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Solidarity with the revolt of the youth and proletarians in Algeria!

 

After the brutal repression of protests in Tunisia following the immolation by fire in mid-December of a young graduate, who in order to survive was forced to work as a peddler, left one person dead; it is the turn young Algerian proletariat to take to the streets, clashing fearlessly with the forces of bourgeois "law and order" to express their rage.

While this year Algeria has officially recorded huge inflows of money from the sale of oil, much of the working population lives in poverty. For years inflation has outstripped nominal wage increases, resulting in lower real wages, while unemployment is rife, especially among youth, the chronic lack of housing is becoming increasingly intolerable, and police repression is constant (the state of emergency is still in force).

This situation originates in a year which has witnessed a series of local riots and skirmishes as well as strikes – strikes that have come up against not only employer and state repression, but were also open to the sabotage and threats of the official union UGTA. As of January 3, the UGTA continued to condemn the strike waged by dockworkers at the port of Algiers under the pretext that it was impossible to reverse the agreement reached between the company and the union!

  Meanwhile the government granted a wage increase of 50% to the police ...

  The brutal rise in prices of essential commodities sparked the explosion of long pent-up anger: the price of oil has increased by 20%, that of sugar by 30% or even more, the price of coffee, lentils, fresh vegetables, milk, etc.., also rose precipitously in a few days: "Give us some sugar!" some protesters chanted derisively, but in reality they were not joking but shouting out their rejection of a social and economic order that condemns the masses to increasing misery while at the same time the bourgeois are squabbling amonst themselves for the countries wealth – obtained only thanks to the work of the proletarians, all this as revealed by the scandals that are regularly displayed on the pages of the press.

Surprised by the protests which have spread like wildfire throughout the country, the government  kept silent for 48 hours before the Minister of Youth and Sports Friday called for the youth to "engage in a peaceful dialogue"and then on Saturday night the government decided to lower taxes on food imports in order to lower prices (this is primarily a gift to the importers).

  But it is against the malvie in general, against the unemployment, the low wages, the poverty and misery engendered by capitalism that these manifestations are occurring, and the authorities have shown that the reality of "dialogue" is bloody police repression, the interior minister admitted Saturday that after four days of rioting, there were 3 dead and hundreds wounded (mostly police officers according to him!). The young protesters have well understood the lesson taught by the representatives of the ruling class: between exploiters and exploited, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, there can be no "dialogue" – only force counts for anything. And the potential power of the proletariat is immense, because the whole economy is based soley on their exploitation. By entering massively into combat they have the power to bring capitalism to its knees and to make the bourgeois state which is its defender tremble. But the prerequisite for this is to break with the organizations and unions who have sold-out to the bourgeoisie, to reject attempts at an interclassist recovery, be they Islamists, nationalists and democratic – which they will not fail to attempt, and to organize independently on class bases.

 The Algerian proletariat has already repeatedly proven its fighting spirit and its capability to of standing up against repression; the current and future struggles will increasingly render more pressing the need to find the road of open struggle against capitalism and the bourgeois state, in union with the proletarians of all countries.

 

• Stop the repression!

• Long live the  revolt of the youth and the Algerian proletariat!

• Down with capitalism!

• Long live the international communist revolution!

 

 

International Communist Party

January, 9th 2011

www.pcint.org

 

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