French strikers and their value

[Mauro junior <mauro.jr@xxxxxx>]

At 14.29 06/12/95 +1000, G.Maclennan wrote:

>
>I agree
>totally with Scott's remarks about France.  However could someone please
>post something about the CGT and Force Ouvriere.  There is a total dearth
>of political analysis in the main media here.  Yet even they seem to
>sense the importance of this struggle.  I note the parallels with the
>outbreak of worker militancy here in Australia that shocked everyone
>especially the trade union leadership.
>
>Could this be the start of something big?  Is the class turning at last.
>Whatever the truth of this, the sight of workers and students together in
>the streets is truly wonderful.
>
>           "O frabjous day! Callooh, Callay!"
Mauro jr:
Yes, I too greet the french struggles as a possible turning of the working
class in Europe.
It's anyway (whether these struggles win or not)a great event at least in
two senses:
1. The bourgoisie (from the radical right one to the radical left) is since
long saying that the class struggle is over, the working class doesn't exist
any more, we all are citizens, middel-class equal members of the civil
society. The french workers are showing that those are lies: the society is
still class divided and the working class is the only class hit by the
crisis of the capitalist economy, and anyway when the latter has got problems.

2. the pressure from the "base" (union members and expecially the most
not-union member)facing the cuts by the governement has been enough to
compel the unions to declare the strikes for trying to lead them to... the
defeat. Will it be a lesson for our class?

The nature of the fight is fundamentally defensive. The hard attack is of
the bourgeoisie (and its state) against the conditions of the workers. It is
lasting since 20 years in which the average workers wage in France and Italy
(I've not here the fresh figures for Britain and Germany) lost a 15% and
where the total "v" is dramatically diminished also through the millions of
dismissals. Now they (ruling class and state) are directly robing the
indirect wage (the pensions and the health). The french workers are fighting
exactly against these new brutal attack.
It's really hard, though not impossible, to "win", that is to stop the
attack to the pensions. This will probably imply some new economical
"measure" by the state which is searching for money from the workers
pockets. Surely, our class is not able to cut the profits - which are
already cutted by the crisis - without the revolution.
And here is the point: either the class (their vanguards, first of all) is
able to use these struggles for make this truth to arise and spread  in the
workers consciousnesses, or this battle will be "useless" and politically
defeated (which, historically,  is worst than materially, economicaly defeated).
No one, in France and anywhere, can call himself communist without showing
in the material, objective limits of these great battle the limits of
capitalism and the need for communism.
ill the unions (the "moderate" socialist Force Ouvriere and the stalinist
CGT) play this role? Of course, no. Who is intervening there on a
revolutionary communist ground?
Mauro Junior
Tel  (-39)02/35.51.275 fax (-39)02/33.200.101



     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

     ------------------