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Spain
On the pseudo-strike for Palestine called for 27 September
The anarcho-syndicalist trade union Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and Solidaridad Obrera (a splinter of the CGT, also an anarcho-syndicalist confederation) have called a “general strike for Palestine” for 27 September with the following demands: “for the redistribution of public expenditure in favour of the working class, for an end to the genocide and apartheid in Palestine”. This call was joined by political organizations such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, an international organization calling on states to take action against Israel, the Trotskyists of the Corriente Revolucionaria de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras, or the “tent demonstrations for Palestine”, all intending to make this day a kind of national call “for Palestine”.
To properly evaluate the real effect of this call, it should be considered that most of the CGT sections only learned about it a few days ago when it was publicly announced during a press conference. Thus, not even the slightest preparatory work (even among union representatives!) was carried out, which usually takes place regarding such calls. This was a decision taken by the leaders of the CGT and Solidaridad Obrera, who had no thought of carrying out any agitation either among their base or among workers in general. Those who know the history of these two organisations, especially the CGT, which in recent years has achieved a major presence among the proletarians, cannot expect much from them; but in this case, by resorting to strike action by decree, they have placed themselves on exactly the same level as the big trade union organisations, Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO.) and Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT, historically linked to Social Democracy), which are distinguished by the passivity to which they induce the workers.
But apart from the organizational aspect (even that would be enough to understand what exactly is going on in this call, which is more of a publicity action than a strike, or even more of a symbolic gesture than a publicity action), it is the slogans raised for this call that show its barrenness. What does “redistribution of public expenditure in favour of the working class” mean? In a situation in which the Spanish state, with the government of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and the left-wing bloc-party SUMAR (successor to the left-wing alliance Unidas Podemos) – which, incidentally, is not mentioned in the appeal at all – is a direct ally of the imperialist powers engaged in the massacre of the Palestinian masses, the call for a “redistribution of the budget” appears to be a mere joke. There is neither a demand for a halt to commercial operations of a military nature with Israel, nor a criticism of diplomatic relations with the Israeli state, proclamations that would be futile in themselves, but at least would not be so… stupid. What is the meaning of the budget redistribution? That military spending would be shifted to education, as the proclamation states? This is a dichotomy that does not exist for any modern capitalist state, it is a contradiction that does not exist and does not in any way challenge the imperialist interests of the Spanish bourgeoisie or its national government. Moreover, what does it mean to call for an “end to genocide and apartheid” when there is not even a willingness to mobilise one's own unions to achieve this? Nothing! It's just blather, grandiose platitudes that are all the more offensive because the daily murder of dozens of Palestinians is something very real, and to put an end to it would require international class action, which today is enormously remote in prospect.
The strike has been, must be, and will have to be a weapon of the proletarian class struggle. Through the strike, the proletarians express their class strength by ceasing to be mere workers who obey the orders of the bosses. By interrupting work to achieve the satisfaction of their own demands, workers abandon any illusions about who creates wealth in capitalist society, who among the social strata have more leverage, in short, who is indispensable to a particular society or to the country in general. This is why the bourgeoisie fears the classist strike as if it were a cancer: although it knows that it can defeat almost any group of workers who cease to work, it also knows that the great danger is “metastasis”, that is, the dispersion of such an example, the spread of the proletarian consciousness of its own strength, of class solidarity among the workers…, and therefore it tries by all means not only to repress but also to prevent the strike from occurring.
Today, this repression against the strike, as well as against any manifestation of class struggle in general, is not carried out by direct repression. Over decades of uninterrupted domination over the proletariat, the bourgeoisie has accumulated enough power and knowledge to be able to build an entire apparatus of preventive repression based on the regulation and legal integration of every expression of workers' struggle with the aim of rendering it completely harmless. The activity of the large trade unions integrated into the state, labour legislation laying down every step that can or cannot be taken in the field of organising, the legal definition of authorised and unauthorised strikes, the obligation to give prior notice and to provide minimum services, etc. are the real repressive instruments at the bourgeoisie's disposal: employing them it succeeds in neutralizing proletarian power, letting fall on workers willing to fight the entire “democratic” weight of the law to exhaust their strength, redirect it to trifling objectives, etc. In this way, the bourgeoisie not only succeeds in winning over the group of striking workers, but makes the struggle itself impossible and sows helplessness in the whole proletariat, which sees its defeat not with the stick, but with the democratic and legalistic carrot.
The final component of this mechanism of sterilization of the class struggle is the type of strike that the CGT and Solidaridad Obrera are calling for today: the strike that is not even a strike, where there is no agitation for participation, no picketing, no diffusion of demands in workplaces… but on the contrary, where the fate of the call is decided through the media and social networks. It is no longer a routine appeal in the style of CC.OO and UGT, a limited action, a one-day “general” strike, etc., but a purely symbolic gesture seeking only its moment of glory in the press (and not yet in the entire press…).
The Palestinian proletarians and the oppressed masses suffer the Israeli military offensive without anyone, absolutely no one, coming to their help. Nor are they being helped by Iran, which, for all its anti-American rhetoric, obeys the regional and global interests of Russia and China and therefore has no interest in confronting Israel or its American protector. And neither Hezbollah nor its younger fellow Houthis give them any help, both organisations conditioned by the same dynamics of inter-imperialist clashes, for which Palestinian blood is today far more valuable as a means of propaganda than as a call to regional war. Nor are they given any help by the Arab proletariat and popular masses, including the millions of Palestinians in exile in Jordan, Lebanon, etc., already paralysed under the pressure of the Arab bourgeoisies there and the decades of repression falling on their shoulders, and who are unable to be the spark that would ignite the Middle East.
They are not helped by the European and American proletariat, which has a greater tradition of class struggle in its distant history, both on the trade union and political terrain, but which for many decades has remained practically paralysed, both in the struggle for its own immediate interests and as regards the defence of the struggles of the proletariat and the dispossessed masses of the so-called Third World, even in times when it had much greater vigour and subversive capacity than today. And they are of course not helped by the Israeli proletariat, which has completely sunk into the logic of political and military collaboration with its bourgeoisie, and which has been unable to express even a symbolic stand of dissent, and which in numerous instances actually collaborates in the massacre.
It is on the latter two, the Euro-American and Israeli proletariat, that much of this co-responsibility falls. The European and American proletariat would have the strength, the historical force, to stop the massacre of the Palestinians. It has a tradition of class struggle that has managed, in other periods, to push the world bourgeoisie into a tight corner. It was able to do so in 1871, 1905 or 1917, when it was capable of responding to the national and imperialist war, to turn its weapons against its bourgeois masters and bring them to their knees, to stop the massacre and to force the international powers to abandon – even if only temporarily – their plans of partitioning the world. This historical force, which the Palestinian and Arab proletarians cannot rely on (however generous their contribution to the world proletarian struggle may have been), is today completely forgotten.
That disappeared after decades of class collaboration, acceptance of the bourgeois state, defence of the national economy, renunciation of the defence of its immediate and ultimate interests. And because of this, the bourgeoisie of all countries feels able to push through its criminal plans, which today entail the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza (and certainly in the West Bank) or Russian and Ukrainian recruits, whereas in the future (an increasingly imminent future) it will be a large-scale conflict between the major imperialist powers, which will lead the proletarians of all countries to the fronts of general war as cannon fodder.
This is the present and future reality of the proletariat in Spain, Europe and the world. It is a dark reality in which tens of thousands of proletarians in Palestine, but also in Russia and Ukraine, lose their lives on the battlefield because of the plans of the world bourgeoisie. And it is with this bourgeoisie, in every country, that the proletarians must know how to break with. It is against it that they must declare war, it is against it that they must use all the forces at their disposal.
That is why calls like the one on 27 September, which are an impotent and ineffectual gesture in the face of the massacre, are particularly detrimental. With them, the CGT and other organisers reinforce the defeat of the proletarians, their inability to respond in class terms to the economic, political and military dictates of their bourgeoisie. By turning the strike into a theatrical act, a plea addressed only to their union bureaucrats and activists, they contribute to the spread of the (already widespread) idea that struggle is impossible, that there is nothing left to do but to make entreaties and wait, as always, to be crushed sooner or later. In the face of a proletariat such as the Spanish one, which could provide a major contribution to the mobilisation of other proletariats in Europe for putting an end to the massacre if they fought on class lines, the denial of the necessary conditions for this struggle is an indirect support for the criminal policy of the bourgeoisie in all countries.
For the strike to once again become a weapon of the proletariat's class struggle for both immediate and more general demands!
For the classist reorganisation of the proletariat!
For internationalist solidarity with the proletarians and the oppressed masses in Palestine, Ukraine, Russia and any other country!
For the breaking of the national fronts!
For the uncompromising defence of the proletarian class struggle!
September, 22nd 2024
International Communist Party
Il comunista - le prolétaire - el proletario - proletarian - programme communiste - el programa comunista - Communist Program
www.pcint.org
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