(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #246 - Urban folder:
Urban Struggles toward new life (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
In a context of struggle of low intensity classes in the workplace, and increasing housing
insecurity, city, place extortion of surplus value at the expense of the popular classes,
can be a struggle to field potential. ---- The numbers are staggering: nearly 10 million
people in France are affected by the housing crisis[1]. About 3.5 million people are
poorly housed (141,500 being downright homeless), 1.25 million can not pay their rent, 15%
of households experiencing fuel poverty. At the same time - therefore? - This sordid
observation, there is a rise of so-called urban struggles. And these are not confined to
housing, but questioning wider development of public space, law enforcement, and imposed
unnecessary large projects, and go up to denounce the social and economic insecurity broadly.
The city, a diverse and productive space
? However, the term "urban" is adequate? The expansion of urbanization gradually abolish
the distinction between town and country, and that today more than 80% of French people
living in an urban area[2]. Urban areas are actually a mosaic of heterogeneous spaces, in
appearance as in their social composition, nested in unequal interdependent relationships.
Ideally it should, according to the geographer David Harvey[3], speak of "struggles
against the generation of uneven geographical development". But for the sake of
efficiency, we prefer to use the terms of "urban struggles," or of "struggles for the
right to the city". The latter concept is defined broadly as the right to produce the
city, collectively, for the purpose of reclaiming and emancipation. These struggles are
carrying a huge potential, as long forsook the traditional left, and even fought this type
of mobilization it considered "petty bourgeois"[4].
In the years 1960-1970, the PCF disparaged the nascent opposition-bulldozers renovations
in old city centers, taxing of "aclassisme" neighborhood committees who questioned how the
urban reno vation was conducted. Yet, like industrial goods, the city is herself a product
and a source of value, and thus the field of expression of the class struggle. The bus
driver to the garbage man, through the mass of disparate service and maintenance employees
for businesses or population, tens of thousands of workers involved in the manufacture of
the city and its operation, maintenance of infrastructure for traffic and fixing of
capital flows. These workers are often employed in precarious status, are an essential
component of the production value, without being attached to a defined place of
production. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels fall within the exploitation of
workers do not stop at the gates of the factory and that the wages of these is subject to
multiple grabs, including homeowners.
To the extent that the class struggle is not confined to the workplace, the organization
of workers, precarious or not, should not confine it. Trade unions and other collective
best interest to grow out of the strict framework of the company, invest - weaving the
territory. The continued increase in precariat grows in this direction. Temporary or
part-time, alternating periods of employment and periods of unemployment, the growing wage
configuration leaves little material and psychological opportunities for interested es to
integrate into a working collective, let alone to a trade union. Yet these precarious
workers do belong to a territory, an area of production and consumption. It is on this
basis that the trade unions, through local unions or precarious collective can organize to
converge the demands and aspirations of this growing body of single workers. Like the
tenants unions of the early twentieth century, inspired by the revolutionary
syndicalism[5] reinvest tenant associations or revitalize existing neighborhood committees
can be an attractive prospect according to local situations.
Territorial and urban reorganization
In any case, given the restructuring of wage labor, the revolutionary left has to
integrate its social strategy to transform the issue of territorial and urban
reorganization. To sketch a strategic conclusion, we quote once again the geographer David
Harvey, who "either we decide to put us in mourning the possibility of revolution, or we
change our conception of the proletariat to include unorganized hordes of producers
urbanization which we agree to explore the power and singular revolutionary capabilities "[6].
Julien (AL Alsace)
[1] Report 2014 of the Fondation Abb? Pierre.
[2] According to INSEE, an urban area is "a set of common, in one piece and without
enclave, consisting of an urban center (Urban) of more than 10 000 jobs and by commuter
belts which at least 40% of the resident population in employment works in the center or
in mass attracted by it. "
[3] David Harvey, Capitalism against the Right to the City , ed. Amsterdam, 2013.
[4] Fran?ois Madore, social segregation and housing , PUR, 2004.
[5] The Union of Tenants in 1911-1912, led by Georges Cochon; then confederal Union of
Tenants in the 1920s.
[6] David Harvey, op. cit.
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