WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria, May: STRIKES IN FRANCE. A contribution from the comrades of "Lundimatin" - Appeal to international solidarity (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The great protest movement that exploded in France last January against the

raising of the retirement age to 64, decreed by the Macron government, is
becoming increasingly radical. Emmanuel Macron and his ministers imposed an
unpopular law not voted by Parliament, given their unconditional support for the
most violent forms of police repression, carried out by the "flying brigades"
reconstituted in 2019 against the "yellow vests", and responded to the criticisms
of the human rights associations threatening them to suspend state subsidies.
Macron refuses to discuss with the parliamentary opposition, with the trade union
centers - which have regrouped for the occasion -, with the millions of
demonstrators who took to the streets to protest in all French cities. "Lundimatin",

Since January, France has been on fire. Millions of people took to the streets
every week, blocking stations and highways, confronting the police and attacking
the symbols of the state and capitalism. The opposition to the pension reform
wanted by the Macron government has several reasons. The first, and most evident,
aims to protect the "French-style" social model: a relatively generous policy of
redistribution of labor products and capital income, imposed by the strikes and
threats of the proletariat in the 1950s and 1960s. Social security, unemployment
insurance, public housing for all, universal pensions, free education: there
would be much to say about the problems and impediments caused by tripartite
co-management, State/Employers/Unions, of socially produced wealth, but the
mobilizations that have made it possible to extract and defend these social
conquests, which are an example for the whole world, make them precious. It is in
the determination to methodically destroy them that the rise of neoliberalism has
become more evident, while the popular resistance it has encountered is proof of
a political and radical adherence to a certain idea of social justice.

A second point that soon became apparent was the refusal to work in a society
that is slowly dying from the pressure exerted by neoliberalism on everyone. The
prospect of remaining at work for another two years, when retirement appears on
the horizon as the long-awaited moment in which to finally escape work and its
destructive grip on body and mind, was immediately experienced as unbearable. Not
only does capitalism's need for profitability make work a place of suffering and
alienation, but its very meaning has been lost when it feeds more and more the
capitalist production and distribution mechanism that accelerates the ongoing
ecological catastrophe every day. Previous generations had been promised an ever
more comfortable and opulent life, even at the cost of sacrificing the planet,

The third point, which shines through in the speeches but whose consequences are
too serious for the movement to dare to formulate directly, concerns political
legitimacy. It has not escaped anyone, not even the main interested party, that
Macron's re-election in 2022 absolutely does not derive from an adherence to his
ideas, his program or his method, but from a "lesser evil" policy aimed at
preventing all extreme right to access power. Elected without a plebiscite,
governing without a majority in legislative assemblies, Macron is trying to
brutally impose his agenda of transforming France into a "start-up nation", a
neoliberal and tendentially fascist paradise. The virulence with which the square
reminds the government of its existence is also a consequence of this deaf
awareness: the source of political legitimacy does not lie in the pure electoral
game, there is a "demos" to which it must account. The government's refusal to
give way on any aspect of its reform shows that it is fully aware of the
situation: bowing to the streets, and to the political forces agitating them,
would mean recognizing their authority and accepting that until the end of his
mandate the country becomes ungovernable.

We could summarize the stakes of the current movement with the need to demand
greater control by the workers over the distribution of wealth, using the weapons
of social mobilization (strikes, demonstrations, blockades, etc.), to put an end
to the neoliberal program of destruction of the French social model. We are not
saying that the movement should stop there, considering that more and more of us
want a revolutionary overcoming of that model, but that this represents the
minimum meeting point between its various components. This is in fact one of the
most precious and decisive elements for guaranteeing the duration of the movement
and its progressive shift towards more radical objectives. This unitary basis
allowed in the first phase of the movement, from January to the beginning of
March, the holding of mass demonstrations, with the participation of several
million people, both in large cities and in many smaller towns. This first phase
of peaceful mobilization served above all to count and gather more and more each
time, and this strengthened the determination of those who wanted to move on to
the second phase of the movement, that of strikes and blockades. Spurred by the
government's refusal to enter into the slightest discussion with them, despite
the massive support they received from the streets, the unions had no other
choice than to ask for the escalation of a movement that was starting to get out
of hand. Thus, starting from the first week of March, the number of strike days
multiplied and, in a coordinated manner in various cities, the blockade of roads,
railways, bus depots and waste storage facilities. The closure of refineries and
the blockade of ports through which oil is transported to France led, for a time,
to a fuel shortage.

Nonetheless, the government has gone even further in contempt of democracy and
social dialogue, resorting to art. 49 paragraph 3 of the Constitution, which
allows him to pass a law without voting for it when there is no parliamentary
majority. This event set fire to the dust. It was now clear that no recourse to
parliamentary democracy would be possible and that the weekly mass mobilizations
would be insufficient. Thus riots broke out in all the cities of France with
marches passing through them burning rubbish bins and furiously and methodically
attacking the symbols of capitalism and the state. A demonstration called by
ecologists in Sainte-Soline, with 25,000 people determined to carry out
collective actions of sabotage, was repressed with the utmost brutality:

Although the number of protesters begins to decline, the movement remains
determined and focuses on new forms of action. Activist groups, for example,
regularly invade public offices, the headquarters of large capitalist companies,
the private properties of some billionaires. A cheerful hunt has begun for
members of the government and deputies who are friends of Macron: their every
appearance is greeted by an angry crowd that chases them, insults them and drowns
out their speeches with the clatter of saucepans. The broad support that the
movement still enjoys, the fact that new initiatives are continually being taken,
the radical nature of the issues that underlie it, contribute to creating a
stimulating and at the same time dizzying climate.

We ask you to express the widest possible solidarity, with the movement and
against its repression, wherever you are and in the forms that everyone, at an
international level, deems appropriate. Among the ideas that could be useful, in
addition to counterinformation activities, hanging banners, painting or writing
on walls, we ask you to prevent the travel of members of the government abroad,
to put pressure on the places of French power abroad, as well as on large French
companies, especially in the luxury, finance and energy sectors. Make the ongoing
struggle in France more visible, support it with all necessary means,

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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