Vol. 73/No. 8      March 2, 2009

As workers and farmers on the islands take to the streets with demands to protect themselves from the capitalist economic crisis, they deserve the support of working people everywhere. We should demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all French troops and police.

The French capitalists refer to Guadeloupe and Martinique as “overseas departments,” a fancy name for colonies that are also a source of their superprofits. The islands are big tourist destinations—Club Med has resorts there—and ports of call for cruise ships from around the world.

One indication of the inequality that reigns in Guadeloupe is that less than 1 percent of the population—the descendants of white French colonialists and an integral part of the French capitalist class—owns most of the wealth and land, while the overwhelming majority of working people there are Black. A similar situation exists in nearby Martinique.

Less than a half million people live in each of these island nations, some 445,000 in Guadeloupe and 400,000 in Martinique, yet tens of thousands have joined the strikes and protests. As the economic crisis of capitalism continues to spread, more and more workers around the world will follow their example.

The challenge working people face in Guadeloupe and Martinique is the same as that posed around the world: how to take power out of the hands of the ruling rich and put in place workers and farmers governments that can advance the organization of the working classes and reorganize the economy on the basis of meeting human needs, not profits.

In Guadeloupe and Martinique this fight will be intertwined with the struggle for independence from French imperialist rule.

Capitalism’s long hot winter has begun, and so has the resistance that will, in the decades ahead, lead to overturning the wages system once and for all.
 
 
Related articles:
Guadeloupe mass strikes spread to Martinique  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home