general strike in the Grand Duchy. from the April 13 issue of Klassenkampf. The translation is by IV. by Robert MERTZIG
Forty thousand demonstrators on Eighty thousand strikers on April 5! Not in decades has Luxembourg seen anything like this mobilization of trade unions, and the other working-class organizations.
The bourgeoisie and its government have been thrown on the defensive. Such massive protest by the workers against the direct attacks of the bosses and the bourgeois government has put all social and political questions on a
The reformist trade unions moved late, but not yet too late. They were stuck in class collaboration, tripartite negotiations among partners, the bosses, the government, and labor). Finally the pressure of a more and more angry rank and file forced them to take the initiative for a national mob-
In very broad, the broadest, sections of the working people, this day of action triggered basic class retlexes. It led to mithe beginnings of new forms of organization, and confrontations with the hierarchy, the bosses, and the government.
The massive pickets, occupations of border crossings, occupations of highways, massive actions against the strikebreaking intimidation and provocations of the government mafia expressed an unsuspected combativity.
The special role that the unions play as the organizing force of the protheir interests again become clear. the government, the state apparatus, and the police as the organizing force of capital against the working class was also clear, in many strike-breaking attacks and provocations.
In other words, after many years of growing conflict between capital and labor, the class struggle has once again come out into the open as a clear fact of everyday life.
For years, the reformist classcollaborationist policy conducted by the Labor Party helped to get the workers to and austerity. That was the logic of the tripartite commissions. They helped the bosses and their government systematically shift the costs of the capitalist crisis onto the shoulders of the workers.
The turn by the trade-union leaders to mobilization and the massive response of the workers shows the falseness of the tripartite notion, like any class collabora-
So, it is essential to reject any such attempts by the bourgeoisie and the government to tie the hands of the workers. The working class has shown its power. Its organizations and parties must now join in a united front and make a definitive break from class collaboration, tripartite commissions, and compromises
The bourgeois coalition had decided beforehand to go for double or
On the very day of the strike, it rammed its miserable austerity program through the parliament.
In the face of the direct democracy that was expressed clearly takably on the streets of Luxembourg city April 5, forty-one reactionary backhiding behind cops and riot police, decided to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. And they did so, of course, in the name of the
The task of the workers movement is now to move in a unified and decisive way to take advantage of the mass antagonism to the government. In the factores and the unions, there must be demo cratic and open discussion about more mobilizations, more militant actions.
The reactionary gentlemen are going to push more and more austerity meacapitalists want more, a lot more, and the government is their servant.
The combativity of the workers must not be allowed to flag or to be used by the union leaders simply as a card in negotiations. What is on the agenda now is not some illusory game in parliament (as the CP proposes since it has no general political alternative). It is not an atomization of the concentrated power of the workers movement in a referendum. What is on the agenda is to drive the bourgeois coalition from office! A united front of the trade unions and all the workers parties must focus in a united and uncompromising way on this target. This is the only way to force the capitalists and their stooges to retreat from their austerity projects.