Today is not yet the return of the proletarian revolution (1), but only the beginning of the real class struggle against the capitalists and their State. Chéréque (boss of the arch collaborationist CFDT union) was forced to flee the Paris demo Tuesday; but his colleagues of the CGT (the main, “communist” led, French union) showed themselves in their true colors by inviting today the workers to save their forces, because the negotiations will last for weeks! The whole media zoo explained that this was an implicit call for the resumption of work. At least Chéréque was franker when he said openly a week ago that the strike had "to be suspended" because the negotiations were going to last a month–free, of course, to resume in one month, one year or–never! The workers answered by voting massively to continue the strike: every one knows that in the absence of the relationship of forces established by the strike, it is impossible to make the bosses and the government retreat.

But faced with the more hypocritical sabotage today of the other trade-union leaderships, the vote for the continuation of the strike is not enough any more. Without independent organization in elected strike committees, without their coordination and the establishment of a central strike committee entrusted to conduct the struggle on the basis of authentic proletarian demands (and not just a little sugar to aid in swallowing the bitter pill of capitulation), the workers will be disarmed and impotent faced with the manoeuvres of the collaborationist trade-union apparatuses (to say nothing of their reformist political accomplices of the left or "extreme left").

The first examples of the formation of strike committees at the RATP (Paris public transport) and at the SNCF (French national Railways) show that the workers can really take their fight in hand. The so-called "sabotage" actions of this night which are undoubtedly a response to the anti-strike speech of Sarkozy and the opening of the negotiations/capitulations of today, are a sign of the determination of certain strikers. One should not condemn these actions braying in unison with the government, the ‘management’ and the trade unions, but use this determination to maintain and extend the strike, including calling out other sectors of workers and young people: effective strike pickets, massive delegations sent to nearby companies, etc.


The struggle of the transport workers and others is not a fight to maintain "privileges": the privileged people, are the capitalists with Sarkozy as their “man of straw”; the strikers combat must be supported by all the workers because it is the avant-garde of the struggle against the intensification of the anti-proletarian attacks decided on by the capitalists and their government. The hundreds of thousands of strikers and demonstrators of Tuesday have understood this: against the generalization of the attacks, it is necessary to answer back by the generalization of the struggle!



For the Independent Organization of the Workers and the Break With Political and Trade-union Collaborationism!
For the Return of the Anti-Capitalist Class Struggle!



(1) Title of a report on the events in France by Russian NTV television Tuesday: "In France, return of the proletarian revolution". One can read in the script of the report: "the observers seriously fear that the importance of the movements occurring in France could completely paralyse the country which already for a week has been strangled by ceaseless strikes (.) the fight for the social benefits in France already points to the proletarian revolution. At the time (of the Russian Revolution) the Bolsheviks called for the seizure of the post office, telegraph and railway stations; today the French paralyse the operation of these key objectives". news.ntv.ru/12107 It is a report calculated to send a shiver through the Russian petit-bourgeois viewer conditioned to support the strong arm power of Putin against any disorder. But beyond this it demonstrates that for the bourgeois all great movements of struggle evoke the spectre of the revolution!



International Communist Party, 21/11/2007

Correspondence:
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