For a programme to defend workers and youth

For a government truly representing the workers

We must begin by beating Sarkozy and throwing out the the UMP-UDF* members of the National Assembly.

Starting with the mobilisation to defend the pensions of public employees and against decentralisation, in the regional elections of 2004 and the No-victory in the referendum on the EU constitution right up to Spring 2006 against the CPE legislation*, the working class and the youth have shown that they wanted to throw Chirac, Sarkozy, Villepin and their allies out of power, to rout their deputies and so finish with their policies at the service of capital.

On each occasion, the  leaders of the PS - Socialist Party - and the PCF - French Communist Party - have refused to fight with this perspective, raising instead the presidential election of 2007. This election will take place in April/May 2007 and will be followed by the legislative elections. Everyone understands the importance of the impending battle:

How to defeat Sarkozy, the candidate of capital, whose declared programme it is to redouble the fight  against wages, the unemployed, the youth, the immigrants.

How to block the road to the bosses' parties?

But how also, if we do defeat Sarkozy, to prevent a government presided over by S. Royal from retaining all of those reactionary laws which we have been fighting against all these past years and from trying to pursue the same antisocial policies in the same way as the "pluralistic Left" did?

Is it actually possible without taking steps which are radically opposed to capitalism and which struggle against it to do any of the following:

- raising millions of workers out of poverty

- preventing all redundancies, factory closures and decentralisations which set worker against worker the world over

- raising wages for a decent standard of living, recreating those tens of thousands of jobs which have been destroyed in order to ensure the efficient running of schools, hospitals and public services

- giving decent jobs to millions of unemployed, youth in deprived districts, graduates dooomed by the tens of thousands to work in dead-end jobs and suffer loss of skills.

- housing homeless families

- putting an end to the ravaging of our environment etc etc.?

The capitalist will always find arguments justifying the cruellest attacks on workers and youth in the name of profit and competitiveness.

It is impossible to prevent these attacks without breaking with the principle of the system and the state which defends it. It is essential to begin by defeating Sarkozy, his party and his UMP majority in the Assembly.

How?

It is perfectly legitimate for every group to defend its own programme. But all the parties which have emerged from the historical struggle of the workers' movement - the PS, the PCF, LO, LCR, PT*** - and including all the labour unions since they are in daily conflict with the government, must clearly declare as from today: Do everything to defeat Sarkozy and the UMP majority in the Assembly!

To achieve this

- vote for the workers' party of your choice in the first round of the elections

- unite behind the best-placed candidate in the second round against the bosses' candidate.

For the legislative elections, the same procedure.

The Socialist Party candidate, probably the best placed for the second round,  expressly declares her intention of retaining reactionary laws and thus to pursue, even sharpen, the orientation which we have experienced under Mitterand and Jospin, even going so far as to embrace some of Sarkozy's ideas.

What is to be done?

Organise for an immediate mobilisation of the working class and the youth around a programme to defend wages, defend the youth, defend other layers of the population including tradesmen, farmers, small shopkeepers whose fate is closely bound up with theirs.

Whatever the outcome of the elections, this defence will demand in effect

- the repeal of the laws brought in by Balladur, Juppé, Fillon and Douste-Blazy against the social security system and pensions, Raffarin's decentralisation laws, Sarozy's anti-immigrant laws, the LOLF****, all of the decrees, administrative measures and reactionary laws passed by preceding governements on pensions, social security, labour laws, education, privatisations and immigrants etc.

- regaining purchase power and pay linked to the inflation index; a stop to redundancies, to "social plans" to ease sackings, to production plants moving away; an opening of public offices to examinations, credits for public education according to need,  reopening of classes  and essential jobs, repeal of anti-secular laws; requisition of empty dwellings and a rent freeze; an amnesty for illegal immigrants; withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan, Lebanon and sub-Saharan Africa; rejection of all measures, directives, laws and treaties of capitalist Europe.

These demands can only be met by

A government representative of the working class, that is, consisting only of the parties and organisations of the working class movement and controlled by the workers and the youth.

These demands can only be met by putting on the government agenda a programme of breaking with the capitalist system on the basis of:

- the expropriation of the big industrialists, financiers and bankers;

- control by the workers themselves of the accounts and financial movements of the capitalists;

- democratic organisation and control of a plan of production which meets social needs, needs of labour and consumption, a rational and conscious management of the environment, the only remedy for the damages wrought by the profit system;

- active support for workers and the exploited of the whole world in their struggles and an appeal to unify our common struggle against the oppression, pillage and barbarism of the imperialist system.

Let us immediately organise for such a government and raise discussion about its programme!

CCI-T, CLSRD, Militant

Notes

*UMP Chirac's conservative party

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Union+for+a+Popular+Movement

UDF a more liberal grouping

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Union+for+French+Democracy

** CPE - Le Contrat Première Embauche - was intended to abolish safeguards for youth first entering employment

*** LO - Lutte Ouvrière, LCR - the Mandelist Ligue Commmuniste Revolutionnaire, PT - Parti des travailleurs - these groups won three million votes. ****LOLF (Organic Act on Finances) The LOLF divides expenses according to identifiable "missions" (which can be subdivided into sub-missions etc.). The performance of the administration and public bodies will be evaluated with respect to these missions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_France