the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 16, 2024
The following is a translation of large excerpts of a text of orientation submitted for discussion and voted on at the 54th Congress of Lutte Ouvriére. The text appeared in the December 2024 issue of Lutte de Classe, #244, the political journal of Lutte Ouvriére.
The most notable aspect of the domestic situation [in France] is the acceleration and progression of reactionary ideas. Against a backdrop of crises and wars, authoritarian, nationalist and xenophobic ideas are becoming the norm, as the electoral results of the [extreme right] Rassemblement National (R.N.: National Rally) in the European and legislative elections indicate.
Because Macron decided to dissolve the Parliament and call a snap election, the rise of the far right is now accompanied by a political crisis. The National Assembly is now split into three blocs of approximately the same size and eleven parliamentary groups. This calls for a coalition government, a common occurrence in many countries, but an unprecedented one in France under the 5th Republic. The situation is rendered even more complicated by the politicians’ concerted efforts to isolate the R.N. which, together with its ally [right-wing politician] Eric Ciotti, boasts 142 representatives.
It took Macron two months to find a Prime Minister able to cobble together a majority relying on the Macronists and unopposed by Le Pen. That mission—a short-term contract due to expire at the next snap election, that is to say next summer, the earliest a new legislative election can be held—has been entrusted to Michel Barnier, a politician from Les Républicains (L.R.: The Republicans). It took him almost a month to compose his cabinet. [And since this was written, his government lost a vote of confidence, creating a situation in France, like the one in Germany, wherein the main bourgeois parties, unable to keep a majority together, exacerbate the instability inherent in the capitalist system.]
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According to a September poll commissioned by Le Parisien, 51% of the population believe that “only strong power” can restore order and security, and 23% no longer believe in the “system of democracy.” The legislative elections have undoubtedly reinforced these trends, as many R.N. and NFP voters feel they have been robbed of their victory. The fact that the government is led by a man, Barnier, whose party won just 5% of the vote seems like a “denial of democracy.” That bitterness is all the worse as Barnier’s appointment came after a series of governmental attacks imposed using the infamous “Article 49.3,” notably the recent pension reform [which postpones retirement until age 64].
For years, we’ve been talking about the crisis of French bourgeois democracy, insofar as the traditional political class is discredited and no longer manages to create illusions and impose itself through elections. But the real end of bourgeois democracy came when capitalism entered its imperialist phase.
The bourgeoisie when it was still on the rise needed to create parliaments to collectively discuss how the state should be organized, what its role should be, and what laws were needed for business. Some big bosses, such as industrialist Eugène Schneider, from Le Creusot, or banker Casimir Périer, insisted on sitting in Parliament in person. And for decades, particularly in Great Britain and France, tax-based voting ensured that decision-making would remain in the hands of the bourgeoisie. It was only gradually, and with great care, that the right to vote was extended to become universal. France, which has proclaimed itself the country of human rights since the revolution of 1789, didn’t really establish it until 1944, when it granted women the right to vote, fourteen years after Turkey under Mustafa Kemal.
Parliamentary democracy had long been emptied of all substance. As soon as the capitalist economy entered its imperialist phase, with large financial and industrial trusts dominating economic life, the big bourgeoisie imposed their decisions on all the less powerful capitalists without going through parliament, since government and state personnel were at their disposal. The parliaments in which the interests of the various bourgeois categories clashed, and whose votes determined the major decisions affecting the bosses’ affairs, were transformed into mere echo chambers, adopting laws devised by the most powerful boards of directors. To speak of the “denial of democracy” in 2024 is to be more than a century late!
The Communist Party in its Stalinist days was responsible for fueling the belief that parliament and individual votes could change the fate of working people. From this point of view, bigmouth Georges Marchais, often considered more radical, more in favor of class struggle than his successors, played the most damaging role because he was influential at a time when the fighting spirit and level of organization of the workers could have opened up many other possibilities.
The “rule of law” is the bourgeois rule of law, in which freedom really exists only for the richest, and democracy is a screen for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But freedom of speech, freedom of association, the freedom to assemble and demonstrate are precious for the exploited and for revolutionaries like us. These few rights exist only in the richest countries, which have accumulated enough wealth through colonial and imperialist plunder to elevate a fraction of their working classes to the rank of a labor aristocracy committed to defending the existing social order. It didn’t happen overnight. It took the bourgeoisie in rich countries almost a century to succeed in locking the exploited into the cage of its institutions. In France, it took no less than five republics, built on massacres of workers, to reach a formula ensuring governmental and institutional stability.
The fact that these rights are engraved in the stone of public buildings does not make them eternal. They reflect a certain level of wealth accumulation and a certain balance of power between the bourgeoisie and the working class. Those rights are shrinking and can be called into question by the present reactionary trend.
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The offensive led by the bourgeoisie against the working class is being carried out both by the government, in terms of the budget, and by big business in the companies. As weak as Barnier’s coalition may be, his mission is clear: he must place the burden of the ever-growing debt, now up to 3.2 trillion euros, squarely on the shoulders of the working class.
Even if financiers benefit from the deficit because it’s a secured and continuous flow of money, the state and the bourgeoisie need public finances to be balanced again. It’s not a question of submitting to some sort of European diktat, but one of ensuring the general interests of the capitalists. When the state reaches a certain level of debt or deficit, causing it to be sanctioned by a downgrade in the credit rating issued by financial institutions, it becomes vulnerable to the threats of speculation. Such a downgrade would cause significant losses to holders of French debt securities and increase the interest rates at which the French state can borrow.
A small number of financiers would get rich off a debt crisis by strangling the state—but to the detriment of the bourgeoisie in general which relies heavily on public subsidies. A debt crisis would jeopardize the balance of power within the ranks of the big bourgeoisie and also threaten the sovereignty of the state apparatus—the pillar of the bourgeois order.
Barnier is therefore compelled, just like any other government would be, to quickly straighten out public finances. One of the main ways of doing this is to increase taxes and levies—which is the fastest and most reliable way to fill state coffers back up again—while only asking the bourgeoisie to make symbolic contributions. As for cuts to public spending, Barnier is planing down more than chopping off. He has no other choice because he needs to act quickly but cautiously so as to avoid fracturing his weak majority [the danger of which was shown by the subsequent vote of no-confidence].
The most brutal attack is the one we hear the least about, that is the offensive in big companies, led directly by the bosses of major corporations. The vigorous attacks in the automotive industry are among the most visible. Foundries are closing, suppliers and equipment manufacturers are suffering from fewer orders and mass layoffs and factory closures are being announced one after the other. Even major manufacturers are preparing to shut down historic plants. During the Paris Auto Show, Carlos Tavares, the CEO of Stellantis, casually stated that a 10% increase in Chinese car sales in Europe would mean 1.5 million fewer European cars sold and the closure of seven assembly plants.
In the chemical industry, 1,000 jobs have been cut in France since the beginning of 2024, and there could be 15,000 more cut within the next three years. Industrialists almost openly warn that it will be worse yet if the government doesn’t provide the decarbonization aid worth 5 billion euros that was promised to the 50 main chemical plants. We’ve been hearing that the luxury and tech industries are also stagnating, which is a way of preparing the public for more job cuts. This is a time of fierce competition, driven by shrinking solvent markets and shifting power relations between American, European and Chinese capitalists, and the bourgeoisie doesn’t want to lose a single cent. So the capitalists are intensifying exploitation in all aspects by increasing workloads, worsening working conditions or relocating to countries where labor is cheaper.
The big bourgeoisie knows it’s sitting on a volcano and that its attacks could end up causing an uncontrollable outburst of social unrest. The main problem is that the working class is totally unprepared for this situation. Most workers are passive, resigned and even fatalistic. Some of them are fighting because they have no choice, but only on a local level. Recent mobilizations, such as the one against raising the retirement age to 64 and the yellow vest movement, are often given as examples to prove it’s impossible to win. But, as has happened in the past, workers will get their fighting spirit back.
What is most worrying is that the working class has no political leadership capable of helping it prepare for struggle. In The Transitional Program, written in 1938, Trotsky denounces “The historical crisis of the proletarian leadership.” He blames the Communist Party and the Third International for betraying the interests of the working class, stating, “The chief obstacle in the path of transforming the prerevolutionary into a revolutionary state is the opportunist character of proletarian leadership: its petty bourgeois cowardice before the big bourgeoisie and its perfidious connection with it even in its death agony.” Further in The Transitional Program, he adds, “The orientation of the masses is determined first by the objective conditions of decaying capitalism, and second, by the treacherous politics of the old workers’ organizations. Of these factors, the first, of course, is the decisive one: the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus. No matter how the methods of the social betrayers differ—from the ‘social’ legislation of Blum to the judicial frame-ups of Stalin—they will never succeed in breaking the revolutionary will of the proletariat.”
A lot has changed since then. The Communist Party, now totally integrated into the bourgeois state, no longer positions itself as “the leadership of the proletariat.” It no longer claims to represent the working class or its struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie. It no longer has to twist around as it did between the 1930s and the 1980s, when it continued to promise revolution and socialism—a way to channel and stifle social movements. LFI [La France Insoumise] and the Greens have no ties with the working class other than through elections. They have no militants and no working-class policy in companies. All of them have helped pave the way for the R.N.
The fact that the most electorally influential party in the working class is the R.N. testifies to the political and moral decline of our class. As a matter of fact, except for some working-class suburbs in large urban areas like Paris and Lyon, the R.N. got the most votes in the working class, rural areas, many small and medium-sized towns and in old industrial regions like Nord-Pas-de-Calais. If there are no collective struggles, this situation could persist. As long as workers are unable to find the strength to attack the bourgeoisie and its political lackeys, they’ll follow the demagogues who campaign to diminish the rights of other workers, the unemployed and of immigrants, and they’ll be receptive to nationalist ideas and isolation.
These reactionary and nationalist ideas are supported by the institutional left, the PCF, LFI, the Greens and the trade union confederations, all of which explain that we need to ensure national sovereignty, break with free-trade treaties and set up protectionist barriers to face international competition. These ideas are the exact opposite of class consciousness and the assertion that the workers’ only homeland is the international working class.
Such reactionary ideas can poison and divide workers, distracting them from their real enemies and the battles to be waged. But the reality of class struggle is no less real. Every day, the exploited are confronted with the bourgeoisie through the class struggle. While commentators are being fascinated by all the political agitation, workers are suffering exploitation and dealing with it as best as they can, most of the time individually but sometimes also collectively. They are struggling against rising prices, trouble getting medical care and a fair education for their children.
Relying on this social reality, we need to awaken, fuel and spread class consciousness—the awareness that society is divided in two: the exploiters on one side and the exploited on the other, that the real borders are not between French and foreigners, whites and blacks, men and women, but between those who own the means of production and those who are deprived of them. We must be aware that behind the scornful politicians capable of doing us dirty tricks, it’s the capitalist class that holds real power in its hands, and that it’s precisely this class that must be overthrown. We need to become more conscious that the working class is not just an oppressed and exploited class but the only potentially revolutionary force.
Despite the scarcity and weakness of working-class struggles, its strength is intact because its fundamental role in production and the functioning of society remains unchanged. The bourgeoisie needs workers and exploitation to increase its capital. As Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto, “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.”
The multiplication of crises and deadlocks will provoke reactions and move consciousness. The darkest times have sometimes produced the greatest revolutions, times when millions of women and men take up the fight to change their fate. It’s at times like these that the working class can change the very face of the world. It’s also at times like these that a revolutionary party is indispensable. Without such a party, future social explosions will be huge threats for workers.
The existence of a revolutionary current is decisive when workers, having entered a revolutionary phase, start creating their own power. But it’s also decisive when struggles lose ground, when revolutionary ideas are in danger of disappearing in the face of bourgeois ideology and reactionary ideas.
Whatever difficulties and trials lie ahead, however small we may be, we represent a revolutionary current. It’s our responsibility to make it live and grow even if we are swimming against the tide. Even if outraged workers are still yet silent and isolated, it’s up to us to find our way to them. It’s up to us to provide rank-and-file workers with answers and help them get organized. It’s up to us to convince young people who see no future in capitalist society. It’s up to us to win over those who are revolted by racism or women’s oppression to revolutionary struggle. It’s up to us to convince those who look to environmentalism for answers because: it’s impossible to save the planet without overthrowing the capitalist minority which runs the economy and is the main obstacle to organizing it rationally and making sure that humanity and nature are respected.
Only the working class, which is at the heart of the capitalist system and has nothing to lose but its chains, can push the struggle so as to completely overthrow the system and expropriate the capitalists. Only the working class can create a collective economy organized to meet the needs of everyone and offer a solution to the crisis and to the decaying of capitalism everywhere you look.
To achieve this, revolutionaries need to build a party rooted in the working class, which, armed with the immense political legacy left by Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky, will be able to stay the course as much during periods of revolutionary uprising as in the darkest years of reaction.