"Where Have We Been All This Time?" -the French Left and the anniversary of the Paris Commune

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article2000

<snip>

And so the march to equality shall begin. Equality with which everything begins in France — equality that will lead us to proclaim the end of capital’s privileges, the establishment of citizens’ rights in the workplace — which will make good what was left uncompleted when — as Jean Jaurès said — the great revolution "made French people kings in the city and left them serfs in the workplace" — these new workers’ rights being the rights to veto, the right to pre-empt the property of capital and set up workers’ cooperatives, the rights of requisition by the Nation when a property is deemed to be a common utility. And we shall inscribe this new right into law that there is a collective human property of basic goods, such as water and energy.

We it is who shall give its full place to the dignity of human love by extending to all couples the rights that accrue to heterosexual couples. Liberty! Liberty is what we want to advance along the road to equality. Liberty, the basic rights of the human person must be guaranteed in this constitution, the first being the right to dispose of oneself without any constraint whatsoever. We it is that shall inscribe the right to abortion in our constitution so that no one is tempted to tamper with it when threats multiply as is now the case, for the right to abortion recognizes for each woman the right to dispose of her body, which is no one else’s property.

<snip>

It is we who shall firmly establish the most absolute liberty of conscience and for that, shall decide that secularism, already inscribed in the Constitution, shall be extended without any exception to all the Republic’s territories, so that the Concordat [6] shall be repealed. And the benefit of the 1905 law shall be extended to all French lands: Polynesia, Guyana, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia, as well as Alsace and Moselle.

<snip>

It is we who will ban once and for all, thereby founding a new principle, the patenting of life forms and the private property of existence itself.

Full speech at the link.

[TBF]

1. Not just Europe, applies here too -

The people’s sovereignty, such is the great issue at stake, which from now on is going to preoccupy all of Europe — as Europe once more finds itself embarked on an enterprise founded on the same mistake as in the previous stages of its history — for Europe has been built without the peoples’ consent and without democracy. (emphasis added)

[socialist_n_TN]

2. Your bolded clause............

We're seeing that in the banker's takeover of the governments of Greece and Italy and Deity knows which country next. TOTALLY non-democratically elected leadership (dictatorship of capital in it's most blatant form) ruling the citizens of these countries for the benefit of capital and NOT the benefit of people.

This is why you can't separate the political from the economic or from the social. They are ALL intertwined and you can't reform one without reforming the other. Ergo, reform won't work. The economic rulers have to be overthrown and economic democracy installed at the same time as you overhaul the political side in order to make it more sensitive to the will of ALL of the people.