France - November 1 2022

Interview to Claude Marill, a well known decade long militant of the French workers movement. Today he's a member of the Emancipation Inter-Union Tendency. Claude comes from the Trotskyist movement and has a long history in the struggle against Stalinism.
From the very heart of the French imperialism, he gives us his insight about the situation in France and in Europe.
We reproduce the brave position of this internationalist militant, relentless fighter for the Syrian revolution and now the Ukrainian working class.

INTERVIEW WITH CLAUDE MARILL, Trotskyst leader from the "Emancipation" Inter-union Tendency

Faced with the invasion war in Ukraine and the massacre of its working class, how do you consider the response of the European working class? and of the French one in particular?

In France, the workers' organizations did not campaign in support of the Ukrainian people. The French labor movement structured by the social democracy, the PCF and the sovereigntists, including the FI (France Insoumise party of Melenchon. NT), did not come out in defense of the Ukrainian people, although it had been invaded. The sovereigntists, are asking for peace under the authority of the UN and place the main responsibility for this conflict on the United States and its armed wing, NATO. The condemnation of the Kremlin, therefore, is purely formal. The Trotskyists, including the LO (Workers' Struggle), but also the POI (Independent Workers' Party, Lambertism, NT) and POID (split from the POI, NT), for their part, condemn the invasion, but are ignore the Ukrainian popular resistance and its proletariat. By the initiative of SUD SOLIDAIRE, the FSU and the CGT, the humanitarian trade union convoys (organized thanks to the Red Sindical de Solidaridad y Lucha (Trade Union Network of Struggle and Solidarity) left to Ukraine to join independent unions. This internationalist consciousness of workers had been reborn after the wars in the Balkans and Chechnya and it must be popularized and strengthened. The sovereigntists and Stalinists convey the message to the French public opinion and its working class that the Kremlin, faced with the encirclement and the threat of NATO, had no choice but to invade the bellicose and Nazified Ukraine to restore social peace and democracy.

On Tuesday the 18th there was a major strike and mobilization in France. What were the demands, which sectors stopped?

The demonstration of 10-18, for the revaluation of wages, called by the union federations CGT, SOLIDAIRES, FSU, has only had a relative success. However, it carried a central slogan, unifying the class and therefore strategically lucid. The strike for the increase in wages in a context of inflation of more than 10%, imposes itself for all public and private employee But in the dynamics of striking refinery workers, who demanded a 10% increase in the minimum wage, the other salaried sectors did not take advantage of the opportunity to call a general strike on a clear basis of demands: the same increase of 10% for everyone, sliding scale of salaries, retirements, pensions, social minimums. However, during the demonstration on 10/18, the Sud / Trenes railway workers column chanted General Strike!!... and declared a renewable strike from 10/29. Isolated, and not followed by the other federations CGT, FO, UNSA, CFDT, the movement has run out of steam in the Parisian stations... And so, the railway men voted to go back to work. It was clear, however, that the occupied refineries and the striking train would blockade the country! The question of wages is central, it is the heart of the demands of the workers today. The CGT, FO, SOLIDAIRES, FSU union leaderships have the heavy responsibility of not having wanted, over and over again, to participate in the test of strength with power. The government, for its part, is intensifying its attacks against workers, playing with the corporatist union opposition, continuing its course of destroying gains related to pensions and social security, and persisting in the deterioration of public hospitals and public educational institutions. The militancy of the workers in the refinery sector remains intact in a moment Total Energy is recording profits of almost €55 billion by the year 2022. For their part, the CFDT (union center affiliated with the government) and the CGC (union of civil servants) have signed a salary agreement that will have allowed a 5% increase in salaries for all. Far below the required demands.

¿Por qué cree Ud. que el estado recurrió a la requisa de las refinerías? ¿En qué otro momento utilizo esta medida?

La requisición ha sido ejecutable desde 1909 relativa a los empleados del estado, la facultad estatal no daba lugar al derecho de huelga.
En la ley, el juez administrativo otorga al prefecto regional el derecho de decidir sobre una requisición.
Esto es poco frecuente y se aplica en sectores estratégicos de la economía, pero también puede aplicarse en instituciones bajo el poder soberano del Estado.
A pesar de la requisa, viola el derecho de huelga y su aplicación refleja la debilidad del Estado para resolver conflictos, como es el caso hoy.

What is the situation in France in terms of the relationship of forces between the bourgeoisie and the labor movement?

Today the relationship of objective forces would be clearly in favor of the working class. Macron was elected with no other choice (in sight) and amidst a record abstention rate. The legislative elections have not allowed him to obtain a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. He comes out of these last elections very weak. The war in Ukraine can only worsen the economic situation of the country, which shows a growth rate of 0.5%. On the left, the political and union leaderships are even more conciliatory with power, since the test of strength could swing in favor of the working class. The CGT, pressed by a situation of confrontation and crisis, is announcing two days of action scheduled for 10/27 and 11/10. For the CGT, it is admitting not wanting to win! Under the leadership of Mélenchon, France Unsubmissive resolutely plays the reformist card, favoring chatter and parliamentary disputes to the detriment of strikes in companies. This deviation from the militancy of the workers for the parliamentary game represents the worst strategy for the working class. Neither the motions of no confidence in parliament nor days of action will allow us to win! Only the strategy of overcoming the union and political leaderships of the strike will allow the situation to be unblocked. This could develop the question of revaluation of wages, put an end to parliamentarianism, build the perspective towards the general strike.

What do you think of Mélechon's policy and of the NPA, LO, POID, POI etc. in the current situation?

In the current social context, the policy followed by France Unsubmissive, under the leadership of Mélenchon is an impasse for the development of the struggles, their orientations, their objectives. Mélenchon considers that from now on the working class is no longer a motor and subject of history. He calls for the French bourgeois revolution and not for the Paris Commune. Only the people in their dynamic of "civic insurrection" (sic) that passes through parliament, is susceptible to real social change, through elective votes, which is that of the bourgeois democracy system. In this, France Unsubmissive is reinforced by the POI, POID and LO, since these organizations fall into sectarian electoralism and a workerism closed to struggles on an international scale. The NPA would seem incapable of proposing a clear internationalist class line. It maintains a centrist position given its internal contradictions. Its ambiguities regarding its international positions do not allow it to play a revolutionary role. For example, his support for the Kurdish PKK IPG-IPJ Kurdish, to the detriment of the Syrian revolution in its most active phase, was indicative of his internationalist mistakes. NPA militants supported the besieged Kurds in Ain Arab/Kobane, but did not support those in eastern Aleppo, Homs, Idlib, Raqqa… They did not mobilize in defense of the Belarusian, Kazakh and now Iranian peoples. Their defense of the Ukrainian people remains ambiguous. There is no mobilization for the arming of the Ukrainian people and its working class. The French left and the extreme left are marked by a focused European political ideology, not very permeable to insurrectionary movements, to ongoing revolutions. They were deaf and blind to the colonial war in Chechnya, as well as in the Caucasus, in Syria, in the Mashreq (the Levant NT), in the Arab world. Their campy analyzes of the war waged by the Russian colonial tutelary power against the Ukrainian people place them in an outstanding counterrevolutionary position.

What is your conclusion?

The world economic crisis is accelerating the processes of imperialist confrontations that generate war. Modern warfare combines the most archaic procedures such as mass rape, torture, and the dehumanization of the adversary, with powerfully lethal high-tech weapons. We are returning to barbarism. Only the international revolution led by the proletariats united in the same fight against capitalism could defeat this spiral of destructive imperialist violence. Today the revolutionary vanguards are absolutely necessary to save humanity now that it is on the brink of the unspeakable.