Home | Home |
The current change of government in Mexico does not foresee anything good for the exploited workers, for the proletarians, for the poor employees, for the days labourer and peasants.
After having assumed Calderon's election at the presidency, the bourgeois State - with all its forces, police, judges, medias – carried on and accentuated the repression against the workers on struggle in Oaxaca. After the evacuation of the "plantón" [ the picket in front of the governor's palace ] of Oaxaca by the Federal Police and other forces of repression with hundreds of wounded and prisoners, a real emergency state has been imposed with ceaseless patrols, brutal searching in the houses, a curfew not only in the city but also through all the regional State. It is the materialisation of the declarations of the "new" government on the need "for fighting insecurity" and for "improving the living conditions of the soldiers", i.e. the reinforcement of the police force and the army and the crushing of any movement of social protest.
At the level of world economy, the signs of a new open recession accumulate, which today means redoubled attacks of the capital against the living and working conditions of all proletarians.
In front of this situation everywhere, the working class anger, the dissatisfaction of the workers and their feeling "that something should be made", that they must fight in one way or another to defend their living conditions, develop, as we could see these last months not only with Oaxaca but also in other movements and strikes through all the country - although the media took the precaution to give them less possible publicity (at Volkswagen, in the sector of the sugar cane, amongst the miners, in the colleges, at the teacher training school of Ayotzinapa). However, the dead end in which were driven the majority of these social movements, and particularly Oaxaca - which, after 5 months of fierce resistance ended in repression and persecution -, poses today, to the proletariat, the question : HOW TO FIGHT EFFICIENTLY ? In other words, how the proletarian class can defend its interests vis-a-vis the impressive machine of the capitalist State ? The movement of Oaxaca provides many lessons for its struggles to come.
Which demands for the struggle ?In Oaxaca, the movement started with a strike of the teachers for wage raise (the "rezonificación"). But, after the first wave of repression engaged by the regional government, and although the movement was extended to other sectors, it carried out a turn towards a claim which was a trap, a true dead end for the workers : "dismissal of the governor" in order to "democratize" the regional State, i.e. a claim which is foreign for them and which locked up them in a struggle between the various fractions of the bourgeoisie for the post of governor. It moved them away from the struggle for the defense of their own interests as workers and it gave them up to the repressive bourgeois forces. Thus, the first aspect for which the workers in struggle must fight, is that of maintaining on their own "class terrain". In other words, to prevent that the movement for their own demands - for wage increases, better working conditions, against the dismissals, etc. - is not canted, in particular towards a fight which leads them to be placed behind a fraction of the capital, left or right-hand side, on a "democratic" ground which is not theirs. The reinforcement of the movement cannot be made if the workers give up their immediate claims but, on the contrary, by giving to those a broader dimension which relates to all the proletarian class ; so that other working sectors can recognize themselves in it and, from there, join the struggle. Thus, for example, the "rezonificacion" of the teachers of Oaxaca is only their claim for the increase in their wages - claim in which any exploited worker can recognize himself. The bourgeoisie is conscious of this danger and it is for this reason that it makes all it can to divert the workers from their legitimate immediate claims and from their class terrain.
How to carry out the struggle ? It is by starting from the struggles for their immediate claims that the workers must try to extend the movement to other sectors. It is a crucial question which arises for each fight and on which depends, mainly, its result. It is something which the bourgeoisie also knows and this is why, by the intermediary of the trade unions and the organizations of left and leftists, it makes all it can to isolate each fight, sector by sector, company by company, or even by zone (as in the case of the teachers). Thus, in Oaxaca, although some sectors of poor peasants and students joined the struggle of the teachers, this one did not extend on the basis of the wage claims - that the trade union succeeded in drawing aside - but finally found itself isolated, locked up in the trap of a "local democratic claim" - dismissal of the governor in place - on the basis of which the workers of other areas, and even of the State of Oaxaca itself, could not feel really concerned.
Moreover, Oaxaca showed on a large scale the inefficiency of the "forms of fight" such as the "plantón", the "marches" or the "hunger strikes" which only lead the workers in struggle to physical and moral exhaustion. All the conditions, thus, were met so that repression could fall on.
Instead of this form of struggle which exposes them to useless exhaustion, lasting weeks or months, which isolates them and leaves them at the mercy of the repression forces, the workers must seek other forms of struggle which lead, above all, to a genuine extension of the movement to the factories and companies of the neighbourhood, on the basis of common working class claims, by carrying out strikes in which the workers, instead of remaining of "guard" or in "pickets", send large delegations to call for the other sectors to link with the struggle, by organising the most massive, combative and unified possible street demonstrations. If there are something which can slow down - even temporarily and partially - an attack of the bourgeoisie against the living conditions of the workers, and something which can draw aside the threat of repression (or, if necessary, face it effectively), it is a movement of this nature (massive and unified), a movement which is not under the influence of the organisations of control of the bourgeoisie (trade unions, parties of left and leftists).
Workers of industry and the services, agricultural days labourers, public employees, teachers, workers of the health sector, students of workers families, pensioners, unemployed, precarious workers ! Proletarians !
Today more than ever, the historical situation that we live, requires to become conscious of the serious but pressing responsibility which weighs on the shoulders of the proletarian class. The repression of the movement in Oaxaca is only the most recent episode of the political offensive that the bourgeoisie carries out since months to trap the proletarians in false alternatives such as that of "democracy or repression", "left or right-hand side" ("Lopez Obrador or Calderon"), in order to disarm them and finally to repress them.
This offensive of the Mexican bourgeoisie, in its turn, is only a "national" alternative of the political offensive that the whole bourgeoisie of all countries develops against the working class in order to overcome its resistance and in order to tie it up to the interests of "its" own national bourgeoisie, in the perspective of a new imperialist world war, the only issue in front of capitalism's bankruptcy.
The Oaxaca movement must be used as an experience for the future struggles of the working class. If it highlights a certain number of traps that that one must avoid, it remains however, for it, an example to be followed as well from the point of view of the determination as of the courage expressed by the workers in struggle. Everywhere the proletarians must become aware not only that it is necessary for them to fight thus to defend their living and working conditions but also that their fight is crucial for the future of humanity.
Its resistance of today prepares its decisive struggles of tomorrow which will destroy capitalism, this system which can only bring to humanity more misery, famine and deaths.
Internal
Fraction of the ICC
December 8, 2006.
Internal Fraction of ICC - Communist Bulletin