- FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
ENGLISH - LANGUAGE EDITION OF THE THEORETICAL ORGAN OF THE
INTERNATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
LESSONS OF A DEFEAT
Number 3
Editorial
The spectacular collapse of the Fourth Republic in France will long resound on the European and world political stages, so sudden and unexpected was it to the masses and their traditional parties in France itself, and so deeply rooted internationally was the myth of a democratic citadel in that country. It was furthermore an event whose consequences and teachings will stir to the depths the ideas and structures of the world labor movement. The fall of the Fourth Republic in France closes a chapter in the post-war period which, especially these last years, amid a dynamic expansion of capitalism, saw the growth of the lure of a vulgar neo-rea formism that preached - including from the mouths of the Kremlin's new arch-opportunist masters "new," "peaceful," "parliamentary" "ways" to socialThe inglorious end of the parliamentary republic in a nation traditionally among the most democratic ones, amid the clatter of the parachutists' machine-guns, the hysteria of the fascist mobs and settlers, the paralyzing disorientation of the immense metropolitan masses, promptly revived pre-war memories: the chain of reactionary victories following the rise of the Nazis in Germany, Austria, Spain, France. Granted, the current international context is quite other than in that period, and de Gaulle after all is not and cannot be a new Hitler. It is, however, none the less true that the political regime in France has qualitatively changed, that parliamentary democracy has been destroyed, and that the working class cannot get out of this new frame without breaking it by a revolutionary upsurge carried to the highest pitch. o It would furthermore be unpardonably light-minded to underestimate the reactionary effects of this first serious post-war victory of the bourgeoisie on the European and world arenas.
Summer 1958 THE REASONS FOR THE CRISIS IN PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY De Gaulle came to power through the revolt of the army against the powerless and ineffective parliamentary apparatus of the bourgeoisie. This multi-partisan apparatus functioned within the framework of institutions and constitutional proceedures that split up the bourgeoisie's political power and kept it in a regime of permanent crisis. Government instability in France had become the laughing-stock of the domestic and foreign critics of "the system." Yet that instability only expressed within the framework of parliamentary democracy a much more fundamental process through which French post-war society was passing: the real political splitting up of the country into formations reflecting its economic and social restructuration. The relatively stable French pre-war society, based on an economic structure made up of a multitude of small and medium firms and easy profits arising from the exploitation of submissive colonies and from capital invested abroad at usurious rates, found itself sucked into the temporary dynamism of post-war world capitalism. The task facing the French bourgeoisie was hastily to modernize its economic structures in the midst of a irresistible movement of European economic leveling, carried out from above, and of the emancipation of colonies, in lack of which it ran the risk of having its own homeland colonized by more dynamic capitalisms while definitely losing, even on the economic level, its own colonies. By the force of events, post-war France undertook the gigantic task of modernizing itself, of bringing itself 'up-to-date with the XXth century." The process once begun could not fail to shake deeply the conservative structures of the country. While industry as a whole developed strongly in these last years (42%
2 between 1953 and 1956), a very concentrated and dynamic industry was created in certain branches, first of all in steel. In agriculture, mechanization of production for the benefit of medium-sized and especially of large properties, also developed greatly: France now numbers 12 times more tractors than before the war. Even the archaic system of distribution, with its immense network of "little shop-keepers," as burdensome as it is inefficient, has undergone profound changes by the steady spread of the chains of department stores and the concentration of trade. These processes brought about reclassifications and polarizations which expressed their antagonistic interests and tendencies in the political parties and struggles that marked the life of the Fourth Republic. Various sectors of the metropolitan and colonial bourand country injured by the proce process through which French society was passing could quiet down and a dominant social stratum, in lieu of a new ruling class, emerge with enough dynamism, authority, and efficiency to direct this society. This whole process, with its roots in the transformations of the homeland itself, was rendered infinitely more spasmodic and explosive by the interference of the colonial revolution, shaking the overseas foundations of capitalist France. It is under these conditions that the political instrument of parliamentary democracy imperceptibly became inoperative for the bourgeoise. The need tor a "reform of institutions" was felt long before the culminating point of the recent crisis. The war in Algeria is only the direct cause of the crisis of the political regime, but this in reality fed on the whole process of the restructuration of the economic and social foundations of capitalist and imperialist post-war The search for a "strong" state was inherent in this process in order that it might be concluded and capitalized upon to the profit of the most dynamic and powerful strata of the "modernized" French bourgeoisie. DE GAULLE IS INSTALLING A BONAPARTIST REGIME This search could take the form only of either a more or less benign Bonapartist regime or a fascist regime. It is indubitable that these two tendencies are now confronting each other within the French bourgeoisie, and are expressed to a certain extent by the ambiguity that at present still characterizes de Gaulle's regime. We give the term Bonapartist regime to a political regime in which the state apparatus (administrative bureaucracy, police, army) in one way or another raises itself above parliamentary democracy and tries to solve the latter's crisis and instability by the continuity of extraparliamentary authoritarian action. Such a regime is possible only in case of a sort of
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL mutual neutralization of the divided, antagonistic, and momentarily powerless forces of parliamentary democracy, including the forces of the left integrated into the parliamentary game. This regime appears under these conditions as a super-arbiter and draws its strength precisely from the mutual neutralization of the forces of parliamentary democracy. The forms of a Bonapartist regime are naturally varied, running all the way from government with a parliamentary façade to an open military dictatorship that completely suppresses all the attributes of parliamentary democraey. That depends on the concrete dynamics of the class struggle. The Bonapartist regime, however, is never pure Bonapartism, really suspended above all classes and strata, but in the long run expresses the interests of a given class, and even of a given stratum of a class. Within the framework of the capitalist social regime, Bonapartism in the long run operates in favor of the most dynamic and conscious concentrated strata of big capital. A fascist political regime, on the contrary, is characterized above all by a broad popular mass movement, organized and militant. that takes hold of the state apparatus, to place it, in turn, at the service of big capital, in the form of an evolution of fascism to Bonapartism. But Bonapartism can also precede fascism and as it were open the way to it, as was the case in Germany with the successive governments of Brüning, von Papen, von Schleicher, before the final arrival of Hitler. WHAT IS THE SITUATION IN THE CONCRETE CASE OF FRANCE? For a whole period the dominant trend of the bourgeoisie, especially the metropolitan bourgeoisie, toward a "strong" state, espoused the form of a Bonapartist regime with a parliamentary façade. Talk was especially about the strengthening of the "executive" there was even envisaged a presidential regime "à l'américaine." There was no question either of a military Bonapartist dictatorship or, a fortiori, of a fascist regime, which, in the current economic conjuncture, visibly lacked a broad popular base in France itself. The war in Algeria, however, began to have a different effect. An extreme authoritarian tendency developed among layers of the colonial bourgeoisie, of the army, and layers of the metropolitan bourgeoisie economically tied up with Algeria or with the profits resulting from the war in that country. It is this tendency which especially weighed on the policy of the metropolis during recent years, bending it to the degree that it reached its present point: the Bonapartist power of de Gaulle. The dynamism of the tendency is explicable by the fact that it includes the army. The army, instrument of post-war France's colonial policy, passed through a deep crisis in face of the invincible rise of
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the colonial revolution. Unable either to understand or to dominate the colonial revolution, it began, as is natural, to want to dominate its own country, whose impotent political regime seemed to it the main cause for its own defeats. In the peculiar ambience of Algeria, the army, cut off from the homeland, was able to bring about a sort of national reintegration by intermingling with the mass of European settlers, so close to its own mentality and aspirations. But the succes of this armysettler tendency cannot be explained merely by the presence of the army, the main organized force of the bourgeoisie. In reality the bourgeoisie as a whole was longing for a "strong" state for the specific reasons we have just explained. And it is still doubtful today whether, faced by the problems raised by its colonies and more especially by Algeria, any fraction of the bourgeoisie can oppose a diametrically different policy to that of the army-settlers. By a real integration of Algeria to France in one form or another, the French bourgeoisie not only maintains the privileges of a strong sector of its class but also thinks that only thus can it control the wealth of the Sahara and economically "federate" Tunisia and Morocco. The real independence of Algeria is a solution that threatens to ruin all that and is currently not considered by any important sector of the bourgeoisie. The territories of Africa, the real wealth of the Sahara, the African market, far from losing importance in the process of France's modernization, to the degree that this process means in the long run an accumulation of France's industrial and economic potential, also means, in terms of a capitalist regime, an increased imperialist potential in one form or another. France's economic development involves a growing interest in Africa by all sectors of the bourgeoisie. From this point of view the ambitions for African or Euro-African "grandeur" are shared in different forms as much by a de Gaulle as by a Mendès-France, both aimed at serving the interests of a modernized capitalism, more dynamic hence also more expansionist than ever. Thus the victory of de Gaulle — borne to power by the almost unanimous complicity of all forces of the bourgeoisie, in order to change the henceforth inoperative political instrument of catice and to set spra strong state tale ces the tendencies, views, and interests fundamentally common to all the essential fractions of the bourgeoisie at the present time. The divergences existent among them bear on the form of the "strong" state: a Bonapartist regime with a parliamentary façade, or a fascisizing military dictatorship. These divergences are naturally real and deep and have an obvious importance for the forms and evolution of the regime. The answer to this last question, however, will be given, especially in the first stage, by the turn taken by the war in Algeria, and, in a
3 second stage, by the degree of resistance of the masses in France itself. If the war in Algeria ended quickly with a military victory of France or a capitulation of the F L N, the new authoritarian regime that de Gaulle is preparing could for a whole period také on benign forms. Its evolution would then depend on the reactions of the masses in France itself: insufficiently strong, they would have the result of hardening the regime; really strong, they might render its stabilization impossible. If, on the contrary, the war in Algeria dragged on, the F L N rejecting any solution that compromises independence, this would contribute, through a temporary aggravation of the authoritarian regime in France, to preventing the regime's consolidation and bringing about its crisis and downfall. In one sense, de Gaulle reached power through the inability of the French left to carry out its militant junction with the Algerian revolution and to open up the perspective of revolution in France itself. The main weakness of de Gaulle's regime, its principal adversary, remains the power of the Algerian revolution. It is unlikely that de Gaulle can grant genuine independence to Algeria, including within a federative framework with the other countries of the Maghreb and with France. It remains to be seen whether the Algerian revolution, isolated as it is from the active solidarity of the French masses, and under the pressure of bourgeois conciliatory forces from the outside and inside, will be able to find the strength to continue its glorious combat. THE METROPOLITAN PROLETARIAT AND THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION The determined struggle of the colonial peoples for their independence has objectively provided a very serious basis for giving drive and victory to the revolutionary struggle in the homelands. But instead of witnessing an effective junction between the metropolitan proletariat and the colonial revolution, we have in reality seen the inverse process, the metropolitan masses acting in practice as de facto allies of their own bourgeoisie against the colonial revolution. This fact is naturally due above all to the training and leadership given the masses by the longtime chauvinist, opportunist, and class-collaborationist practices of the Socialist and Communist Parties. The European Social-Democracy in particular has shown itself to be in practice as pledged till death to the imperialist bourgeoisie. It has backed it up in all its enterprises aiming at perpetuating in one way or another its domination over the colonial peoples. The example of the French SP is naturally the most scandalous one. But it must not be forgotten, concerning this party that carried on the struggle for the extermination of the Algerian people, that later opened the way to de Gaulle, and that is still today participating, in the person of its general secretary, in the Bonapartist
government, that the Socialist International not only has taken no sanction against it but has in practice covered its activity. As for the Communist Parties, their verbal opposition to colonial wars must not cause it to be forgotten that in practice these parties have done everything to sabotage an effective revolutionary struggle against these wars. The example of the French CP in this connection is also overwhelming. The French CP several times lined up with the S FIO position on Algeria; it voted unlimited powers to Guy Mollet and Lacoste; it voted unlimited powers, the state of emergency, and the dictatorial reform of the constitution to the Pflimlin cabinet which hatched the plot for the "cold" restoration of de Gaulle; and it has never cleared up the ambiguity about its real position on the independence of Algeria. In reality its position has been constantly influenced by the Kremlin's considerations about the United States and France. In order to stir up the "antiAmericanism" of certain strata of the French bourgeoisie, the Kremlin has always favored a solution of the Algerian problem that takes into account the "historic bonds that unite Algeria with France," as the Soviet ambassador at Paris quite recently repeated once more. But it is not this attitude dictated by the Kremlin that has paralyzed the French C P in a real struggle against the war in Algeria. By its whole parliamentarist doctrine and structure this party has completely lost the possibility of effective revolutonary struggle. Really to struggle against the war in Algeria meant in practice to turn one's back on the "new paths" of eminently parliamentary activity in favor of an eminently extraparliamentary revolutionary activity. Such activity would furthermore require a whole different structure of the party and qualitatively different bonds with the masses. Now the French CP is at present simply a party of reformist practice and structure, unable to mobilize the masses. This has been amply proved by its whole practice in recent years and especially during the crisis preceding de Gaulle's arrival at power. It is, however, not sufficient to throw the final responsibilities for the nonmobilization of the masses in aid of the colonial revolution on to the traditional opportunist leaderships, order thus to excuse completely the working class itself. The betrayal of the traditional leaderships has been evident for long years now and is confirmed in a striking manner at every important crisis. Why has the working class shown itself unable to draw the conclusions from this and go beyond these leaderships? That is a question that deserves, and requires, An observation concerning the reactions of the European proletariat as a whole and that of metropolitan capitalist countries in general is now forced upon us. That is, that the degree of its revolutionary spontaneity, of its class revolutionary reactions, is showing
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL in this post-war period an enormous lag compared to the revolutionary spontaneity demonstrated by the masses of the colonial and dependent countries. The reformist training received over many years from the Socialist and Communist leaderships has pushed back the revolutionary spontaneity of the metropolitan masses. Skepticism and indeed mistrust toward the traditional leaderships has also had a certain weight But it is possible that in such a context the passing prosperity that post-war capitalism has experienced has also had influence in the direction of causing a certain de facto collaboration of the metropolitan masses with the bourgeoisie in face of the colonial revolution theatening the regime. The French experience, however, will demonstrate that the basis of such an estimate is false. The colonial revolution is an irreversible and invincible process, at whose end there will be the inexorable independence of all colonies. Under these conditions the metropolitan bourgeoisie will try to compensate for the concessions and losses in the colonial field by aggravating the exploitation of the metropolitan masses. The de Gaulle operation is heading in this direction. His colonial policy might prove in the long run more "liberal" than that of the "socialist" Lacoste. But on the other hand it will be translated in France itself by the installation of a de facto dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in which the means of parliamentary representation and action of the parties will no longer have even the semblance of any efficacy. Hence the fact the metropolitan masses have shown themselves to be incapable of joining in the revolutionary action of the colonial revolution and helping it by beginning their own revolution, might threaten to bring about their own defeat in the home countries and the inevitable lowering of their standard of living. Once more, in this field as well, reformist policy shows itself to be wholly inoperative and catastrophic. Naturally this factual attitude of the metropolitan proletariat is not without difficulties for the colonial revolution itself. Not only does it put off its victory; but it influences its social development by strengthening bourgeois-nationalist tendencies to the detriment of proletarian-socialist tendencies.
is already visible in the development of the Arab revolution in general, and in particular in recent developments within the F L N itself. This organization, which set out as an anti-imperialist united front of all national forces, is becoming internally more and more differentiated along the lines of social forces. For the moment the leadership still belongs to the "military" tendency, with a peasant social base, represented by men like Krim Belkacem and Boussouf. To its right, there is growing stronger the tendency of the frankly pro-bourgeois elements, like Ferhat Abbas, who enjoy the support of the Tunisian and Moroccan bourgeoisies, and who are the most
sensitive, despite their verbal intransigence, to the that of the "battle" with bits of paper for a No in the
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL pressure of imperialism. To its left, there is the tendency of the more plebeian and even proletarian elements of the countryside, the cities, and the emigration in France, a tendency which has up till now occasionally had representatives at all levels, and whose best members were among the first victims of the repression and the war. In one sense, the resistance of the Algerian revolution to the military, political, and diplomatic offensive of French imperialism under the de Gaulle regime, will depend, in the coming weeks and months, on the definitive orientation adopted by the "military-peasant" tendency : structural alliance with that of Ferhat Abbas, which would absorb it politically, or a lining up with the left. This last eventuality, however, would be possible only in case the F L N left organizes itself in depth by developing the social content of its policy. THE PROLETARIAT AND BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY The shipwreck of the Fourth Republic in France should serve for a fundamental reorientation of the revolutionary elements of the French and even the international workers' movement. The political system of parliamentary democracy has been abandoned unanimously by the vast majority of the bourgeoisie in favor of a political system of a "strong" power. Hence, by the initiative of the bourgeoisie, the "new paths" leading to "socialism" by parliamentary democracy are blocked for a whole period. The bourgeois parliament is capable of mutations bringing peacefully to power only the openly dictatorial power of the bourgeoisie and not "socialism." To want now to struggle for a pure and simple return to the Fourth Republic, and this by means of No votes in the coming referendum on the constitution, is obviously to go beyond the limits of parliamentary cretinism to enter flatly into conscious betrayal. In fact such a policy, like that currently put forward by the leadership of the French CP, can in practice mean only the sabotage of a revolutionary struggle for a revolutionary perspective. It is equivalent to settling down into the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It is not at all excluded that such is in fact the hidden desire of the Kremlin and of the nucleus of the French CP leadership informed of this desire. The Kremlin may perfectly well be wishing for the consolidation of de Gaulle's power for a whole period, wagering on the difficulties and disagreements that he might sow within the Atlantic alliance, and giving him in this sense the guarantees expressed in the French C P's attitude of purely verbal opposition to him. The policy of "defense of the Republic" that the French C P is opposing to the "fascism" of de Gaulle, by means of a still eminently parliamentary action like
5 referendum on the constitution, naturally leaves masses largely indifferent and nowise contributes to their militant regroupment. A large part of the petty-bourgeois and even proletarian masses have been repelled — by the inefficiency, corruption, and impotence of the bourgeois Fourth Republic — toward antiparliamentary positions that aid the authoritarian solution of de Gaulle. To avoid their crystalization around his power, it was necessary to offer these masses another perspective that took into account their negative experience with the bourgeois republic and qualitatively altered the content of that republic. It was necessary to open up the perspective of socialist democracy, concretized in a specific programme of transitional economic, social, and political demands culminating in the slogan of a workers' and peasants' government, of workers' organi. zations; based on democratic committees of workers and peasants. To the counter-revolutionary extraparliamentary action of the bourgeoisie it was necessary to offer in opposition, not the stale chimæras of a Fourth-Republic type of parliamentary regime, now historically outdistanced by the concrete class struggle in France, but revolutionary working-class action for a revo lutionary programme. The petty-bourgeois reformism of the traditional leaderships can only die a natural death if it shows itself to be unable to draw the least lesson from the bourgeoisie's own initiatives. Henceforth the historic alternative in France is not — as we are asked to believe by the leaders of the French C P, who are enjoying disguising themselves as petty-bourgeois Jacobins some centuries late in history's time-table — fascism or republic, abstract political categories without class content (if not precisely two forms of capitalist social regime), but counter-revolution or revolution. The Bonapartist regime of de Gaulle, independently of its evolution and its future forms, has placed the masses of France in a regime of de facto dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. To get out of it, it is henceforth necessary to break this vise of iron by a revolutionary mobilization raised to the highest pitch. THE PROLETARIAT AND THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE The traditional leaderships have contributed to weakening enormously the class, revolutionary reactions of the proletariat in the metropolitan countries. They have cultivated the chauvinist and reformist propensities that the proletariat receives from the ambience of developed capitalist society, they have for a long time practised the policy of a wholehog class-collaborationist opportunism, and they have systematically discredited the forms and means of revolutionary struggle. But history has not evolved in the direction of "new
6 paths" of eminently reformist and parliamentary action by the proletariat. The objective situation of capitalism has not ceased to be characterized by abrupt changes, after longer or shorter periods of euphoria, which roughly raise the dilemma: counter-revolution or revolution. In these crises the proletariat's traditional organizations prove to be completely lacking in adequate ideological orientation and material preparation for facing up to them. Their strength in electoral votes, parliamentary mandates, and legal apparatuses falls apart like a house of cards before the blast of the organized and militant forces of the counter-revolution. The French crisis has fully justified these truths of thé class struggle viewed not only in "democratic" interludes but as a whole. The attempts of the S P and especially of the CP in France to block the drive toward Bonapartist dictatorship backed by the army, which abruptly rose up no farther away than their own noses, by recourse the means of parliamentary democracy — support to the Pflimlin government, peaceful demonstrations in "legality" for the "republic," etc. — take on an air of real battles of Don Quixote, hurling himself with an outmoded lance against a wall of modern machineguns and tanks. In the best of cases it was a question of a disarming naïveté bordering on stupidity. In the more probable case, it was a question of "leftist" camouflages of a passive acceptance of defeat, destined for the use of the "militants," who were alas as devoted as they were politically naive. The struggle against the dictatorship of the army, which brought de Gaulle to power, was possible only by means of a revolutionary mobilization of the working class, raised to the highest pitch: the general strike, not passive but accompanied by the generalized arming of the masses and by the occupation of the factories, the airfields, the railway stations, the squares, and the streets, i e the revolutionary mobilization of the masses determined to confront and to beat the armed and organized forces of the counter-revolution. In such a case, it would obviously be a question of the beginning of the Revolution. Only a revolutionary party, that had for years on end practised a consistent class policy, could hope to mobilize the masses in such a direction. Only such a party could effectively seize the opportunity offered by history to transform a counter-revolutionary crisis into a victorious revolutionary crisis. Granted, the fact that the counter-revolution had taken the initiative of an offensive was already a handicap, the result of the whole previous evolution of the relationship of forces, which were worsening to the detriment of the proletariat. But on the other hand the adversary's forces must not be overestimated
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL by forgetting that its army was in reality tied down on the front of the colonial revolution in Algeria. The historical truth is that the whole powerful apparatus of bourgeois democracy in the metropolis, with its great workers' organizations, with millions of members and voters, with hundreds of parliamentary representatives, collapsed lamentably before the shadow of the threat of a few thousand parachutists, the only military force available to the bourgeoisie for fighting in case of need on the metropolitan front! The real impotence of the French proletarian left is thus more clearly visible. This impotence was the result of abandoning for years on end revolutionary orientation and organization to the advantage of reformist policy and organization. Herein must lie the main lesson of the French crisis for the proletariat. It is from this observation that its future reorientation must follow. To get out of the present framework of dictatorship, it will need a revolutionary policy and organization. The policy must consist of linking up the necessary transitional demands and forms with the perspective of a revolutionary upsurge, a revolutionary mobilization of the armed masses who, at the culminating point of the struggle, would beat down the dictatorship and set up a workers' and peasants' government of the Fifth — democratic socialist — Republic in France. mic, in a proletarian antifascist united front, organized in as broad as possible democratic committees in the city districts, villages, and factories. These committees of the new Resistance will find the means of combining legal and illegal struggle, in all forms, including the highest ones. They will fight at the same time against the war in Algeria and for the independence of that country, which, in the war, serves as the main base of counter-revolution in France itself. But the ultimate organization, for the victorious prosecution of such a struggle, must consist of a militant regroupment of all the revolutionary Marxist forces, on the basis of a clear complete programme, the same organization: the new revolutionary MarxThere is only one way for the proletariat to turn a serious class defeat into a victory, at least a partial one: to draw from that defeat all necessary conclusions by a revolutionary criticism which, without any ambiguity, hesitations, or evasions whatever, goes to the root of the causes and confronts face-to-face the real problems with the real solutions. 1 July 1958