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While election revelry renews
almost everywhere, the workers have to square up to a dramatic
situation dominated by two differing yet converging threats.
One is already in motion, the other is more long term.
The first threat concerns
the effects of an economic crisis which (despite moments of
greater or lesser intensity) stretches back over about thirty
years. Job security, living standards and psycho-physical
well-being have all been seriously weakened during this unprecedented
onslaught against the proletariat: every single aspect of
its already precarious existence has been subjected to attack,
from salaries and housing to working hours and the simple
day-to-day struggle for survival. Everywhere in the world,
capital has been attacking the proletariat to squeeze out
as much surplus value as it can in an effort to stave off
the social and economic collapse which is indisputably causing
so much misery in all walks of life today.
Precariousness is capital’s watchword, whatever the government in power. The
hire-and-fire mentality is now increasingly widespread in
the labour market. It has brought about unsustainable working
conditions, frantic rhythms, flexi-hours, job insecurity (where
jobs are available in the first place), stress and related
pathologies and plenty of workplace accidents. Take the railways,
for example, where one accident after another is disgracefully
put down to ‘human error’ rather than their real cause: staff
reductions and lack of maintenance. Capitalist exploitation
has intensified month after month, creating anew the living
and working conditions we traditionally associated with Dickensian
times. No longer confined to countries on the periphery of
capitalist development, these conditions are rousing their
heads in the capitalist heartland too. Increasingly large
numbers of families proletarian and non (hardship is spreading
like wildfire) see their real wages diminishing before their
very eyes, and struggle to get to the end of the third week
in the month, let alone the fourth.
The floating mass of unemployed
– that industrial reserve army whose numbers swell
abnormally during economic crises, thus keeping salaries
down and exercising a powerful form of blackmail over salaried
workers – continues to grow. Economic and social inequalities
are growing, competition among workers is growing,
as it is between the old and the young and between ‘indigenous’
workers and immigrants, victims of all kinds of racism
and cynicism and forced to live and work in subhuman
conditions. In line with all this, we have seen a growth in
the militarization of society: any kind of struggle
or even vaguely antagonistic behaviour is criminalised and
suppressed. These are just some of the most dramatic aspects
of the capitalist assault upon the workers, all accomplished
with the steady contribution of political parties and trade
unions which – far from defending proletarian interests –
are the faithful and obedient lapdogs of capital.
Faced with this emergency,
it is time the proletariat got back to basics and went about
erecting more solid barriers: once again the time is
ripe for an increasingly centralised co-ordination and
organization of strike action which goes beyond mere categories,
sectors and localities. This implies the blocking of
production, the closed rank union of workers and unemployed
and the territorial organization of working class struggles
and bodies; it also means temporally and spatially unlimited
general strikes without warning and a united return to
historically grounded demands which include:
- Drastic reduction in
working hours for the same wage
- Hefty wage increases,
especially for worst paid categories of workers
- Full wages for the laid-offs
and unemployed
- Rejection of any discrimination
on the basis of age, sex or nationality
- Rejection of all kinds
of precarious or undeclared work
- Rejection of all kinds
of concerted action, compatibility or sacrifice in the name
of the ‘national economy’
But this defensive struggle
is not enough on its own: the
other threat hovering over the heads of the worldwide proletariat
makes no bones about this. On the one hand, the capitalist
mode of production reacts to the crisis by intensifying exploitation,
and on the other by preparing the ground for a necessarily
inevitable new worldwide conflict. This would destroy
all that has been produced in excess (including the workforce)
and, after the dreadful catastrophe, allow for the drawing
up of markets anew, thus facilitating the inauguration of
a new expansionist phase. This was exactly what happened after
the First and Second World Wars.
The capitalist mode of production
is in agony, and this agony spares nothing and no-one.
Hence the environmental devastation, the monstrous exploitation
of workers, the deterioration of social life in all its forms
and colours, the exasperated and catastrophic tensions of
the markets, the pillaging and ruination of whole areas, the
increasingly bloody and intense inter-imperialistic conflicts
… A desolate panorama which is there for all to see.
It is not enough, therefore,
to simply defend oneself from attack.
We ourselves must proceed to prepare the conditions whereby
we can go on the attack against the capitalist stronghold
and the state which defends it and which plays the game according
to its rules. And the attack must be waged with a view to
destroying this malicious and decayed mode of production which
is so out of joint with the times. And it must be waged with
a view (once we have taken power and exercised it dictatorially
to ensure old enemies keep their head down and to usher in
basic economic and social transformations) to replacing it
with a new mode of production founded on the needs
of the species and not in the interests of a class.
In order that this might
be accomplished, it is fundamental that the International
Communist Party takes root anew among the proletariat
worldwide: at the forefront of theory, politics and organization,
the Party is essential to the positive outcome of today’s
struggles and, most importantly, its presence is vital for
the revolution of the future: a revolution that can only be
brought about with method and determination.
In
a world which is more and more bursting with suffering and
menaces, this May 1st
2006 calls for it in a loud
voice
International Communist Party
(Internationalist Papers – Cahiers Internationalistes
– Il programma comunista)
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