The far left should talk about what’s going on in Clichy
Friday, November 04, 2005
Clichy, Aulnay, Blanc-Mesnil, Bobigny... It is right to rebel
The far left should talk about what’s going on in Clichy
The nights of rebellion continue. A popular rebellion taking aim at the
State, which is completely overwhelmed by what was easy to see coming.
But even if you see it coming, a popular rebellion cannot be crushed, for
history is the history of class struggle.
Chirac can say “People have to calm down,” but what difference does it make?
The police section of the CFTC trade union, which represents 20% of the
unionized police force, can ask for “a curfew to counter the civil war which
is being waged in numerous French ghettos,” as “tomorrow it will be 700 out
of bounds suburbs that will join the civil war,” just as it previously asked
for the army. (see our document “La révolte de Clichy, expression
du besoin d'autodéfense ou celui de la guerre populaire ?”) But what
difference will it make?
None of this will change anything, for it is the masses who make history,
and these seven nights of rebellion already have their place in the revolutionary
history of France.
There rebellions are the proof that the class struggle is not over, even
though certain people tried to suffocate it with electoralism and the campaign
to vote “No” against the European constitution!
The popular rebellions taking place right now are sweeping away opportunism
and this is a good thing.
They are showing that revolution is both possible and necessary.
They have silenced the electoral far left; it was several days before they
dared to speak about what was going on, all of their strategy of having the
working classes submit to the peace-loving petit-bourgeoisise just fell apart!
And yet when the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that “Israel
must be wiped off the map”, the “French Communist Party” spoke up immediately,
saying that this statement provoked “legitimate emotions and indignation.”
Apparently the popular rebellion creates less emotions… especially when
we know that it is taking place in many suburbs with Communist mayors!
For the French Communist Party “Calm should be restored as quickly as possible
and everyone should learn what they can from this”, “Community policing had
allowed us to make important progress, but it was scrapped. Community groups
carrying out extremely important work on the ground are seeing their funding
cut.”
All of which amounts to the same as what Georges Mothron, the UMP [the ruling
political party] mayor of Argenteuil has said: “This is the first time i have
had to deal with this shit personally. My car was torched my house attacked.
I have never seen anything like this! I was born in Argenteuil and I have
always been able to wander around at any time of day, but here we are at a
different level. That said, it is no good waving the stick without the carrot.”
The [Trotskyist] Revolutionary Communist League is saying the same thing:
so far as it is concerned, the rebellion is only about “anger,” an expression
of suffering and hopelessness. They consider Sarkozy to be a “pyromaniac firefighter.”
Much of the far left thinks this way: for them struggle exists on an organizational
level, nothing else exists.
“This kind of ‘revolutionary’ says the same kind of thing as the Trotskyists,
verbally kissing the workers’ asses even when they are completely ideologically
backwards and screaming about anarchism as soon as some windows get smashed
in a demonstration. We Maoists like it when windows get smashed. And the worker
who is sorry to see the windows break is an idiot who needs to be politically
educated.” (“Vive le léninisme,” Communist Party (Marxist-Lenininst
Maoist) April 2003)
It is right to rebel!
Communist Party (Marxist-Lenininst Maoist) November 2005
Please note that the above text about the past week’s
riots in Clichy-Sous-Bois come from the website of the Communist Party
(Marxist-Leninist Maoist) in France and is translated by yours truly.
I have a “fast and loose” translation philosophy, meaning that when there
is a choice between readability and the original phraseology i tend to favour
the former, provided that the meaning stays the same. The original document can be seen in French.
This originally came from my blog - Sketchy Thoughts
- and is one of a number of pieces i wrote or translated regarding the
riots that rocked France in October and November 2005. To see the a complete
list of such posts, i suggest you check out the 2005 Riots In France page on the Kersplebedeb
site.