France: Georges Abdallah free and triumphant in Beirut: what lessons can be learned from the victory?

Hereby we share an unofficial translation of the article by La Cause du Peuple:

With his disheveled hair, red t-shirt and raised fist, nothing in Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s attitude upon his arrival in Lebanon would suggest that this tireless fighter had just spent more than 40 years behind the bars of French imperialism.

With his well-known modesty and the enthusiasm of an activist, he delivered a speech honoring the Palestinian resistance and calling for the mobilization of Arabs from all countries against the genocide in Gaza.

It is a victory, a triumph, not that of bourgeois justice, but of the popular mobilization that reversed the balance of power and led, this time, to his release. It must be remembered that from a closed case, which only interested a handful of activists at the beginning of the 21st century, the mobilization for Georges Ibrahim Abdallah reinitiated by the Collective for his release and then led masterfully by the Unitary Campaign, taking advantage of the scale of the national and international mobilization for Palestine since October 7, 2023, has developed through thousands of anonymous actions, small or large gatherings, demonstrations in front of the Lannemezan prison, etc. over many long years. It culminated in the large national demonstrations in Paris in the last 12 months, bringing together several thousand people and up to 15,000 on June 14.

We wrote in January, before all this unfolding:

“Victory or victory!”

This is a slogan that our comrade Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, imprisoned for 40 years in French jails, did not discover yesterday. He chanted it behind bars, and he had it in mind long before his arrest, he who gave his life to human emancipation, which for him meant: freedom for Lebanon and Palestine, down with imperialism! And now, it is a reality.

[…]

There you have it, take note, enemies and false allies of the workers’ movement: this is the real balance of power! It is not just about sitting down in a general assembly, organizing a slow-motion strike or a funeral march from point A to point B in a city. It is the union and general mobilization of broad and varied sections of the masses toward a specific objective; with constantly renewed means, which associate the long and arduous work of a Unitary Campaign with the explosion and audacity of blockade actions, combative demonstrations and multiple connections whether with Palestine, the unions or the neighborhoods. This is what a battle plan is!

[…]

Our victories are their defeats: why should we be afraid to say that we are fighting to win? We are optimistic precisely because we do not spend our time scrutinizing the reaction, we celebrate the successes of the masses, our successes, from the smallest in the neighborhoods where heating is being installed, to the most historic ones like the popular mobilization for Georges Abdallah.

The defeatists of the workers’ movement will have to get used to the fact that around them, in all meetings and actions, those who are not afraid of victory will emerge with their heads held high. Those for whom victory is not a mirage but a necessity, to escape poverty, to transform the world by doing much more than freeing the oldest political prisoner in Europe. The wind that is blowing is that of historical times: it is the strategic offensive throughout the world and in France too, we feel this storm blowing. Let us welcome it: it is that of the oppressed peoples of the entire world who cry out to us: victory or victory!

These words resonate today in the release of our comrade. What lessons can we learn from them?

On the anti-imperialist struggle

The release of Georges Abdallah is part of the Palestinian struggle and, more generally, of the anti-imperialist struggle on a European and global scale.

It is in this sense that international mobilization has taken place in dozens of countries around the Mediterranean and beyond. In 2018, during the June demonstration in Paris, a red procession set off with activists from Italy, Germany, Norway, Austria, and even Ireland. At the time, this was already a fervent demonstration of proletarian internationalism.

The peoples of the world, whether oppressed or directly in the heart of the imperialist metropolises, need to unite in a new international anti-imperialist organization to amplify and direct their struggle, conduct joint campaigns and organize mobilization in all countries as a spearhead against imperialism and reaction.

The potential is enormous: since 2023, tens of millions of Arab masses, hundreds of millions of masses around the world, have become politicized and mobilized in favor of the struggle of the Palestinian people and against the genocidal plans of the imperialist powers, led by the US, and their bridgehead in the Middle East, Israel.

And beyond that, it is the only way to have an international movement that allows us to lead campaigns around, for example, the struggle of the Kurdish people, the peasant and anti-imperialist struggles in Latin America, the struggle of the peoples of Africa against the imperialist chain and the balkanization of their countries by militias and groups armed by this or that power or proxy for the benefit of the big monopolies of the imperialist powers.

The release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah shows a simple, individual, small-scale example of the immense victories that await an anti-imperialist movement truly connected to the oppressed masses. And the place of imperialist countries, like France, and the anti-imperialist forces within them, is not in the background, but essential to strike the beast where it is found, that is, in our own capitals, “our” headquarters, “our” institutions. This is the first lesson.

On the struggle for revolutionary political prisoners

Then, these years of mobilization for a revolutionary political prisoner in France have taught us a lot, both in practice and in the direction of a movement for prisoners. While repression is intensifying against anyone who organizes and dares to “open it up,” as we analyzed in our last issue, while recently a movement of prisoners (and it doesn’t matter if they are linked to banditry) attacked prisons and the state directly for prisoners’ rights; while the leaders of the Kanak people were kept in detention for months without reason; it is clear that Georges Abdallah was not the only political prisoner in French prisons.

Every movement, such as the Yellow Vests or the June 2023 revolts, now has its share of convicts, thousands of people who have been imprisoned for acts, generally of agitation, and who receive no outside support.

It is clear that the need for a Red Aid will gradually resurface as the revolutionary movement and popular mobilizations experience their share of arrests and prisoners. That is to say, an organization that takes care of the link between the inside and the outside, that helps those who “return,” that organizes within prisons and that supports family, friends and loved ones in general. It is a historical component of the international and French workers’ movement, born as Red Aid in 1931 and later becoming Popular Aid, then recreated in 1970 by revolutionary militants, former Francs-Tireurs and Partisans and participants in the Spanish Civil War.

But such an organization and such a movement will not be able to carry out its mission without integrating into a general revolutionary movement, which requires the reconstitution of the Communist Party of France, which will certainly be able to generate such an organization when the need arises. Thus, to the activists and militants who have worked for years for the release of Georges Abdallah, we say not to stop there, we must persist in the Alert campaign to defend the life of Georges in Lebanon, and above all it is time to raise ourselves the flag that Georges never lowered, it is not enough to fight for revolutionary political prisoners, we must develop the path towards the Socialist Revolution in France by tackling the fundamental tasks that face us. This is the second lesson.

On popular mobilizations

Finally, it is impossible to end without mentioning popular mobilizations. How many of us have taken to the streets in our hundreds, thousands, millions for this or that demand, this or that cause, without being able to cry victory? The brilliant liberation of Georges Abdallah has finally allowed us to realize (for those who doubted) that mobilization can lead to victory and is neither vain nor performative.

It is obvious that the popular masses are not fighting to lose, nor for pleasure. They are fighting for their existence, that is to say, to win, and it is therefore normal that a part of the masses, the least mobilized, could have said to themselves “what’s the point of demonstrating, putting up posters, distributing leaflets… it won’t change anything.” But today, the victory of the mobilization for Georges Abdallah shows that the wind is blowing in the other direction, that it is time to once again fight for victory, to win, and not just to “not lose” our social gains.

In addition to this, the popular mobilization for Georges Abdallah was not spontaneous, it was organized, the intensive and laborious work of a diligent Unitary Campaign, made up of thousands of meetings, initiatives that flourished in dozens of cities in France and countries. When we celebrate the liberation of Georges with the Campaign, we must not forget that we are also celebrating this, the formidable power that resides in the organization, which is the only weapon of the proletariat according to the Great Lenin. We are marching on the path of the World Proletarian Revolution which promises us new, much greater victories, and we must know how to keep a cool head to face all the difficulties that the bourgeoisie will pose on our road to emancipation. This is the third lesson.

But on this very special day, when Georges Abdallah once again sets foot on the land that is his, when he so courageously invites the masses to the struggle, we cannot do otherwise than participate in this triumph and loudly display our revolutionary optimism for the future events.