Forum for the Internationalist Communist Left
While most left communists maintain a pessimistic but lucid outlook on the current state of the struggle, the International Communist Current (ICC) claims, in its International Review no. 171, dated Winter 2024, that since 2022 we’ve been witnessing a new historical rupture, similar in importance to that of 1968, and even with the potential to go beyond it [1]. But is this really the case? That’s what we’re going to answer by examining the question from three complementary angles: quantitative, qualitative and historical.
Massive struggles that break with the past?
The ICC uses the British case as a prototypical example of this renewed struggle. In quantitative terms, we see a slight upturn from 2022 onward, in stark contrast to previous decades (1990 to 2020), but without reaching a similar level in terms of duration, scale and peaks reached in the 1970s, or even the 1980s (Graph 1).
Graph 1: UK – Working days lost due to strike action (January 1966 – April 2024)
What’s more, this surge declined steadily from 2023 onward, making comparisons with the 1968-1980 period irrelevant, as the latter was characterized by almost permanent mobilizations whose multiple peaks were four to ten times greater. But the British case is one of the few to confirm, if only partially, the ICC narrative. In the United States, France, Germany and Spain, for example, all available data point to relatively modest figures. In the United States, struggles have certainly been on the rise since 2018, but they only barely and occasionally surpass the struggles of the 1990s (Graph 2).
Graph 2: USA – Number of workers striking by year (1881 – 2023, US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
In France, even if we don’t yet have the figures for 2023, the year marked by the struggle against pension “reform”, previous years do not bear witness to a historic break, and are even far behind the 2010 struggle movement, which could, with far more reason, have been described as a breakthrough, as the ICC did not fail to do in its time. Once again, however, this ceiling is nothing like that of the 1960s-1970s, and proves to be short-lived (Graph 3).
Graph 3: France – Working days lost due to strike action (2005 – 2022, per 1,000)
The same applies to Germany, where the still limited upturn in struggles dates from the 2010s rather than 2022 (Graph 4).
Graph 4: Germany – Number of enterprises with strikes (1993 – 2022)
Finally, in the case of a country like Spain, the level of struggles reached in 2023 is lower than in 2008-2014 (Graph 5), a period nevertheless well below the level reached in the 1970s and even 1980s (Graph 6).
Graph 5: Spain – Number of strikes (2000 – 2023)
Graph 6: Spain – Number of strikes – 1977-2016.
There’s no point in multiplying the examples, as they all confirm one and the same reality: statistically speaking, there’s no evidence of a quantitative break with the previous years. There is even less a question of movements similar to those that took place during the 1965-1975 period. However, the ICC might retort that the break is more of a qualitative nature. This is what we now need to question.
Struggles in which the proletariat expresses its class consciousness?
Most of the struggle movements highlighted by the ICC (the Summer of Discontent in the United Kingdom, the struggle against pension “reform” in France, the transport strike in Germany, the public service strike in Canada and Quebec, the auto strike in the USA, the textile strike in Bangladesh) ended either in stinging defeat, or, when victories were achieved, in a blatant lack of self-organization on the part of the proletariat, which was very largely mobilized by the forces of syndicalist framing.
The ICC itself is forced to admit this in the articles it devotes to these struggles. This is true of the struggles in Great Britain, where it writes that “Most of the strikes in the key sectors have been well controlled by the trade unions, who have carried out their role for capitalism by keeping the strikes isolated from each other (just as they did with the miners and other sectors in the 1980s), spreading them out on different days, even among workers in different parts of the transport system (rail, tube, buses…), and often restricted to one or two days of strike with notice given long in advance” [2]. Or “In fact, despite a huge fighting spirit, for six months the struggles remained largely separate from each other. Each behind one’s own picket line and day of mobilization. The unions avoided calling for large-scale demonstrations (with the exception of one in June) to prevent workers from coming together” [3].
Well, this reality, marked by the almost total control of struggles by the unions, and therefore by the absence of wildcat strikes, occupations with picket lines and general assemblies, is to be found in all struggles of the current period. This was the case with the strike in the automotive sector in the USA, which took place solely within the framework imposed by the United Auto Workers (UAW) on the workers, with the latter never questioning this framework [4].
This is also the case in France, where, as Le Prolétaire states in an article taking stock of the struggle, “it is now clear that throughout the movement, the working class has left the initiative in the hands of the intersyndicale, with no participation in general assemblies to bring together all the proletarians in struggle, and decide on the direction of the fight, notably by calling for unlimited strikes with clear objectives likely to extend to the whole class. The same applies to the absence of autonomous strike committees organizing the blockade of workplaces through picket lines, and coordinating at all levels with the aim of making concrete the extension of the struggle and the generalization of strikes and occupations. (…) The few strikes that did take place were organized along corporatist and localist lines, demanding that the government take into account criteria such as the arduousness of the job – when it’s the job itself that’s arduous! – or the surplus nature of pension funds – as did the CGT union at EDF” [5].
These few examples suffice, and readers interested in the details of other movements can consult the articles on them published by the main groups of the communist left [6]. This weakness of the working class in its struggle comes as no surprise. It is in fact the product of fifty years of retreating social conflict and a counter-revolutionary course that the proletariat has never succeeded in putting off for long. In concrete terms, this means that the working class has very few assets with which to take its struggles into its own hands: its class consciousness is at an all-time low; revolutionary organizations are reduced to the margins, and have to swim more than ever against the current; and, whatever the ICC may say with its notion of “subterranean maturation”, there is a loss of lessons learned from previous experiences, as evidenced by the proletariat’s renewed confidence in its trades unions. Of course, this is not meant as a reproach to the proletariat. There is no doubt that the proletariat will have to learn from the many defeats it faces today. This is a perspective shared by all revolutionary Marxists. But true revolutionaries cannot, for all that, boast about the level of current struggles, and therefore defend a political orientation based on a real bluff, a perspective never confirmed by the reality of the struggles.
“Historic” struggles?
To read the bourgeois press, complacently relayed by the ICC, we are confronted with a multitude of “historic” struggles. This proves to be largely erroneous on a global scale, but is the same true country by country?
The British case calls for a little nuance. Indeed, a pertinent analysis of the struggles that began in 2022 cannot ignore the country’s recent history of struggle. The most important event in the relative comeback of the British proletariat was the miners’ strike of 1984-85, triggered by Margaret Thatcher’s government’s decision to close several coal mines. Faced with the disappearance of their jobs, the miners waged a long-winded struggle, stretched out over a whole year, that ended in bitter defeat, as they were forced to return to work without having achieved anything. This defeat, in turn, spread to the entire hard-hit working class. The recovery, even though it is four times smaller in terms of quantity and limited in terms of quality, had a notable significance in terms of the history of struggles in this country, which is still far from representing a “historic break”. What about other countries?
As far as France is concerned, the answer is clear. This movement is in no way historic, either in terms of the number of people mobilized – lower than the 2010 struggle, which was already focused on this issue – or in terms of quality. Indeed, whereas in 1995, a victory had been achieved even though there was still a significant trade union support base; whereas in 2006, a victory had once again been achieved while, at the same time, young proletarians had managed to demonstrate their ability to self-organize and reject the union framework; whereas in 2010, the movement had emerged defeated, but had been marked by the same tendency towards self-organization, with general assemblies and even discussions held at the end of demonstrations, none of this happened in 2023. Not only did the movement end in defeat, but nothing seems to have been learned from the lessons of previous movements: the unions framed the struggle from start to finish, and even saw an influx of new members; the general assemblies were the great absentees from this sequence of struggles; and the democratic-legal mystification around the [paragraph] 49.3 and the hope in the decisions of the Constitutional Council highlighted the total absence of class consciousness. And no amount of vague discussions about the CPE or slogans about May ‘68 will convince us otherwise. If the struggle was massive, it was weak in terms of consciousness and, above all, inferior in every respect to previous movements. The “rupture” is therefore nothing more than a figment of the imagination.
For the German case, a glance at the article chosen by the ICC is enough to qualify the “historic” dimension of the movement. It states that the movement is “on a scale that is rare for Germany” and, above all, that “such a unitary movement between the EVG and Ver.di unions, representing 230,000 railway workers and 2.5 million service employees respectively, is extremely rare” [7]. With regard to the first point, provided that the figures for 2023, as yet unavailable, do not prove us wrong, the data for the period 2013-2022 do show that there is a relatively high level of struggle. In quantitative terms, then, the struggle in Germany would be nothing exceptional or historic. But, more importantly, the argument that underpins the historic dimension of this strike is the ability of the unions to form a united front. Either the communist left has understood nothing about the unions, or this struggle in no way represents a qualitative leap over previous struggles.
The same approach to the article on the Canadian strike shows that the strike’s historical dimension is again relative. We read that “the movement (is) described as ‘historic’ by the main public service union”. Does this mean that the ICC’s historical approach is identical to that of the Public Service Alliance of Canada? Another important piece of information is that “the last walkout of this magnitude in Canada was in 1991”. However, in the current schema of the ICC, the 1990s were the terrible years when class consciousness was at its lowest, the years against which we would be witnessing an historic break today. All of which goes to show that behind the mask of a historical method claiming to be faithful to Marxism lies a short-sighted, unhistorical and immediatist analysis, identical to that of the bourgeois press.
The American situation is somewhat more interesting for Marxists. Class struggle has traditionally been at its lowest ebb in this country, for reasons that need not be discussed here, but which can be explained both by the country’s particular history and by American power since the beginning of the 20th Century. So to see the workers of each of the “Big Three” (General Motors, Ford and Stellantis) go on strike at the same time, representing 18,000 workers at the height of the struggle, is significant if not historic. However, the American working class still has a long way to go to develop a consistent struggle against its bourgeoisie, and it will have to go beyond corporatist struggles framed by the unions for the break to become a reality and no longer an off-the-wall slogan.
Apriori, the historic Icelandic strike referred to by the ICC is the “2023 Icelandic women’s strike” for equal pay for men and women. It’s true that this strike brought together 100,000 people, i.e. more than a quarter of the country’s 375,000 inhabitants. But let’s make no mistake: the numbers are so high not because Iceland is on the brink of revolution, but because the feminist nature of the demands enabled a true union of women across social classes, even allowing Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir to take part. Far from being a mass strike, and without denying the legitimacy of the struggle for equal pay for women and men – a demand that the proletariat has made its own – this was an inter-class movement, representative of the working class’s difficulty in organizing on its own terrain. That the ICC, so often quick to denounce the deviations of others on the question of class terrain, doesn’t realize this, shows the weight of its illusions on current struggles.
The penultimate example is the textile strike in Bangladesh. Given the importance of the textile industry in Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest exporter of clothing behind China, with almost 3,500 textile factories in the country [8], class struggles are frequent and significant in this country, reflecting the growing importance of non-European countries, particularly Asian, in the class struggle. Thus, since the Rana Plaza scandal, there have been several struggles by proletarians to improve their living and working conditions: January 2019; November 2021; August 2022. The November 2023 strike is therefore part of a sequence of struggles that is particular to the country’s recent social history. Far from dating back to 2022, the rupture dates back to 2013, the date of the collapse of the Rana Plaza, and a symbol for the Bangladeshi proletariat of the appalling exploitation it suffers in the name of capital’s profitability.
The last example we evoke is that of Quebec. Le Monde reveals that “Since the end of November, the entire public service – schools, hospitals, social services – has been at a standstill in Quebec. Unheard of for fifty years.” [9]. Once again, therefore, this is a significant episode of class struggle on a regional scale, and it remains to be seen whether it will serve as a fulcrum for future struggles by the proletariat, or whether, like so many other struggles in the past and today, it will merely be a flash in the pan.
Conclusion
We have sought to verify the existence of a rupture on three different levels: quantitative, qualitative and historical. We have shown that the use of statistics in no way shows a resemblance to a sequence analogous to that of 1965-1975. We have also highlighted the enormous weaknesses of these struggles, which ended either in defeat or in a victory achieved at the cost of reinforcing syndicalist and reformist illusions. In both cases, the proletariat failed to self-organize and impose its own means of action. This is not due to any intrinsic weakness on the part of the proletariat, but rather to the weight of fifty years of significant decline in class consciousness and the longest counter-revolutionary period in history. Finally, we have shown that situations vary from country to country: while recent episodes of struggle are important in Great Britain, the United States and Quebec, it would be an overstatement to claim that they are sufficient to detect a historical break of the same order as that of the 1960s and 1970s. The synchronicity of the struggles is not in the slightest doubt, and can be explained by the weight of inflation in many countries in 2022-2023 (Graph 7) . However, two things need to be emphasized. Firstly, this synchronicity was limited in time, as the bourgeoisie managed to respond to the various social conflicts, as in Germany, where the unions obtained satisfaction, or in France, where it managed to defeat the movement without conceding anything. The British bourgeoisie’s refusal to make concessions to the unions explains the relative upsurge in struggles we have seen in that country. Even if we accept that a rupture has taken place in 2022-2023, the fact remains that it has already ceased. A second remark that tends to relativize the idea of a rupture is that this synchronicity of struggles has existed on numerous occasions in the past, without this being the signal for a historic revival of the class struggle. A glance at the ICC press is enough to make us aware of these false ruptures, regularly announced with laughable assurance: “Theses (sic) on the current resumption of the class struggle” (International Revue no. 37, 2nd quarter 1984); “Editorial: The difficult resumption of class struggle” (International Revue no. 76, 1st quarter 1994); “A turning point in the class struggle – Resolution on the evolution of the class struggle” (International Revue no. 119, 4th quarter 2004); “Editorial: In the face of capitalist attacks around the world, the resumption of class struggle” (International Revue no. 130; 3rd quarter 2007); ”Faced with the danger of a resumption of class struggle…” (“Government and unions hand in hand to push through reform”, Révolution internationale no. 480, January-February 2020).
Without claiming to be exhaustive, this selection enables the reader to judge the methodological relevance of an organization that prides itself on identifying historical ruptures in the class struggle about once a decade. It’s a safe bet that the ICC’s current analysis will join its predecessors in the long list of errors and bluffs for which this organization is renowned.
Of course, it’s natural for revolutionaries to get excited about any manifestation of class struggle. However, as scientific socialists with a methodology light-years away from empiricism and immediatism, they must be able to analyze the evolution of the class struggle with precision. Otherwise, they will resemble those pseudo-revolutionaries who in 1929-30, claiming to be witnessing a “third period” of class struggle, turned bluffing into a systematic practice, pinning every little strike as a harbinger of imminent revolution. May this modest article remind revolutionaries of the need for serious analysis, rigorously grounded in Marxist method, and rejecting the twin pitfalls of disillusionment and permanent bluffing.
Monbars, August 2024
English translation by the author. Proofread by H.C. Revision of October 17, 2024.
[1] See “After the rupture in the class struggle, the necessity for politicisation” (Gracchus) from International Review, no. 171, Winter 2024. See also the ICC’s international leaflet: We have to go further than in 1968! (April 24, 2023).
[2] Source: Workers fight for their own side in the class war from World Revolution no. 394, Autumn 2022.
[3] Source: Grèves au Royaume-Uni: Le retour de la combativité du prolétariat mondial from Révolution internationale no. 496, January – March 2023 (“Strikes in the UK: The return of the combativeness of the world proletariat”, our translation).
[4] “However, it is not or should not be normal for “alternative” trade unionists and part-time internationalists to rejoice in a struggle that has not only been, overall, a loser, but has not advanced class consciousness an inch.“ (Source: Misplaced Enthusiasm: On the Auto Strike in the USA , from Battaglia Communista, December 25, 2023).
[5] Source: Le sabotage prémédité de la lutte – Tirer le bilan du mouvement contre la réforme des retraites , Le Prolétaire, no. 549, June – August 2023. (“The premeditated sabotage of the struggle – Taking stock of the movement against pension reform”, our translation)
[6] A few more examples: For Bangladesh: “Last year’s strike failed to bring the bosses and the state to heel, but it was not a defeat. All proletarians have won by further strengthening their organization, their capacity for struggle, sacrifice, unity and solidarity – in other words, by reinforcing themselves on the fundamental bases of classist struggle, without deviating from its material objectives.” (Source: Bangladesh – Against the Bestial Exploitation of Capitalism! Long Live the Struggle of the Textile Proletarians!, The Proletarian no. 21, Spring-Summer 2024). For Sweden: “With the exception of the wildcat transport strike in April, all these strikes since October have been tightly controlled by the unions.” (Source: Despite the “Swedish model”, workers in Scandinavia respond to the deepening crisis of capitalism, World Revolution no. 399, Winter 2024). For Quebec: “Despite the actual limitations and the warning it contains concerning the real dangers facing the development of future struggles, letting the struggle get trapped in the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie and those of the unions, the public sector strike in Quebec illustrates most of all the potential of the international revival of workers’ combativity and determination, in a broader context of unfolding struggles and maturing workers’ consciousness in the central countries of capitalism.” (Source: Historic mobilisations in Quebec as well, ibidem).
[7] Euronews , March 2023: “Historic strike in German transport for better wages” (Our translation)
[8] Libération , November 8, 2023: “In Bangladesh, a historic strike by textile workers”.
[9] Le Monde , December 14, 2023: “Historic public services strike in Quebec”.