Introduction
For the first time since May 1968, France has been washed with strikes and other struggles, touching all the public sector, and meeting with real sympathy among working people. A new cycle of struggle is opening.
The striking railway workers, postal workers, electricians, teachers, and civil servants virtually paralysed France. They had a general goal: withdrawl of the "Juppé plan" for dismantling social security, and their own demands, particularly on the railways, where the government's "Plan-Contract" threatens thousands of jobs and thousands of kilometres of socially useful railway services.
But behind all this, the movement expressed a more tundamental unease in society: a feeling that the mutation of social protection in Europe today is a historic moment, almost a change in civilisation.
President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppé had decided on drastic austerity measures to bring France's state budget, social security deficit, and public sector spending into line with the "convergence criteria" which the Maastricht Treaty establishes as preconditions for the adoption of the Euro as a new international currency within the European Union.
Despite its dilapidation, the social security and pension system still represents concrete social advances of the working population, and the basic balance of class forces in French society. The Juppé plan is part of a historic modification of the relationship between worker, employer and state. If it passes, the Juppé plan clears the way for other regressive moves from employers and the state.
The media have presented this movement as an amalgam of sectorial, professional and "corporatist" demands. The following articles show that this was a united movement. By rejecting the Juppé plan we cried "stop" to the neoliberal policies implemented over the last 20 years.
One journalist at Le Monde called this "the first revolt against globalisation". It is certainly the most important strike in a capitalist country since the fall of the Berlin wall. The class struggle is back!
The limits of this movement are the result of the disintegrative effects of the crisis which has characterised the last 20 years. Strong in the public sector, enjoying the sympathy of working people all over the country (despite the paralysis of public transport), this never became a general strike. Unlike May 1968, there was no domino effect leading to a general strike in the private sector. Some commentators talked of a "delegate" or 2
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"proxy" strike. Private sector workers supported the strike, but did not join it. This is one of the consequences of the economic crisis. Past defeats, the tear of unemployment, insecure and part-time contracts, all this has a negative effect on struggles in the private sector.
The strength of the movement is provoked a polarisation in the trade union movement. The leadership of the CFDT federation headed a bloc which supported the Juppé reform. A left opposition in the CFDT supported the movement, as did the CGT, FO and su tederations, and the new radical unions like SUD (post-telecom) and the CRC (nurses). The effects of this polarisation are still playing themselves out.
The trade unions have gained strength in this movement. But despite all their claims, most union leaders "surfed" on the waves of mobilisations, rather than trying to help lead them. There was no inter-union co-ordination body: which made the striking railway workers into the "natural" leadership of the movement. Leaders of the CGT and FO union federations spoke about the "generalisation" of the strike but never called clearly for a general strike in both public and private sectors. CGT leader Louis Viannet refused to call for the resignation of the Juppe government.
Socialist and Communist Party leaders tried desperately not to "politicise" the movement. The Socialist Party prefers to wait for the 1998 elections, rather than take the responsibility of power backed by a mass movement. The French Communist Party spoke vaguely of an alternative policy, but never called for the resignation of Juppé's government, nor for the mobilisation of the left to force through an alternative policy. Like the Socialists, Communist Party leaders are paralysed by their fear of the coming elections. The parliamentary left has striven to contain this social crisis, refusing to transform it into a political crisis. And yet, this social crisis posed the question of an alternative policy to the capitalist liberalism which lies behind the Juppé plan. This strike gives credibility to policies which call for a break with the logic of the Maastricht Treaty, and which propose to finance the deficits of social programmes by taxes on capital, and fight unemployment by a massive, generalised reduction in the working week. The task now is to articulate that political alternative, and present it to the tens of thousands of women and men who led the struggles of December. * by François Ollivier January 1996
Contents
12 Russia: Moral defeat for the right
A. Buzgalin and A. Kolganov
16 Poland: Post-election truce?
Jan Malewski
19 Spain: Fight for the soul of the union
J. Albarracin and P. Montes
22 Bosnia's "Pax Americana"
Catherine Samary
25 Sri Lanka: After the "great victory"
Vickramabahu Karunarathne
27 Vietnam: Neo-liberalism is Party policy by Tuan
29 Tahiti: Paradise and the bomb
Laurent Durose
33 Conference notes
Trotsky in St Petersburg
35 APEC meeting in Osaka
35 Book notes
Three weeks in
France
Introduction
Upsurge
Christian Picquet
6 CGT: Pleasure & Passion at union congress
7 Unity is strength!
José Perez on the Rouen strike committee
Communist Party: No alternative?
Georges Villetin
9 Left regroupment fails "acid test"
Christian Picquet
10 Attack on the value of labour
Claude Gabriel
Internationale (PECI), BP 85, 75522 Paris CEDEX 11, France. Tel. (+33)