soldiers. That is what accounts for the political operation the regime plunged into by taking the risk of directly attacking the CFDT, invading the CFDT headquarters and arresting some of its leaders in provincial cities (Bordeaux, Bensançon, Chaumont). The scope of the forces involved and the risks accepted by the government indicate the importance of the stakes. Indeed, the regime is confronted by an unprecedented crisis in its military institutions. This crisis is primarily expressed by the entry of masses of soldiers into struggle. The jumping-off point for this movement came in June 1974 with the publication of the "Appeal of the 100," a manifesto publicly signed by 100 soldiers and addressed to the candidates for the presidency of the republic. This manifesto reiterated the essential demands put forward by the soldiers: free choice on date and place of Induction into the army; elimination of overseas duty; halt to all forms of harassment; genüine right to leaves; pay equal to the minimum wage; the right to receive news, and the right of free expression and organization in the barracks. In spite of the immediate repression against the initial signers of the appeal, within a few months nearly 5,000 soldiers had signed the appeal. It became the struggle manifesto of the masses of draftees. Soldiers committees then began to spring up in the barracks. Necessarily clandestine, they drew in a minority of the soldiers, but they soon won the confidence of the masses of draftees by becoming the spokesmen for their demands and by organizing their struggles. Today there are a hundred of these soldiers committees. In spite of the severe repression and the difficulties related to
25
FRANCE the continual rotation of the ranks of draftees, most of these committees manage to produce more or less regular barracks newspapers. Battle for a soldiers trade-union Barracks struggles proliferated in the wake of the issuing of the Appeal of the 100. These struggles took spectacular forms at first, with demonstrations of soldiers in Draguignan, Karlsruhe (in West Germany), Nancy, and Verdun; soldiers in uniform marched in the workers demonstrations in Paris on May 1. But there were also collecfive actions in the barracks themselves. In iiself the rise of this mass movement was sufficient to make the regime uneasy, especially since the concessions to certain demands (pay increases, Improvement of the leave system, authorization of some of the workers press in the barracks) only boosted the combativity of the draftees. But what provoked the offensive of the regime was its determination to block the increasingly close linkup between the soldiers movement and the workers.movement before it was too late. In fact, for more than a year some of the trade-union bodies, mainly the CFDT but also the CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail -General Confederation of Labor, the largest trade-union federation, under CP hegemony), had given direct support to the struggle of the soldiers, particularly by loaning out their headquarters for soldiers meetings and by guaranteeing that the barracks newspapers would be published. Moreover, because of their consistent mass work, the soldiers committees were able to win a growing number of worker militants to support of their struggles; trade-union militants, members of the CP youth, and members of the SP youth joined the struggles of revolutionary militants, thus contributing to making the soldiers committees real united mass bodies. The soldien committees had placed on the agenda the holding of a national conference with the support of the workers movement in order to work out a new platform and take steps forward in the fight for a soldiers trade union. In fact, the question of the right of organization was increasingly at the center of the demands of the mass of soldiers; far from complacently wallowing in clandestine organization, the soldiers asked that they be recognized as having all their rights as workers in uniform, in the first place the right to freely organize to defend their demands. Thus, most of the soldiers committees declared themselves in favor of a trade union of soldiers, supported by the workers trade unions. The CP, the SP, and the CGT continuously rejected this demand, even though it began to get a broader and broader response among the workers, as was indicated by the position recently taken by the CFDT in favor of such a union. It was thus clear that the regime no longer had the choice of making real concessions to the soldiers movement, mainly on the right of organization, or brutal repression. 26
It opted for the second rood, keeping in reserve the possibility of accompanying its present offensive with a few concessions. Reactions of the workers movement Such an attack, particularly since it was aimed at the CFDT, one of the major workers trade unions, required an immediate united response of the entire workers movement. But there was nothing of the kind. On the basis of inadmissible pretexts, the CP, the SP, and the CGT rejected any united response, leaving the CFT to take to the streets alone after the arrest of some of its leaders and the searches of its headquarters. Georges Séguy, secretary general of the CGT, marked this occasion with a statement that will surely go down in history: We are not unconditional defenders of trade-union solidarity." In fact, the CP, like the SP, was immediately forced to retreat in face of the regime's offensive on a field on which they had no desire to fight. They joined in the chorus denouncing antimilitarism and were mainly concerned with setting themselves off from the action of the revolutionary organizations on all fields, thus fingering these organizations as special targets for the attacks of the regime. They condemned the soldiers committees, even though a growing number of their own members had joined these committees during the recent period, counterposing "harmonization commissions" in the barracks in which delegates elected by the soldiers would sit side by side with representatives of the military The regime thus had a clear field to push ahead with its offensive. This is what enabled the government to continue to bring indictments, even though the prosecution dossiers were empty, and to imprison militants who were nothing but hostages. It is high fime to halt this repression. In face of the default of most of the workers organizations, a "national committee for the release of the imprisoned soldiers and militants" has organized the response on a basis on which nonexclusive unity in action was possible from the outset: immediate release of all those arrested and a halt to the prosecutions; dissolution of the State Security Court; support to the struggle of the soldiers for their democratic rights, notably the right of organization. The stakes for the workers movement are high. What is now up for grabs is whether the soldiers will be able to struggle, that is, their obility to assert their rights as workers in uniform, to oppose the role the regime intends to make them play, to oppose the utilization of the army against the workers. As is recalled by the crush-ing of the Chilean working class in September 1973, in the final analysis what is really at stake is the very possibility of the victory of socialism. January 15, 1976
The French CP
Crisis of Capitalism
& the 1. The point of this brief article is not to make an exhaustive presentation of the overall positions of the French Communist party (PCF — Parti Communiste Français) on "state monopoly capitalism" and its crisis, but rather to highlight the proposals the PCF makes for bringing the crisis to an end. 2. In this regard, the PCF begins by stressing that what is being manifested today is not only a particularly serious cyclical crisis of overproduction, but also a lasting crisis of the capitalist system, a crisis of "state monopoly capitalism" that began in 1967-68 and marks the opening of whot the PCF calls a long period of persistent overaccumulation. 3. Let us note, moreover, that this theme of the crisis of state monopoly capitalism, which is very extensively developed y i call he nucleus of it incony diction functioning of state monopoly capitalism: the theory of the overaccumulation-devalorization of capital. Indeed, although we cannot deal extensively with this point here, it is important to stress that this theory begins with a falsification of the writings of Marx, Whereas Marx explained that devalorization, which he defined simply as a decline in the value of capital, could be a provisional solution to overaccumulation as a consequence of overproduction crises, the PCF lends a different meaning to the devalorization of capital, defining it as the totality of solutions to overaccumulation. Thus, in an absurd manner, the PCF assimilates:
1) Devalorization and valorization at reduced rates (public capital or the capital of small and middle-sized enterprises) or outside national borders (exported capital);
2) Valorization at reduced rates or outside national borders and the absence of valorization, by JACOUES VALIER Thus, when the PCF speaks of "devalorization" of public capital under the pretext that this capital yields a rate of profit inferior to what it could yield in view of the importance of this capital, the PC's point is simultaneously:
-absurd, because it amounts to speaking of the valorization of capital that is not valorized; and
- doubly false, because in the first place public capital certainly is valorized. The state does not substitute Itself for the law of value. Any transfer of surplus value from nationalized enterprises to monopolies involves an intensification of exploitation by the state (whether of the workers of the nationalized enterprises themselves or of the workers as a whole). Second, because in the course of this process, public capital does not suffer a fall in value (devalorization in the sense in which Marx used the term). It is true that the state fosters devalorization by taking measures that accelerate the concentration/centralization of capital. But it is out of the question to speak of devalorization of public capital when what is involved is a transference of surplus-value to the monopolies. The consequence of the PCF's attitude is:
- to give the impression that the PCF believes that the state substitutes itself for the law of value;
- to give the impression that capitalism without crisis is possible, at least as long as the entire private sector has not been nationalized, The public financing of private production about which the PCF speaks seems to be put forward as a lasting cure for overaccumulation so long as nationalizations can continue. This logical conclusion of the pseudo theory of the PCF is contradictory to the very idea of the