PARIS, October 31 — Two million workers and youth took to the streets in massive nation-wide demonstrations — 170,000 marching in Paris — to protest the ruling class’s raising the retirement age and the rising unemployment caused by the bosses’ economic crisis. A movement that began in the spring over pensions broadened to encompass a fight for jobs amid workers’ rage over the tremendous disparity in wealth between the ruling class and the working class.
Large numbers continue to join the anti-retirement demonstrations against low wages and President Sarkozy’s connivance with the wealthy. The focus on retirement “reform” stems from the fact that it affects the largest number of people. “The wage problem is overshadowed by the jobs problem which is overshadowed by the retirement problem,” explained Antoine, an unemployed worker in his forties. “It all results from the unequal distribution of wealth.” And all that is integral to capitalism’s drive for profits. Only a communist revolution that destroys this system and replaces it with one run by and for workers can end these evils.
Initially Sarkozy and the sellout union leaders had figured that some one-day strikes and demonstrations would allow the workers to vent their anger and then the pension changes would sail through. But this became a miscalculation when the rank and file pushed past the union leaders, organizing unlimited strikes, with polls reporting from 65% to 71% of the population supporting them. It then became difficult for the union hacks to back out of the struggle and to control it.
While falling short of a general strike resembling the uprising in 1968, this rank-and-file-led movement spread to accomplish the following:
• Halted 50% of industry due to a lack of raw materials and fuel;
• A 33-day strike which included dock and refinery workers, aided by other workers supporting them, paralyzed 40% of oil refinery production, idling 99 ships, including 20 crude oil tankers and 15 refined fuel tankers, in harbors from Fos (near Marseilles) to Le Havre, costing the oil companies up to 300 million euros ($420 million);
Blocked major highways leading to industrial parks and occupied toll booths, allowing free passage to drivers;
University cafeteria workers provided free meals to students;
Supportera joined with striking sanitation workers to dump garbage in front of the homes of leading CEOs;
Caused cancellation of half the flights at Orly Airport on October 28;
A hundred youth fought a police tear-gas attack after a demonstration in the ship-building city of Saint-Nazaire;
Student unions shut six universities;
Sanitation strikers blocked truck depots in Nantes and other cities, creating huge piles of garbage throughout the area.
Workers are very conscious of the tremendous disparity in wealth and blame the rich — and Sarkozy who they view as representing the rich — for the economic crisis and resulting threats to their jobs and to the gains made since World War II. Rank-and-file refinery strikers told a PL’er at the Total Company facilities on the Atlantic coast that their grandparents had fought for many of their gains in wages, vacations and pensions and that not fighting to retain them would be a betrayal of their forebears.
This fight against the government, and the workers’ view of the struggle as one between classes, to a certain degree reflected a political consciousness which the reformist union leaders did not foresee when they tried to limit the strikes to one-day walkouts. Many workers feel that the union officials are betraying the movement. The sentiment of auto and rail workers and truckers was expressed by one, saying the union leaders “have been doing that for 40 years. Urge people to go out on strike, wave red flags and then negotiate with the bosses. But who gives a damn about the union bureaucrats. At least we’re fighting and that’s all that counts. Won’t be a revolution but it [is a] chance to show them what we think.”
The union mis-leaders’ reformism was stark when including in a press statement a demand for “respect for private property” which implied a condemnation of the militant youth who were fighting the cops
But the inter-generational unity of the working class was mirrored in the support for the strikers shown by the youth who not only closed hundreds of high schools but showed up at picket lines to back the workers. The picketing workers point to that development with pride. Both young and old felt that by fighting Sarkozy’s raising the retirement age they were fighting for more jobs for first-time job-seekers.
However, a weakness in the struggle was reflected in the movement’s weak links with the 400,000 undocumented immigrant workers, but possibly even more importantly with the millions of documented immigrant and French-born largely Arab and black African workers who face daily racist discrimination. They are a potent force that could immeasurably strengthen the working class’s overall fight.
Workers at the docks and refineries and on the railroad have now voted to suspend their strikes. But meanwhile workers in six Air France unions have called for a strike for November 4 and another mass demonstration is planned for November 6, despite the passage of the pension law changes and Sarkozy’s expected signature.
Assuming the enactment of this law, and the presumed scaling down of the struggle, it will have reflected the failure of even this massive movement to defeat the rulers’ attack on workers’ pensions. On the other hand the movement has sharpened the class struggle and the class consciousness of millions of workers who have stood ready to fight the bosses and their government and recognize the tie between both.
This consciousness and anger of the working class in France cries out for revolutionary communist leadership. The absence of the latter is very evident. The French “Communist” Party, which has had a big influence in the main union, the CGT, long ago abandoned communist principles and actively tries to steer the rank-and-file’s militancy into voting for them.
Certainly fertile ground exists on which to advance revolutionary communist consciousness. This could lead to workers’ recognition of the need to destroy the entire profit system, the bosses and their government servants; and not just to try to maintain the reforms which the ruling class inevitably takes away as part of its attempt to deal with capitalism’s crisis.