WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #340 - Practices, Network for the general strike, less bluff please (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Yes, we must popularize the idea of a general strike, of its necessity

to stop or even overthrow power. But not by pretending that we will
achieve it better with a Trotskyist "trade union leadership"... ---- On
January 29, 2023, the Sunday newspaper published an appeal from trade
unionists and intellectuals defending the prospect of a strike general.
This was the point of a " Network for the General Strike " which
globally relayed the vision of the Trotskyist organization Permanent
Revolution (RP) : renewable strikes break out here and there, the
situation is potentially revolutionary, the inter-union is afraid , it
isolates the strikes by spacing out the days of national action, it is
treason, etc. At the GA of the Network, on March 22, Anasse Kazib,
figurehead of RP, declared that it was necessary to form " action
committees[...]with a management that really wants to go all the way !
As you will have understood, it is not the principle of a vertical
direction that poses a problem for these activists, but the fact that it
is not their political current that is in charge.

To renew a strike, you need a completed GA
Let's be fair. We can be grateful to RP for having managed, by launching
its Network, to give visibility to the idea of a general strike. Because
yes, the general strike was indeed a necessity to make the government
back down. The big problem is basing all of its propaganda on a
deliberate exaggeration of real social conflict. No, the intersyndicale
did not have the opportunity to curb an imminent popular explosion. To
renew a strike at the end of the first 24 hours, it takes a massive AG
of strikers determined to go further. But the GAs have always remained
skinny. So no extension possible. The most serious attempt at renewal,
from March 7, was driven precisely by the " union leaderships " CGT and
Solidaires... but the base did not follow; it didn't take. Then, beyond
the thunderous rhetoric, the concrete practices raise questions. At the
SNCF, quite a few struggle unionists were surprised to see that, while
they were on strike for twenty days, the SUD-Rail union section of Le
Bourget, notoriously "held" by RP and giving lessons on the pension
defense strategy, was doing something quite different : it only called
for 59 minute walkouts... to obtain a local bonus ! Difficult after that
to be fooled by the great radical speeches. Contrary to what the
Trotskyists write, the crisis of trade unionism is not a crisis of
leadership, it is a crisis of its base. There is a lack of activists to
set out again to reconquer the union deserts, to develop unionization in
the feminized sectors and to revitalize the interprofessional
structures, particularly at the local level. The best " network for the
general strike " is a network of active, democratic unions, present in
as many companies as possible and coordinated. This is the colossal (but
exhilarating) task facing revolutionaries. Less incantations, more
organization.

Boivin (UCL Rennes), Guillaume (UCL Paris north-east)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Reseau-pour-la-greve-generale-moins-de-bluff-svp
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