WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #37-24: Libertarian transition or dictatorship? Boarding the future - part 4 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 First part:

https://umanitanova.org/allarrembaggio-del-futuro-necessita-e-problemi-del-superamento-del-capitalismo/
---- Second part:
https://umanitanova.org/allarrembaggio-del-futuro-2-parte/ ---- Third
part: https://umanitanova.org/allarrembaggio-del-futuro-3-parte/
I resume my reflections on the transition once again starting from
Ernest Mandel. In his text the author raises the problem of the
relationship between the growth of production in the producer goods
sector and the growth of production in the consumer goods sector. Mandel
criticizes the choice of the Stalinist leadership of the Soviet Union,
which set itself the goal of a more rapid development of the means of
production sector compared to that of consumer goods and even went so
far as to make it a scientific law of the economy of the transition
phase in the Khrushchev era. In this regard, Mandel quotes a passage by
Charles Bettelheim, taken from his work "Problemes du developpement
economique":
«These transformations can take place with the desired speed, despite
the interests that oppose them, only if the action of the State really
operates in this direction and if this action is powerfully supported by
the social forces that will have to benefit from economic development.
And this support will be given with the necessary vigor only if those
who will have to benefit from economic development note from the
beginning that the economic policy that is practiced brings real
advantages for them».
Mandel continues, linking the choice of Stalin's accelerated
industrialization to the affirmation of the bureaucratic caste in the
USSR, to the growing authoritarianism of the state and to the worsening
of the living conditions of the producers. Every increase in the
accumulation fund - he states - constitutes a relative renunciation in
terms of consumption by the working classes: the resources used for the
construction of machines could have been used to produce consumer goods.
In a bureaucratically and centrally planned economy, it is the
government that arbitrarily determines the rate of investment on which
the volume of real consumption of the masses depends. In this way,
sacrifices are imposed on the masses without them having been consulted,
without obtaining their consent beforehand, as in capitalism. A
management system of this type is contrary to the aims of socialism and
leads, I would add, inevitably to the rebirth of capitalism. It invests
the power of control over the social surplus only in the central
administration, political, economic and military. Consequently, it
ensures that this administration has the power to control and
subordinate the whole of society to itself. The cult of personality was
only the final outcome of such arbitrary power of the bureaucracy over
the economy and over the entire society.
It is inevitable that in a situation of still accentuated scarcity, such
a concentration of the social surplus in the hands of a central
administration entails the granting of considerable privileges to its
members.
Stalinist Maurice Dobb argues: "If the decision regarding the division
of the surplus value obtained between consumption and investment is the
crucial decision for determining the rate of development of an economy,
it follows that whoever makes this decision finds himself in a condition
of privileged consumer, in whatever sense he makes his decision. This
condition of privileged consumer derives directly from the strategic
function that the people who make these decisions have in an economy".

Revolutionizing the economic and social structure translates into the
possibility, for those directly involved, to make decisions regarding
the destination of the resources available for potential consumption;
this is what the anarchist movement means by socialism. Entrusting these
decisions to a central domination structure and the bureaucracy that
comes from it is completely contrary to socialism.

These reflections show even more their inadequacy with respect to the
current moment: they are based on a productivist conception that
currently appears to generate many more problems than it solves. This
conception is shared by some classical authors of anarchism.

The enormous development of the productive forces that has taken place
within the capitalist relations of production poses problems of survival
for the productive forces themselves. The problem is not only to
guarantee the satisfaction of humanity's needs, but also to guarantee
its survival and the maintenance of the presuppositions of humanity's
existence. The ecological crisis threatens the sources of the productive
forces, humanity, from which the labor force emerges, and nature, from
which those goods involved in the organic exchange between humanity and
nature emerge. This ecological crisis is the result of production relations.

The concept according to which the transition phase is the phase in
which the productive forces are developed for the subsequent passage to
communism, to the society of abundance, derives directly from the
cornerstone of the materialist conception of history according to which
"in the social production of their existence, people enter into
determined, necessary relationships, independent of their will, in
production relationships that correspond to a determined degree of
development of their material productive forces. The set of these
production relationships constitutes the economic structure of society,
that is, the real basis on which a legal and political superstructure
rises and to which correspond determined forms of social consciousness.
The mode of production of material life generally conditions the social,
political and spiritual process of life. It is not the consciousness of
men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social
being that determines their consciousness. At a certain point in their
development, the material productive forces of society come into
conflict with the existing relations of production, that is, with the
property relations (which are only their legal expression) within which
these forces have previously operated. These relations, from forms of
development of the productive forces, are converted into their chains.
And then an epoch of social revolution sets in. With the change in the
economic basis, the entire gigantic superstructure is more or less
rapidly overturned. In studying such upheavals, it is always
indispensable to distinguish between the material upheaval of the
economic conditions of production, which can be ascertained with the
precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious,
artistic or philosophical forms, that is, the ideological forms, which
enable men to conceive this conflict and to combat it" (Karl Marx,
Preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy").

This tendency can be traced back to the great upheavals of civilization,
but authoritarian socialists have given this conception the status of an
objective, scientific law, on which they have based their scientific
"socialism" and which they have tried to apply every time they have
gained power: if the old capitalist relations of production were chains
to the development of productive forces, the new relations of production
should have given rise to a prodigious development of productive forces
that would have led in a short time, within one or two generations, to
the age of abundance, to communism. And this was not only Stalin's
vision, but was also shared by Lenin and Trotsky, from the Second
International to the First World War, and is shared, albeit with some
attenuation, by our Ernest Mandel.

Now, thinking of the transition phase as a phase of development of
production would have as a consequence the continuation of the
plundering of backward areas by advanced areas, as well as the worsening
of the climate crisis and the worsening of the living conditions of the
great masses. As I noted above, capitalist production relations threaten
the very existence of productive forces, undermining their sources, with
the expansion of production for production's sake. It is this process
that must be interrupted, bringing production under control, allocating
it to the satisfaction of social needs and not to private profit.

Current problems highlight the double error of Marx and Marxism. First
of all, having given a tendency the force of a law of nature, to be
applied at all times and in all places without taking into account
objective conditions and without taking into account relations of
domination extraneous to the economic sphere, such as the political
relations of domination that give rise to government and the State, and
which played such an important role in the suffocation of the Russian
Revolution and in the military defeat of the Spanish Revolution.

Secondly, the wording of the quotation is ambiguous: Marx states that
production relations are identical to property relations and at the same
time that property relations are only the legal form of production
relations - "...the existing production relations, that is, with
property relations (which are only their legal expression)" -. If we
think about today's society, we see that the capitalist production
relation informs not only property relations but also the productive
forces themselves: the organization of the work process, technology, the
division of labor and its monetary mediation masks relationships between
people with value relations, with relationships between things. The
credit system and the debt relationships that derive from it are the
taboo of current production relationships, reducing the exploited part
of humanity to work in slavery conditions for the benefit of the
privileged minority. Not only legal relationships, not only ideology,
but also interpersonal relationships, feelings and emotions are
conditioned by production relationships, by the totem of productivity
and gross domestic product, by the race towards accumulation.

Marxism had to wait until the 1960s, the Cultural Revolution, the
questioning of experts, the battle against Confucianism and the
traditional conceptions of the Chinese bureaucracy to understand that
technology is not neutral but, like science, is an integral part of the
dominant ideology.

Classical anarchism also shared with Marxism the identification of
production relationships with property relationships but, unlike the
latter, did not make it an absolute law. Furthermore, anarchism does not
postpone to the future the abolition of the State, of the authoritarian
organization of the work process, of monetary relations and of the
division of labor, even that on a gender basis; it poses to the
revolutionary forces the problem of immediately building alternative
social relations to the capitalist ones, creating the conditions, also
through the free experimentation of forms of production, distribution
and consumption and forms of organization of society, for the
elimination of social and interpersonal relations based on oppression,
in the various forms in which it presents itself, even the patriarchal one.

As long as production dominates society, the division of labor on the
basis of gender and the patriarchy that is its expression will continue
to exist, the social bases of machismo will continue to exist; as long
as the development of the productive forces is at the center, the binary
relationship that allows the reproduction of those who provide the
working capacity will also be at the center. The liberation of
non-binary and fluid subjectivities can only occur in a society that
places consumption and not production at the center, that allows the
satisfaction of social needs, childhood education, education,
healthcare, assistance within the community and not within the family,
undermining its foundations.

If this does not happen, if we limit ourselves to the socialization of
the large means of production and exchange, we risk having a society of
producers that reproduces the models of the authoritarian and capitalist
society at a social level. The emancipation of the working class will
not be accompanied by the emancipation of all humanity.

The self-management of the work process by producers must therefore be
accompanied by collective management, that is, by the entire society, by
the network of collectives and territorial, functional, productive
organisms that will form in the days immediately preceding and following
the victorious insurrection. On the basis of the formation and expansion
of organisms based on free and supportive social relationships, it is
possible to reduce the weight of violence and appropriation in the minds
of individuals, in a process of continuous experimentation and
horizontal discussion. A process that must begin immediately and develop
with the revolution, without waiting for a mythical age of abundance, to
be successful. This for me is communism, this for me is anarchy.

Tiziano Antonelli

https://umanitanova.org/transizione-libertaria-o-dittatura-allarrembaggio-del-futuro-parte-4/
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WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY SICILY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, Sicilie Libertaria #454 - PINO BERTELLI - Parthenope (2024) by Paolo Sorrentino (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

We like Paolo Sorrentino, especially with a cigar in his mouth, in the
manner of a Neapolitan street urchin who grew up quickly in the slums
and the belly of Naples that marked generations of libertarian uprisings
and Camorra obsequies... however, we are not at all attracted by his
filmography, except, perhaps, The Family Friend (2005)... on the
contrary... We find it full of misplaced artistic ambitions and not even
visionary, as many have said... his most celebrated and Oscar-winning
films appear to us as colorful sideshows... something that is between a
circus show and the aesthetics of ornament dear to the "beautiful
appearance" of all power... Sorrentino, like a stylite sitting on a
column in the desert of cinema, tries to shock the audience with
figurative excesses (?!), without ever having understood that a
brilliant artist is a refined anarchist or a mangy dog who knows no
limits or measures to respect, spends his entire existence only to dance
on the heads of kings...

Of Parthenope. The most beautiful image of Parthenope is the word
interval... we are not joking... we understand well why the helpful
national and international critics have spent words of praise for this
film... to us it seems like a long commercial not even for Naples, but
for the upper middle class of Campania that together with the Camorra
has always reigned over the city... the courtiers know the art of
crawling and to keep a place in the gazebo of small red carpet
privileges, they kiss their masters' ass. Sorrentino seems to forget the
millenary culture of a city and a people who invented moments of
profound insurrectional beauty... Naples was and is the center of
popular and intellectual culture not only in Italy... expressed in
immortal songs, films of naked realism, photography of difference and
disseminated in plays, anthropological essays, futurist visions,
everlasting novels... an unrepeatable act of ethical-aesthetic creation.

Parthenope is a powerful international co-production: Fremantle, The
Apartment, Pathé, Numero 10, PiperFilm, Saint Laurent, Logical Content
Ventures, Canal+, Cine+. International distribution is Pathé, North
American distribution is A24 and Italian distribution is PiperFilm...
all people who pay attention to the substance of utilitarianism... box
office success is the film, the art of cinema has nothing to do with it.
Sorrentino's film opens in 1950... with the birth of the second daughter
of the wealthy Di Sangro family in the sea of Posillipo... she is given
the name Parthenope in honor of the city of Naples... the godfather is
Commander Achille Lauro... the one who gave a shoe to those who voted
for him in the elections for mayor and deputy of the MSI with other
right-wing coalitions... and after winning he gave the other shoe, says
Sorrentino. We move on to 1970. Parthenope is a cheeky
twenty-year-old... she makes Sandrino, the housekeeper's son, fall in
love with her, and also Raimondo, her brother, with whom she has an
almost incestuous relationship. At university she is good... she admires
the anthropology professor Devoto Marotta (who has a very troubled son
but nobody knows what it is)... a relationship of detached respect is
established between the bubbly girl and the professor. During the summer
Parthenope, Raimondo and Sandrino go on holiday to Capri... Parthenope
knows no inhibitions... an industrialist from the north tries to seduce
her with a helicopter, villas, champagne and promises of wealth... she
refuses. She proposes to her favourite writer, John Cheever, and is told
that she loves men. Raimondo goes with an heiress, and when he tries to
kiss her, he realises that he cannot love any woman except his sister.
She commits suicide by throwing herself off a cliff in Capri.
Parthenope's parents consider her guilty of her brother's death and
banish her from their lives. The wave of generational revolt of '68 had
shaken the entire world... Sorrentino doesn't take it into account... he
is silent about the cultural-political fervour that shook Naples and the
whole of Italy at least until 1977. It was about attacking power, not to
possess it, but to better destroy it.

In 1974 Parthenope asks Professor Marotta to support a thesis on the
topic of suicide... the professor suggests another topic, the cultural
impact of the miracle... she interrupts her studies and tries to become
an actress... he tries to take lessons from a faded diva, Flora Malva,
disfigured by plastic surgery who kisses her in the fumes of the
bathroom... then he sends her to Greta Cool, a declining actress of
Campanian origins (she lives in Northern Italy)... on a ship, during the
New Year's event in her honor, Cool rants against Naples and the
Neapolitans... he suggests Parthenope not to be enchanted by the
fictionality of cinema. On the same ship Parthenope meets Roberto
Criscuolo, a Camorra boss who takes her to visit the suburbs of
Naples... the girl discovers that in the city there is misery, poverty,
prostitution (?!)... she witnesses the ritual called the great fusion...
a boy and a girl, heirs of two contrasting Camorra families, make love
on a bed in front of the members of the families to conceive a child who
will mark the end of their feud. Parthenope becomes pregnant by
Criscuolo and chooses to have an abortion. Sandrino, before moving to
Milan, confirms his love for her... she blames him for her brother's
death... they will never see each other again... in the meantime Italy
falls into the years of lead (a cream sequence, you can see that
Sorrentino in those years was going mushroom hunting, perhaps)...
Parthenope graduates with top marks and Marotta takes her on as an
assistant.

We jump to 1982. Parthenope is a diligent researcher... an anthropology
magazine asks her to write an article on the liquefaction of the blood
of San Gennaro and wants to meet Cardinal Tesorone (guardian of the
ampoules of the Saint). Marotta tells her that the ecclesiastic is a
criminal. The prelate promises Parthenope to show her the treasure of
San Gennaro after the mass, where the blood of the Saint will liquefy.
The miracle does not happen because a menopausal woman screams that she
has started menstruating again... the cardinal dresses Parthenope with
jewels from the Saint's treasure and tells her that Neapolitan
spirituality is a useless machination that intertwines popular
superstition and political convenience... Parthenope lies down on a bed
and during the act of love (the cardinal never stops smoking), the blood
of San Gennaro liquefies (the Saint also participates in the cardinal's
copulation with the shameless researcher, we were missing seeing Jesus
banging the Madonna, while the angels sang the Ave Maria in chorus, and
the miracle of the blood was complete). Marotta retires and suggests
Parthenope take the competition in Trento... after winning it, do a few
years of teaching and return to Naples... he invites her to his house...
he introduces her to his son, a sort of enormous child who fills a room,
made "of water and salt, like the sea" (?!). Parthenope is fascinated by
him. It's 2023. Professor Parthenope, who remained to teach in Trento,
retires. She returns to Naples... she goes to Capri... she reflects on
her brother's death and finally feels part of the city... on the street
the fans celebrate Napoli's third championship victory and she opens up
to a smile of liberation.

Parthenope is written and directed by Sorrentino... the pompous shots,
the laughable dialogues, the bombastic scenes refer to a figurative
prosopopoeia that is at times embarrassing... both in the love scenes
and in the illustrative story of the city... Sorrentino puts everything
in there... abortion, homosexuality, lesbianism, incest, camorra,
commander Lauro... illustrated postcards resting on that slender girl
(Parthenope) who crosses the film between veils, glances, nudity that do
not penetrate the screen. Daria D'Antonio's photography spreads in a
uniform grayness and does not contemplate either the shadows or the
Mediterranean lights of Naples... Cristiano Travaglioli's editing is a
conjunction of exhausting sequences and with Lele Marchitelli's music,
they sink into a figurative minestrone with no escape... for 136
minutes... until the exhaustion of the spectator most faithful to
Sorrentine filmic factuality. Celeste Della Porta's (Young Parthenope)
acting is disconcerting... she moves through the film without having the
slightest bit of sensuality... she is neither vulgar, nor sinful, nor
shamelessly slutty (as the theme required)... she can't carry the words,
nor walk without recalling the parades of anorexic models... she wags
her tail as she can here and there... and in the close-ups she refers to
the advertisements for drugs to cure depression... she wouldn't look bad
as a lifeguard in some Turkish TV series. Luisa Ranieri (Greta Cool)
plays the wasted actress in an anecdotal way and when she gets angry
against Naples and the Neapolitans, her invectives provoke mockery. Gary
Oldman is the drunk homosexual... he doesn't break the mold... he
doesn't seem to believe in what he's playing. Isabella Ferrari covered
by a black mask, passes unnoticed from the room of memories to the
bathroom. Peppe Lanzetta impersonates the cardinal with arrogance and
the degeneration of the sacred in ostentatious sketches, to the point of
descending into parody. Alfonso Santagata (Achille Lauro) is little more
than a caricature. Except for Silvio Orlando (Professor Marotta) and
partly Stefania Sandrelli (older Parthenope), all the others are
marginal faces-bodies that have little to do with the roles assigned to
them... they seem to have come out of a designer clothes store and there
they die happy. The good monster-child, then (taken from the painting by
René Magritte, "The art of living", 1967)... is astonishing... here the
bonhomie of the monster-child is almost a martyrological evocation of an
innocent and sacred life. We have not understood if behind those
cigarettes in everyone's mouth there is some hidden sponsor and we have
not even understood if general stupidity is a virtue... what has become
clear to us is that Parthenope is a cinematic carnival that has nothing
to do with the resurrection of a thought, a style, an art form... but an
elevation of deception, conventions, lies, scams that keep the society
of the spectacle afloat. Praise be now to men of fame.

http://sicilialibertaria.it
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WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #355 - Trade Unionism, Video Game Industry: Strike of the Year (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 A social consensus is shattering in the video game sector. Deciphering

the capitalist logic of the sector and the union responses that lead
employees to abandon the GOTY race[9]for the class struggle. ---- By
chaining together layoff plans while displaying insolent growth, has the
recent video game industry just earned its stripes in game capitalism? A
figure of French Tech, adored by the Start up Nation, it employs nearly
15,000 people in France. Salaries are low, working conditions are
difficult, and the culture of collective struggle is weak. It generates
more than 6 billion euros in turnover in 2023, "growing by nearly 10%"
according to the Employers' Union of Leisure Software Publishers[2].
#GGWP[3].

Employer combos
However, worldwide, layoffs have been in the tens of thousands since
2021[4]. Social movements are coming one after another. In France, 700
strikers on February 14 and more than 1,000 on October 15 in the Ubisoft
group; a third of the Kylotonn studio on strike on July 25; strike at
the Spiders studio in early September, joined by their colleagues from
the Kylotonn studio; more than 100 strikers at the Don't Nod studio on
October 28 and November 8.

Without shame, the bosses are hiding behind a "post-Covid crisis" and
claiming a drop in consumption at the end of the lockdowns. The reality
is that the irresponsibility of the bosses, competing only with the most
absolute mediocrity, hastened to welcome investment funds and other
venture capital lured by the records due to the lockdowns. These
investors usually operate in the world of startups, where the game
consists of financing a large number of them abundantly in the hope that
one of them will scoop the jackpot, multiply the profits by squeezing
out its customers, then close down or be bought out.

Incompetence or lure of gain, the French bosses, too used to being
showered with public money without compensation, saw nothing coming. The
capitalist logic is then respected: grow, multiply the production lines
and impose ever more excessive objectives.
Investors demand rapid results, sometimes as early as the following
year. However, a video game rarely takes less than two years to be made.
Profits are not there then; it is necessary to move on to the downsizing
stage. Even large groups like Ubisoft or Microsoft, which nevertheless
make considerable profits, cut their workforce more or less brutally,
sometimes by closing studios overnight.
Until recently, France was spared from layoff plans. However, this does
not prevent the capitalists from continuing their sinister work: at
Ubisoft, the supreme boss Yves Guillemot praises "natural
attrition"[5]to skim the workforce. Deteriorating working conditions to
make employees resign is profitable: 200 million euros in savings per year.
In fact, the social context is tense: sexual assaults and widespread
moral harassment, particularly perpetrated by senior executives, total
contempt of management towards the CSE, unions or strikers, etc. Yves
Guillemot even goes so far as to appeal to the far right in his official
statements, exposing workers to harassment and threats from fascists[6].
Indeed, fringes of the far right, particularly in the United States and
France, are trying to revive GamerGate, a large movement of online
sexist harassment that contributed to the rise of Trump[6].
Finally, far from being a demand for comfort, teleworking crystallizes
the distrust and questioning of their management's discourse by the
strikers. Indeed, the forced return to the office is never even
justified by explanations or data, even if they are false. It then
clearly appears for what it is: a desire for control through pure
neoliberal ideology coupled with a strategy to encourage the
resignations of employees who have moved.
High points of salaried employment
But Ubisoft's share price plummets. Profits and "voluntary" departures
were not enough to appease the appetite of minority shareholders.
Ubisoft must now not only save money, but also bring in more by spending
less. With 19,000 employees worldwide, it is the largest employer in the
sector, but not the most profitable. The accounting calculation is
quickly done: the payroll must be cut. On October 15, more than 1,000
strikers followed the call of the inter-union: CGT and Printemps
Écologique at the "headquarters"; Solidaires Informatique, CFE-CGC and
STJV at Ubisoft Paris; STJV in the other entities in France.

Mobilizing at the group level is no small feat, since Ubisoft is made up
of about ten separate entities and therefore as many CSEs and union
sections.

Two weeks later, with the layoff plan at Don't Nod, video game workers
find themselves in an archetypal struggle of the labor movement. It is
interesting to note that one of their main demands is formulated as
follows: "We demand that employees, who are the most competent people,
now have a say in all decision-making."[7]. A large third of the studio
responded to the call. An open letter was sent to management and a new
strike took place on November 8, bringing together more than 120
strikers, or nearly half of the workforce!

For us, libertarian communists, the aspiration for self-organization of
workers is clearly evident. This demand is shared by the Ubisoft,
Spiders and Kylotonn strikers who denounce the decisions of their
management, each one worse than the last, yet anticipated and decried.
Given the success of the recent mobilizations, these demands carry and
find a very wide echo in the ranks of the studios. It is therefore
permissible to imagine a class awareness and an affirmation of a
principle shared by the entire working class: it is we who produce, it
is we who decide.

Antoine (UCL Paris Nord Est)

The speedrun of unionism
"Public strikes are rare" the Union of Video Game Workers (STJV) told us
in 2023[8]. This period is now over. Unionists know it, there is nothing
like the excesses of the bosses to mobilize colleagues. The fact remains
that, without prior union establishment and consolidation, a long-term
and often thankless militant task, the bosses' excess is a steamroller.

In just seven years and without being a member of any confederation, it
is the historic and omnipresent union of the sector. Founded in Paris,
it quickly spread to the other main video game cities and now has around
twenty union sections. Due to the union desert, it had to profoundly
adapt its strategy to overcome obstacles: very young average age,
average career length of ten years, a multitude of very small companies,
industrial recourse to disguised employment of independent workers, a
globalized job market, self-denial in the passionate profession...

The STJV union members had to learn a lot and very quickly, while
demonstrating a fine analysis of their situation by creating a unionism
of struggle, industry and mass, at least on their scale. Hence the
parallel with speedrunning: a practice that consists, through in-depth
knowledge of a video game, in achieving objectives in a spectacular or
efficient way. For example, finishing a video game in record time.

At the heart of their concerns: how to be heard in a rather
depoliticized, falsely horizontal environment, steeped in neoliberal
lies and where bosses take advantage of employees' passion for their
job. In order to be able to unionize, organize and fight, it is
essential for them to propose a counter-discourse. This discourse of
in-depth knowledge of the profession, working conditions, and industry,
which leads to class consciousness. If independence from historical
confederations can rightly be questioned, the bet is winning for the
penetration of the environment and mobilization.

Long live grassroots and industry unionism!

Validate

[1]The Game Of The Year (GOTY) is an award given for the best video game
of the year.

[2]"Video game market: 2023 report", study of March 21, 2024 by the
French video game agency.

[3]Good game, well played is a polite formula used at the end of a
multiplayer game, sometimes used ironically.

[4]14,000 layoffs estimated in 2024 according to "Game industry
Layoffs", publish.obsidian.md/vg-layoffs/Archive/2024

[5]In economics, it is a phenomenon of loss. For example, a company that
loses its customers.

[6]"GamerGate, 8chan, Alt-Right... the breeding ground for Trump's vote
is also online", Le Monde, January 20, 2017.

[7]"Don't Nod: call for a strike on Friday, November 8", STJV leaflet of
October 31, 2024

[8]"STJV: "It is important that the union make people adhere to a
political line through practice"", article of September 27, 2023 in
Alternative Libertaire.

[9]The Game Of The Year (GOTY) is an award given for the best video game
of the year.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Industrie-du-jeu-video-Greve-of-the-year
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WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE- (en) France, OCL CA #345 - Colonialism: Palestine and Kanaky through the prism of the Algerian revolution (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of the armed insurrection

against French colonialism in Algeria was celebrated on November 1st.
While the event gave rise to an imposing military parade in the streets
of Algiers and the release of several prisoners of conscience (including
the journalist Ihsane El Kadi and the "hirak poet" Mohamed Tadjadit), it
did not, however, provoke much reaction in France from activists who
declare or wish, not without some illusions, to follow in the footsteps
of those who, over the last century, courageously took part in the fight
against this criminal, unjust and racist system. How can we understand
this state of affairs?

Until relatively recently, it was not uncommon to read contributions in
the libertarian or Marxist press, sometimes giving in to the register of
commemoration, but emphasizing, in the same movement, the legitimacy of
the struggle of the oppressed masses in the colonies - supported by a
handful of revolutionaries in the metropolis -, as well as the need to
support autonomous struggles in societies freed from foreign tutelage.
Indeed, if independence meant the end of a system of subjugation,
national liberation was not accompanied by the abolition of exploitation
and other forms of oppression, despite the hopes - or illusions - of
sincere anti-colonialists.
The situation undoubtedly explains this relative silence. Indeed,
Algeria and France have been experiencing a new diplomatic crisis since
Emmanuel Macron recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed
territories of Western Sahara. But it is appropriate to look for other
elements of explanation, without claiming to be exhaustive. In fact, the
war waged by the Israeli army against Palestinian civilians, as well as
its multiple repercussions in the Middle East but also elsewhere in the
world, capture the attention - rightly - of our contemporaries horrified
by the destruction and dehumanization of a people who aspire, like so
many others, to freedom and equality.
In addition, the activists for Algerian independence, like their allies
in France, are, by force of circumstances, few in number and very old.
Many have left us, thus depriving the rising generations of an
experience and a lucidity that are sorely lacking in these times. This
is not the case of Mohammed Harbi who is still with us - fortunately -,
even if he has just announced, from the height of his 91 years, that he
is taking his "political retirement". Nevertheless, this very
understandable decision is accompanied by editorial news since his
classic work, Le FLN, mirage et réalité (Jeune Afrique, 1980) was
republished by Syllepse, while the first volume of his memoirs, Une vie
debout (La Découverte, 2001), was translated into Tamazight by Koukou -
a publishing house, founded by Arezki Aït Larbi, banned from
participating in the Algiers International Book Fair this year.

Our era is therefore one in which the words of those involved in the
fight against French colonialism in Algeria are irresistibly giving way
to those of the heirs, thereby allowing misunderstandings or
manipulations of all kinds - which already existed, of course, but with
the possibility of being confronted with a living testimony, regardless
of its credibility, not to mention the expertise of researchers whose
voice carries little weight and whose reliability sometimes remains
questionable. Nevertheless, it is worth emphasizing the appetite of the
new generations for this issue, the specter of which haunts the
intellectual and political elites of both countries. Except that this
social demand - oh so legitimate - is far from being satisfied by the
revolutionaries, thus giving way to identity or memorial entrepreneurs,
more or less linked to the state apparatus, and rarely bearers of
emancipatory perspectives.
This distance is undeniably explained by the decline, in recent years,
of libertarian or Marxist organizations in France, just as the collapse,
at the same time, of the groups of the Algerian left - certainly, most
often influenced by Leninism or nationalism -, under the blows of
repression or because of the changes in society, strongly restricting
the probabilities of fruitful interactions in an internationalist
perspective. In this regard, the popular movement (hirak) of 2019 was a
serious test but, alas, a failed one. However, the future belongs
neither to the capitulators nor to the defeatists. And nothing tells us
that what was not possible in the past will not be possible in the
future, in more favorable circumstances, on the condition, however, that
certain pitfalls are avoided. This is something that only experience
will be able to demonstrate.

For good and bad reasons, the Algerian experience has often served as a
political compass for revolutionaries in France to think about
situations deemed analogous, such as the Palestinian question. This is
for example the case of the libertarian communist Roland Breton
(1931-2016) who, under the pseudonym of J. Presly, signed the article
"French Algerians = Israel" in the Noir & Rouge bulletin (summer 1956)
which concludes as follows:

"Today we understand that the only colonizations that have succeeded in
the last century and a half are those that have previously physically
destroyed the natives.
Purchase by the American state of Indian scalps.
Systematic manhunts in Tasmania.
Indian reserves in the United States.
Already the Bantu reserves in South Africa, foreshadow the inevitable
failure of "Apartheid".
No more than the Anglo-Boers, the French of the Maghreb or the Jews of
Israel will be able to swallow a continent.
The days are numbered for these annexes of European civilization that
can only assert themselves by the negation of other social and national
forms.
We are not going to regret their ephemeral reign."

This correlation "Algerian settlers-Israel", considered "stupid" by the
anti-colonialist writer Jean Duvignaud (1921-2007) in the journal
Arguments (April-May 1957), ended up imposing itself on the left of
social democracy, like the journalist and activist of the New Left
Gilles Martinet (L'Arche, February 1957). Indeed, in contrast to the
sacred union that prevailed during the creation of the State of Israel
in 1948, the analysis of the situation evolved in a direction
unfavorable to the Zionist project due to the combination of several
factors: the fierce war waged against the uprising of the Algerian
people since November 1, 1954; the intervention of the Israeli army,
alongside France and Great Britain, during the Suez Canal crisis in the
fall of 1956; the fate of Palestinian refugees and the discrimination
endured by Arabs who remained in Israel - publicized by Jewish activists
who broke with the status quo, such as those of the "Third Force" (see
La Révolution prolétarienne, February 1957).
A decade later, in June 1967, in response to the Six-Day War and the
surge of anti-Arab racism in France, Maurice Laisant (1909-1991),
co-founder of the Anarchist Federation, published in Le Monde libertaire
(September-October 1967) an article entitled "The Palestinian problem"
in which we can read the following passage:

"If, as anarchists, we claim the right to life of the Israeli people, it
is not to deny it to another people. If we have deplored the
Israeli-Arab conflict, it is not to applaud the escalation in the Far East.
It is the association of all peoples (that of the Jews is part of it),
which will put an end to the gang of all rulers, of which that of Israel
is not excluded. (...)
Let the Israelis consider those who applauded their victory: let them
think that for them the triumph of Israel was above all the massacre of
Arabs and revenge for the fascists of French Algeria disappointed at no
longer being able to make the burnous sweat the "bicots", let them think
that those who acclaim them are racists whose anti-Semitism has only
changed sides."

Whatever one may think of the relevance of certain formulations, it
remains no less true that French passions regarding the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which are based, in large part, on the
painful memory of the persecution and deportation of Jews during the
Second World War, can also be explained by the repercussions of Algerian
independence on society as a whole. This was still fully understood and
made explicit in the following years, even if it gave rise to divergent
orientations within the extra-parliamentary left.
Indeed, the third-world journal Partisans published two significant
contributions in this regard in an issue dated March-April 1970. The
first, signed by the Belgian Trotskyist Guy Desolre (1939-2016) and
entitled "Notes on the Algerian Revolution and the Palestinian
Revolution" is resolutely in line with the paradigm of the "Arab
revolution" defended at the time by the Unified Secretariat of the
Fourth International, which has since reversed the unconditional support
given to the National Liberation Front (FLN), as evidenced by this
extract which addresses more specifically the question of armed struggle:

"The Algerian experience also indicates that in conditions where the
combatants are necessarily isolated from the bulk of the population by
military borders, extreme attention must be paid to the danger of
creating a "border army", professionalized and solidly armed but
separated from the people. This danger can only be combated by
preventing the combatants from being privileged over the masses, by
eliminating as much as possible the distinctions between the combatants
and the armed masses themselves and by making a particular effort of
politicization both among the combatants and among the masses themselves."

In this same issue, but on a different register, the anti-colonialist
historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet (1930-2006) published his luminous
"Reflections on the Margins of a Tragedy" which tempered the enthusiasm
of the article cited above by refuting the validity of the comparison
between the military capabilities of the Algerian insurgents and those,
much weaker, of the Palestinian groups - which does not prevent him from
pointing out the risk of seeing Zionism "caught tomorrow in an Algerian
or South African type of logic".

During the following decade, the Algerian experience was called upon in
the wake of the assassination of the Kanak independence activists Éloi
Machoro and Marcel Nonnaro. The libertarian monthly Lutter! (February
1985) published a declaration which, while recalling the
anti-colonialist commitment of the Libertarian Communist Federation,
stipulated in particular:

"In the past, Interior Minister François Mitterrand believed he could
put an end to the Algerian revolt through repression. He had set the
Algerian war alight. Does the President of the Republic François
Mitterrand imagine in 1985 that he could stop the Kanak revolt by
executing leaders esteemed by an entire people? There is even worse.
Thousands of soldiers, paratroopers, CRS, gendarmes, are crisscrossing
New Caledonia. Every day hundreds of new men come to reinforce the
system. The leading bodies of the Socialist Party are cynically
assessing the risks and advantages of a military crushing of the
separatists."

This parallel is again established in the monthly published by the
Libertarian Communist Organization, Courant Alternatif (April 1985),
which questions the existence of an "Algerian War" in Kanaky. The
comparison is justified by the links of solidarity between a "Caledonian
extreme right" and former supporters of French Algeria. However, a major
difference between the two situations is immediately stated: it is the
demographic weight of the indigenous and European populations, not to
mention the over-armament of the Caldoches.
However, the bloody repression of the October 1988 uprising by the
forces of law and order in Algeria leads to further tarnishing the aura
of the anti-colonial revolution judged in terms of its authoritarian
outcome, while fueling, here again, contrasting reflections. Thus, the
tract "The Battle of Algiers" (Paris, October 10, 1988) signed "Des
canailles" addresses its fraternal greetings to the insurgents,
comparing them to emblematic riots of the period:

"Our young brothers, in that they directly attack the STATE and the
COMMODITY in a way that is not without recalling that of the joyous
rioters of LIVERPOOL, BRIXTON, MANCHESTER and further on those of WATTS
in their criticism of everything that exists, have received the fiery
testimony of the sympathy of a whole section of the KANAK youth who, a
few nights ago, spread to NOUMEA, looting supermarkets, destroying goods
like their ALGERIAN Brothers."

However, the following month, Le Monde libertaire (November 3, 1988)
published an article with the eloquent title: "So that Noumea is not
Algiers". In doing so, the Algerian experience becomes a counter-example
at a time of the crisis of Third Worldism. However, far from denying the
legitimacy of the anti-colonial struggle, the anarchist activist warns
against the absence of a positive project and draws attention to the
forms taken by this fight:

"Fighting against colonialism is necessary, but on condition that the
form of the struggle and the objective of the struggle guarantee the
building of a society that respects human rights and political and trade
union pluralism. The rest leads to the mass graves of Cambodia or the
bursts of machine guns of Bab-el-Oued. We refuse to get on those trains."

Without a doubt, this warning remains valid in the current context.
Instructed by the lessons of the past, those who support - rightly - the
centers of resistance to colonial oppression in an authentically
emancipatory perspective, must be able to distinguish the shadows and
the lights of the Algerian revolution, as well as the relevance of the
analogies raised by this rich experience. And this, contrary to
attitudes motivated by unconditional support for authoritarian
organizations or by indifference, tinged with racism - it must be noted
-, as to the fate of the populations abandoned by the bourgeoisies of
the "North" as well as the "South". The criticism of the biases -
theoretical or practical - engendered by the fight against colonialism
cannot be formulated to the detriment of the affirmation of humanist and
universal principles. This is rather what we should start with.

Nedjib SIDI MOUSSA

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4317
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