Spain. Regarding the “Strike for Gaza” of October 15: the class-collaborationist unions perform empty gestures while the massacre in Palestine continues. Only the class struggle of the proletariat can put an end to the imperialist war

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Regarding the “Strike for Gaza” of October 15: the class-collaborationist unions perform empty gestures while the massacre in Palestine continues

Only the class struggle of the proletariat can put an end to the imperialist war

For October 15, the two major trade-union organizations have called a two-hour “strike” in solidarity “against the genocide in Gaza.” This call follows a series of mass actions and demonstrations that have drawn attention thanks to their large participation – for example, the protest against the participation of an Israeli team in the Vuelta cycling race, student strikes, or large demonstrations marking the anniversary of the beginning of the current war in Gaza.

The objective of the CC.OO. and UGT unions is clear: to place themselves at the head – on both the labour and the “social” fronts where the strike takes place – of the movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people and thus contribute to ensuring that this movement remains purely symbolic, without any impact beyond sterile protest and futile pacifism. In September of last year, trade-union organizations such as CGT and Solidaridad Obrera already called a strike for the same reasons. What was the position of CC.OO. and UGT then? They refused to take part. This is yet another example of the hypocrisy – not moral but political – that lies behind this call.

Minority unions, such as the CGT or the nationalist unions in Catalonia and the Basque Country, have issued their own calls for October 15 – for a full-day “strike,” not a limited one as in the case of CC.OO. and UGT. Concerning this call, which has a much smaller scope and reproduces the fragmentation and isolation to which the major unions subject the proletariat, one can repeat what we stated a year ago: without promoting the strike among workers – when its “promotion” takes the form of a publicity-driven and seemingly spectacular campaign – this strike by decree places these organizations on the same level as CC.OO. and UGT.

The war of destruction and devastation waged by Israel in Gaza – and which will continue, sooner or later, both throughout the Strip and in the West Bank – despite the peace plans of the United States, shows the degree of violence an imperialist power is capable of exercising against entire populations in order to impose its territorial, ethnic or national demands, behind which there always lies the economic gain it hopes to secure after the war. In the case of Israel, the situation is particularly bloody, because the Palestinian population in Gaza is being exterminated – the first step in consolidating the project of a Greater Israel, dreamed of for decades by both the Hebrew bourgeoisie and the main imperialist powers of the West. As the new German chancellor Merz said: it is the dirty work Israel does for all of us, to the benefit of itself and of the West.

The imposition of an extraordinarily harsh imperialist order – not only in Palestinian territory but throughout the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, etc.) – capable of keeping under control, in this region, the threat posed to the trade and business interests of Europe and the United States by the presence of regional powers such as Iran, now allied with China and Russia, is the main objective of this war of bloodshed, which has already lasted two years. This is why, alongside the bombardment of Gaza, we have witnessed continuous attacks on Lebanese territory, air raids on Damascus, and so on. And at the centre of all this stand the Palestinian masses – defenceless, dispossessed and oppressed – crushed both by decades of Israel’s criminal policies and by the harshness with which the Arab powers that supposedly supported them have treated them. The global imperialist order plays its moves on the chessboard of the Middle East, just as it did a century ago in the Balkans, and the destruction it brings strikes the Palestinians daily in the form of military attacks and famine.

The current war in Gaza shows what kind of future awaits the proletariat in the United States and Europe. In that region their bourgeoisies are enforcing their demands and their regime of terror over the Palestinian population as an inevitable step in preparing for a conflict of much greater scope. They seek to establish a peace drenched in blood and accompanied by the destruction of all Gaza, through which they hope to consolidate their position in the region – in order then to devote their efforts and resources to preparing for a far greater war yet to come. By controlling the region, they pursue both immediate profit and the expulsion of rival imperialist powers (China, Russia, etc.), because they know that the future confrontation will be with them – regardless of which alliances may prevail at any given time.

This is why the victory of their bourgeoisies – the triumph of the international coalition that sustains and supports the State of Israel – represents a victory of militarism on the social, political and economic planes. In this way their bourgeoisies seek to force the proletariat to accept the demands that tomorrow’s war will bring. Through the current war in Gaza, the bourgeoisie not only secures short- and medium-term advantages but also strengthens the chains with which it binds the working class in Germany, France, the United States and Spain.

The proletariat of the imperialist countries – the main culprits of Israel’s warlike initiatives, not only against Hamas or the Palestinian National Authority but against the Palestinian people as a whole – has, as a class, the task of fighting against its own bourgeoisie, against its national and foreign interests, and therefore against the growing militarism that prepares above all the proletarian masses for war (not only for the world war when it breaks out, but also for military expeditions, even “local” ones), since all this is carried out exclusively in the bourgeois and imperialist interest.

This struggle of the proletariat against its own bourgeoisie – which is, in essence, a struggle against class collaboration – is the true form of solidarity with the oppressed and massacred peoples in other countries, as in the case of the Palestinians or any other people subjugated by the dominant powers. At the same time, it is the way to show the proletarians of all other countries and the dominated and oppressed peoples that the class struggle of the proletariat in the imperialist countries is the only struggle capable of influencing imperialist policy and the initiatives of the imperialist bourgeoisies – the only struggle that can put the imperialist bourgeoisie in difficulty, and to which the proletarians of other imperialist countries and of the countries suffering the harshest repression and massacres by their national bourgeois powers can join, thereby extending the front of the class struggle which, in perspective, will transform the imperialist war into a war between classes.

This class struggle, which the working class must assume today or tomorrow – when the drums of war will be deafening – proceeds through the struggle against bourgeois demands even within its own country. The bourgeoisie seeks to discipline the proletariat politically and socially so that it accepts its economic and military dictates, which will inevitably (and already do) bring heavy consequences for the lives of workers. The struggle against the imperialist war is also the struggle for the living conditions of the proletarians – the struggle for a wage that allows one to live, the struggle against high prices, the struggle against unbearable work rhythms, against industrial accidents... for in all these fields the bourgeoisie seeks to squeeze from the proletariat the last drop of profit – doing so with the prospect of reinvesting it in new and still more painful military campaigns.

To embark on this path, the proletarian class must break with the policy of social peace and conciliation with the bourgeois class that has persisted for far too many decades. It must return to struggle by classist means and methods, exclusively in defence of its own interests. To this end, it must break with the pseudo-combative policy imposed on it by the large (and, after them, the smaller) trade unions, and with their attempts to divert the social discontent provoked by the war in Gaza toward the path of pacifism and empty protest. Symbolic strikes, even one-day ones, do not weaken but rather strengthen the ties – for they deceive and distract – that bind the proletariat in the web of interclass collaboration. The same unions that pretend to weep for Gaza at the same time enable the bourgeoisie to take any anti-worker measures, sabotage exemplary strikes such as those of the metalworkers of Cádiz or Cartagena, and gladly toast with the bourgeoisie whenever a new arms factory opens.

Although social peace is today the prevailing tone, the example set by the dockworkers of Genoa, Turkey and other countries – who, in a coordinated international action, refused to take part in loading weapons destined for Israel – shows that it is possible to break out of the state of permanent defeat: that the proletarian class has the strength to shake the very foundations of the bourgeois order, provided that it directs it against the class enemy and employs it with genuinely classist means and methods.

• For the restoration of the strike as a weapon of proletarian class struggle – for both immediate and general demands!

• For internationalist solidarity with the proletarians and oppressed masses in Palestine – in Ukraine, in Russia, and in every other country!

Il comunista - le prolétaire - el proletario - proletarian - programme communiste - el programa comunista - Communist Program