AGAINST IMMINENT DICTATORSHIP IN FRANCE!
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In France the Fourth Republic is in its death-agony. The regime of bourgeois democracy in that country is now living out its last moments. Frontally attacked by the rebel generals and the fascist settlers of Algeria, undermined by the intrigues and plots of their reactionary allies in the metropolis, this regime has become a farce, a sheer fiction, to which there still desperately cling the heteroclite cohorts of "republicans" running all the way from certain bourgeois parliamentary formations to the Socialist and Communist Parties. Rarely has the parliamentary cretinism of the traditional workers' leaderships taken on so grotesque and criminal a form. The real power is already in the hands of extraparliamentary forces, which are deciding about the evoluAnd while these forces are imposing on the rump parabrut the cold taster of scener to de caulerte dictator already plebiscited by the army, the settlers, and the whole extreme-right of the metropolis - the • Socialist and Communist leaderships multiply their acts of confidence in the puppet government that is cynically making a deal with the rebellion, continuing the war in Algeria, tying down the working class, and strangling the republic! IMMINENT DICTATORSHIP That "left" "democrats," either frightened or incurably poisoned by a substratum of petty-bourgeois chauvinism, should dream of a providential solution that would restore to a bourgeois and imperialist France its "grandeur," tarnished by so many defeats and blighted hopes, and bow down before de Gaulle - this is still explicable. But that so-called workers' leaders pretend to be wanting really to struggle against the dictator's coming to power, to defend the "republic," by granting their confidence and full powers to a government which delegates them to General Salan and immobilizes the working class, that is the height of treason for those among them who do so consciously, the height of reformist cretinism for the others.
Ot what use to these leaderships has been the extremely bitter experience of Hitlers arrival at power through the series of parliamentary Bonapartist governments, from Brüning to Papen, in face of a divided and dis-
1934, or what of spain orth ep to ne30, rushit in
France during the same period? In each of these cases, when the regime of parliamentary democracy became incapable of solving the problems of the bourgeoisie, and got ready to cede its place to a "strong" government, it was never possible to stop this fatal trend by supporting transitional Bonapartist bourgeois governments. There was no other way to safety than the autonomous revolutionary mobilization of the class, carried to the highest pitch! The death-agony of parliamentary democracy in France is the result of the military, political, economic, international impasse in which the new colonial war against Algeria has ended up, in face of the factual incapacity of the metropolitan working class to give it a revolutionary outcome. Both in order to carry on this war, on which the fate of all that remains of the French colonial empire depends, and in order to control the situation in case of a defeat in Algeria and make the metropolitan masses support the damages, the French bourgeoisie has an inexorable need of a "strong" government. The parliamentary democratic regime has for a long time now been an inconvenience to it in the new conditions in which wars and colonial defeats have placed it. The measures and discussions for the strengthening of the executive and the reform. of the constitution were the expression of a dictatorial Bonapartist trend more and more necessary for the regime. The real power was gradually escaping from the hands of parliament to become concentrated in the hands of extraparliamentary forces, first of all the army and the regime in Algeria. Independently of the forms that the installation of a "strong" government may take, it will rapidly develop toward a military Bonapartist dictatorship, in which all the reactionary, pro-tascist, and fascist forces will form Furthermore, no illusion is possible concerning a regime led by de Gaulle. By his past, his training, his conceptions, the forces at present supporting him, the conlitions surrounding him, and the problems which he vill have to solve, the man will be inexorably led to base his regime on a reactionary foundation of military dictatorship backed by the extreme-right forces that have already plebiscited the general. Only the revolutionary mobilization of the working class would be able to check such an evolution. But the class has in reality been for years now educated and led by opportunist leaderships who have systematically blunted its combativity, confused its prospects, and weakened its class reactions. By cultivating a chauvinist fermentation in multiple forms, practi, a dapa collaborato pa by anding, or, by discrediting the revolutionary forms of class struggle, these leaderships have prevented the active joining of forces between the metropolitan proletariat and the colonial revolution, maintained reformist illusions, and paralyzed class mobilization. They are now harvesting the fruits of this long practice. Some of them excuse their present attitude of a revolting support for the government of a state of emergency, of
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FOURTH INTERNATIONAL full powers, delegated to Salan, for the aggravated continuation of the war in Algeria, and of the dictatorial reform of the constitution, by arguing that the class is incapable of being mobilized.
true that the chauvinist, opportunistic, and classcollaborationist policy systematically carried out for years now by the Socialist and Communist leaderships has created a factual situation in the masses. But to continue and aggravate this policy means to head inexorably for defeat without even trying to fight a single important battle with the class forces that still exist, and to mortgage the whole future by an evil example. It is not true that a joint appeal by the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the trade unions, could not still mobilize vast sectors on a programme that defined the genuine way to put a stop to the dictatorship's
51 in Algeria! Popular tribunals for the factionists !
Action committees in the metropolis, fraternizing with the Algerian workers in France, determined to fight, including by means of the general strike and armed struggle, against the factionists, against the coming to power of the dictatorship, for the defense of dories, for the based on of wotess?
SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST MILITANTS, PROLETA. RIANS OF FRANCE : There is still time for a last-minute upsurge on this programme in order to save the honor of the French abor movement, to hold out an active fraternal hand to the Algerian revolution which is still gloriously fighting all alone, to defend democratic liberties, to open up a socialist perspective in France and in Europe, coming to power:
An end to the war in Algeria and a proclamation of its independence, cutting the ground out from under the factionists !
Immediate demobilization of all the soldiers now Milan, 24 May 1958 the only way to genuine safety and greatness !
THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT OF THE FOURTH
INTERNATIONAL