Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Today in the class struggle
If you live in a sleepy provincial outpost, like me you might have missed these. Tuesday was a huge day for class struggle in the capitalist core. First, France had, as predicted, 3 million people out protesting the labour 'flexibilization' law (Mass Protests on the Streets of France.) The protests tried not only to prevent the law from being enacted, but to bring down the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin.
Second, the UK had a million workers walk out to protest pension cutbacks and meddling with the retirement age (Ministers seek urgent talks after a million workers walk out.)
Third, upwards of two million people protested new immigration restrictions in Los Angeles and around the U.S.
America's citizens - and non-citizens - resist
Do Protests Work?
In this oh-so-ironic postmodern age, protesting is supposed to be dead. No one cares, no one marches in the streets, and if they did it wouldn't have an impact anyway. The death of the Left is pronounced with plodding regularity.
Yet the Left believes in human agency: that real people, collectively, make history. They change their world through confronting power together. And, if we needed yet more proof, France, England and the U.S. provide it.
In France, the ruling class is already starting to back down and reshuffle: "Même dans son propre camp, le premier ministre apparaissait de plus en plus isolé. Son rival et ministre de l'intérieur, Nicolas Sarkozy, a pris ses distances, en prônant – sans toutefois la nommer – la suspension du CPE, le temps de négocier un "compromis" avec les syndicats." (Even in his own camp, the prime minister was appearing more and more isolated. His rival and minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, distanced himself, in pronouncing - without nonetheless naming it - the suspension of the CPE [employment law], [and] the time to negotiate a 'compromise' with the unions.)
A map from Le Monde, showing the police & organizer crowd estimates. Finally, proof that police always underestimate crowd sizes.
In England,
U.K. workers on strike
Political power rests on consent. Mass walkouts - particularly strikes, that affect production - challenge that consent. They are not 'enough' on their own to overturn it. But they have a number of important consequences:
1) they allow people to sense their own power. Marching with 700,000 others gives you a feeling that you can do something - that you're not alone in your disgust at the way capitalism works.
2) they pose alternatives to capitalist power. Organizing and marching in demonstrations brings together large numbers of activists around a central goal. They provide much-needed experience in the art of social mobilization, and prove in practice that 'we' don't need 'them' to run our lives.
3) they work against apathy. Western workers are supposed to be content, uncaring, bloated pigs. This view is rampant on the right, but also among liberals. Radicals bemoan the vast majority of workers who aren't radical enough (which is often those who are honest enough about their racism and sexism not to know it's a problem - unlike all the radicals who try to hide their own contradictions.) Yet we see millions of people, in the richest countries in the world, dissatisfied with what their rulers are doing to them and willing to act collectively against it. In the belly of the beast, in imperialist USA, the 'evil empire' knee-jerk anti-Americanism derides, Americans have proven themselves capable of resisting a racist, exclusionary immigration bill.
Paris ensemble
I celebrate mass struggle wherever it happens; the fact that it happens where capitalism is doing its 'best' job, is extra reason to feel cheerful. It simultaneously undercuts the despair of the left, the confidence of the right, and let's not forget the rightists in other countries, who feed off images of westerners as rich, uncaring, and solidly behind their governments.
Those who would only see one-off mass protests miss the point. They're both a cause and a reflection of unrest. Leftists don't create unrest; the activists who built the protests built on underlying discontent. Rather than that discontent being dissipated through apathy, or channelled in racist directions, it's being targetted at its source: the capitalist governments. Mass protests are important glimpses of our power, and they pose the question concretely: what more must be done?
Second, the UK had a million workers walk out to protest pension cutbacks and meddling with the retirement age (Ministers seek urgent talks after a million workers walk out.)
Third, upwards of two million people protested new immigration restrictions in Los Angeles and around the U.S.
America's citizens - and non-citizens - resist
Do Protests Work?
In this oh-so-ironic postmodern age, protesting is supposed to be dead. No one cares, no one marches in the streets, and if they did it wouldn't have an impact anyway. The death of the Left is pronounced with plodding regularity.
Yet the Left believes in human agency: that real people, collectively, make history. They change their world through confronting power together. And, if we needed yet more proof, France, England and the U.S. provide it.
In France, the ruling class is already starting to back down and reshuffle: "Même dans son propre camp, le premier ministre apparaissait de plus en plus isolé. Son rival et ministre de l'intérieur, Nicolas Sarkozy, a pris ses distances, en prônant – sans toutefois la nommer – la suspension du CPE, le temps de négocier un "compromis" avec les syndicats." (Even in his own camp, the prime minister was appearing more and more isolated. His rival and minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, distanced himself, in pronouncing - without nonetheless naming it - the suspension of the CPE [employment law], [and] the time to negotiate a 'compromise' with the unions.)
A map from Le Monde, showing the police & organizer crowd estimates. Finally, proof that police always underestimate crowd sizes.
In England,
Phil Woolas, the local government minister, made conciliatory noises to the strikers last night after they staged what the unions claimed to be the biggest mass show of industrial muscle since the 1926 general strike, paralysing schools, libraries, leisure centres and transport networks across the country.And in the U.S., they've organized the biggest action in living memory, with echoes of the civil rights movement.
Ministers are privately furious at the scale of yesterday's disruption and are alarmed about the prospect of further walkouts that could disrupt voting during next month's crucial local elections.
U.K. workers on strikePolitical power rests on consent. Mass walkouts - particularly strikes, that affect production - challenge that consent. They are not 'enough' on their own to overturn it. But they have a number of important consequences:
1) they allow people to sense their own power. Marching with 700,000 others gives you a feeling that you can do something - that you're not alone in your disgust at the way capitalism works.
2) they pose alternatives to capitalist power. Organizing and marching in demonstrations brings together large numbers of activists around a central goal. They provide much-needed experience in the art of social mobilization, and prove in practice that 'we' don't need 'them' to run our lives.
3) they work against apathy. Western workers are supposed to be content, uncaring, bloated pigs. This view is rampant on the right, but also among liberals. Radicals bemoan the vast majority of workers who aren't radical enough (which is often those who are honest enough about their racism and sexism not to know it's a problem - unlike all the radicals who try to hide their own contradictions.) Yet we see millions of people, in the richest countries in the world, dissatisfied with what their rulers are doing to them and willing to act collectively against it. In the belly of the beast, in imperialist USA, the 'evil empire' knee-jerk anti-Americanism derides, Americans have proven themselves capable of resisting a racist, exclusionary immigration bill.
"We are illegal immigrants if you trace our heritage all the way back, but we are here and we are working and we are living the American dream," said Janet Padron, a 22-year-old Allen Park resident.
"Do you see the community?" Padron asked, pointing to the thousands of people around her. "Do you see how many people didn't go to work today?"
Paris ensemble
I celebrate mass struggle wherever it happens; the fact that it happens where capitalism is doing its 'best' job, is extra reason to feel cheerful. It simultaneously undercuts the despair of the left, the confidence of the right, and let's not forget the rightists in other countries, who feed off images of westerners as rich, uncaring, and solidly behind their governments.
Those who would only see one-off mass protests miss the point. They're both a cause and a reflection of unrest. Leftists don't create unrest; the activists who built the protests built on underlying discontent. Rather than that discontent being dissipated through apathy, or channelled in racist directions, it's being targetted at its source: the capitalist governments. Mass protests are important glimpses of our power, and they pose the question concretely: what more must be done?
