André Gorz passed away four days ago.
He will be remembered for many things, but for me, a story I read when I was a student will always pop out each time I hear his name mentioned:
In the 1968 Socialist Register he began his article, ‘The working class will neither unite politically nor man the barricades for a 10 percent rise in wages or 50,000 more council flats. In the foreseeable future there will be no crisis of European capitalism so dramatic as to drive the mass of workers to revolutionary general strike or armed insurrection in defence of their vital interests.’
Needless to say, few months later, the May 1968 events took place, with the biggest general strike in the history of modern Europe, including at least 10 million French workers occupying their factories, raising the red and black flags.
No one knows when the tide of events change, and revolutions most of the time take everyone by surprise, including the revolutionaries themselves.
It’s important however not to repeat the mistakes done before. It’s important not to re-invent the wheel each time a working class struggle breaks out.
It’s important we find a way to build an entity that unites the most militant sections of the workers in the industrial areas with the students in the universities, the professionals in their syndicates, and the peasants in their land that can take the fight forward.
Repression will always constitute an impediment, but it’s not impossible to overcome it, just like history showed us over and over again.
