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Articles From
 France |
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From Resistance to
Counteroffensive to the Struggle for Workers
Power Focal Point Europe: Capitalism in Crisis, Class Struggle Erupts Over
the past year, a wave of class struggle has
swept across Europe. In country after country,
working people are facing devastating attacks on
their livelihoods, their past gains, and their
futures. And they are fighting back. On December
15, Greece had yet another one-day nationwide
strike – its eighth this year. On November 25,
more than 3 million workers walked out in the
biggest strike in Portugal’s history. All fall, France was
in turmoil as millions of workers and students
repeatedly mobilized against the government’s
pension “reform,” with numbers and militancy not
seen in years. In Ireland, Italy and Spain as
well there have been huge marches of hundreds of
thousands trade unionists, students and youth.
Now in Britain, angry student protests against
drastic fee hikes could spark working-class
resistance to the government’s program of
vicious cuts. But demonstrations in the streets,
no matter how massive, have not stopped European
governments – whether of the right or “left” –
from proceeding with their onslaught. Nor will
they in the future, for this is not a matter of
pressuring over budget priorities, it is a
concerted capitalist assault on the working
class. To defeat it, we must go from resistance
to a struggle for power.The burning question is
how to get there. Focal
Point Europe: Capitalism in Crisis,
Class Struggle Erupts (26 December
2010)
French Battle Over Attack on Pensions Continues To Drive Out Sarkozy & Co., Fight for Power to the Workers Build a Workers Party on the Revolutionary Program of Lenin and Trotsky On October 19, once
again some 3.5 million people responded to the
call of unions, striking and demonstrating in
cities around France in the sixth “day of
action” in the last seven weeks protesting the
government’s
pension “reform.” The two-week-old strike of
French refineries and the blockade
of fuel depots are beginning to bite as
service stations run out of fuel. Despite all
the inconvenience, more than two-thirds of the
population supports the strikes. But rather
than bring
strike battle to a head, the reformists
(including the so-called “far left”) are
looking to electoral politics. The Socialist
Party (PS) want to channel the protests into
the 2012 elections.
Yet if the PS returns to office, French
workers will still have to
work longer to get the right to retire, just
as under Sarkozy. The Communist Party wants a
new popular front, while the New
Anti-Capitalist Party is calling the protests
a movement for the resignation of Sarkozy. To
be replaced by what? A new capitalist
government. It is possible to bring down a
bourgeois regime, especially one as widely
hated as this one, but this can only done by
driving it out through sharp class struggle
leading to a fight for a workers government.
Simply replacing one bourgeois government with
another anti-working-class regime, even if it
is decked out in “left” clothing, is no
victory.
To
Drive Out Sarkozy & Co., Fight for
Power to the Workers (26 October
2010)
Reports on French Worker-Student Upsurge
May in October? The Spectre of a New ’68 The Big Obstacle: Pro-Capitalist Union Misleaders and the Now-Reformist “Far Left” Since the beginning
of September, French workers have held six
nationwide“days of action,” with huge
demonstrations and strikes to protest against
the “reform” of pension and retirement rights
being pushed through parliament by the
conservative government of President Nicolas
Sarkozy. In mid-October, there was a
significant shift as continuing strikes were
called on the railroads and at oil refineries
and fuel depots, while hundreds of thousands
of secondary students walked out, blockading
schools. The government reacted with
heavy-handed repression, but the strikes have
overwhelming public support. The sight of
students and workers in struggle together
frightens the French bourgeoisie, recalling
the upheaval of May 1968. A general strike
until the anti-worker pension bill is
withdrawn is called for, but a major obstacle
standing in the way is the union leadership,
as well as the now not-so-far left. To lead the
way toward a new May ’68 that goes all the way
to workers revolution, the key is to build a
genuinely Leninist-Trotskyist workers party. France:
May
in October? The Spectre of a New ’68
(18 October
2010)
After the
Presidential Elections, A Reactionary
Offensive Against Youth and WorkersFrance Turns Hard to the Right To Defeat Sarkozy, End Class-Collaborationist Alliances Out of the most appalling presidential campaign that France has known in a long time, the candidate emerged victorious who most embodied chauvinist electioneering and the employers’ determination to put an end to the threadbare union gains still remaining after almost a quarter century of dismantling the “welfare state.” Nicolas Sarkozy has been installed in the Elysée (France’s presidential palace) in order to proclaim the death of the “French model.” This policy represents a consensus among the French bourgeoisie, and the “socialist” Royal was in fact the candidate of a bourgeois coalition, backed by small capitalist parties. As always, this popular front of class collaboration had the purpose of chaining the working people to a sector of the bourgeoisie. “Sarko” vs. “Sego” was a contest between two competitors running on the same basic program, and a majority of the voters preferred the original to the copy. If the presidential campaign demonstrated the bankruptcy of the “social-liberal” parliamentary left, it also laid bare the dead-end of a “far left” sunk in popular-frontism.The lesson of the recent presidential elections and of social struggles over the last decade is the urgent and necessary regrouping of orthodox Marxists in an authentically Trotskyist party. France Turns Hard to the Right (24 May 2007)
Racist
Provocation Against Ghetto
Youth
France:
Workers Mobilize to Beat Back Attack on
Youth
For the past two
months, French students, youth and labor
have been demonstrating in the streets
against a new labor law, the “first
employment contract,” that would let
employers fire young workers without cause
for up to two years. This was the answer of
the reactionary government of President
Chirac and his aristocratic prime minister
de Villepin, backed up by France’s hard-line
top cop, Sarkozy, to the revolt by ghetto
youth last fall. Everyone understands that
this is the opening wedge of an attack on an
attack job security for all. Millions of
protesters have marched in the largest
demonstrations since 1968, roads and rail
lines have been blocked, the cabinet could
fall, yet the reformist left is seeking ...
a popular-front election victory next year!
This leaflet by the League for the Fourth
International calls for a program of
transitional demands leading from the
present battle to the struggle for workers
revolution. France:
Workers
Mobilize to Beat Back Attack on the Youth
(25 March
2006)No New Popular Front of Class
Collaboration –
For a Revolutionary-Internationalist Workers Party! French Government Forced to Back Down on Youth Jobs Laws After ten weeks of massive demonstrations followed by escalating road and rail blockages, on April 10 French president Jacques Chirac was finally forced to annul the “first job contract” which set off a worker-youth revolt that convulsed the country. It was a heavy blow to the presidential ambitions of Chirac’s anointed successor de Villepin, but the government sought to limit the damage by only withdrawing one article of the egregiously misnamed “equal opportunity” law. The union bureaucrats and reformist party leaders claimed victory, since their real aim was to prepare the way for the 2007 elections. Students vowed to continue the struggle to get rid of the entire youth jobs law. The struggles of youth and workers in France must be joined with those of working people throughout Europe against the police-state measures of their rulers, as part of a struggle to defeat the imperialist war drive. French Government Forced to Back Down on Youth Jobs Laws (24 April 2006) Mass
Arrests and New Repressive Laws in France:
No Collaboration – Cops Out of the Unions!
National Front At
Forefront of Capitalist Drive Toward
“Strong State” in France
Demonstrators Demand: “Free Our Comrades!” After 3-million-strong nationwide throught France against the youth labor law, students have continued to mobilize. The main demand in this round is to end the repression and free hundreds of youths being held by the police. Almost 4,000 people have been arrested during and after recent marches. Outrageously, reformist union tops have used their marshals to attack “troublemakers in the marches and turn them over to the cops. The response to mounting repression must be to mobilize the working class for a showdown with the ruling class. Demonstrators Demand: “Free Our Comrades!” (8 April 2006) Break with the Popular Front! Build a Trotskyist Party to Lead the Struggle for International Workers Revolution! The presence of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Führer of the National Front (FN), in the run-off round of the French presidential elections stunned France and sent shock waves around Europe. The reformists, from the Socialist and Communist parties to the “far left,” channeled outrage against the fascists into support for the corrupt conservative president Jacques Chirac. Some call for outlawing the FN under laws that will be (and already have been) used to ban leftist and anti-colonialist parties. Others, including Lutte Ouvrière and the International Communist League pretend that the FN is merely an “electoral party.” This classic social-democratic conception sows deadly illusions. The National Front has a veritable private army, at the core of which are paramilitary units notorious for their racist attacks. In the 1995 FN campaign two immigrant youth were murdered by FN thugs. FN operatives run agencies supplying strikebreakers to French companies and mercenaries for French interests in Africa. The fight against the the drive toward a bonapartist “strong state” requires revolutionary mobilization of the working class to crush the fascists and break with the popular front of war and racism. National Front at forefront of capitalist drive toward “strong state” in France (8 June 2002) In Centrist Drift Toward Lutte Ouvrière How ICL Turns French Fascists Into Ballot-Box Rightists For decades the Spartacist tendency/International Communist League (ICL) held that France’s National Front (FN) was fascist. But over the last three years, the ICL has decided that Haider’s FP? in Austria, Fini’s AN in Italy and Le Pen’s FN in France are not fascist but “electoral parties. ” This is the policy of the bourgeoisie, which refers only to “ex-” and “post-”fascists. It is also the position of Lutte Ouvrière (LO), which has long claimed that the FN was just another right-wing party. The ICL’s sudden shift is one of a series of line changes on key questions as it has abandoned Trotskyism for centrist confusionism. Its offer of conditional “critical support” to LO reflected a growing political rapprochement. Neither LO nor the ICL call to defeat the imperialist war, neither call for independence for French and U.S. colonies, both justify a policy of left-talking abstention from the class struggle by blaming the backward consciousness of the workers. This perspective has led LO to play only a marginal role in the major upheavals by the French working class, notably in 1968. This underscores the need to forge an authentic Leninist-Trotskyist party. How ICL turns French fascists into ballot-box rightists (8 June 2002). From Hindenberg to
Chirac... No to Chirac –
Le Pen! Sweep Away the
Fascist Thugs
Workers Struggles Shake Chirac-Juppe Government France: Workers Struggles Shake Chirac-Juppe Government (January 1997) |
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