Protests in France

For the abolition of capital and wage labor! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!

Cities across France erupted in protest at the end of November. There were two sparks that lit the fuse: the National Assembly passed a repressive security law that would criminalize filming the police while allowing greater police surveillance of citizens, the same week that multiple videos emerged of police officers abusing black and Arab workers. Tens of thousands went to the streets in opposition to this reactionary violence and the legislation that seeks to perpetuate it.

As has been the case with so many protests in the past year, the demonstrations in France quickly grew to encompass all the social effects of the pandemic and the economic crisis. It should come as no surprise that the largest demonstrations were combined with the trade union movement. The first Saturday in December is a traditional day of union demonstrations in France; last month these combined with the anti‑police actions. Our French comrades distributed the following text at the demonstrations on December 5.

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Crisis and unemployment are constant elements in the history of capitalism. Crises are experienced chronically, despite (and because) of the immense development of the productive forces.

The pandemic sweeping the planet is a product of capitalism, of its urban and productive development. Obviously, it affects the whole of society, we think especially of small businesses, petty trade, the travel and tourism sectors (which represent 10% of global GDP), and especially the many precarious workers who have lost their jobs. If this crisis affects the petty bourgeoisie and the small employers, it hits the precarious workers even more severely.

Unemployment is increasing in industrialized countries, and it will increase further, because capital no longer succeeds in extracting surplus value through the market, and neither can it do so by other means such as speculation, in which the sum of the profits and losses cancel each other out. The crisis is not due to «incompetent» bosses or «corrupt» politicians, as the opportunist unions and parties say, whether on the right or on the left. Fools and thieves have always existed, just as evildoers have always served capitalist society (crime can also be productive for capital). The bourgeoisie sacrifices us for its national economy, to defend its markets and its production. They tell us that it is important to develop industry through technological innovation, to accept sacrifices to save jobs, etc. There are many examples of workers who have accepted everything for years, including wage cuts, only to see their businesses shut down and find themselves unemployed.

But the only truth is that too many commodities invade a market that fails to absorb them; productivity grows, but with it unemployment increases. Proletarians have always lived in a more or less precarious condition, depending on the economic situation. This precariousness is – and always will be – the condition of millions of human beings. Today, with increasing automation, with a large workforce available, employment becomes a mirage, and a growing part of the population becomes redundant for capital. The prices of goods, and of labor power, collide in a market that has become thoroughly international, the salary of a French worker thus not being able to compete with that of a Polish or African worker. Competition between the labor force of different countries causes the displacement of entire sectors of activity from one continent to another, and becomes the seed of an economic war among the poor.

The capitalists maintain this competition. Unemployment is a weapon in the hands of the bosses and their state, to divide and foment competition between workers. In Marxist terms we call the unemployed the reserve army of labor, from which the bourgeoisie draws according to its needs and which it can use to break the unity of the workers. This reserve army can, however, desert the bosses and help to give strength to the struggle of the proletariat! The class union is a tool to change the role of the unemployed, from an amorphous and passive mass into an army of combative and organized proletarians.

The division of trade unions by labor category must be fought all the more when the general tendency of capitalism is one of increasing proletarian precariousness exacerbated by competition. A territoriality of struggles is imposed by the union leadership, while flexibility, precariousness, and relocation reign in society. Limiting the struggle to a single category, territory, or the company is nonsense, a betrayal which prevents the unity of the workers and deprives them of any truly effective action.

The defense of proletarian interests, their working and living conditions, is a problem of balance of power: trade union organization develops and asserts itself through struggle. It is also a question of the method of struggle, of organization, and of the program of demands and tactics which must constantly seek to unify workers across all divisions, regardless of their professional category, territory, or company.

The struggle also depends on the alignment of forces (fixed employees, unemployed and precarious workers, etc.) at our disposal, and today, in this area, the trade union movements have practical delays, imposed by a union leadership who are in the hands of opportunist parties. Fighting for the class union means a central focus on the organization of the precarious and the unemployed (flexible contracts for precarious production): labor councils, committees of precarious and unemployed workers, which will promote unity across categories. If we want to fight for a real class union, we cannot ignore the precarious workers and the unemployed, who are growing in number every day.

Salaries increase or decrease according to the economic situation, but above all because of the balance of power between classes; however, the rate of employment is historically destined to decrease, according to the law of capitalist accumulation, because it is not jobs that are lacking, but in reality the work, freed by machines and by increasingly automated and streamlined processes. Today there is more unemployment and a greater intensification of work, a sign of the crisis of an outdated economic system in which we are forced to live.

If the class union is necessary, to give strength and organization to the resistance of the proletariat (employed or unemployed) in its daily struggle for survival, it is not sufficient to achieve the emancipation of the workers.

The emancipation of the workers occurs through the overthrow of the bourgeoisie – industrial, financial and landed – by its expropriation and the transition to a communist society, whose economic basis is the large‑scale socialization of the productive forces already taking place under capitalism.

But the indispensable weapon to achieve this goal is the organization of the proletarian vanguard into an International Communist Party, depositary of the communist program, which will guide the proletarian masses towards the final goal.- Fewer working hours and more pay- A salary for the unemployed- For a real class union- For the International Communist Party

— Fewer working hours and more pay
— A salary for the unemployed
— For a real class union
— For the International Communist Party