Il Partito Comunista 404

Elections! The deception against the workers is the same: that the vote – within the framework of this social, economic and political system – is a useful tool to defend the living conditions and political objectives of the working class.

The lie has a name: Democracy. The workers are not rulers over anything, since political power is firmly in the hands of the ruling class, i.e. big industry, finance and landowners.

Political power is exercised by this social class, the bourgeoisie, against the working class, first of all through the state machine, which is not at all a neutral entity at the service of the citizens, but rather the instrument for the domination and oppression of the workers, in the interest of the master.

For workers, the number of Members of Congress, legislature and city halls of whatever party, does not change anything: they have passed the laws of the past against the proletarians (social security, COVID stimulus, etc. etc.) and they will do so in the future.

The economic and political power, the handling of the state machine and the media, guarantee the ruling class the certainty that the elections and the parties that participate in them will still lead to governments that protect their interests.

By now, the parties that are part of the electoral game, or that would like to be part of it, are declaring their only choice to be on the side of the bourgeoisie.

Either electoral preparation or revolutionary preparation, we revolutionary communists have written on our banners!

The workers must not take the bait for the false promises of those who want to deceive them that one vote will be enough to change their conditions for the better, to oppose the cut in wages, the increase in unemployment, the prevailing racism.

Even if there were a party really on the side of the workers able to take millions of votes, they would not be enough to change the nature of the present social and political regime. They would always be in the minority within the congress and if ever, absurdly, they could become a majority, the ruling class would close the congress itself and throw away the democratic mask to show the true face of the dictatorship of capital over the workers.

This was the lesson of fascism.

Millions of votes would be useless. Hundreds of thousands of workers on strike can bring in a few days wage increases and material improvements in the living conditions of workers that no «electoral path» can achieve.

At a time of serious economic and political crisis of the bourgeoisie, a vast movement of strikes, framed in a large class union, directed by the most conscious part of the workers framed in the real communist party are the conditions that will allow to take political power away from the bourgeoisie and free humanity from capitalism.

Protests have been held in Belarus in recent weeks and a strike movement has developed. The trigger was the umpteenth electoral «victory» of President Alexander Lukashenko, re-elected for his sixth term despite his low popularity, worn down by 26 years of uninterrupted power.

Lukashenko, initially considered the «savior of the republic», has recently adopted neoliberal policies, including the privatization of many state enterprises, the reform of the pension system, the introduction of zero-hour contracts, etc.

Now most Belarusian workers live in worse conditions even than their Russian and Polish neighbors.

The first protests were repressed by the police, who arrested thousands of demonstrators. This did not put an end to the protests and soon the workers of the country’s major factories, characterized by a very high degree of industrialization, went on strike.

If the spark for the protests was the election, which the opposition claims was rigged, their real origin lies in the decline of living conditions in recent years.

For many years, energy agreements with Russia have ensured the Belarusian state an income to buy social peace and ensure a certain political stability. A breakthrough made by Russia in the energy supply policy of Central and Western Europe has diverted part of its investments from Belarus, exacerbating the economic crisis in this satellite country. To cope with the difficult situation, the government led by Lukashenko has tried the path of greater autonomy from Russia, hinting at some dialogue with the United States and the European Union, threatening to shift the axis of its energy policy.

Meanwhile the conditions of the Belarusian population have suffered a drastic deterioration, also due to a decline in state support for industry and social assistance.

The onset of the coronavirus has helped to show the reality of a government policy determined to pursue the interests of the Belarusian bourgeoisie, still largely nestled in the maze of the high state bureaucracy. The government, constituted through the traditional paternalism of «socialist» assistance, has brazenly flaunted its obedience to the interests of capital, ignoring the health of workers and the population in general. Like governments and employers’ associations around the world, the Belarusian state has forced factories to stay open, exposing workers to the contagion.

Production above all! This is the motto of the government of capital in Belarus, a country that, out of 10 million poor inhabitants, has 5 million employed and 2 million workers in industry. Proletarians, locked up in wage labor prisons with the threat of contracting the deadly virus, and forced to produce in the name of profit, have also suffered cuts in their wages, which in some cases have even reached 20%.

This proletarian anger was expressed in strikes, which did not back down despite the vain promises of the government, unable to restore order with sermons. Thus began the state response to the workers’ struggle: the strike committees were dissolved with a wave of arrests and the government ordered a lockout on August 24.

The so-called «liberal» forces, which express the aspirations of the petty bourgeoisie, despite being all aligned against the current regime, are divided between those who rely on the help of Russia and those who side with the European Union or the USA. These liberals, so much praised by the Western media, are not at all on the side of the workers, and would like privatizations at an even faster rate than the current regime.

Meanwhile, some of the more combative fringes of the trade union movement are trying to advance the demands of the working class, not only economic but also political. For example, the workers of the large Belaruskaliy chemical factory are calling for a generalized revision of collective agreements.

Regardless of the fate of the President, the strike movement must lead to the formation of an independent trade unionism, separate from both the state and from the movements and parties of the petty bourgeoisie, whether pro-Russian or pro-Western. Workers need an organization capable of defending the living conditions of their class. And a communist party needs to be reborn, rich in the experience of centuries of struggle, to represent the general and historical interests of the proletariat, not only in Belarus but the whole world.

The Montreal Longshoremen’s Union (Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 375) declared a 4-day strike beginning Monday, July 27, 2020. This strike affected all activities at the Port of Montreal, and also at the shipping terminal at Contrecoeur, located west of Montreal. Local 375 represents 1,125 longshoremen, some of whom are women (25% of new hires are now women).

It should now be noted that Local 1657 of the International Longshoremen’s Association, representing the auditors and counting 175 people, will go on strike on Friday, July 31 to similarly paralyze Port activities. The Port of Montreal and Contrecoeur terminal operations will therefore be paralyzed for five days. Local 1657 has not used the strike as a means of pressure for 30 years.

The Maritime Employers’ Association (MEA – the management) refuses to negotiate clauses affecting job security and the jurisdiction of its employees’ duties. Since the beginning of the pandemic, some employees have been working seven days a week without leave. Litigation is therefore beginning to spill over into occupational health and safety issues.

The main issue remains atypical schedules. Members at Local 375, for example, work day shifts for one week, but for the next three weeks can then be assigned to work evenings and nights. The schedule in the longshoremen’s contract requires them to be available on 19 days out of 21, and this schedule has been transformed into 19 days worked out of 21. This does nothing to help with work-life balance. In this contract, employees must therefore check their schedule every evening at 6:00 p.m. in preparation for the next day and can be assigned to any task and position.

Currently, the MEA uses scabs, since anti-scab legislation is under provincial jurisdiction and the Port of Montreal’s activities are under federal jurisdiction. The scabs are actually managers trained to move cargo.