Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Strasbourg... Millions of French workers and youth have flooded the streets of hundreds of cities and towns this Thursday 23 March. It has been the 9th day of the general strike since this battle began. A historic day, unprecedented since May 1968, which shows that the approval without a parliamentary vote of the pension reform and the brutal repression unleashed by Macron and his government are proving impotent in the face of the determination of the working class. The struggle has taken a new leap and is deepening, threatening not only Macron, but the entire bourgeois institutions. The features that characterise a revolutionary crisis are unfolding. The clashes with the police have become widespread; the barricades; the occupations of faculties and high schools; the blockade of the economy due to the direct action of the workers; the massiveness of the mobilizations, which are growing; the crisis and isolation of the Government and the complete paralysis of the far-right; the union leaderships being surpassed from below, forced to call a new general strike next Tuesday the 28th; the confidence of the working class and youth in their own forces, determined to go to the end, and advancing in his anti-capitalist conscience with seven-league boots.
Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Strasbourg... Millions of French workers and youth have flooded the streets of hundreds of cities and towns this Thursday 23 March. It has been the 9th day of the general strike since this battle began. A historic day, unprecedented since May 1968, which shows that the approval without a parliamentary vote of the pension reform and the brutal repression unleashed by Macron and his government are proving impotent in the face of the determination of the working class. The struggle has taken a new leap and is deepening, threatening not only Macron, but the entire bourgeois institutions.
The features that characterise a revolutionary crisis are unfolding. The clashes with the police have become widespread; the barricades; the occupations of faculties and high schools; the blockade of the economy due to the direct action of the workers; the massiveness of the mobilizations, which are growing; the crisis and isolation of the Government and the complete paralysis of the far-right; the union leaderships being surpassed from below, forced to call a new general strike next Tuesday the 28th; the confidence of the working class and youth in their own forces, determined to go to the end, and advancing in his anti-capitalist conscience with seven-league boots.
The power of the working class. Occupy factories and workplaces.
There are already weeks with numerous sectors on indefinite strike such as bin workers, refineries, gas and electricity energy companies, transport or education. Strikes, which the Government desperately tries to suppress by force, annulling this right in practice and trying to force the workers to return to their jobs under penalties fines or imprisonment.
But this authoritarian offensive is not breaking the will of the French workers. This is the case with the bin workers, who resist at the doors of their workplaces, or now in the refineries, with massive pickets that confront the riot police. This is how democratic rights are defended and not through impotent appeals before the bourgeois courts, as many cowed union leaders claim.
The French working class is taking heaven by storm, which contrasts strikingly with those resounding silences and half-hearted statements by the leaders of the Intersindical. The most relevant case is that of Laurent Berger, general secretary of the CFDT, who has come to condemn the violence of the protesters, unscrupulously supporting government propaganda and whitewashing the brutal police violence, and who asks Macron to "pause" the reform of pensions: "a time of listening, of dialogue, in which we leave the pension reform on hold". Statements that portray a frightened bureaucrat, who runs to the skirts of the neoliberals to help him cover himself from the workers' indignation. What a betrayal in the midst of battle.
What we need now is not a pause, nor a time to listen, but to deepen the mobilization until the pension reform and the Macron government are overthrown. What is in question is the capitalist system, an illegitimate order that has been exposed as a brutal dictatorship in defence of bankers and big business. Only they and their government, headed by Macron, defend the reform, faced with the rejection of 93% of the workers.
At this decisive moment, it is necessary to redouble the organization of the worker and student movement. It is necessary to generalize the permanent assemblies and action committees in the workplaces and study centres. Factories, companies, universities and high schools must be occupied as in May 1968, to turn them into centres of revolutionary action and participatory democracy. And these organs of popular and worker power must be coordinated by the state in order to fight openly for the socialist transformation of France.
This is the central task in which the union and student activists, the militants of the La France Insoumise, the activists and social movements, and the organizations that claim to be revolutionary have to devote themselves.
The Government resorts to the most savage repression. Build worker self-defence!
The task of repelling the brutality of the police and defending democratic rights is central to the movement. As the uprising progresses, the actions of the repressive forces and fascist gangs also harden, acting as auxiliaries to the police, attacking strikers, students and demonstrators. It has happened in the demonstrations in Paris, Lille, Nantes or Bordeaux, with almost 500 detainees. They try to break the morale of the workers and the youth, but they are not succeeding.
The other way around! The images of the protesters’ shields in the demonstrations resisting the onslaught of the riot police, without backing down, or of hundreds of workers and students surrounding police stations, demanding the release of the detainees and fearlessly confronting the police, are highlighting the enormous limitations of repression and are generating growing fear among the ruling class and the state apparatus.
It is time to step up and take worker self-defence very seriously. Self-defence brigades should be created in all factories, companies and study centres to protect demonstrations and strikes. And they have to be nourished by thousands of young people and workers. Police and fascist violence must be responded to with the iron fist of the organized working class.
The Macron government is isolated and hangs by a thread. His pathetic statements on television the day before the general strike, after weeks of silence, insulting millions of strikers, arrogantly stating that "the herds do not prevail over the representatives of the people", or trying to compare this uprising with the coup d’etat attempts of the far-right in the US and Brazil, have increased anger and indignation. The one who agrees and relies on the far right is precisely Macron. Le Pen demands that the strikes be lifted and Zemmour sends his fascist groups to collaborate with the police. All are united in defence of order and capitalist property.
Raise a communist program!
In this context, Melenchon and the deputies of La France Insoumisse continue to encourage mobilizations, blockades and strikes. Hence the furious campaign against them, accusing them of setting fire to the streets and creating chaos. It is evident that La France Insoumisse has become a problem for the ruling class, and that thousands of its militants are participating in the front line of this battle. We must continue to deepen this strategy and unmask all those who seek to betray the struggle and return to the calm waters of bourgeois institutions!
It is necessary to raise and strengthen the united front with all those, from La France Insoumise to the thousands of militant activists and delegates from the CGT and other unions, who are playing a relevant role in this battle. The revolutionary communists are not sectarians. Precisely this was always the method of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
A united front that must be endowed with a program that, in our opinion, does not go through either the Constituent Assembly or the establishment of a new bourgeois Republic, the VI Republic, as Melenchon points out. What we need is a program that calls into question the ownership of the capitalists, of the banks and the big monopolies, of that tiny minority that hoards the immense resources that we workers generate.
It is about the struggle for power, to determine who rules in this society, if a minority of bankers and plutocrats or the vast majority, the working class. Only in this way, by expropriating the bankers and the big companies listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, will we be able to solve the serious social scourges that we suffer and win an authentic democracy of the workers.
The events in France are being a source of inspiration. The seizure of power by the French working class, with a socialist and internationalist programme, would become an overwhelming force for workers and the oppressed throughout Europe and the world.
Down with Macron, down with the repression! Long live the French revolutionary uprising!
