Between 11 and 16 August 1965, an authentic rebellion took place in the black ghetto of Watts in Los Angeles, California. The Afro-American population, already exasperated by widespread poverty and growing unemployment, by constant repression and miserable living conditions, rose up against the umpteenth case of police brutality.  By the end of the revolt 34 deaths were counted, all caused by the forces of "law and order" and the National Guard.  It was one of the most serious episodes, after the one in Harlem in 1943 and before those following the savage beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1992. Our party immediately published the following article, which we dedicate to all those proletarians who came out onto the streets and into squares throughout the United States to demonstrate their anger and will to fight back after the murder of George Floyd on 25 May last.  

“Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat”.

                                                                                                                                                                                The Communist Manifesto (1848)

Today. Great surprise has been caused by the so-called “gilets jaunes movement” (the yellow vests), arising in France in mid November, apparently out of nothing, and, reaching its peak at the beginning of December, subsequently losing momentum and potential for mobilization after the Government concessions of 10 December.