Mass struggles and campaigns on economic or political issues

Jose Maria Sison

Note by Julieta de Lima:

It is with deepest grief that I have to be the one to issue my husband’s last and final message to the revolutionary forces and the people on the 54th anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines. He started discussing with me the outline and writing of the message a month ago when he just got discharged from the hospital at his second confinement in November and just before the start of his third and last confinement on November 28. He wrote the first draft on paper, which I keyed in to the computer and then he reread and corrected it twice to produce this final draft below. Some fifteen or so minutes before Joma took his last breath, he we was still talking about ensuring the revolution would win victory and advancing to socialism. With his last thoughts he remained optimistic about the Filipino people whom he served with utmost determination.

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PRISM received this emailed statement by a regular reader, who requested anonymity and will temporarily go by the initials “OC”, in response to the 13 November 2020 editorial of the Tribune of the People (https://tribuneofthepeople.news/2020/11/13/to-celebrate-bidens-victory-is-incompatible-with-anti-imperialism-an-open-letter-to-the-communist-party-of-the-philippines/).

The TOTP editorial, in the form of an “open letter” to the Communist Party of the Philippines, criticizes the CPP for its statement on the recent electoral victory of Joe Biden over incumbent US President Trump. The CPP statement, entitled “On the defeat of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections,” is posted on https://cpp.ph/statements/on-the-defeat-of-donald-trump-in-the-us-presidential-elections/ .

We decided to publish Contributor “OC”s” response here in the spirit of pursuing discussions on strategy and tactics of the revolutionary mass movement as applied to various countries and as seen from the framework of Marxism-Leninism and Maoist theories on people’s war.

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US police brutality

This is Part 1 of a series of commentaries by PRISM editors and Art Belisario on the ongoing events and trends in the U.S. around the issue of racist violence by state forces and the people’s massive protest actions in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdowns, and socio-economic crisis.

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ILPS protest march

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), in a statement by its chairman Len Cooper, expressed solidarity with the people of the United States and millions of sympathizers worldwide in condemning the latest murders of black people at the hands of the U.S. police forces. The statement, updated on 4 June and circulated in other online sites and via email, emphasized that the same imperialist state that wields the weapons of criminal violence against its own citizens also uses the same weapons—directly or indirectly—against many peoples of the world.

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France's yellow vest movement

Professor Jose Maria Sison, chairperson of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), favorably compares France’s yellow vest movement “with the May 1968 mass protests in France, especially with regard to militancy and opposition to the capitalist establishment.” He says that the yellow-vest protestors “enjoy the support of the broad masses of the people” who condemn French neoliberal banker turned president Emmanuel Macron. While the movement “suffers from the same excessively horizontalist populist character” and the lack of revolutionary proletarian leadership, Sison emphasizes that the “yellow vest movement is welcome and praiseworthy for taking up the just grievances of the working class and the middle class and exposing the grave ills of the oppressive and exploitative capitalist ruling system.” Full text of the ILPS chairperson’s statement follows.

On the yellow vest movement in France


By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International League of Peoples’ Struggle
March 19, 2019

On 17 November 2018, 300,000 people of the working class and the middle class mainly from the suburban and rural areas of France rose up in militant mass demonstrations to protest the fuel tax hike and rising fuel prices. Characteristically, they wore the yellow vest to signal their economic and social distress. They had been inspired by an online petition signed by almost one million people.

Eighteen mass demonstrations, centered in Paris and carried out nationwide, broke out up to the most recent one of March 16, 2019 dubbed as “The Ultimatum”. The just demands of the yellow vest movement have expanded from the lowering of fuel taxes to the reintroduction of the solidarity tax on wealth, increase of the minimum wage, expansion of social services, the implementation of citizen’s initiative referendums and the resignation of President Macron and his regime.

The Macron regime has responded with a heavy hand by launching physical attacks by the police on the demonstrators with the use of water cannons, tear gas grenades, flash balls and baton charges. It is but just that the demonstrators have fought back with the use of sticks, cobblestones, car blockades, control of roads and roundabouts, destruction of traffic surveillance cameras, the burning of the expensive cars of the big bourgeois and mass entries to the upper class restaurants and shops.

The yellow vest demonstrators enjoy the support of the broad masses of the people who condemn Macron, the investment banker turned president, as the promoter and enforcer of the neoliberal policy which favors the big bourgeoisie and its best-paid executives at the expense of the workers and the rural people. They are enraged by the use of police violence during mass actions and by the false promises made by Macron before and after every mass action.

The yellow vest movement has influenced similar mass movements in Europe and elsewhere in the world, whose participants wear the yellow vest and raise demands against the tax and other exploitative policies of the big bourgeois government. Most of the influenced movements have a benign and progressive character directed against the exploitative policies of bourgeois governments. But a few are directed against migrant workers and others unrelated to the monopoly bourgeoisie.

The yellow vest movement may be favorably compared with the May 1968 mass protests in France, especially with regard to militancy and opposition to the capitalist establishment. But it suffers from the same excessively horizontalist populist character and the lack of leadership from a revolutionary party of the proletariat. It may also be compared with the Occupy Movement of recent memory, which enjoyed popular support for a certain period. But this fizzled out for lack of leadership from a revolutionary party of the proletariat.

At any rate, such a phenomenon as the yellow vest movement is welcome and praiseworthy for taking up the just grievances of the working class and the middle class and exposing the grave ills of the oppressive and exploitative capitalist ruling system. It shows that there is a wide and deepgoing mass base of social discontent and resistance that the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party of the proletariat can avail of in winning the battle for democracy and aiming for the socialist revolution.###

Source URL: https://josemariasison.org/on-the-yellow-vest-movement-in-france/