"We don't want to relive episodes like the demonstrations against
pension reform."* ---- When the bosses of Capécure consider their
hegemony challenged, incomprehension and indignation are replaced by
recrimination and repression. In this regard, they know how to count on
the local media outlets of the bourgeois press and the iron fist of the
police. ---- The Sacrosanct Right to Property... ---- During the latest
attack by Élisabeth Borne's government against the retirement age, the
industrial district of Capécure was the scene of direct clashes with the
bosses' power exercised there and the police forces deployed to
guarantee, in good bourgeois terms, "freedom of work and movement."
We remember the police roadblocks set up at the very first
demonstration, preventing the procession from accessing the port area.
Thus, the local authorities legitimized the Boulogne employers' right to
extend their property rights and authority beyond the confines of their
factories, by seizing public space. Experienced as an affront by the
thousands of demonstrators gathered that day, this insurmountable
barrier revealed the truth of the rule of law. In this case, the law is
erased at the threshold of the higher interests of capital.
A Contested Hegemony
The humiliation would not go unpunished. For several nights, dozens of
workers disputed with the bosses and the police access to and use of the
port area, appropriating the necessary equipment on the spot to block
the movement of the goods they had just produced a few hours earlier.
Spontaneously, they regained control, prohibited its use, and denied
ownership. This was all it took for employers, the sub-prefect, the city
council, and the local press, in a seemingly unanimity that spoke
volumes, to deliberately overshadow the reality of exploited labor,
preferring to condemn in turn "the rioters," "violent individuals,"
"black blocs," who came from who knows where... The ensuing repression
would lead several of them before the courts. None of them came from
elsewhere; all were workers...
A Predatory and Weakened Employer Class
Each time its hegemony was challenged, the employers reacted, sometimes
fiercely. Labor records tell us of shootings, assassinations, beatings,
trials, dismissals... which never fueled any other desire than to
reaffirm a power that was never established and always contradicted. It
is precisely because they are clear-sighted about their organic
fragility that employers seek to protect themselves from it.
Aware of their class interests, Boulogne's employers do not, however,
form a homogeneous whole. Torn apart by the competition between them,
divided by the size of the companies themselves and the nature of the
capital that dominates them, they form an aggregate dominated by a few
transnational groups amidst a slew of SMEs...
At the head of a sector greatly weakened by the collapse of the resource
for which they bear full responsibility, they persist in their headlong
rush toward productivism. Although they pride themselves on being at the
helm of France's leading fishing port, each decade in the past has seen
a drastic drop in recorded volumes, and the 300,000 tons of imported
materials cannot mask this worrying reality.
The employers intend to ward off this curse in the future by building
aquaculture plants and producing raw materials off-site. For every
calamity it creates, capital substitutes an even worse one. The
destruction of fish resources is followed by battery-farming factories,
Henry Ford, Elon Musk...
Contradictions are sharpening
The supposedly glorious years of the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer are now a
memory that the violence of exploitation and the exhaustion of workers
in exchange for "good wages" will never make us miss. Grappling with
exacerbated contradictions, today's employers are now buying labor under
the degraded conditions of the period: temporary workers, minimum wage
for life, and high turnover. The Fordist boom is well and truly behind
us, and with it, the social compromise on which it was based. How can we
be surprised, then, that the terms and intensity of the struggle also
harden when the bourgeoisie imposes longer sentences on the exploited...
The return of the employers' militias?
Anticipating inevitable antagonisms, a "club of entrepreneurs has been
formed to better secure the city's economic lifeblood"(1). In order to
combat, they say, all kinds of "attacks, vandalism, and theft," a
"vigilance charter" has been established and "security officers have
been appointed to take turns throughout the day"(2)... It's always lurid
to hear employers complain about theft, when theft, through the
extortion of surplus value they practice on living labor, is their sole
reason for existing in the world...
Are we witnessing the return of employer militias? The serious events
that occurred in 2023 during the order pickers' strike at Vertbaudet
warn us against any amnesia on the subject(3). While weighing much less
heavily and relating to a completely different story than that of the
textile magnates of Northern France, the small world of local SMEs
nevertheless knows it is at a turning point. For now, it claims to
prioritize "its contacts with law enforcement." Numerous struggles have
taught us that one practice in no way excludes the other; often, the two
are combined if necessary...
-----
*Alain Ducamp, Director of Océan Délices. La VdN. 06/23/2023.
(1), (2)Ibid.
(3)Vertbaudet: an operation worthy of an "employer militia" against a
CGT union member. Read at:
https://rapportsdeforce.fr/classes-en-lutte/vertbaudet-une-operation-digne-dune-milice-patronale-contre-un-syndicaliste-cgt-051718114
https://lamouetteenragee.noblogs.org/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
pension reform."* ---- When the bosses of Capécure consider their
hegemony challenged, incomprehension and indignation are replaced by
recrimination and repression. In this regard, they know how to count on
the local media outlets of the bourgeois press and the iron fist of the
police. ---- The Sacrosanct Right to Property... ---- During the latest
attack by Élisabeth Borne's government against the retirement age, the
industrial district of Capécure was the scene of direct clashes with the
bosses' power exercised there and the police forces deployed to
guarantee, in good bourgeois terms, "freedom of work and movement."
We remember the police roadblocks set up at the very first
demonstration, preventing the procession from accessing the port area.
Thus, the local authorities legitimized the Boulogne employers' right to
extend their property rights and authority beyond the confines of their
factories, by seizing public space. Experienced as an affront by the
thousands of demonstrators gathered that day, this insurmountable
barrier revealed the truth of the rule of law. In this case, the law is
erased at the threshold of the higher interests of capital.
A Contested Hegemony
The humiliation would not go unpunished. For several nights, dozens of
workers disputed with the bosses and the police access to and use of the
port area, appropriating the necessary equipment on the spot to block
the movement of the goods they had just produced a few hours earlier.
Spontaneously, they regained control, prohibited its use, and denied
ownership. This was all it took for employers, the sub-prefect, the city
council, and the local press, in a seemingly unanimity that spoke
volumes, to deliberately overshadow the reality of exploited labor,
preferring to condemn in turn "the rioters," "violent individuals,"
"black blocs," who came from who knows where... The ensuing repression
would lead several of them before the courts. None of them came from
elsewhere; all were workers...
A Predatory and Weakened Employer Class
Each time its hegemony was challenged, the employers reacted, sometimes
fiercely. Labor records tell us of shootings, assassinations, beatings,
trials, dismissals... which never fueled any other desire than to
reaffirm a power that was never established and always contradicted. It
is precisely because they are clear-sighted about their organic
fragility that employers seek to protect themselves from it.
Aware of their class interests, Boulogne's employers do not, however,
form a homogeneous whole. Torn apart by the competition between them,
divided by the size of the companies themselves and the nature of the
capital that dominates them, they form an aggregate dominated by a few
transnational groups amidst a slew of SMEs...
At the head of a sector greatly weakened by the collapse of the resource
for which they bear full responsibility, they persist in their headlong
rush toward productivism. Although they pride themselves on being at the
helm of France's leading fishing port, each decade in the past has seen
a drastic drop in recorded volumes, and the 300,000 tons of imported
materials cannot mask this worrying reality.
The employers intend to ward off this curse in the future by building
aquaculture plants and producing raw materials off-site. For every
calamity it creates, capital substitutes an even worse one. The
destruction of fish resources is followed by battery-farming factories,
Henry Ford, Elon Musk...
Contradictions are sharpening
The supposedly glorious years of the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer are now a
memory that the violence of exploitation and the exhaustion of workers
in exchange for "good wages" will never make us miss. Grappling with
exacerbated contradictions, today's employers are now buying labor under
the degraded conditions of the period: temporary workers, minimum wage
for life, and high turnover. The Fordist boom is well and truly behind
us, and with it, the social compromise on which it was based. How can we
be surprised, then, that the terms and intensity of the struggle also
harden when the bourgeoisie imposes longer sentences on the exploited...
The return of the employers' militias?
Anticipating inevitable antagonisms, a "club of entrepreneurs has been
formed to better secure the city's economic lifeblood"(1). In order to
combat, they say, all kinds of "attacks, vandalism, and theft," a
"vigilance charter" has been established and "security officers have
been appointed to take turns throughout the day"(2)... It's always lurid
to hear employers complain about theft, when theft, through the
extortion of surplus value they practice on living labor, is their sole
reason for existing in the world...
Are we witnessing the return of employer militias? The serious events
that occurred in 2023 during the order pickers' strike at Vertbaudet
warn us against any amnesia on the subject(3). While weighing much less
heavily and relating to a completely different story than that of the
textile magnates of Northern France, the small world of local SMEs
nevertheless knows it is at a turning point. For now, it claims to
prioritize "its contacts with law enforcement." Numerous struggles have
taught us that one practice in no way excludes the other; often, the two
are combined if necessary...
-----
*Alain Ducamp, Director of Océan Délices. La VdN. 06/23/2023.
(1), (2)Ibid.
(3)Vertbaudet: an operation worthy of an "employer militia" against a
CGT union member. Read at:
https://rapportsdeforce.fr/classes-en-lutte/vertbaudet-une-operation-digne-dune-milice-patronale-contre-un-syndicaliste-cgt-051718114
https://lamouetteenragee.noblogs.org/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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