Whatever the admirers of neo-liberal democracy might
think, capitalism at the end of this century is the inverse of the image it
presents. Behind the humanitarian mask appears the increasingly implacable
inhumanity of exploitation and domination. The aggravated capitalization of
life generates horrors without end to such an extent that, in the most
civilized countries it is henceforth difficult to regard them as contingent
and temporary.
From the point of view of the masters of this world,
the World Bank being the appointed manager, many things remain to be done
to crush their slaves and give free reign to their all-consuming ambitions:
to devastate the planet and let loose the domesticating power of capital.
For the factions in power in France it is necessary to get it over with -
and quickly. They are impelled by the expiry dates for European
integration, and in a more general way, by the requirements of the world
market for which they are, in the final analysis, only acting as proxies.
But it was enough for state employees to demonstrate their refusal to
submit for the well-oiled machine, set in primed motion by the present
managers, to begin to seize up.
For the leadership of the trade unions, who are
always hostile to individual and collective initiatives which escape their
control, the decision to call a strike was the result of exhausting
negotiations conducted with all the pedantry and ceremony proper to
democracy with the objective of gaining credibility from people concerned.
But individuals not lacking in decision already know from experience that
the formal unanimity thus achieved doesn't signify anything in itself.
Without waiting for the approval of all their still hesitant comrades, they
not only went on strike but also began to seize the signal control
centres.
Such initiatives were denounced by the SNCF
management as irresponsible acts "which put the security of the rail
network and equipment at risk" whereas it is them who have been responsible
for numerous railway catastrophes on the lines which don't pay - by letting
them fall into disrepair. In reality, such acts reveal the vulnerability of
the transport network which is more and more centralized and computerized.
The generalization of the latest technology is at once the source of the
power and the general weakness of the system. It is an arm of capital to
domesticate humans and to render their presence more and more obsolete. At
the same time, all that was necessary was for a handful of individuals to
occupy the control centres and signal power boxes, carry out some basic
acts of sabotage, like erasing the computer memory, for the network to be
paralysed in its entirety.
The leadership of the trade unions viewed with
suspicion the first spontaneous outbursts which took place without their
approval and which would have enormous unforeseen consequences. For those
responsible for labour power, work is life itself and a strike is merely
one of the unfortunate means the wardens of survival are sometimes obliged
to use in order to attain their desired end. They do not understand that to
stop work, even in a momentary fashion, forms part of the pleasures of life
even though it absorbs a lot of energy and you lose money sometimes.
For a great deal of the strikers, the strike, on
average, was set to become an end in itself. An activity breaking with the
everyday. It allowed heads to be lifted up and the cycle of resignation to
be broken, to break somewhat, trade separation, to speak, to party, to
demonstrate in the street and - and why not? - to feast with the people in
the neighbourhood, which, by the way, happened much more on the fringes
than in the centre of Paris, now being transformed into a museum and into a
commercial centre for luxury goods.
The holders of state power, apologists for social
Darwinism,[2] have denounced such unwillingness as the "corporatism of the
privileged worker", in short, as a survival reflex of antediluvian species
unable to adapt. This view has nothing new about it. It dates from some
fifteen years ago when the workers in traditional industries resisted,
sometimes very violently, their disappearance...a primordial situation in
order to bring the stubborn under control and permit the reconversion of
capital.
The workers in state industries like the SNCF are,
by tradition, marked by corporatism and underpinned by professional pride.
But when the initiators of the first strikes affirmed that they were
"striking for themselves but also for all proletarians waged and unwaged",
they showed that they were overcoming their habitual shopkeepers' outlook
which had caused so much wrong during the preceding strikes, in particular
during the winter of 1986.
The content of the first intense discussions held,
as often as not, in cafés as well as in assemblies, showed that
there had been some subterranean maturation well before the outbreak of the
strike. The majority were, to be sure, mainly preoccupied with the many
questions relating to the status of the state workers. But a more conscious
and determined minority went much further and attempted to tackle all the
problems of daily survival. The responses were very confused, tainted with
ideology and the language of pure democracy,[3] but one felt a critical
reflection, a search for real perspectives which would permit "the human to
be replaced at the centre against the dictatorship of the market", beyond
capital's inhuman categories and the separations and roles which accompany
them.
Thus, the strikers at SNCF, telecom, RATP (metro)
and even the electricity industry accepted that people not belonging to the
state industries were present in the general assemblies, organizing soup
kitchens for down-and-outs and reconnecting, in part, electricity to
shelters for the poor. These were the seeds of helping one another break
with the ideology of belonging to a firm and the insane egotism peculiar to
contemporary capitalism.
Ridicule failed to kill anymore: the wretched
attempts by the state to set the population against the strikers failed.
After the fiasco of the first demonstration of "angry passengers held
hostage by the strikers", it decided to cancel the following demos. In
spite of the generalization of disorder on urban transport, the population
were not at all unsympathetic to the strikers, an attitude which stood out
clearly from the latent hostility during the preceding SNCF strikes, in
particular during the winter of 1986. In general, the sympathy was passive
sometimes active: the setting up of a support fund for the strikers,
putting up those occupying depots in the centre of Paris and who lived too
far away on the outskirts to return every evening to their home, etc.
There were moments when it was possible to think
that things were going to go much further. But the initial dynamism
foundered, then came to a halt, without the demands which had caused the
strike even being met, in spite of the general bitterness when the strikes
were called off and the continuation of certain pockets of resistance.
The repression had been restrained, except in
ultra-sensitive sectors to the functioning of capital, like in the
electricity industry, where it was directed at isolated pockets of
unyielding resistance. The absence of cash, the fear of being without it
and of being laid-off, had been some factors which had contributed to the
general inertia, in particular in the most structured sectors of capital
where self-reliance, the war of one against all and of each against
themselves, are, hence-forth the rule. But the strikers themselves were
less hamstrung by lack of money, at least immediately. Moreover, the
determined among them replied to people who proposed to raise money on
their behalf: "we are fed up with striking by proxy. Better to go out on
strike yourselves". The critique of 'striking by delegates' was to the
point. It put in relief the somewhat amorphous behaviour of ordinary
citizens, accustomed at work to delegate the resolution of their problems
to official and officious individuals and therefore, scarcely inclined to
show any spirit of initiative. Moreover, on the whole they continued to
work, willingly or reluctantly, at best marching behind the trade union
leadership, with the unemployed sometimes by their side. Even the mass of
strikers were less and less mobilized. They stuck to the simple matter of
renewing the strike through the general assemblies, participating in
demonstrations and in the parties organized at their workplaces.
Against the prevailing passivity, the most combative
strikers called for the "generalization of the strike". The formula was
ambiguous: it meant they considered their own activity, the strike they had
embarked on, as the obligatory reference point for all potential
revolts.
The unblocking of the situation could not come from
the simple increase in the number of strikes. The extension was, in part,
subordinate to radicalization, to bypassing the limited character of the
initial initiatives which had stirred the mass of protesters. The
contradiction between the breadth of the protest and the near general
absence of a subversive perspective was clear to those who had not lost
their clarity. In spite of their combativity, the protesters had stumbled
over two essential questions, that of the function of work and
concomitantly, the role of the state and in particular, the welfare
state.
The strikers in the state sector were rejecting the
devalorization of their situation. But they had taken on board as
unassailable their alleged mission, to be at the 'service of all citizens'.
They had valorized what their survival was based on: their work. They
endowed it with unique virtues whereas here, as elsewhere, work has become
something very functional, with no particular meaning to workers except
that it permits them to have money and to be recognized as citizens. Their
sole peculiarity is to be an integral part of the state's communication
system.
Furthermore, the state workers who had been able to
profit from the weakness of the latest technology in their workplaces had
not understood the modifications these had already led to in the rest of
society. They were hoping their strike would paralyse the economy in its
entirety and would therefore force the State to give in over the
essentials. Nothing of the sort happened.
In the Paris region, the transport blockade had been
total, much more so than in the winter of 1986, but the impact had been
less. Industry has practically disappeared to the benefit of finance, the
press, etc. There the computerization of work processes predominate. Firms
have been capable, much more so than previously, of carrying out their
essential activities thanks to flexi-time and the use of home based
computer terminals. Some managers had hesitated to put similar measures
into operation because they were in doubt about the enthusiasm of their
personnel and preferred to have them under their watchful eye in order to
control them. Moreover, the nature of work did not always permit it, in
particular in the retail trade. But the tone was set.
The concept of a communication network less and less
overlaps that of the transport network. To increase the pressure, it would
have been necessary for strikers to block other networks which was difficult
to achieve without the connivance of employees in telecom, The electricity
industry, etc. The strike in the electricity industry (EDF) would have had
a much greater impact to the degree where the communications network
couldn't function without electricity. But the trade union leadership,
aware of dangers, broke the few strikes which took place in the electricity
industry and warned the over-excited against "acts which endangered the
security of power stations and the grid".
Behind the fixation on retaining acquired
privileges, there appeared ambiguities at the same time towards the welfare
state. For example, calls for guaranteed employment, even payment for not
being employed.
The system of labour protection, put in place on the
morrow of the Liberation, was indispensable to the reconstruction of the
basis of the state, and a prelude to the subsequent frenzied accumulation
of capital over the next 30 glorious years. Labour power was then
considered as the most precious capital. The recent changes within capital,
in particular technological changes, have brought into question its
centrality and as a consequence, the state treats it as a depreciating
commodity whose upkeep is expensive and worthy of being thrown in the waste
paper basket.
Moreover, the domination of the welfare state was of
a piece with the helping-out mentality. It had accustomed citizens to
seeing their survival problems taken in hand and decided by a supreme
authority in a practically quasi-automatic fashion without there being any
need to intervene themselves. This renunciation had been the reverse of
protection. In particular, it wasn't for nothing that in the atomization
and partial asthenia that stubborn individuals, because of their hatred of
work, fled firms in order to try and live a little. Despite the partial
questioning of the welfare state, the need for social security wastes and
encourages the partial neutralization of energies which, if not, would
become dangerous to society.
Neo-liberalism is to be sure inhuman. But it does no
more than reveal the internal essence of capital: for it, the human is only
of interest to the degree it is capitalizable. From now on, more than ever,
it will be too much. When state power becomes the apologist for labour, it
is not because it thinks that the employment of all potential workers
remains the primordial condition for the value creating process of capital
but in order to try to make good, at the least cost, a life of inactivity,
the origin of revolts. The state has a horror of emptiness. So to keep
order, any kind of activity is better than none at all, such is the credo
of neo-liberalism which has taken over from the apologists of the welfare
state. Work remains the best cop even though the mode of contemporary
capital's functioning rends practically impossible the employment of all
available human beings, even on the cheap.
It might appear paradoxical that some protesters who
were indifferent to politics should have granted so much importance to the
idea of democracy: faced with the authoritarianism of state power, the
defence of citizenship appeared to them indispensable.
In France, the myth of the sovereignty of the people
has always been of great importance in the minds of the average citizen.
They see there the means of disposing of despotisms, although it resurfaces
without ceasing from the representation they have themselves chosen. But
the myth would never have a similar hold on them if the state had not also
appeared as their protector with the setting up of the welfare state. Not
only did it assimilate, in the last analysis, citizens with workers, but
also as workers it protected them somewhat, they and their families,
against the upset and risks inherent to wage workers in the service of
capital. In France, the welfare state had thus realized up to the end the
democratization of the state.
From now on, the transformation of capital shall
make citizenship appear as a pure political form without a socially
effective content. That is why the reduction of the protective role of the
state is linked to the partial, and even total questioning by the excluded,
of the statute of citizenship. Here also, neo-liberalism plays a revelatory
role. Democracy appears, even under a benign appearance, as what it always
had been: the domination of capital.
The winter crises also revealed the paradoxes of
contestation for official unionism. The protesters have, en masse,
expressed willy-nilly, their refusal of neo-liberalism following union
officials to the degree that, with the exception of those in the CFDT, they
made a show of mobilizing them.
It is, however, notorious that in France
disaffection with trade unionism has considerably increased over the years.
At the risk of abstraction, the period of radicalization after May '68 had
not shown a surpassing of the trade union strait jacket. Rather, it had
sanctioned atomization, the dissolution of former combative communities and
submission to the imperatives of capitalist restructuring.
But the principal characteristics of the welfare
state in France is to have integrated the trade unions, who at times have
preserved the facade of contestation, into organs for the protection of
labour. 'Paritarisme' (the equal representation of both sides when
management and trade union leaders meet) gave the impression to the trade
union rank and file, and continues to give it despite de-unionization, of
having a direct hold over state management through the intermediary of
their leaders.
From their angle, the majority of trade union bosses
were apprehensive; the reduction in the contractual function of the state
would mean to them the loss of sinecures and positions even if the tendency
to participate in the mode of neo-liberal management was pronounced among
them and not only in the CFDT. What's more, they knew that their
acknowledgement as partners by state power depended on their being
representatives and their capacity to enclose and derail trouble in the
enterprises, especially in attracting and controlling the most combative
individuals which appeared.
Already for a number of years, the day belonged not
to exclusion (except in the CFDT) but to recuperation, in order to try to
broaden the base of the pyramid whose mummified summit was in danger of
falling to pieces. The shop floor delegates' development is henceforth very
different from that of preceding generations. The oldest had often
participated in radical groupings which had sprung up after May '68,
particularly in workshop committees outside of the main trade unions. The
bankruptcy of their revolutionary political pretensions had led them to
devote the majority of their energy to rank and file trade unionism even
when they were sometimes members of Trotskyist/anarchist groups, etc. The
youngest have come from the co-ordinations of winter '86. They are pretty
indifferent to trade union labels; not uncommonly they belong at one and
the same time to several organizations including the libertarian wing of
the CNT. Their combativity is at times real. But, as long as they manoeuvre
within a framework of a trade unionism approved by the state, they are
tolerated by their leaderships as elements necessary to their survival and
to the maintenance of their influence over the incredulous who, for want of
better, accorded them some credit for trying to limit the damage.
The trade union leadership played the game well. The
basis of their subtle sabotage was double language. They had, in part,
consigned to the basement their stall-holder slanging matches and sought to
consolidate, for the moment at least, the branch on which they were sitting
and which they had contributed to sawing through. Hence the demagogic
appeals to a "unitary inter-trade action through the generalization
throughout the country of strikes and demonstrations for the scrapping of
the Juppé Plan". In reality they refused to extend the strikes, in
particular in the electricity industry (EDF), monopolizing speech and
communication in the strikers' assemblies, controlling demonstrations and
causing them to degenerate into inoffensive, repetitive marches in which
the aim was exhausting their energies and preventing the most radical of
them taking over the local branches after their own fashion.[4]
The winter crises confirmed the breakthrough of a
renewed rank and file trades unionism recomposing itself outside of
traditional confederations, very much upsetting the different leaderships,
in particular the leadership of the CFDT. From now on the model is the
SUD.
The frequent references by the founders of the SUD
to the origins of revolutionary syndicalism, indeed of anarcho-syndicalism
for those who are also members of the CNT, to the original trade unions and
to the first associations which had as their objective the emancipation of
the workers, could be deceptive. Likewise their hostility to the most
narrow minded corporatism.
But their steps were more the result of the
exclusion imposed by the leadership of the CNT than of any critical
reflection. In reality, they are participating in the renewal of trades
unionism, a renewal based both on taking up the theme of self-management
and the taking into account of the phenomenon of exclusion, up to then
neglected by the main unions. They combine the traditional defence of the
right of state employees with the defence of the workless, the homeless and
illegal immigrants, participating in the creation of charitable
organizations and multiplying contacts with those religious and lay people
who are taking over from the state in matters of social assistance.
The SUD is already an integral part of a combination
movement such as the purest democrats of our epoch dream of, champions of
"the defence of civil society against the attacks of state power". But the
renovated combination movement is rotten even before flowering: it is born
out of the decomposition of the former professional trade unionism, based
on the identification of individuals with their type of work, and from the
emergence of new reformist associations based on the aim of integrating
into the world of work all those who have been excluded, so that they
become citizens in their entirety. In spite of the good will of a number of
SUD members, this atypical trade unionism, as they like to call it, has
nothing revolutionary about it.
The irony is that the bureaucratism of the main
unions does not stop them from participating in the institutional
mechanisms in the state industries, in particular, in elections which allow
them to be recognized by the state as the official representatives of the
staff. The notion of not abandoning the terrain of power-sharing
institutions, from workers' committees to administrative councils, to the
managers is completely worn through. The terrain is full of pitfalls,
delegates are admitted as co-managers of labour-power.
Faced with the institutionalization of the SUD, some
protesters propose to limit the duration of delegates' participation in the
co-management organizations and even to elect and revoke them on the basis
of only the decisions taken in general assemblies and strike committees.
But no formal procedure has ever impeded the appearance of a hierarchy
within the institutions even when the base is regarded as sovereign. As
long as individuals express the need to be represented, they are always
confronted by the fact that the representation that they have chosen
escapes their control.
It is customary in France for demonstrators to try
to get round obstacles encountered in concrete struggle through a recourse
to abstract recipes. Faced with the incapacity to understand what was
shackling the development of the content and the contents of the movements
unfolding, there was a return to apologetics regarding well-known forms.
But, detached from the context that gave them life and meaning, they were
nothing more than dead, hollow formulas, phantoms which no longer arouse
fear in the holders of state power and their acolytes in the trade union
hierarchy. Because the trade unions, for fear of throwing petrol on the
fire, have avoided using the term general strike, some protesters thought
they saw in it the miracle solution. But whatever their good intentions,
they have only tried to outbid their rivals.
The general strike of May '68 constituted their
blue-chip stock par excellence. In so doing, they no longer
demonstrated any critical spirit. For the mass radical movement which broke
out then had already passed the very limited confines of the general
strike. It began to question work and many other aspects of daily survival:
the family, school, urbanism, etc. Under the control of the unions, the
occupations quickly shut themselves away and sometimes turned hostile to
anything which wasn't to do with the corporate struggle. So leave the dead
in peace. The wheel has turned. The structure of society has undergone an
in-depth transformation with the commodity invading the totality of
relations plus the near total demolition of working class communities which
had, in spite of their corporatism, put up a resistance to capital. It has
become impossible in France to identify the modern islets of contemporary
capitalism, workers and non-workers, with the former workers of industrial
capitalism which then constituted the heart of the economy, with the
exception of, partly, state industries and what remains of the classical
industrial firms.
To go on strike is not reduced in importance because
work, as a feature of the domestication of individuals, remains the basis
of society's functioning. But the general disruption of the work process
throughout the country is, less than ever, the model for combat for every
particular revolt. The ensemble of roles and the straight-jackets which
suffocate us overwhelm the confines of work. Henceforth, work disruptions
are only one of the moments of the movements of insubordination against
state power and contemporary society. Witness the urban riots endemic to
the megalopolis of the most advanced countries which already, in spite of
the limited character of their objectives, are no less a very
characteristic manifestation of revolt in our epoch.
It is impossible to say today what will happen
tomorrow. The outcome of the winter movement has not been settled in
advance. In relation to those of the recent past it has achieved some
advances but, at the same time, it has revealed the existence of enormous
obstacles. Of course these are not, a priori, insurmountable and
must not become the pretext for kow-towing. Nothing is inevitable, and as
the celebrated saying recalls: 'the power of the masters also rests on the
weakness of the slaves'.
However, it none-the-less remains true that
historical conditions have been modified. The Juppé Plan is not the
only fruit of the neo-liberal fads of the technocrats in delirium who are
today in power in France. In this case the mass strikes of winter would
have been enough to cause its withdrawal. But behind them looms the
menacing shadow of the real enemy whose managers they only are. The enemy
is global capitalism which has decided, on a planetary scale, to deliver
the coup de grace to those it has not yet got under control. It's
also the reason why the shrewd Juppé Plan has the capacity to take a
lot of punishment.
Moreover, the victims of neo-liberalism are in a
corner. On the one hand, the oldest are scarcely enthused by the programmes
coming from bygone periods which in general were reformist. On the other
hand, young people have grown up in the shadow of the crises, in an
atmosphere of generalized nihilism, which characterizes contemporary
capitalism.
Even when the determination to unravel it is real,
the absence of a global perspective for overcoming the survival which
envelopes them condemns them to explosions of anger which are considerable
but without any follow up at the moment, when even a simple resistance to
the encroachment of capital is a very arduous thing to achieve. Capital has
always taken back what it granted the night before and one cannot appraise
the winter movement in terms of a balance sheet. But the non-satisfaction
of basic demands had a part to play in the feeling of powerlessness. We
don't live only for the pleasures of the flesh but when they aren't to be
had those of the spirit offer no consolation.
The absence of great aims does not prompt the use of
great means except in very particular situations. Power understood this. In
spite of the fear the massive work stoppages in state industries aroused in
them, they relied more on the likelihood of decay than on savage repression
and gave way to sectional demands only to accelerate the decomposition.
A handful of irreducibles in Paris and the regions,
in order to struggle against defeatism and the return to atomization
following the return to work, have taken it upon themselves to think and
act in a co-ordinated fashion in expectation of a hypothetical resumption.
The initiative is not without interest. But it is essential to comprehend
that it cannot be a matter of reconstituting the action committees, such as
existed in the period of radicalization inaugurated by May '68. And still
less the co-ordinations, in the image of those which arose during the
preceding strikes and which sought to be the representatives of different
trades and professions in struggle. Without neglecting the exchange of
information and the rest, it is, more than ever, necessary to draw up a
critique of the movement of insubordination which we participated in. The
possibility that individuals refusing to accept resignation will converge
depends on it. What is necessary, in particular, is the critique of trades
unionism, even atypical trades unionism. It is difficult because it could
be the cause of a distancing, not only as regards trade union leaderships,
but also as regards friends who are still full of illusions on the question
of rank and file trade unionism, and not comprehending the critique, the
latter could liken it to a rupture in relations forged during the strike.
But it is today one of the conditions enabling us to act by ourselves and
for ourselves.
ANDRÉ