secret negotiations among ‘experts' (which proves that it only originally accepted the broadcasting of the talks under the pressure of the workers).

This movement therefore had a very considerable intrinsic strength; but this alone doesn't explain why the French state gave in and accepted a 200 euro increase for the lower paid. What's more, the bourgeoisie also made concessions on La Réunion even though the movement there was much weaker. In fact, the unions, via the COSPAR collective, had partly managed to sabotage the movement by calling for the demonstration on 5 March, the day the general strike on Guadeloupe ended, insisting that it was not following the model of the "Antilles movement" (le Point, 4 March). The Collective thus made sure that the strike would be isolated. And in fact without the locomotive of the struggle in Guadeloupe, the demonstrations of 5 and 10 March on La Réunion were semi-failures, with a much smaller participation than expected (around 20,000 and 10,000 people respectively). And yet, as we have said, here too the French state gave in. Why?

Workers' anger and militancy is developing in all countries

In fact, the mobilisations in the Antilles and La Réunion took place in a general context of rising workers' militancy.

In Britain, for example, there were the strikes in the oil refineries at the end of January. Despite all the efforts to create divisions between ‘British' and ‘foreign' workers, the beginnings of a tendency towards unity between the two (for example, the joining of the strike by Polish workers at Langage and the raising of internationalist banners in opposition to the nationalist ones that had predominated at the beginning) convinced the ruling class that it should bring the strike to an end quickly, announcing the creation of 102 new jobs[6].

The bourgeoisie, at the international level, has no desire to see a struggle taking on a real breadth and giving ideas to workers in other countries. Especially when the struggle uses methods like massive delegations going from workplace to workplace, control of the struggle by the workers themselves, using the radio to keep an eye on negotiations, etc....

And this was also the case in France. The French state quickly gave ground in La Réunion because a big demonstration was about to take place in France on 19 March. It was vital for the ruling class to put a stop to this whole general strike business in the Antilles in order to prevent it having a bad influence on the workers in France itself. The paper Libération clearly expressed this fear of the French bourgeoisie in an article written on 6 March: "Contagion. In Paris, this ‘revolt' which has seized hold the overseas départments was poorly understood by the power. Except for Yves Jégo who very quickly got the point. But out of fear of contagion, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Fillon, who after shilly-shallying and hoping the movement would run out of steam, ended up opening the state's coffers"[7].

The real victory is the struggle itself

So the struggle in the islands was victorious. The 200 euro raise for the low paid was not negligible. But there's no room for illusions. The living conditions of the working class in the islands, as everywhere else, are inevitably going to worsen.

Already the bourgeoisie is trying to claw back some of what it's given away. Of the 200 euro increase, 100 will come from the central state, 50 from regional authorities and 50 from the bosses. But the Medef (bosses' organisation) has already announced that it will only give part of the increases, if at all (and even then according to different branches and sectors). The same goes for the regional authorities. As for the central state, it's commitment is only for two years. As Charles Pasqua put it, "the promises were only made to those who were listening": the cynicism and hypocrisy of the ruling class could hardly be more naked.

Under the blows of the crisis, pauperisation is going to increase. Wage increases, even if they make a difference in the short term, will be rapidly wiped out by price rises. And already, in Martinique, 10,000 jobs are about to be cut.

The real victory of the movement is the struggle itself! These experience are so many lessons for the struggles of the future. They show the exploited where their strength really lies: in their unity, solidarity, and confidence, in their ability to take control of their own struggles.

Pawel 26.3.09

 

 

 

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[1] The LKP (Lyannaj kont profitasyon - United against Superexploitation) was the collective regrouping 49 trade union, political, cultural and other organisations, which on 20 January drew up a platform of demands.

[2] A collective set up on the model of the LKP at the beginning of the movement in Martinique, on the 5 February. It regrouped 25 union, political and cultural organisations

 

[3]COSPAR: a similar collective on La Réunion

[4] see our article ‘Massive struggle shows us the way: solidarity with the workers of the Antilles [9]'

 

[5] Source : www.lkp-gwa.org/chronologie.htm [10]

[6] See our article ‘Oil refinery and power station strikes: Workers begin to challenge nationalism [11]'

[7] Source : www.liberation.fr/politiques/0101513929-la-societe-guadeloupeenne-entre-... [12]