Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Documents and notes on the world situation and tasks
II
2. The ongoing uprising of the proletariat and the popular masses in Europe, mainly in France.
In France they are republishing a chapter of their history. The struggles of the students and the proletariat are once again shaking old Europe, it began with student movements and has spread to encompass immense proletarian masses and other deep and profound masses.
According to sources from the Ministry of the Interior itself, there were blockades and spontaneous protests in more than 1,000 educational establishments in all departments (101). On the other hand, it recognizes the important role of social networks in these blockages at institute entrances. These actions began in Créteil (east of Paris) on September 17, then broke out in Seine-Saint-Denis on the 22nd and became widespread in much of France from the 29th onwards.
"The great student revolt, originated among the working-class youth", to which the youth of the popular neighborhoods and later the unions and other working-class masses have joined. This great revolt, which began in September and continues to this day, shows how a proletarian struggle is carried out in response to the measures of the Macron government, which represents the interests of the financial oligarchy, which directs the bourgeois dictatorship, the French imperialist State. Violence of the proletarian masses in Paris and other large, medium and small cities throughout the country.
In the newspaper La Causa del Pueblo (October 16), in this regard, we read:
“French imperialism, in crisis, crushes the proletariat and the working classes with all its force (…) The forced restructuring of the old bourgeois system drives a process of reactionary consolidation, whose most visible manifestation is the repression of all popular movements through the use of batons, grenades, tear gas, systematic imprisonment, dissolution of organizations, political trials, mutilations and dozens of deaths, affecting in particular the most oppressed proletariat and all forms of “There is a real war being waged against the working classes – a policy aimed solely at trying to frustrate the development of the class struggle.”
Regarding the forms of struggle and their objective for the mobilizations of the next day, the 17th, in their article, which we have been citing, they write:
"The strategy for October 17 must be one of saturation: we have numerical superiority, mobility, determination and history on our side. Block the flow of people and goods in all directions; paralyze the heavy and relatively static police apparatus with the agility of the movements of insurgent groups; repeat this incessantly, without tiring; this is the path towards an October 17 that, although it is not October 17 itself, will be a new step towards the Socialist Revolution. ”
But, in their call at the end of the article, the perspective is unfortunately lost, they go from referring to the day of struggle on the 17th, as "a new step towards...", to a change of direction, in short, due to the change of regime and for the elections to be postponed, thus in the final paragraph of the article, we read:
"On October 17, 2026, let us vigorously promote the fight for dignity led by the high school student movement and its vanguard, the proletarian youth. Let us organize in the countryside, in the cities, in the neighborhoods, in the factories and in all places where the flame of revolt burns, with a single slogan: LET'S SHUT EVERYTHING! The time for revolt has arrived; it is just and embodies the dignity of reality. Let us go all the way to overthrow the despicable King Macron, his puppet Lecornu and postpone the electoral farce!” (RH, France, La Cause du Peuple, Protests)
That is why it is convenient to ask: By what regime? Postponing the upcoming reactionary elections: for what?
Revolution is the violent overthrow of one class by another
The fight or uprising against a reactionary government, against its anti-proletarian and anti-popular policy, for economic and political demands, for benefits, rights and freedoms cannot be called a revolution. The problem is not a change of government or regime, the problem is to destroy the old State from its roots and on its rubble to build step by step the new State, the State of dictatorship of the proletariat.
Revolution is the violent overthrow of one class by another. The socialist revolution is the violent overthrow of the bourgeois class by the proletariat led by its CP through revolutionary violence, which today can only be a people's war.
The repressive forces of the State could not contain them. There were tens of thousands on Saturday, October 17, it is estimated that around 800,000 people were mobilized throughout France. In the course of which, the masses overflowed and overflowed, furiously attacking the forces of order, public buildings, banks, businesses of the large monopolies and the most striking signs of the bourgeois dictatorship, expressing the contradiction of the proletariat and bourgeoisie as the contradiction of the masses and the government.
That is, then, a protest uprising of the workers, which began as a student revolt and then became generalized. The masses are there to fight, because that is their historical mission.
These mass protests, which have also occurred in other European countries, are contrary to the custom of peaceful strikes or stoppages called by revisionist union scabs. Lenin said that the demonstration, the march, the protest make the reaction tremble.
We must learn from working-class and popular masses in France. Where is the fault? Once again it will serve for the reactionary solution, because although it is not a simple “annoyance”, it cannot be said that the reaction has no way out, there are no situations with no way out for the reaction unless there is a victorious revolution (see quote from Lenin, a few lines below). We must take advantage of this crisis situation where the ground shakes under the feet of reaction and the masses fight to advance in the reconstitution of the Communist Party. All the time the same in that stupid vicious circle despite all the fury and anger unleashed by the masses against imperialist oppression and exploitation in their own country.
These great days that the students and the French proletariat have been leading, moving economic and also political demands, must be directed towards the revolution as the aforementioned note demands, but they are orphans of the mature Communist Party, that is, the only party capable of directing the state of rebellion of the masses in overflowing to the socialist revolution.
We are sure that the communists in training in said country, driven by the explosion of the class struggle of the proletariat, with the wind in their favor, will advance with a beating drum and will reconstitute their Communist Party as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party to carry out the socialist revolution through the people's war, as part of and at the service of the world proletarian revolution.
What is happening in France, in Italy, in Belgium, Spain, etc., expresses that there is a revolutionary situation in unequal development, what there is not is a revolutionary crisis.
Lenin, with the revolutionary crisis existing at the end of World War I, said:
"In such circumstances, the workers’ mounting resentment, the growth of a revolutionary temper and ideas, and the increase in spontaneous mass strikes are obviously inevitable, since the position of the workers is becoming intolerable. The workers’ own experience is convincing(...) If, on the one hand, the economic situation of the masses has become unbearable; if, on the other hand, within the tiny minority of countries omnipotent victors has begun and the decomposition illustrated by Keynes is actually witnessing the maturation of the two conditions of the world revolution.
(…) Comrades, we have now come to the question of the revolutionary crisis as the basis of our revolutionary action. And here we must first of all note two widespread errors. On the one hand, bourgeois economists depict this crisis simply as “unrest”, to use the elegant expression of the British. On the other hand, revolutionaries sometimes try to prove that the crisis is absolutely insoluble.
This is a mistake. There is no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation. The bourgeoisie are behaving like barefaced plunderers who have lost their heads; they are committing folly after folly, thus aggravating the situation and hastening their doom. All that is true. But nobody can “prove” that it is absolutely impossible for them to pacify a minority of the exploited with some petty concessions, and suppress some movement or uprising of some section of the oppressed and exploited. To try to “prove” in advance that there is “absolutely” no way out of the situation would be sheer pedantry, or playing with concepts and catchwords. Practice alone can serve as real “proof” in this and similar questions. All over the world, the bourgeois system is experiencing a tremendous revolutionary crisis. The revolutionary parties must now “prove” in practice that they have sufficient understanding and organisation, contact with the exploited masses, and determination and skill to utilise this crisis for a successful, a victorious revolution.
It is mainly to prepare this “proof” that we have gathered at this Congress of the Communist International.
To illustrate to what extent opportunism still prevails among parties that wish to affiliate to the Third International, and how far the work of some parties is removed from preparing the revolutionary class to utilise the revolution ary crisis, I shall quote the leader of the British Independent Labour Party, Ramsay MacDonald.=
(V. I. Lenin, Report on the international situation and the fundamental tasks of the Communist International, July 19, 1920)
FINALLY:
"Only with such a party, with the class united, organized in its Party, no decrepit power of reaction will be able to prevail. Our Party, the army of the class, the organized masses led by the Communist Party through the people's war can conquer Power, the reaction will not prevail, we will overthrow the old State and destroy bureaucratic capitalism, imperialist subjection, semi-feudality. Internationally we will also put an end to imperialism, the world revisionism and reaction, not even capitalism will survive, communism will prevail no matter how many zigzags the revolution experiences today, the proletariat will narrow its ranks, it will strengthen itself despite all the imperialism, all the revisionist rot, despite all that anarchism typical of the anarchist intellectuals who always oppose the Party and burst into tinsel and fuss, as their unfounded attacks reveal. proletariat united in a powerful Communist Party will conquer Power in the country and will continue its socialist course until communism; and in the world it will sweep away imperialism, revisionism and world reaction. Let us reiterate, the basis of all this is the organization of the class. Marx said the class has the power of numbers." (President Gonzalo)
NOTE:
In addition, from the previous report, we must keep in mind the report that we quote below: V. I. Lenin, Report of the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questios, July 26, 1920, where it is written once and for all:
" First, what is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike the Second International and bourgeois democracy, we emphasise this distinction. In this age of imperialism, it is particularly important for the proletariat and the Communist International to establish the concrete economic facts and to proceed from concrete realities, not from abstract postulates, in all colonial and national problems.
The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole world, as we now see, being divided into a large number of oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor nations, the latter possessing colossal wealth and powerful armed forces. The vast majority of the world’s population, over a thousand million, perhaps even 1,250 million people, if we take the total population of the world as 1,750 million, in other words, about 70 per cent of the world’s population, belong to the oppressed nations, which are either in a state of direct colonial dependence or are semi-colonies, as, for example, Persia, Turkey and China, or else, conquered by some big imperialist power, have become greatly dependent on that power by virtue of peace treaties. This idea of distinction, of dividing the nations into oppressor and oppressed, runs through the theses, not only the first theses published earlier over my signature, but also those submitted by Comrade Roy. The latter were framed chiefly from the standpoint of the situation in India and other big Asian countries oppressed by Britain. Herein lies their great importance to us."
.To be continued