Bulletin février mars 2025 The report of the General Secretary of the CGT to the Confederal Executive Committee of February 4, entitled: " What union strategy in the face of Trump ?" challenges many CGT officials and activists to the extent that the election of Trump and his first political acts as President, if they do not fundamentally call into question the nature of the United States, mark a new stage in its development as an imperialist power. In the following text, we give our point of view on the fundamental questions raised by this report of February 4.
From the very first chapter, devoted to the " consequences of Trump's election ," it is clear that this text does not develop any class analysis of the situation in the United States. It merely raises three points:
- of the widespread conflicts of interest and especially that of Elon Musk's mission to cut federal agencies and the civil service.
- the oligarchic character of the government
- of the framework in which these transformations take place , that of the shift towards the extreme right of Russia, Argentina, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Israel, India...
If the description of the nature of US power is indeed that of big monopoly capital, without using the term, this is not a revelation. The class nature of this power in the service of the most powerful fractions of US capitalism is as old as its existence and the links of politicians with the oligarchy are just as old. All US leaders have served the interests of financial and monopoly capital and they have never ceased, Democrats and or Republicans, to fuel wars against the independence of the people, causing millions of deaths and economic and ecological devastation of unparalleled scale in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan... not to mention all the successful or aborted coups d'état that have been organized by the CIA in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia... not to mention the illegal blockade of Cuba! The bill is heavy and deserves, at the very least, that we analyze these events as manifestations of the character of a dominant power in the imperialist system. However, none of this is at all discussed in the report. To speak of an alliance between billionaires and the extreme right is to put on the same level the class that rules and decides and its agents. To characterize Trump's policy as that of the law of the strongest, in place of multilateralism, is to wipe the lid off the crimes of US imperialism and those of the dominant capitalist countries, including France. What the report says about multilateralism, which until now has ruled international relations, does not correspond in any way to the reality of the hegemonic character of the United States within imperialism: " The United States is therefore methodically calling into question the multilateralism (relative, because supervised by the major powers) built after the Second World War to guarantee peace and already very weakened by the rise of authoritarian and extreme right-wing regimes. "
Faced with what the report calls: "[the] Establishment of an extreme right-wing international ," the latter, relying on the idea that this situation benefits China: " This policy will have the consequence of discrediting the United States, which will probably benefit China, which is already in a strong position from a commercial point of view (64 countries have the United States as their main trading partner, while China is the largest trading partner for 130 countries). If China is not led by the extreme right, it is not a democratic regime today, with the questioning of many freedoms and human rights, starting with those of the Uighurs. " concludes that: " Europe is therefore the only democratic actor of weight that can assert itself on the international scene. " This statement ignores the reality of the European Union as an imperialist construction seeking to take its place in global capitalist competition and in the military framework of NATO, which, in fact, puts it in tow of the United States. According to the report, this difficulty should be overcome by a " dealignment " of Europe with the United States, which would involve lifting the German lock : " To achieve this reorientation, we must lift the German lock and free Germany from its triple dependence (on American defense, Russian gas, and Chinese exports) so that it clearly plays the game of strengthening Europe. " Given the divergence of interests among capitalists in Europe, lifting the German lock is at best wishful thinking. It fuels the idea of a federal European Union deciding general policy directions, diplomacy, and defense well beyond the sovereignty of nations. This is, moreover, what the report advocates as the goal to be achieved. Thus, to move towards this European Union, the report notes that it is necessary to arrive at: " A real common foreign policy, turned towards the global South without a hegemonic vision and based on multilateralism, respect for international law and support for democracy and human rights. " and a little further: " exit from NATO, starting with exit from the integrated command ." The contradictory nature of these two objectives is obvious. How can we envisage a common foreign policy for a capitalist conglomerate without a dominant force emerging within this conglomerate, by itself or through its privileged position in its relations with the dominant capitalist power that is the United States, and this within NATO? To ask the question is to answer it!By stating that: "Europe is...the only democratic actor of weight that can assert itself on the international scene ", the report chooses to defend an imperialist alliance against others, what is more its own imperialism and writes off its involvement in recent imperialist wars whether in the first Gulf War, in Afghanistan, in Yugoslavia, in Libya and today in Ukraine, its military operations in Africa, its unwavering support for the colonial state of Israel against the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people, its support for Morocco in its annexation of Western Sahara and the repression it carries out in its own colonies in the Antilles, in Kanaky and in the Comoros. The subject is also so sensitive for French imperialism that it reacts violently against all those who challenge this order.
At bottom, what remains of this report is the taste of a social-democratic mush that aligns itself with an even more advanced vision of the integration of capitalist Europe and which pretends to sell us this broth as that of a regained independence. Let us recall that at the beginning of the European construction, it was sold to us as that of a new democratic force, of a third way between unbridled US capitalism and the communist dictatorship . At the time, this rose-tinted story constituted the discourse of the CGT-FO, a creature of the CIA 1 to weaken the class current in France and by the CFTC 2 : but where is the CGT going? Is it enough, today, to stick to the observation of the acceleration of the liquidation of its class character and accept this as an inevitability? Certainly not! At a time when the employers, with the close complicity of their representatives in government, are throwing overboard the social conquests of the working class, creating the objective conditions for a deepening of the class struggle, we believe that it is more necessary than ever to affirm the class character of the CGT, by strengthening it everywhere in the unions and in action to defend the interests of the working class.
1 Annie Lacroix-Riz, Union splits, reformism and dominant imperialisms 1939-1949, Ed. Le temps des cerises, 2016