Dockers against the war: 22 countries, around a hundred ports, one grain of sand

Les faits d'abord. According to RFI, some hundred maritime ports are operating at reduced capacity today, 30 October, across 22 countries. The call to strike came from the European Dockers' Council, taken up internationally by other federations, notably in Turkey, India and Morocco. The stated aim: to oppose war and the growing militarisation of port infrastructure.

What we do not yet know: the exact extent of the delays, the cargoes targeted, the responses of governments and shipowners. The dispatch does not say. We will not make it up.

Which leaves the structural question, and it is a simple one: who profits from the transit? Arms manufacturers, first. Shipowners and terminal operators, next. States, finally, which order, stockpile and dispatch. A port is not a neutral backdrop. It is a link in the chain that connects an industrialist's order book to the front. The dockers hold that link. They have just reminded us of it.

Our reading: this is what the Leninist tradition calls the politics of a system. When financial and industrial capital merge, when the great powers compete for markets, resources and spheres of influence, arms contracts, alliances and logistics corridors become the political hull of that rivalry. War is not an accident of diplomacy. It extends economic rivalries. And somewhere, it has to be shipped.

Facing this, the state. We are told it arbitrates the general interest. Let us look instead at what it protects. In most of the countries concerned, the playbook is already easy to guess: requisitions, invocation of "national security", ports declared critical infrastructure, strikes presented as irresponsible. These are our assumptions, not reported facts. But the logical precedent is clear: once war logistics become strategic, the right to strike becomes a question of public order.

The strength of this movement lies in its form. Dockers from Europe, but also from Turkey, India and Morocco: a coordination that spills over the borders which states, for their part, defend so zealously. Capital circulates on a global scale. It was high time organised labour did the same.

One limit, however, and Rosa Luxemburg warns us of it. A day of action is not a victory. What matters is whether it strengthens workers' confidence and collective power, or whether it dissolves into "social dialogue" and soothing communiqués. A symbolic gesture bargained away for a round table is the management of capital by other means.

The dockers have posed a question the chancelleries prefer to avoid: who agrees to load the crates? We will follow what happens next, particularly the official responses. Peace, as we know, is not decreed at summits. Sometimes it begins at the quayside.