We stand with the working class of France, which is growing the strike and revolt against the attacks of the bourgeoisie!
SALUTE TO THOSE WHO FOLLOW THE STEPS OF THE COMMUNARDS WHO CONQUERED THE SKY!
The imperialist-capitalist system cannot get out of the economic crisis that broke out in 2018, despite its efforts to make the world working class and oppressed peoples pay the bill. Moreover, with the two-year-long coronavirus pandemic and the imperialist war of hegemony in Ukraine for a year, it is overwhelmed by the depth of the crisis. In order to get out of this crisis, it is trying to do the best thing it knows how to do; that is, to exploit the working class to the bone with attacks such as lowering wages, layoffs, disregarding job security, increasing working hours, raising the retirement age, liquidating workers’ organisations. Heeding the warning of the IMF President in 2019 (“When there are too many clouds, it only takes one lightning bolt to start the storm.”), all governments are on the one hand toughening “security laws”, creating special anti-riot units within police forces, and on the other hand strengthening racist structures against possible riots.
The predictions of the imperialist-capitalists have not been wrong once again; the first waves created by the accumulated anger of the oppressed of the world have started to rise. The strikes and protests of the working class and labourers of France, which have been going on for months and which have gradually expanded and become more militant, are part of this wave. French President Emmanuel Macron’s reform of the retirement age from 62 to 64 has found the necessary response in the working class and millions of workers and labourers have gone on strike against this draft law and demonstrated a radical and militant stance against all the violent attacks of the police. Protests and strikes still continue to grow.
To justify his attack on raising the retirement age, Macron points to the increase in the elderly population, falling birth rates and the decline in the number of workers paying into the pension system. In reality, this reform is designed not only as a way out of the current economic crisis, but also as a way to put more on the backs of the working class in order to save the decaying and collapsing imperialist-capitalist system. Against this bill the French working class is responding with a bigger, more widespread strike, the most powerful weapon of the working class, forcing even the reformist-compromising unions to act.
This militant revolt of the French working class is followed with excitement by the world working class. Not only the French bourgeoisie-state, but also the big imperialist-capitalist powers such as Germany, USA, England, Switzerland are following this revolt with anxiety and fear. Because the barricade built by the French working class against the plans of the bourgeoisie will be strengthened by the workers and labourers of other countries and will become an open threat for the whole imperialist capitalist system. In the US, for example, tens of thousands of teachers and education workers in some states and cities went on strike against the loss of wages of public sector workers due to inflation and budget cuts. In Germany, hundreds of thousands of transport workers, who had been on warning strike for weeks, paralysed life in the country with a 24-hour strike. Hundreds of thousands of labourers, including teachers, doctors, nurses, civil servants and railway workers, went on strike in the UK despite the government’s tough measures. In Portugal, thousands of workers and pensioners demonstrated against the high cost of living, demanding salary increases.
As the Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist Leninist (TKP-ML), we stand by all these strikes and revolts in the centres of the imperialist-capitalist system, especially in France, which is drowning in the crisis deepened by the pandemic and the imperialist war on Ukraine and whose way out of the crisis is to increase the exploitation of workers and labourers. The participation of the working class in communist parties, the establishment of communist parties where these parties do not exist, and the establishment of international unity and solidarity will be the beginning of the end of this rotten, rotten system.
We Salute the Resistance of the French Working Class!
Long Live International Unity and Solidarity!
Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist Leninist (TKP-ML)
International Bureau
March 2023