24 thoughts on “Around France with the Yellow Vests Sat. 15th”

1. Viriato says:

   16/12/2018 at 17:00

   Well, I will write my reports here instead of making the 61 in the other…

   As I have told you many times, you must wait a lot to have a good report on demos.

   I Have jus received this

   which is a totally different view of the demo in Marseille.

   Marseille is quite important because of it’s huge working class in ports and raffineries and in the whole history of France.

   The reading in french says “Several thousand demonstrators in Marseille, yellow vests, red vests, young vests, unsubmissive vests, towards a convergence of struggles. Don’t believe the head stuffing of the guard dogs (“les chiens de garde” are intellectuals who defend capitalist society), those who were there know that there were not “a thousand of us” (BFM).”

   BFM is BFMTV a TV that is a shame, a sort of Fox “News” or similar but in french. Hated and discredited between Gilet Jaunes for it’s Macron’s partiality.

   It is called Macron’s TV.

   What it is interesting to see in these pictures is that not only that it is a real conjonction of the Gilets Jaunes and the CGT (what we are trying in every city around France) but that France Insoumise is parading with there colors which is a step forward, not only for FI people (Mélenchon is MP in that city) but because in the beginning most of GJ were against any open sign of political membership.

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2. Viriato says:

   17/12/2018 at 09:07

   A meeting of some 500 Gilets Jaunes in Toulouse where the “convergence” (conjonction) of workers, students and Gilets jaunes it’s in the process of being realized.

   The worker said that in his works just the threat of workers to rejoin the Gilets Jaunes movement has make the boss give an increase in wages/salaries (which is the real word?).

   This is the big road to succes.

   The gouvernment and some misled Gilets Jaunes, on the contrary, are putting ahead the RIC question that will fool the Gilets Jaunes.
   Prime Minister is talking about “parlementary commisions” “parlementary debates on this interesting issue but that should be limited to what is possible” and some Gilets Jaunes are falling in this open trap that the most backwards mélenchonists and of course Rénovation Nationale are pushing forward.

   A fight is never linear and there are always obstacles in the way.

   Left communist must be between the masses to explain things.

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3. Viriato says:

   17/12/2018 at 09:15

   In Calais (not far from Britain) dockers join Gilet Jaunes to bloch a motorway

   http://lavdn.lavoixdunord.fr/493790/article/2018-11-22/l-autoroute-a16-nouveau-bloquee-par-les-gilets-jaunes#Echobox=1542924666

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4. Viriato says:

   17/12/2018 at 09:22

   Women fighting the so called “forces of order”.

   She says “why do you do us this? Have you no shame?”

   She knells not because of fear or submission but to remember the police what they have done in Maintes-la-Jolie to students.

   As someones has said” The woman’s participation in a revolution is the most clear sign of it’s depth” (by memory I could not garanteed the exactness)

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5. Viriato says:

   17/12/2018 at 09:24

   NPA Group demonstrating in Paris with Besancennot in the front line.

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6. Viriato says:

   17/12/2018 at 09:26

   A “nasse” in Opera, Paris.

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   • Viriato says:

     17/12/2018 at 09:40

     This “56 stations de métro fermées aujourd’hui à Paris , 11 de plus que la semaine dernière ! Les bus transportant les gilets jaunes vers Paris sont bloqués . Les gilets jaunes sur place sont encerclés. Les journalistes sont heureux de vous annoncer que la mobilisation des gilets est moins importante aujourd’hui ”
     says:

     “56 metro stations closed today in Paris, 11 more than last week! (the ones who are in and near center Paris) The buses carrying the yellow vests to Paris were blocked. The yellow vests on site are surrounded. Journalists are pleased to announce that the mobilization of Gilets Jaunes is less important today”

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7. Viriato says:

   17/12/2018 at 09:31

   Avignon. South of France between Lyon and Marseille a tourist city in fact.

   But the government and its press are telling that the movement is fadding away.

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8. Viriato says:

   17/12/2018 at 09:33

   Women in Paris opposing the police and the government.

   Clothed in Great French Revolution red.

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9. Viriato says:

   18/12/2018 at 09:29

   In Belgium

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10. Viriato says:

    19/12/2018 at 08:06

    Demo in favor of migrants. The Gilet Jaunes movement is developping a left conciousness in the country.

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11. Viriato says:

    19/12/2018 at 08:21

    In a real popular revolt, humour is always there.

    The lady says : “I have received the my home tax. I am waiting Macron for a coffee…”

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    • Viriato says:

      19/12/2018 at 08:26

      Translation of the bottom phrases:
      “Yellow vests you are very friendly and I am with you wholeheartedly.
      But think of the small pensions, you as workers you have obtained some advances, we small pensioners not a penny of euro, the only thing we have escaped is the increase in the CSG, but this adds nothing at all to our pensions and with inflation in 2019 we will have 8 to 10€ less…
      So think of the small pensions one day you will also be there.”

      Dear Madame we are thinking.

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12. Viriato says:

    20/12/2018 at 08:41

    This is one “point de blocage” somewhere un the north of France. Its is early in the morning and workers and retired workers answer a journalist.
    It comes from an article posted by Révolution Permanente called “170 blocade point evacuated but 300 still there”

    The words (as I can…):
    “It has become a second house and in some way a second family. It is not a little thing and in so short a time”
    Since a month they live here in this roundabout in Villars, night and day
    “In general, nights are short because we discuss till 2 o’clock in the morning. There are people who awakes and rises at 4 o’clock”
    These gilets jaunes have built their “second home”, kitchen, living room, food storage, every one shares this “people’s shack”
    “Have you put in some aromatic herbs? Yes there were inside. How nice”
    “To refind (recover) the human involved (who participates) for himself and also for solidarity”
    Around a fire, with their experiences and their ideas they discuss, debate.

    “I have learned the spontaneous pasion. People are passionately, they are really pasionated for what they are living and it is so nice to see this pasions that are to their skin (really in their hearts)” for them there is a BEFORE and an AFTER the gilets jaunes.
    “When you make “Metro-work-sleep” (Metro-boulot-dodo typical worker’s expression) and you do that your whole life it becomes monotonous (boring). After when you fight for cause that is furthermore just, I would say that this takes yout out of the routine, that makes you see that you are here for something important, that you serve to something, even if it goes nowhere, at least you have tried.”
    In Britany the first roundabout has been avacuated by the police.
    “An rthere, we said often to ourselves. If you takes us away our “people’s shacks” we will go to live in the “Maisons du Peuple” (People’s Houses).

    This is what has been slandered as “right wing for fuel taxes mouvement” in the beginning. As you can easely see, the mouvement by it’s own roots, by its class composition tends to the left.

    This shacks (is it the correct word?) points on roundabouts with workers, because there is no one petit bourgeois or little boss, only retired and workers is what you see everywhere.

    In my place is exactly the same somewhat bigger. But do not take a wrong impression. This is early in the morning and only some ones can “sleep” inside. In the morning, noon, afternoon, evening other gilets jaunes comes, the time they have. Someones two hours, others five, others more.
    Someones block, other make food, other split wood to warm ourselves in makeshift stoves that make a lot of smoke and eat whatever gives us people who comes directly to give us food, of every sort, and wood and money and solidarity. There are a lot of discussions with auto drivers, lorry drivers even with the policement patrol that are there, a way to softening and disolving them as much as it can be donne.

    Lorry drivers make hear their klaxons, cars drivers salute us with their gilets jaunes and the “left” partys are not here or for a little hours, aloof, whatching this as entomologists insects.

    In thios video you can see some of the courage of people and their real “natural” fighting spirit, the way conciousness makes its way in the fight, by the fight, but all this could go nowhere because there is not a real working class party.

    Think on this, because it is not sure that this magnificent movement could not become the beginning fighting way of every people that are fed up with treasoneous unions and “left” partys.

    A real communist party is made of this kind of stuff.

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13. Viriato says:

    22/12/2018 at 07:10

    This is what happened in a much broader scale in Paris lasr saturday. Today they will try to go further.
    Police forcing people to undress their gilets jaunes and through it to the dustbin or catch it It is totally illegal even by their standards.

    https://www.facebook.com/groups/278553209525009/

    The ladie ask “Why”?
    and the policeman answer “Because…”
    It is the reason of the governement.

    Always a class fight comes to this.

    This little exemple shows the today’s trend. Repression that cannot be counter because of inorganization, lack of political conciousness and abandonement of the movement by the left parties.

    It !s going through, dismantle of blocage points, désinformation, infiltration and confusion.

    If today there is not a strong reaction the movement is in the bad tracks.

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14. Viriato says:

    23/12/2018 at 08:42

    Some photos and videos of “Acte 6” demos

    http://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Montmartre-Quand-des-Gilets-Jaunes-ravivent-le-souvenir-de-la-Commune-de-Paris?fbclid=IwAR1xlbm95d5-rPMYMvB9WunOwW7p2pL53CpL4IkBWsxZ0S6KBqXkweKlWwk

    Gilets Jaunes in Champs Elysées

    http://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Acte-VI-Surprise-les-gilets-jaunes-sont-toujours-la?fbclid=IwAR3-CYEEWC-zHrZOdfqeQh3UgIKhotu_iU74qatSWHymdxq4uVQpmkcWN38

    Bordeaux

    http://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Acte-VI-A-Bordeaux-les-Gilets-Jaunes-maintiennent-la-pression-malgre-les-fetes?fbclid=IwAR0mOrZcN1nDL65iE6XnON6if2xRzEL4R7nSE6TLcsbe9Vt6q1_9Oq4_sRU

    Toulouse

    http://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Toulouse-Acte-VI-on-n-est-pas-fatigues?fbclid=IwAR14A-grsbGoeQdCsxU3j5_Y_GaSh20Er_5nSDzkeZ8uhsDKUqOvKABF5nY

    Montpellier

    A long video in Paris

    Avignon

    In Jura (mountains near Switzerland)

    solidarity woth the GJs in Berlin

    http://revolutionpermanente.fr/Rassemblement-en-soutien-aux-gilets-jaunes-a-Berlin-la-solidarite-est-notre-arme?fbclid=IwAR2boQySJBW_dq55jQPTAl-SgSf_nbIkc02GcJiMYSG2jfb7v6mIuWBtCUI

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15. Viriato says:

    24/12/2018 at 09:02

    Saturday’s Act 6 in other places

    Saint Etienne (near Lyon)

    Just people that demonstrate.

    Ypu can see the contrast between these people and the ones who fight the police. In Paris mainly right wing little groupes, marginals, some lumpen but lesser.

    Gilets Jaunes à Castres searching toys for the poorest

    https://www.facebook.com/RevolutionPermanente.fr/?__tn__=kCH-R&eid=ARBIzWJYAILC_wbf1otl_Gq3hibVxQSW_ivVBwRMG3uMyampbzAZP2VfFStNU3h_I0lOrpMYDGNtFXcT&hc_ref=ARTR0kjVv13ohNcqQKcDgCEVHQ-oXhehOrLssW2XMUyu757SStPE_u_6ZAv9afl3ctg&fref=nf

    A lady that say their are old yet but they are fighting for theirs little children.

    A young man (31) that say he is in the demo for raises in wages and for the RIC. He says that there are many people in Paris that the press doesn’t report.
    He talks after about his imposibility to taker his boys in holydays and others themes. He finishes by “On ne lâche rien!” “We won’t give up!”

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16. stephenrdiamond says:

    24/12/2018 at 19:45

    What do you think of the Spart analysis: https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/index.html

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    • Viriato says:

      25/12/2018 at 08:19

      What can be said in a leaflet adressed to demonstrators that are in the beginning of the beginning of a class conciousness, filled with the whole socialist programm of revendications ?

      That it is one of the main reason why I passed 50 years of my life abohorring that sort of fake trotskism and taken it as a delirium tremens counter revolutionary practice.

      First of all, one of the first demands of the Gilets Jaunes was not to be instrumentalized by politicians. and they understand as politician, whatever party of whatever color. They were then quite non receptive (to put it mild) on leaflets and on full programm leaflets you can imagine. This would change during of the fighting process that’s what communists should know, then go with them and make the max you can step forward to socialism.

      These people don’t know or doesn’t take in account the real level of political conciousness of the ones who are fighting and throw between the masses a leaflet who, in the state of mind of the demonstrators would just throw the paper in the dustbin at best. It could be they get very angry with those who doesn’t follow their backward prejuges.

      But this permit the ones who distribute some copies in Paris (they are nowhere else as I know) to conclude that they have done their work…In fact, not in the least, because with that kind of activity the doors of the movement will be slamed on their noses and they could intervene not more in the mouvement or just as a group apart under the mistrust of the masses. Not exactly what it is needed.

      I do not know how they conceive propaganda. I, talk my conception and what my practice dictates me.
      I will never adress a worker with no political knowledge directly to “french imperialism” for instance when I am sure he doesn’t know the first elements of the class fight. When I was very young I have done that and…get a angry look from a worker that could not understand me.

      Firts element of propaganda, know your public and do not throw whatever you want to say, but what the public could understand…a step forward. These WV people jump every step and just don’t bother of the people, but they surely rest quite happy of their “communist” propaganda. They write for them and their circle, aware of what should be said, not for the masses.

      All the leaflet is on the same track and they profite to developpe their whole programm…surely to no use.

      This has been done by ultra-leftists from the night of times to no avail whatsoever.

      If they want to developpe their general vision of the movement, they have papers, or the Web, or they can adress advanced workers or militants with that kind of prose (if there are not outright errors or wishful thinking), as we have done in numerous publications in France or abroad.

      We are prepearing a brochure to wholy (as much as we can) explain and take the political lessons of this magnificent movement. This should be done, but for the masses we are doing an oral propaganda because still the masses won’t take a leaflet or for only a little number of them.

      There are diferent political options in french society disputing each other the political “benefits” of the movement but not openly, even if it is quite open, and the left has just do the same without investing the movement.

      This is a complex situation that can be adressed taking in account every particularity (what sectairan never do) not otherwise. Marxism need to study the reality not applied a sort of ready made plastering on worker’s. Is just such contempt of workers who need a detailed explanation of what they are living, and where to go.

      In fact, the Workers Vanguard leaflet miss their target because they do not know the public.

      It is, at best, an explanation good for militants not for the masses level at that precise moment.

      Time and oportunity should be taken in account or we just throw a dogmatic exposition of principles to the masses, “take it or leave it”. The way not to make agitation.

      At that moment they could have developped a leaflet (if they have a public for that) insisting on organization, wages and pensions rises and change of the system. These watchwords could reach the masses because that was the dynamics developping inside them and expressed in a simple but as much complete as it is posible, it would have some impact.

      But filling it with all the lines of the socialist programm misses the target, isolate the ones who make such a move and do not serve for anything.

      Politics are, before all, a question of study. Class fight even more, you need to stick to facts and give an answer in question of hours, without separating from the fighting masses but a step forward, taking in account the real dynamics, resuming the lattent demands of masses in watchwords that goes with them (in fact say in an open clear way what the masses by their confused or inconcious words are also saying), beware of not resting back (this is a real danger. I have always seen that the so called “avanced ones”, in a turn of a class fight find themselves in the backward yard…)

      To avoid this, as much as it can posible been made, you need a sound anti-sectarian spirit disposition that cannot be filled with a rough programm manifesto. You are forced to use your head. Principles are true just in ultime instance and if you just trust them all the time not to do the hard work of understanding and orienting your comrades with “socialism” (the next step to arrive to) in a way they could understand it and go ahead, or you are loosing your time or just you are “working” for yourself, your dreams, or the ones that dispute with you, but not for the movement.

      A class fight it is not an easy matter and requires very good intellectuals (from working origine better) not to be lost, and if this happens (and happens almost always) rectified, rest stiked to the masses to be able to orient them.

      Sorry, but such a way to throw a leaflet, is full of errors, dogmatic, absurd, written for themselves, with no study of the real conciousness of the ones adressed, just an outburst that make the workers in the movement go in the oposite direction. And the oposite direction who, better knowing, do not send programatic leaflets and pretend to follow the expressed will of the masses agaienst “politicians”, can reap afterwards or the rising political left spirit of the masses (Mélenchon) or the results of a défeat (MLPen).

      This is a process, not a fixed situation as WV, in fact, conceive it.

      This is preliminary to analyse it’s content I will do in other comment.

      Comradly

      V.

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      • Viriato says:

        25/12/2018 at 08:42

        I will try to adress the other aspects of the WV leaflet.

        First of all, every political issue of this movement, we have adressed to the most advanced militants actives in the movement. Not much and not so advanced in fact, Some France Insoumise people, blogs, some known old militants and the rare activists we encounter here and there.

        But also to individuals Gilets Jaunes which we have realised they could understand what we were talking about. There are, and a lot, but we are very few and the so-called left is just not here…

        Of course we discuss with them topics related with the dévelopements of the movement. and very rarely, when they talk of, about “UE, french imperialism, worker’s party, etc.

        Rises in wages we are always talking not only because of the real need of the masses but also because is popular in very poors GJs the majority in blocade points and because this watchword put afar, expose the extreme right.
        We spoke also of the need for a “liberate our comrades campaign”, of class struggle leadership in the unions. We criticize the RIC diversion and this carefully but thoroughly because the masses are still favorables to it.

        If we had just come to a blocking point and tell the ones there that we should fight for a “Bolchevik party on the model of Lenin and Trotsky” and the “Fourth International” (who very few of the GJs must know) at best we will return with some poached eyes, bleeding noses and some reflections on the oportunity of our provocative action.

        You do the rest.

        It is exactly what it is not to be done in my modest point of view. This sectarian dogmatics are a real nuissance and if they are waving the trotskist flag, they are doing the whole trotskists a very bad propaganda thattantamount to outright sabotage.

        Sorry for the tone, correct me if I am wrong, but I have no other opinion and I am being mild.

        V.

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17. Viriato says:

    27/12/2018 at 08:03

    On the same question about de WV leaflet I would give you the answer of the youg lady who has begin this movement, Priscila Ludowsky.
    She is not a “marxist” militant, just an unknown citizen but who can resolve the difficult question of giving a programm and a “one step forward answer”one to the confused Gilet Jaunes movement in this precise moment in a letter to the president of the republic.

    It is just what we need to get the movement forward, avoid the pitfalls, is short, understandable for the masses of Gilets Jaunes and can unite the whole movement in a forward direction.

    From this point we can go further, without this point we are lost.

    As I have said you in many ocasions, common people are almost always more advanced in a real fight than “dirigents” or they must be of the caliber of a Lenin, Trotsky, Even Marx get backward in relation to the Fédérés of the Paris Commune (but he step forward almost immediately).

    Here is her answer which resume the today’s semi-concious (or concious for a part of GJs) tendancies of the movement with some problems and errors that could should be adressed by the left militants …if they were inside the movement. They are not.

    You never have a “pure”, thing anywhere and the work of a real worker’s party is to go inside a mass movement to correct, in an every day basis , thoses errors and problems and leaflets should contribute to this work not just to the ghosts in the heads of it’s producers:

    I make some explaining comments in parenthesis

    “26 DEC. 2018 –
    Mr. President,
    7 months after launching this petition, I receive your answer and it is a pity that after so much time, it is so unconstructive.

    Mine will be made up of 2 parts:
    1-A question related to the questioning specifically raised by this petition

    2- The second one related to the movement of the Yellow Vests

    1- You say: “Action against global warming is a necessary fight, but it must not set the problems of the end of the world against the problems of the end of the month. (he means wages, pensions, subsidies, buying power of tthe masses)

    The government therefore announced the cancellation of the fuel tax increase and that no increase in gas and electricity rates would take place during the winter.

    This is a clear response to the specific purpose of your petition. »

    –> Let me make it clear that your answer is not as clear as you say and does not answer all the questions raised in this petition.

    –> I assume that you have a paid team that is supposed to be qualified to (at a minimum) read the petition and related publications in full and then provide a reasoned AND documented response.

    –> I will therefore reiterate some points that have not been answered by you:

    o The proportion of taxes in the price of fuel is far too high, given that other polluting actors are not subject to this taxation: Kerosene used in non-taxed aviation, untaxed marine fuel oil… I can’t tell you anything… isn’t saving the planet everyone’s business? Is the “polluter pays” principle applicable only to motorists?

    § It would therefore be irresponsible and unfair not to significantly reduce the proportion of this tax (the floating tax is not, in my opinion, the solution)

    § It would be incomprehensible not to tax other polluters

    § It is incomprehensible that this tax is subject to IVA! (tax on every product sell in France and payed by everyone. VAT)

    o You justify the increase in this tax by the fact that it is necessary to finance the ecological transition, but I do not observe the measures put in place to promote the transition…. (Glyphosate is still not banned; you let TOTAL drill oil in French Guiana and actively participate in polluting the waters, you let the soils of the French Overseas Communities rot with chlordecone; you promote the introduction on the market of electric vehicles that are known to be no less polluting in terms of the whole process of their production chain than a conventional vehicle; you do not provide the necessary means for the development of means of transport in regions that do not have them and whose inhabitants have no choice but to use their vehicles..) ;

    o Mr. De Rugy (minister of envirenment) had assured us that we would receive the receipts for expenses of the taxes collected so far on fuel -> To date, we have not received anything;

    o Another question raised by this petition was to obtain the list of government-funded biofuel projects that would demonstrate that you are willing to move towards a transition by creating alternative fuels for oil abandonment -> Mr. De Rugy has committed to send us this list that we are still waiting for to this day.

    2- You mention a “deep anger”.

    -> Yes we are angry, because, yes, we keep paying taxes for which we do not know what they are financing and do not know to what extent they are justified as they increase.

    -> Yes, we do not have the impression that the measures adopted over the years are in the general interest but in the interests of lobbies and industrialists.

    -> Yes, we would like to be much more involved in the decisions that concern us, as we see that they lead to the implementation of measures that only meet the needs of a part of the population.

    You say, “To speed things up, I have declared a state of economic and social emergency. ».
    These measures are insufficient and without any real desire to improve the standard of living of the French people.

    Here is what we, along with many “Yellow Vests”, have proposed in order to respond urgently to a need to quickly regain purchasing power and resolve this democratic crisis we are experiencing:

    -a serious reduction of all taxes and duties on basic necessities (energy, housing, transport, food, clothing) with certainly an additional effort to be made on organic, healthy and made in France products (this should be corrected by a militant’s patient explanation between the masses) . This effort is proposed by a “yellow vest” that is concerned, as are many of us, about the health of citizens. This would also lead to French (the same) and healthier consumption.

    – a significant decrease in all current and future pensions, salaries, privileges and pensions of elected officials and senior civil servants. This would demonstrate the solidarity of these profiles towards less advantaged profiles but also to make savings.

    -implementation of the Citizens’ Initiative Referendum in all matters based on four points:

    *give the people the right to call a referendum to amend the Constitution and prohibit any amendment of the Constitution without going through the referendum;

    *giving the people the right to draft or repeal a law on the subject they choose;

    *give the people the right to request a referendum on all laws passed by Parliament;

    *Require the President of the Republic to present all international treaties, agreements and pacts to the referendum before ratification.

    Being only in a role of transmitting the needs expressed by many citizens “yellow vests”, it was in their company that we asked you in Versailles and then in Opera during a Press Conference, to organize a referendum in order to present to the French people a text aimed at:
    – to amend the Constitution with a view to introducing the Referendum on the Citizens’ Initiative in all matters;

    – significantly reduce all taxes on basic necessities;

    – significantly reduce all current and future pensions, salaries, privileges and pensions of elected officials and senior civil servants.

    You are the President and refer to democracy in a country that does not use the tools to promote its application.

    Personally, I cannot imagine that a President could refuse to hold a referendum. (this is a complex question that should be clarified by militant action…or by experience of the masses)

    Also on a personal level, I met 2 types of extremely revolted population that I do not think should be on the streets: retired people and people with reduced mobility who are active or retired.

    An immediate gesture in their favour to really increase their purchasing power is a necessity. (Abolition of the increase in the CSG for all pensioners regardless of income level, Cancellation of the merger of the AAH supplements, etc.).

    Finally, you have invited each of the signatories to continue the dialogue by completing a form set up for this purpose. So I filled in my contact details there.

    Priscillia Ludosky”

    This a tactical lesson for any shrewd or old “dirigent”. She discussed in the right tone and attitude, accesible to the masses, fully understandable for the average Gilet Jaune. She refutes every word of deceit or open lies of the president and put forward correct revendications (with some errorrs that can be corrected if there were enough activists to do the work) and gives the movement a unified direction, a line that takes out the movement from the rutted roads it has been stopped.

    This is the way, not throwing away, as dirt in a dustbin, the wishful dreams on a bunch of petit bourgeois leftists that don’t bother at all of the people involved in the fight or their concious level.

    A step forward of such a mass movement is ten folds better than the best of general programms, as the old man said, but when it is just not studying that mass movement, not bothering to be understood or to understood what is happening, not knowing the first letter of how to work out a leaflet, the best thing to do is to go and make an investigation and learn from the masses, a school that cannot be substituted..

    But the ones who pretend to know everything because they have superficially red some books and live in the rarified atmosphere of sectarian cercles, must be thrown away from the worker’s movement as quickly as they are identified.

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18. Viriato says:

    28/12/2018 at 12:13

    These last comments have been criticized (published in other places) by Luniterre who signed the first document we published in SF in november.

    For a better understanding of the movement in his real position now, december 28, and what is at stake (I am waiting for an authorisation to publish another document that further clarifies the situation and the understanding which is the goal of publishing here the most accurate possible account of a movement that can be the form it will take the classes fight everywhere in the present -non mass workers party- in many parts of the world) I publish his critics and my answer.

    Hello, Viriato

    This Letter from Ludosky certainly contains some interesting points, but it is nevertheless in decline compared to the list of 42 claims of 29/11/2018. It is normal for new claims to be added as the situation evolves, but the most important ones should not take second place to others, less important ones.

    The idea of “zero-rating” various basic necessities is obviously quite good, as it is easily understandable, but can also become a trap.

    It must complement and reinforce the demand for a real increase in the minimum wage, not replace it.

    With one tax chasing the other, Macron is currently winning, on the overall balance sheet. This is whaemerges from the analysis:

    Noël en prison : pour combien de “Gilets Jaunes” et pour quel combat ?

    This is what I also try to highlight, in a post in response, on VLR, copy below.

    It is therefore necessary to support only in order to be able to explain this phenomenon and put pressure back on direct and indirect salaries (social security contributions), which alone have a direct impact on capital and not on taxpayers.

    And above all, revolutionaries must put the demand for solidarity and amnesty at the forefront for all GJs charged, convicted and imprisoned!

    Linking resistance to economic claims becomes necessary and politically essential.

    This does not prevent actions from being reframed around right targets, quite the contrary, clarification should help.

    Luniterre

    The answer:

    Hi Luniterre,

    Of course, the 42 measures are better than those of Priscilla, which, as you point out, leaves gaping holes where the government can easily slip through.

    But the question is: how to recover, how to save a movement that drifts towards “actions” that reduce it in some places to a small group, sometimes infiltrated by the Extreme Right and the government, and put it back on the right track of mass demonstrations?

    There is a need for a program more or less according to the state of consciousness of the masses and capable of being extended to workers working.

    Surely the 42 claims would do the job better. The problem is that it is not recognized and is not likely to be recognized as a programmatic document of the GJs and Priscilla’s letter can be recognized because she is at the origin of the movement and has some moral authority.

    I advance this with this tactical, opportunistic consideration.

    The work of a working class organization would be to advance the best points and leave behind the bad by discussion, argumentation within the movement.

    Unfortunately, this organization does not exist and those that exist or are working for next elections or do not go there altogether and wait for the death of the movement to prove themselves right and play the ones who have been right from the beginning.

    I also think that the question of the movement must be seen today in the perspective of major upheavals in the bourgeois order if the financial crisis that seems to have begun, with stock prices falling by more than 11% everywhere and with no prospect of stopping, generates movements that are much stronger than those of the GJs.

    We must therefore hold on and any acceptable program that keeps the movement more or less alive is good.

    We must avoid the mistake of wanting to go faster than the masses, wanting to impose our vision on them at a time when only they can accept a slightly higher level. Here it is not a question of defending principles but of tactical steps that our action (alas very small) can correct by criticism within the masses.

    Everything you have written can and must be advanced, but among the masses. It will be a drop in the bucket, but it has already been noted that the movement is changing its focus very quickly, seeking and through its profound tendency dictated by the needs of those who participate tends, or should tend towards social demands, to increase incomes.

    But even here, we must be careful not to fall into a pure “economism” and also point out political issues in the form that the masses understand it…a step forward.
    For example, explain that the “Macron resignation” is not enough and that it is the whole system (“capitalist” if we can advance that) that must be changed.

    Strongly agree with your comments on Bibeau’s and Do’s positions

    Friendly

    V.

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19. Viriato says:

    28/12/2018 at 13:19

    Perhaps, the best result of the Gilets Jaunes movement is the exposure of every one’s deficiencies, errors, weaknesses, disabilities, lack of courage, overcoming by the left and by the masses, ankylosing of thought and other defects that appear at all levels, everywhere but specifically in all the left, including myself. This is a burning test that wears you out, mistreats you, disorients you and asks the terrible question about the future of the left across all tendencies.

    This rude real proletarian movement, expose all the deficiencies, errors, weaknesses, disabilities, lack of courage, overcoming by the left and by the masses, ankylosing of thought and other defects that appear at all levels, everywhere but specifically in all the left, including myself. It
    wears you out, mistreats you, disorients you and asks the terrible question about the future of the left across all tendencies.

    This harsh tremor carried by the awakening of the masses puts all parties and individuals to the test and marks them with a red-hot iron.

    This is surely the best “result” of this struggle which, at this moment, I do not bode well for its future yet, has drawn a dazzling line on all the conceptions of a left and extreme left that only addresses the workers aristocracy and does not know and does not want to address the awakened layers, raised by the current GJ movement.

    Such a bankruptcy, I can’t find any other word, leaves the field open to the far right but… the far right can’t take advantage of it! So much the real tendancy of the movement is foreign to their proposals.

    It might be that the desertion of the left allows the extreme right to win the elections, it has no control over a movement that is essentially proletarian, out of poverty, and that still remains with considerable energy that is lost for lack of political leadership.

    Here are excerpts from a letter addressed to a section of France Insubordinated by one of its activists.
    He only allowed the publication of a few excerpts but these excerpts speak for themselves:

    “First of all, I will say very briefly what I saw during Act VI on Saturday, December 22nd: A lot of people, despite the media-government hype, to stop it. Then we saw the reappearance of the organized extreme right; and this time, well organized, with leaders who claimed to lead the demonstration. Not without some success, both for the direction it was to take, and for the content of the instructions chanted.

    I say some success only because it seemed to me that the vast majority of GJs were rather inclined to left-wing slogans and to demonstrate quietly and peacefully. So they often took other directions and chanted other slogans, often original, than those suggested. This was done in a certain ingenuity and without recognizing the “ultras”, which were rather aggressive, but without causing any breakage. This throughout the day.

    In the evening it was something else, according to what we saw on TV, but probably very limited in time and exclusively in the Champs Élysées Clemenceau sector where, being on the departure, I had the bad surprise of finding this gas station and evacuated (?)
    In short, then, it clearly bore the mark of the far right despite, I repeat, the lack of cooperation from the crowd.
    No one was there to counterbalance it! And especially not the F.I.

    (…)

    However, it is clear that the movement is facing a moment of definition of what to do next. He remains determined, but this will only be possible if he finds the political opportunity he is confused about. This is not the first time this has happened in the long history of class struggle, particularly in France. It is our job to indicate this goal and get involved to help achieve it. And just then, the IF is conspicuous by its absence, both in the orientation, instructions, songs… (what do I know), and physically in the demonstrations…

    The only exceptions are the speeches and writings of JLM (but who reads them except ourselves? In any case, he cannot do everything) and the presence of dedicated militants, but without any organization or instructions, drowned in the mass, without knowing how to guide them and sometimes, benignly, following anyone.

    However, all opportunists, all laggards, all fishermen in troubled waters are working to recover the movement, with some success, as the need for a political perspective becomes apparent. (in bulk: for more democracy, for a VI Republic, for a control of finance, for future elections, and so on) This while since the beginning JLM has understood the scope of the movement and its political significance.

    Decisive in the current moment: program, history, first magnitude leader, (often necessary in the history of revolutions) and militants dedicated and ready for the struggle.
    But we will not be able to do so without becoming aware of our own turpitudes.”

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20. Ideological formlessness and Labour’s Disaster; Corbyn’s Failure of Leadership | Socialist Fight says:

    27/01/2020 at 09:53

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