We are publishing a call to arms to workers of the world by participants in the "General Assembly Gare de l'Est and Île de France" against the worldwide wave of imposed austerity measures.

To the workers, unemployed, and students of Europe

We are a group of workers from different industries and sectors (railway workers, teachers, tech workers, casuals...), both in work and unemployed. During the recent strikes in France, we came together to form an All Trades General Assembly, first on one of the platforms of the Gare de l’Est (mainline station in Paris), then in a room at the “Bourse du Travail”. Our aim was to bring together as many workers as possible from towns in the Paris region. Because we had had enough of the unions’ class collaboration, leading us yet again to yet another defeat, we wanted to organise by ourselves to try to unify the different sectors on strike, to spread the strike, and to have the strikers themselves control their own movement.

Against the capitalists’ social war, the workers must wage a class war

In Britain, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, France... everywhere we are under heavy attack. Our living conditions are getting worse.

• In Britain, the Cameron government has announced that 500,000 jobs are to go in the public sector, £7bn of cuts are planned in social budgets, university fees have tripled, etc...

• In Ireland, the Cowen government has just lowered the minimum hourly wage by 1 euro (more than 10%), and pensions by 9%.

• In Portugal, workers are facing record unemployment. In Spain, the thoroughly “socialist” Zapatero is cutting everywhere: unemployment benefit, social security, health...

• In France, the government continues to break up our living conditions. After our pensions, comes the health service. Access to health care is getting more and more difficult and expensive: more and more drugs are no longer reimbursed, health care plans are increasing their charges, hospitals are cutting down on staff. Like all the other public services (the Post Office, gas and electricity, telecoms), the health service is being broken up and privatised. As a result, millions of working class families are unable to get care!

This policy is vital for the capitalists. Faced with the development of the crisis and the collapse of whole sectors of the capitalist economy, they find it more and more difficult to find markets where their capital can make a profit. They are therefore all the more in a hurry to privatise public services.

However, these new markets offer fewer productive outlets than do the pillars of the world economy like construction, oil, or the car industry. Even in the most favourable circumstances, they will not allow the economy to take off again.

In this context of general collapse, the fight for markets between the great international trusts will be ever more bitter. It will be a question of life or death for the investors of capital. In this struggle, every capitalist will take refuge behind his state to defend himself. In the name of the defence of the national economy, the capitalists will try to drag us into their economic war.

In this war, the victims are always... the workers. For behind the defence of the national economy, every national ruling class, every state, every boss will try to reduce “costs” in order to maintain their “competitiveness”. Concretely, they will not stop attacking our living and working conditions. If we let them get away with it, if we agree to “tighten our belts”, there will be no end to these sacrifices. They will end up putting our very lives in question!

Workers, let us refuse to let ourselves be divided by trade, by branch, or by nation. Let us refuse to wage this economic war within or across national borders. Let us fight together, and unite in struggle! Never were Marx’s words more urgent: “Workers of all countries, unite!”

It is up to us workers to control our own struggles

Today, it is the workers in Greece and Spain, the students in Britain, who are in struggle against governments which – whether right or left – are the servants of the ruling classes. And just like us in France, you are up against governments which do not hesitate to use violent repression against the workers, the unemployed, the university and school students.

This autumn in France, we tried to defend ourselves. We went into the streets by millions to refuse to accept this new attack. We fought against the new law on pensions, and against all the austerity measures which we are subjected to. We said “No!” to the rise in poverty and casualisation.

But the Intersyndicale (joint committee of the unions at national and local level, translator’s note) intentionally led us to defeat by fighting against any extension of the strike movement:

-          instead of breaking down the barriers between trades and branches to unite workers, it kept the mass meetings in each workplace closed to other workers;

-          it undertook spectacular actions to “block the economy” but did nothing to organise strike pickets or flying pickets which might have drawn other workers into the struggle – which is what some workers and casuals tried to do;

-          it negotiated our defeat behind our backs, and behind the closed doors of cabinet ministries.

The Intersyndicale never rejected the law on pensions, it even repeated over and over again that it was “necessary” and “inevitable”! To listen to the unions, we should have been satisfied with demanding “more negotiations between government, unions, and employers”, or “more measures to make the law a fairer reform”...

To struggle against all these attacks, we can count on nobody but ourselves. As far as we are concerned, we defended in this movement the necessity for workers to organise in their workplaces in sovereign mass meetings (“general assemblies”), to coordinate the strike nationally and to have it run by elected, immediately revocable delegates. Only a struggle led, organised, and controlled by all workers – both in terms of its methods and its aims – can create the conditions necessary for victory.

We know that the fight isn’t finished: the attacks will continue, conditions will be more and more difficult, and the consequences of the capitalist crisis will only get worse. Everywhere in the world, we will have to fight. And for that we must once again find confidence in our own strength:

-          We can take control of our own struggles and organise collectively.

-          We can discuss together openly and fraternally, we can speak freely with each other.

-          We can control of our own discussions and our own decisions.

Our mass meetings must be controlled not by the unions, but by the workers themselves.

We will have to fight to defend our lives and our children’s future!

The exploited of the whole world are brothers and sisters of one and the same class!

Only our unity across all national borders can overthrown this system of exploitation.

Participants of the AG InterPro “Gare de l’Est et Île de France”

Contact us at [email protected] [6]

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY OF THE WHOLE WORKING CLASS!

For several weeks now we’ve seen an uprising in Tunisia against the misery and unemployment which is particularly hitting the young. All over the country, street demonstrations, meetings, strikes have spontaneously broken out protesting against the regime of Ben Ali. The protestors are demanding bread, work for the young and the right to live in dignity. Faced with this revolt of the exploited and youth deprived of a future, the dominant class has responded with a hail of bullets. These protestors are our class brothers and these are their children who are massacred in the demonstrations and whose blood flows today in Tunisia as in Algeria! The killers, and those that command them at the heads of the Tunisian and Algerian states, reveal in all its horror the real face of our exploiters and of the domination of the capitalist system across the earth. These assassins are not content to make us die of misery and hunger, it’s not enough for them to push into suicide dozens of youths reduced to despair, no, they also kill us with volleys of bullets fired at the demonstrations. Police units deployed at Thala, Sidi Bouzid, Tunis and above all Kasserine, have not hesitated to fire into the crowd killing, in cold blood, men, women and children, making it dozens of deaths since the beginning of the confrontations. Faced with this carnage, the bourgeoisies of the ‘democratic’ countries, and notably France the faithful ally of Ben Ali, have not raised a finger to condemn the barbarity of the regime and demand that the repression stops. Nothing surprising there. All governments, all the states are complicit! The world bourgeoisie is a class of murderers and assassins.

What’s really happening in Tunisia and Algeria?

It all began Friday December 17, in the centre of the country, following the self-immolation of a young unemployed graduate of 26 years old, Mohamed Bouazizi, after the local police of Sidi Bouzid confiscated his sole means of support which was a cart and some fruit and vegetables he was selling from it. Immediately a vast movement of solidarity and indignation developed in the region. From December 19, totally peaceful demonstrations broke out against unemployment, misery and the cost of living (protestors brandished baguettes!). Straightaway the government responded with repression which only accentuated the anger of the population.

A two-day strike of non-urgent medical staff started on December 22 by university doctors protesting against their lack of means and the degradation of their conditions of work. It also involved the medical-university centres of the country. Also on December 22, another young man, Houcine Neji, killed himself in front of the crowd at Menzel Bouzaiane, by gripping hold of a high tension cable “I don’t want any more misery and unemployment” he cried. Other suicides strengthened the indignation and anger still more. December 24, a young demonstrator of 18, Mohamed Ammari, was killed by police bullets. Another, Chawki Hidri, was seriously wounded and died on the first of January. To date the provisional list of deaths by bullets numbers 65!

Faced with the repression, the movement very quickly spread to the whole of the country. Unemployed graduates demonstrated on December 25 and 26 in the centre of Tunis. Meetings and demonstrations of solidarity developed throughout the country: Sfax, Kairouan, Thala, Bizerte, Sousse, Meknessi, Souk, Jedid, Ben Gardane, Medenine, Siliana... Despite the repression, despite the absence of freedom of expression, demonstrators brandished placards reading: “Today, we are no longer afraid!”.

December 27 and 28: lawyers joined in the movement of solidarity with the population of Sidi Bouzid. Faced with the repression meted out to them, arrests and being beaten up, the lawyers called for a general strike on January 6. Strike movements also affected journalists in Tunis and teachers in Bizerte. As Jeune Afrique of January 9 indicated, the social movement of protest and the coming together in the streets was totally spontaneous and was outside of the direction and control of political organisations and the unions: “The first certainty is that the movement of protest is above all social and spontaneous. This is confirmed by credible sources. ‘No party, no movement can pretend that it is directing the street or that it’s capable of stopping it’, declared the regional section of the Tunisian general union (UGTT)”.

A total blackout of information was organised. In the region of Sidi Bouzid, several localities were placed under a curfew and the army was mobilised. At Menzel Bouzaiane, the wounded could not be transported to hospital, the population lacked provisions and schools were used as lodgings by police reinforcements.

In order to try to restore calm, Ben Ali broke his silence and made a 13-minute long public declaration in which he promised to create 300,000 jobs in 2011-12 and to free all the demonstrators except those who had committed acts of vandalism. He dismissed his interior minister using him as a safety-trip and at the same time denounced the “orchestrated” politics of a minority of “extremists” and “terrorists” who were trying to harm the interests of the country.

This provocative speech, which criminalised the movement, could only galvanise the anger of the population and particularly its youth. From January 3rd, schoolchildren mobilised themselves and used mobile phones and the internet, notably Facebook and Twitter, to call for a general strike for all pupils. They demonstrated on January 3 and 4 and were joined by unemployed graduates at Thala. The young demonstrators were faced with truncheons and tear gas from the forces of repression. During the course of these confrontations the seat of government was invaded and the centre of the party in power was set on fire. The call for a national strike of pupils, relayed through the internet, was followed in several towns. At Tunis, Sfax, Sidi Bouzid, Bizerte, Grombalia, Jbeniana, Sousse, schoolchildren joined up with the unemployed. Meetings of solidarity also took place in Hammamet and Kasserine.

The revolt spreads to the universities

At the same time, in Algeria on January 4, in the small town of Kolea to the west of the Algerian capital, a number of impatient and angry workers and unemployed came onto the streets. The same day, dockers at the port of Algiers began a strike against an agreement between the port authority and the union cutting out supplementary payments for night work. The strikers refused to give in to an appeal by union representatives to suspend the strike. Here also the anger rumbled on; for these workers having a miserable wage, feeding themselves and their families is a daily preoccupation with the same content as unemployed youth in Tunis or Alger. The next day, the movement of revolt spread in Algeria notably to the coastal region and in Kabylia (Oran, Tipaza, Bejaia...) around the same social demands: they too are faced with endemic youth unemployment and the lack of lodgings, forcing them to live with their parents or to be crowded into unsuitable rooms (in the suburbs of Algiers these are found in profusion in the city quarters built in the 1950s and now resembling shanty-towns where the inhabitants are regularly harassed by the aggressive forces of the police). The response of the government wasn’t long in coming: immediately the forces of repression hit and hit hard. In the quarter of Bab el Oued in Algiers alone the wounded counted in the hundreds. But here also the ferocious repression of the Algerian state contributed to increasing the anger. In a few days, the demonstration spread to twenty departments (wilayas). Official reports were of 3 dead (at M’Silla, Tipaza and Boumerdes). The demonstrators are angry: “We can’t carry on like this and we don’t want to”, “We have nothing to lose”. These are the cries that you hear most often on the streets of Algeria. The immediate detonator for these outbursts was the brutal increase in the price of basic necessities announced on the first of January: the price of cereals increased by 30%, oil 20% and sugar shot up 80%! After 5 days of repression and lies about the demonstrations, Bouteflika took a step back to try to lower the tension: he promised a reduction of prices in the products that had been put up.

In Tunisia on January 5, during a funeral of the young vegetable seller who killed himself at Sidi Bouzid, anger was overflowing. A crowd of 5000 people marched being the funeral cortege crying in indignation “We won’t cry today, we will make those that caused his death cry”. The procession turned into a demonstration and the crowd stressed slogans against the cost of living which “led Mohamed to kill himself” and shouted “Shame on the government!” The same evening the police proceeded with heavy-handed arrests of demonstrators at Jbedania and Thals. Some youths were arrested or chased by armed police.

January 6, the general strike by lawyers is 95% solid. Elsewhere, in the centre, the south and the east of the country, strikes, street demonstrations, confrontations with the police are taking place and the agitation even spreads to the wealthier towns of the eastern coastal region.

The police are deployed in front of schools and all the universities in the country. At Sfax, Jbeniana, Tajerouine, Siliana, Makhter, Tela demonstrations of schoolchildren, students and inhabitants are brutally dispersed by the police. At Sousse, the faculty of Human Sciences is assaulted by the forces of order which proceed to arrest students. The government decides to close all schools and universities.

Faced with the repression of the movement, on January 7, in the towns of Regueb and Saida close to Sidi Bouzid, confrontations between demonstrators and police result in 6 wounded. Some demonstrators launch missiles at a security post and police fire into the crowd. Three youngsters are seriously injured.

January 8, the official UGTT union finally ends its silence, but doesn’t denounce the repression. Its General Secretary Abid Brigui, contents himself with saying, under pressure from below, that he supports “the legitimate claims of the population of Sidi Bouzid and the regions inside the country. We cannot be outside this movement. We can only range ourselves alongside the right to necessities and the demands for jobs”. Faced with the violence of the repression, he timidly declared: “It is against nature to condemn this movement. It is not normal to respond with bullets”. But he launched no call for a general mobilisation of all the workers, no appeal for the immediate end to the repression which was unleashed with a growing violence during the week of the 8th and 9th of January.

At Kasserine, Thala and Regueb, the repression of demonstrations turns into a massacre. Cold-bloodily the police fire into the crowd killing more than 25 people. In the town of Kasserine, terrorised by the exactions of the police who have even fired on funerals, the divided army not only refused to fire on the population but stood up in order to assure its protection against the anti-riot police. For his part, the high-command of the land army is dismissed for having given an order not to fire on the demonstrators. Moreover, if the army was deployed in the main towns to protect public buildings, it placed itself aside from the operations of direct repression, including in the capital where it ended up withdrawing. Faced with the bloodbath, hospital personnel of the region, although overflowing with emergencies, walked out in protest.

Since the bloody weekend of January 8 and 9, anger has spread to the capital. January 12, struggles exploded in the outskirts of Tunis. The repression results in 8 deaths with one youth killed by a bullet in the head. The government imposes a curfew. The capital is patrolled by the security forces and the official UGTT union ends up by calling for a general strike for two hours on Friday the 14th. Despite the curfew and the deployment of the forces of repression in the capital, confrontations are vigorously pursued in the heart of Tunis and everywhere portraits of Ben Ali are burnt. On January 13, the revolt spreads to the resorts on the coast and notably the great tourist centre of Hammamet where shops are smashed and portraits of Ben Ali torn apart while confrontations continue between demonstrators and police in the heart of the capital. Faced with the risk of tipping the country into chaos, faced with the threat of a general strike, and under the pressure of the ‘international community’, notably the French state which, for the first time, begins to condemn Ben Ali, the state strives to save something from the situation. 12/13 January Ben Ali declares to the population: “I’ve understood you” and he affirms that he would not be standing at the next elections... in 2014! He promises to lower the price of sugar, of milk and bread and finally asks the forces of order not to fire bullets and affirms that “there have been some errors and some have died for nothing”. 

The complicity of the ‘democratic’ states

Faced with this savage repression, all the ‘democratic’ governments have for several weeks limited themselves to expressing their ‘concern’, calling for ‘calm’ and ‘dialogue. In the name of respect for the independence of Tunisia and non-interference its internal affairs, none of them condemned the police violence and the massacres carried out by Ben Ali’s thugs, even if they have hypocritically deplored the ‘excessive’ use of force. After the bloody weekend of 8 and 9 January, The French state was still openly offering support for this ruthless dictator. The French foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, in his speech to the National Assembly of 12 January, offered to lend a hand to Tunisia’s security forces: “We contend that the savoir-faire of our security forces, which is recognised throughout the world, would make it possible to resolve the security situation in this country”

The “savoir-faire” of the French security forces: we’ve seen that at work in the police persecution which resulted in the electrocution of two teenagers who had been chased by the cops in 2005, provoking the riots in the banlieues. We also saw this “savoir-faire” at work at the time of the youth revolt against the CPE, when anti-riot brigades invaded some universities with dogs to terrorise the students who were fighting against the prospect of unemployment and casualisation. The “savoir-faire” of our fine French cops was also revealed when they fired the flash-balls that injured a number of high school students during the demonstrations against the LRU in 2007. And more recently, in the movement against the reform of pensions, the repression meted out in particular to the young demonstrators in Lyon once against showed the efficiency of the security forces of the French democratic state. Following this demo, hundreds of young people were condemned to heavy penalties or are threatened with them. Of course, the ‘democratic’ states are not yet using live bullets against demonstrations, but this is not because they are more civilised, less barbaric, more respectful of the rights of man and freedom of expression, but because the working class in these countries is stronger, has a longer experience of struggle and is not prepared to accept such a level of repression.

When it comes to criminalising social movements in order to justify repression, the Ben Ali government has little to envy in its French accomplice, which was the first to use the term ‘terrorists’ to denounce the students in 2006 or the transport workers in 2007 when they came out in defence of their pension provisions.

It is clear that the only thing that really concerns the ruling class in all countries is the need to efficiently strengthen the police state in order to maintain capitalist order, an order which has nothing to offer the younger generations. All over the world, faced with an insurmountable crisis of capitalism, this ‘order’ can only engender more poverty, more unemployment and more repression.

The obvious complicity of the world bourgeoisie exposes the fact that it is the whole capitalist system which is responsible for the bloodshed in Tunisia, and not just Ben Ali’s corrupt regime. The Tunisian state is just a caricature of the capitalist state!

A revolt which is part of the struggle of the world working class

Although Tunisia is dominated by a highly corrupt, totalitarian regime, the social situation in this country is not an exception. In Tunisia, as everywhere else, young people face the same problem: the lack of any perspective. This ‘popular’ revolt is part of the general struggle of the working class and its younger generations against capitalism. It is in continuity with the struggles which have been developing since 2006 in France, Greece, Turkey, Italy and Britain, where all generations have come together in a huge wave of protest against the degradation of living conditions, against poverty, youth unemployment and repression. The fact that the social movement was marked by a vast expression of solidarity beginning with events of 17 December shows that, despite all the difficulties of the class struggle in Tunisia or Algeria, despite the weight of democratic illusions which are a product of a lack of experience and of the extremely repressive nature of these regimes, this revolt against unemployment and the high cost of living is part of the struggle of the world working class.

The conspiracy of silence which surrounded these events for weeks doesn’t just come from the censorship imposed by these regimes. It has to some extent been breached by the activity of young people who have made use of internet forums, blogs, Twitter or Facebook as a means of communication and of spreading information about what’s going on, linking up not only inside the country but also with family and friends abroad, especially in Europe. But the bourgeois media have everywhere contributed to installing a black-out, especially about the workers’ struggles which have inevitably accompanied this movement and about which we have heard only fragmentary echoes[1].    

As they do with every workers’ struggle, the media have done all they can to deform and discredit this revolt against capitalist poverty and terror, presenting it to the outside world as a ‘remake’ of the revolt in the French banlieues of 2005, as the work of a bunch of irresponsible wreckers and looters. Here against they have been in full complicity with the Ben Ali government: a number of demonstrators have denounced certain acts of looting as being the work of masked cops aimed at discrediting the movement. Amateur videos showed plain clothes cops smashing windows in Kasserine on 8 January to provide a pretext for the terrible repression which was to descend on this town.

In the face of capitalist barbarity, in the face of the wall of silence and lies, the working class in all countries has to show its solidarity towards our class brothers in Tunisia and Algeria, And this solidarity can only be affirmed effectively through the development of the struggle against the attacks of capital in all countries, against this class of exploiters and murderers which can only maintain its privileges by plunging humanity into the depths of misery. It is only through the massive development of its international unity and solidarity that the working class, especially in the most industrialised ‘democratic’ countries, can offer society a perspective for the future.

Refusing to pay for the capitalist crisis all over the world, fighting against impoverishment and terror, this alone can offer the prospect of an end to capitalist exploitation and the construction of a society founded on the satisfaction of human need.

Solidarity with our class brothers and sisters in the Mahgreb!

Solidarity with the younger generation of proletarians, wherever they struggle!

To end unemployment, poverty and repression, we have to end capitalism!

WM 13/1/11

For weeks, all the democratic states, with France at their head, have been supporting Ben Ali’s blood-soaked regime. There was an almost total black-out of information even though all these governments knew exactly what was happening in Tunisia. All the bourgeois media justified this disinformation by letting on that the country was experiencing riots but was in a confused, chaotic situation which was very difficult to understand. We were supposed to think that no one really knew what was going on. Lies! The savagery of the repression was known about all over the world. Thanks to the video footage put out on the internet by the young demonstrators, by tourists and journalists, all this information was by no means hidden. The reign of silence regarding the crimes of Ben Ali’s murderers was deliberately imposed by the governments and their tame media. The strikes, street demonstrations, revolts in high schools and universities were blacked out so that proletarians in the democratic countries would not feel concerned about the repression of the movement and show their solidarity. Now, after the fall of Ben Ali, tongues are untied and all the cameras are focused on the ‘revolution’ in Tunisia. Immediately after the official announcement of Ben Ali’s departure, when a state of emergency was being imposed and the army was being deployed all over the country, the French TV networks showed us pictures of the Tunisian community celebrating, especially in Paris. But prior to that, for week after week, nothing was shown of the daily demonstrations which were being repressed by the police, whereas images of the immense crowds thronging Bourguiba avenue in Tunis on 14 January are suddenly being broadcast by all the TV networks.   Representatives of the political class, experts and special envoys are now being invited to join a grand democratic debate about the situation in Tunisia. And now of course this whole crew is taking its distance from the Ben Ali regime and glorifying “the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people”, to use Obama’s own words. The fall of Ben Ali is now on the front pages of the newspapers whereas for weeks previously the torment of the Tunisian population was not seen as being worthy of much ink. This kind of hypocrisy is not gratuitous. If the media are now inundating us with real time information after weeks of black-out, it’s certainly not because the ruling class of the democratic countries is now “on the side of the Tunisian people”, as the French government declared with such boundless cynicism , three days after offering its services to Ben Ali’s repressive forces! If the bourgeoisie of the democratic countries, with its whole apparatus of media manipulation, has now changed its tune and is praising the “jasmine revolution” in Tunisia, it’s because it is in its interests to do so. The fate of Ben Ali has given it the opportunity to unleash a huge campaign about the benefits of democracy.

The bourgeois media continue to lie when they present the lawyers’ strike of 6 January as the motor force behind the revolt. They lie when they claim that it is an educated youth belonging to the “middle class” which brought the dictator down. They lie when they claim that the only aspiration of the exploited class and the younger generation who were at the heart of the movement is to obtain freedom of expression, They lie when they hide the deeper reasons for the anger: poverty, the near 55% unemployment which affects young graduates and which provoked a number of suicides at the beginning of the movement. It is this reality, a result of the aggravation of the world economic crisis, which the media campaign around the fall of Ben Ali is now trying to mask. The only objective behind the media enthusiasm for the “Tunisian revolution” is to intoxicate the minds of the exploited, to derail their struggles against poverty and unemployment onto the terrain of defending the democratic bourgeois state which is just another, more insidious and hypocritical  form of capitalist dictatorship          

Safiane  15/1/11

 Part of the media campaign surrounding the mid-term election results in the US has been a revisiting of the theme of the supposed “conservatism” of the working class in the US. According to many bourgeois analysts of the left, the Republican victories in the Mid-Term elections were largely the result of white working class voters deserting the Democrats in droves and voting for Republicans and the Tea Party. According to this meme, the Democrats suffered their most devastating losses in the old industrial Rust Belt of the Upper Mid-West. These traditionally Democratic areas, where union density has traditionally been high, have been an increasingly difficult electoral constituency to predict. Republican George W. Bush’s two election victories were made possible in large part by his ability to win Ohio’s electoral votes; a state with a large concentration of industrial workers, many of whom are union members. According to the dominant narrative on the bourgeois left, the working class is suffering from a profound case of “false consciousness” in which it votes for politicians who act against its economic interests. The conclusion is that the industrial working class cannot be trusted to act in a socially responsible manner. It is open to manipulation by right-wing demagogues. For the bourgeois left, the working class is potentially very politically dangerous.

This argument is not particularly new and has its roots in the New Left of the 1960s and 70s, when many politically radicalized students grew frustrated with the working-class’ supposed quietism and decided to take matters into their own hand in a series of “exemplary actions.” Today, this theme has been expressed primarily by the left of the Democratic Party who have trouble accepting the purported reality that many working-class people vote Republican instead of Democratic, just as the Republican Party has turned hard to the right and advocates many openly anti-working-class policies, such as abolishing unemployment benefits, privatizing Social Security, busting the unions and redistributing income upwards through tax cuts to the rich.

At the time of writing, the tense stand-off in the Ivory Coast, which contained the risk of a direct conflict between former president Gbagbo and the UN troops protecting the (UN’s) officially recognised winner of the elections, Ouattara, has eased somewhat. Various local African leaders have interceded to persuade Gbagbo to lift the siege of his rival and enter into negotiations without preconditions. But the situation remains extremely unstable. The following article, published by our French section at the beginning of December, provides some of the background to the conflict between the two presidents and in particular to the imperialist machinations going on behind the scenes. 

The day after the second round of the presidential election on November 28, the Ivory Coast awoke to find it had two presidents. One of them, Alassane Ouattara was proclaimed the winner by the electoral commission and the UN with 54% of the votes; the other, Laurent Gbagbo was named the winner by the Ivorian Constitutional Council with 51.4% of the votes. We thus have two big crocodiles ready to devour each other over control of Ivory Coast’s water-hole.

According to the UN Security Council, this was a “normal” election process. It welcomed “the announcement of the results of the second round of the presidential election which was held in a democratic climate...these were free, just, transparent elections”.

Obviously the reality is a bit different. This election was just a sinister farce which had already resulted in 55 deaths and 504 wounded by the end of the first week in December (Le Monde, 8.12.10). In the wake of Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Togo, Gabon and Guinea, it’s now the turn of the Ivory Coast to enter the bloody arena of these kinds of elections, where the future winner is designated in advance by himself or with the complicity of his imperialist backers. And as always in such cases, the protagonists settle their scores through mutual massacres.

The current situation in the Ivory Coast cannot fail to bring to mind the morbid sequence of events in 2002, when the presidential election ended up with mass killings and a military coup, resulting in years of terror and the country being cut in two, between north and south. During this period the various factions, pro-government or rebels, confiscated the resources under their respective control, using the profits to buy huge numbers of weapons so that they could carry on the struggle for power. It goes without saying that this happened at the expense of the population, 50% of which lives on less than 2 dollars a day. This is a population which is constantly exposed to racketeering and murder. Today, with these new elections, all the conditions are coming together for a slaughter on an even more massive scale.

“The scenario which everyone feared was produced on the evening of 3 December. Laurent Gbagbo had himself declared winner. At the risk of plunging the country into crisis, indeed into war....No doubt Gbagbo could win a gold medal for pugnacity. But someone who has up till now presented himself as the ‘son of elections’ and a ‘child of democracy’ will now have a hard time keeping up this image. At whatever cost, he has decided to go to the bitter end of an approach which has nothing to do with the ballot box... The perspective of a new partition, a new north-south clash, doesn’t bother him: most of the country’s resources (cocoa, coffee, oil) are in the centre or the south; and exports of these materials go through the port of San Pedro. The Ivory Coast has been functioning in this way since 2002. Why shouldn’t it continue to be the case? The real Gbagbo, after these useless elections, is showing his face: arms in hand, ready to withstand a siege from the ‘external enemy’[1] as he never tires of repeating. The Ivory Coast has gone back to square one” (Jeune Afrique 5.12.10)

As for Alassane Ouattara, he has been ready to turn to his partisans, the ‘new forces’, who have said that they won’t stand idly by if Gbagbo remains n power. Similarly, Guillaume Soro, Ouattara’s prime minister, has stated his intention to ‘dislodge’ Gbagbo (whose prime minister he was until the beginning of the elections). In short, each camp is readying its guard dogs – the death squads and machete-wielders. But above all each side is counting on the support of the big imperialist powers, especially France.

When you see how much the question of the Ivory Coast animates the French bourgeoisie, you can get an idea of the importance of what’s at stake in this former hunting ground of French imperialism. Since the shattering of the democratic shop-window at the beginning of the 2000s, resulting in France losing control of its local agents, French imperialism has been trying its damnedest to maintain an influence in the country, in particular through big companies like Bouygues, Total, Bolloré, etc. These companies are the real backbone of ‘Françafrique’ in the Ivory Coast, with state interests and private interests fused together, as shown by the particularly incestuous relationship between Bolloré and the French state.

“It’s difficult to separate the multiple connections between this group, the worthy heir of the colonial trusts and the Françafricain networks, and the French political apparatus. As with other conglomerates, it benefits from the support of the public power in its conquest of the continent’s markets. The President of the Republic or its ministers happily go to Africa to act as lobbyists among their opposite numbers. While Bolloré’s friends on the right are well known, we can see that the Socialist deputy Jean Glavany[2] is, alongside Alain Minc, part of the group’s strategic committee. When France sends - or repatriates – its troops into Africa, as for the ‘Licorne’ operation in the Ivory Coast, the many tentacles of the Bolloré group seem to be indispensable. ‘All the operations are carried out in the greatest security and confidentality’, as we can read superimposed on pictures of armoured cars in a prospectus distributed by the ‘Defence’ branch of the SDV (Manière de Voir, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2009).

But France is badly equipped, lacking sure supporters on the ground. This is why it is now officially giving its support to Ouattara, the democratically elected candidate; but in the corridors, right up until the final result, Sarkozy didn’t stop ‘reassuring’ Gbagbo, trying to make sure he would continue to serve French interests if needed. And it is in perfect knowledge of the fragile nature of France’s situation that Gbagbo, traditionally close to the Socialist Party, decided to blackmail the French authorities by brandishing his Chinese connections in front of them. In the end, therefore, France had to publicly declare its ‘neutrality’ saying that it didn’t have its own ‘candidate’. In sum, it was trying to bet on two horses, but without any guarantee of success either way. 

Françafrique under the eye of the US, and the rise of Chinafrique

Behind all the headlines, the fact is that France’s position in Africa is really under threat as it faces sharp competition from the American and Chinese bourgeoisies in particular. The battle is already raging in the UN Security Council between the partisans of Gbagbo and the supporters of Ouattara: the first is defended by China and Russia, the second by the US, Britain and France. We can’t fail to note the hypocrisy of these bandits: all of them talk about ‘peace’ while supplying weapons and ammunition to their armed agencies on the ground.

In France, Alassane Ouattara was at one point described as being ‘pro-American’, but more recently he has developed links with the French government, enjoying coffee and aperitifs with Sarkozy. But he is also hanging on to his friendships in US circles, notably in the IMF in which he has been a vice president. No doubt he will choose the backer who makes him the best offer, above all in the perspective of future confrontations in the Ivory Coast. And, on the continental level, Ouattara can count on a good deal of support in West Africa and from the African Union.

As for Laurent Gbagbo, Angola remains his main supplier of arms and on the diplomatic level he can rely on South Africa, which was his main supporter in his clash with France in 2004.

At the end of the day, behind all the manoeuvres and calls to respect the decision of the ballot box, we are seeing a bunch of criminals preparing to plunge the country into mass slaughter and spread bloody chaos throughout the region.

Amina, 8/12/2010. 

A tide of revolt is sweeping through Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and Yemen. The Syrian regime has cut off the internet in fear that the contagion will spread to them.

These are not Islamist movements, as apologists for Mubarak have been claiming. The whole population has taken part, irrespective of their exact stance on matters of religion. In Egypt thousands defied the instructions of their imams not to go onto the streets; there have also been examples of a conscious rejection of sectarian divisions between Muslims and Christians, in a country where the latter minority has been subjected to massacres very recently.

But neither are they movements for parliamentary democracy, for the cosmetic political reform of a moribund social system, even if many of the movement’s participants may be hampered by such democratic illusions.

They are not ‘middle class’ movements: as with the student revolt over here, the majority of university students in Tunisia, Egypt, France, Greece, are today part of the working class.

These rebellions are part of a worldwide movement of the working class, the proletariat, the exploited. The same class movement that has appeared in Greece, in France, and here in the UK, in response to the capitalist economic crisis, to the despicable corruption and hypocrisy of the ruling class, and to the ruthless austerity drive of all governments, right wing or left wing.

This is why we must proclaim our total solidarity with the workers, unemployed, students and others who are leading these rebellions, and our opposition to all the forces seeking to block their evolution, from the open police violence of ‘dictators’ to the false promises of the democratic or Islamist politicians who seek to use the revolt for their own ends.

These movements are important to discuss at public meetings, demonstrations, and wherever we take up our own struggles.

To discuss what initiatives might be possible or useful, you can email us, post on the forum on our website, or raise the issue on other class struggle forums, such as libcom.org [18]

WR, 29/01/11.

We have just received news from Korea that eight militants of the “Socialist Workers’ League of Korea” (Sanoryun) have been arrested and charged under South Korea’s infamous “National Security Law”.1 They are due to be sentenced on 27th January.

There can be no doubt that this is a political trial, and a travesty of what the ruling class likes to call its “justice”. Three facts bear witness to this:

• First, the fact that South Korea’s own courts have twice thrown out the police charges against those arrested.2
• Second, the fact that the militants are charged with “forming a group benefiting the enemy” (ie North Korea), despite the fact that Oh Se-Cheol and Nam Goong Won, amongst others, were signatories of the October 2006 “Internationalist Declaration from Korea against the threat of war” which denounced North Korea’s nuclear tests and declared in particular that: “the capitalist North Korean state (...) has absolutely nothing to do with the working class or communism, and is nothing but a most extreme and grotesque version of decadent capitalism's general tendency towards militaristic barbarism”.3
• Third, Oh Se-Cheol’s speech leaves no doubt that he opposes all forms of capitalism, including North Korean state capitalism.

These militants are accused of nothing other than the thought crime of being socialists. In other words, they stand accused of urging workers to defend themselves, their families, and their living conditions, and of exposing openly the real nature of capitalism. The sentences required by the prosecution are only one more example of the repression meted out by the South Korea ruling class against those who dare to stand in its way. This brutal repression has already targeted the young mothers of the “baby strollers’ brigade” who took their children to the 2008 Candlelight demonstrations and later faced legal and police harassment;4 it has targeted the Ssangyong workers who were beaten up by the riot police who invaded their occupied factory.5

Faced with the prospect of heavy jail sentences, the arrested militants have conducted themselves in court with exemplary dignity, and have used the opportunity to expose clearly the political nature of this trial. We reproduce below a translation of Oh Se-Cheol’s last speech before the tribunal.

Military tensions in the region are on the rise, following the provocative shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November last year and the killing of civilians by the North Korean regime’s canon, answered by the despatch of an American nuclear aircraft carrier to the region to conduct joint military exercises with the South Korean armed forces. In this situation, the statement that humanity today faces a choice between socialism and barbarism rings truer than ever.

The propaganda of the US and its allies likes to portray North Korea as a “gangster state”, whose ruling clique lives in luxury thanks to the ruthless repression of its starving population. This is certainly true. But the repression meted out by the South Korean government to mothers, children, struggling workers, and now socialist militants shows clearly enough that, in the final analysis, every national bourgeoisie rules by fear and brute force.

Faced with this situation we declare our complete solidarity with the arrested militants, notwithstanding the political disagreements we may have with them. Their struggle is our struggle. We address our heartfelt sympathy and solidarity to their families and comrades. We will gladly forward on to the comrades any messages of support and solidarity that we may receive at international [at] internationalism.org.6

Oh Se-Cheol's final speech in court, December 2010

(what follows is the text of Oh Se-Cheol's speech, translated by us from the Korean)

Several theories have sought to explain the crises that have occured throughout the history of capitalism. One of these is the catastrophe theory, which holds that capitalism will collapse of its own accord at the very moment that capitalist contradictions arrive at their highest point, making way for a new millennium of paradise. This apocalyptic or extreme anarchistic position has created confusion and illusions in understanding the proletariat’s suffering from capitalist oppression and exploitation. Many people have been infected by such a non-scientific view.

Another theory is the optimistic one that the bourgeoisie always spreads. According to this theory, capitalism itself has the means to overcome its own contradictions and the real economy works well through eliminating speculation.

A more refined position than the two mentioned above, and which has come to prevail over the others, considers that capitalist crises are periodic, and that we need only wait quietly until the storm is over in order to sail on.

Such a position was appropriate for the scene of capitalism in the 19th Century: it is no longer so for capitalist crises in the 20th and 21st century. The capitalist crises in the 19th century were crises of capitalism’s phase of unlimited expansion, which Marx in the Communist Manifesto called the epidemic of overproduction. However the tendency of overproduction resulting in famine, poverty and unemployment was not because of a lack of commodities but because there were too many commodities, too much industry and too many resources. Another cause of capitalist crises is the anarchy of capitalism’s system of competition. In the 19th century, capitalist relations of production could be expanded and deepened through conquering new areas to win new wage labour and new outlets for commodities and so crises in this period were understood as the pulses of a healthy heart beat.

In the 20th century such an ascending phase of capitalism came to an end with the turning point of World War I. From this point onwards, capitalist relations of commodity production and of wage labour had been expanded throughout the world. In 1919 the Communist International named capitalism in that period as the period of “war or revolution”. On the one hand, the capitalist tendency of overproduction pushed towards imperialist war with the aim of grabbing and controlling the world market. On the other hand, unlike the 19th century, it made the world economy dependent on the semi-permanent crisis of instability and destruction.

Such a contradiction resulted in two historical events, the First World War and the world depression of 1929 at the cost of 20 million lives and an unemployment rate of 20% – 30%, which again paved the way for the so called “socialist countries” with state capitalism through nationalisation of the economy on one side and liberal countries with a combination of private bourgeoisie and state bureaucracy on the other side.

After the Second World War world capitalism, including the so called “socialist countries”, experienced an extraordinary prosperity resulting from 25 years of reconstruction and increasing debts. This led government bureaucracy, trade union leaders, economists, and so called “Marxists” to declare loudly that capitalism had overcome its economic crisis definitively. But the crisis has continuously worsened as the following examples show: the devaluation of the Pound Sterling in 1967, the Dollar crisis in 1971, the oil shock in 1973, the economic recession of 1974-75, inflation crisis in 1979, credit crisis in 1982, crisis of Wall Street in 1987, economic recession in 1989, destabilisation of European currencies in 1992-93, crisis of the “tigers” and “dragons” in Asia in 1997, the crisis of the American “new economy” in 2001, the sub-prime crisis in 2007, the financial crisis of Lehman Brothers etc and the financial crisis of 2009-2010.

Is such a series of crises a ‘cyclical’, a ‘periodic’ crisis? Not at all! It is the result of the incurable illness of capitalism, the scarcity of markets with the ability to pay, the falling rate of profit. At the time of the big world depression in 1929 the worst situation did not occur because of an immense intervention of the states. But recent cases of financial crisis, economic crisis show that the capitalist system cannot survive any more with the help of such instant measures as the bail-out money from states or state debts. Capitalism is now facing an impasse as a result of the impossibility of the expansion of productive forces. However capitalism is in a struggle to the death against this impasse. That is, it depends endlessly on state credit and finds outlets for over-production through creating fictitious markets.

For 40 years world capitalism has been escaping catastrophe through immense credits. Credit for capitalism is the same as drugs for a drug-addict. In the end those credits will return as a burden demanding the blood and sweat of workers throughout the world. They will also result in workers’ poverty throughout the world, in imperialist wars, and in ecological disasters.

Is capitalism in decline? Yes. It is heading not for sudden ruin but for a new stage in the downfall of a system, the final stage in the history of capitalism which is drawing to its end. We must seriously recall the 100 year old slogan “war or revolution?” and once again prepare the historical understanding of the alternative “barbarism or socialism” and the practice of scientific socialism. This means that socialists must work together and unite, they must stand firmly on the basis of revolutionary Marxism. Our aim is to overcome capitalism based on money, commodity, market, wage labour and exchange value, and to build a society of liberated labour in a community of free individuals.

Marxist analyses have confirmed that the general crisis of the capitalist mode of production has already reached its critical point because of the falling rate of profit and the saturation of markets in the process of production and realisation of surplus value. We now find ourselves facing the alternative between capitalism, meaning barbarism, and socialism, communism meaning civilisation.

First, the capitalist system is becoming one which cannot even feed the slaves of wage labour. Every day around the world one hundred thousand people are starving and every 5 seconds one child under 5 years old starves to death. 842 million people are suffering from permanent undernourishment and one third of the 6 billion world population is struggling every day for its survival because of rising food prices.

Second, the present capitalist system cannot maintain the illusion of economic prosperity.

The economic miracles of India and China have proved illusions. During the first half year of 2008 in China 20 million workers lost their jobs and 67,000 companies went bankrupt.

Third, an ecological disaster is expected. On the point of global warming, the average temperature of the earth increased 0.6% since 1896. In the 20th century the northern hemisphere experienced the most serious warming for the last 1000 years. The areas covered with snow shrank by 10% since the end of the 1960s and the layer of ice at the North Pole has shrunk by 40%. The average sea level rose by 10-20% during the 20th century. Such a rise means 10 times an increase higher than that of last 3000 years. The exploitation of the earth during the last 90 years appeared in the form of reckless deforestation, soil erosion, pollution (air, water), usage of chemical and radioactive materials, destruction of animals and plants, explosive appearance of epidemics. The ecological disaster can be seen in an integrated and global form. So it is impossible to foresee exactly how seriously this problem will develop in the future.

How then has the history of class struggle against capitalist suppression and exploitation developed?

The class struggle has existed constantly but has not been successful. The 1st International failed because of the power of capitalism in its ascending period. The 2nd International failed because of nationalism and its abandoning of its revolutionary character. And the 3rd International failed because of the Stalinist counterrevolution. Especially the counterrevolutionary currents since 1930 misled the workers about the nature of state capitalism which they called ‘socialism’. In the end, they played a supporting role for the world capitalist system, suppressed and exploited the world proletariat through disguising the confrontation between two blocs.

Further, according to the bourgeois campaign the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the Stalinist system was an “evident victory of liberalist capitalism”, “the end of class struggle” and even the end of the working class itself. Such a campaign led the working class into serious retreat on the level of its consciousness and militancy.

During 1990s the working class didn´t give up completely but it had no weight and ability commensurate to those of trade unions as struggle organisations in a previous period. But the struggles in France and Austria against the attacks on pensions provided a turning point for the working class since 1989 to start its struggle again. The workers’ struggle increased most in the central countries: the struggle at Boeing and the transportation strike in New York in the USA in 2005; Daimler and Opel struggles in 2004, medical doctors’ struggle in the spring of 2006, Telekom struggle in 2007 in Germany; London airport struggle in August, 2005 in GB and Anti-CPE struggle in France 2006. Among the peripheral countries, there were the construction workers’ struggle in the spring of 2006 in Dubai, the textile workers’ struggle in spring of 2006 in Bangladesh, the textile workers’ struggle in spring of 2007 in Egypt.

Between 2006 and 2008 the struggle of the world working class has been expanding to the whole world, to Egypt, Dubai, Algeria, Venezuela, Peru, Turkey, Greece, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Italy, Britain, Germany, France, the USA, and China. As the recent struggle in France against pension reforms showed, the working class struggle is anticipated to become more and more extensively offensive.

As the above showed, the final tendency of decadence of world capitalism and the crisis which has burdened the working class have inevitably provoked struggles of workers throughout the world, unlike those we have experienced before.

We stand now before the alternative, to live in barbarism not as human beings but like animals or to live happily in freedom, in equality and with human dignity.

The depth and the scope of the contradictions of Korean capitalism are more serious than those of so-called advanced countries. The pain of Korean workers seems to be far bigger than those of the workers in European countries with their achievements of previous struggles of the working class. This is a question of the human life of the class, which cannot be measured by the empty pretence of the Korean government playing host for the G20 summit meeting, or the display of quantitative economic indexes.

Capital is international by its nature. Different national capitals have always been in competition and conflict but they have collaborated together in order to maintain the capitalist system, to hide its crises and attack workers as human beings. Workers struggle not against capitalists but against the capitalist system which moves only for the increase of its profits and unlimited competition.

Historically Marxists have always struggled together with the working class, the master of history, by revealing the nature of the historical laws of human society and that of the laws of social systems, presenting the orientation towards the world of real human life, and criticizing the obstacles of inhuman systems and laws.

For that reason they constructed organisations like parties and participated in practical struggles. At least since the 2nd World War such practical activities of Marxists have never experienced any judicial constriction. Rather their thought and practice have been highly valued as contributions to the progress of human society. Such masterpieces of Marx as Capital or the Communist Manifesto have been read as widely as the Bible.

This SWLK case is a historical one which shows to the whole world the barbarous nature of Korean society through its suppression of thought, and would be as a stain in the history of socialist trials in the world. In the future there will be more open and mass socialist movements, Marxist movements will be widely and powerfully developed in the world and in Korea. The judicial apparatus will handle cases of organised violence but cannot suppress socialist movements, Marxist movements. Because they will continue forever as long as humanity and workers exist.

Socialist movements and their practice cannot be the object of judicial punishment. Rather they must be an example for respect and confidence. Here are my closing words:

• Abolish the national security law which suppresses the freedom of thoughts, of science and of expression!
• Stop the repression of capital and power against workers’ struggles to be the subject of history, of production and of power!
• Workers of the whole world, unite in order to abolish capitalism and construct a community of free individuals!