tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70779966799752809172024-03-13T00:40:26.670-04:00INTERNATIONALIST COMMUNISTS - KLASBATALO! WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-53136246408668336922014-09-13T10:14:00.001-04:002014-09-13T10:27:39.680-04:00Revolution or WAR<h2 style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Journal of the International Group of the Communist Left</span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Revolution or War </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is the journal of the International Group of the Communist Left (IGLC)</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It is the result of the fusion of CIK- Klabastalo and FICL. Our unity is based on the following main points:</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1.- For our class, this vital unification of Left Communist forces (whose main component is the ICT) is an essential step for the future and indispensable formation of the class party for the revolution. This fundamental objective also requires uncompromising struggle against the penetration of bourgeois ideology within the Communist Left, especially against the opportunism and sectarianism that still plague this environment.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2.- Today, this necessary process can only strengthen communists’ ability to assume the responsibilities that the proletariat has raised: to be its most conscious and determined fraction.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">http://igcl.org</span></span></h2>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"></span>Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-5375045502499426192013-11-18T13:46:00.000-05:002013-11-18T13:56:21.710-05:00<h2>
<a href="http://internationalistcommunistsmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/11/communique-on-constitution-of.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Communique on the Constitution of International Group of the Communist Left</span></span></a></h2>
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-59828659076187768402013-11-17T09:20:00.001-05:002013-11-19T11:03:27.536-05:00International Communist Bulletin 11 (November 2013)Organ of the Fraction of the International Communist Left<br />
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<li style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci11/bci11_1.php">Editorial of the bulletin 11</a></li>
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<i>The IC-Klasbatalo and our Fraction, we are on the way to adopting a ‘platform’ with main positions close to those of both the ICT and the “historical” ICC. We continue to discuss and clarify the questions of organization and functioning based on the Communist Left, especially the tradition of the “Italian” Left...</i></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Intervention in the Working Struggle</span></b><div class="sinespacio" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
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<li><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci11/bci11_2.php">Communist Intervention and Evolution of the Class Struggle</a></li>
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<i><em>The great masses of workers seeing that their minorities or more militant sectors hesitate at the sheer scale of the task, of the necessity to avoid the democratic traps and erroneous approaches – such of the "indignados" or "Occupy" ideology for instance – this indicates, <b>above all,</b><b>the concrete, practical, necessity to take up the political fight against capitalism's forces, in the first place from the unions who pretend to be "workers", in the struggle.</b></em></i><em></em></div>
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<li><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci11/bci11_3.php">Statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency about the Port-Said Events (March 2013)</a></li>
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<i>Any bourgeois government can wait. It can wait until the anger is exhausted in some act of protest, however powerful and violent, and then take back by force the situation that previously got out of hand. The manoeuvre is much simpler and more effective if the uprising is isolated, if it concerns only a sector of production or a geographically small area...</i></div>
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<li><i><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci11/bci11_4.php">Greece, Turkey, France, Spain ...</a></i><br />The workers' response must be international and united!</li>
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<i>That is why we must rid ourselves of the union-imposed framework, and take our struggle into our own hands. We must not accept that every mobilization remain in its particular “corner” in its “own” region or its “own” country. To remain isolated, separated from other sections of the working class, poses the best prospect for the bourgeoisie to continue to maintain control of the situation, for it to successfully wage more attacks against our lives, forcing us to sacrifice more and more, ultimately sacrificing our lives in the inevitable war.</i></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">International Situation</span></b><div class="sinespacio" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
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<li><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci11/bci11_5.php">The bourgeoisie prepares its repressive apparatus</a></li>
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<i>As the economic crisis deepens, the bourgeoisie and its instruments of repression are consolidating...</i></div>
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<li><i><a href="http://internationalistcommunistsmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/09/an-irrational-accommodation-capitalism.html">An Irrational Accommodation: Capitalism</a></i><i></i></li>
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<i>The capitalist class has only one aim in mind: to prevent the proletariat from affirming its solidarity and its unity as an international working class. While making believe that the Québécois proletariat would have something to safeguard, to defend against all immigrants from Arab countries or elsewhere, all this media hoopla endeavors to do is to make them believe that the immigrant situation is separate from the working class, from the misery of its own condition as an exploited class...</i></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Text of the Workers Movement</span></b><div class="sinespacio" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
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<li><i><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci11/bci11_7.php">Rosa Luxemburg : Her Fight Against the German Betrayers of International Socialism (Preface to the Junius Pamphlet) Clara Zetkin (1919)</a></i><i></i></li>
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<i>The <strong>Junius Pamphlet</strong> is a particularly sparkling treasure of the heritage which Rosa Luxemburg has left the proletariat of Germany, of the world, for the theory and practice of its struggle for liberation...http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci11/bci11_3.php</i></div>
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</i></i></em></span>Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-81791662783999046052013-11-12T09:29:00.000-05:002014-09-13T10:10:53.985-04:00Communique on the Constitution of International Group of the Communist Left<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">The Internationalists Communists – Klasbatalo (ex-ICM) and the Fraction of the International Communist Left (ex-IFICC) held a Conference in order to set up a new communist group. At that Conference, the two groups decided to dissolve in order to form the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;"><i><b>International Group of the Communist Left</b></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;"><i>.</i></span><br />
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As soon as we can, we'll communicate and publish the documents adopted at this meeting and on which the new group bases itself. The Conference adopted a political platform essentially taking up the basic positions of the ICT and the ICC which generally corresponds to the positions that the FICL's <i>International Communist Bulletin</i> posted on its back page. It also adopted the international centralization as a mode of functioning and as a communist principle and practice to develop in its own ranks. It adopted the Thesis on the International Situation so as to define and develop political orientations and interventions within the working class.</div>
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As well, it takes up again the debate that developed between the previous groups regarding the analysis of the Proletarian Camp and the intervention to develop within it. The IGCL wants to focus its intervention within the Proletarian Camp on the struggle for the communist regroupment aiming at the formation of the Communist Party of tomorrow and on the struggle against all the forms of opportunism and sectarianism which had weakened the original. More concretely, and taking note of a central line of demarcation and opposition within this camp between the "pro-party" and "anti-party" tendencies and groups, our group will orientate its intervention in order to favor at best the process of regroupment around the Internationalist Communist Tendency – around its positions and its organization as a unique international pole icapable of embodying the legacy of the Communist Left.</div>
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Finally, the Conference decided to equip the new group with a review, initially to come out twice a year in French and English, along with extracts translated into Spanish on our website. The web address will be: <a href="http://www.igcl.org/">www.igcl.org</a> . As well, we have a new email address : <span style="color: navy;"><u><a class="western" href="mailto:intleftcom@gmail.com" style="color: #ca0004; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; text-decoration: none;">intleftcom@gmail.com</a></u></span> to which the reader and the groups can already write.</div>
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Today, in the present historical situation – economic crisis, danger of imperialist war, workers struggles... the working class absolutely needs the regroupment of communist minorities in order to prepare the constitution of its world Party.</div>
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The IGCL, November 7th, 2013</div>
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-85523056964253868772013-09-09T12:02:00.001-04:002013-10-15T10:13:30.004-04:00An irrational accommodation: capitalism<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #454545;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">In several countries, the bourgeoisie is escalating its ideological bombardment through campaigns on some subject or other called “society" which, on one hand occupies the terrain and consciousness in its diversion from the reality of capital’s crisis and proletarian conditions of life and work, and additionally on the other hand, brings up false issues, all aimed at enhancing adherence to the democratic mystification of the bourgeois state.<br /><br />In various countries, mainly Europe, the question of whether to allow the Islamic veil for women has become one of these themes. In Belgium, in France, the issue of the hijab has become the pretext for strengthening secular and republican ideology, in other words, the ‘democratic’ state. This, too, was the case in Canada in French speaking Quebec. On September 14, in an appeal to religious organizations, a street demonstration took place in Montreal. On this occasion, our K-IC comrades deem it necessary to reproduce the following text from 2007 on their blog.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #454545; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Fraction of the International Communist Left</span><br />
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<b>An irrational accommodation: capitalism</b></div>
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For several months, the press and
bourgeois media spearheaded a massive campaign to divide immigrant workers from
their Québécois and aboriginal counterparts. The pretext: reasonable
accommodations for Jews and Muslims. Even if, for example, no Islamic religious
organizations requested the right to wear the veil during voting, the media
kept on about it. <b>The whole point of this divisive debate is to have us
forget that the vote is utterly useless for the proletariat, regardless of
their origin.</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Amongst politicians, this
has culminated in the creation of the Bouchard-Taylor commission given the task
of touring Quebec. Everyone - bourgeois, petit bourgeois and workers are
invited as "citizens" to offer their opinion. This campaign serves to
fuel the worst of bourgeois ideology: racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, of
'every man for himself'. The capitalist class has only one aim in mind: to
prevent the proletariat from affirming its solidarity and its unity as an
international working class. While making believe that the Québécois proletariat
would have something to safeguard, to defend against all immigrants from Arab
countries or elsewhere, all this media hoopla endeavors to do is to make them
believe that the immigrant situation (1) is separate from the working class,
from the misery of its own condition as an exploited class.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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We have even heard that
"lady of the manor" Pauline Marois, speak to us of "Our
identity" as nationalists. This "Identity" being the right to be
exploited by our own home-grown business people... The bourgeois elites, as
always, stand in the way of any real workers solidarity, which must extend
beyond nationality. This "faith" in the "secular" bourgeois
State as ultimate judge of peace and social cohesion, is just the kind of crap
that's thrown out for the unions. <b>Behind this whole debate about reasonable
accommodation is the defense of "secularism" which is in fact the
defense of the special status given to the capitalist state and bourgeois
democracy.</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The government has no intention
of diminishing the importance of religions, to the contrary – its aim is to
reinforce them. It will be under the staff of "our secular State"
that courses on all religions will flourish in the schools in the autumn of
2008. Religion will always be the opiate of the masses.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the face of worldwide misery
and barbarism in full putrefaction, there is but one prospect for the working
class – to firmly reject the competitive rationale of its own exploiters, of
"every man for himself". No matter what their origin, language,
colour of skin, or religion, the proletariat has no interest in common with
national capital. It can only really defend its interests, by developing
everywhere its solidarity with the international working class, by resisting
any attempt to foster division as immigrants, Canadians, Quebecois and
aboriginal peoples.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Only the assertion of its common
interests in struggle will permit the proletariat to gather all its resources,
to affirm itself as a world class united in solidarity, to bring down the
capitalist Moloch before it destroys the planet.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Some internationalist communists
of Montreal</div>
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<span lang="FR" style="color: blue; font-family: Times-Roman; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><u style="text-underline: blue;">klasbatalo1917@gmail.com</u></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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(1) Note: from 1840 to 1930,
900,000 French Canadians emigrated to the USA. It is alarming to read the
racist report of an American functionary:</div>
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« With some exceptions the
Canadian French are the<o:p></o:p></div>
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Chinese of the Eastern States.
They care nothing for<o:p></o:p></div>
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our institutions, civil,
political, or educational.<o:p></o:p></div>
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They do not come to make a home
among us, to dwell<o:p></o:p></div>
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with us as citizens, and so
become a part of us; but<o:p></o:p></div>
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their purpose is merely to
sojourn a few years as<o:p></o:p></div>
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aliens…<o:p></o:p></div>
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…They are indefatigable workers,
and docile… All they<o:p></o:p></div>
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ask is to be set to work, and
they care little who<o:p></o:p></div>
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rules them or how they are ruled.
To earn all they can<o:p></o:p></div>
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by no matter how many hours of toil,
to live in the<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
most beggarly way so that out of
their earnings they<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
may spend as little for living as
possible, and to<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
carry out of the country what
they can thus save: this<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
is the aim of the Canadian French
in our factory<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
districts. »<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Massachusetts Report on
statistics of labor Boston 13<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
th 1881<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-68826350110357018072013-09-05T11:23:00.000-04:002013-11-08T11:26:10.887-05:00The bourgeoisie prepares its repressive apparatus<!--StartFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
As the economic crisis deepens,
the bourgeoisie and its instruments of repression are consolidating. Throughout
the world, police act with increasing violence, aided and abetted by
‘democratic’ societies. It’s primarily in these ‘democratic’ societies that
repression hits: arrests without charge, mass arrests, kettling of
demonstrations and infiltration by agent provocateurs, surveillance of workers
in struggle, murders, torture, new and old laws (the American “Patriot Act” has
broadened its scope everywhere) giving individuals and police more power, if
not “complete power”. In several countries, the police benefit from the unions’
help in isolating workers struggles or in containing demonstrations. The
weapons paraphernalia grows steadily and is widely used: Tasers, Flash Ball
(plastic or rubber balls), and even live ammunition. Far from neutral, the
police are trained, armed and educated to protect the capitalist system; that’s
their prime directive. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Here are several examples which
represent only a tiny part of police and military activities around the world
and the free reign they enjoy, backed by the media, the magistrates, laws and
commissions of inquiry. The mass arrests and murders of demonstrators and of
militants are increasingly trivialized by the ‘democratic’ media. The armies
reinforce this to a great extent by bringing us to war to oppose workers’
uprisings.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>USA</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The vigilante, George Zimmerman
was acquitted of the murder of the teenaged Trayvon Martin. He copped a plea of
“self-defense”. This happened in February 2012, when Zimmerman killed the
unarmed teenager with a single bulled during a surveillance round. The “Stand
your ground” law, valid in a large number of American States, allows bourgeois
repressive forces to kill anyone if they “consider themselves at risk” of being
attacked. This is the law that Zimmerman’s lawyer used to acquit him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;">On the
military side, the American army has established an urban training center 4
kilometers square in Indiana’s south center which boasts of more than 1500
“training structures” designed to simulate houses, schools, hospitals and
factories. The center’s website confirms that it “could be adapted to reproduce
foreign as well as domestic situations.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>France</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Demonstrators in France sustained
irreversible eye injuries from Flash-Ball discharges (in Mureaux in 2005, in
Clichy-sous-Bois in 2006, in Nantes in 2007, in Toulouse, Montreauil,
Neuilly-sur-Marne or Villiers-le-Bel in 2009). And on the military front, the
French army constructed a city and a village. The fake town of Jeoffrécourt was
created entirely by the French army for training troops in urban guerilla
warfare, the most common form of 21<sup>st</sup> century combat. Jeoffrécourt
condenses all recent conflict scenarios, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, mixing
suburban homes and abandoned buildings. Combat and war situations are
standardized there. In this ghost town, soldiers in training can take over a
town, a church or hide out in a cemetery. Sidewalks, public lighting, shutters
that rattle, everything is reproduced to scale.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
As for the village of Beausejour,
it consists of 63 houses, all different, many obstacles (fences, barricades,
rubble), different types of roads (wide, narrow, winding or clear.) It is made
up of different modules: the village in itself, a squatter area in which it is
impossible for vehicles to enter, a campground made up of caravans (perhaps as
practice for expelling Roma), a road created from scratch and a strategic
hamlet. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Canada</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
- The first Toronto cop to be
prosecuted under criminal charges in the wake of protests against the G20
meeting in Toronto in June 2010 was recently acquitted. Constable Glenn Weddell
was charged after the journalist Dorian Barton had suffered a broken shoulder,
June 26, 2010. Dorian Barton had wandered onto the grounds of the Legislative
Assembly of Ontario during a demonstration. In his testimony he said he’d been
struck from behind while photographing police on horseback. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
- One month after a Toronto cop
killed Sammy Yatim, the Ontario minister of Community and Social Services,
Madelein Meilleur, announced that all police officers in the province will be
equipped with Tasers. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
- Following the fierce and
scandalous repression exercised against the students, the City of Montreal
Chief of Police<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the director
of <span class="hps"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Sûreté du Québec
presented themselves before a bogus commission of inquiry into the events of
2012 Quebec. They claimed that the police did a “great job” under difficult and
exceptional circumstances. Remember that there were over 3,000 arrests, many
with serious injuries, (loss of an eye, a torn ear and head injury). Now they
plan to use new chemical weapons. So far not one officer has so much as been
charged. </span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
As Rosa Luxemburg said, over a
century ago:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
“<i>Violated, dishonored, wading in
blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in
reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture,
philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast,
the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it
reveals itself in its true, its naked form.</i>”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Wake up and open your eyes to
what bourgeois democracy is really all about. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Steve (ICK) september 13<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-35805685739670444292013-09-04T16:38:00.000-04:002013-10-28T16:45:54.828-04:00Solidarity with our working class brothers Port Said and Egypt!<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana-Italic; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>
<!--StartFragment-->
</i></span></span></div>
<i></i><br />
<i><div class="MsoTitle" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;"><i>
<!--StartFragment-->
</i></span></span></div>
<i><div class="MsoTitle">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;"><b>Solidarity with our working class brothers Port Said and Egypt!</b></span><!--EndFragment-->
</i><br />
<div class="MsoTitle" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18.0pt;">
<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;"><i>We reproduce below a political stand of the
International Communist Tendency we share analysis and policy guidelines and
that we support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fraction of the
International Communist Left<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>september 2013</i></span><!--EndFragment-->
</span></div>
<div class="MsoTitle" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoTitle" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18.0pt;">The Events in Port Said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana-Italic; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;">(Internationalist Communist Tendancy)</span></i></span></div>
</span></i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana;"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana-Italic; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>We are publishing this position statement about what
is happening in Port Said, Egypt with the warning that the news about what is
going on is limited [ignored internationally by the official media] and not
entirely consistent even if all the sources consulted agree on the fact that
the Egyptian city is in ferment</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Information is still scarce
but some facts speak for themselves. After street protests, anger erupted
following the 21 death sentences handed down for the massacre in Port Said.
During a spontaneous protest against this Morsi's police left 40 more victims
on the streets. After that the police were forced to abandon the city leaving
it in the hands of the protesters. At the moment, all public order, traffic and
production linked to the Suez Canal are in the hands of the insurgents. Port
Said has become a kind of free zone where the state has had to temporarily
raise the white flag. If it is true that the death sentences on the 21 youth
and the subsequent forty victims were the tragic triggers immediately provoking
the rebellion, it is also true that the devastating consequences of the
economic crisis and the arrogance of the reactionary Islamist Morsi government
have been a decisive element.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Finally, after two years of
tensions on the streets, of managed elections, of fraud and betrayal of the
most basic expectations, something has snapped. The main fact, if confirmed, is
that workers of Port Said were the first to trigger the revolt; including the
port workers, those in transport and workers from other factories. Marine
traffic has halted, factories have closed and the mobilisation of the city
seems to be general and definitive. The movement, as well as guarding against
the inevitable government reaction, must also deal with a number of internal
problems<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">A first danger is the risk of
isolation. The workers of Port Said must actively ask for practical militant
help from all Egyptian workers, from the factories of Cairo to those of Alexandria,
Ismailia and Assiut. The only way to avoid the risk of isolation and the
ability to continue the fight is to widen the struggle and open up greater
opportunities. Any bourgeois government can wait. It can wait until the anger
is exhausted in some act of protest, however powerful and violent, and then
take back by force the situation that previously got out of hand. The manoeuvre
is much simpler and more effective if the uprising is isolated, if it concerns
only a sector of production or a geographically small area. Breaking this
isolation, asking for proletarian solidarity is not only tactically necessary
but it is the condition for the fight to continue, otherwise the axe of
repression will fall heavily on the demonstrators.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The more the struggle continues
on the lines of a frontal attack, away from the conservative siren calls of
reformism, whether secular or religious, the more it can serve as a model for
proletarians in the whole area of North Africa, in the hope of giving an
initial sense of class to the failure of the "Arab Spring ". At this
point, the proletarians of the Egyptian Canal Zone must not fall into the trap
of believing that reform can be a different way of managing public affairs
within the framework of a capitalism that is everywhere around them. It is not
only by demanding the fall of the Morsi government and respect for democratic
freedoms, or by operating within the political framework of civil disobedience
that things will radically change. The movement that has had the strength to
rebel against the murderous authoritarianism of the Islamist government, to
free itself from the chains of the traditional political forces, which is
trying to present itself as politically autonomous, must continue on the path
without falling back on the options that radical reformism offers, or be drawn
back into the old worn-out democratic game.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The European proletariat,
which suffers the same exploitation on the other side of the Mediterranean,
should do its part. Class solidarity, which despite a few episodes of struggle
has recently sensationally absconded everywhere, has expressed itself here and
there. It should now take this opportunity to reappear on the international
scene. Europe’s streets have every reason to be full of disturbances against
the various policies and heavy sacrifices demanded of us. If they do it should
not be in single sectors or under the umbrella of this or that union policy, of
this or that "left reformist" political force, but on the basis of
real class solidarity, beyond nationalist boundaries and particularism, and
this seems to be a good opportunity to start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">One last point. Spontaneity,
the determination of a struggle that arises immediately against a government,
against its police, is doomed to failure if it does not elaborate a tactic, a
strategy and a programme that goes beyond the traps of capital, to build a real
social alternative, which is another way of producing and distributing that
wealth of which the Egyptian proletariat, like the international working class,
is the only creator. However, if we stay on the ground of civil disobedience,
if the movement sets as its objective just the overthrow of the Morsi
government in favour of "true democracy", subject to all the
pressures of capitalism, as the movement in Tahrir Square did with Mubarak, the
results will be the same, if not worse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">FD (ICT) 6 March, 2013</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-51528860952257467482013-09-03T10:02:00.000-04:002013-11-03T10:05:04.297-05:00Rosa Luxemburg’s Junius Pamphlet <!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Rosa Luxemburg’s <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> has its history and
is itself a piece of history – thanks both to the circumstances under which it
originated and to the life that emanates from it in a sparkling, glowing
stream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rosa Luxemburg wrote the pamphlet in April,
1915. A few weeks before she had been forced to enter the “Royal Prussian
Women’s Prison,” where she was to serve the year of imprisonment to which she
had been sentenced by the Criminal Court of Frankfort a.M., for her courageous
fight against militarism. In the fight, the sentence, and the sequel was
gathered as in a nutshell what soon appeared, full grown, virile, unconcealed –
Rosa Luxemburg’s clear recognition of the imminent imperialistic tempest and
the need of the hour for the proletariat to hurl itself against the onslaught
with all the desperate energy of its protest; the courage and spirit of
self-sacrifice with which she led the fight against the dangerous enemy in the
name of International Socialism; the acute capitalistic class instinct, not to
say the wakeful capitalistic class consciousness with which the bourgeois world
so ruthlessly applied its instruments of power to protect imperialism and to
which the historical evolution of society, with the rise of imperialism, had
assigned new tasks and a greater significance for the existence of capitalism;
the dishonorable surrender of the German Social-Democracy, or more correctly of
its leadership, to militarism and imperialism.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In truth, at that time great masses of
proletarians burned with eagerness to go into the fight against militarism and
imperialism. If their class consciousness did not yet clearly recognize the
mortal enemy, their healthy class feeling sensed, anticipated that enemy. As
though illuminated by a search light, militarism in its historic form had
become visible on their horizon, glaringly exposed by Rosa Luxemburg’s
condemnation and the reason for it – the conviction expressed by the courageous
leader, that proletarians would not obey the command to raise the weapons of
murder against their brothers of other nationalities. The rousing, fiery effect
of the condemned words were intensified by the speech before the Frankfort
Court, a classical document of political defense which in place of legal
quibbling about “guilt,” penalty, and degree of punishment, set up the fight
for the scientifically firmly established ideal of International Socialism. A
wave of splendid, determined fighting spirit rose out of the proletarian
masses. It should have been the obvious task of Social-Democratic leaders, if
they had the least political insight, to take advantage of this fighting
spirit, to intensify it, in order to give militarism and imperialism a fight on
a large scale, to give them a staggering blow. The Executive of the Social-Democracy
showed once again clearly that it was not convinced of the truth and worth of
the great strong bulwark of that consistent Marxian standpoint which affords a
free outlook over situations and their obvious development and thus determines
the correct basis of judgment, of will, and of action.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In the present situation it gave itself the
certificate of weakness that it fell short of everything that makes for
political leadership. It avoided the obvious, the natural, the necessary thing
– to gather together the protest that was arising everywhere with elemental
force against the judgment of the Frankfort Criminal Court, into a tremendous
mass action against militarism and imperialism. The Party Executive went even
further with its “Backward, backward, Don Rodrigo” to the proud vow of the
Social-Democracy. It tried to dam up the current that had begun without its
effort. And all this in the atmosphere of burning indignation not only about
the Luxemburg case but also about the triumph of the sabre in the scandalous
trial against the little lieutenant, Forstner-Zabern; about the sanguinary
judgment of the Erfurt court-martial, which, treading on all that is human,
banished proletarians to the prisons for years on account of mere bagatelles;
about the numerous cases of terrible abuse of the soldiers that were to he
brought to light out of the darkness of the drill-yards and the company rooms
through an approaching second trial of Rosa Luxemburg – if recollection does
not receive, more than 30,000 mistreated men volunteered to act as witnesses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">But to be sure, by this time the
Social-Democratic Party had already turned its misguided steps toward
parliamentarism, it was fast becoming a bourgeois party, and its fear of mass
action was already leading to its surrender to militarism and imperialism. It
was the active and passive connivance of the Social-Democratic group of the
Reichstag, and through them the connivance of the Social-Democracy as a whole,
that made it possible in 1913 for the tremendous bluff of the “Jubilee gift for
the Peace Emperor, Wilhelm II” to go across the political stage successfully,
that enabled the Government to prepare unhindered the imperialistic war stroke
of 1914, with the army bill – the most gigantic increase of the army which up to
that time had ever been demanded and granted – and the defense contribution of
billions – the first war credit for the intended marauding expedition across
the Balkans to Bagdad and other “places in the sun.” The Party group in the
Reichstag had made it easier for the bourgeois “opposition parties” to nod
assent to the army bill, by having itself agreed to the separation of that bill
from the general budget. It had given its blessing to the defense contribution
and income tax bills as presumptive burdens upon the possessing classes. It had
run after the delusive spectre of “modified finance” policies and had skipped
the fight against the robust armored fellow called imperialism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">But the sins of commission and omission of the
Party faction in the Reichstag had begun to determine the attitude of the
entire Party, a few small, criticizing and dickering groups excepted. The
Social-Democracy had not collected its forces for a stand against the brazen
advance of imperialism greedy for power. Thus it created on the one hand the
confident assurance of militarism and imperialism that there was no fear of
opposition to their plans on the part of the proletarian masses, and on the
other hand a paralyzing dullness in the masses themselves, even a slackening up
in the face of danger. In short, the Social-Democracy allowed that atmosphere
of war illusion to gather which in the summer of 1914 broke down all the
political and moral opposition of the working classes against the crime of the
war. Let us not forget that in the attitude of the Social-Democracy at that
time, the policy of the “Marxist center” dominated, the policy which Karl
Kautsky in our times praises up to the proletariat eagerly as the prerequisite
for its victory. Let us not forget, moreover, that it was this high priest of
“pure Marxism” who with his extremely un-Marxian tax theory built the ass’s
bridge over which the Reichstag faction had proceeded to accepting the defense
contribution and income tax measures. Under the given conditions the
Social-Democratic Party Executive would have had to jump over its own shadow,
if it desired to brace up and make use of the mass sentiment created by the
Frankfort decision for a serious fight against militarism and imperialism. In
the events which forced Rose Luxemburg into prison during the latter half of
February, 1914, the disgraceful bankruptcy of the German Social-Democracy on
August 4, 1914, had cast its shadow before, but there was forshadowed in them
as well, the loyal, self-sacrificing fight of this inspired pioneer of
Socialism against its internal decay.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Hardly had the acceptance of the war credit
measure by the Social-Democratic faction in the Reichstag become known, than
Rosa Luxemburg together with a few friends raised the flag of rebellion against
this treason to the International, to Socialism. Two circumstances prevented
this rebellion from at once becoming widely known. The fight was to begin with
a protest against the vote in favor of the war credits by the Social-Democratic
representatives, which would have to be so managed, however, that it would not
be squashed by the tricks and wiles of the state of siege and the censorship.
Besides this, and above all, it would certainly have been significant if the
protest was from the start issued in the name of a goodly number of familiar
Social-Democratic fighters. We therefore tried to put it into such a form that
as many as possible of the leading comrades should declare their solidarity
with its ideas who had uttered sharp, even absolutely destructive criticism on
the policy of August 4th, in the Reichstag faction or within small groups. A
consideration which cost much hard thinking, paper, letters, telegrams, and
valuable time – and the result of which, despite all that, was nil. Of all the
critics of the Social-Democratic majority who had expressed themselves in
vigorous speech, only Karl Liebknecht dared, together with Rosa Luxemburg,
Franz Mehring and me to defy the idol of Party discipline upon whose altars
were sacrificed character and convictions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Rosa Luxemburg had nearly completed the first
number of the magazine <b>Internationale</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">, when she was made to begin
her prison sentence on the eve of a trip to Holland which we had intended to
take together to prepare the way for the projected International Conference of
Socialist Women and in general to bind more strongly the ties of international
relations and to encourage the attempts to combine internationally the men and
women comrades who were still true to their principles. Now, instead of
speeding to the Dutch border with her, I had to visit Rosa in the Barnim
Strasse prison. The unexpectedly sudden execution of the sentence had crashed
like a thunderbolt into our immediate fighting plans. Nevertheless barely two
months later the <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> was finished. Rosa Luxemburg did not allow her
imprisonment to be a “breathing spell” for the enemy. They would not let her
fight. With stubborn courage she replied to the power attacking her, “Very
well, now I’ll fight all the more!” Her indomitable will converted the place of
severest restraint to a site of spiritual liberty. Writing of a political
nature was strictly forbidden her. Secretly, under the greatest difficulties,
narrowly watched by spying eyes, outside of the permissible occupation with
literary and scientific work, she wrote her grand, penetrating final reckoning
with the Social-Democracy, using every minute of time, every spark of light for
the purpose. Weariness, illness disappeared before the force of the inner
voice. That voice helped her to bear the most disconcerting, the most
tormenting part of it all – that innumerable times she was wrested out of her
train of thought, that she was never sure that she might not be caught at her
task and prevented from completing it. It was a relief from the most tyrannical
spiritual pressure when at last she was able to put the last stroke to her
manuscript and, crafty as Odysseus, to send the last pages out of prison walls
by the hand of loyal friendship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Outside the doors of the women’s prison lay the
heavy atmosphere of the World War, reeking with destruction, commingled with
the rotten odors of the unbridled passion of profit and usury of the
respectable parasites and defenders of the bourgeois order; raged the “will to
victory,” artificially inflamed and fanned to a white heat with all the means
of perfidy, violence, despicability; waded the Social-Democracy month after
month through the fratricidal sea of blood, repeating piously, like an obedient
pupil, the sayings of the imperialistic bourgeoisie and its government, with
merely a few clumsy variations, breaking every solemn oath of international
solidarity, treading upon the ideals of Socialism; outside those prison walls,
stood like a gray, oppressive nebular mass, the dullness and stupidity of the
workers allowing themselves to be dragged by imperialism into death and ruin
instead of resisting it with strength and consciousness of purpose. In the
choking atmosphere of those days, the <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> came like the fresh,
strong wind that hurries on before the purging storm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">And its significance was even greater than that
by far. It was even a part of that same purging tempest of returning
consciousness in which German Social-Democrats and German workers began to find
the way back to the historical task of, the proletariat – to overcome
imperialism and capitalism through the international class struggle and to
realize Socialism. It gave a mighty impetus to the awakening of the
proletarians out of the social-patriotic war delusion and harmony delusion of
civic truce, the process of their rallying to the class struggle and the banner
of International Socialism. Clearly, firmly, scientifically, and penetratingly
it gave expression and direction to an emotion, a thought, and a will that
stirred within the proletarian’ masses, at first fearfully and scatteringly,
then more loudly, more imperatively, uniting ever larger groups.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Karl Kautsky, the official theoretician of the
Social-Democracy, had changed from a leader into a misleader. In his supply-kit
of “Marxian” formulas, he could find not a single one that would justify the
miserable treachery of the Party majority. <i>Ad usum Delphini</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> he invented the
famous two-soul theory for the Socialist International, which was “an
instrument of peace and not of war,” and the principles of which therefore
were, all according to the given situation, “Proletarians of all lands, unite”
or on the other hand, “Proletarians of all lands, murder one another!” “Like a
beast on the barren heath” he wandered vaguely back and forth between gay logical
houses of cards and schoolmaster quibbling, in order to place himself with his
authority protectingly before the policy of August 4th. His subsequent
opposition was contradictory, uncertain as to principles, weak. Rosa Luxemburg,
on the other hand in the <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> placed that policy on trial –
consistently, mercilessly, annihilating it. She proved the bankruptcy of the
German Social-Democracy, unparalleled in history, and her proofs were not
formulas, but hard, stubborn facts. She knocked the bottom out of all the
legends and slogans for the justification of Social-patriotism by revealing the
causes and the impelling forces of the imperialistic war, baring its character
and its aims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The keynote of the <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> is contained in the
following sentence of the last chapter: “The history which gave birth to the
present war did not just begin in July, 1914, but dates back decades, where
thread was tied to thread with the inevitability of a natural law, until the
finely woven net of imperialistic world policy had entangled five continents –
a tremendous historical complex of phenomena whose roots go deep down into
Plutonic depths of economic creation and whose branches point toward the
vaguely stirring new world.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Imperialism, born of capitalistic development,
confronts us as an international phenomenon in its radiations and influences,
accomplishing with its brutal unscrupulousness of conscience, its gigantic,
insatiable appetites, its tremendous means of power, very different wonders
from “the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and Gothic cathedrals,” as
expressed in the <b>Communist Manifesto</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">. It gives new and deepened
content to the difference between Germany and France created by the war of
1870-71; it extinguishes old differences familiar to world-politics between the
great powers of Europe and creates new fields of conflict between them; it is
tearing the United States and Japan into its powerful current. Dripping with
dirt and blood it traverses the earth, destroying ancient civilizations and
converting entire despoiled nations into slaves of European capitalism.
International imperialism is heaping up fagot upon fagot for the devastating
world-conflagration – in Egypt, Syria, Morocco, South and Southeast Africa, in
Asia Minor, Arabia, Persia, and China, on the islands and the coasts of the
Pacific Ocean, and on the Balkan peninsula. But it was German imperialism,
late-born and madly aggressive, which, by way of the provoking ultimatum of
Austria to Serbia in 1914, carried out the war stroke that lit the pyre of
capitalistic civilization. It was driven on irresistibly by the gold-hunger of
German finance – represented in particular by the German Bank, the most
concentrated, best organized institution of capitalistic finance in the world –
which longed to exploit Turkey and Asia Minor, and the lust of profit of the
armament industries; it received its ruinous fool’s liberty from the barely
curbed despotism of Wilhelm II and the voluntary weakness of the bourgeois
opposition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Rosa Luxemburg succeeded so well in portraying
within the narrow limits of her <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> the imperialistic nature of
the World War and its aims, because in her extensive scientific work on the <b>Accumulation
of Capital</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> she had traced down in an exposition as thorough as it was brilliant, the
last roots of imperialism, as well as its political branchings. But in
divesting the World War of its ideological dress, exposing it in its nakedness
as a business venture – the business venture, the deal for life and death – of
international Capital, she also mercilessly, piece by piece, tears the
ideological wrappings of the Social-Democratic policy of August 4th from its
body. In the fresh morning atmosphere of scientific examination of the entire
historical phenomenon and its associations, the hollow phrases of the “fight
for civilization,” “against Czarism,” “for the defense of the Fatherland,”
etc., crumble away. Convincingly Rosa Luxemburg proves that in the present
imperialistic environment the conception of a modest, virtuous war of defense
of the fatherland has forever flown. The Social-Democratic war policy reveals
itself in all its primitive ugliness as outright bankruptcy, as the inner
expression of a social-patriotic labor-party imbued with bourgeois ideals, a
party that has sold the proud revolutionary birthright of the proletariat for
even less than the mess of pottage demanded by Kautsky – for the empty words of
a Kaiser, “I recognize no parties, I know only Germans,” for the “honor” of a
place in the ranks of nationalistic delusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> is introduced by observations
on the duty and importance of Socialist self-criticism, observations that are
among the most wonderful things that have ever emerged out of the depths of
pure and strong socialistic feeling and thought. Here the sincerest, most
glowing conviction demands the highest and severest standards for our actions
as Socialists, directing our glance with prophetic force to the great
resplendent perspectives of the future which Socialism opens to us. The approaching
heroic hour of the new world-epoch must find a heroic race in the proletariat
which during the up and down of victory and defeat of its revolutionary
struggles shall train itself through unsparing self-criticism, for the triumph
of Socialism. The conclusion of the <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> links on to the beginning,
closing the ring. It views the World War as the pioneer of the World
Revolution. Victory or defeat in the present gigantic struggle must be equally
fateful for the conflicting imperialist groups, and incidentally for the
proletariats of the different lands, leading inevitably to the collapse of the
capitalistic order and capitalistic culture, to its world-trial before the
judgment seat of the Revolution. Rosa Luxemburg wrote this in March and April
of 1915 – long before the heroic Russian proletariat led by the determined
Bolsheviki gave the storm signal for the social revolution, long before the
slightest ruffling of the waters in Germany and in the Habsburg dual monarchy
announced the approach of a revolutionary flood. What we have since
experienced, what Rosa Luxemburg herself was still permitted to experience in
part, is a splendid corroboration of the sharpness and correctness with which
she had in her <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> seen the historical lines of development.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Perhaps on this very account some reader may
regrettingly or fault-findingly inquire why the author did not show in
perspective the possibility of a revolution in Russia, why she neglected to
indicate the possible methods and means of fighting in the revolutionary period
that was just dawning. It is true that in 1915, already out of the roaring
chaos of the world struggle more and more clearly and visibly the giant form of
the Revolution was emerging. But there was no indication of when and where it
would begin its triumphal course. The Russian Revolution was to be the subject
of a second <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">, some of whose outlines had already been hastily
sketched by Rosa Luxemburg. The murderous hand of the German culture-bearing
military has deprived us of the projected work, which would also have discussed
and evaluated the fighting means and methods of the Russian Revolution – not in
Kautsky fashion, certainly, according to a hard and fast scheme to which the
actual development had to fit itself. No, Rosa Luxemburg’s view is that of a
living, creative stream following out the historic development. “The historical
moment each time demands the appropriate form of the people’s movement and <i>itself
creates</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> new means, improvises hitherto unknown fighting instruments, enriching the
arsenal of the people, unheedful of party rules.” The essential thing for the
Revolution, then, is “not a conglomeration of ridiculous rules and
prescriptions of a technical nature, but the <i>political slogan, the clear consciousness
of the political tasks and interests of the proletariat</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">.” In accordance with
this view, Rosa Luxemburg at one time investigated an already tried fighting
instrument of the working class – the general strike, which she recognizes as
first in historical importance and as “the classical form of the movement of
the proletariat in the periods of a revolutionary ferment.’ Her pamphlet on
this subject – a pioneer work in the proper estimation of this fighting
instrument – has been given a new significance by present events; today it
should find millions of readers and sympathizers, rally millions of active
fighters, ready for revolutionary deeds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> is a particularly sparkling
treasure of the heritage which Rosa Luxemburg has left the proletariat of
Germany, of the world, for the theory and practice of its struggle for
liberation, a treasure whose sparkle and glow are a painful reminder of how
great and irreparable is the loss we have suffered. What is said of this
treasure, here, compares with it as a dry table of classification of plants
compares with a garden full of blossoming, resplendent, fragrant flowers. It is
as though Rosa Luxemburg, in anticipation of her sudden end, had gathered
together in the <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> all the forces of her genial nature for a great
work – the scientific, penetrating, independently searching and pondering mind
of the theoretician, the fearless, burning passion of the convinced, daring
revolutionary fighter, the inner richness and the splendid wealth of expression
of the ever struggling artist. All the good spirits which nature had lavished
upon her stood by her side as she wrote this work. Wrote – merely wrote? No,
experienced in the depths of her soul. In the precisely coined words that mark
both her iconoclastic criticism of the Social-Democratic betrayal and her
inspiring vision of the expiation and the resurrection of the proletariat in
the Revolution; in the sentences that seem to rush on to their goal; in the
extensive chains of thought welded together with iron firmness; in the
brilliant sarcasms; in the plastic figures of speech and the simple, noble
pathos – in all this one feels that it is suffused with the heartblood of Rosa
Luxemburg, that in it speaks Rosa Luxemburg’s that behind it stands her whole
being, every fibre of it. The <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> is the outlet of a great
personality that has devoted itself wholly and singly to a great, to the
greatest cause. So, out of this work, the same Rosa Luxemburg greets us from
beyond the grave who today more than ever is leading the world proletariat,
going before it and leading it upon its way of Golgotha toward the promised
land of Socialism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">But within the circle of light that surrounds her
form, there stands a second great personality, which it is necessary to draw
out from the obscurity in which it has purposely remained with that modesty
which is a sign of real worth and the complete merging of all personal
characteristics in a great ideal. This personality is Leo Jogisches. More than
twenty years he was united with Rosa Luxemburg in an incomparable community of
ideals and fighting purpose which had been steeled by the most powerful of all
forces – the glowing, all-consuming passion of the two unusual souls for the
Revolution. Not many have known Leo Jogisches, and very few indeed have
estimated him according to his great significance. He appeared usually only as
the organizer, who translated Rosa Luxemburg’s political ideas into practice,
as an organizer to he sure of the first order, as a genial organizer. However,
this does not exhaust his accomplishments. Of a far-reaching, thorough general
education, a rare master of scientific Socialism, a penetrating dialectic mind,
Leo Jogisches was the incorruptible critical judge of Rosa Luxemburg and her work,
her ever-waiting theoretic and practical conscience, at times too the one who
saw further, the one who stimulated, just as Rosa on her part was the more
penetrating and the one who created. He was one of those still very rare great
masculine personalities who was capable of living side by side in true and
joyous comradeship with a great feminine personality, without feeling in her
growth and development a bond and a limitation upon his own ego; a gentle
revolutionary in the noblest sense of the word, without any contradiction
between belief and action. So, much of Leo’s best lies enshrined in the
life-work of Rosa Luxemburg. His increasing, impetuous insistence and his
creative criticism contributed their full share in causing the <b>Junius
Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> to be created so soon and so masterfully, just as it is due to his iron
will that it could be printed and distributed despite the extraordinary
difficulties caused by the state of siege. The counter-revolutionists knew what
they were doing when, a few weeks after the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, they had
Leo Jogisches assassinated too – “in an alleged attempt at flight” in the same
Moabite Prison from which it had been possible to abduct Rosa’s assassin, in an
elegant private automobile in broad daylight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The <b>Junius Pamphlet</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> was an individual
revolutionary deed. It must give birth to revolutionary mass action. It is of
the dynamite of the spirit which is blasting the bourgeois order. The
socialistic society rising in its place is the only fitting monument for Leo Jogisches
and Rosa Luxemburg. And this monument is being reared by the revolution for
which they lived and died.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-52046813005912457152013-08-25T10:51:00.000-04:002013-09-26T10:57:43.049-04:00Letter to the Autonomous People's Assembly of Montreal (APAM)<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">We have serious
questions about APAM’s very existence, on its activism and its strong leftist
composition. APAM arose amidst the stagnation, if not the very retreat of a
mass movement. It was formed by a tiny minority without support from the
majority of the Popular Assemblies Autonomous District (APAQ). Here, we’re
talking about a ‘city-wide’ organization, not a neighbourhood assembly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In the text <i><a href="http://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html">The organization of the proletariat outside periods of open struggle</a></i></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> which is attached to our brochure, <i>The
Student Struggle and the Neighbourhood Assemblies,</i></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> we call into question this type of committee in a period of decline or
absence of real mass struggles. These committees tend to descend into activism
as shown by the participation of APAM in the May 1 demonstration or that of May
22, with predictable results. This is why they, the committees, circles, and
proletarian groups must be careful to avoid them.<br />
They also tend to fall into the following traps :<br />
<i> * imagining that they constitute a structure which can prepare
the way for the appearance of strike committees or councils ;<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><i> *
imagining themselves to be invested with a sort of ‘potentiality’ which can
develop future struggles. (It isn’t the minorities who artificially create a
strike or cause a General Assembly or a committee to appear, even though they
do have an active intervention to make in this process) ;<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><i> *
giving themselves a platform or statutes or anything else that risks freezing
their evolution and thus condemning them to political confusion ; <br />
* presenting themselves as intermediate organs,
half-way between the class and a political organisation, as if they were an
organisation that is at one and the same time unitary and political ;<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><i><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>-
</i></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Extract from the
organization of the proletariat outside periods of open struggles<br />
<br />
The APAM could have been very useful in spring /summer of 2012, while there was
still a mass movement. In spring 2012, members of Klasbatalo (CIK) and APA-RPP
(a Montreal neighbourhood Assembly) proposed the creation of APAM but the
majority of the assembly, influenced by anarchist political positions, refused.
As individuals, and with scepticism, we still participated in APAM in December,
as it came at the end of the period of open struggle .<br />
<br />
In short, for the moment, it is more important to our members and our group to
focus our energies towards the consolidation of internationalist communist
forces worldwide. We won’t be participating in APAM.<br />
<br />
Two militants (ICK) and members of APAM <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">klasbatalo1917@gmail.com</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-36602254143651505572013-08-21T09:54:00.000-04:002013-08-21T09:54:08.629-04:00The Difficult Path to an International Workers’ Fight-back<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>
<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;">We publish this text from the <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2013-08-03/the-difficult-path-to-an-international-workers%E2%80%99-fight-back">Internationalist Communist Tendency</a> (CWO) because we are in agreement with its contents even if
we have no organizational link with ITC.</span><!--EndFragment-->
</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;">CIK</span></b></span></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;">___________________________________________________________________________</span></b></span></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>Slowly Deepening Crisis</b></span><!--EndFragment-->
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The so called “Great
Recession” is now in its sixth year and is acknowledged, even by the capitalist
class, as the most serious economic crisis since World War Two. Although the
crisis now appears to have stabilised it is in fact slowly deepening. The
violent gyrations in global stock markets of recent months indicate a
nervousness and uncertainty, not a return to confidence. The fact that markets
can collapse when the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank announces that money
printing will be scaled back because the US economy is <i>improving</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">
indicates the upside down world which global finances now inhabit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The strategies of the
capitalist class for overcoming the “Great Recession” whether they base
themselves on reflating demand, or austerity and balanced budgets, both rely on
achieving economic growth as the only escape route. Growth is, however, proving
elusive. The World Bank expects the global economy to grow by only 2.2% this
year but this is almost entirely due to higher growth rates in China and India.
For the UK, the economy has actually shrunk by 3.9% from its level of 2007 and
for the EU as a whole growth has been negative with European Commission
predicting only 0.5% growth in 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Attempts at balancing budgets
have also been unimpressive. The EU has a budget deficit target of 3% of GDP
for all EU members. The UK deficit is now 8.2%, which is the highest since
2008, and the target date for achieving a balanced budget has been pushed back
from 2015 to 2018. The EU bailout countries have all been given extended
periods to cut their deficits. Portugal and Ireland have each been given
another 7 years beyond the original bailout terms. The US budget deficit,
though falling, is still expected to be 6.5%.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The strategy of “Austerity and
Balanced Budgets” is itself now being questioned by one of it architects, the
IMF, which now admits mistakes have been made in earlier bailouts particularly
Greece and the medicine dished out with the loans has made the situation worse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">A completely opposite strategy
is being attempted in Japan. After two decades of deflation a massive programme
of Quantitative Easing has been initiated. Money is being pumped into the
economy at a rate of 1% of the GDP per month which is double the maximum ever
undertaken by the US. The government aims to increase the rate of growth at the
price of allowing inflation to rise to 2%. At present Japanese taxes cover a
mere 46% of government expenditure and these measures will increase Japanese
debt; a debt which stands at 245% of the GDP and is the highest of any country
in the world. These measures reflect a sense of desperation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The issue of debt in general
is, of course, not limited to Japan. The UK government debt, which was £700bn
in 2010, has doubled to £1400bn and is expected to rise to 85% of the GDP by
2015. This is just the government debt, once the corporate debt and personal
debt are added the total figure is £7500bn or approximately 500% of the GDP.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">While this indicates little
success in finding a route out of the “Great Recession” it does suggest things
could get dramatically worse. A significant rise in global interest rates would
be a catastrophe. The figures for rescuing the financial system in the present
conditions would be measured in trillions not billions as in 2008. These
amounts would be beyond the capacity of the nation state. What the capitalist
class would do then is a matter of speculation but, writing down debts,
confiscation of deposits, as occurred in Cyprus recently, nationalisation of
pension funds, as occurred in Argentina 1990, or devaluing debts by inflation
of currencies could occur. All these things would produce a massive financial
crisis and loss of “confidence” which in its turn would produce a social
crisis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Accompanying these
manoeuvrings in the financial sphere the ruling class has followed a strategy
of trying to shift the burden of the crisis onto the working class. There are
indications that this strategy on its own is proving insufficient. A hint of
this was the so-called “bail-in” of large depositors, namely sections of the
bourgeoisie themselves, in the case of the Cyprus rescue. The decisions of the
European Union at the end of June established the “bail in” of bank
shareholders and creditors as a policy to be followed in future rescues. The
signs are that this strategy isn’t working, even though the working class has
not yet been able to successfully oppose it.</span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Far from indicating that a
route out of the crisis has been found, these developments only indicate that
the underlying problems of capitalism continue and that the ruling class is
unable to either understand them or address them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>Attacks on the Working
Class</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The attempts of the ruling
class to impose austerity on the working class have generally been successful.
Before considering why this is the case we wish to briefly outline the extent
of burdens which have been heaped on workers’ shoulders.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Since 2008 the attacks have
been on two fronts, a direct attack on wages and an indirect attack via social
benefits. The severity of these attacks can be illustrated by many statistics,
but probably the most dramatic are those from Greece. Here we find that;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Average family income has
fallen by 38% from its level in 2007<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Wages and pensions have fallen
by 35 – 50%<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Unemployment is 28.6% and 40%
of youth are seeking employment abroad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Collective labour agreements
have been revoked<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Pension age has been raised to
67<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Vat has been increased to 27%<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">One of the results of all this
is that 37% of all children are now living in poverty.[1]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Infant mortality has increased
by 40%.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In the other EU bailout
countries there have been similar, but smaller, attacks on direct wages with
reductions of 5-10%. Minimum wages have similarly been reduced. For the UK, the
Institute of Fiscal Studies reports that there have been falls of 4.8% and 9.9%
in wages in the private and public sectors respectively since 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">At the same more flexible
conditions have been enforced with workers having to give up previous
entitlements such as holidays, bonuses as well as having to sign individual
contracts with employers or accept zero hours contracts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Reduction in the social wage
have been imposed through reduction of benefits and services. For example in
the UK, disability benefit has been cut, the bedroom tax introduced, workfare,
which means working for free, has been imposed together with increases in the
pension age and reductions in pension payments etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">This has been coupled with
restructuring of the economies and speed-ups which, of course, has led to
massive unemployment. In the EU as a whole the rate is 12% but in certain
countries it is much worse. 12% unemployment represents 18.8 million workers!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">For the capitalist class this
has resulted in a net reduction in labour costs. For Greece this amounts to
some 14%. Why has the working class proved unable to resist all this?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>Working Class Resistance in
Metropolitan Countries</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The working class in the
so-called “developed”, or metropolitan, capitalist countries, particularly
Europe, the US and Japan, has proved unable to resist these attacks. In general
the capitalist class has succeeded in enforcing most of the attacks on wages
and conditions of workers it wanted. We consider two factors need to be
considered in explaining this, firstly the reorganisation of global capital
which has been carried out under the banner of “globalisation” and secondly the
confinement of workers’ struggles in the prison of the trade unions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">During the last 25 years
globalisation has changed the material situation in which the metropolitan
working class is forced to struggle. It has given the capitalist class a
flexibility they did not previously have, and an ability to outmanoeuvre
working class resistance. Richard Freeman, a Harvard economics professor,
estimates that the entry of China, India and the former Soviet bloc into the
world economy resulted in 1.47 billion additional workers becoming available to
global capital. This resulted in a doubling of the size of the size of the
workforce to approximately 3 billion. These additional workers brought very
little additional capital with them, and as a result cut the global ratio of
capital to labour which decreased to between 55% and 60% of what it would
otherwise have been_<b>[2]</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">_.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Richard Freeman himself makes
the obvious point that:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>“The capital/labor ratio is
a critical determinant of the wages paid to workers and of the rewards to
capital. The more capital each worker has, the higher will be their
productivity and pay. A decline in the global capital/labor ratio shifts the
balance of power in markets toward capital, as more workers compete for working
with that capital.”<b>[3]</b></i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The additional workers who
have become available have been made use of by the metropolitan capitalist
class by exporting production and service industries to the areas where they
are available. This has resulted in massively cheaper labour power becoming
available to capital. Technical developments in communications and the internet
have, obviously, greatly assisted the exploitation of this new labour force.
Much of the surplus value generated by these global operations has, of course,
been returned to the metropolitan countries and in part been used to fund those
service industries which cannot be exported.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">For the metropolitan workers,
globalisation has as its corollary a tendency to fragmentation of the entire
working class. Large factories are split into smaller units forming a small
section of a global production process, or simply closed down and production
moved to peripheral countries. In the wake of the defeats of the bastions of
working class resistance in the 80s the metropolitan capitalists have succeeded
in reforming much of the organisation of labour under the banner of
“flexibility”. This has resulted in workers working in smaller units. For
example, construction workers working for “labour only” subcontractors, or
being “self-employed”, or being on flexible contracts such as the infamous
“zero hours” contracts[4]. The workforce is thus split into smaller units with
apparently differing interests.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The sector of the economy which
illustrates the decline of large scale production and large concentrations of
workers most brutally is manufacturing. This accounted for 40% of the UK
economy in 1955 employing 8 million workers and today accounts for just under
10% and employs only 2.5 million.[5] UK coal mining which employed 470,000
workers at the time of nationalisation in 1947, had contracted to approximately
half, 200,000, by the time of the miners’ strike in 1984, and today employs a
mere 6000. The same type of reduction of employed workers applies to the steel
industry. In 1951 it had 450,000 workers and today the figure is 18,500[6].
Similar figures could be produced for other industries, but these industries
are instructive as their decimation followed bitter strikes, strikes which
failed to prevent either the plant closures or lost production being replaced
by imports. They indicate how the previous methods and particularly the extent
of struggle, which had won battles in the 60s and 70s, were no longer
effective. Today steel making, vehicle production and whole swathes of
manufacturing industry are owned by international capitalist corporations. They
are thus able to transfer production elsewhere in the world in response to
local profitability, or in response to strikes. Globalisation of production has
given the capitalist class the ability to outflank previous methods of
struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">As the surplus value producing
industries, in particular manufacturing, have been cut back industries which
generally appropriate surplus value produced elsewhere in the economy, have
increased. This in turn has been made possible by globalisation. The service
industries, now employ 81%[7] of the workforce in the UK, according to the 2011
census. The sectors included in “service industries” are government employees,
health and education workers, transport, tourism and, of course, the famous
financial sector, which, employs 17% of the workforce and which, until 2008 was
supposed to be the saviour of UK capitalism[8]. Despite the obvious parasitism
of the financial sector, not all of these sectors are totally unproductive in
value terms and increasing numbers of ‘service sector’ workers are finding
their service work is being turned into commodity production. It is no accident
that these sectors have borne the brunt of the latest round of attacks on wages
and conditions. However, in these sectors strike action is more difficult than
in manufacturing, mining or steel-making and is less effective as so many key
commodities are imported from abroad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The second obstacle preventing
any effective fight-back in the metropolitan countries is that struggles
generally remain controlled by the trade unions. The conditions in which the
trade unions operate have also been changed by globalisation, as described
above, and the more general change in capitalism’s profitability which has
occurred as the system moved from a phase of reconstruction, following World
War Two, to one of crisis which started from the early 70s. Whereas the trade
unions were able to negotiate some improvements in conditions and pay in the
post-war period this was possible because capitalism was in a period of growth,
caused by increased profitability brought about by the destruction of capital
during the Second World War. As soon as the crisis set in the capitalist class
tried to restore profits by reducing workers’ wages and benefits. In the
changed circumstances trade unions’ principal activity became about negotiating
redundancies, speedups and worse conditions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">This should not surprise us
since trade unions do not in any way oppose the wages system which is the basis
of capitalism. They locate themselves within the capitalist system and are
therefore a part of it. Their principal task is to negotiate the rate capital
pays for labour power and to assure its availability. This is a negotiation
within the system, and it accepts the conditions and premises of capitalism.
Trade unions therefore accept the need for a profitable economy and logic which
goes with this. They consequently accept such things as the need for
flexibility, speedups, redundancies and the rest. They stand for a healthy
national economy and their vision of socialism is an entirely statified
economy, that is to say, a system of fully integral state capitalism. Trade
unions are consequently agents of capitalism and, as such, they will sabotage
any effective fight against the system itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">For workers in the
metropolitan countries, the situation is thus one in which they are under a
general attack because of structural changes in the global economy, changes
which are bringing about a slow equalisation of global wage rates, and a
specific attack resulting from the financial collapse of 2008. We expect these
attacks to intensify as the economic crisis deepens. At the same time
resistance remains generally organised by trade unions who advise workers to
knuckle down and submit to these attacks otherwise their situation will get
worse and could reduce their conditions to those of workers in the peripheral
countries. This is the background to the current failure to halt the wave of
attacks which the capitalist class is launching on workers in the metropolitan
countries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>Resistance in the
Peripheral Countries</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The situation in the
peripheral countries is more or less the inverse of that in the metropolitan
countries. Here we find huge concentrations of workers in large factories,
reminiscent of the situation in Manchester in the Nineteenth century, but many
times larger. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this is Foxconn, the
Taiwanese electronics company producing such things as smartphones, tablets,
computer servers etc. which employs 1 million workers worldwide. Its 3
production facilities in China employ approximately 700,000 workers[9]. The
biggest factory in Shenzhen employs 390 000. Similar massive concentrations of
workers in production plants are found in India, Bangladesh, Brazil, South
Africa and other peripheral countries. The conditions which many of these
workers suffer are similar to those described by Engels in his study <i>The
Condition of the Working Class in England.</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> In China
some 250 million workers earn less than $1 per day and 700 million live on less
than $2 a day. Workers often have to work 60 to 70 hours per week.[10] In
Bangladesh clothing workers are locked in the factories, have pay deducted for
toilet breaks and work in notoriously unsafe conditions for a pittance. In
November 2012 a fire in a factory burned 117 workers to death, and this year
the collapse of a single factory crushed 1100 workers to death. These few examples
give an indication of pay and conditions in the “Brave New World” which
capitalism has constructed in the peripheral countries, conditions which
revolutionaries can only brand as an outrage.[11]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In most peripheral countries
the role of the trade unions is not so entrenched in the capitalist apparatus
as in the metropolitan countries. China, of course, is the exception where the
unions are visibly integrated into the state. This means that much of the class
struggle takes place outside union control. Strikes are wildcats and often do
achieve some concessions but a price is paid, frequently in blood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">A majority of the workers in
the peripheral countries are first generation workers without a previous
tradition of class struggle. When class struggle breaks out it is with
elemental violence on a local level often leading to violent clashes with the
police. In China, for example, while there are no statistics, it is estimated
that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of strikes every year. All
of them are wildcats.[12] These have recently led to clashes with the police
and army leading to deaths of workers. One of the most brutal examples of
violent suppression of workers’ struggles in a peripheral country is that of
the strike at the Marikana platinum mine in South Africa in 2012. Here the
police simply gunned down 34 striking miners.[13]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In the periphery, therefore,
it is generally the case that workers are struggling against the savage
exploitation and achieving minor concessions in wages and conditions. These
struggles remain local and are generally contained by the repressive forces of
the state. There is, however, no perspective that this struggle is part of a
general struggle against capitalism itself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>Globalised Resistance</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">While globalisation has provided
the capitalist class with the means to undermine local and even national
workers’ struggles it has also, as predicted by Marx in the <i>Communist</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">
_Manifesto_, created a global working class and a global system of production,
which lays the basis for the international unity of the working class. While
the capitalists are able to outflank strikes in a single industry or in a
single country, strikes which generalised to many industries or became
international could not be defeated. It is clear that workers need to unite
worldwide exactly in the way the <i>Manifesto</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> states. This
has become necessary to achieve even immediate economic demands. The capitalist
crisis, however, makes economic gains short lived since the capitalist class
will always find ways of taking such gains back or introducing other changes
which compensate for these concessions. The real problem is the capitalist
system itself which, because of its exploitative nature, is leading the world
to catastrophe. The real issue is the replacement of the capitalist system with
a communist[14] one, and future struggles need to be given an orientation
towards this goal. The question is how can this be done?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The working class owns nothing
but its ability to labour. It is a property-less class in capitalism and is
thus forced to sell its labour power to survive, and this sale of labour power
is the basis of the entire capitalist system. To free itself from this
condition it has to break the wage labour-capital relationship and, of course,
doing this means exploding the whole capitalist system. It is for this reason
that Marx described the working class as a class held in “radical chains” since
it cannot break the chains without breaking the entire system apart and
reorganizing production and society globally. In these circumstances the
working class has only two weapons on which it can rely, its consciousness and
its organisation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>Workers’ Consciousness</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">At present the working class
accepts the ideas of the capitalist class since, as Marx noted in <i>The German
Ideology</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>The ideas of the ruling
class are in every epoch the ruling ideas*[15]*.</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In general workers accept that
the present crisis is a temporary interruption in the operation of a system to
which there is no alternative. For the present, for most workers, it seems best
to hold onto what you have, keep your head below the parapet and wait for the
better future, which our rulers are always promising. However, as Marx also
notes in the <i>Preface to a Critique of Political Economy</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>The mode of production of
material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process
in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being,
but, on the contrary, their social being what determines their consciousness.
At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of
society come in conflict with the existing relations of production or – what is
but a legal expression for the same thing – with the property relations within
which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the
productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch
of social revolution.<b>[16]</b></i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">As workers’ lives become ever
more difficult and the promised glorious future never comes, it is this which
will determine their consciousness. This is, of course, in direct contradiction
with the ideas propagated by the capitalist class through their media, their
education system and their ideological apparatus. It is in this situation that
ideas of wider class struggle and international struggle can take root.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The “social being” of the
working class, which Marx talks of, is, of course, enmeshed in the social being
of capitalist society at large. The present phase of the crisis has produced a
general dissatisfaction with capitalist society which has expressed itself in
social movements in which workers have participated as individuals. We have
witnessed mass struggles in peripheral and central countries; social uprisings
in Tunisia and Egypt; occupations of central squares in major cities in Greece,
Spain, US, UK and elsewhere; followed by social movement in Turkey, Brazil and
once again in Egypt[17]. While movements are interclass movements without any
clear objectives they undoubtedly do express a dissatisfaction with capitalism
at a fundamental level and also a dissatisfaction with the formal structures of
capitalism such as bourgeois democracy, political parties and trade unions. The
crisis has, therefore, brought about an incipient challenge to bourgeois ideas
in which workers have participated as individuals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The CWO argues that capitalist
relations of production are a “fetter” on the forces of production in the sense
used by Marx in the passage quoted above. Although it is undeniable that the
forces of production have grown enormously since the Second World War we argue
that this growth depended on the massive devaluation and destruction of
constant capital which the war brought about. This destruction of previously
produced wealth has become an essential and integral part of capitalism’s
survival because of the systemic problems of accumulation which cause a
tendency for profit rates to fall. When it is understood that the historical
cycle of modern capitalism entails general destruction of wealth through global
war it is clear that capitalist social relations are indeed a “fetter” to the
forces of production. At present we are at the stage in the present cycle of
reproduction where general destruction of constant capital through war is
appearing again as the only solution to capitalism’s impasse. However, since
the conditions for general war are not yet developed, the present impasse is
characterised by ever increasing attacks on the working class.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">This is the material
background to the working class’ situation. However, the “social being” of
workers within capitalism does not directly raise questions such as these. What
workers experience are increasingly difficult conditions until it becomes
impossible to continue living in the old way. The issue will them be
confronting immediate problems, but problems, which when they try to solve
them, will necessarily lead to the confrontation of the more fundamental
historical questions. Both the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian
Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 moved from initially trying to confront
essentially bourgeois nationalist issues to world historical tasks, and there
is no reason why this should not recur.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>Organisation</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The material conditions exist
for the working class to become conscious that its immediate struggles need to
be generalised and made international if they are to succeed. There is however
no automatic trigger that will make that happen. At the moment the most
widespread hope amongst many workers is that capitalism can be made “fairer”
despite all the evidence that the wealth gap around the world continues to
increase notwithstanding the crisis. This is a necessary stage we have to go
through. In the course of their continuing exploitation the wider working class
will be faced with the impasse that capitalism has created. It will be faced
with the recognition that the system is no longer compatible with the future of
humanity (and we have not even raised here the environmental destruction it is
creating[18]). Its struggles will become wider and more collective. Street movements
may bring impressive anti-capitalist masses out but it will be the mass strikes
of the future which will really threaten the system. Only by paralysing the old
system of production can we pave the way for a new one. It is worth noting in
this respect that, where the struggles have had any success in the “Arab
Spring”, strikes by the local working class have provided the force required to
achieve the capitulation of the authorities, notably in Tunisia and Egypt. This
indicates that the only real power able to confront the capitalist authorities
is the working class.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">At present workers’ struggles
everywhere are largely in the hands of the trade unions which, as has been
argued above, form part of the capitalist system of control of labour. For
future struggles to have any chance of success it is therefore necessary to
take their organisation out of the hands of the unions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Struggles need to be organised
democratically through workers’ assemblies which delegate members to strike
committees who would give themselves the task of extending strikes or struggles
to other industries and, where possible, internationally. These delegates are
answerable only to the assemblies and are recallable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">But this alone will not be
enough to defeat the system. In this process a historical consciousness will
have to arise which will take many forms but will find its political voice in
an international party. This will be a necessary instrument for the working
class to be able to build a new world. We are not talking here about a party of
government but a party of the working class, in the working class, whose task
is to fight for the spread of international communism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Such an organisation needs to
be embedded in the struggles of the working class as this is the only way it
can influence them. Without a clear political aim even the most determined
workers’ struggles will ultimately end in confusion and failure. To fight for
the construction of such an organisation is the key task of the present period
for revolutionaries who understand the historical lessons of the class struggle
and the stakes of the present situation. How to engage in workers’ struggles
and propagate the revolutionary way forward is the key challenge to everyone
who sees that only the working class can forge an historic alternative to
capitalism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>CP</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>Footnotes</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[1] See <a href="http://www.solidarity4all.gr/sites/www.solidarity4all.gr/files/aggliko.pdf"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">solidarity4all.gr</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[2]“Labour Market imbalances”
Richard Freeman, Harvard University paper. Richard Freeman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[3] See Richard Freeman <a href="http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=4542"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">theglobalist.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[4] These contracts allow
employers to retain workers but only pay them for hours they work. Often they
are informed when they are required to work by text to a mobile phone. In the
UK in 2012 there were 200,000 workers on these contracts with 100,000 of them
in the National Health Service. This system has been extended to professionals
such as doctors, engineers, lecturers, journalists and others and the numbers
increased by 25% in the last year. It represents a way of cheapening the costs
of labour and making employment more precarious. Figures from <i>Financial
Times</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> 8/4/13.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[5] See Guardian <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/16/why-britain-doesnt-make-things-manufacturing"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">guardian.co.uk</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[6] See <i>Financial Times</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">
14/05/13<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[7] See <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-analysis/170-years-of-industry/170-years-of-industrial-changeponent.html"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">ons.gov.uk</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[8] The City of London
produces 9% of GDP but generates 27% of government taxes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[9] See <i>Financial Times</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">
4/01/13. For an article on Foxconn see <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2010-06-09/chinese-workers-show-their-class"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">leftcom.org</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[10] Reported in <i>Financial</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">
_Times_ 9/12/05<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[11] See <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2013-04-28/bangladesh-factory-disaster-workers-lives-are-expendable-for-capital"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">leftcom.org</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[12] See <a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2012/08/china-in-revolt/"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">jacobinmag.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[13] See <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-08-25/south-africa-striking-miners-massacred-by-police"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">leftcom.org</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[14] When we speak of
Communism we mean production for human needs, where the means of production are
socialised and society will be organised so that each person will contribute
according to their ability and each will receive according to their needs. This
has nothing whatsoever to do with the state capitalist societies which existed
in Russia, China etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[15] Karl Marx <i>The German
Ideology</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[16] Karl Marx <i>Preface to</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> _A
Critique of Political Economy_<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[17] See articles which follow
this one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">[18] See our pamphlet <i>Capitalism
and the Environment</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> by Mauro Stefanini or <span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2009-11-24/environmental-disaster-or-communism-there-is-no-third-way">leftcom.org</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Saturday, August 3, 2013</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-57381202332036535242013-07-27T10:18:00.000-04:002013-07-27T10:18:16.215-04:00CANADA The Lac-Megantic Disaster: The law of profit is the Criminal! <!--StartFragment-->
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The aftermath
of the worst rail disaster in Canada for decades leaves at least 47 dead with
many of the victims still unaccounted for. On Saturday, July 6 at one o'clock
in the morning a train carrying crude oil derailed in the small town of
Lac-Megantic in Quebec (6000 inhabitants), the fire and the explosion of
several cars destroyed a large section of the downtown.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The train had
stopped 11 km outside town at the top of a hill, for a "crew
change"; actually the train, consisting of five locomotives
and 72 cars each weighing well over one hundred tons, originating in Dakota and
which had passed through Toronto and Montreal, was operated and conducted by a "crew"
of <b>one engineer</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">! The latter, who had just finished 12 hours of
consecutive work, went to rest after setting the brake system according to the
usual rules. But shortly after a fire was reported on one of the engines and
was extinguished by firefighters from nearby Nantes and the engine shut down.
Somehow the train was set in motion and, without a driver, it accelerated
downhill toward Lac-Megantic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The director
of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) has laid off the engineer,
accusing him of being responsible for the accident, saying said he might have
lied about having correctly applied handbrakes on 11 tanker cars (and the
company took advantage of the accident to lay off 19 other employees in
Quebec on July 16, 19 ).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">But to accuse
the driver actually serves to hide the direct responsibility of the pursuit of
profit which is the rule in capitalist society and which always leads to the
detriment of the workers and security.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">MMA (formerly
Iron World Railways) was acquired in 2003 by Rail World Inc., a company owned
by an American capitalist named Burkhard who built his fortune by buying and
selling railway undertakings. In the 90s he participated in the privatization
of railways in New Zealand, which earned him a token of appreciation from the
bourgeoisie of New Zealand, the title of "honorary consul"! Also in
the 90s, he took advantage of the privatization of the railways in Britain to
put together its largest rail freight company (now owned by a German firem),
eliminating 1,700 jobs in the process. He participated in the profitable
privatization of railways in Estonia in 2001 (the local government was then
forced a few years later to buy them back), he also served on the board of
directors of a private Polish railway company and others in the
United States.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> For his
success in the increase in profits of companies accomplished by reducing costs
and increasing the exploitation of workers, in 1999 Burkhard was
appointed <i>"Railroader of the Year" </i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">by
Railway Age magazine and then one of <i>"16 Greatest Railroaders of the
Twentieth Century".</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> But according to statistics from the
American Federal Railroad Administration, between 2003 and 2011, MMA had a
double or triple the accident rate, than the average in the sector: the profit
is made on the backs of the workers and the population...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Shortly after
the acquisition of the Canadian company, Burkhard lowered wages by 40%, under
the pretext of the bankruptcy of a major customer. In 2010 he announced a plan
to save 4.5 million dollars Cdn. by reducing the number of workers on locomotives.
In 2012, Transport Canada, the government agency regulating railways authorized
MMA trains to operate with a single driver, no other crew. To top this off,
this has been accomplished by the indifference or outright collusion of the
unions involved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The bourgeois
State, whose role according to democrats and reformers should be to protect and
defend "all citizens", is actually in the service of capitalism and
the capitalists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">For many
years various governments have increasingly made decisions in favor of railway
companies: if today on most freight trains in the United States and Canada the
norm consist is now two workers, there were five thirty years ago. The
productivity race that exists in this sector too, means that increasingly fewer
proletarians are obligated to produce increasingly more, and when the
various regulations enacted to ensure safety become obstacles to the
realization of profits, they are removed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">At the
request of the capitalists, in 1999 the Liberal government decided to
accelerate deregulation, pursued by every successive government policy. One of
the measures obtained by the companies was "self-regulation": it is
the companies themselves who decide what safety measures to take!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The result
was predictable: in 2007 the Canadian Safety Council released a report noting
the deteriorating security situation on the railways. Since it was established
in 1991 in the United States that the existing tank cars were not safe,
eventually in 2011 the Canadian government required companies need only buy new
more secure cars when renewing their fleet, all the while allowing the
use of the existing unsafe ones : but as the life of these cars is from thirty
to fifty years, they will still circulate for decades! Investments in rail
infrastructure are insufficient, etc.. Meanwhile the boom in transporting crude
oil boosts profits for the railways (oil transport by rail is less expensive
than pipeline) ...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The Disaster
in Lac-Mégantic is absolutely not due to chance, to fate: it is a crime
committed by the MMA railway company, by capitalism, by the profit motive that
drives all companies in this society with the aid of the State: the Canadian
State last year broke the strike by workers of Canadian Pacific Rail, thousands
of workers were laid off, working conditions have deteriorated further,
"unproductive" expenditures for security and maintenance have been
reduced to the greater profits of the company. The blood-soaked capitalist
Burkhard is not an exception, he is the product of the capitalist mode of production.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Against such
disasters, it is silly to talk about a return to a mythical past of a
"regulated" capitalism which would replace the savage
"neo-liberal" variety: the capitalism of yesterday was every bit as
savage as today's; it had nothing but contempt for the safety, security
and the lives of the workers and the public. Today as yesterday and
throughout the last century the motto of the Railway Barons remains the same:
"Uphill Slow, Downhill Fast, Tonnage first, Safety Last".<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>It is
capitalism that is criminal; This is what we have to combat and put to death in
order to live in safety!</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>International
Communist Party</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">July, 20th
2013<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><a href="http://www.pcint.org/">www.pcint.org</a></b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Tahoma; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 3.0pt; margin-left: 15.0pt; margin-right: 15.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 15.0pt;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Tahoma; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma;"> </span></div>
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The Internationalist Communist Klasbatalo (ICK) have no organizational link
with the International Communist Party and does not share all its political
positions. However, we are in total agreement with the contents of this
article.</span><!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-72607700191269440842013-07-04T21:02:00.000-04:002013-10-21T20:21:46.320-04:00Greece, Turkey, France, Spain ... The workers' response must be international and united! <!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Tuesday evening, June 11<sup>th</sup> , thousands of angry proletarians
flocked to Greece’s public television and radio headquarters, in response to
the bourgeois government’s sudden and brutal announcement of its closure, and
to stand in solidarity with the thousands of dismissed workers. All<span style="color: blue;"> </span>the while, massive labor protests had paralyzed
Turkey – the so-called "hereditary enemy" – for almost 15 days in its
major cities, despite the Turkish bourgeoisie’s violent and even bloody
repression (with several protesters killed). Proletarian anger, determination
and courage in struggle remains unabated in the face of the brutal repressive
forces of the State. This reaction reflects the current reality of
confrontations between classes at the international level and, more
importantly, shows the course that the entire international working class must
take to defend itself against the constant attacks it has suffered everywhere,
and to impose another power relationship to that of the bourgeoisie and
capitalism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
</span><span lang="EN-US">It’s all across Europe, in fact<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>– and even beyond – that workers’
reactions are escalating in response to the rise of increasingly brutal attacks
that capitalism in crisis imposes everywhere. </span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Despite the bourgeois media’s misrepresentation
and deliberate censorship of these mobilizations – one must take time to scour
the Internet for alternative sources of information to get a sense of the many
struggles and mobilizations, all of which we cannot mention here– from Spain to
Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain and elsewhere, working class
and exploited people are overwhelmingly expressing their anger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br />
By now, we must recognize that all the struggles (and there are many) that have
arisen since the start of capitalism’s open crisis in 2008 (the
"subprime"), failed to drive back the bourgeoisie and their state,
except perhaps momentarily. Essentially, the struggles remained too limited,
hampered by the same ideological framework and capitalist policies imposed by
all political and trade union forces, and primarily the bourgeois states.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br />
Compliance with this order of affairs or even any illusions about it remain a
source of deepening misery, the most crushing of defeats, and even death for
the proletariat. This is why we should not be fooled by poisonous rhetoric,
deceptive and "legalistic" political and bourgeois media. That is why
we must rid ourselves of the union-imposed framework, and take our struggle
into our own hands. We must not accept that every mobilization remain in its
particular “corner” in its “own” region or its “own” country. To remain
isolated, separated from other sections of the working class, poses the best
prospect for the bourgeoisie to continue to maintain control of the situation,
for it to successfully wage more attacks against our lives, forcing us to
sacrifice more and more, ultimately sacrificing our lives in the inevitable war
that capitalism’s crisis brings down on us all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br />
Only all together, combining all sectors, in all countries at once, can the
proletariat contend with the bourgeoisie, pin back its murderous arm, put an
end to it and its system of misery and barbarism. It is high time for workers
to join with the struggles across borders. It’s time for the international
generalization of the class struggle against capitalism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br />
The brutality of the Greek government’s latest measures offers just such an
opportunity. All European workers, at least, have their eyes now on what’s
unfolding in Athens, as well as in Istanbul, and (indeed) on other struggles.
With European air traffic disrupted by an air traffic controllers’ strike –
controllers from different European countries are taking over from their French
colleagues. With protests raging on in Turkey in spite of massive repression.
Through it all, the struggles increase, with generalized anger spreading
amongst workers of all countries. Even the bourgeoisie at the moment, given the
general anger amongst workers, is apprehensive about the social and political
consequences of the Greek government’s decision.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br />
The time for unified struggle is upon us. Time to join our comrades in Athens
and in Istanbul. It’s time to enlist all local and European mobilizations in
direct and active solidarity with our Greek comrades. It is high time to reject
and to once and for all break out of the nationalist straitjacket, the state,
democratic left parties and unions impose upon us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br />
Active solidarity with the workers in Greece, Turkey and everywhere else!<br />
Everywhere, all of us must unite in the struggle against capitalist attacks!<br />
For an International generalization of the struggle of the working class!<br />
One perspective: away with capitalism!<br />
The one and only way: widespread and united international struggle against
capital!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="hps"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">On</span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> <span class="hps">June 12, 2013</span><br />
<span class="hps">Communist</span> <span class="hps">Internationalists</span><span class="atn">-</span>Klasbatalo<br />
<span class="hps">Fraction</span> <span class="hps">of the International Communist</span>
<span class="hps">Left</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-25406213944914263262013-06-05T18:42:00.000-04:002013-06-05T18:42:23.823-04:00May Day statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<h1>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal;">The CIK enthusiastically applauds the ICT’s May Day
statement: <i><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2013-04-30/against-the-%E2%80%9Cclass-war%E2%80%9D-of-the-rich-time-to-fight">Against the “Class War” of the Rich: </a></i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2013-04-30/against-the-%E2%80%9Cclass-war%E2%80%9D-of-the-rich-time-to-fight">Time to Fight!</a></i></span></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">We completely agree that this is not merely
a debt or bank crisis, etc., but a <i>“structural crisis of the whole system
which has developed over decades”.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">World war is capitalism’s attempt to get
out of this, as the ICT says, <i>“war is no solution, but it is the only one
capitalism has to offer, in order to emerge from its valorisation crisis.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The article also clearly shows how the
bourgeoisie can isolate and divide us with the unions and parties such as
Quebec’s QS or France’s NPA. <i>“This demands a political break with the unions
and parliamentary parties, which are without exception ensnared in the logic of
this system. The dream of a socially tamed capitalism is exhausted, having been
dreamt too long. Time and again, those political bodies, which claim to
represent our interests through negotiations and compromises with the ruling
class unmask themselves as especially perfidious defenders of this system.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The article categorically rejects state
capitalism<i>: “It is not a question of controlling the banks”, “taxing the
rich more heavily” or “nationalising industries”. A capitalism organised on the
basis of the state is an equally poor alternative. The experience with
Stalinism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere should be sufficient proof of
this.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Finally, the ICT clearly indicates its will
to participate in building an international revolutionary organization while
not seeing itself as central to it. We reiterate our agreement that political
debates are an integral part of this process. For years, just as with the ICT,
we have sought discussions and common work with serious revolutionaries around
the world, so as to encourage the construction of a new international
organisation. We are aware that this will be a long-term and difficult process.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b>Our discussions with groups such as the
International Fraction of the Communist Left, Internationalist Voice, the ICC
and the ICT are based on proposed principles and have always demonstrated the
seriousness with which we envision these relations</b></span><!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-52154219487513621002013-05-27T14:56:00.000-04:002013-06-02T08:54:12.454-04:00Student struggle and Assemblies of neighbourhoods<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Table of contents</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>Spring 2012 student movement</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- An international economic crisis,
drastic austerity measures worldwide ... and rising tuition<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- The struggle against tuition fees
is part of the struggle against capitalist attacks on our living<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>conditions<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- Student unionism<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- The student movement isolates
itself and is isolated from the labor movement<b><br />
- </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Social strike radical students and
minorities<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- The question of violence<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- The beginning of the end: the
elections mark the end of the movement and its defeat through extensive student
participation in those elections<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- The summit on education and
continuation of austerity measures<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b> Assemblies of
the neighbourhoods</b><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>: </b></span><b>our
intervention in the APAQs<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>- </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">’Democracy’ gives birth to Bill 78<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- The<i> manifestations casseroles </i><span style="font-style: normal;">movement: the working class and the middle class in
solidarity with the student movement<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- Democratic illusions and the
civic “<i>manifestations casseroles<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
- The <i>casseroles </i><span style="font-style: normal;">seem to want to give themselves a political
extension: creation of the APAQs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN">- </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The </span><span lang="FR" style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">APAQ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">s supported the student movement, but were also put in
tow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>- </b></span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Autonomy according to the APAQs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">- Struggles of tendancies: localism and
anarchist individualism disrupt the APAQs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">- The end of the wave of struggle, the drift
to self-management<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Annex<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">General strike or electoral circus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The organisation of the proletariat outside periods of open struggle
(workers' groups, nuclei, circles, committees</span><span lang="EN">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"><b>Send your address or email to receive it : klasbatalo1917@gmail.com</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: center 216.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-13635209642299247812013-05-13T11:40:00.000-04:002013-05-13T11:40:12.843-04:00On May First <!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">On May First,
however, the demonstration was called by the CLAC (Convergence des Luttes
Anti-Capitalistes) which is an anarchist activist organization. We decided to
go handing leaflets (200) at the Subway’s station where the demonstration was
scheduled but to stay away from the demonstration itself since it was setup as
a trap. In Montréal, since a few years, the police experiments mass arrests and
foreign police from around the world comes to Montréal to study the police
tactics they are using here, particularly when a demonstration is called by a
leftist radical group such as the CLAC. So we knew from the beginning there
would be a mass arrest.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In 2008, a similar
demonstration was called. We then denounced this
kind of left radical front because it brings confusion within the proletarian
class, it leads nowhere else than political adventurism, and it tends to
discourage sincere and young militant to keep on militating when they get
arrested time after time, defeat after defeat.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">So, this
demonstration was setup from the start as a militants trap. There was no point
for us to get arrested with a 637$ fine in a leftist demonstration lost in the
middle of a bourgeois area (le Vieux-port de Montréal) without any balance of
power and straight participation of the working class. While we fully support
and show solidarity with people who got arrested, we denounce this kind of
demonstration and the CLAC because it tends to help the police to make
political profiling on those people who got arrested.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">See<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the leaflet <a href="http://internationalistcommunistsmontreal.blogspot.ca/2009/12/answer-to-leftist-action-of-may-first_08.html">An answer to the leftist action of May First</a> the we wrote in 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Solidarity with all
arrested people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 13.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Times-Roman; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Internationalist
Communists - Klasbatalo</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-78388203753492877902013-04-09T10:02:00.000-04:002013-04-09T10:02:35.627-04:00USA: A PR Campaign for Austerity—A More “Flexible” System of Layoffs in the Offing for Workers<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: center;">
<!--StartFragment-->
</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR">We publish this text
from Internationalist Notes ( <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en">Internationalist Communist Tendency</a>) because we are totally in agreement with its contents even if we
have no organizational link with ITC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"></span><br />
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Internationalist Communists – Klasbatalo</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;">*************************************</span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
USA: A PR Campaign for Austerity—A More “Flexible” System of Layoffs in
the Offing for Workers</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: 21.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;"><!--StartFragment--></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt;">The Illusion of popular participation in austerity and
restructuring programs can be particularly nauseating for those conscious
workers who have the stomach to sit through one of these staged public
relations sessions. Across the US there are such events being held in the City
of Detroit to mediate the sell-off of all city assets. For the Chicago public
schools the CTU President Jesse Sharkey even speaks of the need for the union
to be included in deciding which Chicago Public School, out of the 100 schools
now slated for closing by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The University of Wisconsin
System like the City of Detroit is putting forward public hearings to give a
democratic veneer to a process that is intended to victimize and divide
workers. It represents a continuing attack on wages and working conditions that
demands an organized response.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Since
the official demise of unions as bargaining agents beginning with Act 10 in
Wisconsin has created a push among the management of the UW Madison to separate
from the state civil service system so as to have greater say over the
management of their workforce. Seniority rights are threatened with a new
recognition of organizational need in layoffs thus paving the way for the
layoff of expensive employees and their replacement with cheaper employees,
eroding basic seniority protections.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">But
with every stick comes a carrot. This carrot is that all the lowest paid
employees who are starting at $11.24 per hour, approximately 1600 workers will
see their pay increase to what is determined to be the local “living wage”.
Initially this was to be $12.19 per hour, but as the Human Resources PR
sessions drag on this seems to become more vague as the July 1st date
approaches. While the promised cost of living increases for employees who are
further up on the pay scale are being pushed forwards for another fiscal year
of further deliberations. The UW Madison administration has been given a great deal
of power in determining what to do with their workforce.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">For
many who protested there are some who are willing to work with the employers on
their new “engagement teams” with labor and management sitting together in the
pretense that labor is being listened to. There are many who accommodate
themselves to this new reality rather than attempt to struggle to build
something new.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">As
the University of Wisconsin-Madison Administration under Chancellor Biddy
Martin became separated from the rest of the Wisconsin State Civil Service the
idea came to be sold to many that this was the only way for any improvement in
working conditions and pay would ever take place. It is not unreasonable to
conclude that the larger consideration was to divide the University employees
on one end of State Street from the State Government employees on the other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Traditionally
the state civil service locally in Madison was divided into classified
non-exempt employees, classified exempt employees. Those not covered under
union contracts and those workers in positions covered under union contracts
respectively. Now only the blue collar and building trades remain with
certified unions actually engaging in negotiating contracts with the state
employer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">After
July 1, 2013 the new policies will finally begin to be implemented fully.
Classified non-exempt employees will be called University Staff, and Classified
Exempt employees will be given a choice as to whether they are classified as
Academic Staff or University Staff. What this means in terms of impact on
workers is that the university as employer will then become a separate civil
service system apart from the state system. Thus pay scales for similar work
will be able to differ more widely from one department to the next for jobs
that are essentially the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Pay
increases can now include the element of favoritism as employers can now give
raises to those they deem to have done work that merits a pay increase. In
reality, this is a popularity contest. In practice this means few raises will
be given and labor costs will thus be lower. The last pay increase seen by many
workers in the lower pay-scales at the UW Madison was in fact a pay increase
only on paper as it was coupled with increases in “employee contributions” to
benefits that caused the net increase in pay to actually be a “negative
increase” in take home pay, that is to say a reduction in pay. Since that time
workers have seen further increased “employee benefit contributions”, more pay
cuts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">For
any conscious worker sitting through one of these events involves trying to
stay awake through professional hiring and management jargon to try to
determine what is going to happen to one’s fellow workers. More absurd still is
that employees are sucked into this “process” via employee “engagement teams”
in hopes that some minor concessions can be made in exchange for compliance.
This allows the employers to pretend that this austerity process was decided
with workers input. The outcome is determined entirely but the necessity of
reducing labor costs in an institution that pretends to be devoted to education
when its’ primary purpose is to act as a corporate contracting gravy train.
Anywhere austerity is undertaken and the capitalist class makes a pretense of
democratic inclusion it is the proletariat that gets to choose which knife gets
to cut their throats. Only when workers take it upon themselves to create their
own assemblies and put forward their own demands that they won’t simply be
subjects to any bourgeois parody of democracy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px; line-height: 18pt; margin-bottom: 21pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">AS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Monday, April 1, 2013</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;"><!--EndFragment--></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 15px;">
</span><br />
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-41042718759138664302013-02-17T17:00:00.001-05:002013-02-17T17:01:51.839-05:00Our answer to the fraction of the International Communist Lefts activity report of October 2012.<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<!--StartFragment-->
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="hps"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We respond</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> below <span class="hps">to the fraction of</span>
<span class="hps">the International Communist Left</span>s<span class="hps">
activity report</span> <span class="hps">of October</span> <span class="hps">2012.
There’s an element in the report's conclusion</span> that <span class="hps">we</span>
<span class="hps">enthusiastically</span> endorse<span class="hps">: “...</span></span>
<span class="hps"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>we offer</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i> <span class="hps">to those with whom we</span>
<span class="hps">are closest</span>, including <span class="hps">CIK,</span> <span class="hps">to initiate procedings </span>leading to the <span class="hps">formation
of </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span class="hps">a new
organization following</span> a process <span class="hps">of</span> <span class="hps">discussions</span> <span class="hps">and agreements on</span> <span class="hps">platform</span> <span class="hps">positions</span> <span class="hps">and</span>
<span class="hps">orientations</span></i></span><span class="hps"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br />
<br />
</span><span class="hps"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The</span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> <span class="hps">ICKs</span> <span class="hps">logic</span>
<span class="hps">is that it is</span> <span class="hps">indeed essential</span> <span class="hps">to begin</span> <span class="hps">a process of discussion</span> with
the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">FICL</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> <span class="hps"><span lang="EN">which</span></span><span lang="EN"> <span class="hps">could eventually lead
to</span> <span class="hps">a merger between</span> <span class="hps">the two
groups.</span><br />
As well there’s o<span class="hps">ne aspect in</span> <span class="hps">the
conclusion of the</span> <span class="hps">ICTs’response</span> <span class="hps">to
the report</span> (<span class="hps">of activities of the</span> <span class="hps">fraction</span>
<span class="hps">of the Communist Left)</span> that <span class="hps">can</span>
give us inspiration <span class="hps">and</span> <span class="hps">help to reunite</span>
<span class="hps">internationalist</span> <span class="hps">communist forces</span>
around a single<span class="hps"> pole of</span> <span class="hps">consolidation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>« it
would be a great step forward if you could participate in the formation of
an internationalist organisation based amongst French communists
which could act as a real nucleus oriented, not only to debate amongst the
internationalists around the world, but also to the working class [we] are
directly in contact with »<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="hps"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">We invite</span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> <span class="hps">readers</span> <span class="hps">to read </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php">FICL</a></span><span class="hps"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php">s latest newsletter(</a></span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php">#</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php">FICLs latest newsletter( # 10)</a> of</span> <span class="hps">including</span>
<span class="hps">the following items:</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="hps">- The <a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php">Annual Report</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php">of the</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php">fraction</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php">of the Left</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php">Communist</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php">
</a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php">International</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_2.php">http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php</a></span>.</div>
<span class="hps">-</span> The <span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php">Response to the Report</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php">of activities of the</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php">fraction</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php">of</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php">the International Communist<o:p></o:p></a></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="hps"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php"> Left</a></span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_3.php"> Response to the Report of activities of the fraction of the International Communist Left </a><span class="hps">(ICT)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span class="hps">-</span> <span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_4.php">Our response to</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_4.php"> </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_4.php">ICT</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_4.php"> </a><span class="hpsatn"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_4.php">[</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_4.php">FICLs </a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_4.php">response</a></span><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_4.php">
</a><span class="hps"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci10/bci10_4.php">Our response to ICT [FICLs response to ICT</a></span>]</span><br />
<span class="hps">- CI-Ks</span> <span class="hps">Position</span> <span class="hps">report</span>
<span class="hps">on the</span> <span class="hps">activities below</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dear
comrades,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">First,
we apologize for the delay in response to your report. Indeed, as we had
already told you in recent weeks, as a result we’ve had a lot of
difficulties<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>holding meetings with
all of us present , I (Alex) personally was delayed in responding to you. Don’t
see this as a lack of enthusiasm on our part. On the contrary, we were aware,
with great interest, of your document of October 2012, your balance sheet of
the IFICC and the FICL over the last ten years. For our part this response,
will often see us returning to some points: some observations and statements.
It is that, like you, we see the urgency of the global political situation,
both in relation to the attacks of the bourgeoisie and the response of the
proletariat to them, and the opportunity we face in organizing ourselves
differently.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now,
let’s begin by saying that we fully agree with the preamble on the nature and
the need for organizational activities report. As with you, we say that an
organization of Marxist allegiance has a programmatic history to as appoint of
reference if it’s to maintain a dialectical approach. Indeed, this means a
review and a critical return on the political activities of the Organization in
order to clear its proletarian programmatic positions from elements that are
alien to it; because, of course, no revolutionary organization is immune from
any penetration of bourgeois ideology into its core. As well inn 2011, to an
greater or lesser degree, experienced, having produced the document
'Contribution à un état des lieux de la GCI', experienced a fight that was, in
many points, beneficial!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Actually,
at one point, we even entertained the idea of split. In fact, we have avoided a
worse situation because a faction would have probably resulted in the breakup
of our group given our lack of political experience on this issue. However, we
can say with pride that we have been able to avert this by remaining united
despite somewhat-bitter differences that arose, keeping the focus firmly on the
debate, criticism...In the end undertaking an internal repositioning of the
IC-K. It’s an experience that is important to us and that we fully accept<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>despite this detour to the “into the
swamp” of the Communist left (Controversies, IPPI, IOD). Our 'critical return',
although with relatively less discussion, allowed us to set the record straight
at the time grasping more clearly what presently represents the real
proletarian camp as well as our role in it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
therefore made your formulation ours:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>« Any communist organization is
responsible of its history and must take it in front of the proletariat</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>”.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
And now :<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>« Even
for a small group as ours, the necessity for making balance-sheets and drawing
orientations of activities from these balance-sheets is imperative ; as
disproportionate this work and this effort can seem to be at first sight in
regards with our forces. »<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This
is what we have worked on hard in the year 2011, while managing to maintain an
activity of intervention within some struggles, and this despite the
divergences and contradictions of political order within the group caused by
the document 'Contribution '. We will come back quite often on this but we
believe, to some extent, that the work may be an example for other groups that
comprise both the swamp of the Communist left, and the historical Communist
left; in this sense where, currently, among the groups of the GC, disagreements
seem more to point in direction of ruptures and divisions rather than the
emergence of internal discussions and attempts at clarification for the
proletariat as a whole. It is in this serious light that we consider, , the
future of the IC-K and that we continue to respond diligently to the struggles
and movements that appear here and there. For example, last Sunday, Comrade RJ
gave a lecture on the current economic crisis before twenty-or-so people and
received a good welcome, despite the recent (in the same week) death of his
mother. In short, we firmly deal with our meager forces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>On
the inheritance of </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">IFICC<b>,
of the </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">FICL<b>, and the
defense of the ICC.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
continue to consider the ICC programmatic contribution as possibly the most
important work ever produced by an organization from the Communist Left, as
well as the one from the Italian fraction around <i>Bilan</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. We note despite this contribution (which
should be a real tank against the opportunistic derivative) growing confusion
about the interventions of the ICC within the proletariat. That is how an
organization regardless of its strengths is never immune against an
opportunistic direction, treason and counter-revolution. For we, who feel
closer to the platform of the ICC, we note with regret the various injuries
that has experimented the organization over the past years starting with the
departure of the EFICC, subsequently the JJ’s case, and then by the ICC’s
activities against the IFICC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
this regard, we believe that the political work conducted by the IFICC has born
fruit historicaly, without unfortunately preventing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the ICC from continuing its path towards resonant
opportunism that overwhelms the organizations belonging to the Communist Left<sup>
</sup>(Note). For the history of the revolutionary movement, for the
rehabilitation of the ICC also, it would have been legitimate for IFICCs
activities to continue unabated in order to maintain the real parallel
continuity of the ICC. Unfortunately, the break up of the fraction in 2010
significantly weakened its political action. Despite the analysis that you have
produced and that we share on the drift of the ICC of the past ten years,
nothing is yet lost. The work of the fraction was conducted as far it could
taken under the circumstances, with hard work and conviction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 11px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt; width: 7.8pt;" valign="top" width="8"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
constitution of the FICL - with its mandate to pursue both the work of the
IFICC opening up again to the benefit of the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>other groups of the Proletarien Political Milieu - is a huge
task for forces at its disposal, especially with the absence of Ldo.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">You
mention in the Bulletin no. 13 and in your report:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">“<i>Since we've decided to open our
internal bulletins to the whole proletarian political milieu, organisations and
their contacts and sympathizers, we consider that our area of internal
discussion is not any more limited to the single ICC but to the whole political
milieu which will have to become the active and determining factor for the
building-up of the future world communist party. We think that the questions
which are raised by the ICC crisis, its opportunist drift, concern and
"belong" to the whole components of this milieu. Moreover, if we
think we are still in the phase of "internal fraction", of
"redressment", of the ICC with its method and its very precise
political requirements, we have also to make up for the responsibilities that
the ICC is giving up, such as the struggle for the unity and the defence of the
Left Communist.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
we have pointed out in the footnotes, we share the same understanding of the
proletarian political environment and we see the Communist Left as a whole
belonging to this historical critique, even before it is a current divided in
this or that organization. On the other hand, in the current context
(exacerbation of the crisis, rise of the proletarian struggles, threat of a
polarization of the enemy forces lading to war, weakness of a genuine
revolutionary intervention within our class to deal with all of this), we
believe that it is time for you to close the chapter on the fraction and
undertake new activity to strengthen our ranks; to concentrate the activities
of the FICL to the regrouping of revolutionary militants around an organization
capable of leading the fight. We agree with you that:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">“<i>Today, at the very moment of this
balance-sheet, our fraction has formally no more than two comrades of which one
is particularly and badly affected at the physical level. The concrete work,
material work if so we can say, of our group doesn't rely but on one comrade.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>This situation is not simply due to
personal “objective” realities. Of course, the dispersal of the three comrades
of the fraction, one in Mexico, the others geographically separated in France,
of course too the respective personal difficulties of which some are real and
important – the living conditions of the comrade in Mexico, the health of one
of the two comrades in France –, are material elements which made more and more
difficult the political commitment of the whole. Nevertheless, there is no
doubt that the events, pressure of the anti-communist campaigns, lack of
immediate results – the contacts in general, the process with the IC-K, the
slowness of the evolution of our relationships with the ICT, the relative
isolation too – have contributed to shake our understanding of our orientations
and to weaken <b>above all our political and militant convictions</b></i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>. It is
particularly clear as regards with our comrade in Mexico. The last two years,
the comrade's commitment has reduced up to the point the rest of the fraction
could not any more count on him for its regular activities which thus begun to
be strongly reduced : the realization of the bulletin, the internal
discussions, the intervention in particular towards the contacts relatively
numerous in Mexico... Caught in personal and daily difficulties, our comrade
has progressively disengaged himself and did not participate but formally and
intermittently to the activities of the fraction.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>This disease, the weakness of
comprehension and conviction, is for the essential as we recall it, the result
of the ideological offensive of the bourgeoisie.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
The ICM and the IC-K have experienced<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>their moment of discouragement, we are
well placed to understand the situation of Comrade Ldo. Alex nearly resigned in
the spring of 2010 faced with feelings of political isolation. Luie himself
also had to take a short break in the summer 2011, and Réal has also offered
his resignation during our discussions around the Contribution. It goes without
saying all the pressure on organizations of the proletariat since the beginning
of the 1990s has Indeed shown, that isolation does not help us at all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now,
if we return to last comments, the abandonment of the FICL’s fraction work does
not mean the abandonment of possible interventions - addressing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the possible direction of ICC’s militants. Indeed, for the
IC-K, since our critical return on the Contribution, the Communist Left
tendency (the partyist one), even before a conglomerate of organizations with
more or less pronounced differences is first and above all a programmatic body
to defend against all detours, attacks, and foreign intervention, that we need
to defend the ICC or the ICP! Because the Communist Left was not bankrupt and
is sharper than those who believe they can pronounce its end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Take the ICC as an example, threatening at any moment to
abandon its class ground: nothing prevents a proletarian to resume the
positions of the organization...And to extract its proletarian positions from
its opportunist trajectory, just as organizations that once formed the left
fractions were able to reconstitute their approach from the first Congress of
the third international.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
this regard, let’s us recall that the IC-K has had to make a long journey for
more than a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>year to understand the
limitations of the proletarian camp, to see more clearly the issues that arose
out of a conciliatory position towards a group like Controversies. As well it’s
thanks to you that we can now say that we’ve escaped from the organizational
swamp within the Communist Left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Towards
a first grouping<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Comrades,
you offered a close connection, and we offer you a grouping together. In fact,
from one part and to an other (FICL and the IC-K), the need to come together in
as a single organization seems to us both a historical duty as well as a chance
to appeal to the proletarian camp. Moreover, we are already politically
"close",let's gear up, without hiding possible differences. The work
of political clarification between us has been going on informally since 2006.
Because of your political responsibilities elsewhere (fraction work), it was
not relevant for you to open your ranks to other militants, we have never
really talked about regrouping, sporadically , but with no real action. If you
agree, we believe that it is time to formalize this group’s relation into
something else a tighter relationship, on top of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>joint propaganda signatures, and the mutual opening up of our
publications.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Recent
years have plunged the historic organizations of the Communist Left through
several crises: dismemberment of the ICP; major crises (with an "s")
of the ICC; the crisis of IBRP/ICT to organise themselves effectively with the
appearance of precarious groups and their disappearance of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>without much comment, with no
interventions or poor ones (B & P, IWG), the split of the IOD. In short,
the proletarian camp suffered more attacks it gives. Not to mention the
appearance of groups claiming to be members of the CL making an appeal, then
quickly being reduced to silence (the Australians, for example). Of course,
these were not only deceptions. The ICT and the ICC arrived to integrate new
cells; but it does not appear that the call has truly paid off. The ICC
continues on its downward slope while the ICT<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>seems to lack the capacity for true international
intervention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So,
it seems to us that addressing the direction of the proletarian camp is our
responsibility. If the ICC is slowly moving towards the enemy camp confusing in
its various interventions; and if the ICT is unable to find the drive to become
a pole of regroupment although occasionally it seems so (ex: RP no.59),
sometimes not (ex: its policy towards us) - then why don’t we start to organize
ourselves together to work towards this grouping?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
regards to our two groups, we are already in agreement on several points even
so we have to significantly deepen these.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">You
come back, in fact, in your activity report, to discussions between the IBRP
and IFICC, discussions on consciousness that we ourselves planned to begin with
inside the IC-K. Unfortunately, we only discussed it in surface. This is a
discussion that we could also conduct with you, although we can glimpse an
agreement in advance,due to the fact that: neither of us are councilist or
bordiguist. However, this has never been stated and furthermore is necessary to
debate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">On
the other hand, concerning the legacy of the partyist Italian left, we can say
with more confidence that it acts as the main reference for the IC-K with
respect to its programmatic positions, though we consider the council communist
tendency, which evolved into councilism, as belonging to the history of the
Communist Left as well despite his abandonment of the Marxists principle of the
organization of the international working class avant-garde into a class party.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">With
regard to the organizational conception of federalist type of the ICT, we fully
share the criticism because we ourselves suffer its’ backwash with the IWG. We
consider the centralization of the ICC as being more effective, less
problematic, even if there is always danger of an executive maneuver seizing
the reins of the organization as is the case currently in the ICC. Therefore,
if some militants were able to take on a direction of this<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sort, it means at some point that the
self-study of organisational frameworks has work failed to meet the operational
needs of the organization. In effect, provided that it is possible to do so,
executives of a Marxist organization must develop fairly evenly to both taking
turn at tasks;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>staying vigilant,
reporting on our interventions (so that positions remain firmly on class
terrain); and keeping an eye on the operations of the Executive Committees. The
recent programmatic mistakes of the ICC can suggests that a takeover just
seasoned the original positions of the organization is currently in work and
little framed by militants with more experience. However, we miss the operation
of internal self-study of the ICC and cannot say more on this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let’s continue
: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Like
you, we claim fundamental analyses of the ICC - prior to its liquidation - and
Marxism as the alternative "imperialist war or proletarian
revolution" and we defend the notion of historic course as the ICC has
defined and refined in the years 1970-1980. Thus, we share with you this
observation that the historic course is towards class confrontation,
understanding the shortfall in the organisation of the proletariat running
against the time in ongoing class struggle and especially the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in terms of the upcoming confronation
(threat of global war).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also,
it seems more relevant to take at into account this statement of yours and take
the opportunity to point out the merits of a merger between our two groups:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">“<i>For any communist organization, the
intervention towards the class – publications, leaflets, communiques, etc... –
in the historical situation, in the workers struggles indeed but not only, is a
central dimension of its activity what ever is its size and its immediate
influence. It must be a permanent concern that only the concrete conditions of
its realization – real state of the militant forces, relation of forces between
the classes, degree of the repression of the enemy class and its State
apparatus which is precisely determined by that relation of forces – can limit
the extend and the intensity.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>Linked and in coherence with our
vision of the construction of the party, in particular in accordance with the
understanding that any communist group must set up itself as an <b>international
and centralized</b></i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i> organization, as an embryo of communist party, the
intervention has to be international and historical which doesn't exclude, and
even all the contrary do favour, its indispensable “declension” at the
immediate and local levels according to the circumstances. Believing that
resolute intervention, and thus the effort and even the political fight for its
realization, is not but for the party of tomorrow because the weakness of both
the workers struggles and the militant forces, their influence in the class –
what is the point of mobilizing and contributing so much efforts to distribute
a few thousands leaflets which won't change nothing to the situation since
“nobody reads us” ? – turns the back to the responsibilities of the
political vanguard of the proletariat. At their turn, these reluctances,
hesitations, doubts – as expressions of the wrong understanding of the role of
class consciousness in the classes struggle, in particular expressions of
political concessions to anti-party and a-political visions which belong to the
opportunist political current Lenin defined as “economism”, we today qualify as
“councilism” – come to reinforce and to worsen the initial lack of militant
conviction and to weaken it even more. It is also at that level that the “danger
of councilism” manifests itself as the ICC had defined it in the years 1980
(see </i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">International Review <i>40 : <span style="color: #c40e00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><a href="http://en.internationalism.org/node/2971">The function of revolutionary organizations: The danger of councilism</a></span>) and as such it is exerted
within the very proletarian camp and its political organizations. In that
sense, at the level of the “external” intervention as well as at the level of
the “internal” functioning – see the first part about why a report ? – we
claim a party method, included for a small group as our.”</i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
IC-K also considers:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">“<i>that the question of the
revolutionaries' regroupment cannot be posed but in the theoretical and
political framework of the Communist Left and the supporters of the
fundamental, indispensable, essential, crucial role of the Communist Party as
political vanguard and leadership of the proletariat. From this, all the
“councilist” milieu can't but oppose to the process towards the formation of
the Party and becoming objectively the relay for the ideological and political
themes of the bourgeoisie.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
It is also said that the prospect of a grouping for the
IC-K, despite the present difficulties of conflict, is currently with the
Internationalist Communist Tendency.<o:p></o:p></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 11px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="padding: .75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt; width: 7.8pt;" valign="top" width="8"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
well it’s important for us to note that in this regard, this regroupment is not
opportunistic because, if make a balance sheet of the relationship between our
two groups, we can say that we have been corresponding for almost 6 years –
through agreements (joint interventions) and critiques (Contribution); We share
essentially the same programmatic positions (Italian heritage, the original ICC
platform) and that we were already able to speak with a single voice in the
past. Similarly, despite the differences that we have with you (some critiques
of our leaflets, brochures, or<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>most important political mistakes as with the 'Contribution'), we are
still remained connected, as we continued to defend the spirit of the FICL
(especially in facing Internationalist Voice). It seems so logical and even
essential to start a process of discussion leading our own groups abilitiy, to
intervene more effectively both within the proletarian struggles and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>within the proletarian camp (ITC, TCI)
along with you!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">If
you agree, we could implement an initial plan and timetable in this respect, as
well as the terms and conditions under which to operate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fraternally,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
IC-K<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Note :
</span><span lang="FR" style="color: #454545; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">One parenthesis however, we consider that there is always
a real revolutionary movement known as the Communist Left, which claims programmatic
contributions from successive fractions of the Third International Left and
offshoots with roots in both the Italian Left and the Germano-Dutch left,
unlike the Internationalist Communist Tendency which currently
seems to use the name "communist internationalist."-</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-73082142572980835532013-01-22T10:56:00.000-05:002013-01-22T10:56:05.409-05:00In Africa, France is the Gendarme of Europe against the USA and its acolytes<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">
<!--StartFragment-->
</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span lang="FR">The <a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php">Fraction of the International Communist Left</a> published the article below with which we are in agreement</span><span lang="FR" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span lang="FR" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"></span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Internationalist Communists - Klasbatalo </span></div>
<div style="font: 12.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Times; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">************************************</span></div>
<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">
<!--StartFragment-->
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">War in Mali</span></i></b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b> <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<span lang="FR" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<b>In Africa, France is the Gendarme of Europe against
the USA and its acolytes</b></div>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">France's military intervention in Mali
marks an important stage in the evolution of the relations between the main
great imperialist powers of the world. This war expresses the brutal worsening
of the imperialist rivalries that the economical capitalist crisis imposes upon
all national bourgeoisies. Unable to resolve the economical contradictions of
their system, each national capital, each State, each ruling class, is
inescapably thrown against all the others in a frantic and barbarous race for
its own survival on the world arena. The only and unique “response” to the
crisis that capitalism can bring is the perspective of generalized imperialist
war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Workers, proletarians, and other
exploited, of France, Europe and elsewhere would be wrong to let themselves
convinced, and above all to let themselves carried, by the
« humanist » and « democratic » argumentation of a
« war against terrorism ». The terrorists they talk about, the
Islamic groups, have been created and maintained above all by the great powers
since now several decades via the financing and other supports from countries
like Saudi Arabia (which, we can be sure, works for Washington), Algeria, Qatar
and others. The « terrorists » and the barbarous are the ones and the
others ! Regarding terrorism, the great imperialist powers are like the
pyromaniac firemen who shout « fire ! » after having setting
it !<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Through taking the initiative of a
military intervention in Mali in the name of « war against
terrorism », French imperialism takes back to its own account, and in an
other situation, the American policy of Bush, father and son, in Iraq –
initiative of a « moral » war for defending their sordid imperialist
interests in order to oblige their main rivals to side with them and to support
them. Fundamentally, France aims at taking advantage of the present weakening
of the American bourgeoisie – at the imperialist and economical levels – to
regain the positions it was losing in Africa to the benefit precisely of the US
and others powers like China – this later being incapable of intervening
militarily in this region. Besides the direct economical interests – control of
the resources and richnesses of this area –, the French bourgeoisie aims also
at carrying on its counter-offensive initiated with the war in Libya and to
thus ensure a generalized lining up of the African countries of the
Mediterranean surrounds to its imperialist policy. Already, it seems it has
achieved some of its goals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The intervention in Mali is compelling
Algeria to give up its autonomous imperialist policy in the region – up to now,
it « allowed », not to say that it utilized for its own account, some
Islamic groups – and to go along with the French intervention. The
authorization of flying over its territory for the French air force has marked
its desertion of the Islamic groups. The reaction of these latter has been
brutal and bloody – taking hostages in In Amenas – and have sped up even more
the lining up of the Algerian bourgeoisie to French policy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The American, English and Japanese
bourgeoisies were not mistaken and the bloody counter-attack of the Algerian
army to the Gas site gave them the occasion – a small one – to manifest their
opposition to the French intervention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">But the French bourgeoisie doesn't only
aim at regaining the lost influence in sub-Saharan and at consolidating the lining
up of the Mediterranean countries from North Africa behind its imperialist
policy. By defending its interests, it also defends the interests of the
bourgeoisies of “continental” Europe whose central axis is Germany. This
latter, with Italy, Spain, Belgium – just for quoting the main countries –
support politically and militarily the French military intervention. Certainly,
it is true that the French bourgeoisie attempts also to strengthen its
political weight within European Union. It is also true that it attempts to
re-equilibrate a little in its favor the German-French relationship through the
use of its military card, unique in Europe, and by pushing to a “European
defense” in which it could not but have a primordial role. Nevertheless it
remains that the major political fact is that the other European bourgeoisies
fully join the French bourgeoisie in its imperialist assertion of a continental
Europe against its rivals – the first one being the USA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">As the refusal of these countries to
participate to the 2nd American war in Iraq in 2003, the assertion of the
European imperialist interests brought by France on the African continent and
on the Mediterranean surrounds, as well as the discussion for a European
defense, do mark an additional moment of the dynamic of imperialist
polarization around two axis : an American one, the other German-European.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">For the proletarians, for the workers,
there is nothing good in this dynamic of growing imperialist
confrontations : besides the wars and massacres, besides the use of terror
and terrorism – the medias and the bourgeois specialists have not cease to
proclaim that there are going to have still more bombings and taking of
hostages, included in the very heart of the main capitalist countries –, the
increasing militarization and the development of the armament production – the
setting up of a “European defense” for instance – will come yet to add to the
burden of capitalist crisis the working class must pay for at the cost of an
increased and exhausting exploitation, of unemployment and misery, of
repression and State terror. For the proletarians, nothing good but the
perspective of generalized war, of barbarity every where and sacrifices of all
kinds up to the final one, the one of their life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Who is barbarous and terrorist ?
Capitalism ! It is up to the proletarians to oppose it by refusing the
sacrifices of all kind in order to end up with it and to set up their own
power. Only the proletarian revolution, the destruction of the capitalist State
and the exertion of working class' political power, in brief the class war
against the terrorist and barbarous bourgeoisie, will open the path for an
other society without misery and without war : Communism !<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">January 20th, 2013<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The Fraction of the International
Communist Left<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-87469232005023620912012-12-27T14:12:00.000-05:002012-12-26T16:29:35.979-05:00The organisation of the proletariat outside periods of open struggle (workers' groups, nuclei, circles, committees)<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<!--StartFragment-->
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Internationalist Communists
Klasbatalo have no organizational links with the International Communist
Current and don’t share all of their political positions. We reproduce this
text because we agree with it.<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> The text mentions committees, circles, groups, etc. We could also put
Autonomous popular Assembly of District or city.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR-CA;">Internationalist
Communists Klasbatalo<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(ICK)</span><!--EndFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
*******************************************<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
The organisation of the proletariat outside periods of
open struggle (workers' groups, nuclei, circles, committees)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">(This <a href="http://en.internationalism.org/worldrevolution/201209/5113/organisation-proletariat-outside-periods-open-struggle-workers-groups-nu">text</a> was adopted by the 3rd
Congress of Internationalisme, the ICC's section in Belgium, February 1980.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">What is to be done outside times of
open struggle? How should we organise when the strike is finished? How to
prepare the struggles to come?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Faced with this question, faced
with the problems posed by the existence of committees, circles, nuclei, etc,
regrouping small minorities of the working class, we have no recipes to
provide. We cannot choose between giving them moral lessons (‘organise
yourselves like this or that’, ‘dissolve yourselves’, ‘join us’) and
demagogically flattering them. Instead, our concern is this: to understand
these minority expressions of the proletariat as a part of the whole class. If
we situate them in the general movement of the class struggle; if we see that
they are strictly linked to the strengths and weaknesses of different periods
in this struggle between the classes, then, in this way, we’ll be able to
understand to what general necessity they are a response. By neither remaining
politically imprecise in relation to them, nor by imprisoning ourselves inside
rigid schemas, we’ll also be able to grasp what their positive aspects are and
be able to point out what dangers lie in wait for them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>Characteristics of the
workers struggle in decadent capitalism<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Our first concern in understanding
this problem must be to recall the general, historical context within which we
find ourselves. We must remember the nature of this historic period (the period
of social revolutions) and the characteristics of the class struggle in
decadence. This analysis is fundamental because it allows us to understand the
type of class organisation that can exist in such a period.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Without going into all the details,
let’s recall simply that the proletariat in the nineteenth century existed as
an organised force in a permanent way. The proletariat unified itself as a
class through an economic and political struggle for reforms. The progressive
character of the capitalist system allowed the proletariat to bring pressure
to bear on the bourgeoisie in order to obtain reforms, and for this, large
masses of the working class regrouped within unions and parties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In the period of capitalism’s
senility, the characteristics and the forms of organisation of the class
changed. A quasi-permanent mobilisation of the proletariat around its immediate
and political interests was no longer possible, nor viable. Henceforward, the
permanent </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>unitary organs</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> of the class </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>were
no longer able to exist </b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldItalicMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><i>except</i></b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b> in the
course of the struggle itself</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">. From this time on, the function of these
unitary organs could no longer be limited to simply ‘negotiating’ an
improvement in the proletariat’s living conditions (because an improvement was
no longer possible over the long term and because the only realistic answer was
that of revolution). Their task was to prepare for the seizure of power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The unitary organs of the
dictatorship of the proletariat are the workers’ councils. These organs possess
a certain number of characteristics which we must make clear if we are to grasp
the entire process which leads to the self-organisation of the proletariat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Thus, we must clearly show that the
councils are a direct expression of working class struggle. They arise in a
spontaneous (but not mechanical) way from out of this struggle. This is why
they are intimately tied to the development and maturity of the struggle. They
draw from it their substance and their vitality. They don’t constitute, then, a
simple ‘delegation’ of power, a parody of Parliament, but are truly the
organised expression of the whole working class and its power. Their task isn’t
to organise a proportional representation of social groupings, or political
parties, but allow the will of the proletariat to realise itself practically.
It’s through them that all the decisions are taken. That is the reason why the
workers must constantly keep control of them (the revocability of delegates) by
means of the General Assemblies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Only the workers’ councils are
capable of realising the living identification between the immediate struggle
and the final goal. In this liaison between the struggle for immediate
interests and the struggle for political power, the councils establish the
objective and subjective basis for the revolution. They constitute, par
excellence, the crucible of class consciousness. The constitution of the
proletariat in councils is not then a simple question of a form of
organisation, but is the product of the development of the struggle and of
class consciousness. </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>The appearance of the councils isn’t the
fruit of organisational recipes, of prefabricated structures, of intermediate
organs</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The more and more conscious
extension and centralisation of struggles, beyond the factories and beyond
frontiers, cannot be artificial, voluntarist action. To be convinced of the
correction of this idea, it’s sufficient to recall the experience of the AAUD
and its artificial attempt to unite and centralise the ‘factory organisations’
in a period when the struggle was in reflux. <span style="color: #c63500; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><a href="http://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftn1">[1]</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The Councils can only continue to
exist when the permanent, open struggle continues to exist, signifying the
participation of an ever-growing number of workers in the struggle. Their
appearance is essentially a function of the development of the struggle itself
and of the development of class consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>The attempts to bridge a
gap<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">But we are not yet in a period of
permanent struggle, in a revolutionary context which would allow the
proletariat to organise itself in workers’ councils. The constitution of the
proletariat in councils is</span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b> </b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">the result of
objective conditions (the depth of the crisis, the historic course) and
subjective conditions (the maturity of the struggle and the consciousness of
the class). It is the result of an entire apprenticeship, a whole maturation,
which is as much organisational as it is political.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">We must be conscious that this
maturation, this political fermentation, doesn’t unfold in a well-designated
straight line. It expresses itself instead as a fiery, impetuous, confused
process within a jostling, jerky movement. It demands the active participation
of revolutionary minorities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Since it is incapable of acting
mechanically in accordance with abstract principles, preconceived plans or
voluntarist schemes detached from reality, the proletariat must forge its unity
and consciousness by means of a painful apprenticeship. Incapable of regrouping
all its forces on a preordained day, it consolidates its ranks in the course of
the battle itself. </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>It forms its ‘army’ within the conflict
itself</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">. But in the course of the struggle it forms in its ranks
more combative elements, a more determined vanguard. These elements don’t
necessarily regroup themselves within the revolutionary organisation (because,
in certain periods, it is virtually unknown). The appearance of these combative
minorities within the proletariat, whether before or after open struggles,
isn’t an incomprehensible or new phenomenon. It really expresses the irregular
character of the struggle, the unequal and heterogeneous development of class
consciousness. Thus, since the end of the 1960’s, we’ve witnessed, at one and
the same time, the development of the struggle (in the sense of its greater self-organisation),
a reinforcement of revolutionary minorities, and the appearance of committees,
nuclei, circles, etc, trying to regroup a working class avant-garde. The
development of a coherent political pole of regroupment, and the tendency for
the proletariat to try to organise itself outside the unions, both issue from
the same maturation of the struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The appearance of these committees,
circles, etc, truly responds to a necessity within the struggle. If some
combative elements sense the need to remain grouped together after they’ve been
struggling together, they do so with the aim of simultaneously continuing to
‘act together’ (the eventual preparation of a new strike) and of drawing the
lessons of the struggle (through political discussion). The problem which poses
itself to these workers is </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>as much one of regrouping with a view to
future action as it is of regrouping with a view to clarifying questions posed
by the past struggle and the struggle to come</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">. This attitude
is understandable in the sense that the absence of permanent struggle the
‘bankruptcy’ of the unions, and the very great weakness of revolutionary
organisations creates an organisational and political void. When the working
class returns to the path of its historic struggle, it has a horror of this
void. Therefore, it seeks to reply to the need posed by this organisational and
political void.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">These committees, these nuclei,
these proletarian minorities who still don’t understand clearly their own
function, are a response to this need. They are, at one and the same time, an
expression of the general weakness of today’s class struggle and an expression
of the </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>maturation of the organisation of the class</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">. They
are a crystallisation of a whole subterranean development at work within the proletariat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>The reflux of 1973-77<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">That is why we must be careful not
to lock away these organs in a hermetic, rigidly classified drawer. We cannot
forecast their appearance and development in a totally precise way.
Furthermore, we must be careful not to make artificial separations in the
different moments in the life of these committees, getting ourselves caught in
the false dilemma: ‘action or discussion’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">This said, it must not stop us from
making an intervention towards these organs. We must also be capable of
appreciating their evolution in terms of the period, </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>depending
on whether we are in a phase of renewal or reflux in the struggle</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">.
Because they are a spontaneous, immediate product of the struggle, and because
the appearance of these nuclei is based mainly on conjunctural problems (in
distinction to the revolutionary organisation which appears on the basis of the
historical necessities of the proletariat), this means that they remain very
dependent on the surrounding milieu of the class struggle. They remain more
strongly imprisoned by the general weaknesses of the movement and have a
tendency to follow the ups and downs of the struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">We must make a distinction in the
development of these nuclei between the period of reflux in the struggle
(1973-77) and today’s period of renewed class struggle internationally. While
underlining the fact that the dangers threatening them remain identical in both
periods, we must, nonetheless, be capable of grasping what differences the
change in period implies for their evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">At the end of the first wave of
struggle at the end of the 1960’s, we witnessed the appearance of a whole
series of confusions within the working class. We could measure the extent of
these confusions by examining the attitude of some of the combative elements of
the class, who tried to remain regrouped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">We saw develop:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>the
illusion in fighting unionism and the distrust of anything political</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> (OHK,
AAH, Komiteewerking <a href="http://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftn2"><span style="color: #c63500; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[2]</span></a>
). In many cases, the committees that came out of struggles transformed
themselves, categorically, into semi-unions. This was the case for the workers’
commissions in Spain and the ‘factory councils’ in Italy. Even more often they
just disappeared.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- a very strong </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>corporatism</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> (which
itself constitutes the basis for the illusion in ‘fighting unionism’).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- when attempts were made to go
beyond the limits of the factory, the result was </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>confusion
and a great political eclecticism</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- a very great political confusion
was present, rendering these organs very vulnerable to the manoeuvres of the
leftists, and also allowing them to fall prey to illusions of the type held by
the PIC (cf. their ‘bluff’ about workers’ groups)<a href="http://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftn3"><span style="color: #c63500; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[3]</span></a>.
Also, in the course of this period, the ideology of ‘workers autonomy’
developed, bringing with it an apology for immediatism, factoryism and
economism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">All of these weaknesses were
essentially a function of the weaknesses of the first wave of struggle at the
end of the 60’s. This movement was characterised by a disproportion between the
strength and extension of the strikes and the weakness in the content of the
demands made. What especially indicated this disproportion was the absence of
any clear, political perspective in the movement. The falling-back of the
workers, which happened between 1973 and 1977, was a product of this weakness,
which the bourgeoisie utilised to demobilise and ideologically contain the
struggles. Each of the weak points of the first wave of strikes was
‘recuperated’ by the bourgeoisie to its own profit:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">“</span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>Thus
the idea of a permanent organisation of the class, at one and the same time
economic and political, was transformed later into the idea of ‘new unions’ to
end finally in a return to classical trade unionism. The vision of the General
Assembly as a form independent of any content ended up — via the mystification
concerning direct democracy and popular power – re-establishing trust in
classical bourgeois democracy. Ideas about self-management and workers’ control
of production (confusions which were understandable at the beginning) were
theorised into the myth of ‘generalised self-management’, ‘islands of
communism’ or ‘nationalisation under workers’ control’. All this caused the
workers to put their confidence in plans to restructure the economy, which
would supposedly avoid layoffs or caused them to back national solidarity pacts
presented as a way of ‘getting out of the crisis</i></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">(Report on the Class Struggle
presented to the IIIrd International Congress of the ICC).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>The renewal of struggles
since 1977<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">With the renewal in struggle since
1977, we have seen other tendencies delineate themselves. The proletariat
matured through its ‘defeat’. It had drawn albeit in a confused way, the
lessons of the reflux, and even if the dangers represented by ‘fighting
unionism’, corporatism, etc remain, they exist within a different general
evolution in the struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Since 1977, we have seen the hesitant
development of:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- a more or less marked will on the
part of the avant-garde of combative workers to develop political discussion
(remember the General Assembly of Co-ordinamenti in Turin, the debate at
Antwerp with the workers of Rotterdam, Antwerp, etc, the conference of dockers
in Barcelona. <a href="http://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftn4"><span style="color: #c63500; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[4]</span></a>);<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- the will to enlarge the field of
struggle, </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>to go beyond the ghetto of factoryism</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">, to
give a more global political framework to the struggle. This will expressed
itself through the appearance of the ‘co—ordinamenti’, and more specifically in
the political manifesto produced by one of the co-ordinamenti situated in the
North of Italy (Sesto S. Giovanni). This manifesto demanded the unification of
the combative avant-garde in the factories, spelt out the necessity for a
politically independent struggle by the workers and insisted on the necessity
for the struggle to break out of factory limitations;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- the concern to establish </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>a
link between the immediate aspect of the struggle and the final goal</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">. This
concern was particularly expressed in workers groups in Italy (FIAT) and in
Spain (FEYCU, FORD). The first of these groups intervened by means of a leaflet
to denounce the dangers of layoffs made by the bourgeoisie in the name of
‘fighting terrorism’, and the second intervened to denounce the illusion of
parliamentarism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- the concern to better prepare and
organise the struggles to come (cf. the action of the ‘spokesmen’ group of
dockers in Rotterdam calling for the formation of a General Assembly).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">We must repeat that the dangers of
corporatism, ‘fighting unionism’ and locking-up of the struggle on a strictly
economic terrain continue to exist even within this period. But what we must take
into account is the </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>important influence of the period</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> on the
evolution of the committees and nuclei that appear both before and after open
struggles. When the period is one of combativity and resurgence of class
struggle, the intervention of such minorities takes on a different sense, as
does our attitude toward them. In a period of generalised reflux in the
struggle, we have to insist more on the danger of these organs becoming
transformed into semi-unions, of falling into the clutches of the leftists, of
having illusions in terrorism, etc. In a period of class resurgence we insist
more on the dangers represented by voluntarism and activism (see the illusions
expressed in this connection in the manifesto of the co-ordinamenti of Sesto S.
Giovanni), and by the illusion which some of these combative workers may have
about the possibility of forming the embryos of future strike committees, etc.
In a period of renewal in the struggle, we will also be more open to combative
minorities which appear and regroup with a view to calling for strikes and the
formation of strike committees, General Assemblies, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>The possibilities of these
organs<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The concern to situate the
committees, nuclei, etc, in the cauldron of the class struggle, to understand
them in terms of the period in which they appear, doesn’t imply, however,
abruptly changing our analysis in the wake of the different stages in the class
struggle. Whatever the mo5ent that gives birth to these committees, we know
that they </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>constitute only one stage in a dynamic, general
process</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> they are one moment in the maturation of the
organisation and consciousness of the class. They can only have a positive role
when they give themselves a broad, supple framework to work within, in order
not to freeze the general process. This is why these organs must be vigilant if
they are to avoid falling into the following traps:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- imagining that they constitute a
structure which can prepare the way for the appearance of strike committees or
councils;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- imagining themselves to be invested
with a sort of ‘potentiality’ which can develop future struggles. (It isn’t the
minorities who artificially create a strike or cause a General Assembly or a
committee to appear, even though they do have an active intervention to make in
this process).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- giving themselves a platform or
statutes or anything else that risks freezing their evolution and thus
condemning them to political confusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">- presenting themselves as
intermediate organs, half-way between the class and a political organisation,
as if they were an organisation that is at one and the same time unitary and
political.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">This is why our attitude towards
these minority organs remains open, but at the same time tries to influence the
evolution of </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>political reflection</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> in their midst,
and this whatever the period in which we find ourselves. We must try our
hardest to ensure that these committees, nuclei, etc. don’t freeze up, either
in one direction (a structure which imagines itself to prefigure the workers’
councils) or another (political fixation). Before all else, what must guide us
in our intervention is not the interests and the conjunctural concerns of these
organs (since we can’t suggest to them any organisational recipes nor any
ready-made answers), </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>but the general interests of the whole
class</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">. Our concern is always to homogenise and develop class
consciousness in such a way that the development of the class struggle happens
with a greater, more massive participation of all workers, and that the
struggle is taken in-hand by the workers themselves and not by a minority, no
matter what type it may be. It is for this reason that we insist on the dynamic
of the movement and that we put the combative elements on their guard against
any attempt at substitutionism or anything that might block the later
development of the struggle and of class consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In orientating the evolution of
these organs in one direction (reflection and political discussion), rather
than another, we can give a response which will be favourable to the dynamic of
the movement. But let it be well-understood that this doesn’t signify that we
condemn any form of ‘intervention’ or ‘action’ undertaken by these organs. It
is obvious that the instant a group of combative workers understands that the
task isn’t to act to constitute themselves as a semi-union, but rather to draw
the political lessons of the past struggles, this doesn’t imply that their
political reflection is going to happen in an ethereal vacuum, in the abstract,
without any-practical consequences. The political clarification undertaken by
these combative workers will also push them to act together within their own
factory (and in the most positive of cases, even outside their own factory).
They will feel the necessity to give a material, political expression to their
political reflection (leaflets, newspapers, etc). They will feel the need to
take up positions in relation to the concrete issues that face the working
class. In order to defend and disseminate their positions, they will thus have
to make a </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>concrete intervention</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">. In certain
circumstances they will propose concrete means of action (formation of General
Assemblies, strike committees…) to advance the struggle. In the course of the
struggle itself, they will sense the necessity for a concerted effort to
develop a certain orientation for the struggle; they will support demands that
will permit the struggle to extend itself and they will insist on the necessity
for its enlargement, generalisation, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Even though we remain attentive to
these efforts and don’t try to lay down rigid schemas for them to follow,
nonetheless it is clear that we must continue to insist on the fact that what
counts the most is the active participation of all the workers in the struggle,
and that the combative workers should at no time substitute themselves for
their comrades in the organisation and co-ordination of the strike. Moreover,
it is also clear that the more the organisation of revolutionaries increases
its influence within the struggles, the more the combative elements will turn
toward it. Not because the organisation will have a policy of forcibly
recruiting these elements, but quite simply because the combative workers
themselves will become conscious that a political intervention, which is really
active and effective, can only be made in the framework of such an
international organisation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #4c4c4c; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>The intervention of
revolutionaries<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">All that glitters isn’t gold. To
point out that the working class in its struggle can cause more combative
elements to appear doesn’t mean affirming that the impact of these minorities
is decisive for the later development of class consciousness. We must not make
this absolute identification: an expression of the maturation of consciousness
= an active factor in its development.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In reality the influence which
these nuclei can have in the later unfolding of the struggle is very limited.
Their influence entirely depends on the general combativity of the proletariat
and of the capacity of these nuclei to pursue without let-up this work of
political clarification. In the long-term, this work cannot be followed except
within the framework of a revolutionary organisation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">But here again, we’ve no mechanism
to drop in place. It’s not in an artificial manner that the revolutionary
organisation wins these elements. Contrary to the ideas of organisations like
Battaglia Communista or the PIC, the ICC does not seek to fill-in, in an
artificial, voluntarist manner, ‘the gap’ between the party and the class. Our
understanding of the working class as a historic force, and our comprehension
of our own role prevents us from wanting to freeze these committees into the
form of an intermediate structure. Nor do we seek to create ‘factory groups’ as
transmission belts between the class and the party.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">This presents us with the question
of determining what our attitude to such circles, committees, etc should be.
Even while recognising their limited influence and their weaknesses, we must
remain open to them and attentive to their appearance. The most important thing
that we propose to them is that they open up widely to discussions. At no time,
do we adopt toward them a distrustful or condemnatory attitude under the
pretext of reacting against their political ‘impurity’. So that’s one thing we
should avoid; another is to avoid flattering them or even uniquely
concentrating our energies on them. We mustn’t ignore workers’ groups, but
equally we mustn’t become obsessive about them. We recognise that the struggle
matures and class-consciousness develops in a process.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Within this process, tendencies
exist within the class that attempt to ‘hoist’ the struggle onto a political
terrain. In the course of this process, we know that the proletariat will give
rise to combative minorities within itself, but they won’t necessarily organise
themselves within political organisations. We must be careful not to identify
this process of maturation in the class today with what characterised the
development of the struggle last century. This understanding is very important
because it permits us to appreciate in what way these committees, circles, etc
are a real expression of the maturation of class consciousness, but an
expression which is, above all, </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>temporary and ephemeral</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> and not
a fixed, structured organisational rung in the development of the class
struggle. The class struggle in the period of capitalist decadence advances
explosively. Sudden eruptions appear which surprise even those elements who
were the most combative in the proceeding round of struggle, and these
eruptions can immediately go beyond previous experience in terms of the
consciousness and maturity developed in the new struggle. The proletariat can
only really organise itself on a unitary level within the struggle. To the
extent that the struggle itself becomes permanent, it causes the unitary
organisations of the class to grow and become stronger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;">This understanding is what allows
us to grasp why we don’t have a specific policy, a special ‘tactic’ in relation
to workers’ committees, even though in; certain circumstances it can be very
positive for us to begin and systematically continue discussions with them, and
to participate in their meetings. We know that it is possible and increasingly
easy to discuss with these combative elements (particularly when open struggle
isn’t taking place). We are also aware that certain of these elements may want
to join us, but we don’t focus all our attention on them. Because what is of
primary importance for us, is the general dynamic of the struggle, and we don’t
set up any rigid classifications or hierarchies within this dynamic. Before
everything, we address ourselves to the working class as a whole. Contrary to
other political groups who try to surmount the problem of the lack of influence
of revolutionary minorities in the class by artificial methods and by feeding
themselves on illusions about these workers’ groups, the ICC recognises that it
has very little impact in the present period. We don’t try to increase our
influence among the workers by giving them artificial ‘confidence’ in us. We aren’t
workerist, nor are we megalomaniacs. The influence which we will progressively
develop within the struggles will come essentially from our </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>political
practice</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> inside these struggles and not from our acting as
toadies, or flatterers, or as ‘water-carriers’ who restrict themselves to
performing technical tasks. Furthermore, we address our political intervention
to all the workers, to the proletariat taken as a whole, as a class, because
our fundamental task is to call for the maximum extension of the struggles. We
don’t exist in order to feel satisfied at winning the confidence of two or
three horny-handed worker but to homogenise and accelerate the development of
the consciousness of the class. It’s necessary to be aware that it will only be
in the revolutionary process itself that the proletariat will accord us its
political ‘confidence’ to the extent that it realises that the revolutionary
party really makes up </span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial-BoldMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>a part</b></span><span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> of its historic
struggle.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><a href="http://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftnref1"><span style="color: #c63500; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[1]</span></a><span style="color: #333333;"> AAUD: Allgemeine Arbeiter Union Deutschlands, ‘General
Workers Union of Germany’. The ‘Unions’ weren’t trade unions, but attempts to
create permanent forms of organisation regrouping all the workers outside and
against the unions, in Germany in the years following the crushing of the 1919
Berlin insurrection. They expressed nostalgia for the workers councils, but
never succeeded in carrying out the function of the councils.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><a href="http://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftnref2"><span style="color: #c63500; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[2]</span></a>
These were all workers groups in Belgium.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><a href="http://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftnref3"><span style="color: #c63500; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[3]</span></a>
The French group PIC (Pour Une Intervention Communiste) was for several months
convinced - and tried to convince everyone else - that it was participating in
the development of a network of ‘workers groups’ which would constitute a
powerful avant-garde of the revolutionary movement. They based this illusion on
the skeletal reality of two or three groups largely made-up of ex-leftist
elements. There’s not much left of this bluff today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><a href="http://en.internationalism.org/ir/021_workers_groups.html#_ftnref4"><span style="color: #c63500; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">[4]</span></a>
These are organised meetings regrouping delegates from different workers
groups, collectives and committees.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-31401702799516049572012-09-12T11:21:00.000-04:002012-09-13T10:46:05.391-04:00The Historical Perspective of « Communism » is the Key of the Proletariat's Present Struggles<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<h4>
Fraction of the
International Communist Left has published its <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php">bulletin #9</a></span> of August 15, 2012 We publish
the article below with which we are totally in agreement.</h4>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Times-Roman; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Internationalist Communists – Klasbatalo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><i>Warning </i></b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>: the
translations into English we do, are made by comrades whose knowledge of this
language is very relative.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>Thus, besides the lack of easiness for the
reading, our English texts may present some mistakes and confusions which
aren't political but "technical". One can refer to the <a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index.php">French version</a>.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span lang="FR"><b>The Historical Perspective of « Communism »
is the Key of the Proletariat's Present Struggles</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Forced to mention the workers mobilization
around the struggle of the Spanish miners – they could not ignore them unless
risking to discredit themselves – , the bourgeois media hasten to silence again
on this event after the miners' demonstration in Madrid (July 11th) taking
advantage the holidays summer period and the Olympic Games. The censorship that
the international media exert over the workers reactions to the crisis is an
illustration of the threat that the dynamic of international workers struggles
represents for the capitalist order and which particularly runs through Europe.
After Greece, it is thus the turn of the Iberian Peninsula, in Spain, in
Portugal, where the proletariat is obliged to attempt to react in front of the
conditions of living which are now imposed on it. And the silence exerted by
the ruling class, doesn't change anything to the reality of the various workers
responses of this summer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">After Greece, the workers mobilization around
the Asturian miners' struggle tended to focus the attention of the
international proletariat and has embodied a centre of agitation in Spain for
all workers. The massive participation of the workers population of Madrid to
the “Marcha negra” [the “Black March”] of the miners as well as the warm
reception they received in the whole country, reveal the fact that all Spanish
workers tended to identify with this fight and were conscious of the need for a
united response of all sectors and all regions to face the State. The use of a
class violence to defend itself in front of the bourgeois repression, the
attempts to paralyse the functioning of the State and the capitalist economy
through the blockage of transportations and the occupation of the cities of the
mine region, has shown to all the path to follow and it is precisely in this
that the whole Spanish proletariat recognizes itself. Also, this mobilization
of an “historical” sector of the working class, with a “tradition” of decades
of struggles whether under the Spanish Republic in the years 1930 as well as under
Franco's dictatorship in the following years, has definitively shown the
“limits” of the famous movement of the “indignados” [“indignous”, the Spanish
version, and first one, of the “Occupy Wall Street” movements] and, actually,
the example-trap that it represented for the proletariat's struggle. The miners
of the Asturias recalled to everybody that the fight against the capitalist
attacks due to the crisis is not a fight of “citizens” for a better democracy,
but well and truly a fight of an exploited class against another ruling and
exploiter class whether it is “democratic” or no.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">For this, the miners' struggle and the
mobilization it has led to in the whole country, is an example to follow, a
path to take back in all countries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nevertheless, we must also note that this
mobilization – up to today, the miners have globally stop their strike without
having get something and the austerity measures carry on falling on the Spanish
working class – has not emerged on a raising of the class fight against the bourgeoisie
and its State up to shake the latter and oblige it, at least momentarily, to
withdraw its economical attacks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Why the workers anger which is real,
generalized, why the willingness for fighting, the feeling we must struggle
altogether, have not succeeded to modify significantly the relation of forces
between the classes ? The workers demonstration in Madrid, despite its
success and the reinforcements of the workers population of the Spanish
capital, has finished into an impasse and a kind of an end – at least for the
moment. Why ? Is this due to the fact the unions have kept the control
over the workers mobilization, over the organization of the March to Madrid,
over the slogans and the demands – often regionalist and corporatist ? Due
to the fact they have also partly succeeded in turning back against the workers
the use of self-defence in front of repression by making it a myth and a goal
in itself, thus limiting at the maximum any risk of real extension and
generalization of the movement ? Indeed, the unions and the Left political
forces have played a role and made all they could to enclose the workers into
their specificities of “miners” and in the “save our region” - and
unfortunately no communist group could, or didn't want</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">(Note 1)</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">, intervene and oppose
besides the workers to the unions dead-ends and sabotages ; none could
advance alternative slogans and alternative perspectives of action. But this is
not enough to explain the limits of the present workers struggles – since the
limits of the mobilization in Spain are more or less the same as the ones the
international proletariat faces almost everywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Why the role of the bourgeoisie's agents in
the workers ranks as the unions, the Left parties and the leftists, and their
action are not enough to explain that the working class doesn't succeed up to
now to rise its struggle at the level which is required by the situation
(gravity of the capitalist crisis and the attacks) ? While never in
capitalism history – we do weigh our words – the <b>objective </b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">conditions have so
much favoured the evolution of the relation of forces between the classes in
favour of the proletariat. Never in capitalism history, the bourgeoisie had to
attack the proletariat with such a strength– we only are at its beginnings – and
with such a frontal manner, in all countries and in all sectors, at the same
time, while the whole working class – though suffering the ceaseless false
plugging of bourgeois ideology – remains far from supporting the great
nationalist, democratic, anti-terrorist, anti-fascist or other themes of this
ideology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">These frontal and massive attacks aren't but
beginning and are even going to increase, not only because the economical
crisis is insolvable from the capitalist oint of view but also precisely
because the bourgeoisie has no other choice than to press that the whole
society mobilizes and compromises in a new generalized imperialist war. This
other “historical perspective”, the one “offered” by the bourgeoisie, implies
even before its starting new and terrible sacrifices. But, up to today, and
contrary to 1914 and 1939, the working class is not ready to accept and to
adhere to this march towards generalized war. Thus, while the objective
historical conditions (the more and more obvious bankruptcy of capitalism, the
historical weakening of the ruling class...) have never been so favourable, we
repeat it, why the proletariat is it still unable to take advantage of this
situation in order to turn the situation in its own favour ? Why, whereas
its illusions about capitalism and bourgeois democracy are falling down under
the strikes of the attacks by the bourgeois States ? What is it
missing ? What does it suffer of ?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">The essential weakness of the international
proletariat – the workers struggles in Greece and now in Spain demonstrate it –
lies at the level of its class consciousness, at the level of the extent and
the deepness of this one in its ranks. At the very moment it regains, in its
masses, the consciousness that it is a single and same class, it carries on
suffering the huge and deep impact of the anti-communism campaigns which have
above all followed the collapse of stalinism and which rely on the false
assimilation of genuine communism to the stalinist dictatorship and to the
USSR. Since, with its campaigns ceaseless dealt out, the bourgeoisie does all
it can to make us believe that “communism is dead” and above all that there is
no alternative to capitalism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">One fact is significant and goes beyond a
simple detail : the images of the massive demonstration in Madrid show a
flowering of regionalist or unionist banners but no red flags – what ever is
their utilization by the leftists. This a particular illustration of the fact
that consciousness, as diffuse and confuse it can be in the workers ranks, that
another society is possible and that capitalism has to be destroyed, is
particularly reduced and in great part lacking in the workers mobilization.
Inevitably, this has a negative impact for the development (in extension, in
unity and in deepness) of the workers fights of today. Without this historical
perspective whether it be more or less clear and present in the class, the
proletariat's struggle can't rise up to what the situation requires. Without
historical perspective, it is deeply weakened up to the very level of its
immediate and daily struggles which have no chance to make the bourgeoisie
withdraws – in particular today when the capitalist system is bankrupted. Since
the need for paralysing the bourgeoisie and its State power, it means to
confront it politically and to dispute it its power, loses its foundation
without the consciousness that the proletariat is a class whose future is to
overthrow capitalism, make disappear the classes and set up communism through
the exercise of its own class power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">It is all the difficulty of the class fights
of today as well as their limit. This weakness also expresses itself at the
level of the proletariat's political vanguard in particular through the absence
of influence of the living communist minorities. Of course, the groups and
organizations which claim communism, define themselves according to this
perspective. Nevertheless they have also suffered from the post-1989
anti-communist campaigns. In particular, political opportunism have exerted
ravages in their ranks as illustrates it the example of the catastrophic
political drift of the ICC</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">(Note 2)</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> which openly manifested since 2001. Besides this,
sectarianism carries on hitting the existing groups and weaken their difficulty
to assume the tasks of political confrontations and debates in order to favour
the indispensable regroupment of forces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">In that sense, the fact that various
individuals and circles, often stemming from... the ICC, take over the
anti-communist campaigns of the bourgeoisie adding their contribution and their
“supposed” authority on the subject for having been militant in the ranks of
the Communist Left during decades, comes also to weaken directly the communist
camp and its organizations. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px;">All this implies that the great proletarian masses, with
the determined support of their most conscious and most militant minorities
which are the communist political groups, must regain the perspective of the
proletarian revolution and of communism. This way passes through the return to
the workers and communist generations of the past ; for the whole
international proletariat, it passes through taking back the path of the
workers fights free from the democratic lies and illusions ; for the
organized communist minorities, besides their decided intervention in the
workers struggles to which they can participate, it passes through the defence
of the workers experiences of the past, and all specially the defence of the
1917 Russian Revolution, of the workers insurrection, of the exercise of the
proletarian dictatorship ; the defence of the bolshevik party of Lenin
that the bourgeoisie strives to soil. For the great workers masses, the return
in the consciousnesses of the revolutionary perspective will arm and will make
more efficient the immediate fights which, in return, will increasingly precise
and strengthen this perspective. From possible, these fights will make it a
material necessity. For the political vanguard, defending the “communist
program” within the working class, it is putting forward the legacy of the
past, it is to tie up again with the threads of the previous generations of
revolutionaries. This will favour their confidence and determination for their
leading and dynamic role of political vanguard and thus will go towards giving
the influence upon the great workers masses that it belongs to them.</span></div>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">“<i>There are not two different class
struggles of the working class, an economic and a political one, but only one
class struggle, which aims at one and the same time at the limitation of
capitalist exploitation within bourgeois society, and at the abolition of
exploitation together with bourgeois society itself “ </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">(Rosa Luxemburg, <i>The
Mass Strike</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">, 1906).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">August 2012.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">1</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">. The intervention of the ICC has been
conspicuous by its absence in a first time, and then, after much delay, by its
content worthy of the “indignados” and anarchist ideology according to which <i>“one
must change himself”</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> ! See our following text in this issue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">2</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">. We refer the reader to the summaries of our
bulletins and the ones of the ex-Internal Fraction of the ICC for the study of
this catastrophic opportunist drift of this organization which once was our
organization (www.fractioncommuniste.org).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-3369067092441293772012-07-17T10:42:00.000-04:002012-07-24T10:20:59.065-04:00<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt;"><b>The miners of the Asturias (Spain) refuse the
capitalist rules . As in Greece, these proletarians do not hesitate to confront
the policemen, these defenders of the bourgeois state.</b></span>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">Videos:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt;"><b>
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09iCIeJHgr4">Confrontation between miners and policemen</a></span>
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt;"><b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtTXWJyVIpE">Spanish Miners Battle Police Over Austerity</a></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">See also an </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php">article</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"> from our comrades of the Fraction of the International Communist Left.</span>Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-65836982518594737902012-06-14T19:22:00.001-04:002012-06-14T19:23:28.886-04:00General strike or electoral circus<br />
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;">The student struggle against
tuition increases has taken a new turn following the adoption of matraque law
78. Recall that before being used
against the student movement, this law was especially aimed at the working class,
threatening any demonstration of over 50 people with heavy fines. --Leaving it
to the police to decide whether or not the demonstration is legal, if they’ll
accept the route or not. This law is not only an attack on the students, but on
the working class as a whole. This is bourgeois ‘democracy’ for you, and this
sort of law is not unique to Quebec. Faced with capitalism in crisis, several
‘democracies’ have passed similar laws or are in the process of doing so. In
2001, under the pretext of the ‘war on terror’, several states passed
counter-terrorism laws, which in practice, attack working class struggles. In
2005, for instance, striking New York subway workers faced charges of
terrorism. Recently a score of Montreal students were accused under a similar
law passed by the federal government in 2001.<span style="color: red;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;">The struggle against rising
tuition is spreading elsewhere in Canada, as well. Students have held actions
in Ottawa and Toronto, with other groups spread across several provinces
preparing to join them. A day of action took place June 5<sup>th</sup>, with a
demonstration in Toronto, as well as other Ontario cities. BC students, as well, have declared
solidarity with those in Quebec, condemning bill 78. Demonstrations in
solidarity against this bill have been held in Ottawa, Toronto, Paris, Cannes,
New York, London and Chile. This is no longer just a struggle against the
rising cost of tuition. Since May 21, workers, unemployed, students and
pensioners have been banging on pots and pans every evening at 8 o’clock, and great
numbers of people are out in the streets to demonstrate that they’re fed up
with bill 78, the mass arrests, police brutality, government corruption and
austerity measures. We’ve lost count of the number of cities and towns
participating in these nightly casserole demonstrations, and these as well are
spreading throughout other Canadian provinces. This struggle is part of an
international struggle against capitalism in crisis. It’s linked with that of
workers in Greece, Spain, Portugal, China, India, France, the UK, the US and
other parts of the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;">Although the casserole
demonstrations are intended as an expression of outrage against state policies,
one might question the outcome. Speaking at a Montreal business conference,
Finance Minister Raymond Bachand, himself, welcomed these demonstrations as a
creative and festive means of voicing an opinion without hurting the city’s
tourist industry. As in the rest of the world, the bourgeoisie tries to divert
struggle by persuading workers to vote in coming elections, in 6 months, a
year, two years… At heart, this is what matters most to the unions and all
political parties: </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">Québec
Solidaire, Parti Québécois, the Liberals, the CAQ and others, diverting all
activity into the electoral circus. Elections are by no means an expression of
“popular will”. The election of
this or that political party is determined by the interests of big capital of which the bourgeois
state is a servant. Elections are useless to the working class. It’s a terrain
in which it has no real place, except when it comes time to marking an X every
four years to elect the usual bourgeois, such as Charest, Marois, David,
Khadir, Legault, etc. They’d have us believe that the ballot can help to “make
change”. They perpetuate the illusion of democracy, in which all “citizens” are
equal and the state is neutral. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;">While the Liberals and the CAQ
are well known for openly serving the interests of large capitalist enterprise,
others are nastier in a sense, more insidious, as is the case with Parti
Quebecois nationalists and </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">Québec
Solidaire. While they denounce the implementaion of rightwing policies by the
Liberals with matraque law 78, they insist that the government’s policies would
“go against common Quebecois values”
No no such ‘common values’ exist. What typical nationalist,
petty-bourgeois language, propagating illusions of capitalism’s “human face”,
while failing to mention the working class and its struggle. <b>Capitalism is
bankrupt and for its survival it’s carrying out the same attacks everywhere</b></span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">: raising energy prices, attacking pensions,
increasing tuition, creating new taxes, eliminating thousands of jobs in the
public sector, cutting unemployment benefits, on top of massive factory
closures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>The strength of the working class</b></span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;"> whose exploitation sustains bourgeois society, is <b>in
its collective action</b></span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">, led
and organized on the basis of class. Only the working class, in resisting and
abolishing this rotten system, will change society. Working class struggles in
Greece, Spain, Portugal, China, India, France, UK, USA, in Chile and other
parts of the world are forcing bourgeois factions to unite against the working
class. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of demonstrators around the world
are refusing austerity. The lying media is censoring these struggles in an
effort to prevent the rise of international solidarity. The struggle of
Quebec’s students and working class is not isolated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">Workers, the unemployed, students, pensioners, we’ve got to stop going
along with our fake trade union friends and politicians, such as those from QS,
who are simply interested in reforming capitalism. We have to quit begging the
bourgeois state through petitions and votes. We must take control of the
struggle from them. Otherwise, they will divert our struggles to the
parliamentary circus or into negociation of our level of exploitation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>A general strike, is what we need to expand the struggle</b></span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">, as our brothers and sisters, the working
class from Greece and Spain, have shown. They set an example for us by uniting
more and more broadly in spite of nationalism and union corporatism, by
rejecting politicians, and attacking the bourgeois state machine as a whole.
For example, the Greek working class besieged parliament when it approved the
measures demanded by the European capitalists. It’s the capitalists who are
responsible for this crisis. It’s not for the working class to pay. A single
slogan: unite with the working class of Greece and Spain through general
strike. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt;"><b>Yes for a general strike! No to the electoral circus!<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">To end this barbaric system, we need a new society. A society intent on
production to meet real human needs as opposed to a society bent on production
for profit. A society in which the means of production and distribution would
be within reach of all, socialized, without an exploiter to hold the reins and
appropriate our socially produced wealth. A world where the environment is no
longer seen as a huge profit reserve – for plunder and ruin – by the capitalist
class as we see today. A world based on the participation of all, which could
be expressed through new organs of co-ordination, of production, and of
distribution, through a system of delegates elected and subject to recall at
any time, and representing society as a whole.To achieve this, it is imperative
to overthrow the bourgeois state along with its parliamentary ‘democracy’, the
capitalist class’s usual smoke & mirrors trick for establishing and
maintaining their dominance. It’s up to the working class, with its class party
as a guide, to take power by ridding itself of the the class which exploits it,
by destroying its State, and establishing its own institutions. Only the
working class as a whole, though its own autonomous bodies, workers councils
for example, may establish a new classless stateless society. This task can not
be delegated, not even to the most and conscious class Party. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;">Internationalist
Communists Klasbatalo </span><span lang="FR" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">Printemps Érable
2012 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span lang="FR" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="mailto:cim_icm@yahoo.com"><span style="color: black;">cim_icm@yahoo.com</span></a> </span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-38351871846205448692012-06-07T09:29:00.001-04:002012-06-07T09:29:18.709-04:00Solidarity with Battaglia Comunista (PCint) which has suffered provocations in Parma (Italy)<!--StartFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We publish the comment of the
Fraction of the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>International Communist
Left and want to indicate our whole internationalist solidarity with comrades of
the Pcint-Battaglia Communista.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Times-Roman; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Internationalist Communists - Klasbatalo</span><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>Solidarity
with <i>Battaglia Comunista </i></b></span><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>(PCint)
which has suffered provocations in Parma (Italy)<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We publish here the
"communique" that the comrades of the PCint-<i>Battaglia Comunista</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (<a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en">Internationalist Communist Tendency</a>) have written
after various and suspicious provocations recently held against them. We think
highly important that all groups and militants claiming the Communist Left
legacy express their solidarity with </span><i>BC</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and the ICT. This expression of solidarity is obvious, by principle
can we say, and must be expressed at any moment. But today, it seems to us that
it is even more fundamental at the very moment the confrontation between the
classes, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, takes a wider scale than
the last decades because the deepness and the impasse of capitalism's
economical crisis. Everywhere, the bourgeoisie is obliged to attack massively
and roughly the working class. Everywhere, it knows that these attacks will
provoke inescapably workers reactions – they have already begun - which
will be massive and increasingly "radical". It does prepare itself to
it. Economically of course, but above all politically, ideologically, and at
the repressive level too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In Italy, the bourgeoisie has a
great experience of the confrontation and the repression with the proletariat.
In the years 1970, in front of the social movements initiated by the 1969
Italian "May" [called "Mai rampant" in French since it
occurred during various months in the 1969 spring a year after the French
May 68, translator's note], one of its essential weapons for derailing the
proletariat off its class ground and to defeat it, had been the utilization of
the police provocations and the cynical and systematic use of terrorism
- through murderous bombings of so-called anarchists and in which the
secrete services and policemen were often implicated as well as they were not
very far from the terrorist actions realized by the <i>Red Brigades</i><span style="font-style: normal;">... It appears today that the Italian bourgeoisie
takes out again from its drawers this arm and this tactic putting back at first
plan alleged threats of "violent" groups and various bombings and
murders, one day on behalf of the mafia, the other one of the anarchists (FAI),
the third on a "madman". So, it creates a "climate of
tension" that the BC comrades underline and denounce in their communique
and which does not limit itself to national scale events but also to a lot of
local "incidents"... as in Parma where some of them have been
provoked but "fascist" elements. It is in this context of "tension"
that the PCint office in Parma has been "visited".<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
This tactic of tension has only
one aim : hampering the inescapable revival of the workers struggles and
the indispensable workers fight-back to the attacks they suffer ; and, for
that aim, also attacking the political groups and militants of the class'
vanguard who call for the destruction of the bourgeois State and for the
Dictatorship of the proletariat. The utilization of terrorism enables to create
the suspicion of these ones, to take the workers away from them, and to prepare
thus their repression, their prosecution and their banning. The communists, as
their class, have nothing to do with terrorism and they firmly denounce its use
and "minority" actions which substitute to the mass action of the
proletariat. Following the communique of the ICT comrades, we reproduce an
extract of the <span style="color: #cc0000;"><i>Resolution on terrorism, terror
and class violence</i></span><i> –</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> that we
had adopted in the ICC in 1978 – which recalls why terrorism can't be a
proletariat's arm and why it can't be today but utilized, manipulated, and even
directly created by the bourgeoisie and its State. In front of these
provocations which will certainly multiply, we claim the conclusion of the
PCint comrades : </span><i>"that's why we will carry on our communist
fight and will defend our capacity of political action without withdrawing for
one step"</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Solidarity with the comrades
of <i>Battaglia Comunista </i></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>!</b></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The FICL, May 30th, 2012.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>Communique
of <i>Battaglia Comunista</i></b></span><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>Serious
Event at the Parma PCint Office.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
During the night of Wednesday 16
to Thursday 17, unknown persons have get into our office in Parma, at <i>borgo
San Giuseppe 5</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, and have taken tens of
volumes of the Dimitri Papaioannoy library. The following Friday morning, one
comrade passing to the office found the mailbox pulled out and thrown in front
of the door.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Facts as well worrying had
already occurred in the previous weeks : one day, we realized that one of
the two banners that we run up at the office entrance when we open it, had
disappeared ; some days later, we found the other banner on the ground
with a footprint on it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It is obvious that these unknown
persons have been able to open the door without breaking. We can't know who are
the authors of these provocations towards us but they fit in a climate of tension
which have not stop growing in the city after the criminal attack that the
fascists of the <i>Casapound</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> have led with
strikes of iron bars and knives Saturday May 11th afternoon against
comrades of the anti-fascist committee of the </span><i>Montanara </i><span style="font-style: normal;">district.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In these cases, we need to have
solid nerves and much determination. As far as we are concerned, we won't let
us being intimidated by anyone - as communists, we know that the
bourgeoisie's hand is behind these provocations -, and we won't fall in
the trap of the physical fight-back - it is exactly what the enemy class
looks for. That's why we will carry on our communist fight and will defend our
capacity of political action without withdrawing for one step<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Battaglia Comunista</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, section "Guido Torricelli" of Parma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Sunday, May 27th 2012.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>(Translated into English by
the FICL)</i><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><i>Resolution
on terror, terrorism and class violence<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><i>(extracts,
ICC, 1978)</i></b></span><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>We reproduce here after an
extract of a programmatic document of the ICC which presents the communists'
position in regards with the question of terrorism and which we carry on still
today to defend as ours.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
(...)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
4. Capitalism is the last society
in history to be divided into classes. The capitalist class bases its rule on
the economic exploitation of the working class. In order to ensure this
exploitation and intensify it as far as it can, the capitalist class, like all
exploiting classes in history, resorts to all the means of coercion, oppression
and repression at its disposal. It does not hesitate to use the most inhuman,
savage and bloody methods to guarantee and perpetuate exploitation. The more it
is confronted with internal difficulties, the more the workers resist
exploitation, the more bloodily the bourgeoisie exerts its repression. It has
developed a whole arsenal of repressive methods: prisons, deportations, murder,
concentration camps, genocidal wars, and the most refined forms of torture. It
has also, of necessity, created various bodies specialized in carrying all this
out: police; gendarmes, armies, juridical bodies, qualified torturers,
commandos and paramilitary gangs. The capitalist class devotes an ever-growing
part of the surplus value extracted from the exploitation of the working class
in order to maintain this repressive apparatus; this has reached the point
where this sector has become the most important and flourishing field of social
activity. In order to defend its class rule, the capitalist class is in the
process of leading society to ruin and threatening the whole of humanity with
suffering and death.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We are not trying to paint an
emotional picture of capitalist barbarism; it is a prosaic description of its
actual <b>practice</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
This practice, which impregnates
the whole of social life and all relations between human beings, which
penetrates into the pores of society, this practice, this system of domination,
we call -- terror. Terror is not this or that episodic, circumstantial act of
violence. Terror is a particular mode of violence, inherent to exploiting
classes. It is concentrated, organized, specialized violence, planned,
developed and perfected with the aim of perpetuating exploitation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Its principal characteristics
are:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
a. being the violence of a
minority class against the great majority of society;<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
b. perpetuating and perfecting
itself to the point of becoming its own <b>raison d’être</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
c. requiring a specialized body
which always becomes more specialized, more detached from society, closed in
upon itself, escaping all control, brutally imposing its iron grip on the whole
population and stifling any hint of criticism with the silence of death.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
5. The proletariat is not the
only class to feel the rigors of state terror. Terror is also imposed upon all
the petty bourgeois classes and strata: peasants, artisans, small producers and
shopkeepers, intellectuals and the liberal professions, scientists and
students; it even extends itself into the ranks of the bourgeois class itself.
These strata and classes do not put forward any historical alternative to
capitalism; worn out and exasperated by the barbarism of the system and its
terror, they can only oppose it with acts of despair: terrorism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Although it can also be used by
certain sectors of the bourgeoisie, terrorism is essentially the mode of
action, the <b>practice </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">of desperate
classes and strata who have no future. This is why this </span><b>practice</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, which tries to be ‘heroic and exemplary’, is in
fact nothing but an act of suicide. It offers no way forward and only has the
result of supplying victims to the terror of the state. It has no positive
effect on the class struggle of the proletariat and often acts as an obstacle
to it, inasmuch as it gives rise to illusions among the workers that there can
be some other way forward than the class struggle. This is why terrorism, </span><b>the
practice of the petty bourgeoisie</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, can be
and often is exploited judiciously by the state as a way of derailing the
workers from the terrain of the class struggle and as a pretext for
strengthening the terror of the state.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
What characterizes terrorism as a
practice of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that it is the action of small,
isolated minorities which never raises itself to the level of mass action. It
is conducted in the shadows of little conspiracies, thus providing a favorite
hunting ground for the underhand activities of agents of the police and the
state and for all sorts of manipulations and intrigues. (...)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In this sense we have to reject
the idea of a ‘workers’ terrorism’ which is presented as the work of
detachments of the proletariat, ‘specialists’ in armed action, or which is
supposed to prepare the ground for future battles by giving an example of
violent struggle to the rest of the class, or by ‘weakening’ the capitalist
state by ‘preliminary attacks’. The proletariat can delegate certain
detachments for this or that immediate action (pickets, patrols, etc) but these
are under the control of the movement as a whole; within the framework of this
movement the resolute actions of the most advanced elements can serve to
catalyze the struggle of the broad masses, but this can never be done through
the conspiratorial and individualistic methods that characterize terrorism.
Terrorism even when practiced by workers or groups of workers, cannot take on a
proletarian character, just as the fact that the unions are made up of workers
does not make them organs of the working class. (...)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
6) (...)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The struggle of the proletariat,
like any social struggle, is necessarily violent, but the practice of its
violence is as distinct from that of other classes as are its projects and its
goals. Its practice, including the use of violence, is the action of huge
masses, not of a minority; it is liberating, the midwife of a new harmonious
society, not the perpetuation of a permanent state of war of one against all
and all against one. Its practice does not aim to perfect and perpetuate
violence, but to banish the crimes of the capitalist class and immobilize it.
(...)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Its invincible force resides
(...) in its capacity to mobilize the whole mass of the class and to integrate
the majority of the non-proletarian laboring classes and strata into the
struggle against capitalist barbarism. It resides in the development of its
consciousness and its capacity to organize itself in a unified autonomous way,
in the firmness of its convictions and the vigor of its decisions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
These are the fundamental weapons
of the practice, the class violence of the proletariat.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
ICC, <i>International Review </i><span style="font-style: normal;">15, 1978.<span style="color: #cc0000;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-59877306782547881402012-06-01T10:23:00.000-04:002012-06-01T10:26:24.040-04:00Comments on the international significance of the presidential election in France.<div class="MsoNormal">
We publish this text from Fraction of International Communist Left (FICL) because we are totally in agreement
with its contents.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is important at present because the bourgeoisie of Quebec
speak about the elections to settle the student strike.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
« Working class participation in the electoral circus
and in the various parliaments is the best means the bourgeoisie has found to
divert the proletariat from its historic task, the emancipation of all
humanity. Just as with fascism, “bourgeois democracy” is a terrain in which the
proletariat has no real place. »</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Basic positions of the Internationalist Communists –
Klasbatalo!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
***************</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The result of the first round of the French presidential race
comes at the very moment we end up this bulletin. These elections don't
interest only the French bourgeoisie. Their results have an international
significance, or at least European, at the time many countries of this
continent will live new elections at the regular term of the previous mandates
- Germany in particular - and at the very moment other national
bourgeoisies provoke anticipated elections - such as in Netherlands. It is this
international significance we want to highlight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Actually, new configurations of the political apparatus are
dawning with these elections which will tend to reproduce in the months and
years to come. It is actually almost sure that the Socialist Party's candidate,
François Hollande, will be the next French President</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial;"> (Note 1)</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">. The other outstanding fact of this election is
the rising of a "Left of the Left" - the <i>Front de gauche</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> [Left Front] with Melenchon
at its head - whose vertebral column is being the old stalinist apparatus
of the PCF [French Communist Party]. This two political parties (PS and Front
de gauche) of the Left of capital, far for being opposed one another as they
attempt to make appear, are actually the two sharp edges of the single and same
arm that the bourgeoisie intends to utilize today against the proletariat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">So we have a Left of "government" which will lead a
policy in which the State intervention, State capitalism, will grow and
strengthen, a neo-Keynesian policy - it is the meaning of Hollande's
willingness to re-negotiate the "Stability Pact" with Merkel and the
German bourgeoisie "to introduce some growth". It matters to
underline that this willingness for "introducing a constituent of
growth" in the European policy in front of the crisis is making progress
within the different ruling classes : at the very moment the Dutch
bourgeoisie is provoking anticipated elections, it is interesting to note that
its fractions, up to now aligned on the "drastic reduction of the deficits
and the sovereign debts" policy put forwards by Germany, wish to introduce
"more growth". No illusion within the bourgeoisie : it knows
that a possible growth "due to credit" won't solve the crisis. It
knows that capitalism's contradictions express in a crisis of generalized over-production.
And no illusion for the proletarians : this possible "growth"
won't bring them any relief in their sufferings, nor pauses of the attacks they
suffer. The willingness to impose, at least in Europe, an economical policy
with a "constituent of growth" corresponds amongst the clever
fractions of the bourgeoisie to their consciousness of the need to develop a
European war industry even more efficient and a European defence which really
deserves this name.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">And we have with the <i>Front de gauche</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> a Left "called to
remain in the opposition", with a "social" language, indeed
"revolutionary" and "classist" one, which doesn't want to
be "governing" and whose aim is to control, to flank, and to derail,
then to defeat, the inescapable workers struggles in front the crisis and the
attacks that the "Socialist governments" will hurl at. As doesn't
stop claiming Melenchon, <i>"we are here to go on for long !"</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> The existence of the same
kind of party is not new in Europe and the Party of the Left in Germany, <i>Die Linke</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">, exists now since many
years, actually since the drastic measures of the German bourgeoisie has taken
against the working class during the government of the... Socialist Schröeder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Actually, the national bourgeoisies must adapt their State
apparatus, and in particular the political apparatus, to the new conditions
that the economical crisis imposes. In their great majority, in particular in
Europe, the bourgeois teams in power are government teams which were formed
before 2008, before the "sub-primes" crisis. They are marked by the
"neo-liberal free-market" ideology and theories in fashion in the
1980's. And yet the bankruptcy of "economical liberalism" handicaps
seriously and deeply today these teams at the economical as well as political
level. Actually, politicians, economists and other high-ranking officials or
specialists who were brought up with the liberal free-market ideology, can
certainly not apply from one day to another with the maximum effectiveness, it
means from the point of view of the bourgeoisie of course, the new State
measures and the more direct and massive intervention of the State, to conduct
neo-keynesian policies...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">These "economical" politics present a fundamental
political goal : the indispensable preparation of the main imperialist
powers for the generalized war. At that level, the European bourgeoisie must
tackle to this task with decisiveness and determination. And then to adjust as
efficient as possible the attacks against the working class since this one will
have to pay not only for the present crisis but also for the war economy. This
"economical" policy against the working class which won't prevent
from massive proletarian reactions, must be accompanied, completed, by a device
of Left forces speaking "in the name of the working class", leaning
on the unions apparatus and whose objective is to control as much as possible
these struggles, to make them derail from their aim and their class demands, to
sabotage and to defeat them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">From this point of view, Hollande's election in France will
certainly end up with the procrastinations and the hesitations of Sarkozy's
"foreign" policy who, pro-American by "personal liking" if
so we can say, had finally to submit to the requirements of the profound
tendencies of the imperialist interests of the French bourgeoisie which
inexorably drive it to remain linked and aligned with Germany. Nevertheless,
there is no doubt that his figure is not enough reliable at that level and that
the coming to power of a convinced pro-European will mark a supplementary step
in the development and the affirmation of a more determined imperialist policy,
in a more asserted European diplomacy and policy of defence, in international
initiatives towards the "emerging powers", China, Latin-America,
which raise against the United-States, in the questioning of the dollar as
"the international reserve currency", etc...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">In this preparation to war, the bourgeoisie needs the greater
order and stability. The ability of the new government teams to control and
defeat the workers struggles with the action of radical Left opposition forces
is a central necessity which comes to strengthen even more the necessary coming
of new political teams and new political men that are not hampered by the
politics of the past. Because, besides the sabotage of the workers struggles,
the ultra-chauvinist language of Melenchon and the PCF in the name of the
"revolutionary ideal of the 1789 French revolution and of the 1871 <i>Commune
de Paris" </i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">will complete at the ideological level the dirty work done in the
very struggles. There too, Hollande needs Melenchon, both reunited around the
French tricolour flag ! Both aim at chaining the French proletariat to it.
No doubt that the other bourgeoisie will find their equivalents within their
own ranks. Is not already the case with <i>Die Linke</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> in Germany ?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Far from representing a decline of the attacks against the
proletariat and even less a relief for this one, the adaptation of the
political apparatus of the bourgeois States, included and above all with Left
governments, means that the ruling class is preparing to bring even stronger
attacks. Far from representing a lull of the classes struggle, the coming of
these new apparatus marks at the contrary the increase and the escalation of
the class contradictions. Far from meaning a slack period, the coming of new
government teams accompanied with radical Left forces in the opposition, means
the worsening of the bourgeoisie's offensive against the proletariat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The FICL, April 22nd 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">http://fractioncommuniste.org/index_eng.php</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial;">1</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">.We
don't take too much risks betting on his election in 15 days according to the
polls. But in case it won't happen and Sarkozy would finally be re-elected, we
don't think this would question the basic question of our stance. The last
"arguments" of the latter's electoral campaign, in particular his
willingness to reconsider the European Stability Pact in favour to a policy of
more sustained economical growth, the withdrawal of the French troops from
Afghanistan - just for mentioning only these two significant elements amongst
others -, take up the orientations put forwards by Hollande. The
difference will be that Hollande's new team would be less marked by the
orientations and the politics of the past and thus more capable to lead it than
Sarkozy whose neoliberal past and its continual zigzags and hesitations at the
level of the international politics have sowed doubt about his ability as State
leader within the French bourgeoisie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7077996679975280917.post-63913175390026011802012-05-21T11:47:00.000-04:002012-05-21T11:47:46.856-04:00Red Squares: The Student Strike in Quebec<!--StartFragment-->
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<span lang="FR" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">We publish this
text from<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Revolutionary Perspectives#61,
Spring 2012, Magazine of the Communist Worker’s Organisation, affiliate
(Britain) on the Internationalist Communist Tendency because we are totally in
agreement with its contents even if we have <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>no organizational link with ITC.</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Internationalist Communists -
Klasbatalo<b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b>The
Student Strike in Quebec Poses the Question, Only the Working Class Can Answer
It</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Largely
unreported in the global media 170,000 students in Quebec (more than a third of
the total) have now been on strike for three months. It has lasted so long that
some journalists have taken to likening it to the movements in the Arab world
and dubbed it “the Maple Spring”. The students in universities and GECEPS
(colleges) are fighting to prevent a 75% hike in tuition fees over the next
five years. It will come as no surprise to anyone that this is part of an
austerity package of budget cuts announced by the Liberal Government of the
province to “bring down the deficit” from $3.8 billion to $1.5 billion in a
single year. On this level it has a familiar sound.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="color: #186304; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The Issue<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The
bitterness and extent of the conflict is however remarkable. Behind it lies two
different visions of the world we live in. On the one hand you have students
who uphold the right to a free education (something abandoned everywhere else
some time ago). They point out that Canada is a signatory of the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which calls for “the
progressive introduction of free education”. On the other hand are the corporate
interests promoted by the decidedly corrupt Jean Charest <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-05-17/red-squares-in-quebec#fn1"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(1)</span></a>,
the Liberal Prime Minister of the Quebec Government. Already under
investigation for corruption over construction contracts his favoured project
is the so-called Plan Nord. This will pave the way for the destruction of the
ecosystem of Northern Quebec as it opens the area up to the likes of
Rio-Tinto-Alcan, ArcelorMittal, IAMGold, Alcoa, Agnico Eagle, and Xstrata. All
have already benefitted from promotional fees (worth $500 million) and huge
government grants worth over $1.6 billion are planned over the next five years <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-05-17/red-squares-in-quebec#fn2"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(2)</span></a>.
The annual savings from the higher education fees hike would only be about £250
million. The connection has not been lost on the student movement<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">"<i>On April 20, students demonstrated outside a job
fair for Quebec’s Plan Nord — a major initiative to develop the province’s
north — where Mr. Charest was speaking. One demonstrator was pepper sprayed in
the face as he tried to enter the Palais des Congres. In his speech that day,
Mr. Charest mocked the protesters and offered to give them jobs in the province’s
north</i> <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-05-17/red-squares-in-quebec#fn3"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(3)</span></a>."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Little wonder
that two days later a quarter of a million demonstrated in Montreal on Earth
Day. Many of the demonstrators pinned the small red squares which denotes the
student movement to their clothes in solidarity with the strike. No wonder the
Government would not negotiate and has poured vitriol on the students. It has
tried to portray them as selfish spoiled brats who want everything for free.
This flies in the face of the fact that they were not fighting for themselves
but for the rights of those who would follow them. No wonder this Government
rhetoric has incited its paid thugs (aka the police) to use unprecedented
violence on peaceful demonstrators – a violence which makes anything seen so
far in the “advanced democracies” look rather tame. No wonder it has cited the
antics of a few who have responded with violence to condemn the whole movement
when the real violence has been that of the state.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="color: #186304; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">A Wider Struggle is Needed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">In the face
of this the tenacity of the students has been admirable. Militant and resolved
though the students have been they cannot win this fight alone. Some them know
this, and have made attempts to reach out to rest of the society and, in
particular, to the wider working class. They have not done enough of this but
they have also come up against the hypocrisy of the unions. The unions have
supported the strike verbally (how often do they do that with workers?) but
have not once organised a single day of solidarity action with the students.
This is because they are in reality part of the corporate management of the
state. In recent years they have signed hundreds of deals to ensure the
profitability of Quebecois capitalism which has led to lay-offs, speed-ups and
wage freezes for workers. And this weekend the union leaders were the ones who
“brokered the deal”, as one of our comrades put it, to get the student leaders
into signing away the principal aims of the fight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">When it comes
to negotiating a defeat behind closed doors no-one can compete with the union
leadership. The deal that was finally stitched up was nothing less than a
complete climbdown for the students. The fees will rise but over seven years
rather than five and the way is open for further fees rises in the future. A
committee is to be set up to look at further savings from university budgets
which <b>might</b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> then reduce administrative fees students have to
pay. But as its composition is dominated by business and government this is
unlikely to find any and the Government has already said it is unlikely to make
savings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Not
surprisingly the leaders of the three student organisations have held this last
clause out as a sop to the movement to hide their sell-out. It is equally unsurprising
that they have not been able to sell the deal to their members.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">The stakes
are indeed high. Global capitalism in crisis cannot renege on its need to make
us all pay for its plight. By resisting its attempts to turn back the clock the
Quebec students are implicitly posing an entirely different mode of social
organisation. If capitalism can only offer more misery, more debt and worsening
conditions of existence it is time to explicitly reject it. But the students
can only pose the question. The answer can only be given by the working class
as a whole. The movement has to widen to become a full-scale anti-austerity
movement which takes in the fears and aspirations of the majority of society.
This is not going to come about any time soon but the anger and rage of this
movement has to be built on. What is needed is an organisation which recognises
explicitly that capitalism offers no future. We need to abolish the society
that puts profits before people, that needs money for its functioning and its
state to repress all opposition. It is time for a communist programme.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i>Jock<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><i><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-05-17/red-squares-in-quebec#ref1"><span style="color: #817f00; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(1)</span></a></i></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"> And
opinion polls suggest that he and his Liberal Party cronies will be thrown out
at the next election this year (as happened after the last big student revolt
in 1990).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-05-17/red-squares-in-quebec#ref2"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(2)</span></a>
See “Violence budgetaire” by Michel Chossudovsky at <span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><a href="http://mondialisation.ca/">mondialisation.ca</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-05-17/red-squares-in-quebec#ref3"><span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">(3)</span></a> <span style="color: #817f00; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/03/quebec-student-strike/">news.nationalpost.com</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Calibri-BoldItalic; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">email: uk@leftcom.org<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span lang="FR" style="font-family: Calibri-BoldItalic; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">website: http://www.leftcom.org</span></i></b></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Cedrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04108785897338853581noreply@blogger.com0