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III. The movement of the working class and youth
But there is another front in this process of escalating crisis. Over the past seven weeks a movement of young people and workers has erupted across Europe, and it is now entering a new stage.
In France we are nearly seven weeks into the most serious social upheaval since 1968. It began on September 17 at the LycĂŠe Saint-ExupĂŠry in CrĂŠteil, in the working-class southeastern suburbs of Paris, where students blockaded the school over unfilled teaching posts. Within two weeks, more than a thousand lycĂŠes had been affected and over 200 blockaded. On October 17 the Interior Ministry counted 550,000 marchers, 110,000 of them in Paris; the organizers put the figure at 800,000. On October 24, after the government had banned all but union-organized marches and deployed 70,000 police and gendarmes with soldiers taking over the guarding of public buildings, the Interior Ministry still counted 410,000 marchers.
The repression has been on a scale not seen in France in decades. More than 10,000 people have been arrested. A 15-year-old in Lens lost a hand to a police grenade; a 16-year-old in Tours lost the use of an eye. Night curfews have been imposed in parts of Paris, Marseille and Lyon. Macron has denounced âseditious actsâ by the âultra-left,â which he accuses of seeking to âbring down the Republic,â and has declared that âillegitimateâ demonstrations will be banned.
France is the most advanced expression of a continental process. In Italy, the âNo Meloni Dayâ student demonstrations of October 16 were followed by riots in Milan, Turin and Bologna; the Meloni government has deployed troops to Milan and decreed sentences of two to five years for âorganized violence at public protests,â presumed criminal capacity, unless disproved, for 14- to 18-year-olds and fines on their parents.
In Spain, the housing movement erupted after the eviction and subsequent death of an 87-year-old Madrid tenant; a general strike over housing is set for November 11. In Greece, students first camped in Syntagma Square on October 13.
In Portugal, police cleared the housing camps in Lisbon and Porto. In Belgium, the unions have called a national demonstration for November 23. In Ireland, hundreds of thousands of public employees struck on October 14. In Austria, some 50,000 marched in Vienna on October 22 against a funding settlement leaving the universities âŹ2 billion short. In Serbia, 150,000 marched in Belgrade on October 22, three days before the election in which the Student List defeated VuÄiÄ.
The movement has now arrived in Germany. Protests called by a youth initiative calling itself âGen Z regeltââroughly, âGen Z rulesââbrought out, by the organizersâ count, some 120,000 young people in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Munich and other cities, against the cost of living and the condition of the schools. The demonstrations were met with water cannon. They follow the school strikes earlier this year against the new military service law, under which every 18-year-old in Germany now receives a military service questionnaire, compulsory for young men.
But the development of greatest significance occurred three days ago, and it foreshadows a change in the character of the movement. On Friday, October 30, dock and port workers struck, picketed and demonstrated at 113 ports in 22 countries and regions on five continents, under the slogan âDockers do not work for war.â Their joint statement declared that ports must not be used to transport weapons, ammunition, military equipment or troops.
In Italy the dockersâ walkouts formed part of a 24-hour general strike called by the union confederation USB against the rising cost of living, low wages and the war economy. On October 27 Transport Minister Salvini ordered the strikes postponed, citing the All Saintsâ holiday, with fines of âŹ500 to âŹ1,000 a day for those who struck anyway. The USB declared the order illegitimate and struck.
These workers occupy the arteries through which the war is supplied. For one day they closed them. The capacity of the international working class to halt the war machine was shown in practice, on five continents, on the same day, by workers who had never met.
The action taken by dock workers reveals the potential of workersâ power. But the problem of political leadership and program remains unresolved. Workers are moving into struggle against war and austerity through organizations whose leaderships are committed to the governments waging the war and imposing the austerity.
The official response to the upsurge of mass opposition is everywhere the same. Macron blames the âultra-left.â Trump blames immigration. Meloni blames âthugsâ; Merzâs interior minister blames the left and migrants. Not one of them refers to the fact that the governments of Europe are simultaneously raising military spending toward 5 percent of GDP, paying record interest on their debts, and cutting schools, pensions, healthcare and housingâor that the energy shock driving the inflation is the direct product of the war against Iran that they support. The simultaneity of these movementsâin a dozen countries, over the same grievances, confronting the same measuresârules out any explanation at the level of national politics. The eruption must be understood as the expression of objective economic forces operating on a world scale.