September 2024
from BC informa, feb 08
France
On the first of February, thousands of shop workers from the large stores came out on strike for a wage increase and better working conditions. Their situation is certainly not great, in fact besides not having an adjustment to take into account inflation, these workers are threatened with more Sunday working and the introduction of automatic tills which will lead to heavy lay offs.
Whilst being supported by the major French unions for their own purposes, (with the CGT at the head) the participation of the workers is nevertheless very high, with figures over 80% amongst the cashiers at the hypermarkets.
This strike assumes greater importance if previous episodes of struggle in the sector were much more isolated and modes. Now a significant sector of the modern European proletariat, mostly female, has shown a first important indication of reaction.
The unions, momentarily obliged to take notice of their own members with a day of action, do not seem set to take on a real fight with the major retailers nor with the government. On the contrary, the unions, instead of strongly opposing the government’s project of reform of the labour market, signed, on the 21st of January, an agreement which will lead to greater freedom of dismissal, longer trial periods and an ever closer bond between wages and profits.
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The CWO will have a stall at the Red and Black Clydeside Bookfair, there will also be an NBWCW meeting.
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ANTI-FASCISM AGAINST THE WORKING CLASS
PUBLIC MEETING AND DISCUSSION
On 30 July riots broke out across the UK which targeted Muslim neighbourhoods and places sheltering migrants, following a stabbing in Southport the day before. The riots were fuelled by fascist groups and far right websites spreading the conspiracy theory that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker.
Decades of racist propaganda from mainstream news sources, which blame immigrants for workers’ decline in their standard of living, have led to many thinking that immigration into Britain is the cause of reduced wages, homelessness, a collapsing health service, failing schools etc. rather than increased exploitation of the working class and capitalism’s economic crisis.
The response to this from capitalism’s political left has been to organise against fascism, with national demonstrations of the ‘great and good’ against the riots and against racism in defence of democratic freedoms. But fascism and democracy are simply strategies of the capitalist class to continue exploiting us. Strategies they use to recruit us to fight their wars. Organising specifically against fascism, amounts to supporting one section of the capitalist class against another. It is still in favour of the capitalist system. What we need is to oppose the entire capitalist system through the broader class struggle, leading to the eventual overthrow of capitalism itself.
While other approaches to anti-fascism involve small groups, engaged in physical confrontations with fascists, it is an approach that similarly offers no solutions to a system that breeds racism.
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August 2024
Aurora is the broadsheet of the ICT for the interventions amongst the working class. It is published and distributed in several countries and languages. So far it has been distributed in UK, France, Italy, Canada, USA, Colombia.
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Written by Jock Dominie. £12, 276pp.
The Russian Revolution remains a landmark event in history. For the bourgeois historians, the October Revolution is thought to be a tragedy that set back the achievements of the “democratic” February Revolution, and allowed the Bolsheviks to wreak havoc on their citizens and the world. For the Stalinists, the events of 1917 paved the way for the birth of the USSR, which they point to as a prototypical example of “socialism in one country”. In reality, the February and October Revolutions were both part of the same proletarian revolution.
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Did Marx say “Anyone who
“Anyone who*
Did Marx say
mmmmm, I bet that one rarely appears on the flags.....