People Before Profit blog

African nations show unity at Lisbon summit

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:34:00 +0000

News Analysis

African leaders displayed an exceptional degree of unity at the European-African summit held in Lisbon, Portugal, on Dec. 8-9. The trade issues, which prompted the first meeting of its kind in seven years, were overshadowed by European attempts to prevent the participation of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe.

Although the West has demonized Mugabe since his government’s land reform program began in the 1990s, throughout Africa he is viewed first and foremost as a hero of the anti-colonial struggle. Mugabe’s claims of interference in Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs by Great Britain, its former colonial master, by funding and advising the political opposition, resonates with many Africans who resent neocolonialism.

The European Union (EU) had to withdraw its threat to bar Mugabe from the summit after southern African heads of state threatened to stay away if he was excluded. Not coincidentally, Great Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown was the only European leader to boycott the meeting because of Mugabe’s attendance.

African heads of state also united to rebuff the EU’s attempts to force negotiation of so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) by the end of this year. Current trade deals, which expire Dec. 31, give African countries tariff-free access to the European market under World Trade Organization rules. African leaders, seeking to protect their nations’ industry and agriculture, reject obligations spelled out in the EPAs to open up their markets to foreign investment.

As the British newspaper the Guardian explained, Africans “accuse the EU of neocolonial bullying and diktat, aiming to open vulnerable African economies to predatory European businesses.” In the face of this unified African resistance, some European leaders have urged the EU not to impose tariffs, despite the looming expiration of current deals.

The solidarity exhibited on the African side is testament to the vitality of the African Union (AU). Initiated only six years ago to replace the historic but often ineffective Organization of African Unity, the AU plans to follow the direction of the EU in creating a continent-wide common market and currency.

The formation of the AU also has encouraged African heads of state to increasingly speak with a cohesive voice. Whereas in the past, individual African countries would be tempted by the capitalist powers to negotiate separate trade deals, the African leaders attending the Lisbon summit refused to be divided.

As the AU Chairman, Alpha Oumar Konaré, proclaimed at the opening session: “Africa doesn’t want charity or paternalism. We don’t want anyone doing things for us. We want to play in the global economy but with new rules.”

The backdrop to the sudden European rhetoric about equality and partnership with Africa heard at the summit is the rapid and remarkable emergence of China as a political and economic power on the continent. Only one year ago, in November 2006, nearly all the African heads of state gathered in Beijing for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit, an event marked by optimism and celebration, in stark contrast to the Lisbon meeting.

African-Chinese trade has exploded five-fold over the past half-decade to more than $50 billion last year. While the EU remains Africa’s top trade partner, “the Chinese are catching up fast,” in the words of The Economist.

Indeed, China’s role in Africa has become a topic of obsession in the corporate media, which always portrays the relationship in the most unfavorable light. The anti-China bias of the U.S. ruling class is clear in articles ranging from ongoing front-page pieces in The New York Times on Chinese investments to a frantic exposé titled “Enter China, the Giant” in July’s Vanity Fair.

What the mainstream media does not report, however, is that in many ways China is viewed by Africans as a development model. By pursuing a centrally planned, socialist economy, China has rapidly industrialized over the past several decades while lifting multitudes out of poverty and ignorance.

For African countries underdeveloped by colonialism and kept so by the commands of neoliberalism, the Chinese model — and the long-term investments, favorable loans and practical guidance offered by Beijing — is an attractive alternative. As even the Times noted, “Despite their historical ties to Africa, Europeans have found it difficult to compete with China, which finances giant infrastructure projects and offers investment without conditions.”

So, as China and Africa strengthen their relations, the EU is urgently trying to maintain its dominance in its own backyard. It is a historic irony that Lisbon has taken the lead in this effort, as Portugal was the first European country to directly trade with Africa and, only three decades ago, the last to abandon its colonies there, defeated by Marxist liberation movements.

Besides China, Africans are increasingly turning to other socialist and progressive partners — such as Venezuela, Brazil and India — for cooperation in the economic and social realms while building upon longstanding links with Cuba.

dlaumann @memphis.edu

Chilean general speaks of dirty deeds

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:29:00 +0000

News Analysis

Like a terrible figure from a recurring nightmare, former Chilean Gen. Juan Manuel Contreras has once again thrust himself into the limelight of U.S.-South America relations.

In a Dec. 3 statement on Chilean television, Contreras claimed the Sept. 21, 1976, car bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier, a foreign minister under socialist President Salvador Allende, was jointly decided upon by Chile’s military dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and U.S. Gen. Vernon Walters, the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Ronni Moffitt, Letelier’s U.S. assistant, was also killed in the blast. Her husband Michael Moffitt was injured but survived. At the time, the head of the CIA was George H.W. Bush, later president and the father of the current U.S. chief executive.

Contreras said Pinochet and Walters also jointly plotted the murder of former Chilean army chief Gen. Carlos Prats and his wife, who were killed by a car bomb in Argentina in 1974.

Contreras headed the DINA, the Chilean secret political police, from the Sept. 11, 1973, coup that overthrew Allende until 1977. He later fell out with Pinochet, whom he believes abandoned him when the dictatorship ended and investigations into the crimes of that era began to mount.

On Contreras’ watch, many opponents of the Pinochet dictatorship were hunted down and killed. The DINA’s murder spree became a multinational operation called “Operation Condor” as the dictators of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and other Latin American countries joyfully pitched in to achieve the murder of their enemies, too.

Over time, Operation Condor developed links to violent right-wing Cuban exiles (including Luis Posada Carriles, said to have been at the meeting where the Letelier assassination was planned), Italian and Croatian neo-fascists, secret NATO operatives and, of course, the CIA.

Among those killed were the former president of Bolivia, Gen. Juan Jose Torres, and over 50,000 progressive Latin Americans, including guerrillas, students, social activists, trade union leaders, politicians and academics. Many were kidnapped and then tortured to death and buried in unmarked graves, or thrown into the sea from helicopters. Several Cuban diplomats were also assassinated.

Letelier and Moffitt were murdered in the middle of Washington’s Embassy Row. At the time, both were working at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive think tank.

If Gen. Walters was involved, it would mean that a deputy of the future President George H.W. Bush had planned a brutal murder of a U.S. citizen and a former foreign official on U.S. soil. It is difficult to imagine that Walters, who died in 2002, would have done that by himself.

But the matter is not so simple, because Contreras is hardly an unimpeachable source. He has served seven years of prison time and possibly faces additional consequences for DINA’s bloody actions.

Contacted by the World, a spokesperson for the IPS pointed out that Contreras made the same claims in 2005. Frequently his accounts clash with other sources and even with his own past statements. Contreras has shown a tendency to try to shift all blame from DINA, and thus from himself, onto Pinochet and the CIA, and thus lessen his own responsibility.

Yet even if Contreras’ latest bombshell can be discounted as self-serving, the connivance of U.S. authorities in Operation Condor is absolutely clear. And very serious questions remain about Washington’s involvement in a cover-up of the Letelier-Moffitt murders.

When DINA originally tried to send assassins to Washington, the U.S. ambassador in Chile found out about it and managed to get their visas blocked. But even though Washington officials knew an assassination plan was afoot, they did not warn Letelier, nor did they do much of anything to prevent future attempts, and the head of the assassination team, Michael Townley, was able to get into the U.S. with surprising ease.

In the early 1970s, relatively progressive governments ruled several Latin American countries. Henry Kissinger, then President Nixon’s national security adviser, and other top U.S. officials had sworn to put a stop to this, and showed no reluctance whatsoever to work closely with people with very bloody hands.

Today, there is a similar wave of political change bringing progressive democratic governments to power in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and elsewhere. Let’s make sure history does not repeat itself.

On the road again: Challenges and opportunities in the 2008 elections

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:00:00 +0000

Not every struggle carries the same political significance. Some leave little trace on the political landscape; others rearrange it extensively.

The decisive defeat of the Republican Party next year falls into the latter category. Much like the elections of 1936 and 1964 where Democrats won in a landslide, a similar Democratic victory next year will alter the political landscape in a positive direction and give new energy, confidence, and hope to the labor-led people’s movement, thereby setting the stage for progressive and radical reforms.

What is more, the defeat of the right will weaken not only the most reactionary section of the capitalist class — it will weaken the capitalist class as a whole.

So these elections cannot and should not be reduced to simply a contest between Republicans and Democrats, or between the two wings of the ruling class, one reactionary, the other more moderate and realistic.

Such an analysis misses what is essential: The 2008 elections are the main arena of the class struggle in the near term and depending on their outcome could greatly reshape the terrain of struggle for years to come in favor of the working class and its allies.

While Communists fully support militant and broad expressions of solidarity in other arenas of struggle, such expressions will be successful only to the degree that they are tightly tethered to the struggle to decisively defeat the right in next year’s election.

2008 elections: eye of the needle

Will a Democratic Party sweep solve every social problem? By no means. Why would anyone think so? But it will allow the labor-led people’s movement to fight on far more favorable ground going forward.

Just as there is no road to socialism that bypasses the anti-corporate stage, there is no path to a direct confrontation with the giant corporations and their political sponsors that bypasses the 2008 elections. They are the eye of the needle through which the people’s movement has to pass in order to reach and then march down the road of broad political, economic and social advance.

Perhaps this is too stiff a political construction for some, but I believe that if we have learned anything from the 20th century it is that the class struggle goes through different phases and stages, and that the movement ignores this at its own peril.

Diverse coalition of forces

We should not recoil at the thought that the coalition to defeat the right will include heterogeneous forces. There are no pure forms of struggle at any stage of the political process. The sooner the left and progressive movement learns that, the better.

Any mass movement contains varied tendencies and trends. A common political platform doesn’t mean a singularity of political outlook. Indeed, in a broad, multi-class political coalition, relations will be contested as well as cooperative. Each component will promote its views and attempt to leave its imprint on the overall struggle, while not rupturing the unity of the larger coalition. And this is more so as the movement gains in scope and influence. Haven’t we seen this in the peace movement?

Struggle for unity, an art and science

Thus, the struggle for unity in its multiple forms is as much an art as it is a science, or maybe, more an art than a science. Whatever the case, it is something that all of us in the movement have to master. And the coming elections will provide a practical laboratory to perfect this, for a diverse mixture of political forces is gathering to defeat the right and each of them bring their own distinct views and resources.

From the standpoint of the progressive and left movement, the most vexing element in this mixture is the Democratic Party, which, as we know, is a class-based party. It is incapable of being consistently democratic; it discourages the independent initiative of the people; it resists efforts to heavily trample on capital’s profit imperatives; and while it makes concessions to the people, it tries to limit them.

In next year’s elections, the Democratic Party will attempt to frame the scope and substance of the political discourse and agenda, not to mention define the role and influence of grassroots and people’s organizations on the election process. At the same time, it is the only election instrument that is capable of defeating the extreme right at this moment in the electoral arena.

While we wish there existed an independent and powerful political party with leadership and support from the working class and its organized sector, the racially oppressed, women, youth, and other social movements (all of which comprise the labor-led people’s movement), there is not, and we have no choice but to live with this reality for now.

So what should be our concrete attitude to the Democratic Party in the upcoming election?

On the one hand, we should not fall into the trap of hurling equal doses of abuse on both parties, or of damning the Democratic candidates with the faintest of praise, or of acting as if it doesn’t matter who wins.

On the other hand, we should not hesitate to criticize the Democratic Party and its candidates. But it should be done within the framework of our strategic task of defeating the right. And it should be done in such a way that it gives those candidates space to move in a progressive direction.

Frankly speaking, I never subscribed to the notion, embraced by too many on the left, that people have illusions in the Democratic Party, and that a new party would emerge if only we were able to dissipate these illusions. Such thinking oversimplifies a very complicated problem.

Who will leave an imprint?

Vladimir Lenin once argued against the idea that a “bourgeois revolution is a revolution which is only of interest to the bourgeoisie.” By the same token, we can argue that the defeat of the right at the polls next year is not only to the advantage of the Democratic Party and to the section of the capitalist class it represents, but also to the advantage of the labor-led people’s movement. To acknowledge one doesn’t deny the validity of the other.

In fact, I would go a step further, and say that a decisive (as compared to a more limited) victory will be of more advantage to the working class and people’s movement than to the sections of the capitalist class that support the Democratic Party.

Which begs the question: what constitutes a decisive victory? A decisive victory would mean a shift in the balance of forces in Congress and the country is such a way that the labor-led people’s movement is positioned to go on the offensive in 2009 and beyond.

For that to happen, three conditions have to be met.

First, there will have to be a Democratic Party landslide at the Presidential and Congressional levels. Second, it will be particularly important to increase the number of progressive members of Congress.

Lastly and most importantly, the labor led people’s movement — not the Democratic Party, not Wall Street — must leave, or, more accurately, impose its imprint on the election process. Admittedly, because the working class and its allies don’t have their own political party, this won’t be easy. But it would be wrong to infer from this that the labor-led people’s movement has virtually no political space and leverage to leave their clear and unmistakable imprint on the election, its outcome, and its aftermath.

We should not forget that the boundaries of politics and democracy in a capitalist social formation, and even in one in which the working class doesn’t have its own political party, are malleable, elastic, and can be stretched to include radical reforms and new configurations of political power. What those boundaries are, however, can’t be answered abstractly, but depend on the balance of forces, on which forces leave their mark on the political process, and on unforeseen events and contingencies of all kinds.

Vigorous participation is necessary

Thus, the labor-led people’s coalition —and Communists as a current within that coalition — must energetically participate in every phase of the election process. It must give substance to the national dialogue. It must be a major factor in the primaries, with an eye to electing the most progressive candidates. It must shape the political platform of the Democratic Party and its candidates. It must reach, register and educate new and stay-at-home voters. It must unrelentingly expose the reactionary positions of the Republican candidates. It must guarantee a maximum voter turnout. And it must define the political mandate and agenda in the election’s aftermath.

In doing this, the movement will position itself to qualitatively reshape the political terrain to its advantage and to take another critical step on the transition to a new stage of struggle. At this moment, this is the essence of political independence. A sweeping defeat of the right will give labor and its allies far more political leverage and independence than they have had for a long, long time.

Sam Webb is the national chair of the Communist Party USA. This article is an edited excerpt from “On the Road Again,” a report to a recent meeting of the CPUSA’s National Committee. The full text is available at .

Religion hits the Iowa race

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 09:04:00 +0000

It seems to be a whole new race for both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa. This is particularly true for the Republican candidates, who were in a lackluster campaign until Romney, the leader of the pack, heard footsteps drawing nearer, and looking behind, saw Huckabee closing on him. From near the back of the pack Huckabee had passed all those ahead of him, and not only came alongside, but actually nosed ahead by a couple of points. Romney had to do something to stop this momentum that could clearly turn into a rout.

He and the news media assumed that since the challenger for front runner is a former Southern Baptist minister, while Romney himself is a Mormon, the Republicans’ hardcore constituency of Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists must be biased against Romney’s Mormon religion.

This was not a bad assumption, since the Christian right in general does not consider Mormons to be Christian, regardless of how Mormons identify themselves. Mormons do not consider the Bible to be “without error or contradiction” as do evangelicals and fundamentalists. Secondly, the Christian right points out that the Mormon Church has put the Book of Mormon with its prophesies by Joseph Smith, the church’s “latter day saint” founder, on equal footing with the Old and New Testaments.

In a speech reminiscent of Kennedy’s 1960 speech aimed at overcoming bias against his candidacy as a Roman Catholic, Romney declared, “When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God.” He also implied common ground with his core constituency by adding, “There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation’s founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessing of the Creator.” When asked about atheists and agnostics, he added that some people not of faith are also moral.

Though these words may have assuaged the misgivings of a few, polls taken afterward saw Huckabee widen his lead to 39 points to Romney’s 17, with others in the pack far behind. The speech appeared to consolidate the conservative religious base behind Huckabee.

However, there are other factors that may weigh as heavily in the scales as religious bias. Leading up to the startling change in the lead of the two candidates, their differing appearance in debates left a marked impression on Iowans. Romney stood out as decisive and presidential, but too sure of himself by half. Like an arrogant CEO with unlimited financial resources, he would “stay the course,” but with surer leadership. His agenda and demeanor were of someone too dangerous to trust with power.

Huckabee on the other hand looked a little frumpy, but genuine and with a sense of humor that allowed him to poke fun at himself. With a kind of Will Rogers “down home” charisma, he came across as thoughtful, fair and kindly, not strident or fanatical. He didn’t need to defend himself as a Southern Baptist preacher to the religious base of the party, yet had no air of unctuous piety or self-righteousness that would put off others. However, with a “stay the course” agenda not unlike Romney’s, Huckabee is really more dangerous. His demeanor inspires trust, not just aimed to his own constituency, but to the large number of independent voters and “Reagan Democrats.” With the right running mate he could have the potential to split organized labor’s vote and take away not just Catholic conservatives, but also moderates.

The 2008 election has the possibility of being a real horserace, and cannot be taken for granted!

Faced with this new turn of events, Democrats will need to come out of the caucuses and primaries united and able to reach out to the missing middle of the electorate. In this election, moderate and progressive Christians, Jews and Muslims have a particularly critical role to play. They recognize that this country and world are incredibly diverse and that we must have genuine mutual respect and tolerance in order to live together on this earth. Without it we could end up destroying ourselves in wars of religion and environmental devastation.

Moderate and progressive religious groups, in addition to nonreligious groups, can together speak with conviction of our secular political framework as a necessary arena in which to seek the common good. We need to put aside our differences and thoughtfully listen to a nation that has rejected endless wars, abhors torture and undermining of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and mourns the resultant loss of hope and community. A better world is possible, and everyone knows it. Most of us know that it won’t happen by “staying the course.” We need to come together, listen to the hurts, speak to the hopes, and make it happen together!

Gil Dawes is a Methodist minister and social justice activist in Iowa.

Just the tip of the iceberg: a response to Al Gores Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:58:00 +0000

With the just completed Bali conference, the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, special reports in many newspapers and magazines, demonstrations in 50 countries on global warming, the new Australian government signing on to the Kyoto Accord, and many other events, the focus of the world’s attention is shifting to the need to decrease carbon dioxide emissions. Alongside and driving this shift is a decisive shift in world public opinion. This will propel changes in elections, government policies and media coverage for years to come.

However, the basic environmental problem humanity faces is not only global warming. Global warming is but a symptom, a profound symptom to be sure, of the imbalance in the relationship between human activity and the nature on which we depend. This is the crisis of our times, of which global warming is but one part.

Global climate change is throwing into relief other looming crises. As climate change causes shifts in weather patterns, rainfall patterns and seasons, that also highlights serious problems with the way we do agriculture. When we depend on irrigation systems for increasing agricultural production, we base our ability to grow food on the stability of those water systems. Melting glaciers, rampant development in water-stressed regions, overtapped underground aquifers and rainforest destruction are all turning the water on which our food depends into threatened resources. When we don’t have enough water in the right places to grow the food we are used to, how will we feed ourselves?

When we increase agricultural output by an over-reliance on chemical fertilizers, that puts one more burden on the nonrenewable oil that is used to produce the fertilizer. And in the process, unnecessary carbon dioxide is released. What the fertilizer does is enable us to speed up the rate at which we use up the natural ability of the soil to grow food. We turn the soil into an addict, requiring ever-larger doses of fertilizer to get the same results.

Agriculture is just one example of the problems humanity faces due to our imbalance with nature. Oil and natural gas depletion, industrial pollution, the buildup everywhere in the world of persistent organic pollutants (known as “pops” — many of which negatively affect the human reproductive system), rapid desertification, increased extreme weather events and massive amounts of waste can all be linked to and added to global climate change as examples of how humanity is helping to degrade and stress the ability of nature to support us.

It is not just humanity in general, though, that is causing the problem. It is capitalism. Capitalism, in addition to its exploitation of human labor, relies on ever-expanding markets, ever-expanding production of commodities, ever-expanding development and ever-expanding private profit, all of which are root causes of the imbalance with nature. Short-term, shortsighted profit as the sole measure of value underlies many of the crises which affect humanity as a whole. Increasing capitalist globalization in part means a huge increase in the transport of goods, which results in huge increases in the burning of fossil fuels to run the ships, trucks and airplanes that transport globalized commodities.

We most certainly have to cut carbon dioxide emissions, and fast. Global climate change is an escalating challenge. But it is not the only thing we have to work on.

We need agricultural production systems that don’t rely on excess water consumption, chemical fertilizers or transporting agricultural goods many thousands of miles. We need transportation systems that are much more efficient (trains rather than trucks, for example), and that don’t substitute for local production and distribution. We need industrial production that doesn’t waste energy, doesn’t produce massive amounts of waste, and utilizes solar energy (many forms of renewable energy come from the power of the sun in one form or another — solar, wind, wave, biomass and others).

Are goods and food distributed justly? Are all humans provided with health care? Is there sufficient safe water for everyone? It is not good enough that there is sufficient food on average, there has to be sufficient food for everyone.

Justice, peace, environmental sustainability, world health, all require socialist planning, cooperation and democratic decision-making. We need an economic system that measures all value by human need rather than individual profit.

Marc Brodine (marcbrodine @inlandnet.com) is chair of the Washington State Communist Party and co-authored the second edition of the CPUSA environmental program, “People and Nature Before Profits.”

French youth revolt spotlights deep inequities

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:33:00 +0000

News Analysis

PARIS — Two years have passed since the “insurrection of the suburbs” of working-class and immigrant youth in this city’s impoverished outskirts. The violent rebellion of 2005, which included young people setting fire to thousands of automobiles and engaging in street battles with the police, transfixed the nation for nearly three weeks.

At the time, Nicolas Sarkozy was minister of the interior under President Jacques Chirac. Sarkozy said he wanted “to clean with high-pressure water hoses the suburbs of the rabble [or ‘scum’] who pollute them.”

His provocative remarks were received by the inhabitants of these districts as the insults they were intended to be, but also as a symbol of hatred directed at the poor in general. His words were backed by thousands of police armed with truncheons and tear gas, deployed under a rare “state of emergency.”

When Sarkozy was elected president in 2007 after campaigning on a hard-line, anti-social-entitlements platform, one could only expect that the situation would worsen. Much of France understood this and consequently considered the latest explosion, which began on Nov. 25, as inevitable.

The new disturbances erupted after two youth of African descent, ages 15 and 16, were killed while riding a motorcycle in the city of Villiers-le-Bel. The accident involved a police car.

The suspicious circumstances surrounding the collision and the teens’ deaths, and the hurry of the police to deny all responsibility for the accident help explain why the inhabitants of the area rose up. Observers said that even ordinarily “quiet” people went out into the streets to demonstrate “against injustice.”

Facing reluctance by the authorities to open an investigation into the incident, and, simultaneously, seeing an increase in repression directed against the area’s youth, people became angry and the situation quickly degenerated. Young people, many with hoods over their heads, burned garbage bins, cars and stores.

More than a thousand members of the police force, supported by high-tech helicopters, were mobilized to suppress the rebellion in the Villiers-le-Bel and its neighborhoods — in Sarcelles, Garges-lès-Gonesse, Goussainville, Cergy-Pontoise, as well as in more distant municipalities of other departments of the Parisian region.

Police responded to the youth with tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and paint guns, the latter to better identify them for subsequent arrest. But hundreds of young people continued to burn police cars and attack police stations with Molotov cocktails, sometimes using garbage-can lids as shields.

In their revolt against the established order, the young people focused their attacks on private property, often setting fire to it. They refrained from attacking people — except for the police force. In this connection there was a worrying change compared to the rebellion of November 2005: the level of aggressiveness toward the police was up sharply and included, in some cases, the use of firearms.

For three nights, several districts remained totally inaccessible to the police. As in 2005, the disorders took place only in or near the suburbs where the poorest families are trapped in towers and walls of concrete-slab housing.

While there is no figure for the number of young people who were injured, around 150 police officers were wounded in the clashes, some of them seriously. Some journalists were also injured in the fray.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the families of the deceased teenagers have announced they are filing a lawsuit to find out the truth about what happened to them.

The repression that is expected to come down on the arrested youths will no doubt be even more severe than it was in 2005, with summary sentences at the first court appearances and disproportionately harsh punishment, aggravated by the racism of the coupon-clipping French elite currently in power.

Without condoning the gratuitous violence, one has to observe that capitalist society — particularly under today’s harsh regime of neoliberalism — continues to offer nothing to its working-class youth: neither decent housing, nor education leading to stable employment, nor hope of social advancement, nor recognition.

The most tangible connection that many young people have with the capitalist state consists of being stopped, questioned and searched by the police, often in a brutal or humiliating way.

Even if the tactics of these young people in revolt do cause concern, the political left must see them as allies for the necessary social and democratic transformation of France — and not just a voting bloc in the next election.

Rémy Herrera is a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research and teaches at the University of Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne.