Martin Suchanek
The class struggle is intensifying in France. On 12 October, more than 3.5 million people demonstrated against the government’s “pension reform”. The rolling strikes are gathering momentum every day as more and more people join the fight
At the same time, this day of action was a huge nationwide strike. Nothing moved in France. Most train services were at a standstill. All rail unions – except the “Christian” CFTC) – had called for strike action. Numerous flights were cancelled. Petrol stations ran out of supplies because the transport workers on strike.
Many workers are continuing their strikes, renewing them daily at mass meetings of the workforce. Most unions, including the major federations such as the CGT and the CFDT, have sanctioned and legalised these “renewals”.
Today, October 13, the action even includes trains from Germany to France. The regional trains have been halted. In Paris, some Metro lines are suspended, on others there are only restricted services. The energy sector is also affected; today, Total admitted that all six of its refineries are closed by strike action.
More and more on the streets
Since the unveiling of the pension reform, France has been in turmoil. There have been five national days of action and strikes, starting with around two million people on 27 May and on 24 June. After the summer break, the movement increased in scale with days of action on 7 and 23 September and on 2 October, each with about 3 million participants. And the movement continues to grow, as it did on 12 October. Nor is it just the number or frequency of protests that is growing, increasingly the demonstrations are linked to strikes and continue for several days.
Since the middle of last week, more and more school students, though less university students, are taking action. Already 400 schools are involved, with many occupied, and the number is growing daily.
The strikes and the struggles have widespread support. About 70 percent of French people are in favour of the days of action, approximately 60 per cent are for an indefinite strike, that is, a political general strike against pension reform.
In short, we are at the beginning of a huge wave of class struggle against a central element of the French government’s attacks. Their plan is to raise the minimum age for early retirement, on a reduced pension, from 60 to 62. Beyond that, they want to raise the standard retirement age, with a full pension, from 65 to 67. The Chamber of Deputies agreed to the “reform” on 14 September, the Bill is now going through the Senate, the second chamber.
From the outset, the determination of the government was never in doubt – and neither were their tactics. Sarkozy hopes simply to ride out the wave of protest. As events have shown in recent years, this can be an effective tactic even in the face of major national days of action or one-day strikes involving millions.
The pattern of these battles was often that, for all their militancy and spontaneity and the fact that many took to the streets for weeks, or even months, nothing happened. Government and union leaders strung out negotiations that eventually ended in a rotten compromise, after which the government then carried through its worsening of conditions – only more slowly than originally planned.
This is of course a danger even now. There can be little doubt of the willingness of the reformist trade union leaders, such as CGT-chief Bernard Thibault, to slow down the movement. He said as recently as last Thursday in an interview on RTL 1 to a question about a general strike:
“This is a slogan that is totally abstract to me, incomprehensible. It is not the means by which one can manage to improve the relationship of forces “
Thibault clearly fears a general confrontation with the government and also that the politically more right-wing, larger union confederations CFDT and FO could stab it in the back.
That the slogan of the general strike in the current situation is “abstract” and “incomprehensible” can only be a bad joke or a stupid excuse!
In fact, the whole present development is pushing forward towards a general strike. The strikes, which are increasingly frequent and go beyond days of action, and the powerful movement of the rank and file that is developing, indeed has already developed, all this is increasing the pressure for an indefinite general strike against pension reform and against the austerity measures.
This pressure has also led the union leaders – unlike previously – to officially sanction and legalise renewable daily strikes. Indeed, under the pressure of the scale of the action on October 12, Thibault himself has called for a “radicalisation” of the movement – while the CFDT and FO remain silent.
The more radical, but smaller, unions, SUD, G 10 Solidaires, have been pressing since the summer for an indefinite general strike. The NPA and other left organisations have now followed suit.
Amongst the most conscious and most militant layers of the class, the experience of recent years, even decades, has for some time led to the realisation that the tactics of the trade union bureaucracy, using one-day actions only to pressurise the government and capitalists, actually amounts to a ritual letting off of steam and that an indefinite political mass strike is necessary.
Meanwhile, not only the vanguard of the class but increasingly broader layers are recognising that a generalised political attack demands a generalised response, a general strike. Above all, it is this that is now increasing the pressure not only on the CGT but also on the CFDT.
Relations between the rank and file and the leadership
In this situation, the democratic character of the organisation of the rank and file is an enormous advantage. The mass meetings of the workforce (AG = Assemblées générales) organise actions on a very democratic basis. They include all workers and employees who want to participate, regardless of whether they are members of this or that trade union or any trade union at all. Thus, the unorganised millions are drawn into the fight and decide themselves what action to take, day by day.
Nonetheless, it must not be forgotten that the political leadership of the actions does not lie in the mass meetings. There are no “horizontal”, workplace to workplace, connections. In practice, leadership is therefore still in the hands of the trade union bureaucracy, that is, primarily, the CGT. And the leaders of the CGT, like those of other major reformist unions, manoeuvre one way and another under the pressure of the rank and file. Thus, while they legitimise the “daily renewal” of the strikes, they do not call for a general strike.
Instead, each group of workers has to decide for themselves whether to continue the strike. That sounds democratic, but it is not. The CGT leadership and the other bureaucrats are shirking the duties of political leadership. They do not openly call for a general strike, here and now, but neither do they refuse to legalise the spontaneous strikes.
They are playing a cynical game. If the strike wave continues to grow, or if there is even a spontaneous, political mass strike, they can say that they supported it but, if the strike movement begins to lose momentum, they can say that “the workers” did not want a general strike.
Strategy and tactics
The French working class is now at a turning point. An indefinite general strike is a real possibility, is actually on the agenda. The question is, how can it become a reality?
On the one hand, increasing pressure must be put on the leadership of the largest unions – the CGT in particular – to call openly for a general strike. The CGT is in the key position because it is far and away the strongest fighting trade union in France.
At the same time, the combatants must not rely on its leadership. The workplace mass meetings (AGs) must be linked up together. Each AG should elect delegates to local or regional meetings and these should elect a national coordination as the basis for a centralised, national strike committee. This would thus be accountable to the rank and file members but have the capacity and the authority to lead and coordinate the movement.
Such a direct democracy, a fighting structure similar to workers’ councils, is not only necessary in order to wrest leadership of the struggle away from the trade union bureaucrats, for example, in the event of negotiations, but also to lead a general strike against the government to victory and to defend it against repression and the propaganda apparatus. Such a structure could also be extended from the factories out to the schools and universities, to the unemployed and the youth in the suburbs directly involved in the movement.
France has become a key country for the further development of the class struggle in Europe.
A political general strike could not only stop the pension reform and austerity programmes. It would also inevitably raise the question of power: the question of who rules – the Sarkozy government or any other government of the capital – or a workers’ government, based on the institutions of the general strike, on the AG’s and their organs of self-defence.
In short, developments in France raise the question of the overthrow of capitalism, its revolutionary overthrow, of a government of the working class, a government that expropriates capital and initiates a democratic, planned reorganisation of the French economy and smashes the bureaucratic and repressive state apparatus of capital and replaces it with the direct democracy of workers’ councils.
Political leadership
History shows that such a perspective, even if the masses move ever more spontaneously in this direction – and they are now pushing for a general strike in France – will not happen automatically or “spontaneously”.
It also requires a revolutionary political party of the working class whose cadres fight for this perspective in the unions, the demonstrations, the mass meetings.
There is no such party as yet in France. However, with the formation of the NPA there is now an anti-capitalist party that organises a significant minority of the most conscious workers and activists of the social movements. It is, above all, the NPA that faces the task of becoming such a party of social and political revolution, a party that struggles for the seizure of power by the working class. This is the perspective for which our comrades, the supporters of the League for the Fifth International, are fighting in France.
Leaflet on the day of action:
Dans les entreprises, les quartiers, les facs et les lycées
La grève générale Construisons! Contre la reforme the retraites et l’austérité
on www.cinquiemeinternationale.org