Attacks in Paris: Capitalism is responsible Class war against capitalism!

(«Proletarian»; Nr. 12; Autumn - Winter 2015)

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«We are at war!», is the leitmotif of government personalities like the politicians of various French parties after the murderous atrocities in Paris and Saint Denis.

But in fact it is not just since yesterday that French imperialism has been at war, although up until now the French people have not felt the repercussions in their flesh.

It’s been a little over a year since President Hollande announced with great fanfare the decision to participate in US bombings in Iraq, a decision that was followed by fielding dozens of «Special Forces» commandos; a few weeks ago the government decided to participate in the bombing in Syria; A few days ago he announced the shipment to the Persian Gulf of a marine battle group (aircraft carrier, nuclear attack submarine, with warships for their protection) to intensify its participation in the war in Iraq and Syria . Under the so-called «left» government French imperialism has demonstrated a surge in military aggression that has not been seen since ... the governments of the socialist Mitterrand.

Let’s remember however that it’s an old and sinister French imperialist tradition; under Sarkozy, the imperialist circles were behind the Libyan war that plunged the country into a chaos from which it still has not recovered. There have been a countless number of military interventions in Africa since the official end of colonialism; we will only recall the French responsibility in the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda which left hundreds of thousands dead. As for its colonial wars, they have also caused hundreds and hundreds of thousands of victims.

French imperialism is undoubtedly one of the most rapacious and bloody representatives of imperialism, this world system of domination by a handful of major capitalist centers and the States at their service; but, like its colleagues, it is also at war against its own proletariat, not hesitating to use the most brutal violence to maintain the bourgeois order and capitalist profits.

Without going back to the terrible massacres with which it responded to workers’ revolts throughout the nineteenth century, let us remember the slaughter by the police in October 1961 of hundreds of Algerian workers peacefully demonstrating in Paris. By the way, the government has declared a «state of emergency», an exceptional measure created during the war in Algeria and which was also used in 2005 during the upheavals in the banlieues...

When the decision was made to participate in the bombings in Iraq, the government called for «national unity» to support a war in which it claimed to participate to protect the French as well as the Iraqi populations against terrorist crimes; these calls for union among all citizens have been reiterated ever since as they are once again today.

These are actually appeals to the workers to show solidarity with «their» national imperialism that is to say with the capitalists who exploit them while also exploiting and oppressing the proletarians and the poor masses of the dominated countries, the capitalist who plunder the planet and conduct endless wars. The national union only serves the bourgeoisie, the workers are still victims, whether being exploited in the workplace, or serving as cannon fodder.

All the so-called security measures which over the course of months and years have been continuously strengthened (Vigipirate – France’s national security alert system, mobilization of the army, massive spying on communications, etc.) were never established to protect populations, as demonstrated once again by the most recent attacks; they serve only to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie and defend the capitalist system through intimidation of potential «troublemakers» and especially proletarians.

The bourgeois state is one hundred times more effective in stopping workers from tearing the shirt off their boss than it is in preventing attacks against the inhabitants of Paris: a perfect demonstration that civilian casualties are nothing other than «collateral damage» to the imperialists undertakings, under the bombs in Syria and Iraq just as on the streets or in concert venues in Paris.

But the bodies of the victims are cynically used to power the campaigns of national unity and support for the state and its repressive forces, and to build support for military campaigns. Already the politicians of the right and left parties are multiplying martial statements. Nothing astonishing here: being loyal supporters of imperialism, they had already approved the recent French military interventions in Libya, throughout Africa and the Middle East; they are also unanimous in supporting the government’s actions and the call for interclassist unity.

The proletarians must not be misled by all such representatives or servants of the bourgeoisie; they should give no confidence to the government and the institutions of the bourgeois state, which are in the exclusive service of their class enemies. The bloody attacks in Paris and Saint Denis are the result of their criminal acts, the jihadists responding with individual terrorist acts to the large-scale terrorism of the imperialists.

Wanting to protect themselves from jihadist terrorism or to fight it by gathering behind the bourgeois state, would not only mean the proletariat allowing itself to be an accomplice of imperialist terrorism; this would also mean allowing itself to remain the eternal consenting victim of capitalism.

The bombings in Paris and Ankara, in Beirut or in Chad, like the wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East, are foreshadowing the future of poverty, widespread massacres and wars that capitalism in crisis reserves for the proletariat and the masses of the world.

To escape it, there is not one bourgeois camp to choose against another; there is no other solution than the destruction of capitalism, destruction that can only be accomplished through international communist revolution.

Because it is its exploitation which sustains capitalism, the proletariat has within itself the ability to do away with the capitalist mode of production and of the society of injustice and oppression, wars and massacres, built on its foundations: just refuse to continue to be exploited in order to bring down this colossal edifice.

It is the path of the resumption of the proletarian struggle, of the revolutionary class war against all bourgeoisies and all bourgeois States; it involves breaking the bonds which have been patiently woven over the decades in order to keep the proletariat locked in interclassism, breaking from the multiple forces and institutions of class collaboration, abandoning the illusions in national unity, democracy and the State, which are sustained by a range of social measures, in order to find the forces and class weapons class and reconstitute the political organization to lead the combat.

This is not an easy, fast and safe route; but the proletariat has already historically taken it when in the past it launched the attack on the capitalist citadels. It will necessarily take it again tomorrow, armed with the Marxist political, programmatic and theoretical positions tirelessly defended by the Communist Left, without being stopped or intimidated by the blows of the adversary. Then it will find the strength to avenge all the victims of capitalism by putting a definitive end to this infamous system.

 

No to capitalist wars!

No to national unity!

For the resumption of the class struggle!

For the international communist revolution!

 

November, 14th 2015

 

 

International Communist Party

www.pcint.org

 

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