March 10, 2012 – As Senegal prepares for a run-off presidential election on March 25, the 12 candidates who lost in round 1 have unified with the June 23 movement (M23) for a major rally on March 11 against the current president Abdoulaye Wade. The M23 was formed with militant protests in 2011 in response to sharp political and economic attacks on the working class by Wade and the ruling class (see CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, August 17, 2011, p. 6).

Wade is running for an unprecedented third term. In round 1 of the election, Wade won 35% of the vote and Macky Sall won 27%, and so they will compete head to head in round 2.

The March 11 rally in Dakar is aimed solely at supporting Sall against Wade, and represents a step backward for the movement against capitalism in Senegal. Sall is a former prime minister in Wade's cabinet (he resigned in 2008) and has a long history of involvement with the country's corrupt ruling class. In a second round of voting, those who consider themselves leftists and revolutionaries are making the same mistake they made 12 years ago when they uncritically joined forces with Wade and paved the way for his victory over then-President Abdou Diouf. They are blindly coalescing behind Sall, who has the same neo-liberal agenda as Wade, simply to oust the incumbent president. Moustapha Niasse, who came in third in the first round of voting with support from many of the organizations that attended the Youth Summit, has already called for support of Sall and against Wade, saying   "Stopping Wade is an imperative, it is a necessity, this is a must."  Nonsense. What is a “must” is the building of revolutionary communist consciousness and an orientation towards revolution not elections. As the PLP strengthens its relations with local forces, we hope a branch of PLP will emerge that can provide a vision of a communist future for Senegal and help bring about true liberation of the masses.

Masses of Senegalese turned out to vote in the first round. At the same time, over 40 Senegalese in the Washington, DC area protested at the Senegalese embassy and marched to the White House to let people in the U.S. know the extent of fraud and deception going on with this election. Six weeks ago, there were huge demonstrations in Dakar and other cities protesting the “Constitutional” Court’s unconstitutional January 27 decision that 85-year old Abdoulaye Wade could run for a third six-year term. As protests erupted around the country, police attacked with tear gas and clubs, killing 10, maiming more, and arresting many others, including friends of PLP who were part of the Summit organized by the League of Revolutionary Pan Africanists in June 2011 in which PLP participated (see CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, July 11, 2011, p. 8). Last month’s demonstrations were similar to uprisings last summer when Wade announced that he would run again and tried to force through a new law that would allow him to install his son as vice-president and heir-apparent (see CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, August 17, 2011 p. 6).  During the first round of the election on February 26, hundreds of Wade’s neighbors directly confronted him as he voted for himself. They demanded that he step down. How can such intense anger at the president lead to a communist future for Senegal?

Background:  Mass Outrage

The masses are furious with Wade and his neocolonial party that came to power in 2000 by ousting the sell-out “Socialist” Party President Abdou Diouf that had proven to be a corrupt and loyal lackey of the French imperialists. But Wade’s regime has followed the same path.

Wade stole over 1.6 trillion CFA francs (about $3.4 billion) from the government treasury. He spent $400 million for a private jet with a state-of-the-art hospital staffed with doctors and nurses from France. He built a statue (African Renaissance Statue) costing tens of millions of dollars which the Senegalese masses opposed, asserting that it is just an egotistical monument to himself. This outrageous amount could have been used to improve the living conditions of citizens instead of this statue that represents nothing to the Senegalese people.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Jobs are few, and those that exist provide no rights for workers.  The government backs the private bosses 100%.

During the 12 years Wade has been in office, Senegal has suffered from neglect while the parasites in power feed off the masses. Dakar, the capital, is a “mobile market” where almost everyone is desperately trying to sell something in order to feed a family, from Kleenex to soccer balls to phone cards. Child beggars are everywhere. The cost of living has risen and wages to workers have not been adjusted to inflation as many industries still pay the same wages they paid before Wade was elected. Senegal’s place on the United Nations Human Development Index (#155 out of 187) that measures living standards, life expectancy, literacy and education remains virtually equal to that of Haiti (.459 versus .454 -- the U.S. score is .910 by comparison). Communist revolution is the only solution to such desperate poverty, corruption and exploitation!

The Opposition to Wade

The opposition parties in Senegal were split between self-described socialist and democratic parties, with several smaller self-described communist, pan-Africanist, and revolutionary parties. The Bennoo (“to form as one”) coalition tried to unify the opposition but then split. Both of their programs stressed “public resources for the people”. Such a vague program generally fell flat with the energetic youth demanding greater change.

Macky Sall, Cheikh Tidiane Gadgio, Idrissa Seck, and Ibrahima Fall, ex-members of Wade’s cabinet, also contested for the presidency. They had exposed Wade’s government by revealing closely held secrets such as the murder of officials who opposed Wade on issues and the theft of funds from the treasury. These candidates all claimed that they wanted to limit Senegalese dependence on the imperialist nations and have called themselves “true pan Africanists” unlike Wade. Such opportunists! They could not be taken seriously given their longstanding complicity in the regime.

Youssou N’Dour, the most popular singer in Senegal, formed a movement Fekke ma ci bole (“Part of it because I’m alive”) and announced his candidacy, declaring that he would provide "food for all, better health and education and electricity . . . by scrapping the expensive government's lifestyle and spending”. He also said "I can use my huge contact book to sign new international deals that will bring aid and investments to Senegal." N’Dour’s program promised vague improvements for the masses and continued capitalism and foreign exploitation. Not surprisingly, like the ex-members of Wade’s cabinet, he was once quite close to Wade until they had a falling out. Again, not a good choice for the working class! In any event, the same (Un)Constitutional Court that ruled that Wade could run for a 3^rd term decided that N’Dour could not be a candidate. Who paid off the Constitutional Court?

Meanwhile, a mass hip-hop youth movement Y’en a Marre (We’re fed up!) continues to mobilize youth against unemployment regardless of the elections, and has kept street demonstrations powerful with their slogan, Enough is Enough.  Wade was so worried about them that he printed up and distributed hundreds of Y’en a Marre t-shirts in an effort to co-opt them. But Y’en a Marre rejected this action and declared that no member of their movement should ever wear such a t-shirt! Y’en a Marre is currently preparing independent actions around the second stage of the elections.

Several of the organizations whose members participated in the Youth Summit initially joined the Bennoo coalition. None has advanced a public call for communist revolution, limiting their programs to opposition to neoliberalism, neocolonialism, and imperialism and staying within the electoral path, mainly unifying around the demand that Wade Must Go! Some have argued that, once Wade is replaced, the next stage is to elect progressive legislators.

This approach is part of an incorrect, multi-stage analysis of the path towards communism and true liberation. This losing strategy argues that first, we must fight for national independence from imperialism, often through elections, while never advancing the long-term goals of communism in any public way. This stage, theoretically, is to be followed by gradual steps towards socialism with the government nationalizing and expanding industries while maintaining the wage system and inequalities. Much later, perhaps, the society can move towards communism, with the abolition of the wage system and a thoroughgoing egalitarian structure of society.

The world has witnessed far too many failures as honest revolutionaries have tried to follow this strategy. Capitalist elements always take advantage of the limited ideological development that such a strategy stimulates in the mass movements. Capitalism returns. This multi-stage strategy underestimates the potential of the masses to learn, struggle, and live on the basis of communist principles, and instead hides these ideas “for later”.  Later never seems to come! Communist ideas and practices must be struggled for now!

If the illegitimate Wade tries to claim victory after round 2, it will only be on the basis of naked fraud, and the struggle may sharpen up with expanded Occupy-style movements and broad protests. But without a clear roadmap to communist revolution, such actions will fall short of true liberation of the Senegalese masses.  Hopefully, as our friends in Senegal learn from their experience and deepen their involvement in the growing mass movement, they will move towards a militant and openly communist approach to the struggle.

Wade stole over 1.6 trillion CFA francs (about $3.4 billion) from the government treasury. He spent $400 million for a private jet with a state-of-the-art hospital staffed with doctors and nurses from France. He built an African Renaissance Statue costing $40 million which the Senegalese masses opposed as an egotistical monument to himself. This outrageous amount could have helped improve workers’ living conditions.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Jobs are few. Those that exist have no workers’ rights. The government backs private bosses 100%.

During Wade’s 12-year reign, Senegal has suffered from neglect while the parasites in power feed off the masses. Dakar, the capital, is a “mobile market” where, to feed a family, almost everyone is desperately trying to sell something, from Kleenex to soccer balls to phone cards. Child beggars abound. Workers’ wages have not kept pace with the rising cost of living. 

Many industries still pay the same wages paid prior to Wade’s election. Senegal’s place on the United Nations Human Development Index, that measures living standards, life expectancy, literacy and education, is virtually equal to Haiti’s (.459 versus .454; the U.S. score is .910 by comparison). Communist revolution is the only solution to such desperate poverty, corruption and exploitation.

The Opposition to Wade

Fourteen candidates ran in the first round of today’s election. The main opposition parties were split between self-described socialist and democratic parties, plus self-described communist, pan-Africanist and revolutionary parties. The Benno (“to form as one”) coalition tried to unify the opposition but then split. Both programs stressed “public resources for the people,” vague platforms which fell flat with the energetic youth demanding greater change.

Four ex-members of Wade’s cabinet also ran. They had exposed Wade’s government by revealing closely held secrets such as the murder of officials who opposed Wade on issues and the theft of treasury funds. These candidates all claimed they wanted to limit Senegalese dependence on the imperialist nations and have called themselves “true pan-Africanists,” unlike Wade. Such opportunists couldn’t be taken seriously, given their longstanding complicity in Wade’s regime.

Youssou N’Dour, Senegal’s most popular singer, also announced his candidacy, promising “food for all, better health and education and electricity…by scrapping the expensive government’s lifestyle and spending” and use of his “huge contact book to sign new international deals that will bring aid and investments to Senegal.” These are vague improvements for the masses and continued capitalism and foreign exploitation. Once quite close to Wade until a falling out, his candidacy was voided by the same Court that allowed Wade to run for a third term.

Youth Movement

Meanwhile, a mass hip-hop youth movement, Y’en a Marre (We’re fed up!), continues to mobilize youth against unemployment regardless of the elections, and has maintained powerful street demonstrations with its slogan, “Enough is Enough.” Wade was so worried about them that he distributed hundreds of Y’en a Marre t-shirts attempting to co-opt them. But they rejected this ploy, declaring that no member of their movement should ever wear such a t-shirt!

Several organizations whose members participated in the Youth Summit initially joined the Benno coalition. None has advanced a public call for communist revolution, limiting their programs to opposition to neoliberalism, neocolonialism and imperialism, sticking with elections, uniting around “Wade Must Go!”

‘Staged’ Revolution a Losing Strategy

This approach is part of an incorrect, multi-stage analysis of the path towards true liberation through communism. This losing strategy argues to first fight for national independence from imperialism, often through elections, while never publicly advancing the long-term goals of communism. This stage, theoretically, then follows with gradual steps towards socialism with the government nationalizing industries while maintaining the wage system and inequalities. Much later, society can move to communism, abolition of the wage system and an egalitarian society. 

Such a strategy has always failed; capitalist elements always take advantage of the limited ideological development in the mass movements led by such a strategy, and they return to market capitalism. It underestimates the masses’ potential to learn, struggle and live on the basis of communist principles, and instead hides these ideas “for later.” Later never comes.

As the illegitimate Wade claims victory, the struggle may sharpen with expanded Occupy-style movements, broad protests and possible civil war. But without a clear roadmap to communist revolution, such actions will fall short of true emancipation of the Senegalese masses.

Hopefully, as our friends in Senegal learn from their experience, deepen their involvement in the growing mass movement, strengthen their relations with PLP, and learn from the masses’ increasing militancy, a PLP organization will emerge. This can provide a vision of a communist future for Senegal and with it true liberation of the masses!

February 28 — Preliminary election results show Macky Sall, founder of the political party L’Alliance pour la république (APR), following closely behind Wade with 25.11% of votes against Wade’s 26.46%. Sall, too, was a former prime minister in Wade’s cabinet (resigning in 2008) and was long involved with the country’s corrupt ruling class.

In a second round of voting, will those on the left make the same mistake they made 12 years ago when they uncritically backed Wade and enabled his victory over then-President Abdou Diouf? Will they likely, and blindly coalesce behind Sall, having the same neo-liberal agenda as Wade, simply to oust the incumbent president?

Moustapha Niasse, third in the first round of voting, supported by many organizations that attended the Youth Summit, has already declared for Sall and against Wade. He says “Stopping Wade is an imperative, it is a necessity, this is a must.” Nonsense. What is a “must” is the building of revolutionary communist consciousness, an orientation towards revolution not elections, and building a PLP branch in Senegal to help chart the path towards emancipation of the working class.

PARIS, March 2 — A military dictatorship is the only way to force the Greek people to pay the nation’s debt to international finance capital, according to Michel Rocard, a French Socialist Party (SP) leader. Rocard was prime minister from 1988 to 1991.

“Forced shrinking of the economy leads to civil war,” Rocard told the daily paper Libération. “It’s untenable and it poses a big question for Greece, which is subject to forced shrinking of the economy. In this context, how can you maintain elections? It’s not possible to govern these people while telling them that they’re going to lose 25% of their income over the next ten years in order to pay off all the debt. Nobody says it out loud, but the solution for Greece is a military government.”

War on the Horizon

While Rocard was spilling the beans on the bosses’ vision of a fascist Greece, he also indicated that world war is close:

Nobody [in France] is paying attention to the greater Middle East. We have an Anglo-American strategy, which the other allies, and notably France, have accepted. The strategy is to scuttle any possibility of serious discussion with the Iranians. And even to provoke them a little from time to time. It’s as if it was…preparing a situation of tolerance that would make an Israeli strike possible. In this case, the war will become a Syrian-Iranian war, backed up by China and Russia,…a war broadly against the West and its client states.… This is an affair of millions of deaths, the hypothesis being that it will begin as a nuclear war.

Workers Lose, Banks Collect

The austerity plan imposed on Greece by the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank has slashed wages and pensions. The Greek public debt is $395 billion. Seventy percent of it is owed to foreign institutions, mainly banks.

Andreas Makris, a porter at the Athens public hospital has had his wages cut 40 percent from four years ago when he netted 15,000 euros (USD $19,800) a year on a 37½-hour work-week. Now he nets 9,628 euros (USD $12,712) annually for a 40-hour week.

Dimitris Papadikolao, an Athens steelworker, was laid off in December. He used to make 1,200 euros a month net (USD $1584). Now he survives on 359 euros a month (USD $474) in unemployment benefits. Stelios Sandalakis is retired but cannot make ends meet on his 600-euro-a-month pension (USD $792) and must eat in soup kitchens.

Many Greeks are turning to charities like Doctors of the World for health care because they cannot afford the charges Greek hospitals now make patients pay for medicines. Meanwhile, military spending is up as Greece buys arms from Germany and France.

War and fascism are high on the agenda of the world’s ruling classes. Rocard’s words should be an eye-opener to any worker in France who thinks that François Hollande, the SP’s presidential candidate in the April 22 election, is a lesser evil. War and fascism are the inevitable products of capitalism. The only way to eliminate them is through communist revolution.

The international working class is fighting back, from North Africa to the Mid-East, to Europe to the U.S., against the effects of capitalism’s world economic and political crisis. It has sparked social movements that have captured the imagination, with many comparing 2011 to 1968. Wherever PLP is present it is playing a political role in these movements.

Four billion working-class families are trying to exist on $1 to $2 a day under the weight of the International Monetary Fund-induced austerity. This global economic crisis was fed by capitalism’s drive for maximum profits, centered on Wall Street, setting the stage for the 2011 upsurge.

‘68 General Strike Rocked France

“The French 1968 upheaval took the French ruling class by surprise,” said Alan Woods, the English Marxist historian. Students in France responded both to U.S. imperialism’s Vietnam War genocide) and to French bosses’ university repression. When linked up with the working class — suffering as the lowest-paid industrial workers in Europe — it resulted in a general strike which rocked the very foundations of French capitalism. This qualitative change stemmed from quantitative internal contradictions in French capitalism.

The General Strike paralyzed France. The French National Police could barely contain the insurrection. French bosses feared that an Army call-up might induce many working-class soldiers to side with the strikers and mutiny, so they called up reservists but restricted them to military bases and away from television and radio. DeGaulle almost lost his grip on state power and called on the German military to be ready with tank warfare to put down the revolt.

Ultimately the insurrection failed because, without a viable communist party to lead the working class to revolution, the French “Communist” Party made a deal with DeGaulle and took the electoral road, relying on “lesser evil” bosses.

Woods mentions that DeGaulle so feared revolution that he planned to imprison 20,000 left-wing activists in the Winter Stadium where they would have met a similar fate that Chilean workers and students would face five years later.”

Also in ’68, left-wing students in Mexico used the approaching Olympics to champion needed social reforms: freedom for political prisoners, dismissal of the fascist Mexico City Police Chief, and use of tax money for Mexico’s working class instead of for the Olympics.

Their fight-back began in Mexico City, trying to free an imprisoned railway union leader. The fascist Mexican President Gustavo Ordaz refused to meet with the students’ Strike Council but instead ordered the police and the Army to shoot to kill. Hundreds died or were wounded. October 2nd became known as “The Night of Sorrows.”

The students had three political weaknesses: (1) No revolutionary communist party; (2) No link-up with workers in a general strike; and (3) no ties to working-class Army troops which might have prevented the massacre.

IMF Austerity Takes Its Toll

Now in 2011, the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Mid-East erupted — as with France 1968 — because of capitalism’s insoluble contradictions. Tunisia, like many North African nations, suffered from the 2008 global capitalist crisis. The IMF austerity was taking its toll on the working class. The self-immolation of Mohammed in Sidi Bouazizi, frustrated and poverty-stricken, was the final straw. The section of the Tunisian bosses represented by President Ben Ali was overthrown. Insurgencies soon spread to Egypt, Syria, Libya and Bahrain.

This was a positive development; Arab workers were fighting back, but again, there was no communist party to lead to the overthrow of ALL bosses. One capitalist group was simply replaced by another in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The Arab Spring is a bourgeois revolution. Anything short of communist revolution is a defeat for the international working class, unless in the course of that class struggle workers and youth are won to building a communist party that aims to overthrow capitalism.

In the U.S., the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement began in September, 2011, responding to the increasing economic inequality and mass unemployment precipitated by the capitalist crisis. Globally over 200 million workers lost their jobs because of the instability of capitalism. Wall Street was the flashpoint for the crisis, hence the name OWS, but it soon spread to hundreds of cities and towns across the U.S. and then around the world.

Rulers Trying to Co-opt OWS

While many OWS rank-and-filers have political disagreements with capitalism, the OWS leadership is reformist. Ruling-class influences (George Soros, Obama, the Democrats) are trying to co-opt the movement, to keep it within capitalist bounds, away from becoming radicalized and posing a danger to capitalism itself. The pro-capitalist leadership of unions like the SEIU pulls OWS toward reformist tactics, preventing it from openly challenging the capitalist system.

Rank-and-file Occupiers include workers — employed and unemployed — students, union activists and soldiers, black, white and Latino, women and men.

Many PL’ers trying to move the rank-and-file toward a communist class analysis, explaining why capitalist reforms cannot work, given the system’s internal contradictions centered on racism, sexism and imperialism. Thousands of CHALLENGES distributed to OWS workers and students across the U.S. play a vital role in that effort.

Election Circus vs.
Smash Capitalism

PLP’ers in OWS go beyond the language of the “99%,” terms Democrats cynically use to steer OWS class struggle toward re-electing Obama. PLP’s message is clear: Capitalism is a crisis-ridden system which only serves the interests of the billionaires. Because of its racist and sexist nature, it can never be reformed, never help billions of workers. It must be smashed with communist revolution led by the international PLP to create a communist society with the Party as its leading force. This goes beyond OWS bourgeois reforms.

The 2011-12 class struggles of OWS, the trade union fights in Wisconsin and Ohio and the Arab Spring are important because they demonstrate that workers will fight back against all odds. But workers from OWS to Cairo’s Tahir Square need a winning Marxist class analysis and revolutionary strategy that only PLP can offer.

There are some historical similarities between current global class struggles and the social explosions of 1968. There are also important political lessons:

   • The international working class needs a revolutionary communist party, the PLP, to win state power. The absence of such leadership in 1968 France doomed a valiant insurrection to failure. Workers can have the material conditions necessary for a revolutionary situation, but without communist leadership the capitalist bosses will live to continue their oppression.

   • PLP must be prepared to lead the masses of workers to revolution. At some point a social explosion in North America — the heart of capitalist imperialism — on the scale of 1968 France could offer the opportunity to violently overthrow U.S. bosses. As Mao said, “One spark can start a prairie fire,” but it requires a mass base for communist ideas.

   • In order for a communist revolution to succeed, all sections of the working class must be united — workers, students, men and women, black, white, Latino and Asian. 

   • The PLP must win working-class members in the military away from defending the bosses, which contradicts their class interests. This did not happen in France and Mexico.

With hard work, PLP can and will win our class to be on the right side of history. We, the international working class, have a world to win! Dare to struggle! Dare to win!

Bibliography:

• The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 by George Katsiaficas; (South End Press)

• The French Revolution of May 1968, by Alan Woods (Well-red Books)

• Arab Spring by Hamid Alizadeh in the journal Socialist Appeal (Issue 65 January/February 2012)

• A History of Capitalism, 1500-2000 by Michel Beaud (Monthly Review Press)

In early December a group of 30 members and friends of PLP gathered to learn about political economy, and specifically to discuss who produces all wealth and what causes crises. We also discussed the alternatives presented by the Party in Road to Revolution IV.

The majority of participants were youth; nine of them participated in the discussion for the first time. Several workers, members of the Party, presented the topics well, combining the experience of the old with the enthusiasm of the young.

We discussed that our only alternative to this racist, criminal system is to organize ourselves as a working class, as a Party to destroy it. We heard examples of how we workers generate wealth. We also learned that the future capitalism offers is imperialist war for markets and cheap labor. 

We saw a movie that illustrated the concepts of our discussion. The movie showed how the bosses use nationalism and religion as ideological tools to divide workers. Currently, liberal capitalist leaders promote and support large upheavals, like the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring, to try to resolve their global financial problems and control workers’ anger against their own oppression.

One of the comrades gave examples of the capitalist crisis and described the growing unemployment, the merging of corporations and banks, as moves towards a larger inter imperialist confrontation, which may eventually lead to World War III.

We all recommitted to continue organizing at the grassroots level for a communist revolution.

Mexico Red