Workers\' struggle - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

History

The origin

Workers' struggle takes its origins in the person of David Korner, alias Barta, young person militant Rumanian trotskist who, with three other comrades, rejoins in 1936 the French trotskists excluded from SFIO who have just constituted the working Party internationalist. Around him the group widens appreciably when with others it enters on the indication of Trotski to PSOP of Marceau Pivert (it is the “infiltration”). Upset by the frame of mind “middle-class man” who reigns in IVe international at the time of the bursting of the second world war, Barta is withdrawn following a banal misunderstanding and with its group then made up of ten militants it modestly constitutes the communist Union (UC) with the intention to establish “a contact real and extended with the working class”… The CPU is devoted mainly to propaganda against the war. Under the occupation, the group is maintained and diffused the first numbers of '' the Class struggle '', as much as possible, with the image of Pierre Bois, alias Vic, young refractory railwayman with STO or of Mathieu Bucholz, Communist militant finally located and assassinated with the Libération by militants of the Communist party who show it to be a “Nazi”. The injustice of this crime leads young a 16 years Communist, Robert Barcia alias Hardy, friend of Mathieu Bucholz, to rock definitively in the trotskism.

The crisis

In 1947, the group always counts ten militants. It starts and takes an active part in the strike at Renault. Its militant Pierre Bois is the leading practical one, Barta the political director. An attack of tuberculosis prevents Robert Barcia from taking part. Following the strike, the group organizes the “Syndicat democratic Renault” which will count to 406 trade unionists. However tensions appear: Pierre Wood and Barta are opposed on the orientation of the group and following a conflict about the drafting of a leaflet the crisis bursts. Lassitude seizes the majority of the militants who cease little by little any activity. The scission between the group Pierre Wood and Barta is consumed in 1949 and the CPU disappears in 1950.

The rebuilding

Robert Barcia, resigner at the summer 1948 reappears as of 1950 and in company of Pierre Bois, always active at Renault, tries to restick the pieces. During 5 years the group tries to be reconstituted. Founded in 1956 working Voix gathers much old “Barta group”. Barta takes part by writing articles but does not take again its place of leader. working Voix circulates in the shape of a small newspaper of company, during several years in collaboration with another group NCV Lambert . working Voix weekly starts to be diffused starting from 1963 initially out of 4 pages, then on 8. After the revolt coed and the general strike from May-June 1968, like all the movements claiming trotskism and other movements of Extreme left, working Voix is prohibited and dissolved by a Presidential decree of the Republic of June 12th, 1968 , pursuant to the law of January 10th 1936 modified “on the groups of combat and private militia”. The movement is reformed immediately under the name of its newspaper renamed Workers' struggle then is reinforced of number and multiplies the bulletins of company. As from 1971 a daring initiative gives rise to the first festival of Workers' struggle, in a field, on the commune of Presles in the valley of Oise. Workers' struggle will be then the first political group to introduce a woman to the presidential election, in 1974, while choosing for spokesperson and national candidate Arlette Laguiller. In 1981, it is the rise of the free radios and Workers' struggle tests with “Radio the Bubble there”, on a bottom of Boléro of Ravel. The experiment lasts a few months. Workers' struggle is thereafter a media and political success important. In 2002, Arlette Laguiller obtains 5,72 % of the voices to the presidential election.

Elections

Workers' struggle introduced candidates in all the great elections since 1973. Arlette Laguiller, spokesperson of the organization since 1973 was presidential candidate with the elections of 1974,1981,1988,1995,2002 and 2007. If it exceeded 5 % at the time of two polls, carrying out 5,3 % (1 615.552 votes) in 1995 and 5,72 % (1 630.045) in 2002, in 2007 with 1,34 % (488 119) it seems more not to be supported but by its traditional electorate.

To the municipal elections of 1995, LO presented 49 lists, obtaining 2,81 % of the voices, is 39.879. In 2001, LO presented 128 lists in 109 different cities, which collected 4,37 % of the votes, is 120.347 votes. LO obtain thus 303 elected official (E) S including 11 women, in 22 different cities, without amalgamating its lists with the second turn with the plural left.

At the time of the regional elections of 1998, LO presented lists in 68 departments, obtaining 4,5 % and 20 elected officials.

Workers' struggle is several times associated with the Communist revolutionary league in elections, in particular at the time of the Européennes elections of 1979, those of 1999, and at the time of the regional elections of 2004. LO had also invited to vote for Alain Krivine at the time of the presidential election of 1969.

At the time the regional elections of 2004, Workers' struggle proposed an electoral alliance with the other great movement French trotskist, the Communist revolutionary league. According to LO (LDC n° 77 of December 2003 - January 2004), this alliance was inspired by the assumption that it was probable that a current fort of voter would prefer to vote PS to give a slap to the right-hand side. Their result of 4,95 %, represents a light increase compared to the result of the regional elections of 1998 (4,83 %) but well in lower part of the result of presidential of 2002 (10 % by adding them). The reform of the way of voting made that revolutionists (LO and LCR) lost all their elected officials in the district councils, in spite of a score higher than 1998.

With the difference in the municipal elections of 2001, where LO had presented only autonomous lists, the party announced for the polls of 2008 of the contacts with PCF to introduce candidates on the list supported by PCF (Aubervilliers, Courneuve…) or of the lists of union of the left carried out by the PS (Saint-Brieuc, Angers, Pontarlier…). This unexpected orientation is justified by Georges Kaldy “We do not offer our services to the PS, but where the left can be supplanted by the line or regain a municipality, we discuss. We do not want that our score can support the line” which adds “change of political context. In 2001, one did not want to guarantee the left with the capacity. The election of Sarkozy and its general offensive against the workers changed gives it.” LO notes that it was already allied with the PSU in 1971 then with PCF in 1995.

See electoral Results of the extreme-left in France.

Principles and activities

Workers' struggle arises as a free association of militants who work with the creation of a party working, communist, revolutionary able to defend the interests of the workers, with short terms (dismissals, unemployment, wages, work conditions and of housing…) and long-term (inequalities between men and women, pollution, wars, famines…). According to LO, all these problems rise from the capitalist organization of the company and the race to the profit, and do not relate to only the workers, but the whole of the world population which into sudden the consequences.

Workers' struggle justifies its existence separated within the movement trotskyste by its will to direct its preferred stock towards the working class.

Bases programming sciences

Workers' struggle estimates that the variation growing between average the techniques increasingly sophisticated available to humanity and persistence, even in certain areas aggravation, of misery and of the inequalities, possible and necessary the replacement of the capitalist company makes by a communist company, i.e. by the pooling and democratic control by the whole of the population of production capacities and exchange available to humanity to ensure all its needs.

For Workers' struggle, a communist company would be quite far away from the caricature that the Eastern European countries and the USSR gave some, but would be on the contrary a freer company, more democratic than current capitalism, by giving to the whole of the population means of acting on choices which are currently taken in the boards of directors of banks or multinationals. According to LO, the possibilities material for such a company exist right now, which was not the case in Russia of 1917.

Workers' struggle in addition sees in the working class the only social force which may find it beneficial at the same time the force and to take in hand such a reorganization of the mechanisms of production and redistribution of the richnesses. LO estimates that such a transformation of the company will be able only to result from a confrontation between “those which have only their work to sell” and those which hold the great ways of production. This is why LO is said revolutionary.

LO is asserted for its political heritage of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which analyzed the wheels and internal contradictions of incipient capitalism (value of the goods, role of the working class in the production process), of Rosa Luxembourg, of Lénine, which led the Russian Révolution of 1917 and Trotsky, which analyzed the reasons of the degeneration of the Russian revolution in Stalinist bureaucracy.

In the continuity of these militants, Workers' struggle estimates that it is necessary to the proletariat to have a party which defends its interests. It is this party, workman, Communist, revolutionist, whom LO seeks to build.

Workers' struggle also endorses the formula of Marx “the proletarians do not have a fatherland”. For Workers' struggle, internationalism rises from the organization even of the capitalist company, which is already world and connects all the people of planet. So Workers' struggle estimates that an upheaval of the current social order could be only world, and that it is of this fact necessary to the militants who work with this upheaval to create an Internationale news. For LO, none the existing international regroupings can claim with such a title, not having neither the credit, neither the experiment, nor the militant force to play a true part with the international scales.

Bases programming sciences, by LO.

International bonds

LO is member of the communist Union internationalist whose several groups and political parties in the world are members:

the Antilles: Working Combat
Africa: African Union of the communist workers internationalists
Spain: Lustred of Class
France: Workers' struggle
Haiti: revolutionary Organization of the workers
the United Kingdom: Workers Fight
Turkey: Sinif Mucadelesi

Two other groups are in fraternal relationship to the communist Union internationalist:

the United States of America: The Spark
Italy: Internazionale

Workers' struggle asserts trotskism, which is in its eyes only running communist revolutionist to have always fought the Stalinisme, and to exist with the international scales. However, contrary to the majority of the other trotskystes groups, Workers' struggle estimates that none the international organizations who name themselves Fourth International constitutes true international. Just as Workers' struggle militates in France for the creation of a revolutionary working party, it militates for the construction of true international.

Proposals

In the elections, LO defends the claims of which it estimates that they could put a crushing argument at the degradation of the living conditions of a whole poor part of the population.

She affirms that it is necessary to take on the profits of the large companies to solve the three problem principal of the work world:

to fight against the chômage' , it is necessary to create jobs which miss in the hospitals, public transport, teaching, the building; etc
it is necessary to increase the wages , retirement pensions on a level which makes it possible to live decently, that is to say at least 300 euros of increase for all
it is necessary that the State deals with the construction of the hundreds of thousands of residences which miss.

For the presidential election of 2007, Arlette Laguiller stresses the need which the population can control the economic choices of the large companies, insistent on the fact that “ the capitalist management of the companies, carried out in the secrecy of the boards of directors according to only financial profitability, is not only catastrophic for the workers but also for all the other popular layers, and even for all the company ” (Arlette Laguiller, Presles, June 3rd, 2006).

LO has defended for several years a “ emergency plan”:

to prohibit the dismissals in the companies which make profits and to impose employment maintenance by deducting profits sums necessary;
to impose an increase of 300 euros of all the wages:
to put an end to the insecure contracts;
to restore the income tax of the companies with 50 % at least and to increase in an important way the imposition on the high incomes;
to stop any subsidy, any assistance, with employers under some pretext that it is, by devoting the money thus saved to engage of the personnel in the hospitals, teaching, a great public service of social housing construction.

Concerning all these proposals, LO affirms with each election, in the professions of faith, its leaflets, its newspaper, which they do not constitute an electoral program with the direction where it would be enough to elect a representative so that it is applied, but that on the other hand such claims should be proposed during a mobilization of the workers. ( These objectives will not be carried out by the magic of the electoral results or changes of majority, but by the collective fight of the world of the travail")

Political activities

For LO, revolutionary being does not mean to wait the “great evening passively”, but to militate as of today contributing to modify the frame of mind of the working class, by general propaganda for its ideas, and by the participations in fights (strikes, demonstrations…). LO advances the idea indeed that it is in the fights that the workers can learn how car to organize and become aware of their weight in the company and their force.

LO defines its orientation as mainly turned towards the workers, including the workers of the row.

Its main activity consists of the organization of workers in the companies, in particular around “bulletins of companies”, which denounce the exploitation and the injustices felt daily by the workers. About 500.000 workers, workmen or employees can read this press of company every 15 days.

Workers' struggle supports also, as far as its forces, of many particular combat like that of Without-papers , of associations like Right to housing, the movements Feminist S and of defense of the right to the Voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVG).

In the tradition of the communist movement, Workers' struggle takes part in the elections its forces as far as. On this occasion, she seeks to make propaganda for her ideas, and in particular for immediate measurements of defense of the interests of the workers (see the Proposals above). She seeks moreover to measure by-there her influence, and to estimate the moral one and the combativeness of the workers. When Workers' struggle has elected officials (city council men, regional advisers, European deputies), its posted principle is to support measurements which seem to him to go in the direction of the interests of the workers, and to vote against those which degrade their living conditions. Reports of the votes of the elected officials are in addition made public on the site the LO.

In addition, Workers' struggle regularly organizes conferences on subjects of general policy (prone of current events or histories). Thus, in Paris, the Circle Leon Trotsky (CLT), which gathers approximately a thousand of anybody.

LO organizes finally political festivals, of which the annual festival of Presles, which gathers many people the weekend of Pentecost. In these festivals, a great place is made with the culture and science, writers, intellectuals or scientists coming to share their knowledge with workers.

Oppositions in Workers' struggle

During the years 1970, Workers' struggle knows variable ruptures of importances. A first rupture is that, in 1973, of a Parisian militant, " Bérard" , which will sign the booklet " Rupture with Workers' struggle and the trotskysme" (actually written by the group International Révolution that it had joined after its exit of LO). This booklet influences other militants, as those which publish little time after the text " So that the workers do not vote on the left any more and are not made any more massacre, six militants leave Lutte ouvrière". In 1974, an oppositional fraction is constituted in Workers' struggle, in particular on Bordeaux, starting from the criticism of the characterization of the Russian State like “working State”. This led to the diffusion, on October 10th, within the organization of a text entitled “Clean slate of confusion”. According to this diffusion, the section of Bordeaux of Workers' struggle is dissolved on November 3rd, and the oppositional ones are constituted in fraction independent which will publish as from December 1974 the newspaper “Union working, for abolition of paid slavery”. The working Union evolves/moves then worms of the positions “Ultra-gauche”. Working union will disappear after one year from activities. Another part of the oppositional fraction, present at Paris, Bordeaux and some other cities, will set up the Communist Combat group which will publish the monthly newspaper of the same name. Combat Communiste will tie bonds with several organizations, in particular the OCRIA (Organization of the revolutionary Communists internationalists of Algeria), will publish bulletins of company and will disappear in 1990. Some of its militants will join Workers' struggle.

Workers' struggle includes/understands a small fraction since 1996, which obtains approximately 3 % of the voices at the time of the annual convention of the organization. Following an initial dissension on the evolution of the ex-USSR since 1989, these militants asked to function separately, i.e. in fraction. Other dissensions with the remainder of the party appeared then, like the question of the relations between Militant S of Workers' struggle and the other militants of left. This fraction, the fraction the “Spark of Workers' struggle”, publishes a newspaper, revolutionary Convergences . She says to seek to the maximum the united action with the other militants and groups of extreme left, with each time there is political agreement, and would like that the whole of Workers' struggle adopts this attitude.

With the congress of 2005, the fraction disputed the attitude of the majority on the riots of 2005 in the French suburbs, supported that it was about “a rebellion of part of working youth”, while criticizing the forms taken by this revolt, such as the destruction of public buildings and the attacks against buses and firemen, and recalled that Workers' struggle had in the past supported the Vaulx-in-Vellum rioters, under conditions rather close to those of November 2005. The direction for its part denied this character of “revolt of part of working youth” and considered that these violence resulted certainly from the crisis of the capitalist system and unemployment, but were also for much the result of the deficiency of education of part of the displaced young people of suburbs and that these primarily negative acts could not be comparable with a revolt of class.

Charges of sectarianism at the time of the elections of 2002

Workers' struggle was sometimes shown of sectarianism, i.e. not to turn sufficiently to the other currents to the close ideas or to function folded up on itself, by other political currents:

Critical on behalf of personalities of other political currents: an article of Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit in Libération affirm that LO would be a “sect directed by a guru”. This article involves a lawsuit in slandering, it was initially considered to be defamatory, but the authors profited from the excuse of the bona fide, then condemned to have made it clear that the organization obtained an illegal financing of companies. Gerard Streiff who had affirmed in the newspaper Humanity that “this sect” held “double talks” is released at the time of a lawsuit in slandering because “the " term; double discours" was a " appreciation critique" of the journalist, nonpunishable, and that the word " secte" , employee alone, without reference to morally or penally condemnable practices, was not either defamatory. ”
Critical of others trotskystes or old trotskystes: former militants of Workers' struggle excluded and having formed the current Voice from the workers, which then entered to the Communist revolutionary league. Bernard Seytre, having according to the militated Express train with Workers' struggle 20 years ago confirms, according to this newspaper “the discipline of iron which rate/rhythm life of the organization trotskist, of which the executives do not have the right to have of child, under penalty of exclusion. ”

The journalist Christophe Bourseiller, specialist in the movements, organizations and started from extreme left, writing: “The communist union is obviously not a sect with the direction where closed religious companies are evoked, exerting on their members of intolerable psychological or financial pressures. It is about a political movement, which was constituted during the blackest time of our history and solved to face, against winds and tides, with an aim of falling under the duration”.

The principal leader of Workers' struggle, Robert Barcia, alias Hardy, published a book of talks: true story of Workers' struggle , which contains answers to these charges. He affirms: “Workers' struggle is obviously not a sect. Those which say or suggest hypocritically that would be well in sorrow to explain in what our movement would have the characteristics of a sect. It is with those which affirm that we are a sect to justify it, rather than with us to prove the opposite. I carry a pseudonym like many militants trotskists or anarchists, and also like much of actors, writers, or of journalists. ”

See too

References

, Editions of the Threshold, 1999, collection Counter-enquiry, ISBN 2020370581.

My Communism , Arlette Laguiller, Plon, 2002, ISBN 2259196071
True story of Workers' struggle: Discussions with Christophe Bourseiller , Robert Barcia, Denoël, 2003, Denoël impacts, 326 pages, ISBN 2207254224

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