France The 2006 Anti-CPE Movement: the fight pays but is not enough

In past editions of our Italian-language newspaper, when commenting on the revolts in the banlieues, we wrote that lately the social temperature has been rising unceasingly in France[1]: first the tough struggle of the seamen and dockers in Bastia and Marseilles, next the railway strikes, then the anger of the young proletarians from the suburbs and now the wide-scale anti-CPE movement which in the end, after about a month of wrestling, has forced withdrawal of the government measure.   In terms of the mobilisation involved, the contradictions exposed and the social impact there is no doubt that the France is an example of how the economic crisis inevitably drives large sections of the working population (or those expelled from it or kept on the sidelines or in the antechambers) to take in hand the question of their own living and working conditions, both present and future, without delegating it to political and union forces that are openly interested in defending the status quo.

Let us see how things have gone and what lessons can be drawn from them.

Behind the labels

The draft law containing the measures of the Contrat Première Embauche (CPE) or first job contract,  foresees the possibility of dismissal “without just cause” and from one day to the next for young people under the age of 26 taken on for a two-year trial period in a firm or company of whatever size (the other type of contract, the Contrat Nouvelle Embauche, CNE, or new job contract, was destined, for the moment to regard salaried workers in small companies).  This would obviously have meant that:  a) the worker employed would have been subject for two years to the daily blackmail of  “if you don’t like it you can lump it” (equalling low salary, unpaid overtime, flexible hours, hard working conditions, all sorts of persecution), b) it would be in the interests of the employer to fire the young person “on trial”before the two years were up and take on someone else, thus avoiding open-ended job contracts and making exclusive use of precarious, flexible, underpaid and super-blackmailed labour.  Which, in turn, would have meant the immediate spread of precariousness in all sectors, the approval of precarious employment as the only “working non-relationship”:  the CNE and CPE measures, if approved, would basically have hit not only young people under 26 but the whole world of work.

The fight against the CPE

Opposition to these new measures became immediately obvious and very soon the fight had extended from Paris to the whole of France, trying to equip itself with a minimum of organization and networking in order to overcome the close confines of single places or situations and also occasionally clashing with the forces of law and order.  Surprised by the unforeseen opposition, the State initially adopted the tactics of controlling and cutting off the movement and then turned to its natural allies (up to then only too…neglected):  the unions.  Which, as might have been expected, operated as authentic fire-fighters.  Whilst the occasion demanded that the battle front be made more compact, centralizing it and extending it and – in view of the nature of the CPE and CNE, i.e. measures destined to hit the whole of the working class – the proclamation and preparation of a general strike bringing together all categories of workers, the bonze element worked to dilute the agitation into a series of dates, “days”, demonstrations, unconnected to one another – the classical method always used to boycott the fights in the factories, breaking them up and localizing them.

The young precariously employed or future precariously employed people were thus left out on their own, yet even in this situation they showed considerable determination, which says a lot about the crisis that is eating into wide sectors of French society.  They took action in their actual capacity as the prime destinees of the CPE and CNE:  i.e. as future sellers of labour.  It was not a “student movement,” as the media, the observers, commentators (to sum up, the dominant ideology) hastened to define it, so as to close it in a ghetto, creating a sort of “sanitary cordon” of empty words, barren sociological analyses, improvised definitions around it.  Through their many, different spokespeople, the State acted ideologically towards these “chosen victims” exactly as, only a few months previously, it had acted towards the young proletarians in the banlieues: in that case trying to confine the spontaneous wave of rebellion into the categories of “immigrants, Muslims, hooligans”, and in the new one reducing opposition to the CPE to the “students out to create havoc.”  In both cases it was crucial to stop the concept of “class” and “class struggle” spreading:  that the young people involved should see themselves (and be seen by other sectors of the working class) asproletarians, no matter whether cast out on the edges (in the banlieues) or still evolving (in those huge car parks of society that the secondary schools and now even the universities have become).

Marxist analysis does not do sociology.  It sees social phenomena in motion and not as static.  It sees them from the point of view of production relations and class relations:  that is, from the position of these social phenomena in comparison tothese relations and within the given mode of production.  The anti-CPE movement was not a “student movement” but a) the demonstration of the transformation into proletariat going on in what are now very large sectors of the half classes, b) the reaction of future proletarians to the increasingly precarious nature of work relations.  The two rebellions that followed one another in France in the space of a few months declare and confirm, in practice, what Marxist analysis has always claimed:  the proletariat is defined by reason of its being, either in fact or potentially, without reserves, and not by the genealogy of a family tree, its sociological placement, its “culture” or the image it has of itself, or the position it occupies in the factory – as the bourgeoisie and opportunists of all descriptions (not excluding those of the “far left”) would like to argue in a mixture of  abject cynicism and romantic rhetoric.

Zombies at work

It was inevitable that a new querelle should unleash around the “CPE issue” which experienced the mobilization of the ill-smelling residue of the intelligentsia from sixty-eight and post sixty-eight – a fine sample of those maitres à penser who polluted the air during the course of the ‘70s, making their contribution to the counter-revolution that still continues to rage.  In an interview with the Corriere della Sera of 20/3, MartinKarmitz, then a Maoist, now an important film producer, proclaimed:  “I see a movement that merely strives to conserve what already exists, to defend the status quo. […]  Discontent permeates the whole of society but takes concrete shape in the form of defence of the past, the refusal to change.And it is the France of this “No” that is marching.” After having rebuked those who of course are merely “students” to him for not having anything to say “about the horrors in the world […]. About war, rampant racism, religious extremism, inequality, the exploitation of others,” he adds his final little sermon:  “To these young people I would like to say: be a bit more daring, have the courage to dream of a different future, like we did,” (we, who in the meantime have put down our roots in the status quo, to the music first of billions of francs and today of millions of euros, tangible symbols … of “imagination in power”!).  He is echoed by André Glucksman, also a Maoist at the time, now pro-American, who strikes one blow at the kettle and another at the pot:  “They’re quite right.  They show pride and wisdom [!!!] because Villepin’s first job contract is certainly not a liberal step [!!!] towards opening up the market [!!!].  On the contrary, the CPE is an inadequate measure that will not succeed in creating new jobs but will prolong the guarantees and privileges of adult workers already in employment.  It seems to be the beginning of a reform but it is really a conservative move.” (interview in theCorriere della Sera, 18/3)… which just shows that this rabble has never understood the slightest thing about how capitalism works, what reforms are, what the labour market is, what economic laws are!  In practice, with their mouths stuffed full of words, they have stopped at Adam Smith and the “invisible hand” of the market which was to freely regulate economic and social relations.  Again Glucksman: “An overall and organic reform is needed; we must not place the whole blame for failure on the shoulders of the students.”  In other words:  the CPE is unjust because it only affects young people under the age of 26 – something “new” is required that will hit everyone, cancelling out privileges:  “equality for everyone … a step down!” Lastly the cherry on the icing from Bernard-Henry Lévy, who declares unashamedly that the CPE is “a step, a small step, in the right direction.”As to the “student protest”, “we can clearly see the dimension of it, which is for the moment profoundly conservative.” (Corriere, 2/4).

The State and its sidekicks

The measures contained in the CNE and the CPE are quite coherent with the need of capital, all over the world, to proceed along the path towards rendering work relations totally precarious:  the economic crisis makes this necessary.  In this sense the measures are similar to those adopted in other countries:  in Italy, for example, as documented in the latest edition of this newspaper in relation to the metalworkers’ contract[2], or in Zapatero’s Spain, in Merkel’s Germany and Blair’s Great Britain – measures adopted or being adopted by a range of governments that differ only formally from one another, but actually all share the same commitment to “saving capitalism from its own crisis.” The degree, the timing, the modalities may be different but the facts do not change:  capital needs ultra-flexible and ultra-blackmailable labour.  This is where it returns to its origins, after having given the illusion (through “reforms” made possible by random extraction of plus-value during the twenty-year-and-more economic boom of the post-war recovery) that society based on capital might be the “milk and honey” of those who worship the “welfare state” and “guarantees for all”.  Faced with the crisis, the veils and the masks are off and capital shows itself for what it really is – society based on the war of all against all, which reacts to its own, undeniable death throes in the most savage and merciless fashion.

To do this, the State must be able to count on a whole series of collaborators:  and who could be better collaborators than the so-called left-wing parties and so-called workers’ unions? The long opportunist history of the former and the compromising practices of the latter make them perfect allies.  This is the real difference between the Italian and the French situations. In Italy the ruling class introduced the same measures over the period of a decade but took the precaution (developed in over half a century of … co-existence) of relying on the fire-fighting effect of the parties and unions which roped off the working class behind a sanitary cordon, controlling their reactions and separating them by category and region, exhausting them in agitation without prospects, isolating and criminalizing the most antagonistic factions and using the most underhand, equivocal and terrorist methods, in full harmony with action by the State, in order to prevent even the embryo of an opposition front from forming against the measures gradually being introduced.The French ruling class, partly because they could not count on political forces with the same political-historical weight as the Italian heirs of Stalinism (unionisation is much slighter and so, therefore is control), partly because they believed they need only bring into play their own arrogant grandeur, partly because the social contradictions became explosive from month to month, neglected to involve that necessary help.  Briefly, they thought they could get by alone and they were mistaken.  The unions were, in fact, brought into the picture late, in an evident strategic move to try and control what could be controlled:  a move that was partly successful, showing that this help is crucial for capitalism.  In fact CGT, ex PCF and their attendant choruses immediately adopted diluting practices, from the isolated, separate days of demonstrations and the rhetoric of the important occasions, against the instinctive, though fragile and confused tendency to achieve a compact battlefront and, above all, more widespread and effective forms of struggle, such as a general strike involving all categories.

Thus, despite the delay, opportunist parties and unions earned their future stripes/chevrons on the field:   in the future, the French ruling class will no longer be able to neglect their vital contribution.

The limits of the “movement”

We are not amongst those who see the return of the class struggle, if not even the start of a new cycle of revolutionary battles, in every wave of rebellion (except of course for feeling shocked when the young proletariat of the banlieues burn cars belonging to … their workman neighbours!).  We are not the ones who even theorize that, just as ’68 was supposed to open up the path to a new season of workers’ struggles, the “anti-CPE movement” is supposed to mark the beginning of  a new phase drawing closer to the proletarian revolution. In fact, whilst possessing all the characteristics that have been described  (a movement of young people partly belonging already to the proletariat or becoming part of the proletariat and partly future proletariat, fighting against a tangible deterioration in work relations, both present and future), the “anti-CPE movement” is subject to all the weaknesses that still undermine the working class today.

Only mad visionaries can ignore how profound the work of the counter-revolution has been over the past eighty years in its different but convergent forms of democracy, fascism, Stalinism, actually and metaphorically disarming the world proletariat, first and foremost in the advanced capitalist metropolises.  The effects of this counter-revolution are clearly to be seen:  pursued by an economic crisis that has crushed “security”, jobs, “guarantees” over the past thirty years, the workers have difficulty finding their way back to the class struggle.  It is not merely a question of the day-to-day betrayal by so-called “leftist” parties and so-called “workers’” unions, which have now become crucial pins for keeping in place the order of things – a betrayal that is expressed in the boycott of struggles, the removal of their content and methods, the isolation of the more combative proletarians, with those who will not bow their heads being reported to the police and legal authorities, the criminalization of any sign of resistance, accompanied by harder and harder living and working conditions…

It is not just this (which is not a phenomenon of today but a situation that has come into being over a long period of history, starting, in fact, from Stalinism). It also involves the fact that, in these past tragic eighty years, the working class has lost its links to its own fighting traditions, with the classic content and methods of class struggle, with the concept of class struggle itself – a struggle that, in the short term, must set itself the aim of embracing proletarians from all sectors in a single defence front but, at the same time, in perspective, must establish the objective of going beyond that limit, advanced though it may be, because it will still continue to have the capital-based State opposite it, with all the State’s repressive apparatus, both openly visible and concealed.

The working class, particularly in capitalistically advanced metropolises, is finding it an arduous task to return to this path, to reclaim the methods and content of the struggle, even at an immediate and spontaneous level. In rapid flare-ups, they rebel and instinctively regain the perception of the inevitable antagonism that places them up against bourgeois society, its State and its side-kicks:  and in those rapid flare-ups they also manage to recover from the collective memory what is needed for the fight in hand.  But the flare-ups pass by and soon die out, usually without leaving anything except for a limited experience that the whole of the bourgeois world (ideology, inertia, repression) will go about cancelling out.  To sum up, we are at a far lower level than the one Lenin referred to when he condensed the Marxist theory and practice of the relations between party and class into What Is To Be Done?:  it is certainly not the “fault” of the working class!

And so the CPE was defeated: but the CNE remains and so do all the other oppressive, anti-working class measures, and there remains the need for capital to make use of these or invent new ones. The fight paid off in the short term but this is not enough. The young proletarians or future proletarians fresh from this experience will have to pose the problem of the continuity of the structures set up and the enlargement of the front of resistance against capital. And they will inevitably have to face the problem of the perspectives they should head towards, because without these any antagonistic movement is destined to be re-absorbed without a trace. And the problem of future perspectives can only be that of the need to shift from a fight based on defence to one of attack: therefore the problem of the bourgeois State as a cornerstone of the capitalist mode of production  and the issue of the proletarian revolution and the revolutionary party.

The prime need is for the revolutionary party

Over the past few years France seems to have been visited by several nightmares. Capital and its State attempt to react to the deepening pangs of the crisis with economic and social measures like the CNE and the CNP (aimed at making labour increasingly flexible and susceptible to blackmail) or like the new bill on “selected immigration” (designed to limit, though only partially, immigration: which capital nevertheless continues to need). At the same time, they are trying to reassure the half classes. Meanwhile, the conflictual relationship with the European Union (the recent “No” to the planned European Constitution) and the outbreak of a series of scandals affecting the heads of administration and government betray the profound unease circulating through the country, even though it has not yet succeeding in gathering along the lines and patterns of class opposition, but remains constant, gloomy resentment and alienation. The ideological mobilization (re-evaluation of the country’s colonial past, celebration of the abolition of slavery, etc.) also serves the need to freshen up the celebrations of a shaky and frequently ridiculed grandeur, channelling the unease in a strongly conservative direction.

What is dramatically missing from this whole scenario, of extreme interest to communists, is – as we have said – the revolutionary party, the only force able not only to direct and coordinate the struggles that, materialistically, are emerging from the social sub-strata by leading them out of the narrow boundaries in which they tend to confine themselves, but also to help them take the crucial qualitative step from the terrain of pure economic claims to a political-revolutionary one – basically to make the fights based on defence cross-pollinate, under specific favourable conditions, into fights based on attack.

However, it is not sufficient to state this, since the argument is too often used in an abstract and mechanical fashion. The revolutionary party is not a deus ex machina which – as in classical tragedy – descends from above and solves situations. To speak of the “prime need for a revolutionary party” means talking about long, unceasing and methodical work carried out in contact with all sectors of the working class”.  And this, in turn, essentially means two things.

First of all, it means that the revolutionary party cannot be invented on the spur of the moment; it is not a white rabbit that can be pulled out of a top-hat. It can only be the result of a long struggle carried out over time for the defence and reaffirmation of a doctrine and a tradition, against all the forces, within the working class and outside it, that have unceasingly attacked and questioned that doctrine and that tradition, trying time after time over a century and a half to break the red thread running through it. This means: the balance sheet of eighty years of counter-revolution, incessant theoretical repair, the defence of principles, of the programme, of tactics, the political and organizational circumscribing of opportunism in all its various disguises (of which that of the “far left”, even in its apparently most radical manifestations, is the worst and the most dangerous), conveying to the new generations of revolutionaries a whole body of theoretical-practical heritage, intervention in the fights of the proletariat within the limits of their own forces and capacities, to reintroduce revolutionary methods and objectives. Those who fail to understand this prime need are outside any revolutionary perspective: they are part of the spontaneous, movement-driven, anarchoid and subjectivist miasma that has at times literally sold out the world proletariat during this long period of counter-revolution.

From this initial affirmation the second, no less important, arises dialectically. The revolutionary Party is not even the Military General Staff which, at some point, decides to do battle, expecting the class to follow out of pure soldierly discipline, ready to obey any strategy brought into play, any manoeuvre decided behind closed doors. Here, in this purely mechanical and opportunist vision, we have the seeds of all the Stalinist and post-Stalinist aberrations regarding relations between party and class, which led both the revolutionary party (Lenin’s Third International) and the world’s working class to disaster. The dialectical complexity of this relationship, which actually presupposes that long, unceasing and methodical work of revolutionary preparation in contact with all sectors of the working class (as we have learned, above all from Lenin in What Is To Be Done?), is completely deprived of its true nature in favour of an arrogant and irresponsible over-simplification in pure sergeant-major fashion – a military imitation that makes the skin crawl if we think of the disasters it has produced since the mid-1920s up to the present.

It is a fact that both these mistaken approaches (the spontaneous and the militarist) converge, as has always happened in the history of the communist movement, further demonstrating that opportunism may have several different faces but a single direction – the one that is the direct directly opposite of revolution. On the other hand, the revolutionary party is not “the guiding light” either, a merely academic-scholastic formation whose aim is to “increase the awareness” of the proletariat: taking such a perspective would mean automatically assuming a position outside Marxism, for which the revolution does not consist of the awareness of the proletariat but of material causes that drive the proletariat to encounter the revolutionary party on the rocky path of battles and experiences. Nor is it a formation that will come into being when the masses start to move, because at that point – since that long, unceasing, methodical work has not been carried out – it will truly be too late:  in this case, too, it would mean not having grasped anything about the dialectics of history and leading the fighting class to certain defeat, having deprived it for too long of the revolutionary organ: which is not simply a prop but must be attached and bound to the class exactly like any other organ is attached and bound to the rest of the body, in all its parts and functions.

These are all deviations and aberrations that must be fought, today as yesterday and tomorrow. It will be necessary to return to this topic, since the very evolution of material contradictions will make this necessary, in France, as elsewhere.