France. In the face of the capitalists and their state, demonstration-marches or one-off blockade of the economy are not enough: a real class struggle is needed!

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In the face of the capitalists and their state, demonstration-marches or one-off blockade of the economy are not enough: a real class struggle is needed!

The government acting in favour of the capitalists (the employers’ union MEDEF: “reform is necessary”) is determined to carry out the attack on pensions. After the attack on the unemployed, and before going against undocumented immigrant proletarians, this reform forms part of the anti-proletarian measures demanded by the capitalists in France as elsewhere to restore the average rate of profit of the economy in the face of the crisis, the manifestation of which is the ever increasing layoffs and continued impoverishment of the workers. Capitalism knows only one way to overcome its crises: to attack the proletarians by increasing their exploitation and throwing them to the pavement. At the same time, the crises are aggravating the rivalries between capitalists and bourgeois states to such an extent that they are escalating into open warfare, of which the Ukraine in Europe today is a bloody example, as well as the murderous clashes that continue in Africa and the Middle East.

The government has declared that it wants to prepare for a “high-intensity” war and has announced its intention to spend 400 billion euros over six years to strengthen the country’s military potential, at the very moment when it wants to impose its reform in the name of the indispensable savings that need to be made! The savings on the skin of the proletariat will serve in part to strengthen militarism, prepare for war and fatten the arms merchants. The proletarian interests and the interests of the capitalists are incompatible, even if all the bourgeois forces and their servants would have us believe otherwise: they call on the proletarians to accept sacrifices in the name of a false common interest standing above the classes, in the name of the national economy or of a “fatherland” to be defended against foreign enemies.

But the proletarians have no fatherland, they are in solidarity with foreign proletarians and their first enemy is their own national bourgeoisie!

The attacks of the capitalists can only be truly responded to on the ground of open and determined struggle, while turning away from the calls of the trade union leadership for “social cohesion” (communiqué of the joint trade unions of 02/22); this social cohesion, which is synonymous with the paralysis of the proletariat, is the credo of the trade union bureaucrats who defend class collaboration: that is why they have decided to write to all M.P. of “the whole range of supporters of the Republic” (i.e. , in line with their support for Macron in the presidential elections, including M.P. of the right and Macronists) to ask them not to vote for this law! That is why they are trying their best to put forward other means or other reforms that would solve this “problem”. But it is not for the proletarians to propose solutions to the financial problems of the bourgeoisie; and they cannot expect the fulfilment of their demands from the parliament and bourgeois M.P., but only from their struggle – that is, if it is a real struggle, class against class!

Demonstrations-processions, however impressive, are as impotent as a one-day “blockade” of the country or isolated “renewable” strikes. In 1995, it was the indefinite strike at the SNCF (railways), with the occupation of workplaces (stations, etc.) and the total blockade of transport, its spread to other enterprises, which after three weeks forced the government to withdraw its plan to dismantle the specific pension system and cut thousands of railway workers jobs: an example to follow!

It is possible to counter the attacks of the bourgeoisie, but on condition that the struggle is conducted with class methods and objectives: indefinite strikes led by strike committees elected by the workers and coordinated among themselves, effective picket lines, occupation of workplaces, extension of the movement for the exclusive defence of proletarian interests, etc.

Year after year, the facts have shown that leaving the fate of the struggle in the hands of the collaborationist trade union leaderships, whether acting together or not, leads only to defeat; it is more than urgent to break with the orientation of class collaboration, to organize independently of the lackeys of the bourgeoisie, and to throw ourselves into the real class struggle!

Against the pension “reform” and against all bourgeois attacks it is necessary to wage a class struggle in rupture with the pro-capitalist orientation of the collaborationist trade unions and political organizations!

Unity in the struggle of all proletarians, of the public and private sectors, employed and unemployed, active and retired, men and women, young and old, French and immigrants!

General increases in wages, unemployment benefits, pensions and all social minima!

For the revolutionary struggle against capitalism, its war preparations and imperialist domination, in fraternal unity with the proletarians of the whole world!

International Communist Party

Il comunista - le prolétaire - el proletario - proletarian - programme communiste - el programa comunista - Communist Program