INTERVENTION OF INTELLECTUALS SPURS RESISTANCE TO ALGERIAN WAR and of the International France
The unending French crisis continues to revolve essentially around the war in Algeria.
spectacular "Jeanson network" trial proved a boomerang that discredited the government as much as it honored the accused. The courageous Declaration of the 121, recognizing the right to refusal of military service in the Algerian French intellectual circles astir. The de Gaulle government expressed its petty spite by disciplinary actions against any government employee who had signed, by arrests of the principal "instigators," and threats of further arrests and disciplinary actions.
One of the characteristics of France is that intellectuals carry weight. Thus the Jeanson trial and the Declaration of the 121 have produced an advance in the situation in France on the Algerian question: everyone has had to take a stand on the basis of action trade-union organizations, the cardinals themselves, ete.
Naturally, the Declaration of the 121 has stimulated the rage of the alleged representatives of French culture, most of them talentless old fogies. But it has also disturbed the routine of the "lefts," who hastened, on the initiative of the leaders of the National Federation of Education, to bring out a manifesto whose purpose was to stop the current of signatures toward the 121. This is not surprising on the part of those who are really what Trotsky one day termed "old maids of both sexes." But the situation in France on the matter of Algeria is so tense that this text, written to stop a pro - FLN current, serves in the more backward circles as a first involuntary step toward
Nor is this all: the National Union of French Students (UNEF), which before the summer vacation had reëstablished relations with the organization of Algerian students, the "dissolved" UG EM A, decided to make a public demonstration in favor of peace in Algeria. It appealed to all organizations to join in with its decision. It is unquestionable that this decision, for some people, aimed only at making a demonstration of counter-pressure on the authorities in face of the pressure of the ultras. But however that may be, a great street demonstration would have had an exceptional importance: it woald have been the first real demonstration against the de Gaulle regime; it would have been the beginning of a trial of strength.
Now the leadership of the French CP immediately looked anything but pleased, under the pretext that "the working elass and its party" cannot be just "make-weight forces" - an argument that the French CP leadership hardly thinks of when it is a matter of making a "national front" against German reärmament. The opposition of the CP leadership is comprehensible in that, though it knows that it can keep control over local demonstrations, it knows also that a central demonstration, in which the "121" participate, could not thus easily be politically boxed in and would tbreaten to go beyond the aims of the CP leadership.
As a result of an imbroglio of negotiations and communiqués, the UNEF obtained permission to hold a meeting in the big hall of the Mutualité. The "Front Ouvrier" and CFIC unions joined in. The CG T, on the contrary, backed by the CP, dissociated itself; two days after having refused to launch the slogan of paying no attention to the prohibition of the demonstration, it reproached the students for holding a meeting that had been authorized! In fact, Thorez clearly showed the depth of his policy of "peaceful coexistence" with de Gaulle.
The meeting at the Mutualité was more than a success. In the streets, more than 10,000 people — especially young people - who had been unable to get in, engaged in demonstrations, and violent fights with the police took place. The ultras had managed to get together only a very small number of people.
Thus, for the first time in six years, the struggle against the war in Algeria was beginning to make a clear picture.
The powder-puff treatment given by the military court to the ringleaders in the January 1960 uprising in Algiers, contrasts scandalously with the rigorous treatment given the defendants at the "Jeanson network" trial. Yet the "ultras,". knowing that their possible field of action is limited, and that there is great war weariness among the Europeans in Algeria, are cautious, not daring to move without the army.
The declaration of Sartre poses the problem and prospects in terms which we approve without reservations:
[...J the left is powerless and it will remain so if it refuses to unite its forces with the only force which is seriously struggling today against the common enemy of Algerian and French liberty, and this force is the FLN [...J.
L...J the Frenchmen who are helping the FLN are not only impelled by generous sentiments in relation to an oppressed people, they do not only place themselves in the service of a foreign cause; they are struggling for themselves, for their liberty and for their future [...] they are gaining support from many more people, from a sympathy, either active or passive, which is growing steadily. They are in the vanguard of a movement which will perhaps awaken the left, foundering in miserable cautiousness, and prepare the way for the inevitable trial of strength with the army which has been postponed since May 1958.
[...] the moment is drawing near when every man will have to face up to his responsibility. At this point, those most occupied in political action are still hesitating, out of misplaced respeet for formal legality, about crossing certain boundaries. It is the youth, on the other hand, supported by the intellectuals, who, as in Korea, in Turkey, in Japan, are beginning to expose the frauds of which they are the victims. Hence the exceptional importance of this trial. For the first time, despite all the obstacles,
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Algerians and Frenchmen, fraternally united by a common struggle, find themselves together in the
I...J the Frenchmen there represent the future of France, and the ephemeral government which claims to judge them represents, already, nothing.
Danger lies in the fact that the initiative remains with the Bonapartist government and that it may not hesitate to unleash ruthless repression.
Battle commences therefore in conditions that will entail a heavy price for victory. But no fear need be entertained of the results. Firstly, because, on the international plane, the colonial revolution is invincible and those who today are resolutely opposing the Algerian war have on their side the great forces of the colonial revolution. Secondly, because now that this movement has conquered the vanguard of the student youth, it will gradually involve the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL whole youth of the country, and these, for whom the older political currents have no meaning, will be able to serve as a catalyst in the workers' movement. Thus they will activate the struggle to create a new tendency where the only possible programme is that of revolutionary Marxism, that of the Fourth International.
French Trotskyists, without for one instant abandoning work within the CP where are to be found the most advanced workers of the most important French workers' movement, will not fail to give, to the action of the vanguard of the intellectuals and the young people, all the support it deserves, with a view to popularizing their initiative among the workers, overcome misleading policies, and arouse the activity of the class for genuine mass action to stop the war, and support the struggle of the Algerian revolution until its triumph and the overthrow of the de Gaulle government.
India