WHAT DISTINGUISHES OUR PARTY – The line
running from Marx to Lenin to the foundation
of the Third International and the birth
of the Communist Party of Italy in Leghorn
(Livorno) 1921, and from there to the struggle
of the Italian Communist Left
against the degeneration in Moscow
and to the rejection of popular fronts
and coalition of resistance groups
– The tough work of restoring the revolutionary
doctrine and the party organ, in contact
with the working class, outside the realm
of personal politics and electoralist manoevrings
Capitalism seeks ever new ways to drive down wages in the
capitalist class’ pursuit of ever increasing wages. But their profits also
depend on their businesses delivering. The entirety of American business
depends on your rail lines running. The bosses don’t run the trains
themselves. We do!
The government has shown that it does not have your back;
instead, they side with your bosses because it is more important to keep
business as usual than allow you to live your lives. But they don’t
provide you with a life worth living at all!
Follow the example of Ontario education workers. Their
government, just like ours, has once again shirked their so-called
responsibility to us as citizens and sided with the employers, all to
maintain profits at the expense of working peoples’ livelihoods. The
Ontario educators refused to sit down while the Canadian government
steamrolled their freedom to strike.
We must stand together, rail workers of all crafts, and
even those employed outside of the railway industry! In dividing us by
craft, our bosses are able to push us down individually.
Our strength comes from our unity.
The only solution in front of us is to strike anyway. The
union leaderships may have their hands tied, but we do not!
We must not stand idly by while our right to collectively
bargain is stripped from us.
We should carry this onward, expanding this struggle into
ever larger and more organized struggles. Don’t wait for the leadership to
do it for us, or it may already be too late!
Connect with Longshore workers! Truckers! Those working
in warehouses!
Work toward building a united front of class unions – a
unified network of all the rank and file organizations employed in the
supply chain – so that we can put a halt to their bottom lines!
The capitalist system needs us, but we don’t need them!
Ontario Education Workers Stand up to Illegalization of Strike with Threat of General Strike
Class struggle has been in full swing in the Canadian
province of Ontario, where a
long and difficult struggle over wages in the education sector has caused
a desperate attempt to prevent a work stoppage across the province. The
provincial government, in the face of an impasse in these negotiations,
hastily passed legislation that would outlaw a strike in the province by
the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) if a new contract was not
negotiated. The pretense of the law would be to suspend CUPE’s “right” to
strike by using Article 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Popularly known as the Notwithstanding Clause, it allows a 5 year
suspension of constitutional rights for specific acts by specific groups.
The clause, based on the World War I “War Measures Act”, allowed banning
socialist and communist organizations and publications. The
Notwithstanding Clause has, for example, been used to allow Quebec to ban
islamic headscarves and other regressive measures.
The showdown in Ontario demonstrates the real stakes of
the capitalist system. Confronted by effective union mobilization, the
Province sought to temporarily revoke the workers “right to strike” as
guaranteed by the Canadian constitution. This shows that our position that
even in so-called “free” countries, the
rights contained in any bourgeois constitution are only promises in the
abstract. The only thing that’s inalienable in this society is the right
of the bourgeoisie to extract as much surplus value from the proletariat
as possible, with the aid of the bourgeois State. Education, public
service – these terms are as meaningless as human rights as long as
private property exists on earth. The pitiful state of public education
around the world shows that capitalism (and its unions) hold utter contempt
for anything that enriches human life in general.
With the passing of this legislation, the CUPE continued
on with their planned strike. They picketed for two days and as a result,
the provincial government rescinded the legislation banning the strike.
The liberal petty-bourgeoisie are crowing that this is
the end of the post-war era of compromise between the government and the
public sector unions in Canada. By “compromise”, they mean defeat.
Collaboration of any kind between labor and capital is suicidal for the
working class. The bourgeois State, as we reiterate again and again,
exists only to oppress the working class for the benefit of the
bourgeoisie. If defeat has the appearance of compromise, it is only
because bourgeois ideologies have captured the trade unions, making them
into just another body of armed men organized against the working class.
Now the economic crisis that began with the outbreak of the COVID-19
pandemic has incited workers everywhere to pull back the curtain, to see
where this compromise, that collaboration, really leads them.
So with the head to head match between CUPE and the Ontario government
undressed and out in the open, a tentative agreement has been proposed and
voting on this agreement began November 11th. Despite this
agreement being reached, many in CUPE feel the contract falls short of
what has been asked. Leadership of CUPE has even claimed that the new
agreement is the very same the government presented not two weeks prior.
The back and forth has certainly not abated, and it will be difficult to
tell what will transpire until after the voting period ends on December 17th.
But what we do know is:
Union solidarity stopped State repression in its tracks. This knowledge
should be taken up by American rail workers as well as the West Coast
dockers. Union leaders, beholden to various political parties have spent
years trying and failing to accomplish what the workers, acting as a class
for their class, accomplished in a few days. With the communist
party and the class union (which are the only expressions of the real
unity of action of the working class), the working class can and will end
the bourgeois State and its repression.
Bourgeois Repression in Turkey: Heads of the Turkish Medical Association and the Bread Producers’ Union Arrested
As the crisis increasingly dominates its national
economy, the Turkish State has been increasing the level of repression in
the country. The latest victims of this repression were Şebnem Korur
Fincancı, the head of the Turkish Medical Association, and Cihan Kolivar,
the head of the Bread Producers’ Union.
Fincancı was arrested in late October following a
statement she made on a television program on the claims that the Turkish
Armed Forces used chemical weapons on PKK guerrillas. Fincancı said that
the claims were worth investigating, and moreover, they seemed true based
on the footage of the deceased guerrillas. President Erdoğan himself
personally targeted Fincancı, saying she should pay for her words and also
be replaced as the head of the Turkish Medical Association. The
prosecutors and the police did not waste much time in charging Fincancı
with terrorist propaganda and arresting her afterward. She is currently
awaiting trial.
Kolivar was arrested in early November, again following a
statement he made on a television program. Stating that bread was not a
healthy food, Kolivar said societies fed by bread, such as the people of
Turkey, are foolish and thus elect leaders like the Turkish government.
Kolivar was charged with insulting the Turkish people, its president, and
bread itself, and put in prison. Kolivar was released soon after, above
all because he’d merely offended the current Turkish government rather
than expose the Turkish national State like Fincancı, however his trial
will continue.
Although the Turkish Medical Association, along with the
Union of Turkish Engineers’ and Architects’ Chambers, has long stood with
DİSK (Confederation of Progressive Workers Unions) and KESK (Confederation
of Public Employees’ Unions) and taken part in strikes in the medical
sector, it is a professional organization rather than an actual union. As
such, it includes proletarians as well as doctors who own their own
practices. As for the Bread Producers’ Union, it too is not an actual
workers’ union but an organization of small bakery owners. While the
statements of Fincancı and Kolivar were certainly sensational, the fact
that it is the leaders of such middle class organizations, rather than the
leaders of actual workers’ organizations such as DİSK, KESK and even the
more militant small unions around Umut-Sen (Union of Hope) and İşçi
Hareketi Koordinasyonu (Coordination of the Workers’ Movement),
demonstrates that the Turkish government is still hesitant of targeting
the leaders of workers’ unions directly, afraid of provoking workers’
reaction.
Fincancı, like the rest of the leadership of DİSK and
KESK, is an opportunist, affiliated with a political party allied with
Kurdish nationalists.
Especially Fincancı’s arrest was protested in numerous
Turkish and Kurdish cities by the local Labor and Democracy Forces, which
are political front groups made up of leftist unions, professional
associations and political parties. Without a doubt, the proletariat
should be opposed to such political repression. However, the way forward
is not a front of unions and opportunist parties from above, but an
actually class-based front of workers’ organizations, and workers’
organizations only, from below, employing methods of class struggle rather
than democratic protest against bourgeois repression.
Italy General Strike against the War economy
Fewer Weapons - Higher Wages!
ICP Preface
The two days clearly showed the limits of the unitary course embarked upon
for the past year and a half by the leaderships of Rank and File unionism,
how because of their political opportunism they are incapable of following
through to the end the increasingly urgent and necessary directive of the
unity of action of combative unionism, and how therefore that unitary
course is shaky, constantly in danger, always revocable.
On Saturday, October 15, at the national assembly
convened in Milan by all the Rank and File unions to promote the strike,
one of our comrades, speaking on behalf of the Coordinamento Lavoratori
Autoconvocati (CLA), had welcomed the new united general strike that
followed those of October 18, 2021 and May 20, 2022, and made two
proposals:
- That regional or
inter-regional demonstrations be held on the day of the strike, so that on
the one hand they could concentrate forces a little, and on the other hand
allow for easier participation of striking workers in the demonstrations,
better than could happen with a national demonstration;
- that the preparation of the
strike be as unified as its proclamation, and that for this purpose the
assembly give a mandate to set up in each city "unitary territorial strike
committees" – open to all workers and trade union bodies that supported
the strike – which would take charge of preparing it with territorial
assemblies, posters, leaflets; this was also to serve to broaden the unity
of action of conflict unionism beyond the perimeter of Rank and File
unionism, involving the combative workers’ groups still framed in the
regime unions and the class union areas in CGIL.
Nearly all subsequent speeches, including those by
various national leaders, had rejected-explicitly or implicitly-the two
proposals. What had emerged from them was little concern about the
problem, obviously crucial in a strike, of getting the broadest possible
wage-earning masses to join it, and to that extent the proposal for the
formation of unitary territorial strike committees had been ignored. The
strike would be prepared "each union for itself".
Nor had consideration been given to the problem of
involving combative workers in the regime unions and class union areas in
CGIL. Instead, more emphasis had been given to seeking the participation
in the demonstration – which was to be national – of the so-called social,
inter-class movements. The central goal was the success, in terms of
numbers, of the national demonstration, in order to gain so-called
visibility.
In addition to this, all the Rank and File unions except
SI COBAS-thus USB, CUB, Confederazione COBAS, SGB and other minor
ones-stipulated that they would organize a national demonstration in Rome
on the very day of the strike, Friday, December 2. The SI COBAS, on the
other hand, would organize a national demonstration, also in Rome, but the
next day.
The assembly had then given instructions to participate, in order to
promote the general strike, in two already scheduled national
demonstrations, on October 22 in Bologna and November 5 in Naples.
In the following weeks, however, the leadership of the
Rank and File unions partially changed their minds: on the one hand, they
decided to converge on the national demonstration called by SI COBAS for
December 3, and on the other hand, to organize local demonstrations on the
day of the strike.
This change of directive was positive in that it
eliminated the dastardly organization of two separate national
demonstrations on two days, converging instead on a single demonstration,
and also because it gave a mandate to organize local demonstrations.
However, on the one hand these hesitations and changes of
directions negatively affected the already not easy preparation of the
strike, and on the other hand the double day of mobilizations, local and
national, ended up weakened one a little bit the other.
Local demonstrations on the day of the strike generally
had a worse outcome than last year, with the exception of the one in
Florence.
The SI COBAS – which held the largest number of
preparatory assemblies at workplaces – organized pickets in front of
logistics warehouses and at other companies to prevent scabs, thereby
making the strike successful in logistics, and did not participate in the
city processions, except with delegations and with the exception of
Viterbo, where it joined the united union procession. In Rome, on the
other hand, the base unions were divided into several garrisons under
various ministries, without organizing a united procession.
The strike succeeded, as mentioned, in logistics and
partially in transport, where local and category disputes already in place
played out: well among railroaders in northern regions, gradually less so
going down into central Italy and the south; successful in spots among
tramway workers. In the rest of the working class it was, as in previous
attempts in years past, largely in the minority.
On the whole, once again the Rank and File unions failed
to break through the cloak of working-class passivity – the result of
decades of orchestrated defeats by regime unionism and their daily action
in the workplace – by presenting themselves as a credible instrument with
which to act collectively to demonstrate and fight the problems that
workers complain about.
Determining this situation are, on the one hand, the
malaise resulting from worsening living conditions that is not yet such as
to trigger struggles that spontaneously break such a shroud, except
sporadically; on the other hand, the shortcomings and mistakes of the Rank
and File unions.
However, a good base of workers organized by
confrontational unionism exists, as the national demonstration in Rome the
day after the strike showed.
It was a procession with a clear class character, made up
of 90 percent workers, totaling at least 8,000 people (6,000 according to
the Questura), which followed the classic route of the CGIL’s trade union
processions, landing in the large Piazza San Giovanni, usually used by the
major regime union for its final psalms, which, however, in its last
demonstration on Oct. 8 chose the smaller Piazza del Popolo instead.
Among the Rank and File unions, the largely majority part
of the procession was made up of the two large sections of SI COBAS,
first, and then USB. In between the two was the smaller one from the SGB.
Absent were the COBAS Confederation, CUB, ADL COBAS and the former GKN
Factory Collective.
This good result was unfortunately damaged, in addition
to the absences of the above organizations, by the conduct of the
leaderships of SI COBAS and USB, who in the days leading up to the
demonstration clashed no less than around who should hold the lead in the
procession.
The result was that the USB section kept its distance
from the first half of the procession and, more importantly, that while
the SI COBAS section entered Piazza San Giovanni, the USB section stopped
500 meters before, thus two separate rallies were held, and finally the
workers were even made to flow down two separate streets!
Our comrades, who attended in good numbers to spread the
party’s press and the leaflet calling for a "single class union front", witnessed the concrete and practical manifestation of the division of the
workers’ struggle carried out by opportunist union leaderships. To see
thousands of workers on one side and miles on the other was painful and
cause for anger.
If the entire procession had converged on St. John’s
Square, the result would have stood comparison with the CGIL mobilizations
of recent years. This is all the more so if the absent Rank and File
unions had joined in. In this way, the leaderships of SI COBAS and USB
also damaged what was their proclaimed goal of media visibility.
In any case, the free, democratic... and bourgeois press
dropped complete censorship on the procession of 8,000 workers who marched
through Rome behind the slogan "Let’s lower the guns, let’s raise the
wages!", demonstrating how democracy is the best political shell of the
bourgeois regime.
A full square, however, filled not only by half the
procession and, possibly, still with daylight, would have been more
difficult to ignore and hide and would have had a greater effect in
working to circulate the news of the mobilization’s success with the tools
available to the confrontational unions, which today are basically the
so-called "social" ones.
The reason for this conduct of the leaderships of the two
largest Rank and File unions lies in their opportunist political and trade
union action: if they have no guarantee of controlling or turning out to
be the majority force in a struggle action, they prefer to divide and
weaken it. It is a conduct that is the child of the petty-mindedness of
their conception of the development of the working class struggle
movement, typical of the Movementist groups of the 1970s, from which the
leading groups come, according to which the political organization – each
its own – should retain the leadership of the labor movement from its
earliest steps to the apogee of its strength. But in order to achieve this
impossible goal, the labor movement is divided, with the result of
damaging and retarding its development.
The communist conception of the development of the
struggle of the working class does not navigate so blindly and with such a
short-sighted strategy. We know that in the labor movement one inevitably
has to fight opportunist directives, which are generally in the majority
and whose defeat will be possible only by approaching the revolutionary
stage of the struggle between classes.
Moreover, we work and live in the sure conviction that
the stronger the economic struggle movement of the proletarian class the
more favorable are the conditions for the development of the party and for
its battle to win the leadership of the labor movement, a goal proclaimed
in the light of day and not pursued by petty means of an organizational
nature.
Everything must therefore be subordinated to
strengthening the economic, trade union, workers’ struggle movement. In
the face of the foreseeable attempt of an opportunist union leadership to
demand the head of a trade union march, or other dastardly deeds, we,
finding ourselves in the leadership of a trade union body, would have
nothing to object to, being interested in the unity of the workers in the
struggle, confident that this will lead tomorrow to ousting that
opportunist leadership group from their position of leadership.
The confirmation of these two days of mobilization is
that real, complete, united action of confrontational trade unionism is
possible only by organizing the base of these unions, uniting and
coordinating union militants aware of this need, forcing the leaderships
into it, and it will only be realized definitively to their detriment.
ICP LEAFLET
Rome, Saturday, December 3, 2022
For a united trade union class front!
For the second consecutive year, the leadership of the rank and file
unions have called a united general strike, putting aside the divisions
that had prevented it in previous years. This is an important step in the
direction of the unity of action of combative unionism that is one of the
elements necessary for workers to regain confidence in collective action.
The problem of workers’ distrust of trade union struggle is international,
but while in some countries-such as England and France-strike movements
have developed in recent months in defense of wages against the high cost
of living, in Italy, despite the fact that there are on average lower
wages than in those countries, workers are still prisoners of
individualism, distrust, and resignation.
This condition is the result of decades of regime unionism (CGIL, CISL,
UIL, UGL) that has produced only defeats for the working class:
counter-reforms of the labor market – which have made precariousness
rampant – and of the welfare system, to which they have not opposed any real
fighting action; contract renewals that are always losing.
The rank and file unions, however, have failed to channel distrust of the
regime unions into strengthening class unionism. Several factors
have caused this, one of which has certainly been the conduct of the
leadership of rank and file unionism that has divided workers’ actions:
since 2008 – the year of the new decisive leap forward of capitalism’s
global economic crisis of overproduction – for 13 years, while the
bourgeoisie and its political regime – with governments of different
colors but all anti-worker – unloaded the economic crisis on the workers,
the leadership of the major rank and file unions fought with each other,
hindering the formation of a credible trade union alternative to fight the
wage-earning masses.
The new course taken by the leadership of the rank and file unions, with
the proclamation of united general strikes, is therefore an important
first step in the right direction, which should be welcomed and supported.
Nevertheless, it is still wholly insufficient to address the increasingly
serious situation in which the working class finds itself:
- as unified as the proclamation of the general strike is, likewise
its preparation must be unified! The strike must be prepared in the
workplaces where each rank and file union is present, with assemblies, but
also, in each city, by forming unitary territorial strike committees, open
to all workers’ bodies and to all workers who wish to support it;
moreover, the general strike must be complemented by demonstrations of a
city-wide nature, at most regional or interregional, which encourage
workers’ participation much better than is the case with national
demonstrations;
- the mandate to set up unitary territorial strike committees in
each city must also be aimed at the involvement in the general strike of
the groups of combative workers still framed in the regime unions and the
minority class union areas within the CGIL: unity of union action must go
beyond the perimeter of rank and file unionism and extend to all combative
unionism!
- unity of action cannot be limited to the proclamation of the
general strike but must permeate daily trade union activity at all its
levels: company, territorial, industry and inter-industry! It is
necessary, for example, to define unitary contract platforms. Only on the
basis of a practice inspired by these principles and protracted over time
will it be possible to build that Single Class Union Front necessary to
foster the return to struggle of the proletarian masses and to organize a
general movement for their immediate goals:
- good wage increases, larger for the worst paid
categories and qualifications!
- generalized reduction of hours for equal wages!
- full wages for unemployed workers!
- reduction of the retirement age!
- abolition of all laws and agreements against
full freedom of strike and union organization!
- full equal rights for immigrant workers!
- rejection of all repressive maneuvers against
class unionism!
- renouncing of all actions supporting one side
in imperialist wars!
The return to the trade union struggle of the workers is the necessary
basis for the strengthening of their political party, which is the
authentically communist one, therefore revolutionary and internationalist,
which stands on the political line that from Marx goes to Lenin and the
Italian Communist Left that founded the Communist Party of Italy, which
fought against the Stalinist counterrevolution, in Italy impersonated by
the Togliotti’s PCI, and which kept intact the red thread of the
revolution with the foundation of the International Communist Party!
US: The Electoral Circus is Back in Town
November 8 was the date of the midterm election in the
United States, in which American citizens were called upon to vote for
their preferred representatives at the federal, state, and local levels.
And calling is exactly what the bourgeoisie has done.
From every direction, the elements of bourgeois society scream at citizens
to fulfill their alleged civic duty: vote! Volunteers canvass
neighborhoods and register people to vote at community events. Your
family, your boss, and your landlord all pressure you to cast your ballot.
Bourgeois political parties and regime trade unions insist that you
exercise your right to vote. Schools, universities, and churches join in
the chorus. In addition:
• All forms of news broadcasting – television, radio, and
internet
• Paid advertisements – billboards by the interstate,
posters on walls and poles, signs on the buses and the subway, TV and radio
commercials, internet ads, etc.
• Newspapers, magazines, and journals
• Social media – Facebook, Twitter, and so on
• Even internet search engines – Google says go vote!
Meanwhile, workers – especially those with lower wages – are much more
likely not to vote than the average person. Polls prove this has little to
do with disenfranchisement; non-voters simply do not believe voting will
improve their everyday lives. What does it say about voting that such a
large part of the ruling class advocates for it so earnestly, while the
working class seems to have little interest in it?
Bourgeois political analysts and party staffers are always anxious about
voter turnout. It’s taken as a self-evident truth that the greater the
percentage of the population that participates in the election, the better.
But better for who?
Since a century and a half ago, for our movement, the
existing democratic institutions have become a machine for holding down
the proletariat. Workers’ main problem is the misery of wage-labor: they
are caught between the collapsing purchasing-power of their wages and
looming unemployment. Many politicians ignore such “bread-and-butter”
issues altogether; others, being demagogues, endlessly rant and debate
about them, but never do anything to make an immediate, substantial
change. A vote is a blank check for these leaders to continue the status
quo; elections are nothing but a way of inducing the will of “the People,”
manufacturing consent for their own oppression and exploitation.
So to us communists, it is not at all obvious that high turnout is good. On
the contrary, we believe that the fewer workers who vote, the better.
Indeed, when the working class sees through the illusion of bourgeois
democracy and recognizes the necessity of revolutionary action, it will have no interest whatsoever in casting ballots.
Some argue that we should use the vote to create
better conditions for revolutionary action, to elect the government we
would rather struggle with.
Leaving aside the contradiction between voting for a government only to
subsequently turn around and strive to overthrow it, we grant that some
governments are easier to overthrow than others, although probably not for
the same reasons as the advocates of voting have in mind. The bourgeoisie
acts in its own interests: if it allows for apparent progress for some
sections of the working class, then it must come in the form of a quid pro
quo. A government that feigns friendliness to the workers – conceding
certain rights and improvements in their living and working conditions,
but only in exchange for dividing the working class and depriving it of
its militancy and independence – is not as easy to oppose. When the velvet
glove of democracy comes off, revealing the iron fist of fascism
underneath, communists breathe a sigh of relief – at least then the
workers see who the real enemy is, and instinctively struggle against it.
That is not to say that we buy into the alarmism of the left wing of the
bourgeoisie which frames the competition between Republicans and Democrats
in the US as a war between fascism and democracy: on the one hand, because
right-wing populism in that country is more of a reaction of certain
sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat against globalization
and modernization than an employers’ counter-offensive; on the other,
because the essential content of fascism – unification of the bourgeoisie
and elimination of the working class’s independence – have already been
embraced by both sides.
It is not that we believe voting does nothing. Voting
definitely accomplishes certain things: it perpetuates illusions among the
working class, and diverts precious, otherwise potentially dangerous
energy towards relatively harmless channels, distracting workers from
organizing a real struggle. This is democracy working just as intended by
the bourgeoisie which keeps it alive. The modern ruling class has taken to
heart an important lesson from the ruling class of antiquity: give the
masses bread and circuses to stave off revolt.
Unfortunately for the bourgeoisie, bread is becoming scarce as the crisis of
capital advances, and the spell they cast on the working class has already
worn off, as suggested by their widespread, spontaneous abstention.
Before long, with the intervention of the proletariat’s class party, the
countless simple acts of individual workers not voting due to indifference
turn to a positive action of the working class. Then, organized into a
united class union front, workers will obtain whatever concessions are
still possible under capitalism by the force of strikes that spread across
the artificial divisions of nation, industry, trade, and company; fighting
without illusions and without compromise.
In Germany, Too, Regime Unionism Underwrites Wage Increases Below the Rate of Inflation
Germany’s largest industrial union, IG Metall, with 3.8
million members mainly in the automotive and machine tool sectors, signed
a wage agreement with industrialists on Friday, November 18. The previous
one dated from 2018.
The deal initially applies only to Baden-Württemberg, the
third most populous Land
(State) of the sixteen that make up the Federal Republic of Germany, and
whose major cities include Stuttgart, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Freiburg,
Heidelberg, Ulm and Heilbronn; it is, however, likely to be extended
nationwide.
The agreement calls for an 8.5 percent wage increase over
two years: 5.2% next year and 3.3% in 2024; plus
there is a one-off tax-free payment of €3,000.
This increase is well below the rate of inflation, which
is currently 10.4% in Germany in general, but with higher rates applying
to food and energy, commodities that naturally affect working-class
consumption the most.
Inflation is expected to drop in the next two years, but
this is by no means certain. What’s more, the old contract expired in
September, and the first increase of 5.2% will not come until June 2023.
On September 14, IG Metall’s leadership submitted a
request for an 8% increase for 2023 alone in its first meeting with the
employers’ federation, Gesamtmetall.
"Our patience is wearing thin. The industrialists must
take responsibility and make a concrete offer,” thundered Jörg Hofmann,
secretary of IG Metall, after the failure of the fourth round of
negotiations, threatening strike action.
But at the fifth meeting, held in Ludwigsburg, near
Stuttgart, he finally accepted a significantly lower deal.
This will not even have to be submitted to a vote of the
membership, since, according to IG Metall’s rules, this is only mandatory
if workers have previously been called to vote on whether to proceed with
a general strike action in the category, which did not happen.
The agreement followed a series of local strikes and
demonstrations, which were not
unified by the union into a general movement across the country.
Thousands of workers participated in a “day of action on
the seaboard” in northern Germany on Wednesday, November 16.
This involved strikes in 13 northern cities. In Hamburg,
some 26,000 workers went on strike from 80 companies, including Airbus,
Arcelor Mittal, Philips and Jungheinrich, while 5,000 gathered for a rally
at Hamburg’s Fish Market. In Hanover and Osnabrück 7,000 rallied; in
Bremen 2,500; in Kiel 1,500; in Rostock 800.
Warning strikes, lasting only a few hours, were called at
various factories: Liebherr, Neptun Werft, Caterpillar, Otis Aufzüge, and
Siemens in Rostock. Elsewhere in Germany, 1,800 BMW workers went on strike
in Leipzig; in the Feuerbach industrial district of Stuttgart, about 2,000
workers struck at Robert Bosch GmbH, Coperion, Mahle, Koenig & Bauer
MetalPrint, Voith, Lapp and many other factories; more than 72,000 workers
from 578 companies in Germany’s largest State, North Rhine-Westphalia, had
been taking part in warning strikes for two weeks since the end of
October. Participatory assemblies took place at factories in Arnsberg,
Bielefeld, Duisburg, Mülheim, Gelsenkirchen, Essen, and Oberhausen.
The management of IG Metall only threatened 24-hour
strike action but showed no real intention to unify and extend the strike
movement. Many workers, however, called for the organization of an
indefinite strike and the demand for a 15 percent raise, which would be
needed to restore real wages.
Meanwhile, the
bourgeois regime in Berlin raised the minimum wage to 12 euros per hour
on Oct. 12, and State civil service workers got a 10.5 percent raise in
some Länder (States) with
a 500-euro anti-inflation bonus.
The strength of German imperialism – among the most
powerful in the world – still allows its ruling class, aided by regime
unionism, to keep the working class pacified. But this situation is
destined not to continue, due to the inexorable advance and deepening of
global capitalism’s historic economic crisis of overproduction.
The working class in Germany will also return to struggle
alongside its class brothers around the world!
Report on the 15th October Mobilization in Portugal
Last Saturday, on October 15th, in Lisbon
and Porto, the largest mobilization of people in two years in
Portugal took place. The protest was organized and led by the Portuguese
Communist Party (PCP), the old Stalinist Comintern party, as well as the
trade union confederation which it controls, the CGTP, by far the biggest
in Portugal, organizing around 80% or so of organized workers in Portugal.
The protest was against the almost entirely stagnant
(even “frozen”) wages of Portuguese workers while the prices of every
single essential need, above all gas, reach ludicrous hikes, against rent
and speculation (Lisbon was rated the 3rd most unlivable city
in the world – worse than New York, which alone really says it all!) and
the fact that while this increasing immiseration of the proletariat goes
on, companies have been scoring record profits all across the board.
Thousands upon thousands of people attended, and we saw
the presence of many CGTP unions, carrying their banners, of many sectors
of workers. The demonstrators were overwhelmingly proletarian, poor and
impoverished workers, as well as some students, not distinguished by
class. The age of the demonstrators included both the youth and average
aged worker, as well as some pensioners and retirees. There was not much
of a middle class presence.
One of the speakers, belonging to the PCP, said that “the
last two years show that the Portuguese workers do not accept the
degradation of wages and pensions, the attack on public services, at the
same time as the economic groups and multinational corporations accumulate
thousands of millions of euros in profits shares that for the most
part, exit the country [!],
and that just as the workers don’t accept, neither does the PCP”.
No anti-militarism at all, not of the petit-bourgeois
hypocritical sort, the only talk of war was one of the slogans that was
shouted: “No to war, yes to peace”.
First, let’s note this right off the bat: the fact that a
PCP demonstration is the largest mobilization in the country in two years
is of significance, because while it does point to the fact that class
struggle is incredibly slow and weak in Portugal despite the poverty of
the workers here, the famous “people of mild manners” (povo de brandos
costumes) as the national saying
goes, it also points out that its labor movement at the moment has some
peculiarities: namely that one of the still ongoing, rotten Stalinist
parties of the old Comintern can still manage such a mobilization of
workers in the first place.
In almost no other country would such a thing happen.
The PCP
has a trick that it plays on the workers and that it hasn’t failed them
yet. It’s very simple: it will support the ruling PS (Socialist Party –
a Labourite
type party, and the main party of the Portuguese bourgeoisie, after the
fall of the fascist regime, since it’s very birth) in parliamentary
coalitions with the most rotten and ancient excuse of the
Stalinists’, the “danger from the Right”.
Thus in Portugal, in the near total absence of militant
unions (there exists one for dockers, historically a militant section of
workers, which staged a large, real strike in 2019 and even won, against
the PCP and its unions, it should be noted), with the working class still
trusting the old Communist Party to some extent, which is an entirely
regime organ, fully integrated into the State machinery, and which thus
will never attack the State of which it is a part of or the capitalist
economy that that State serves. Class struggle finds itself in a “frozen”
state, with no combative strikes at all and no revolts.
This was not a strike: it was not even pretending to
be one, nor did it call itself one. It was a mobilization, purposefully marked on a weekend and
lasting one day, only in two major urban centers (and indeed the PCP
never organizes mobilizations other than on May 1st where they are a pure formality that lasts some 45 minutes), to pretend to compel parliament to allow those reformist programs to go through.
There
was
obviously no talk of revolution, and of course we wouldn’t expect such
a thing by any opportunist parliamentary party like this, but there was not even talk of striking.
The
workers
were very receptive to this message, there was no visible discontent
with the assertion that all the workers must do is show their
discontent for the government to ease the burdens of the workers at
the expense of some of the profits of the bourgeoisie and the entire mobilization and march was held with the usual servile obedience to parliamentary party
discipline, with no assemblies for workers to discuss things, merely allowing their
“representatives” to talk for them and shouting their pre-made
slogans.
The
fact that the PCP was
compelled to organize such a mobilization, however, is itself proof of the growing discontent
of the working masses, which the PCP decided to use for its own
bourgeois purposes – though likely less because it could explode into
something out of its control and more likely to maintain the duped
workers’ trust in it.
Needless to say that this demonstration will not change
the attitude of the whole parliament who will no doubt turn down the
incoming PCP reforms, just as they have done the last few years. How the
workers will react to this is what is decisive, but with such a lack of
militant trade-unionism, prospects remain rather pessimistic. We can
certainly say that the Portuguese workers should learn from the example of
their proletarian brothers across the border: loss of faith in democracy,
and an at least substantial presence of the militant unions (as seen in
the Cadiz strike of December last year).
Report from Pakistan
At
the
time of writing this, the present situation with the assassination
attempt on the ex-prime minister Imran Khan, has given one faction of the
bourgeoisie its martyr, giving an organic flavor to Khan’s popular
movement, as in Sri-Lanka, the working masses have remained tied to
the popular movements. The intensified crisis in the bourgeoisie has
further delayed the provision of IMF funds, and developmental
programs.
Pakistan’s bourgeoisie, crisis-stricken and submerged in
water, continues to juggle between imperialisms
The Pakistani
bourgeoisie has long been trying to juggle between the two great
imperialisms, American and Chinese, in
seeking to defend the interests
of their own
national capital.
Prime
minister
Khan’s ouster is a consequence of the need of the crisis-stricken Pakistani
ruling class, namely to try to rebuild its ties, lost in recent years, with the
United States.
Historically,
Pakistan’s
relations
with
Washington intensified shortly after independence.
At the height of the Cold War, in 1954, Pakistan joined the Southeast
Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), a U.S.-sponsored organization aimed
at containing any so-called Communist expansion
into south and central Asia.
During
the
Indo-Pakistani Wars of the 1960s and ‘70s, Washington decided to
loosen relations, which were nurtured again after the Russian invasion
of Afghanistan in December 1979, when Islamabad was fortified as a
check on the Russian advance.
With
the
fall of Russian State capitalism, the two States were once again driven apart. The
new invasion of an ever-tormented Afghanistan, this
time by the
U.S.,
whom
sent substantial military and financial aid, revived American imperialist interest in
the region once again.
It
is
more
recent
that
the
advance
of Chinese imperialism in the region has actually soured relations
with Pakistan’s
allies
in the American ruling class. Relations with Beijing bloomed in the
last twenty years but are also longstanding. By the end of the 1950s
to
the
early
‘60s,
common rivalry with India pushed Islamabad closer to China. In 1963, Pakistan recognized
the region of Shaksgam as Chinese, which before 1947 was formally
under the control of the Maharaja of Kashmir, an area still claimed by
India in the disputed territory
of
Kashmir.
The
Sino-Pakistani military cooperation
was reinforced in the
early
1960s: the People’s Republic, after
distancing itself from post-Stalin Russia, approached Pakistan with funding for the army, beginning in 1962.
In the ‘90s the alliance with China was crucial in developing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons
program. With the rise of Chinese imperialism, investments on
Pakistani soil have increased. From 2008 to 2019, China loaned
Pakistan
$40 million for the construction of transport infrastructure
(primarily highways) and energy. The high point of economic
cooperation between
the
two countries was
in
2015. That
year,
the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched, marking
the
foundations for the
China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor (CPEC) to
connect the Pakistani ports of Gwadar and Karachi to the Chinese
province of Xinjiang.
With regards to armaments trade, relations with
China have also increased. Today, Pakistan primarily buys its arms from Beijing. In the period between
2000 and 2021 (according
to SIPRI
data),
the
country
buys about
three
times more arms from China than from US.
The
relations
between the two countries were
consistently strong. The
result
is the subjugation of the Islamic republic’s recent governments to
Beijing’s
interests.
Nevertheless, a State in the grip of such a deep economic
and social crisis inevitably has to try to search for other sources to get
out of the quagmire in which it finds itself, and it is in this scenario
that the new government’s attempted rapprochement toward U.S. dollars and
support for the permanent settlement of the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad
should be seen.
It
should
also be considered that China itself is reevaluating the usefulness of
part of its investments in Pakistan considering several knots that
Islamabad is unable to untie: the continuous attacks by separatist
(Balochi) and jihadist groups, the instability of domestic politics,
the huge accumulated debt and Beijing’s consequent aversion to keeping
credit tabs
open to such a high-risk country. All are unresolved factors
that have effectively chilled relations between the two countries.
The
stakes
are very high for international capital and exercising control over
this borderland will remain on the agenda of the major
imperialist powers.
Flooding Exacerbates the Crisis
The
year
2022 was a year of severe economic crisis that affected a large number
of countries whose political and social situations, in many cases,
were already precarious. Pakistan,
only one such country, is now in a worse condition than in the crisis that
occurred in 2008. Even before the 2019 global recession, after a small
post-2008 recovery, the economy had begun experiencing sharp declines since
2017.
Today the country is
facing unprecedentedly high inflation which is struggling to ease, with
an external debt of about $130 billion. Since the end of May, fuel
prices have by risen 90%, with food
prices rising by 37%.
The former prime
minister, facing growing discontent, had arranged for fuel and energy
subsidies last March, which were revoked by the new government in an
effort to reduce the rising fiscal deficit and ensure the resumption of
the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) “bailout”
program.
A major energy crisis
had emerged even before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Pakistan, being heavily dependent on fuel exports, was among the first countries to complain
of serious supply problems. The bourgeois State at various times cut off
electricity to households[,] but also to various companies and
industries, with adverse consequences on agricultural
and industrial production. Many large cities were deprived of
electricity for 12 hours a day, worse in rural areas where a power grid
is present.
In late August, the IMF,
to avoid default as happened in Sri Lanka, reinstated the Extended Fund
Facility (EFF) program to benefit Pakistan, which will
receive $1.1 billion. The approval came only after the new government of
Prime Minister Sharif introduced several austerity measures, including a
further increase in fuel prices. Unpopular measures that strengthened
the bourgeois faction linked to former Prime Minister Khan.
The situation became
dramatic when there were unprecedented floods in the summer months that
inundated large areas of the country. Floods fueled by melting glaciers
and continuous monsoon rains destroyed homes, transportation, and agricultural yields including cotton and rice plantations.
The United Nations has labeled this scenario as “climate carnage”,
without going into the merits of the issue; as materialists, we know
well who is the real and main culprit: capitalism,
which as we described and explained in a previous article (il
Partito
Comunista,
n. 418), is
responsible for massive deforestation and uncontrolled urban planning, especially in flood-prone areas.
As we write this, the
waters, which had invaded one-third of Pakistan’s territory, have begun
to recede, leaving behind an apocalyptic scene. More
than 1,500 people are confirmed dead and thousands are still missing;
nearly two million homes have
been
destroyed or damaged, and
millions more displaced.
The worst flooding occurred along the Indus River in the
provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Sindh. In the
latter region, 25% of the population is displaced, about 60% have
inadequate access to drinking water, and more than 40% do not have
adequate access to food. Nearly 1 million livestock and more than 2
million acres of orchards and crops have been lost.
In addition to the
deaths and destruction of infrastructure and housing, the biggest
problem for the displaced people who have been living under the open sky
for weeks is that of infectious diseases fostered by stagnant water:
malaria, dengue, and dysentery abound. There will also be repercussions on the
food supply and market.
The damage amounts to
about $30 billion, affecting field harvesting and industrial production:
a
capital, environmental, social and economic disaster that will also have
medium-term consequences in the rest of the world, particularly in terms
of the reduced supply of Pakistani agricultural products caused by the
devastation of cotton and rice crops, of which the country is in fact
one of the main producers and exporters. Today it is estimated that
about half of the country’s cotton crop has been destroyed. The floods
also threaten to disrupt much of the autumn season’s
wheat planting, with serious
yet predictable
consequences for exports and far-reaching consequences for domestic
needs.
Even if
large landowners survive the floods, a different situation stands for
small farmers, already in crisis and weighed down with debts they can no
longer repay. Also remarkable is
the condition of many wage earners who were already employedin super-exploitative
conditions and have now lost their jobs.
The wage-earning
class, at
large, suffers from
not only high inflation but worsening living and working conditions. The data recorded in the first quarter,
certainly better than those that will be collected in the coming months,
described this picture: in the service sector,
where 40% of the workforce is engaged, wage growth decreased from 3.4%
to 2.4%, for mechanics from 5.9% to 3.6%. Most of the labor force
engaged in the informal sector earns as little as 15,000 rupees
(equivalent to $67) per
month. In the public sector,
the minimum wage for “first-grade” (or entry-level) employees stands at 12,000 rupees ($50) a
month.
Occasionally the State gives up crumbs, this time in the
form of a “relief package,” as they called it: 2,000 rupees, or $8.70!
“Public ownership” of the Railroads Brings no Gain
Amidst the current nationwide turmoil in the rail
industry over contract negotiations, the October meeting of the Railroad
Workers United (RWU) Steering Committee adopted a resolution endorsing
“public ownership” of the railroads. The RWU is an “inter-union,
cross-craft solidarity ‘caucus’ of railroad workers, and their supporters,
from all crafts, all carriers, and all unions across North America”.
The RWU Steering Committee points out that “rail
infrastructure the world over is held publicly” (meaning held by the
State). But the conditions of workers in these State-owned rail companies
is, generally speaking, no better than those in the private sector. We can
see this in countries where both models – private and State ownership –
exist side by side. In the United Kingdom, rail workers of Network Rail
Ltd – the public body run by the UK Government’s Department of Transport –
are striking to improve their wages and conditions alongside rail workers
of the private train operating companies (TOCS) and freight operating
companies (FOCS).
We can see other examples in various sectors in Italy.
Fincantieri, a world leader in the construction of cruise ships is owned
by a State financial institution (Cassa Depositi e Prestiti), ensures its
supremacy with a very high level of exploitation of workers in its
shipyards, based on the chain of subcontracting, whereby the vast majority
of the workforce is employed in the construction of each individual
vessel. Fincantieri’s direct employees enjoy somewhat better conditions
but are a minority of the workers. Fincantieri is nevertheless fully
responsible for the highly exploitative conditions of the workers of the
contracting firms, many of whom are immigrants.
In SDA, a logistics company owned by the State-owned
Italian Postal Service, porters and drivers are subjected to high levels
of exploitation, as evidenced by the ongoing struggles over the years
organized by grassroots unions, first SI Cobas and most recently by USB
(Unione Sindacale di Base). The latter, together with other unions,
organized a strike on October 5 against some of the layoffs, taking SDA
drivers inside the headquarters of the Italian Postal Service in Rome,
from where they were kicked out by police with batons.
The latest example is that of the former Alitalia, now
ITA Airways. The privately owned airline was nationalized in October 2021.
This transition, however, came with the dismissal of most of the
workforce, which was reduced from 11,000 to 2,800 workers.
The RWU resolution
states that publicly owned railroads are
“to be operated
henceforth in the public interest”. Is this the same “public
interest” that the carriers and the UK Government are currently
invoking (and which governments always invoke) in their efforts to prevent
a national rail strike? Why does the Steering Committee refer to
“the public” rather than “the railroad workers” or “the working
class”?
The concept of “the public interest” is a democratic
fantasy in a class-divided society, used to divide and disorientate the
working class whenever it is in struggle. When false friends and
opportunistic labor leaders urge workers to line up on the side of “the
public”, this only traps them within the confines of the body politic of
the State. The truth is it makes no difference to workers whether the boot
that steps on them is public or private.
In the United States,
public ownership is less common, but we only have to look at the US
Postal Service to illustrate that it brings no gain. Postal workers
are legally prevented from using strike action and further inhibited
from doing so as a result of their division into craft unions. As
a result, they face increasingly brutal attacks on their living and
working conditions. There are still huge staffing shortages and
severe problems with recruitment and retention of employees.
Calling on workers and
unions to support public ownership perpetuates the illusion that the
State as
such,
or under certain types
of (bourgeois) government,
is able or willing to liberate the working class. Communists, by
contrast, have always asserted that the emancipation of the working
class can only be achieved by the working class itself. Support for
public ownership also channels valuable energy away from what should
be the real aim of the working class: the formation of the class
union, created to fight over issues that directly affect workers
like wages and working conditions.
Workers can only succeed by struggling for their own
demands. This means directing their efforts to organizing a national rail
strike to protect wages and benefits and reduce working hours. To succeed,
railroad workers must unite with workers across the entire transport and
logistics supply chain and, ultimately, across broad swathes of the
working class, fighting as one for common goals. Communists contribute to
this massive undertaking by making millions of workers aware of their
common class identity and interests and the need to establish the material
prerequisites for unitary and combative action.
Declaring in favor of
public ownership is nothing but a distraction from this
world-historic mission. The only public power currently in existence
– the State – is not some neutral mediator above classes, but a
machine expressly designed and always used for repressing the
proletariat and enforcing capitalist order. In other words, the
State is a bourgeois State.
This does not mean
that the issue can be resolved by “abolishing the State” (an anarchist
fantasy). The State itself exists because the very foundations of the
economy rest on class division, the exploitation of one class by
another. This was as true in the USSR – where virtually all enterprises
were either directly in public ownership or relied on the State for
finance – as it is in the USA or China of today. As we write in the
introduction to A
Revolution Summed Up,
“Wherever wage labor, capital, and an economy based on exchange exist,
we are in the presence of capitalism, its economic cycles and the
falling rate of profit. This is quite simply, and has always been, the
authentic Marxist position”.
France: New Strike Wave
As a result of the rise in consumer prices, a movement
of workers’ struggles has been developing in France since September which,
although it has not reached for now the force of that of December 2019
against pension reform, has an extension and intensity that is by no means
negligible.
The strikes are all for wage increases and almost always
to the bitter end, in France they are called "renewable" (reconductible),
due to the fact that their continuation is decided by the assemblies at
the workplaces. In fact, in many cases, these strikes have forced
companies to anticipate what in France are called Compulsory Annual
Negotiations (NAO), concerning economic aspects. Beyond the results,
generally inferior to the initial demands, there is no doubt that they
gave a partial protection to the workers from the erosion of the
purchasing power of their wages.
They were generally led by the workplace structures of
the CGT – in the case of the petrochemicals the trade federation, the
combative FSIC CGT – which in some cases were joined by those of Force
Ouvrière and Solidaire-Sud.
There has been a tendency for the strikes to spread
between companies and categories, but for the time being the action of the
collaborationist leadership of the CGT, that of the openly pro-union
unions such as the CFDT, CFTC and CFE-CGC, and the repressive action of
the French bourgeois State have been sufficient to stop it from converging
and growing into a general movement.
The most important strike, that of the Exxon Mobil and
Total petrochemicals, which lasted between 22 and 35 days depending on the
plants, was organized by the FNIC CGT, while the CFDT – the majority in
both groups – sabotaged it from the beginning, along with the CFE-CGC, the
cadres’ union.
The FNIC CGT asked for the support of the confederal CGT
by extending the strike for wage increases to the other categories, with
the proclamation of a general strike, which in France they call
inter-professional.
The confederal leadership of the CGT did not deny this
support but deployed mobilisations that were more symbolic than real tests
of strength. It proclaimed a first day of inter-professional mobilization
on Thursday 29 September, two more on Tuesday 18 October and Thursday 27
October, and a fourth on Thursday 10 November.
The first one on 29 September was called not only by the
CGT, but also by Solidaires SUD and FSU (Fédération Syndicale Unitaire).
The one of October 18 was joined by Force Ouvrière. That of 27 October was
called by the CGT alone, as was that of 10 November which, despite a
successful strike in transport, particularly at RATP, mobilized few
workers.
The most combative sectors of the CGT have denounced the
lack of serious preparation by the leadership and the majority of the
union of these days of general mobilization, focused on demonstrations
instead of strikes, with few workplace and territorial assemblies: a
cosmetic action that falls within the framework of the idea of
collaborationist trade unionism, albeit disguised, which places the
bargaining table and not the struggle as the pivot of its action. In
addition, these combative sectors of the CGT, correctly argue that the
general strike, in order to strengthen itself, should not be limited to
one day, but should also be "renewable", that is, not with a predetermined
deadline.
For some time now – since the
end of the control of the bogus French Communist Party (PCF) over this
union, at the turn of the century – the CGT no longer has the
characteristic of a centralized organization, and the territorial, company
and sectoral structures have been left with a great deal of autonomy. The
decisions taken by the collaborationist confederal leadership are in no
way binding. This, on the one hand, has allowed the development of
combative groups and sectors within the union, but on the other hand
prevents the organisation of real general actions. The collaborationist
leadership of the confederation, headed since 2015 by Philippe Martinez,
formerly head of the collaborationist metalworkers’ federation FTM CGT,
convenes general actions without organizing them, justifying itself with
the claim that the impetus for their success must come from the base. With
the loss of the leadership’s ability to firmly control the grassroots
through a sufficiently robust tradition and political organisation that is
falsely workers’ as the PCF was, this disarticulation of the union
machinery plays in its favour. That this is just a strategy to keep the
union on the tracks of class collaborationism is confirmed by the affair
of the CGT PSA at the Poissy factory, which we report on below.
In a number of cases, such as at Exxon Mobil and Total,
the strike was led by the CGT alone, despite its minority membership. The
largest union in the private sector, nationally, is the openly
collaborationist CFDT.
Naturally the bosses, with their press, did not let slip
the opportunity to speculate on this aspect, pointing at the striking
workers as a minority of extremists who were undermining the "right to
work" of the majority of workers and holding society as a whole in check,
where the economic sectors affected by the strike affected general aspects
of social life, as in the case of the petrochemical industry.
But these were still substantial minorities of workers,
which confirms that the democratic principle is idealistic, alien and
contrary to the class struggle, which is based on the principle – not
idealistic and proper to real social life in capitalism – of force: a
sufficiently organized and robust minority of workers can conduct
victorious strikes, drag along part of the undecided fellow-workers and
render the scabs impotent.
CFDT and CFE-CGC, at Exxon Mobil and Total, waited until
the strike showed signs of weakening, at which point they concluded wage
agreements that fell short of the strikers’ demands, but which effectively
ended the strike at most plants. After the strike ended they took credit
for the wage increases, claiming that they were the result of the
negotiations and not of the strike. A practice similar to that observed
many times in Italy, by CGIL Cisl and Uil against SI Cobas, even if with
smaller scale struggles.
Below are brief descriptions of the major strikes.
Exxon and Total Petrochemicals
At Esso-Exxon Mobile the strike began on 20 September,
promoted by the CGT, a minority in the group. On 27 September, the
chemists’ federation, the FNIC CGT, extended the strike to TotalEnergie,
where the strike was joined by 70% of workers at fuel depots and
refineries, including the Normandy refinery, the largest in the country.
Workers from contracting companies also joined the strike. The workers
have demanded a 10% increase, the unblocking of recruitment and investment
in maintenance and renovation of plants now obsolete.
Over the last 30 years, two thirds of the refineries in
France have closed and only seven remain. The plants have not been
renovated. Companies make the maximum profit in the exploration-production
process so that most of the profits are allocated – apart from paying
dividends to shareholders – to investments in exploration, particularly
offshore.
The strike had an impact on refinery and service station
supplies and consequently on the entire national economy. Faced with the
fuel shortages, the government decided on October 12 to resort to
pre-call-outs at Exxon Mobil depots to unblock the departure of tanker
trucks. The walkouts drew protests from CGT and FO union leaders, who
denounced them as a violation of the right to strike. If the worker did
not comply with the precepts, he was punishable by up to 6 months in
prison and a fine of 10,000 euros.
This repressive action of the bourgeois State was
accompanied by the action of the openly pro-union trade unions who signed
downward agreements with the companies.
On October 10, at Exxon Mobil, CFDT and CFE-CGC signed a
wage agreement well below demands. On October 14, the assemblies decided
to break the 23-day strike.
The next day, Saturday, October 15, the administrative
courts validated the preceptions.
On October 13, while the strike continued in all the
main plants, Total began negotiations with all the unions by giving a
majority weight, in the delegations, to those not participating in the
strike movement, namely CFDT and CFE-CGC. The next day these two unions
signed a downward agreement, with a 7% wage increase for 2022 and 2023.
The CGT Total delegates’ coordination decided to
continue the struggle, rejecting the agreement. The strike continued until
18 October – the second day of national mobilisation proclaimed by the
CGT, Force Ouvrière, Solidaire SUD and FSU – but was then broken off in
the majority of plants, except at the Gonfreville-L’Orcher refinery in
Normandy near Le Havre, the largest in the country, and at the Feyzin
depot near Lyon, where it continued until 2 November!
PSA Stellantis and the Poissy CGT PSA affair
All factories of the PSA group (Pegout, Citroën,
Stellantis), including the two most important ones in Sochaux and Mulhouse – near the border with Switzerland and Germany – were hit by strikes on
September 27 and 28 involving some 4,300 workers. French car factories had
not seen similar strikes since 1989. The demands were again for wage
increases.
While this first step was being taken towards the return
to struggle of this important sector of the working class, the
collaborationist leadership of the CGT’s metallurgical federation, the FTM
CGT, did not hesitate to sink an attack – begun in 2021 – against a
combative sector of the union, represented by the CGT’s factory structure
at the PSA in Poissy.
This factory, located about 30 km northwest of Paris,
has been in existence for 60 years. It first produced for Simca-Chrysler,
then for PSA Peugeot-Citroën, and now for Stellantis and employs 3500
workers.
The factory CGT claims to have 270 members – some of
whom are former workers from nearby PSA Aulnay who led a four-month strike
against the plant’s closure in 2013 – and has often clashed with the FTM
CGT leadership.
In November 2021 the CGT PSA in Poissy convened an
extraordinary congress of the factory structure: 193 union members and
representatives of 12 of the 15 CGT factory sections of the PSA Stellantis
group were present but the federation leadership did not want to send its
representatives. The congress confirmed confidence in the shop stewards.
A month later, the national leadership and the
territorial (departmental) structure of the FTM CGT organised another
congress attended by 137 members, including 56 from the CGT PSA in Poissy,
which revoked the mandate of the Central Trade Union Delegate of the CGT
factory Jean Pierre Mercier and, in open violation of the CGT statutes,
created a new factory structure of the union.
Six months later, last June, an assembly of CGT
delegates from the PSA Stellantis factories that took place at the FTM
headquarters on the confederal CGT premises in Montreuil, near Paris,
opposed by a large majority – 223 votes in favour and 31 against – the
decision to revoke Jean Pierre Mercier’s mandate.
The FTM management then decided to settle the matter by
taking 16 delegates of the CGT PSA in Poissy to the administrative courts,
requesting their exclusion from the union.
The court of Bobigny – near Paris – met on October 20 to
address the issue. Outside the courthouse, a presidium was held in the
presence of 500 delegates and members of the CGT, in support of the PSA
factory section of Poissy. The decision of the court will be taken not
earlier than 8 December.
The FTM CGT has 60,000 members, it is the third category
federation of the CGT and is one of the pillars of the line of class
collaboration of this regime union. It was one of the most timid to join
and organize the inter-professional strikes of September 29, October 18
and 27.
Airbus and aeronautics subcontractors
On Thursday, October 6,
for the first time in the company’s history, workers at Sabena
Technics, which works under contract to Airbus, went
on strike. The company is located in the so-called
Blagnac-Cornebarrieu aeronautical basin, near Toulouse, one of the main
industrial districts in France.
The strike was promoted jointly by Force Ouvrière and
CGT to obtain a bonus increase in line with the other aviation
subcontractors in the basin. All workers, including temporary workers,
took part and it lasted four days, until 10 October.
The strikers were able to count on the experience of the
former workers of ATE, a company that had closed down and from which
several workers had come, who had already gone on strike against their
former management. This allowed, for example, to have a well-organized
picket line from the first day and to distribute leaflets to the workers
of this large industrial concentration.
The strike was thus an opportunity to forge links with
trade union activists from other companies in the industry, such as Satys,
AHG or the client Airbus.
On Wednesday 12 October, several dozen workers from
Daher Logistics in Toulouse, a logistics company that subcontracts for
Airbus, transporting parts for assembly, went on strike. The demands were
for a 10% wage increase and a 1000 euro bonus and the strike lasted three
days.
A strike began
on Tuesday 18 October at the FAL A320 in Toulouse, the plant where the
final assembly (Final Assembly Line) of the Airbus 320, the European
manufacturer’s best-selling aircraft model, is carried out.
The demand was the same as for the petrochemicals, a 10%
increase. The strike was supported by the majority of the workers and
supported by the factory CGT but opposed by the Force Ouvrière factory
structure – the majority of workers at the plant – by the group structure
(FO Airbus) and by the trade federation FO Metallurgy Federation.
This was in apparent opposition to the confederal
leadership of Force Ouvriere which had that day joined the
inter-professional strike together with CGT and Solidari SUD. The strike
lasted three days, interrupted by the assembly on the afternoon of
Thursday, October 20.
Workers at the Atelier Industriel de l’Aéronautique
(AIA) in Clermont-Ferrand, in central France 159 km west of Lyon, which
works for the French armed forces, also went on strike on 18 October.
Since Friday 21 October, Daher workers at Bordes,
Tarnos, Le Haillan, St Médard en Jalles and Rosny sur Seine have been on
strike, demanding 5% wage increases. While the strike at Daher Logistic in
Toulouse had involved a few dozen workers but remained isolated, now the
movement involved hundreds of workers on five sites, was nationwide, but
lowering the wage claim from 10% to 5%.
The strike lasted for 5 days. It was particularly strong
in Bordes, where the workers of Saran, where helicopters are assembled,
joined in. Nearly 500 strikers gathered each day in front of the plant.
A strike began on Tuesday 25 October at the
Villefranche-de-Rouergue (Aveyron) plant of Blanc Aéro, a manufacturer of
aeronautical fasteners, owned by Lisi Aerospace, a metalworking giant with
21 production sites in 9 countries.
After an NAO (Compulsory Annual Negotiation) meeting
organised on 18 October, the CGT had set an information assembly for the
workers on Monday 24. At the end of this meeting, the evening shift
workers walked off the job at 10 p.m., with 95% of them on strike. The
strike was then extended to the morning shift and then to the afternoon
and evening shifts. Prior to the strike, the CGT had conducted a
consultation to demand an increase of €220 gross. The management’s
proposals fell far short of the workers’ expectations.
These different struggles raised the question of the
unity of the workers of the entire aviation production chain, which in
recent decades has been divided sol the subcontracting system. The mutual
support between the strikers Daher and Safran at Bordes was a first step
in this direction.
Other strikes
From 19 October to 27
October, a strike has affected the industrial bakery giant
Neuhauser, first in the two main factories of Maubeuge, on the border with
Belgium, and Folschviller, in the department of Moselle on the border with
Germany, then extending to four other factories, for a total of six out of
eleven factories on strike. The strike had repercussions on the
distribution sector, as denounced by the director of human resources of
the Lidl group in France. The workers finally got a bonus of one thousand
euros.
Ten days of strikes have hit EDF, the State-owned
electricity generation and distribution company. 14 out of 18 nuclear
power plants, 24 out of 58 reactors were affected. Workers finally got a
200 euro raise.
On Tuesday 25 October, a week-long strike began at the
private clinic of "Toutes Aures", near Bordeaux. Most of the workers are
women and precarious workers, very young and they went on strike for the
first time. A nurse in the night shift is alone to assist 30 patients.
Because of the strike, the entire operating room schedule was cancelled,
i.e. more than 300 operations.
Several RATP depots in the Île-de-France (the Paris
region), SNCF sites (the Landy technical centre site, the Gare de Lyon)
also went on strike. Worldline, the company specializing in electronic
payments that is part of the CAC40, had many sites affected by strikes.
Workers at the Geodis logistics center in Gennevilliers, near Paris, have
been on all-out strike since October 17.
Other strikes affected workers at Ari Liquid (industrial
gases), Leroy Merlin, Ponticelli Frères (industrial piping and boilers).
Capitalist Climate Change Threatens
Agricultural Profits and Supply Chains
While the United States federal government and the Class
I Railroads attempt to avert a disruption to supply chains caused by an
unruly labor force, another looming menace threatens to cause further
havoc to the economy. The Mississippi River, the United States’ great
artery of commerce, is suffering from a lack of rainfall, leaving barges
stranded as it reaches its lowest levels in 40 years. Water levels in
Memphis, Tennessee, a major logistics hub, were at nearly 11 feet below
average, and the time it takes a barge, the preferred mode of transport
for most crops, to travel from St. Louis, the central hub of commerce
along the river due to its position at the mouth of the Missouri River, to
New Orleans, sitting at the mouth of the river on the Gulf of Mexico, has
doubled.
In addition to the increased travel times, the number of
barges that a given tug can push has decreased due to limitations in the
channel width created by the low water, and those barges must be laden
more lightly lest they run aground. Whereas before a typical pack might
consist of 40 barges, now the limit is 25, and the maximum draft anyone
dares load is nine feet as compared to the previous twelve to fourteen on
the lower Mississippi. To explain the significance to the flow of
agricultural commodities, the following figures must be kept in mind: a typical barge can be loaded
with 1,500 short tons (approximately 1,361 metric tonnes or 1,339 long
tons), which is 50,000 bushels of soybeans; each reduced foot of draft
reduces the amount that a barge can carry by 150-200 short tons (136-181
metric tonnes or 134-179 long tons). Each tow, therefore, has its capacity
reduced by 25-30%.
To compensate for the decreased depth, and to facilitate
the flow of commodities along this critical infrastructure, the US Army
Corps of Engineers in October began dredging the bottom, and constructed a
mud berm on the river bottom to mitigate saltwater intrusion caused by the
reduced freshwater flow, which further restricted traffic; while this was
going on, it was only possible to safely travel along the Mississippi by
day, and traffic around the berm area is one-way only. This has resulted
in over 1,000 barges being stuck while they wait for an opportunity to
move. Consequently, the spot rate for barge transport at the end of
October fell from a peak of $105.85 to $75.28, a decrease of nearly 30%.
While this is still high relative to recent years, even a short-term
decrease in revenues can ruin a firm.
It’s important for US agricultural concerns to be able to
ship their commodities to the international market while the southern
hemisphere – particularly South America – is still in winter. The largest
producer of soybeans in the world is Brazil, and their planting season
begins in September; the beans can be ready to harvest in as few as 66
days, with the average being 116 days, or nearly 4 months. As Brazilian
production comes online, then, prices will begin to fall, as the supply
increases. This will result in reduced profits. Additionally, harvest
season for corn (maize) is approaching, which will impose its own
pressures on shipping.
The problem shows no sign of abating in the near future.
Even if rainfall levels were to increase suddenly, drought-parched soil
would absorb most of it. Further, there is such thing as too much rain.
The soil is only capable of handling so much water, and it needs time to
percolate down from the surface so as not to wash away the topsoil and
refill the aquifers and springs. These rivers and the soils that grow the
crops transported on them also rely heavily on spring snow melts to supply
water, which, if absent, would further compound the problem.
The bourgeoisie, however, is unwilling to take the steps
necessary to mitigate this problem. The
great
capitalist powers remain locked into fossil fuels, especially
petrochemicals, as
a
huge source of their profits and rents.
It is not only energy that is obtained from oil but the
chemicals for fertilizers as well. The warming caused by fossil fuel
emissions, along with the disruption of the nitrogen cycle caused by
overuse of fertilizers, has severely disrupted the natural climactic
cycles that sustain life on this planet. The destruction of the trillions
of dollars of capital investment in this industry is unthinkable; too much
money is at stake to transition. While negative carbon emissions and
restoration of the nitrogen cycle (to facilitate the growth of plants to
capture carbon) are necessary to avert catastrophe, the bourgeoisie
insists that that we must consume more and more commodities so that their
cycle of accumulation can continue without interruption. It is clear that
capital will continue to valorize itself at the expense of the environment
and human need. Only communist revolution can lead us out of this dead-end
course.
ICP Leaflet Venezuela
Unity of action of the workers against capitalist exploitation. For wages and pensions that are enough to live on!
For the reduction of the working day!!!
For health and safety at work and medical attention and medicines!!!!
For freedom for the workers imprisoned for demonstrating for their
demands!!!
Although workers in Venezuela have not yet finished multiplying and
broadening their struggles, some advances have been made that should be
highlighted.
A greater quantitative participation of active workers in the street
protests has been observed, considering that previously they tended to
dominate the protest actions of retired and pensioned workers. This is an
expression, not only of the loss of fear in the face of labor and State
terrorism, but also of manifestations of discontent and disillusionment
with the promises of the government, politicians and businessmen about a
welfare that, as a consequence of the "economic recovery" would be
reflected in an increase of jobs and improvement of salaries, but benefits
that have only reached a minority who are getting richer, while said
"economic recovery" has only been reflected in a deterioration of the
standard of living of salaried workers. This has been expressed in small
signs of a break with apathy and conformism.
- Grassroots mobilization of workers to demand their demands. The
main verification of this was observed in the massive protest rallies of
public education and health workers, through which the government was able
to get the government to pay the Vacation Bonus to educators. What was
relevant in these actions was that the rank and file of the teachers’
union workers mobilized outside the control of the union federations. Only
a small group of leaders and grassroots unions had been carrying out
agitations and calls for workers’ struggle and this facilitated the
channeling of the discontent of this sector of public workers. But none of
the leaderships of the trade union centrals and federations can take
credit for these demonstrations which led to the partial defeat of the
government. It is also worth mentioning the strikes carried out by
metallurgical workers and workers of the basic enterprises of Guayana,
which were decided and directed by the workers’ base assemblies and not by
the union leaderships; actions which later ended up being stopped by the
politicians, the dubious "negotiation tables" and repression.
The workers’ movement in Venezuela continues, however, to present a set of
limitations that weaken it in its vindictive confrontation against the
bosses and the Venezuelan bourgeois government.
There are a number of factors that limit the growth of workers’ struggles.
- There is a great division in the movement of the salaried workers,
mainly among the workers of the public sector, imposed by decades of
bosses’ actions of the trade union centrals and federations that group
together the different unions. Both the new and old trade union centrals
and federations of workers in Venezuela operate as allies of the bosses
and only lead some struggles when dissatisfied workers break with their
passivity and get out of control. The CTV, CUTV, CODESA, CGT, ASI, UNETE
and CSBT and the federations that each one groups together, divide the
workers, demobilize them and keep them subjected to the labor peace that
allows the bosses to maintain and deepen the exploitation of wage labor.
Likewise, the majority of the rank and file unions affiliated to these
trade union centers operate in a bosses’ way and only, as an exception,
some rank and file unions break out of their control and promote agitation
and the struggle for demands. Hence, if the movement of salaried workers
needs to react with struggle, it has to confront a union structure that
divides it, demobilizes it and betrays it,
- The centrals, federations and unions are controlled by different
opportunist political currents that constantly incorporate bourgeois and
non-proletarian demands in their demands. These political currents call on
the workers to defend the operational continuity and the profits of the
enterprises, to defend the national economy, to defend the homeland, to
defend parliamentary democracy, to offer the workers as cannon fodder in
the imperialist wars.
- The workers’ movement is also subjected to the confusion brought
about by the struggle of the pro-government parties and the opposition
parties vying for control of the government in elections of mayors,
councilors, governors, deputies and president of the republic. These
parties have a presence in the workers’ movement to use their discontent
and struggles to serve the political interests of any of the opposing
sides. Any political movement that calls on the workers to vote in the
different electoral processes of Venezuelan bourgeois democracy must be
seen by the workers as an agent of the boss and of capitalist
exploitation.
- Currently the workers’ movement has limited itself to demanding
compliance with the crumbs that are established in different collective
bargaining agreements and does not end up aligning itself with the
struggle for a salary and benefits in accordance with the demands of daily
life and the impact of inflation. Even part of the movement demands the
payment of certain bonuses and falls with this into the cruel game of the
bourgeois government.
The government is trying to prevent the further growth of workers’
mobilization and protest by combining demagogic offers (which are still
miserable and which it will still not fulfill without workers’ pressure),
with the implementation of a national program of musical events, shows and
fairs and with the application of terrorism and repression. But it is
necessary that workers’ agitation and mobilization be imposed and that the
workers organize at the base and locally so that they break with the
division and demobilization promoted by the central unions and
federations.
The height of the CSBT’s servility could be seen when at the end of
September it announced that the government would pay Christmas bonuses and
benefits in four (4) parts, arguing that the workers of the public sector
payroll had to be protected from the effect of inflation. It was not the
top government officials who made this cynical and ruthless announcement,
but rather it was the trade unionists who showed their faces with this
announcement. This is one of the many signs of the commitment of the trade
union confederations to the capitalist bosses. And although some voices of
the trade union movement have opposed this measure, it was put into
effect; with which the exploitative viciousness reaches levels not reached
by previous governments and is a clear sign that in Venezuela there is no
socialism but savage capitalism and is another sign that Chavismo and the
so-called "patriotic pole" is nothing more than an amalgam of bourgeois
and reactionary currents, from which the working class can expect nothing
but demagogy, deceit, corruption, repression and anti-worker measures.
Meanwhile a delegation of the ILO visited Venezuela to bring together the
tripartite government – employers – unions. Only the CSBT, ASI and CTV
were given access to the meetings with the ILO. The other trade union
centers were left out; but nothing would change if they gave access to the
rest of the trade union centers. In this "tripartite" mechanism, all
parties represent one: the capitalist, public and private businessmen. In
this way, the Venezuelan government is moving towards the reactivation of
the tripartite mechanism in wage setting, which is applied in a good part
of the world. In the debate on the wage increase, the blackmail that the
wage increase will bring with it a spike in inflation is being used; and
in this way this tripartite alliance of government-employers-unions,
unites to continue depositing the weight of the economic crisis on the
shoulders of the workers. The representative of the Venezuelan businessmen
in the ILO and in the Tripartite stated that "neither the businessmen nor
the Government can pay a (minimum) wage of US$430". But this cynical
alliance Government-Businessmen-Union Unions has not lifted a finger to
adjust the current minimum wage of US$15 per month. And this starvation
wage is supported by all the opportunist groups and parties, by all the
vote seekers who call for the rescue of the homeland and the national
economy, so that the few live well, surrounded by leisure and privileges,
and the great majorities sink into the abyss of misery, hunger and
disease.
The reality, between parties, announcements of "economic recovery"
(repeated to exhaustion by all the media and social networks) and
arrogance, mistreatment and repression towards workers who mobilize and
make claims, is that another year of miserable salaries is coming to an
end for the workers, of lack of access to health services, of
non-compliance of the government and the bosses with the payment of debts
contracted with the active and retired workers and of significant masses
subjected to unemployment or to precarious "jobs" or pushed to migration
to be subjected to over-exploitation by the capitalists in other
countries. The only way out is the struggle of the workers, and this
struggle must be taken up in a united way and with the broadest
participation of the rank and file of the wage earners in all the
workplaces and in the streets.
In this sense it is important to:
1. To maintain and broaden class unity without distinction of party or
union affiliation. No matter the trade or level of qualification of the
worker, no matter what economic activity or branch of industry is worked,
no matter the nationality, no matter if we work in the public or private
sector, we are all united by the fact that we are wage earners, that we
give our labor force in exchange for a salary. We are the working class or
the class of salaried workers. It is very common that in the same
institution, facing a single employer, workers are divided by affiliation
to several parallel unions. It is also common that there are unions in a
company that do not communicate or do not unite their struggles with those
of other unions. Class unity means getting rid of any artificial and
unnecessary divisions. The unity of class action means acting together
inside the company and outside it, together with comrades from other
companies and institutions. WE WILL NOT ACHIEVE A CLASS VICTORY IF WE DO
NOT MAINTAIN AND BROADEN OUR UNITY OF ACTION!
2. Among the workers of the public sector the demand for the repeal of the
ONAPRE Instruction has become generalized. The government remains silent
on the matter and the Supreme Court of Justice, as was to be expected,
sided with the bosses. This Instruction has been the symbol of the robbery
of public sector workers. But even with the repeal of this Instruction,
salaries continue to be miserable. So we must not lose the north of the
struggle: TO CONQUER A WAGE, PENSIONS AND RETIREMENTS THAT ARE ENOUGH TO
LIVE ON, and that are regularly adjusted above the amount of the Basic
Basket, together with a Reduction of the Working Day. According to
available information, the minimum wage, as well as pensions and
retirement pensions should have a minimum amount equivalent to $1,000 per
month. Likewise, the fractioned payment of Christmas bonuses and of any
contractual "benefit" should be rejected.
3. Let’s rescue the assembly practices. A United Front of Struggle of the
Working Class must be a grassroots movement. And a grassroots movement
must rise up through the meeting of assemblies, which preferably should be
local meetings attended by workers from different companies and not only
union leaders. The area of territorial influence of each local assembly
should be that which facilitates the broadest attendance and participation
of all, moving on foot, by bicycle or urban transport. And regional and
national communication and coordination mechanisms should be established
between all local assemblies. The assemblies should plan actions and
designate working commissions. There are already initiatives of
integration of workers’ organizations; these initiatives must be deepened
by incorporating the grassroots as much as possible, promoting assemblies
and promoting local organization.
4. All the trade union centrals and federations in Venezuela, those that
support the government and those that do not, are bosses’ organizations
that divide and demobilize the workers. But there are grassroots unions
which, even though they are affiliated to these centrals and federations,
have promoted the struggle for their demands. There are also union leaders
who have promoted struggles individually. That is why we must act without
sectarianism, since the important thing is to unite all those who want to
fight; at the end of the day the traitors and vacillators will be unmasked
in the heat of the struggle.
5. Only class demands should be raised. There are demands that not only
distract the workers, but also go against their interests. The struggle of
the workers should not be put at the service of any electoral or
parliamentary campaign, nor should the defense of the national economy be
demanded, because it is a lie that if the economy and the companies are
doing well, the workers are doing well too. Likewise, the struggle of the
workers cannot be placed at the service of the defense of the homeland or
against the sanctions imposed by other capitalist states, because with or
without sanctions, the bourgeois homeland is sustained by the exploitation
of the wage-earning workers. Nor does it make sense to fight against the
privatization of enterprises and institutions since what is relevant is to
demand wage increases, reduction of the workday, a hygienic and safe work
environment and rejection of layoffs, and in this struggle we should not
differentiate between public or private employers or between national or
transnational capitalists, against all we have to confront them all
united, because they are all united in the bourgeois front of the
exploiters.
6. TOWARDS THE GENERAL STRIKE! The maximum expression of the unity of
action of the working class is the General Strike. The only way to defeat
the bosses and the bourgeois government and to win the workers’ demands is
the General Strike. And it must be without notice, indefinite and without
minimum services. That is why it is necessary from now on, not only to
continue with the rallies and mobilizations, but to advance in the
construction of a strong organization of struggle, with broad
participation, based on local assemblies. This will not be easy because
the majority of the trade union centrals and federations will oppose the
rank and file organization of the workers and because it will be necessary
to confront the whole legal and repressive apparatus of the bourgeois
state. But the strike movement will only be able to impose itself with the
broadest participation of the rank and file.
For a class trade union united front!
Converge and unite the struggles of the working class!
For a general movement for strong wage increases against the high cost
of living!
Towards the General Strike!
Life of the Party
US Elections, 1948 (introduction)
The article, whose title we’ve preserved here, was published originally
in a periodical, called International Bulletin, by the section of our
party based in New York City from the late 1920s through the ‘50s.
After the rise of fascism in Italy, the communist left had scattered
across Europe and outside. Many comrades, those fortunate enough to have
not been arrested, or worse, found themselves exiled from Italy. Meanwhile the comrades of the left of the Partito Comunista d’Italia had
been expelled also from the party by stalinists.
In 1943, the internationalists remaining in Italy, with the support of
many of those comrades living in exile, reconstituted their party under
the name Internationalist Communist Party, which came to be known by the
name of its publication Battaglia Comunista.
Despite the collapse of Mussolini’s government, Italy was splintered. In
the south, the Allied forces had launched their invasion in order to
“liberate” the country from fascism; simultaneously, in the north, Germany
occupied the rest.
The communist left remained fractured too. Comrades, primarily in the
north, managed to formally organize once again into a party, and would be
joined by militants from the south not long after. There was a need to
analyze the events of the prior two decades. It become clear in the party
that there was a dire need for the reassessment of the party’s positions
before any real and firm reconstitution of the party could occur. A lot
had happened in the history, in the economy, in the fight between classes
and in the international communist movement in particular. By then we had
been faced with an enormous counter-revolutionary turn of events, and the
party would have to adjust accordingly.
The list of principles printed below contain the main positions, which
we still maintain. The first, for example, is the basis for our
materialist conception of history.
But we must understand the context within which this article was
published, during a period in which there was, on one hand, the generous
will to rebuild the true communist party, and on the other, the need to
wait the time to draw the balance of the worse counter-revolution in the
history of our movement.
Naturally, we cannot here provide a complete and exhaustive exposition of
all the huge work the party made to “rediscover” its original path: our
party’s entire body of works and theses is freely available to comrades.
But we will provide here some minimal clarifications with respect to what
is stated in this article.
We no longer work for the creation of a new, heterogeneous, International
workers’ association comprised of separate, nationally independent
communist parties. Instead, we fight for the development of a unitary
world communist party, which is centralized organically and international
in scope.
At that time, a segment of our party had theorized their own abandonment
of the need to work within the trade unions. We firmly argue for the need
of the rebirth of class unions and of the work of the party inside them.
And, finally, we must emphasize that our approach to looking at the
national and colonial question is the application of a rigorous Marxism,
which can only look at the colonial and semi-colonial world and its
revolutions on the basis of whether they are individually historically
progressive or not. It is not true that – in 1948 – there were no longer
bourgeois or progressive revolutions, nor is it true that all
anti-colonial struggles at the time were themselves imperialist.
International Bulletin
US Elections, 1948 (article)
The leaders and parties in the electoral campaign of 1948 present a
picture of paradox. The conflict between Russian Imperialism and
Anglo-American Imperialism dominates all other issues. Within the
framework of this conflict, the mask for world Imperialism, the United
Nations, masquerades as the world public, impartial arbiter between Easter
and Western Imperialism while it is actually the world market place for
Eastern and Western Imperialism, for making deals on atomic armament;
partition of Germany, export and import of capital between East and West;
spheres of influence in the colonial and semi-colonial areas. It is the
mask under cover of which American Imperialism promotes the Marshall Plan
for the subjugation of the world. It is the cloak under which Russia
promotes the Moscow Imperialist plan. Together, they add up to a War plan.
Internally, the drive of the capitalist class of the U.S. against the
working class sharpens. It saddles the working class with the Taft-Harley
law, no-strike injunctions, anti-radical and Stalinist spy scares. This is
the pattern for mobilization for Imperialist War III, emphasized by the
Military Draft.
President Truman and his competitor Thomas E. Dewey present themselves as
champions of freedom and liberty against the expansion of Russian
Imperialism, while they support military dictatorships in Greece, China,
Korea and Japan (MacArthur democracy). Truman and Dewey claim to be
leaders in the fight against war, yet they promote the Marshall Plan,
which is the political-economic phase of military measures in time of war.
They both support the military draft. They are, in words, for the
independence of all people, yet they promote the E.R.P. which makes the
whole of Western Europe dependent on U.S. Imperialism. Truman states that
the Republican Party is opposed to the working class and Dewey states that
the Democratic party is against labor. They are both right. Both parties
have united to dragoon the American workers so that the labor costs of
production (wages) would not rise, along with capitalist profit. Truman
announces that the Republican Party is the party of economic depression,
and Dewey announces that the Democratic party is the party of inflation.
Both are correct. Dewey snorts that the Truman foreign policy is a weak
and vacillating one, yet Democrat Marshall and Republican Dulles are
carrying out a bi-partisan foreign policy, which will inevitably lead to
War.
The leaders of the Republic and Democratic parties expose each other and
reveal that they are nothing but political offices boys for capitalism.
Taking advantage of the resentment against the Republican and Democratic
declarations of bankruptcy, of a large minority of the American workers
and middle class, Henry Wallace in alliance with Stalinism, has launched a
party, called the Progressive Party. This party performs a two-fold
function. It is a pressure instrument for Russian foreign policy, and a
party for small capitalists. As far back as the year 1943, Wallace
trumpeted that small business people, to him, meant employers of
five-hundred workers and up. He has continually reiterated in this
campaign that he supports free-enterprise capitalism while he advocates
nationalization of basic industries. This means he wants the capitalist
state to become the main investor in the economy while allowing room for
the wealthy middle strata of capitalists, like himself, to expand. Wallace
supports the Imperialist Marshall Plan in concealed form by support the
Stalinist foreign policy, which is in favor of a Marshall Plan with
clauses, favorable to Russia. On the other hand, he is “a knight in
shining armor,” who, in the best traditions of Imperialism and
nationalism, claims he will make America “strong, free and happy”. His
apparent militancy on behalf of the Negro and Jewish workers is so much
decoration [?] to catch votes. His program is pro-capitalist and
anti-working class.
The most comical picture of paradox are the Trotskyites and the
Socialists. They want a labor party which is at the same time militant and
anti-capitalist; bourgeois democratic and revolutionary. (They want
opportunism without opportunists.) They want a Marshall plan that is
anti-capitalist and pro-working class, all in one. They are for a maximum
of democracy for the working-class and advocate at the same time the
highest degree of totalitarianism, nationalization of basic industries
(under capitalism). Norman Thomas advocates Socialism while he proposes to
use capital to buy out the biggest capitalists. Of course, Thomas will
have to exact a promise from the capitalists not to reinvest the capital
with which he proposes to purchase their industry, and thus continue
accumulation of capital. Confiscation with compensation on the heels of a
hypothetical Trotskyite-Socialist parliamentary victory as a substitute
for the class struggle, is the road to ruin; the road of state capitalism
and bureaucracy. Norman Thomas wants an Imperialist War which at the same
time is “pro-working class”. He supported World War II and advocated the
impossible, an Imperialist war with “democratic aims”.
Clearly support for any of the parties and leaders at present dominating
the American political arena is support for capitalism and wars. Instead
of a vote for the parties of war and capitalism, we advocate the building
of a working-class revolutionary party in the U.S. with the following
basic principles:
1.
Our conception of the world and the society proper to it is that of
Marx’s scientific socialism.
2. For the reconstitution of a revolutionary International against the
Internationals of Betrayal (Social Democracy, Stalinism, Trotskyism)
3. Against collaboration with the bourgeois and pseudo-proletarian
parties which uphold the false and deceitful banner of “true democracy”.
4. The trade unions of the C.I.O., and A.F.L., Railriads [sic]
Brotherhoods and “Independent Unions,” are part of the legal apparatus
of the Capitalist State. Working class unity will be achieved on the
basis of the platform of the party of the revolution, and, under its
leadership, within those organisms, created in the revival of the
proletarian class struggle.
5. The farm-workers are the class brothers of the Industrial proletariat
and must be won over to class-solidarity.
6. All so-called movements of colonial independence have an Imperialist
base. There does not exist for the colonial and semi-colonial areas, any
longer the problem of a bourgeois revolution. The only road is that of
proletarian revolution.
7. The proletariat must work for the defeat of its own bourgeoisie and
its satellites in the advanced industrial sectors of world capitalism,
as well as for the defeat of its own bourgeoisie and satellites in the
colonial and semi-colonial areas of world capitalism, in time of war.
8. The defeat of the bourgeoisie, on a world scale, accomplished through
the civil war of the proletariat, under the guidance and leadership of
the Revolutionary International Party, will be the beginning of the
Socialist Reorganization of Society under the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat.
9. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, will serve as the transition to
the classless society of Socialism, where the state, as known under
capitalism, will disappear, and Government and Tyranny, will become the
history of the past.
10. The Dictatorship of the proletariat is not to be understood as a
defense of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, the dictatorship of the
proletarian will arise in Russia, which is now an Imperialist State,
through Socialist revolution.
