May 12, 2016
France
Between the general strike of March 31 and the new demonstration of the working class and the youth against the attacks to their conquest
The president Hollande with a bill and the Bonapartist authority given by the imperialist 5th Republic impose the law that destroy the 35 hours week shift of the working class
The masses take the Street while the boss politicians set up a scene in the parliament to legitimize the attack
The fight is in the streets
General Strike!
For the defeat of the Khomri Law, out with Hollande
Out with the 5th Republic!
They are the representatives of the imperialist Maastricht that attack the European working class
After the government announced on May 10 that it would adopt by a bill a reform of the labor code, workers and militant youth went massively to the streets today, May 12. Although the CGT union confederation with more influence, did not call the strike, workers sectors imposed and attended the demonstration called by the Inter-Union of worker and student exchanges. Tens of thousands took the streets despite the rain and during working hours as workers from different sectors as the car, construction, rail, post, education, health, trade, press, housekeepers, domestic and house wife.
Thousands of university and high school students, even the most precarious sectors of youth, also attended the demonstration and were the vanguard of the struggle, confronting the police for attacking the symbols crudest of exploitation: banks, ie the financial capital, as a protest against all that is denied and all that is imposed on them by this rotten system. When these young people grouped in the MILI (Inter-Struggles Independent Movement) showed their anger against the facades of banks that make fortunes and riot police "CRS" attacked them, the march shouting "respect our right to demonstrate".
At the demonstration, it was heard the chants against the law, the government, politicians and capitalists. "They are not undocumented, are not immigrants, not refugees: it is the capitalists that cost us dearly!" that war cry sound among the columns of the demonstration, showing solidarity among the ranks of the working class.
Meanwhile, in the National Assembly a circus was developed to deceive the masses. Prime Minister M. Valls, announced the May 10 that would make use of Article 49.3 of the constitution to pass the labor reform law without a vote of parliament. On May 11, Socialist Party deputies "critical" of the government and the bill presented a motion of censure to prevent the use of Article 49.3. But it did not get the necessary votes to place that resource should be given to censorship. The next day, the right (Republican, UDI, NF) also presented the motion of censure. But as the deputies of the Socialist Party "critical" that motion did not vote with the right, neither had enough votes... The law is therefore approved by decree. It was a treacherous farce. They filed a motion on different days, each block of deputies did not vote the motion of the other block because everyone knows that the French bosses need to attack the working class. Thus, the law passed quickly and the deputies pose of democratic than "fight" against the "undemocratic" decree.
Against all this, the left currents as the NPA argue that "the government deserves social censorship." What are they talking about? Can they explain the left of the regime how the "society" in general can do this censorship? Does "society", which exploited the sector is not represented in parliament, will censor the transnational companies who run it? Stop confusing the workers. There is nothing to "censor". It is necessary to defeat the BRUTAL ATTACK ON THE WORKING CLASS and their conquests. We must set up the bodies of self-determination of the working class and militant youth where the majority exploited of the population have real power to decide on their struggle.
Hollande’s government attacked the exploited masses of France as it does merciless and with its weapons the oppressed nations to which plunder
The presidential power emanating from the French imperialist Constitution gives the president -such which an emperor full powers of veto, as well as to enact laws via central decrees. The same authority has even to command the armed forces to invade and plunder countries to manage and appoint consuls in the "overseas territories" (ie in their colonies) to represent at international level corporations transnational and French imperialist bankers and even to modify laws and self-given the power of the legislature. A true Bonapartist Constitution, i.e., a democracy for the rich and slavers, commanding the imperialist transnational companies and bankers.
French imperialism, in the morass of the world crisis, in the middle of European stagnation and being in trade disputes with the rest of the imperialist powers for the plundering of the planet, you need to impose a ferocious attack on the conquests of the working class, put it knees, enslave even more in the factories. What they are doing is make a sweat-shop France. We are facing a full attack to work and wages and real Toyotization of the French economy.
The French worker who saw from far away the enslavement of Chinese workers, now have it at home ... French Workers before also looked from far the immigrant workers under poor conditions who made the worst jobs in the imperialist France and are left out by the unions and the worker bureaucracy and aristocracy. Now the French working class will work under those "immigrant conditions ".
The Atlantic Pact between USA and Maastricht, lifting their customs barriers in Europe with US imperialism, imposed on all European imperialist bourgeoisies and to France in particular, which should increase the productivity of labor and slavery of its own working class. There will only be a tought competition from the transnational companies by its location in the different branches of production in a market of 800 million inhabitants that is what will stand with the agreement between US and Maastricht the so called "Atlantic Treaty".
The attack on the Greek masses and other minor bankrupt imperialist countries like Italy, Spain or Portugal, is no exception. Now it is up to France to lead the attack on the working class. While Syriza continues to brutally attack the exploited in Greece, Hollande is not far behind with its own proletariat, nor do the Bourbons in the Spanish State or Merkel with the German working class, which has reduced 25% of wages.
A new round of world crisis is on the way, while the imperialist Europe remains in a brutal stalemate, with its bankers and transnational companies, they have already recovered the losses of 2008, throwing all the burden of the crises to the masses and going to new adventures for looting and plundering to the oppressed world.
A new attack is underway. The French working class is fighting. Their leadership is an absolute obstacle preventing workers to attack the capitalists.
The French bosses do not give up and are available to negotiate nothing
The French working class facing a decisive fight
So in this attack there is no way back. The union bureaucracies and social-imperialist parties made the masses believe in the puppet parliament of the 5th Republic of the French imperialist transnational companies could stop such an attack. Then the trade union bureaucracy has led the enormous forces deployed by the working class and the French youth to pressure the Parliament did not vote the Khomri law. This is tantamount to asking the fox that chickens will not eat.
The French bosses had already declared that it was not willing to negotiate one iota of that law. And all political parties that office of transnational companies which is the Parliament is passing by law. As we said, there was a majority who claimed to be against it as a fraction of deputies of the Socialist Party, the National Front and smaller groups, but never got together to vote on the motion of censure to prevent law-decree taken by Hollande. A real scam to fool the workers and numb their struggle.
Since this new attack started, workers and youth and potential enormous forces were deployed in the streets. So we saw in the days of struggle and the general strike of March 31, in the uprising of youth last march today. It was felt the hatred and anger in the streets against Hollande and the law.
Workers have understood from his own experience that the bourgeoisie comes to all and are facing a decisive battle that nothing was prepared by the leaderships of the working class.
It was the bourgeoisie that broke the "social peace" and declared war on the workers. There will be no output if the French working class is not declared war and prepares for decisive clashes to fight against the bourgeoisie and kneel it down.
The social imperialist left, this "new left" of Syriza, of the "dissidents" of Syriza, the Stalinists batters of the Left Front in France, the PODEMOS of the Spanish State, supported by NPA and other renegades of Trotskyism, left ran quickly to Paris to liquidate the revolutionary content of the workers and young people who camped in the Square of the Republic. They went there to tell them that the struggle was for "real democracy". It is already proven that this is real imperialist bourgeois democracy!
They went to tell that it is possible to stop the bill without defeating Hollande and the infamous regime of the imperialist transnational company, who need that Khomri Act like a fish needs water to breathe.
They wanted to make French workers and youth believe they are as "citizens" to stop the attack. This was criminal. A worker as a "citizen" or as an individual is a slave who kneeling before the foreman and the capitalist. A worker can only be free organized in unions, in a factory committee, in a demonstration in the streets.
These leaderships, with its line of "real democracy" only tried to separate the French rebellious youth which will be the new generation of slaves in the factories of the capitalists, the working class who is fighting now.
They claims in the Square de la Republique in Paris fighting for a supposed "real democracy" and said it is conquered with "binding plebiscites." This would be a bad joke if it will not mean a tragedy for the masses. "Taming" and "control" the imperialists of the French multinational with a plebiscite? Stop lying! Hollande took the law by decree! And in Parliament, the supposed "opposition" that most had not gathered for "censoring".
Let’s ask Syriza what is the use of plebiscites. The government of Syriza did one last a year in Greece. The same was binding because it was called by them. Syriza won it and then handed it Syriza. Enough to fool the masses! The capitalists, their government and their state must be defeated on the streets, on the barricades, the revolutionary general strike, with workers' councils, with the method of the proletarian revolution in the way the May French.
The "real democracy" touting proved a antidemocratic fiasco in the Republic Square in Paris. The "real democracy" proved to be even more antidemocratic than exists in the vertical unions led by Stalinism. They spend hours doing discussions, commissions to solve nothing. Make resolutions proposals and take them to the meetings only if they are taken by chance. A babble of "freedom and democracy" that is to destroy the fighting tendencies for a new Paris Commune that had posed the struggle day of the French working class on March 31.
This leadership, as the trade union bureaucracy did, went to stop in Paris the possibility of Tahrir Square, where the Egypt demands unified at the war cry of: "We want bread! We want the fall of the regime!"
The same is posed in France since the bourgeoisie launched this brutal attack: Let’s defend the workers' and youth conquest! We want the fall of the regime of the 5th French imperialist Republic!
The reformist leaderships speaking about a "real democracy" in France are not even consistent democrats, because they do not call to defeat the 5th Bonapartist imperialist Republic of France.
They make the masses lose two months. A decisive struggle was not prepared and the government hit hard. The employer knows that going around. The working class and the French revolutionary youth need to set up a leadership that is at the level of the fight that they are already giving and necessary to defeat the capitalists and their government.
The government, the infamous regime of the 5th Republic and the attack of the capitalists are not the "censorship" as the NPA speaks peacefully and romantically to make a "social censorship" against Hollande. Come on! Who these people laugh at? To the government and the regime of the imperialist Republic, it is necessary to defeat them! We must take steps to revolutionary actions of the masses in the streets!
The masses must defeat the attack of the capitalists, the government and the regime, which is what the French working class leadership is not willing to do. We must organize and prepare a decisive struggle.
The French working class has a powerful ally:
The European, USA and oppressed workers
It is necessary to unify the forces to defeat the attack of the capitalist!
There are plenty of forces to wage this battle: the French working class in defense of labor and against the attack of their conquests has a huge ally that is the working class of Maastricht Europe and throughout Eastern Europe.
Facing the bill of Hollande is part of the struggle for the defeat of fourth memorandum of Greece, labor demand for all against unemployment and hunger in the Spanish State, against wage decreased Merkel, against the sinking of work and job insecurity in England, against dismissal, the attack on wages and pensions across the continent, against the brutal fall of wages and looting of Eastern Europe, whose countries like Ukraine, Poland, Romania, etc., have become in true republics led by the IMF. Bankruptcy begins in Russia threatens to chronic starvation lead to the exploited in this country who is brutally persecuted by Putin, the hit man of imperialism...
The bourgeoisie of imperialist Maastricht centralizes its attack. The working class must centralize its response in a single fight and war command from Portugal to the Russian steppes. If it does not that it is because the bureaucracy of trade unions, acting as policemen to the interior of the labor movement is preventing them from unifying their ranks within each country and at both European and international level.
It would suffice with unions of the Spanish State, of the French working class in struggle, Greek workers, had called all their class brethren of the continent to initiate and coordinate a large struggle to conquer the wages of German workers, to have a working week of 35 hours for all, to recover the pension and a retirement at age 55.
Such an appeal to the unification of the struggle for these demands, would mean a decisive combat of the powerful European working class against capital, transnational corporations and the Europe of Maastricht Treaty. This is what the labor aristocracy prevents as it defends its privileges maintained with coins that fall from the table of the transnational imperialists feasting with the super-profits from the looting of the colonial and semi-colonial world.
There will be no life for the working class of Europe as long as imperialist Maastricht is alive, which, together with the IMF, plunders the peoples of East Europe and enslaves its workers. And it cannot overcome until it does not put at its head an internationalist revolutionary leadership that breaks the encirclement that the treacherous present leaderships have imposed to the revolutionary processes as in Greece, Ukraine and the own France. As well as in bloody Syria, where Al Assad the killer does the "dirty work" for Obama, the Merkel, Hollande and all imperialist butchers.
From the NuitDebout movement of the Square of the Republic a call was issued to all workers of the world to a day of international struggle on May 15. It was raised to do - and was not done- an appeal to all trade unions and worker organizations in Europe, to coordinate a plan of action and a General Strike across the continent against the Europe of Maastricht and in favor of the peoples enslaved by the imperialist powers in the world.
If the 8-hour workday was conquered by the working class with General strikes around the world, how anybody could think to defend the 35-hour workweek without a widespread struggle by all the European working class?
The social-imperialist left and Union bureaucracies hurried to put out the fire so Paris not turns a spark that can ignite Europe, as years ago Athens did. All these leaderships do is to submit the working class to their "democratic" executioners in each country.
The only class that can unite all those who fight against imperialism and 1% of parasites in the world is the working class, which is suffering exploitation by that 1% and can hit those parasites accurately. The world working class is having a common demand to fight on poverty wages, layoffs, chronic unemployment and the high cost of living in the world. The 1% of parasites can only be defeated by the working-class and their allies, the popular sectors ruined and impoverished in the countryside and the city.
The most immediate task is to move along the path of socialist revolution, the ’68 French May and the Paris Commune. Everything else is a vile deception and a lie.
Revolutionary Greece is the proof, today enclosed and a thousand times betrayed by the Stalinist trade union bureaucracy and this infamous Syriza, left jailers of rebellious youth, which applies the worst plans of hunger and slavery, as guarantor of the businesses of Greek bankers and their partners of the Bundesbank and the Morgan banking.
Out with Maastricht! A single class, the same enemy, a single struggle from Portugal to the Russian steppes!
For a Continental Command of all trade unions and workers organizations for fighting!
We must prepare one fight, a single continent-wide General strike!
Let's expropriate capitalists and bankers without compensation and under workers control!... We must expropriate the expropriators of the people!
Let's return to the cry of the armed miners in Donbass: "Come again the USSR"!
The French and European working class can only move forward in defeating the attack of the capitalists, if tying their fate to the struggle of the working class and oppressed people that their own imperialist bourgeoisies oppress and loot.
The American working class comes paying for the counter-revolutionary offensive of US imperialism in the world with one of the gravest crises in its history. U.S. workers are paying with hunger, unemployment and job losses as it has not seen since the ' 30s US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and its control behind the scenes of the massacres in Syria, Libya, Yemen and against rebelling Ukrainian masses in the Donbass... Today millions of working Americans rise up in fights for $15 hour. That struggle against Wall Street parasites is the same combat as against the butchers of the French Fifth Republic and Maastricht. It is the same struggle and demand by all of the European and world working class. The fight for 35 hours work-week to end unemployment and slave work is a demand of all the oppressed in the world. The combat of the French working class is a combat of the international working class.
Hollande’s pacts with Zionism to plunder Middle East, and with Putin, whom he sells state-of-the art technology for Russian military apparatus, are pushing imperialist France to war and plundering of oppressed peoples. They drag it to military invasions as in Mali and a fierce trade war for the markets, pushing France more and more to get a new mass of surplus value and exploit its working class with thousand times greater intensity.
To liberate itself the French working class needs to defeat the imperialist Fifth Republic. The fate the latter holds for French workers is the same it guarantees to their slaves of the semi-colonies and colonies. "The enemy is at home!" should be the cry of the workers of the imperialist powers. Thus they will conquer huge forces in the colonial and semi-colonial world that will support their fight against their Governments.
The French working class does not have at its head the leadership it deserves
The attack of the capitalists is already here. Reformism without reforms has been caught between the whip of capital that comes for all, and the enormous predisposition of the masses to the struggle
The French working class has massive forces. What it does not have is a leadership that matches the level of the decisive struggle that the attack of the capitalists has raised.
It would suffice with a firm workers’ call demanding withdrawal of France from Mali, Chad and all the peoples of Africa that the Fifth Republic enslaves and plunders with its military bases and bloody massacres; it would suffice with a call to defeat the Zionist State of Israel and the counter-revolutionary agreement that Hollande keeps with this spurious State that crushes the Palestinian masses; it would suffice with the firm resolve of the French working class to finish with murderous Al - Assad and with NATO, the policeman of the interests of imperialism in the world; it would suffice with a call to ignore the foreign debts by means of which the Paris Club and IMF plunder all oppressed peoples... and millions of exploited around the world would be standing next to the workmen of France today fighting in the entrails of imperialism.
The labor aristocracy and Union bureaucracies have subdued the French proletariat to imperialist Maastricht and the Fifth Republic. Not even the massive forces of the working class in France have been organized; both the labor aristocracy and the union bureaucrats are not interested in doing that. Youth that is now attacked very harshly by this law and which will be enslaved in their first job, have already won the streets and through the worker-student unity they have begun to recreate the conditions for a new ‘68 French May. But the majority of non-Union workers have not yet entered the fight, because they have not been organized, starting in the first place with the immigrants and the sans-papiers, which are left to their fate by the bureaucracy of trade unions though today are a fundamental and key factor for the triumph of the combat that has begun because French imperialists’ policy is that all the working class has to be as an immigrant in France.
To stop this we must make the immigrants stand up and organize, and also the outsourced and undocumented workers. They are the heart of the French working class and the fundamental forces that workers have so to overcome and defeat in the streets the Union bureaucracies and working-class autocracies that bind them hands and prevent them from fighting a decisive struggle against their oppressors.
Open the way to the paperless! Open the way to immigrant workers! Open the way to refugees! Open the way to the youth of the cités!
For years, the exploited youth of the cités -the neighborhoods surrounding Paris, was taken to a brutal and generalized unemployment as a by-product of the layoffs and restructuring of French transnationals. Young working-class people of the cités fought like the young Greeks to the cry of “Every night we will make Paris a new Baghdad!"
In this latest mobilization, thousands and thousands of young people from high schools and colleges marched with a banner saying: “We are all vandals, we all break everything". In fact, let's break and destroy the French Fifth Republic!
It is about preparing a decisive fight. The working class, the youth and their more advanced and insightful elements should be setting up a staff that really wants to lead a combat to defeat the Government, the regime and the state of the capitalists and prompting at each step bodies of self-determination and self-organization of the masses to make them which decide the course of action in the fight. The exploited -even in their spontaneity are a million times cleverer than the opportunistic old leaderships of the working class that are sunk in their conservatism and prostration.
We must unite the workers’ ranks and this will be done under a revolutionary program that matches the level of the attack and the profit-voracity of the capitalists and their Government.
Out with the bureaucracy and the labor aristocracy from trade unions and mass organizations for struggle!
Reformism has been cornered by the whip of the capital which does not give peace and because the reformists already cannot pass the alms as "reforms". It has become clear that to defeat Khomri Act it is necessary to defeat Hollande and advance in a huge revolutionary political struggle of the masses in the streets. All those who speak of "real democracy" are just vile charlatans who want to prevent the revolutionary masses from crushing French imperialist Fifth Republic.
Reformism is no alternative for the exploited. Either the whip of capital or a new ’68 French May. Reformism is preparing conditions for the first option. We revolutionary Socialists, Trotskyists of the Fourth International, are calling to fight to prepare and organize a victorious French May.
We must unify the French working class and revolutionary Youth in the footsteps of ’68 French May!
Down with Hollande and the Fifth Republic! Down with Khomri Act!
For a Revolutionary General Strike!
We must organize a great fight. We should unite and organize the vast majority of the workers and the people of France who are being attacked by 1% of parasites -bankers and transnationals, which are the true owners of the French Fifth Republic and today seek to strangle the workers.
To defeat Khomri Act, we must defeat Hollande! Let's break with all parties of the bourgeoisie and their pippet Parliament!
French employers said they would not negotiate anything... Now it is the working class which should raise and say: we do not negotiate anything! We disavow the law! Out with Hollande! In order to defeat Khomri Act, we want now the fall of the regime and the Government!
Imperialist transnationals and bandits only give something when they realize they are on the verge of losing it all. And this "all" is its ownership of the means of production, with which they exploit workers and loot the world.
Stop all chatter about "democratizing" and "improving" the regime of French imperialist butchers and Maastricht made of 1% of parasites who loot the planet!
Those at the top deserve to endure a revolutionary French May!
Those in the bottom are entitled to conquer a new Paris Commune!
For committees of factory, of immigrants, of sans-papiers, colleges, faculties! A single class, the same fight!
Let's put in place a Worker Parliament with direct democracy, recallable delegates with mandate of unions, immigrants, factory committees and immigrants without papers, of the precarious and unemployed, of schools and faculties, to centralize all the forces of the 99% of society against the 1% of parasites and thus conquer the real democracy of the exploited!
The Place de la Republique has to be transformed in Tahrir Square, in 2011 revolutionary Syria, in rebellious Tunisia and Libya. The cry cannot be other than: "The people want the fall of the regime!"
Out with Hollande and imperialist Fifth Republic! Revolutionary General Strike! Down with the Parliament of the imperialist transnationals!
The Government of Hollande and France’s employers prepared these conditions to attack French working class and youth: they framed up self-attacks and tried to convince workers that the real enemy was the ISIS... Pure lies! ISIS was organized by Obama, Dog Bashar... and Hollande, who now also adds to the crimes he has committed, the attack to the conquests of the French working class.
Under the excuse of ISIS, Hollande Government militarized France, murdered innocent civilians, framed the provocation of Charlie Hebdo and now defies and attacks the French working class, while supporting Al - Assad and his ally (the largest gunman in Europe on account of the transnational corporations) Putin’s massacre against the people in Syria.
The French working class must understand that in their attack the capitalists will come for all workers. It's time to build committees of self-defense to face repression and increasingly hard shocks with murderous police!
Hollande´s plan against the proletariat in France is the same as that of Merkel and Syriza. It is the plan of imperialist Maastricht against the workers from across Europe, refugees and the working class from its colonies and semi-colonies! We have the same enemies; let’s fight together for a European General Strike!
35-hour working week and the wage of the German worker for all workers throughout Europe! Jobs and documents for all the refugees!
A single class all across Europe, a single fight!
We cannot allow that refugees from throughout the Middle East and Syria to be put in concentration camps, behind barbed wires. There we French and European workers will end unless we defeat the attack by Hollande and the entire imperialist Maastricht.
Stand up next to the immigrants who are the heart of the European working class! Stand up next to the refugees to break the barbed-wire fences and open the borders!
Out with NATO! Down with the Paris Club of creditors! Out with the IMF and the ECB! Out with the Troika! Out with the imperialist military bases in Africa, Asia, Middle East and Latin America!
For the military defeat of the French troops in Yemen, Syria and Mali
so that the working class succeeds in Paris!
Freedom to Alfon and the Greek prisoners! Freedom for the Basque prisoners and Georges Abdallah, arrested in the dungeons of the killers and butchers of the Fifth Republic! Acquittal for Goodyear workers! Stop and withdraw all prosecution of all the young people who have causes for fighting for their future!
The global financial oligarchy of the Bundesbank, the City of London, Tokyo and Wall Street has come for our achievements, our jobs and our salary... They stole our retirements and emptied the treasures of the States to cover their losses. In the crash of the rotten world capitalist economy, they earn just those who caused it.
Let's expropriate the transnationals and the bankers without compensation and under workers control! Let's finish with the 1%, they are parasites!
So the working class live, imperialism must die!
Down with imperialist Maastricht! Let revolution start throughout Europe!
To be able to eat, have bread and decent jobs: the time has arrived of the revolution of the workers and soldiers’ councils in France and throughout Europe!
Correspondents in París
May 12, 2016
