After years of weakness, the social movement against pension reform shows a re-awakening of the combativity of the proletariat in France. Despite all its difficulties the working class has begun to raise its head.

Militants of the GCF, Paris 1945: left to right, Chirik, Bricanier, Mousso and Evrard

 

 

This article, continuing our long-running series on the communist goals of the workers' movement, looks at the contribution of Marc Chirik, a comrade of the Italian Fraction , the Gauche Communiste de France and the ICC, to the debate on the post-revolutionary state and the problems of the period of transition from capitalism to communism

The USA's assassination of the Iranian military leader Qaseem Soleimani threatens to bring an escalation of military conflicts in the Middle East. But the spread of war and destruction is not the  product of US imperialism, alone, and it won't be halted by getting rid of Donald Trump or the Republican Party. It is an expression of the advancing decay of the world capitalist system, which has no alternative to offer humanity. And as the missile strike that brought down the Ukrainian airliner in Tehran graphically illustrates, the first victims of capitalist war are precisely the civilian populations of the world.

greatest lie in history: Stalinism equals communism

Thirty years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall demonstrated the bankruptcy of the reviled Stalinist regimes. This event was the real symbol of the implosion of the Eastern Bloc. Its thirtieth anniversary has been the chance for the bourgeoisie to use the same lies today as yesterday. The working class has to permanently reject and fight back against this ideological assault.

 

The continent of Australia is a harbinger and a microcosm - a particularly significant microcosm being as large as the whole of Europe or the United States - of the Earth being turned into a desert through the rapacious and unquenchable thirst of capitalism for profit. Everything about man-made climate change, global warming and capitalism's absolute inability to even begin to deal with this mortal threat to humanity, as well as the phoney solutions proposed by the likes of the Greens, is here in "Oz" today.

According to Emmanuel Macron and his ministers, the December 5 strike is "a mobilisation against the end of special regimes", against "equality and social justice". It couldn't be clearer: railworkers and other sectors of workers that have a "special regime" are irresponsibly egotistic and use it to maintain their so-called "privileges". LIES! The government is trying to put us one against the other in order to divide us and render us unable to fight effectively.

Local militias, supported by regional and international imperialist powers, have turned Libya into a chaotic war zone and a veritable slave market for refugees

Protesters wave the national flag in Lebanon

We are currently seeing a wave of popular movements against the endless sacrifices demanded by capitalism and implemented by governments which are often gangrened by corruption, discredited and hated by the population. Such movements have taken place in Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, Iraq, Iran, Algeria and Lebanon. But while the working class is present in these "popular revolts", it's never as an antagonistic class to capital but one drowned within the population. Far from favouring a future riposte from the working class and, with it, the only viable perspective of a struggle against the capitalist system, these popular, inter-classist revolts serve to reinforce the idea of "no future", which can only obscure such a perspective. They strengthen the difficulties experienced by the working class in mounting its own response to the more and more intolerable conditions that are the result of the bankruptcy of capitalism. 

The Green New Deal proposes to save jobs and the environment. This is impossible within capitalism.

 

 

 

 

'Handing yourself over to the police'

For a serious critique of the theory and practice of Extinction Rebellion (XR) it is necessary to use the tools of marxism, understanding social phenomena in the context of capitalist society, in the clash of interests between the ruling capitalist class and the working class - a class that is exploited, but has the capacity to overthrow capitalism. We aim to show that despite its claim to be opposed to reformism and even capitalism itself, XR is an obstacle to a real fight against the capitalist system.

The following article forms part of a Supplement on Ecology with other articles appearing elsewhere on this site. The Supplement itself can be read in full by downloading the attached file or by clicking on the Supplement on Ecology issue ion the right hand Latest Issues column. If you agree with the content, you can actively contribute to its dissemination by distributing the Supplement at demonstrations and meetings.

Windrush workers are faced by RAF officials  as they arrive in the UK

 

During election campaigns political parties often turn to questions of immigration, with false alternatives posed over “freedom of movement”, with arguments over the deportation of “illegal” immigrants, but also a warm welcome given to skilled workers who will benefit the economy. The article that appears here, first published on our website in French, is a reminder that the Windrush scandal is not a matter of historical interest but shows the long-held approach of the bourgeoisie:  for the exploitation of labour power, the attempt to intimidate sectors of workers, the sirring up of xenophobia, and also the thin humanitarian veneer.

For several weeks now, we've seen the emergence of numerous social movements in several countries on different continents: Lebanon, Iraq, Ecuador, Bolivia, Haiti, Guinea, Algeria... Although these mobilisations have their peculiarities, they all express a reaction of protest and anger faced with the effects of the economic crisis which has shown a further descent these last months. We will treat these international mobilisations in a more global manner on our website soon. In the meantime, we are publishing below an article written by our comrades in Latin America on the subject of the present movement taking place in Chile. Some analyses drawn up in this article are applicable to other current mobilisations. All these movements, by their inter-classist and popular nature, as well as the democratic illusions in which they are imprisoned, lead to a fatal dead-end and constitute a trap for the world proletariat. Consequently, this raises the great responsibility incumbent on the proletariat of the central countries of capitalism, the most experienced when it comes to the traps laid by the bourgeoisie, and the only force capable of showing the way towards the autonomous struggle of the world working class.

Ninety years ago, the stock market crash of 1929, which announced the economic crisis of 1930, confirmed what the First World War had meant: that capitalism had definitively passed into its period of decadence. In a few months, tens upon tens of millions of people fell into total destitution. Of course, during this period, the bourgeoisie learnt to attenuate the violence of the crisis but, despite the lessons drawn from it, this crisis has never really been surmounted. This confirms that, in the period opened up by the First World War, the contradictions of capitalism could only lead to a degradation of the living conditions of the great majority of humanity.

We are publishing a contribution from a sympathizer in the US which aims at exposing the empty but dangerous ideology about ‘the elite’ which is being used more and more by different factions of the capitalist class today.

Fifty years after the workers' uprising in the city of Córdoba, it is still necessary to reflect on its meaning, because throughout those same fifty years the left apparatus of capital has been presenting distorted versions of its origins and the political responses it generated, preventing the working class from recovering the experiences left by those days of struggle.

Turkey's invasion of northern Syria shows the complexity of inter-imperialist antagonisms in this region - and the willingness of all sides involved to use the local population as cannon-fodder.