Comrades,
Welcoming all the comrades
and organizations here, above all I would say that to hold this
meeting is a victory for the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists operating in
the imperialist countries, in countries such as France and Italy and,
more generally, it is a victory for the MLM movement in the world.
We
Marxist-Leninist-Maoists consider the French May/June the
concentrated expression of the revolutionary movement of the 70s; a
historical page showing the strength of the trend to the revolution
within the imperialist countries and the historical importance of the
MLM movement, that indicates the path we are taking again and in
which we are working.
“It is right to
rebel”, “the working class must exercise leadership in
everything” are two slogans coming from the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, which were embodied by the students and the
revolutionary youth, by the workers, in those months and in the
following years.
We take back this piece of
history to take up the lessons that come from it, whose validity we
are committed to affirm and actualize in the class struggle, in the
national and international political situation today.
The students’ and youth
rebellion in May 68, attacked and repressed by the government and the
imperialist state, triggered a great workers' struggle, with
factories occupied, strikes, blockades, opposed by all means, beside
the State and the masters, by the revisionist Party, the French
Communist Party, and the revisionist-led trade union, the CGT.
The workers’ rebellion
brought into the workers' ranks the watchwords of the revolution and
struggle for power. The unity between the students who went to
factories and the workers who went to universities ignited the
explosive mixture of the revolutionary struggle.
A great contribution and
keystone of this unity came from the French Maoist communists, many
of them young.
The French May/June has
shown the conditions and the forms in which the mass movement becomes
a revolutionary movement in an imperialist country.
The revolutionary movement
is not enough to win, it needs the revolutionary party, it needs the
strategy and tactics for the revolution in the imperialist countries,
that then as today demands a long-lasting revolutionary war that
leads to insurrection as the path for proletarian and socialist
revolution.
This path was not
established in those May/June and following events, but such
historical experience, as that of Gauche Proletarienne, shows that
the Maoists were the only ones to point out that path.
The global situation was
decisive for the May/June break out. The great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution in China led by the communists of Mao Tsetung was
upsetting the world imperialist order and launching the message that
the rebellions in the 68 and the 70s have took up.
The widespread diffusion of Mao
Tsetung's thought in the world stimulated the development and
increased the level of consciousness of the world revolution of our
time. The brilliant victory of the Chinese GPCR gave new vigor to the
revolutionary will of the people of all the countries, the will to
dare to fight and to dare to win.
A great importance also
had the people's war fought until the victory in Vietnam, beating US
imperialism.
Finally, analyzing those
events, it is absolutely necessary to rely on the evaluation of the
Chinese communists led by Mao on the French May. The Chinese
communists led by Mao, with numerous writings, exalted the
revolutionary movement in the heart of the imperialist countries and
put it in the context of the Great Proletarian Cultural revolution
and the East wind, within which is the liberation war of Vietnam,
prevailing on the West wind. The Chinese communists, led by Mao, were
those who exalted the role of the revolutionary youth who shakes and
frightens the whole world of imperialism, and they taught us how it
has played a role of trigger for the great struggle of workers.
The years that
characterized the May/June 68 had an extraordinary influence in all
the countries of the world.
In
Italy too the class struggle will increase in intensity and extend
for a decade, from 68 to 77, as well as in North America and other
imperialist countries such as Germany, Belgium, Spain. Even in the
Eastern European countries workers will rise up against revisionist
regimes, meeting the East wind indirectly from France.
Being forged by the GCPR
and that revolutionary movement, a new generation took the road of
MLM in many parts of the world.
The joint statement
on the occasion of the 45th
anniversary of Ibrahim Kaypakkaya’s murder:
“He is one of
the best disciple of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He
evaluated his own ideas and the TKP/ML, which he founded, as products
of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Back when
Marxist-Leninist ideas were active globaly, when in the 1960s and
1970s the struggles for revolution and Socialism were developing
themselves, the class struggle in Turkey was making incredible
progress. Especially under the conditions of the 1968 Movement, which
encompassed the whole world, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist
revolutionary waves formed between students. This movement has
reached its 50th anniversary this year. On this occasion, we salute
this movement, which made the world shake and stroke fear among
imperialism and the ruling powers. This movement was influenced by
Marxism-Leninism and adapted to the revolutionary wave, which
developed in the world with the idea of revolution and the assertion
of revolution. This period was at the same time a process in which
the socialist camp divided Revisionism and Marxist-Leninist
foundations”.
Therefore, to hail and
discuss about the French May/June is not nostalgia or mere
celebration but means to indicating the stages, the heritage on which
the workers and revolutionary movement in the imperialist countries
will resume the path of revolution, in unity and harmony with the
international communist movement.
It is
extraordinarily important that this celebration of the 50th
of the French May/June and the rebellions in many other countries of
the world on 68 coincides with the 200th
anniversary of the birth of Marx and the 170th
anniversary of the Communist Manifesto.
The science of revolution
worked out by Marx, and then developed on a theoretical and practical
level by Lenin and Mao, was very much present among the revolutionary
students and the workers of May/June 68 in France, as well as in all
the uprising broken out since then.
The Manifesto spoke about
a specter haunting around Europe, the specter of communism that
scared the ruling classes. Well, 50 years ago that specter reappeared
through the 68 of workers and students. And that specter is still
imprinted in the minds of the ruling classes -that is why the
bourgeoisie in France as in the world does everything to delete,
exorcise and distort it.
But it is an attempt tried
several times and doomed to fail. An attempt that actually shows how
this specter is real and present and the dream of revolution of those
months, of those years, is still a nightmare for capitalism,
imperialism and the ruling classes in the imperialist countries and
in the world.
The Chinese comrades wrote
on June 6, 68: "The great storm of the mass revolutionary
movement that shakes the whole France shows that the French
proletarians, which Marx exalted for their historic initiative and
defined as ready to assault heaven, have written a new and glorious
chapter in the annals of the history of France. They are the worthy
heirs of the Paris Commune ".
Mao said: "Despite
the efforts of the reactionaries to stop the wheel of history, sooner
or later the revolution will break out and will inevitably be
victorious".
The celebration of this
meeting, the commitment made by the French and Italian communists and
in other imperialist countries to affirm and embody the path of
revolution and the construction of genuine revolutionary parties
shows that even in difficult times for the proletariat, the masses,
the Communists and the revolutionaries, while they target of
criminalization, repression and attacks of all kinds by today's
reformists and false communists, the Communists are able to take
again in their hands, also through the lessons of May/June 68, the
weapons of the revolutionary struggle and the struggle for power.
And our meeting represents
an act of pride and trust in the struggle, in the rebellion, and a
new hope that the future is ours, not theirs.
If we want to draw the
main lesson from those years, from the point of view of the
revolution, from the point of view of the working class, which, as
Marx taught us, is the only revolutionary class to the end, we must
recognize that the main lesson of those events it is the unmasking
and the role of betrayal ignominiously and openly carried out by the
French Revisionist Communist Party and the CGT.
Lenin had said:
"Opportunism, that is our main enemy. The opportunism of the
upper strata of the workers movement is a non-proletarian but
bourgeois socialism. Proof of this is the fact that the militants of
the workers movement belonging to the opportunist tendency are better
defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeois themselves. If they
did not have the leadership of the workers in their hands, the
bourgeoisie would not survive ".
Those months have shown
that the revisionism infiltrated in the workers' movement was once
again the most serious impediment for the advance of the
revolutionary ideas and practice in the world.
At that time this made it
difficult to consistently develop those events towards the seizure of
power and even today these issues are the key to resume the lessons
of those years and bring through to the end. In May/June 68 the main
contradiction was between those who wanted to fight bourgeois power
and those who wanted to maintain and serve it. Among the
revolutionary workers and students, the organized forces, between the
Maoists and the currents of the petty bourgeoisie, it was fought a
struggle which saw the bourgeoisie and revisionists on the one side
and the revolutionary workers and students om the other.
Therefore, to come back to
the dynamics of those events is useful to grasp the substance.
The break out of students
agitation on 3 May is triggered on a whole series of further workers'
struggles that had developed in the previous months and culminated on
April with the strike of the Sud-Aviation factory in Nantes, led by
young workers of the CGT in struggle against the revisionist
leadership of the union. On the other hand, the students rose up
against the discriminatory university reform.
From the 3rd
to the 10th
of May the agitation took place mainly in the universities,
challenging the police with violent clashes and there were the first
arrests (596 people only on May 3), while the injured are hundreds.
From 10th
to 13th
of May the student rebellion exacerbates and appears a first
spontaneous aggregation of young workers at the students
demonstration. The 13th
the trade unions are forced to call for a 24-hour general strike and
a large demonstration in which a million protesters participated.
The
students played a vanguard role in this revolutionary struggle. At
the beginning of May, Paris students were the first to leave school
and challenge the school system and the decadent social system of
capitalism. Taking over the student movement's impulse more than 10
million workers organized economic and political strikes, occupied
half of the French factories and companies. The flames of the
struggle spread to more than 90 departments and the revolutionary red
flags rose on a large number of factories, universities, mines.
Regardless of the law and the bourgeois order, they declared
resolutely: "we will oppose revolutionary violence to bourgeois
violence". On several occasions they erected barricades in the
streets and fought the reactionary police and the CRS, turning Paris
and many other cities into battlefields. Students and workers
supported and encouraged each other in the struggle. "Workers
and students united" became the emblematic cry of this
revolutionary storm.
Chairman Mao wrote: "All
the intellectual and student youth of the country must join the broad
masses of workers and peasants, forming one thing with them. That is
the only way to build a powerful force. This also applies to the
student movement of the capitalist countries, that is an important
component of the people’s movement as a whole ".
When the movement spreads
like wildfire and extends to the workers, the revisionists also make
a 180° turn to gain ground. They support the general strike whose
huge participation prevents revisionists from stopping the unity
among workers and students and the participation of the
Marxist-Leninists.
When the workers' strike
turns into an indefinite strike, one factory after another is
occupied, bosses and managers are abducted, action committees and
strike committees are born, at that point the revisionists do
everything to stop the strikes and the movement. The CGT call to
remain within the vindictive limits and to immunize workers from
interventions from outside the working class, by which they mean
revolutionary students and Maoists.
While the government hints
at a tactical surrender to the demands of the students, indefinite
strikes and factories occupation spread in Paris and throughout
France. The number of strikers reaches 10 million; the strikes extend
to railways, air traffic and distribution; while the agitations also
invest the countryside. On May 20, 3000 students cross the Latin
Quarter to reach the occupied Renault factory in Billancourt.
The CGT appeals to
repression and legality, tells the workers to keep locked up in
factories, while makes an infamous deal with the masters and the
government.
The unions, the masters
and the government meet at Rue Grenelle to negotiate, indeed to get
united and decide together how to stop the uprising.
And while the agreement is
being made, the bourgeois state, led by De Gaulle, calls to the
establishment of the Republic's defense committees and civic action
committees and meets its generals in Baden Baden. On the one hand,
the repression and preparation of an emergency state, on the other
hand the Grenelle agreements and the calling for early parliamentary
elections.
But the agreement is
resoundingly rejected by the workers. It is rejected on its merits,
by workers who no longer accept to remain within the limits of the
interests and stability of the capitalist system. They say no to
non-uniform wage increases, to segment negotiations, and to unite the
struggle for demands with the struggle for power; they resist the
return to work and on this basis wage a class war, of which a step is
marked every day. The strikes continue, the workers-students unity
gets stronger and the electoral campaign fails to direct the mass
movement towards the path indicated by the revisionists.
Under the lead of
the assaults of CRS, which uses illegal weapons and lethal tear gas,
two workers, 24-year-old Pierre Beylot and 49-year-old Henri
Blanchet, are murdered in Sochaux the 11th
of June, and the a Maoist student, Gilles Tautin, member of UJC ML
dies in the Seine, in Flins near the Renault.
The bourgeois State bans
11 left-wing organizations, including the Maoist PCml of France,
while freeing Salan and other fascist imperialist leaders of the OAS.
Revisionists and the bourgeois state put the maximum pressure of all
kinds and sorts on workers to push them back to job and impose the
elections as a form of consent to the bourgeois dictatorship.
In addition to the
revisionist line in support of the state, the petty bourgeois forces
contribute to disorganize the revolutionary movement. The Maoists
oppose them bringing within the workers' ranks the need for a
consistent action and an implacable struggle to construct the Party
which the working class needs, against opportunism and sectarianism,
against the influence of the petty bourgeoisie.
It is this struggle that
leads the line and the practice of the Maoist movement and resulted
in the birth of the Gauche Proletarienne.
Throughout this struggle
the Maoists combine the participation in the large mass
demonstrations and clashes with the propaganda and organization in
neighborhoods and factories. Many young people, former students, go
to work in the factories.
In
those years the strategic break with the revisionism is completed and
emerges the novelty and advance of the Maoists.
The
birth of the Cause du peuple and the formation of Gauche
Proletarienne mark the highest point and limit of the battle of the
Maoists in those months and years.
As the comrades of the PCM
of France correctly write in their Program: "Gauche
Proletarienne has developed as the main anti-revisionist force in the
movement that follows the 68. It tried to link the student and youth
movements to the working masses, attempted to radicalize the
struggles and establish a demarcation line with the revisionists;
with the formation of the NRP it laid the foundations of a fighting
forces, began to form a front with the mass organizations it had
promoted, the struggle committees in the factories, the movement of
Arab workers, the Red Relief, etc. A considerable mass work by which
we should be inspired. But it failed to build a genuine MLM party,
this led to its crisis, impasse and dissolution".
Gauche Proletarienne was
the most dynamic force within the 68 movement, even if it did not
solve the central problem that emerged in that movement, the question
of power and the strategy to seize it and establish the proletarian
power.
In the heart of the
imperialist countries it is necessary to take those initial attempts
as a reference to construct the Marxist Leninist Maoist Communist
Party needed for the revolution.
Reaffirming all this,
remove the uprisings in France and in the world from the bourgeois
campaign has nothing to do with nostalgia, as some new-revisionist
groups in France, as Voie Proletarienne, also say. It is part of the
story necessary for the advance of the MLMs and their role as command
and guide of the new phase of the world proletarian revolution.
This
process has already begun for years in countries like France, Italy,
forging itself in the class struggle in close relationship with the
masses and through some important steps that have contributed to
strengthen Maoism in Europe, we refer to the previous meetings
organized here in France. To name a few, that on the uprising in the
banlieues, on Sarkozy's modern fascism and more recently that on the
10th
anniversary of the uprising in the banlieues.
At the same time, Maoism
has strengthened in Europe, in countries such as Germany, Austria,
Galicia.
This is a dialectical and
dynamic process that goes through advanced and setbacks, formation of
new organizations and splits, this is good thing if we take up Maoism
as a guide for action in the two-lines struggle in order to
strengthen and transform the existing organizations and parties to
advance together and affirm the path of the people's war in the
imperialist countries developing revolutionary mass work.
Today's Maoist
organizations goes ahead along the same path carved by the history of
the proletarian revolution, of which the French May/June and the
rebellions of '68 are parts.
To form and strengthen
Maoist communist parties as avant-garde detachments of the working
class, as militarized parties of new type, able to organize and lead
the rebellion of the whole proletariat, of youth, of proletarian
women, to build the United Front of the sectors in struggle and the
struggles against the imperialist State and, to build the fighting
Force that requires the framing and militarization by the Maoists of
proletarian and rebellious youth.
In the wake of
internationalism, in support of the ongoing People's Wars in India,
the Philippines, Peru, Turkey/North Kurdistan and the national
liberation struggles
Long live the red and
revolutionary French May/June!
Long live the unity of
French students and workers, terror of the imperialist bourgeoisie!
Long live the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution, inspiring of the wave of revolts and
revolution in the 4 quarters of the globe!
Long live
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
Long live the birth,
strengthening and development of the Maoist parties in the
imperialist countries!
24th
of June 2018
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