GILETS JAUNES: the first attempts at mobilising “the people” for a strong state against the proletariat - Mouvement Communiste/Kolektivně proti Kapitălu

Brief statement about the nature of the "Gilets jaunes" movement by Mouvement Communiste/Kolektivně proti Kapitălu.

Submitted by Dan Radnika on December 20, 2018

Bulletin n°16
8 December 2018

GILETS JAUNES: the first attempts at mobilising “the people” for a strong state against the proletariat

Starting off in a good-natured way around tax-related demands channelled into a refusal of an increase in the price of fuel, more particularly diesel, and making its first national appearance on 17 November, the Gilets jaunes agitation covered several administrative regions of the French Republic, three times, 24 November, 1 December and 7 December.

THE GILETS JAUNES, A HAPPY HUNTING GROUND FOR THE NATIONAL SOVEREIGNITY BRIGADE

The Gilets jaunes were quickly supported by the main “sovereigntist”1 oppositionists in the country, the Rassemblement national of Marine Le Pen2 and la France insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon3 . The PCF4 , the CGT5 and SUD6 have hesitated about joining the Gilets jaunes using the excuse of secondary fine distinctions. As for the little fascist/Nazi groups, they have plunged into the Gilets jaunes right from their creation. Finally, the so-called autonomes and “insurrectionists” have in their turn seized the opportunity to experience once again their fundamental inability to exercise force against the Police, after the fascists/Nazis opened the way for them during the first Paris gathering on Saturday 24 November.

THE GILETS JAUNES, PRODUCT OF THE FISCAL CRISIS

The Gilets jaunes are above all a product of the fiscal crisis of various states which followed the gravest world financial crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, which began in 2007/2008 with the so-called subprime crisis. It was a crisis in two main stages, the crisis of the banking system of the developed capitalist countries followed by the fiscal crisis of their states which was translated into a reduction of expenditure on social protection, that is to say the hoarding by the state of a significant portion of the indirect wage (social security, pensions, unemployment insurance etc.) by means of taxation. This hoarding served to restore some order to the states’ balance sheets and to refinance the system of credit, invalidated by the crisis of derived financial products and put in danger by the crisis of sovereign debt.

THE GILETS JAUNES, A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ABSENCE OF WORKERS’ STRUGGLES

The Gilets jaunes are also the product of the prolonged absence of significant struggles around wages. This absence is itself the direct consequence of the historic defeat of workers’ autonomy seen in the 1970s and numerous attempts at a massive resurgence of the class struggle in the ‘80s and ‘90s in the new advanced capitalist countries. The casualisation of the labour market everywhere in the world with the generalisation of the figure of the poor and precarious labourer, and the breaking of the contractual frameworks of wage labour with the reappearance of the figure of the jobber, disguised as self-employed and/or as an independent worker. Isolated workers, notably those in small companies, and casualised workers participate in the Gilets jaunes.

Unfortunately, their mobilisation is not on the basis of class positions. These proletarians have thus expressed their inability to organise and to fight against the bosses in workplaces. This impotence, which certainly has an objective base in the growing dislocation of productive territories, is transformed into aggression against the forces of order and the symbols of the state. It’s a bit of a paradox for a rebellion which demands the recognition and protection of the state…

THE GILETS JAUNES, A SOCIAL REACTIONARY INTERCLASS BLOC

The fiscal crisis has not only hit proletarians. It has accelerated the proletarianisation of residual sectors of the petty bourgeoisie in the developed capitalist countries such as artisans, shopkeepers, individual entrepreneurs and certain pauperised liberal professions. Many small bosses have also lost out from the fiscal crisis and the banking crisis. And let’s not forget the people who are no longer in the labour market, including pensioners (who are certainly not all proletarians) and the so-called long-term unemployed. In this general context the increase in taxes, deductions and various contributions has had the capacity to create a heterogenous bloc of segments of various classes which are different and historically antagonistic. Taxation is always a compost of choice for constituting the people around the national flag, the demand for more of a state and a direct relation between the Head of State and the “people fused together”. The cry which goes up, including from the most weakened fractions of the proletariat, is a demand for protection in the face of the consequences of the global financial crisis. It’s a demand for protection which creates an illusory sentiment of belonging and of communion with the sectors of civil society which must be considered as enemies and dealt with accordingly.

THE GILETS JAUNES POLITICISE THEIR ACTION TO CONSTITUTE THEMSELVES AS THE PEOPLE

Meanwhile, the Gilets jaunes rebellion transformed itself from a protest against tax and loss of purchasing power into a sort of global political programme by the addition of demands like the return of seven-year presidencies, the reinforcement of the right to referendums, the expulsion of illegal immigrants, defence of “made in France” and the reduction of pay for elected officials. The programme which emerges carries within it all the characteristics of sovereigntist programmes already seen in other countries. In one phrase, they demand a greater role for the state, and its summit in particular, in a direct link with the people in revolt. In fact, it’s a perfect synthesis of the objectives of the Rassemblement national and la France insoumise. It doesn’t matter much if some participants in the rebellion don’t find themselves in complete agreement with these points, because these people have not been in a position to make explicit their potentially different or divergent visions. The rejection of “politics” professed by the Gilets jaunes is certainly a critique in acts of representative democracy. But this critique is built on a reactionary and nationalist base. In the epoch of nationalism’s advance, the phenomenon of the Gilets jaunes must be read as the first substantial attempt in France, however confused and uncoordinated, to constitute “on the spot” the people. If they continue, phenomena of this type could constitute an indispensable (but not sufficient) condition for the formalisation of mass fascist movements capable of overturning, more or less violently, the dominant institutional form of the dictatorship of capital in the advanced countries, modern representative democracy.

THE GILETS JAUNES, A POLITICAL BYPRODUCT OF THE FIFTH REPUBLIC

The Gilets jaunes have made “Macron resign” into their unifying slogan. By doing that they are in line with the dialectic proper to the Fifth Republic, product of the institutional coup d’État of 13 May 1958. The direct relation between the people and the Head of State is in effect the keystone of its Constitution. During the electoral campaign of 2017, the candidate Emmanuel Macron ceaselessly raised three basic themes which made his election possible: the restoration of the presidency of the Republic with its original prerogatives; the rejection of professional politicians of all kinds; the significant reduction of taxes for everyone. These three central themes of Emmanuel Macron’s campaign are very much present within the Gilets jaunes.

Like a pyromaniac fireman, the President of the Republic pays the costs of the electoral promises which he didn’t keep. These electoral promises were taken at their word by the disillusioned rebels of the Gilets jaunes of today who thus show themselves to be ideologically close to the present government. Their rebellion is not the expression of any revolutionary dynamic. Worse, it could pave the way for the arrival of a sovereigntism to the power ten which follows the lead of Emmanuel Macron, without contest the best representative of the most advanced fraction of the dominant classes. If this is what happens then something will take shape in France similar to what has already happened in Italy.

In 2012, Italy was agitated by the movement of the Forconi (forks)7 . Launched in Sicily by the bosses of small trucking companies and by the peasants, the Forconi also started out by blocking roads. The objective: to rise up against the ruling class “who want to make us pay the bill”, against “the hypocrisy of our politicians” and for a reduction in the price of fuel and insurance. As in France, this phenomenon was actively supported by the fascists and the sovereigntists of the time and even by some “autonomes” in the image of the Askatasuna social centre in Turin, itself close to NO TAV (the movement which opposes the construction of a high-speed rail line between Turin and Lyon).

THE GILETS JAUNES, CHOICE AUXILIARIES OF THE STATE

The Gilets jaunes demand that the state defends their incomes and their assets. The theatrical violence changes nothing in terms of their character of profound submission to the state and capital. On the contrary it only serves to spread the illusion of a movement which is offensive, massive and anti-capitalist. Meanwhile, between the various “acts” of the four Saturdays in a row, the number of Gilets jaunes present at the road blockades has declined. Violence is scarcely in itself a measure of proletarian offensive and even less of a practical critique of the state. The exercise of autonomous force by the workers has nothing in common with the spectacle of the devastation of abstract territories of production and social reproduction.

City centres are a tremendous backdrop for television and the internet but they are totally opaque and disembodied when it is a matter of hitting the value chain of capital. The looting and damage caused to these opulent town centres are acts foreign to and sometimes even hostile to the hundreds of thousands of workers, most often poor, who are exploited there. The protagonists of these violent actions act as warriors against the future offensive struggles of the proletariat, against its autonomy, against its struggle against exploitation and oppression. They must be considered as auxiliaries of the armed forces of the bourgeoisie and the objective props of capital’s order and its state.

THE PROLETARIAT AGAINST THE PEOPLE

In conclusion, the attitude of communists in the face of the tax revolt and the demand for protection addressed to the state must be firm. Communists, militants of the workers’ cause, must work against the people and for proletarian autonomy, for the development of offensive struggles around wages and against working conditions imposed by capital. Struggles which must root themselves and become massive first of all in the territories of production and social reproduction, in the factories, in offices, in warehouses, in working class neighbourhoods. Right now, this perspective is not what is being expressed. The Gilets jaunes do not in any way constitute a palliative, or even less “a new form of anti-capitalist antagonism”. Within the state, they are, on the contrary, a restraint and just one more political enemy.

  • 1See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souverainism
  • 2The new name for the former Front national, an extreme-right organisation, sister of the League of Matteo Salvini in Italy and the Fidesz of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, close to Putin’s Russia.
  • 3Social-nationalist organisation coming out of the Socialist Party and the Trotskyists, close to Podemos in Spain, the Chavez/Maduro regime in Venezuela and to Putin’s foreign policy.
  • 4The old Stalinist and “patriotic” French Communist Party.
  • 5The main French trade union confederation, close to la France insoumise and the PCF.
  • 6The union confederation created by, amongst others, the Trotskyists of the LCR and the anarcho semi-Trotskyists of Alternative libertaire.
  • 7To understand the similarities and differences between the Forconi movement, M5S and the Gilets jaunes, we recommend the excellent text “Les Gilets jaunes à la lumière de l’expérience italienne” [“The Gilets jaunes in the light of the Italian experience”] by the Athéné Nyctalope collective, available here: https://paris-luttes.info/les-gilets-jaunes-a-la-lumiere-de-11185

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Nymphalis Antiopa

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Nymphalis Antiopa on December 21, 2018

RedMariott has already criticised this here - https://libcom.org/news/yellow-vest-movement-france-between-ecological-neoliberalism-apolitical-movements-28112018:

MC appear to say here that these events are reactionary, not due to the political involvement of anti-working class right elements and/or bourgeois demands - but because riots, looting and clashes with cops in consumer shopping areas are in themselves always anti-proletarian. Clashes with cops apparently even make them “auxiliaries of the armed forces of the bourgeoisie”.

After having claimed that the looting & property damage are "alien" to the hundreds of thousands of poor workers employed in shopping/tourist zones the next paragraph then states that proletarian struggles must "root themselves in production and social reproduction". Well, MC already acknowledged that the centres are a workplace for "hundreds of thousands of often poor workers" and obviously consumption/shopping is an integral part of social reproduction – but then they claim they’re totally disconnected from the “the value chain of capital”?? A real mess of an article, seemingly based on a 'noble, deserving factory worker poor versus undeserving lumpen poor' 19thC mentality unfortunately all too often invoked by some left comms/marxists. If movements don't emerge in their prescribed forms they just don't compute and so will be woodenly dismissed.
MC write as if the views expressed on the street are inevitably “alien” to their proletarian stereotype. Yet one can see, eg, from a far more sober & nuanced article http://libcom.org/blog/gilets-jaunes-seen-my-workplace-13122018 describing the existence of far-right views among the author’s fellow workers that MC’s idealised proletarian workplace is surely not always free of yellow vest/far right views. Even if it is fundamentally an inter-class movement it deserves deeper consideration than mechanical knee-jerk reaction.

MC used repulsive ideological simplifcations of significant movements that don't follow their 19th century notion of what genuine proletarian struggle is during the November 2005 riots.

This included the assertion of a significant lie that even the dominant media had corrected within a very short time after they’d spread it; namely that a racist guy (Mouvement Communiste did not mention his overt racist attitudes) had been killed by rioters after they set fire to a bin outside his home; in fact, the guy had died of a heart attack.

(taken from this, as is the following)

admin - name redacted, a leading theoretician for the French ultra-left Mouvement Communiste, knowingly provided (along with others) information for the creation of 2 lists for President Mitterand – in the 1980s – of Italian refugee exiles from the social movements in Italy in the 1970s; one of those he considered basically “harmless” and therefore able to stay in France, the other a list of “dangerous” ones that the state could extradite to Africa. Mouvement Communiste justified him doing this as if he was some kind of Schindler. See: “Sociétés et terrorisme” (which received the “Prix spécial du jury européen d’Amalfi” in1989) written by a sociologist specialising in what the state deems as terrorism, Michel Wieviorka (the book contains, in Chapter IV, “Une intervention sociologique avec des terroristes” to which admin - name redacted again made a significant contribution).

Richard 1917

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Richard 1917 on December 23, 2018

SHAME ON YOU MOUVEMENT "COMMUNISTE"
The struggling proletariat, with all its confusion and richness and heterogeneity, will pass over your dead body...

R Totale

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by R Totale on December 23, 2018

"The looting and damage caused to these opulent town centres are acts foreign to and sometimes even hostile to the hundreds of thousands of workers, most often poor, who are exploited there. The protagonists of these violent actions act as warriors against the future offensive struggles of the proletariat, against its autonomy, against its struggle against exploitation and oppression. They must be considered as auxiliaries of the armed forces of the bourgeoisie and the objective props of capital’s order and its state."
Will MC be organising proletarian militias to defend shop windows against these "auxiliaries of the armed forces of the bourgeoisie and the objective props of capital’s order"?

Mike Harman

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Mike Harman on December 23, 2018

R Totale

"The looting and damage caused to these opulent town centres are acts foreign to and sometimes even hostile to the hundreds of thousands of workers, most often poor, who are exploited there.

I specifically remember when they wrote about the 2005 riots they criticised the rioting happening in the banlieues themselves, because the cars would belong to working class people, local municipal buildings might be damaged etc.

Now if there's a city centre riot it's opposed to the working class people who work in the Apple store or wherever. The idea that people who work in the city centre might participate or sympathise with the riot is completely absent.

It's one thing to say you shouldn't glorify clashes with the police (especially in the absence of different formations like mass meetings etc.) but the condemnation more the level of analysis of a New York Times or Washington Post editorial, and significantly to the right of Teen Vogue at this point. If it was written in Jacobin you'd even get DSA-type social democrats slagging it off.

Battlescarred

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Battlescarred on December 24, 2018

Reminds me of the Lambertist Trots arriving on the barricades in Paris in 1968 and deciding it wasn't a revolutionary situation and then marching off again

Nymphalis Antiopa

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Nymphalis Antiopa on December 24, 2018

Reminds me of the Lambertist Trots arriving on the barricades in Paris in 1968 and deciding it wasn't a revolutionary situation and then marching off again

Except that it's not any way as obviously a tentative revolutionary break with the world of exploitation and hierarchy as May '68. For instance, on December 22nd Nazis openly denying the existence of gas chambers were quite prominent amongst sections of the gilets jaunes in Paris. Undoubtedly May '68 was infested with crap also - eg pictures of Lenin or Mao, but it was radical, non-party, side was far less contradictory than the current movement, and anarchists and other 'libertarians' opportunistically minimising the fascist threat is no way to confront these contradictions. On December 1st the ultra-left mingled at the Arc de Triomphe with the ultra-right without the slightest attempt to confront them.

Mouvement Communiste picks up on a fragment of the truth in order to affirm a ridiculous idiotic dogma, but ignoring the very genuine threat of a grassroots fascism is also ridiculous and idiotic.

Battlescarred

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Battlescarred on December 24, 2018

No one was ignoring that, and I resent being called ridiculous and idiotic

Nymphalis Antiopa

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Nymphalis Antiopa on December 24, 2018

If you weren't ignoring that then it follows that I wasn't calling you ridiculous and idiotic.

Noah Fence

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Noah Fence on December 24, 2018

I resent being called ridiculous and idiotic

I don’t, which is just as well considering the opinion of most people around me.

Battlescarred

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Battlescarred on December 24, 2018

So no actual apology, Nymphalis?

Nymphalis Antiopa

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Nymphalis Antiopa on December 25, 2018

What's there to apologise for?
I said "ignoring the very genuine threat of a grassroots fascism is also ridiculous and idiotic." You said (as spokesman for everyone): " No one was ignoring that". So, as I said, "If you weren't ignoring that then it follows that I wasn't calling you ridiculous and idiotic."
If you weren't so used to almost invariably giving one-line posts as a substitute for attempting to develop and elaborate your critique (clearly so much of an effort that you must feel it just isn't worthwhile), there'd have been no ambiguity when you said, "Reminds me of the Lambertist Trots arriving on the barricades in Paris in 1968 and deciding it wasn't a revolutionary situation and then marching off again". But since, apparently, you weren't ignoring the significant presence of fascists and of a possible fascist future, then clearly I wasn't calling you ridiculous and idiotic. Logical, no?

Guerre de Classe

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Guerre de Classe on December 26, 2018

https://libcom.org/news/yellow-vests-some-stances-26122018

jolasmo

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by jolasmo on December 27, 2018

[Finally, the so-called autonomes and “insurrectionists” have in their turn seized the opportunity to experience once again their fundamental inability to exercise force against the Police, 

I thought this bit was pretty funny. Otherwise probably the worst Gillet Jaunes hot take I've yet seen.

~J.

BigFluffyTail

6 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by BigFluffyTail on December 27, 2018

French version here.

The article is interesting but lacks nuance. Most notably, I have problems seeing looting and vandalizing during protests as "acts foreign to and sometimes even hostile" to the proletariat and its autonomy just because it can attack someone's workplace. Are we defending workplaces now? Oh no the windows of the shops of the "opulent town centres" got broken, send your thoughts and prayers! MC/KPK entertain the notion that these acts are done by groups separate or exterior from the proletariat but this is untrue. Some of those I personally saw vandalizing had indeed come equipped specifically for the situation (which still doesn't mean they're exterior to the proletariat) but most were just regular gilets jaunes. Personally I saw clothing shops get looted by a bunch a poor people who needed the clothes. You could even argue that through looting these proletarians are re-appropriating commodities for themselves and thus criticizing through action the necessity of wage labour, thus "hitting the value chain of capital". But even if it doesn't, MC/KPK clearly go too far when they see the "protagonists of these violent actions act as warriors against the future offensive struggles of the proletariat, against its autonomy, against its struggle against exploitation and oppression". Again, a heavy lack of nuance. Looking at the discussion above, it seems to be this same point that bothered others. That being said, they hit the nail on the head when criticizing the interclassism of the movement or the heavy involvement of the far-right for example. I even saw royalists right next to me at some point (because I had fucked up and ended up at the wrong meeting place).

Looking again at the discussion above, MC do have a tendency to belittle any movement. They're still an interesting read. I know about the guy in France with the lists but I don't know enough about his influence on the group to really deduce anything from that bit of information. I'd rather focus on the content of the texts that are put out.