FRANCE IN FLAMES - December 12th, 2018

Towards the fifth day of combat of the yellow vests in France on Saturday Dec 15th...
Statement of the International Trotskyist Leninist Fraction (FLTI)

Macron did not yield. Supported by the union bureaucracy and the big bosses, he only seeks to scam and deceive the people Fight as in May 1968

France: huge mass independent actions The working class doesn’t have the leadership it deserves See more

To get all our demands for wages, work and decent pensions; and for the crisis to be paid by the capitalists:

Revolutionary General Strike until Macron falls!

The yellow vests do not leave the barricades

On Saturday December 12th, the yellow vests, the workers, the unemployed youth from the working class neighborhoods, the retired, the impoverished petty producers, made a hell on the streets of Paris and in the cities of France, facing the security forces. In Paris a true state of siege was mounted, with armored vehicles of the gendarmerie preventing the masses from raising their barricades on the streets. All the exploited entered the fight for the fourth time in a row. They made a huge day of revolutionary struggle while they are preparing a fifth day of revolutionary struggle for next Saturday December 15th which shows that those from below do not leave the streets.

 

The concessions of Macron: a great scam and deception to the people

After the day of political struggle of December 8th, the government of the Fifth Republic saw that it had lost the control of the masses and that its power was staggering and weakening. Before the revolted masses advance against the power of the bourgeoisie, after a week of silence, Macron called for a meeting to the treacherous union bureaucracy of the trade union federations CGT, CFDT, FO, CFE-CGE and CFTC , to the French imperialist employers' organizations (MEDEF, CPME and U2P ) and to the presidents of the National Assembly (representatives, senators and the Economic Council).

In that meeting they began to devise a big scam and a deception against the workers. First, they mounted a scene to announce that “concessions were given” to the rioting workers and people, making them believe that such concessions as the 100 euros “wage increase” and the suspension of the price increase of fuel, were a result of the demands of the union federations agreed with the employers associations. This is a vile lie. The bureaucracy of the unions prevented the working class from intervening through them in the struggle in the streets. The union bureaucrats supported the hikes in fees and the increase of the fuel prices of Macron, after betraying the enormous combats of the French working class against the labour flexibilization and the loss of the 35 hours of work per week. In these weeks of struggle they did not move a finger while the majority of the working class took the streets, removing from them the restraining vest that the bureaucracy of the unions had imposed on them, putting on the yellow vest and allying themselves with the students and the impoverished sectors of the middle classes of the countryside and the city. That is to say, it is a real mass political struggle against the government and the regime.

But the working class and the exploited people of France are perfectly clear about how things are: who the lackeys of the government and traitors of the workers' struggle are and who really were at the forefront of the barricades and on the streets.

On the other hand, in this meeting, they conspired against the rioting workers, plotting a deception that was quickly exposed as such before the workers and the people. Actually, neither the government nor the bosses granted anything, nor the union bureaucrats got anything. Everything has been a big lie.
The 100 euros of "increase" to the minimum wage announced by Macron will not come out from the bosses' pockets, but from the State treasury, that is to say, what is being granted is nothing more and nothing less than a subsidy to the employers and, in the near future, the masses will have to pay for it with new taxes.
The goes for the annulment of the tax on social security for retired who earn less than 2000 euros and the new-year bonus, whose payment is subjected to the decision of each employer, whereas all of them, of course, have already announced that they cannot grant it...
What about the increase in the fuel prices? A gross hoax... The increase is postponed. Undoubtedly, with the masses off the streets, with the union bureaucracy regaining control of the workers movement, with the bosses enslaving the workers in the companies, with the state flogging the immigrants, the unemployed and the youth, that is to say, once the situation is stabilized, the hike in fees will return again. On what day of 2019 will this be? The one in which the masses are once again controlled by their leaderships and evicted from the streets.

The enemy is the financial oligarchy of France and the imperialist Europe of Maastricht

 

The workers and the French people know that the one who gives the order to increase the prices of fuel to "reduce the state deficit " is the imperialist Europe of Maastricht. The axis that pivots the businesses of the European imperialist gangs in that continent and in the whole planet are the the government of Macron and the government of Merkel, the Franco-German imperialist axis that has found a vital space in the European continent, from Portugal to the Russian steppes.
To maintain the monetary unity of the euro, the Maastricht Europe does not allow more than a 3% deficit in the public accounts of their member states. France has passed that deficit. Of course the big French capitalists, their bankers and the financial oligarchy are not willing to put a single euro of the super profits they get from the oppressed people they plunder and from the French workers they exploit in order to pay for that deficit. That is precisely what the increase in the prices of fuel is about: making the masses pay the deficit of the functioning of the state.
The government of Macron proudly claims to give subsidies to companies, when he pays to each worker those 100 euros plus. This amounts to 10,000 million euros, as current expenditure of the state, which, we insist, will be paid by the masses with increased taxes, as the French people know well. Hence, one of the key claims that fuelled these battles against the increase in fuel prices, was to impose taxes on the great fortunes.
In France, all the workers and people know that Total, one of the largest imperialist oil companies on the planet, partner of the "7 sisters" in the looting of oil throughout the colonial and semi-colonial world, in its balance in the stock market has shown 12,000 million dollars of yearly earnings that it distributes among a handful of shareholders and parasites that live off clipping coupons. That is to say, with the declared super-profits of one year of one of the greatest French imperialist companies, an wage increase can be paid for all the workers of France. Not to mention the Renault group, whose profits reached 11,500 million euros in 4 months; or Airbus or Paribas bank which is openly one of the largest investment banks in China, associated with the transnationals that enslave the Asian working class

It has become clear to the workers and the French people that Macron's announcement is not a concession and that he does not yield anything. It is a scam and a deception that cannot even be passed as a reform or a conquest by the traitors of the union bureaucracy.

The government of Macron today is supported by the traitors of the union bureaucracy and the big bosses, who fear for their fall at the hands of the direct action of the masses

The "king" Macron lost control of the masses, so he sees his dominance is endangered. Thus he called his "squires", the union bureaucrats, to subject the masses to this infamous pact, to strangle the heroic struggle of the masses. Martinez, of the CGT, along with all the union bureaucracy, plays a fundamental role in saving the infamous French Fifth Republic, for these traitors will be the ones who will guarantee the application of the bosses' plans, in case the bourgeoisie manages to take the exploited out of the streets.

That is their role, because they are responsible that the French working class has lost one of its main achievements, the 35 hours of work per week. They sold out the fight against the reform of the labour code, the fight against the Khomri law, the fight against the reform of the railways and a long etcetera.
For this reason, the CGT did not call for any general strike these days, since it’s a matter of life or death for them not only preserving the property and profits of the capitalists, but also because the bourgeoisie knows that the fall of Macron government at the hands of a direct action from the masses would open a real crisis of power in the heights and in all the dominance institutions of France. This is what this "negotiation and dialogue table" is about: to uphold Macron so that the masses do not topple him and prevent them from advancing in opening the way to achieve their demands, demolishing all the institutions of dominance of the French Fifth Republic. The bourgeoisie knows that this would mean the opening of the revolution in France. It would be putting the first stones to build up a barricade of the Commune to take over the Bastille ...
For this reason the bourgeoisie mounted quickly a real wall to defend its fortress, to "reinforce the Bastille" before the hatred of the masses... It is a sinister agreement of the bosses and the union bureaucracy when the bourgeois power has lost control of the masses, that is, at times when the slaveholder has lost control of his slaves who have risen.

This new wall of lies and deception that was built is because the workers with their combats have also put into question the police control of the streets of France. The bourgeoisie knows that in new and superior clashes with the repressive forces and the army, the workers will have the weapons at their reach, as they would’ve conquered them from the picket lines and barricades.
The French ruling classes was forged in the massacre of the Paris Commune and in deceptions and lies, with which they diverted the fight of May 1968, supported by the union bureaucracy in general and Stalinism in particular. They know very well that they need to give back the control of the workers' movement to Stalinism, to the social-imperialist left and to the bureaucracy of all the unions, totally corrupt and sold to the bourgeois state.
That is why Macron called Martinez, the general secretary of the CGT, to organize this meeting to deceive the people and made him the de facto vice-president, as head of the internal police within the labuor movement that the bourgeoisie has to control the unions. This is why the capitalist system and its regimes and governments supported and covered up the Communist Parties since 1989, especially in Europe, after they handed over the USSR. It is in order to control the unions with manu militari. Stalinism knew and knows perfectly that job.
As we saw in various statements, the entire left (the former Trotskyists among them) whined about the unions not participating, when the masses were in the streets and had already completely surpassed the union bureaucracy. But Martínez and the CGT, the social-imperialist bureaucrats of Force Ouvrière (Workers Force) and other trade union federations, paid heed to these currents and participated: they closed a pact with the big bosses to support Macron and deceive and swindle the people.
When we write this statement, it is clear that the masses are not falling for Macron's deception and scam. They are still waiting for his resignation. The union bureaucracy has had to take another stand. It announced a new action of the unions for this Friday, December 14th, with which it intends to ride on the crest of the wave to try to control the revolutionary tide. However, it is highly discredited. The union bureaucrats are not yellow vests. They are not fighters of the barricade. They do not bring conquests. They only betray. They are enemies of the "vandals", as they call those who fight on the streets of France. They are enemies of the yellow vests. They are servants of the Fifth Republic.

After the most advanced steps of May 1968, a new revolution tries to stand up in France.

In that tumultuous year, Paris was shaken by an enormous revolutionary struggle. The student’s movement occupied the universities and for a month, combative militant students were the spark that ignited the prairie that led the labour movement to intervene and set France on fire.

In those years began a revolutionary mass uprising throughout the world. After the fighting against the treacherous Stalinist bureaucracy of the metalworkers in East Germany in 1953 and the workers' councils of Hungary, the working class clashed with the Stalinism, lackeys of the imperialism, in the streets of Prague. In Tlatelolco, Mexico, hundreds of students were killed in violent repression when they were fighting in defense of education. A huge masses' uprising radicalized the world working class that confronting at the left with the infamous pact of US "democratic" imperialism and its partners, the treacherous Stalinist bureaucracy, signed in Yalta and Potsdam after World War II.
In 1968, the US with President Lyndon Johnson from the Democratic Party invaded Vietnam (a reminder to today's left that is so pleased and welcomes this party as progressive) and in response, the Vietnamese masses carried out the Tet offensive, attacking all the Yankee barracks and even his Embassy in Saigon.

The anti-war movement, with its vanguard, the black movement, radicalized in the USA in a real pitched battle against the police of the murderous Democratic Party of the masses of Vietnam.
Che Guevara died in Bolivia, surrounded and isolated by Stalinism, and the student movement dressed in red the universities of Paris with their revolutionary struggle.
The French working class, breaking the barrier of the treacherous trade union bureaucracy of the CGT, controlled by Stalinism and the CP, burst into along with the student movement in a 15-day general strike that even led to De Gaulle's government fleeing out of France and took refuge in Germany, afraid of the masses may have overthrown him with their revolutionary combats. The working class in France, just as it happened in Czechoslovakia, earlier in Hungary and as soon as it was made in a generalized uprising in the world, hit towards the left against the Stalinist control of the world workers movement and its counterrevolutionary pact with imperialism.

The lessons of that combat are alive in the consciousness of the masses. Every revolution that begins, takes elements of the previous ones and the tracks of the past leave their mark on the exploited masses. And in the bourgeoisie, there was a clear class consciousness to face the new mass battles.
Today Macron (worried about being 1968 De Gaulle) on the one hand looks at Berlin and on the other, at the barricade. He has not yet embarked on the trip because he hopes that the traitors of the trade union bureaucracy and the self-styled "New Left", true social-imperialist currents, will extinguish the fire of the barricades.
On the boards of the big transnationals, the bourgeoisie is preparing for the possibility of the masses defeating Macron, something that they is not willing to allow, but when they sees their power in danger, they develop all their class instinct and consciousness.

Thus, in case the current plan of deception and lies fails, they have already sent their bourgeois left wing, which goes from Melenchon to the "anti-capitalist" servants of French imperialism, to request that Macron resign, to advance the elections and to "democratize" France unifying both chambers in a Single National Assembly.
While he sends the police to the street and raises these walls against the masses, the bourgeoisie also prepares this new deception to sweeten the regime of the V Bonapartist and counterrevolutionary Republic with doses of "pseudo-democratic" lies. Why? Because the bourgeoisie’s General Staff, as we have already said, learned perfectly from the French May.

In '68, almost 30 days of combats of the student movement were necessary so that the French proletariat could break the stranglehold of the union bureaucracy tightly controlled by Stalinism, as he had been doing since the outbreak of WWII. Already at that time, the traitor Thorez, the general secretary of the French Communist Party, disarmed the maquis, which was the French resistance that had smashed fascism and the workers to work 12 hours a day in the worst conditions of slavery for "rebuild the France”. And years later, when "distributing wealth time" arrived, workers only received more hunger, misery and oppression. The working class was sold out and also paralyzed when French imperialism organized the massacre and genocide in its Algerian colony that was struggling to become independent.
The fate that the Foreign Legion prepared for the Algerian workers and peasants was the same for the workers of France: miserable wages and slavery. That was the engine of the French May. The working class broke with the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the unions, they broke with a 15 day general strike of and together with the student movement took over France.
 
So it is disgusting when reformism talks about the "Welfare State" of French imperialism. They are, and always have been, part of the workers' aristocracy and of the upper strata of the French and European proletariat, from where they arrogantly look down at the working class of the French colonies and the semi-colonies that this imperialism oppresses and plunders.

In 2018 the workers have entered the combat breaking union bureaucracy’s fence
The bourgeoisie can very well read the conditions and the current development of independent mass actions in France

The bourgeoisie and its government behave today as they are doing, because they draw the lesson from '68. The revolution began in that year when Stalinism and bureaucracy lost control on the labour movement.

But this time the working class broke the straitjacket and it did not wait 30 days of combat of the student movement to leave the factories to fight, like in 1968. This time, the workers and the exploited masses entered directly into political struggle to overthrow the government, despite and against the union bureaucracy. The proletariat entered this fight together with the student movement and the ruined middle classes. The union bureaucracies were surprised, like the bourgeoisie, by this great independent mass action. It is that after huge betrayals of the bureaucracy of the CGT and other trade union centrals, it was the workers' movement that putting on the yellow vests, was the advance of the exploited in the barricades that began to burn Paris.

A gang of the French bourgeoisie, like that of Le Pen, tried to use the action of the masses with its "anti-Maastricht" policy, but gave the order to leave the barricades because there was the working class, the rebellious youth and the student movement fighting... Breaking with the vests of the bureaucracy, the workers movement is already on the streets. Their method of struggle is the barricade. The students, by hundreds of thousands, are also there. The time limit of the French May have been shortened. The trap of the new wall, based on the scam of the pact of the union leaders with the government, is for the working class to go back to be under bureaucracy’s control.

The bourgeoisie knows and wants to prevent the barricade evolves to the picket, the picket to the roadblocks, the road blocks to stop the production and from there to open the way to the Factory Committees to break the corset of the bureaucracy and impose the general strike
If the current conditions develop, these will lead to the Factory Committees and the open defeat of the union bureaucracy that controls each particular factory. This is the way to a new May '68, a May French based on Workers' Councils, the rebel student movement, barricades and pickets. This is necessary in the dynamic of the combat that has been established. And for that reason the new wall and the infamy mounted by the bourgeoisie and the sweetened class collaboration politics of the left, including the "anticapitalists", which does not want Macron -De Gaulle- "to flee to Germany". They want his resignation and anticipated elections.
What travels through France is the ghost of the revolution and of the French May, and that begins to travel all over Europe.

The working class needs to set up the self-organizing masses organisms with direct democracy that will set up the Self-defence Committees and the Workers' Militia.

The task of the moment in France is to set up the ad hoc organisms suitable for the current combat, to organize the masses in struggle: the Consumers Committees, Young people of the cités Committees, Students Committees, Factory Committees, Unemployed Committees and Committees of the picket lines of the barricades centralized at the local, regional and national levels.
The issue is about raising the power of the workers and the exploited masses. It is about disarming the police and arming the people. As in the revolutionary France of 1793, one man, one rifle! And as it was shouted in the Paris Commune: "whoever has the weapons, conquers the bread!".

Faced with this there is no mystery or anything to invent. As much as reformists and treacherous leaders tell the masses and harp on them in their ears, the only thing they can do is "union struggles or pressure on Parliaments to get crumbs", the working class and its allies have already entered into the political struggle. And this subsumes the economic struggle and for the masses everything comes down to the Government's fall to get even the smallest of its demands. Union bureaucracy cannot control the barricade battles of the yellow vests. They slip like in a frozen lake.
What the masses have ahead of them is to raise the workers' councils and their militia from the barricades in order to unite all the oppressed and exploited classes of society. This is no mystery. These are the Soviets. Those that the reformists together with the bourgeoisie have sworn never allow them to set up again. That is their job, they are paid for it.

The masses that today have entered the combat in France have seen the development of the Maghreb and Middle East revolutions opened in 2011. The blood left by the masses in that combat has not yet been cooled. The French imperialist bourgeoisie itself has tried to use it with dozens of "ISIS attacks" to deceive the people and with a false "national unity" to subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie.
These events, as well as the combats throughout the region, are still fresh. There the coordination of workers and soldiers in the Syrian revolution and Libyan militias occurred... In Cairo, millions were grouped in Tahrir Square and the tenth day of mass actions, from there was called a general strike and so the "pharaoh" Mubarak was overthrown... The memory of Tunisia and how with a revolutionary general strike, occupying police stations, the political prisoners were released and the government of Ben Ali fell... The blood of the masses who staged the revolution of the Maghreb and the Middle East is still hot as well the tragedy of their defeats.

Also in North Africa and the Middle East, the NPA, the self-titled "New Left" and the other reformist leaderships, made the masses believe that with Constituent Assemblies, "democratizing" the bourgeois regimes, they would conquer bread and freedom, without expropriating capitalists and advancing towards socialist revolution. There clearly is the strategy of these traitors who promised bread "deepening bourgeois democracy" (ie, the fiercest dictatorship of capital), but what the masses received were the bayonets of fascism and counterrevolution, after the lies of reformism were imposed.

All these are the dangers that the French masses have before them. But the last word has not been said yet. The flame is still on. The mass combats do not stop. They aim to sweep the citadel of power. The conditions were created to raise the power of those from below to fight against the power of the  ones on top and to destroy all the ruling institutions. A pre-revolutionary situation has opened in France. The most backward of it are the reformists who do not know how to beautify this infamous imperialist Republic with sweet phrases and make-up to "democratize" it, when actually in order to conquer the slightest demands it must be demolished.

The forces of the French working class are in their brothers in the colonies and semi-colonies that French imperialism oppresses and workers in the rest of Europe

Masses struggle in France can only triumph decisively and unite with that of the working class of the colonial and semi-colonial world, fighting together against the imperialist Transnationals of the Fifth Republic and the regimes and the oppressors murderers Governments. Independence of Guadalupe, Martinique, Reunion and all the colonies! A people that oppress another cannot liberate itself!

Out with the troops, military bases and financial oligarchy of French imperialism from Mali, Chad, Syria, all of Africa and the whole semicolonial world!

The strength of the French working class lies in unity with workers throughout Europe. Their victory will come if they smash imperialist Maastricht.
The combats of France are followed by all the workers in Europe with an enormous expectation and even they begin to imitate their example. This happens with the workers of the Spanish State who fought against the autocracy of the Bourbons, even those of England in crisis; from Belgium to the Greek workers who entered into struggle actions as it was the last general strike in Athens, which threatens today to be ignited by the spark of France.
In “times of peaces” the treacherous union bureaucracies of Europe call opulent meetings of unions from all over Europe. Now they would never do it. Because the path masses are following is the one of Hamburg, which prepared a “hell” against G-20 in 2017, like the one in Paris today.

Years ago, the working class rose in Romania and Renault workers there shouted: "We want to earn like the Renault workers of France!" That did not happen. The union bureaucracies divided the European working class, including the workers of the same transnational corporations, relocated in the East where they turned those countries into "maquilas". The workers of those countries were forced to work and the wages of the workers of the imperialist metropolises were sunk. That is how they managed to make the French workers earn as the Romanian workers.
Today the French working class has conquered a huge step forward to fight: it broke the control of the union bureaucracies that submit it to its own imperialist bourgeoisie. It is time to call the workers of the French transnationals, who are oppressed and exploited in Eastern Europe and all over the world, to revolt along with the working class of the metropolis.
The Paris Commune was an example of militant internationalism of the world proletariat. This proclaimed that all the workers of the world were citizens of the commune.
 
 
Let’s fight like in May ’68!

Open the road to the Revolutionary General Strike until Macron falls!

We must disarm and dissolve the murderous police who threaten to take the workers and the poor people of France in a bloodbath!
The Self-defence Committees, the pickets and the Workers' Militia have to be set up!

Let’s seize the Bastille!
Down with the V imperialist Republic!

We must conquer bread, work, education, decent pensions, recover the 35 hours week shift and defeat the slavery that capitalists want to impose!

May the employers and the bankers pay the crisis!
Progressive taxes to the great fortunes!
Statization without compensation and under workers control of all the Transnationals and imperialist banks!

 

For the Commune of workers, peasants and poor people!

Down with the imperialist Maastricht!
Let's the flames of Paris ignite the revolutionary fire in the entire European and world working class!
For the Socialist United States of Europe!

 International Coordination Secretariat of the FLTI

 

CGT: General Confederation of Labour / CFDT: Democratic French Confederation of Labour / FO: Workers Force / CFE-CGE: French Confederation of Managers – General Confederation of Executives / CFTC: French Confederation of Christian Workers

MEDEF: Company Movement of France / CPME: Petty and Middle Companies Confederation / U2P: Organización de los Empleadores del Sector Privado