FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
ICWP@Anonymousspeech.com

“You have to know how to end a strike,” said French Socialist president François Hollande. Angry French youth and workers obviously don’t agree.
On Tuesday, June 14, over a million took to the streets (100,000 in Paris) to once again demand the withdrawal of the disastrous El Khomri law, which the French parliament is debating. The law makes it easy for bosses to fire workers, lengthen the work day, and cut overtime rates. It finishes the job of the Macron law in making the labor code negotiable. In other words, it legalizes employers blackmailing workers into giving up what few “rights” they have left.
The demonstrations have lasted longer than expected and have spread to many more sections of society. Their determination is admirable. Unfortunately, they are not yet demanding a real solution – only a defense of the status quo.
Compare this to communism where there will be no labor laws. Workers will not work for wages. Instead of jobs, where workers are hired and fired, there will be meaningful work for everyone. 
In communism, the party’s job will be to mobilize the masses to collectively control their own lives. Workers, motivated by communist ideas, will manage themselves in the interests of the world’s working class. There will be no layer of privileged bureaucracy alien to the working class and giving orders to it. Instead, there will be a mass communist party.
The communist struggle under the slogan “from each according to their commitment, to each according to their need” will be the order of the day.
This is hardly the first time French workers and youth have rebelled. In May of 1968, workers and students filled the street, and French President DeGaulle fled the country.
Not so many know about another uprising, in June of 1936. In May of that year a coalition of “radicals” and Socialists won the elections and Socialist Leon Blum took power. Workers thought their time had come and began striking and occupying factories. It started in northern port city of LeHavre (which has been a stronghold of the current rebellion). The strike/sit-in wave soon spread across the country and literally millions took part. They demanded higher wages, union recognition, and paid vacations.
The 1936 rebellion freaked out the Socialists who immediately set out to squash it or buy it off. Unfortunately, it also freaked out the Communists. They were committed to an anti-fascist Popular Front with the Socialists and, if anything, had become more conservative than their partners. They decided that saving the supposedly anti-fascist Socialist government was more important than organizing workers’ rebellion.
Hollande Uses Words of Reformist Communist Party Leader
Hollande was actually quoting Thorez, the leader of the Communist Party during the 1936 rebellion, who was the first to say, “You have to know how to end a strike.” Socialist president Blum and Thorez eventually ended the rebellion but had to grant all the reform demands.
What a shame! The Communist Party traded in a chance to end capitalism for a few paid vacations.
We in the ICWP have to think carefully about what we would do in a similar situation. These situations are not uncommon. For example, a workers’ rebellion in Spain shortly afterwards set off the Spanish civil war. A few months later, in the US, the Flint sit-down strike helped build a wave of strikes and sit-ins.
In France itself, we can go back to the Paris Commune of 1871, the first attempt at a communist-led government. Or back to the uprising of 1848, that inspired the Communist Manifesto. Or the revolutions of 1830 and of course the big French Revolution of 1789. Revolutions and revolutionary situations are not rare.
So what do we do when a struggle over modest reforms mobilizes millions? Our goal is to win the rebellious masses to a revolution for communism. Nobody else will do it. When you get past the rhetoric, all the other self-styled “leftist” or “Marxist” groups believe in socialism. They want to manage capitalism, not obliterate it.
Our party needs many more thousands of members to turn these rebellions toward communist revolutions. And when we have them, what concrete steps do we take to turn the rebellion into a revolution? Organize Soviets (councils) like the Bolsheviks did? Or branches of a mass communist party? Can we turn strikes to reform capitalism into political strikes that call for communist revolution?
It depends on what we do now. To prepare for them, we must wage a sharp struggle for communist revolution against the reformist ideology of the trade union leaders.
One thing is sure; we are going to need an armed force. We’ll get one primarily by winning over workers in the bosses’ armed forces— starting now.
In the meantime, we can learn something from French history: that opportunities for revolution come along regularly, no matter where you are. Communists used to believe that workers in “advanced” countries were too well off to rebel against capitalism. The events of 1936 and 1937 once again proved them wrong.
Whatever happens in the struggle against the El Khomri law, we can be sure that there will be other uprisings and other revolutionary opportunities. And to take advantage of these opportunities we need a strong ICWP. Join now!

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