In three weeks, the movement has become conscious of its own strength. Its initial demand, the lowering of fuel taxes, is now but one of the urgent measures being demanded, among others that would increase the spending power of workers, pensioners, the unemployed, small artisans, farmers, merchants etc. In the furnace of collective action, mass consciousness is taking giant strides forward every day. The question of power was put forward very early – first in a negative form (“Macron: resignation!”), then, little by little, in a positive form: “power to the people!”
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These events are a critical turning point not just for France and Europe, but for the entire world. Suppressed for decades, the eruption of social protest proclaims the reentry of the working class onto the stage of world history. The class struggle is again asserting itself as the driving force of historical progress. The explosive character of the events in France testifies to the enormous social contradictions that have accumulated over the nearly three decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and, particularly, over the decade since the crash of 2008.
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BARRY GREY—The growth of the class struggle is an objective process that is driven by the global crisis of capitalism, which finds its most acute social and political expression in the center of world capitalism—the United States. It is the class struggle that provides the key to the fight for genuine socialism.
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It is the outcome of the thorough-going degeneration, under the impact of economic crisis and boiling social tensions, of the bourgeois democratic order established 30 years ago this month with the adoption of the 1988 constitution. The process of transition from military dictatorship to civilian rule was touted by its stewards as “slow, gradual and secure.” It assured a blanket amnesty to the assassins and torturers of the Brazilian military and a defense of the property and profits of the capitalists who had supported the dictatorship.
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On this day, 9 October 2014 the Greek ‘riot dog’ Λουκάνικος (Loukanikos: “sausage”) died peacefully in his sleep. Loukanikos was the most famous of the Athens stray dogs who joined demonstrations and riots against the police murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos and later against austerity measures. Inhaling police tear gas and other chemicals during the many riots in which he participated, led to a deterioration of his health, he was adopted and retired out of the city in 2012. He died at the approximate age of 10.
