The French strike wave: A new stage in the class struggle

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The French strike wave: A new stage in the class struggle
19 October 2010

The strikes and mass demonstrations in France against pension cuts are the
latest and most developed expression of a new stage in the class struggle—the
entry of the international working class into mass opposition against the
ruthless assault on jobs and living standards being carried out by the capitalists.

These events deal a shattering blow to all claims that the working class is a
spent force and the class struggle is a relic of the past. Once again, the
immense social power of the working class is beginning to find expression. The
basic division of modern society, between the bourgeoisie and the working class,
is asserting itself under conditions of a historic breakdown of world capitalism.

By all accounts, the strikes against legislation that would raise the retirement
age are expanding. As the week began, petrol stations throughout the country
were running out of fuel as a result of a strike by refinery workers. Truck
drivers have joined in, slowing traffic on the country’s major highways.
Hundreds of high schools are shut down by student protests. Mass demonstrations
are planned for Tuesday, following similar days of action over the past week
that brought more than 3 million people onto the streets.

The expansion of strike action is the response of the working class to the
repressive measures of the Sarkozy government, including the use of riot police
to break up oil workers’ blockades of refineries. The efforts of the workers to
expand the struggle and exercise their social power bring them into ever more
open conflict with the trade unions, which are looking to wind down the mass
actions.

The strikes have the overwhelming support of the French population. Polls show
70 percent in favor of the strikers. Among young people aged 18-24, support is
as high as 84 percent. The popularity of Sarkozy, in contrast, is at record lows.

The events in France are world events. They are part of a growing mood of
resistance in every country. In Europe, there is increasingly determined
opposition to the austerity measures introduced throughout the continent
following the debt crisis in the spring. This has included one-day general
strikes in Greece and Spain. In Italy over the weekend, hundreds of thousands
marched in Rome to protest austerity measures.

The reemergence of the working class into struggle is not limited to Europe.
China has been rocked by strikes of auto workers; textile workers have staged
mass actions in Cambodia and Bangladesh; and Foxconn workers in India have
struck in defiance of police repression. In the United States, there is a
brewing rebellion of auto workers against brutal wage cuts worked out between
the auto companies, the government and the United Auto Workers union.

The ruling class is not backing down. The response of the Sarkozy government to
the spreading strikes is to dig in its heels, insisting that the cuts must go
forward. Behind Sarkozy stand the French and European banks, which have warned
that failure to push through the cuts will call into question the credit rating
on French debt. On a world stage, the financial and corporate elite is
determined to impose the full cost of the crisis of the capitalist system on the
working class.

These events show that there will be no peaceful restabilization of the world
economy following the financial panic of September 2008. The breakdown of world
capitalism has ushered in a new period of social upheaval and revolution.

The open conflict between the working class and the state, which represents the
banks and corporations, poses in every country the question of power. In whose
interests will society be run? The continued rule of the capitalist class—on the
basis of private ownership of the means of production—means the ever greater
impoverishment of the population, the destruction of democratic rights, and ever
wider and more bloody military conflagrations.

The alternative is for the working class to take political power and reorganize
the world economy on the basis of social need, ending the dictatorship of the
banks and corporations over every aspect of economic and political life.

This question of political power is not one for the distant future. It arises
organically and necessarily out of the new stage in the class struggle. The
demands of the French workers and the demands of their class brothers and
sisters internationally cannot be met in any other way.

The biggest obstacle to resolving the crisis in the interests of the French
workers is not the Sarkozy government, which is weak and isolated. It is rather
the trade union leadership and its allies in the Socialist and Communist parties
and the other supposedly “left” middle-class organizations that work to keep
opposition confined within the framework of the capitalist system and its
political representatives. By blocking the road to a political struggle for
power, they work to demobilize the struggle and demoralize the workers.

Whether it is the New Anti-Capitalist Party in France—which claims in its most
recent statement that as a result of the strikes, “the government will be forced
to capitulate”—the Left Party in Germany, SYRIZA in Greece or the International
Socialist Organization in the US, the aim of all these tendencies is the same:
to prevent workers from understanding the situation they confront, mobilizing
their strength and fighting for political power.

For the struggle in France to be successful, it will have to break free of the
stifling grip of the unions and take an independent path. Workers need to build
new, democratic organizations of struggle—committees of action—to fight for the
broadest unity of all sections of the working class and the active participation
of students, youth, professionals and oppressed middle-class layers in an
industrial and political offensive against the government and the ruling class.
The committees of action will campaign for the development of a general strike
to bring down the Sarkozy government and replace it with a workers government
based on a socialist program.

The key issue is the building of a new leadership in the working class to arm
the movement with a clearly worked out revolutionary program. What Leon Trotsky
wrote 72 years ago in the founding program of the Fourth International applies
with full force today: the crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of
revolutionary leadership. The resolution of this crisis requires the building of
the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country.

Joseph Kishore

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/pers-o19.shtml

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