resolution was adopted by the Central Committee of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR - Revolutionary Communist League), French section of the Fourth International, at voting in the cantonal elections. These elections are held to determine the composition of the conseils généraux (general councils), which are county-based bodies that later elect the Senate. The elections are held in two rounds; in cases in which no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round, a second round is held. The cantonal elections are traditionally not of great significance. This time, however, the Communist and Socialist parties made massive gains, picking up
269 seats; the SP vote was the largest of any single party. The elections thus represented a political defeat for the current parliamentary majority. Virtually simultaneous with the cantonal elections, a poll was taken the results of which showed that if legislative elections were held today,
54 percent would vote for the left parties. The LCR resolution examines the new political situation in France after the cantonal vote. We have added the titles and subtitles, - INPRECOR
MITTERRAND Francois elections its meeting of April 3-4, 1976. Fragility of the "upturn» The economic crisis had already dealt a hard blow to President Giscard d'Estaing's reputation, built on the basis of his alleged qualities as a manager, an economic technician. Thus, his credibility had been badly damaged by the impression, very widespread among the masses, that the regime was not at all in control of the evolution of the economic situation, that the regime's predictions had been systematically belied by reality.
FRANCE Georges MARCHAIS The meeting took place less than one month after the mid-March The upturn, which could have been a major trump card against the Union de la Gauche (Union of the Leff, the Socialist party-Communist party electoral bloc), remains fragile. (Between September and February industrial production increased 7 percent, but it is still 5.5 percent lower than its January 1974 level.) This upturn is fueled essentially by the re-stocking operations of companies (whose inventories in any case remain lower than they
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FRANCE were in 1974) through the utilization of conjunctural
Financial facilities accorded by the regime in the framework of the various pump-priming plans and through the upturn in consumption linked in part to the easing of credit (Fourcade, the minister of finance, has just decided to tighten credit again and to raise the prime interest rate).
The fragility of this upturn may be measured by certain important indices:
*The new uptick in inflation (from -1.1 percent in
January to +0.7 percent in February, 1.2 percent according to the CGT, the country's largest trade-union federation) will be further primed by the authorizations for price increases granted to industrialists, who are making this freedom of prices a condition for an upturn in investment; this is true to such an extent that the curve for the first half of 1976 points to an 11-12 percent annual inflation rate.
* The accentuated deficit in the trade balance (less than 95 percent of the covering rate of January 1976)
will continue to be aggravated under the effects of the de facto devaluation of the franc, which entails price increases for energy without improving the competitive position of French products on foreign markets.
*The maintenance of a very significant rate of unemployment, which will not be able to be reduced in the medium term, even though short-time work is tending to diminish with the upturn in industrial activity.
*Finally, the rate of investment remains quite low and testifies to the defiance of the employers in face of a regime they consider incapable of guaranteeing social peace. (In 1975 the volume of investment declined 10 percent compared with 1974; in 1976 it is expected to remain at the 1975 level.) To these factors it is appropriate to add some elements that relate to more structural phenomena of the French economy and that also constitute obstacles to the upturn:
*The very significant corporate debt considerably reduces the possibilities of self-financing and makes the companies very dependent on financial markets;
*The crisis, while it has contributed to accelerating the trend toward concentration of the productive apparatus by liquidating sectors considered unprofitable (considerable increase in the number of bankruptcies), has been neither sufficiently lasting nor deep to really "prune down" this apparatus. Hence, the bourgeoisie has to pay the price for maintaining a productive apparatus that remains archaic in certain sectors. In addition, discontent is developing among some layers (artisans, shopkeepers, small and medium-sized companies) whose interests have been harmed; at the same time, it is precisely these layers that constitute the most solid pillars of support for the regime. On the other hard, the crisis has extensively contributed to a virtually complete paralysis of the European Community. The devaluation of the French franc (which 18 has cost 33 percent of the country's gold and currency reserves) and the fall of the lira and the pound sterling render the project of European monetary union null and void and threaten to accelerate protectionist tendencies in the various member states, thus further diminishing the already low level of international trade. The agricultural Common Market has also been hard hit by the crisis. It is the peasants who have borne the brunt of this crisis, with a decline in purchasing power over the past two years, while the problems of milk and wine (sectors in which small plots predominate) are becoming explosive.
Erosion of the regime's social base The political consequences have been especially important in that the regime had generally based its reputation on its economic capacities; hence the questioning of this regime by a section of the bourgeoisie:
"Economically, Giscard's failure may be measured by the loss of confidence of a section of the employers, who henceforth refuse to accept any reform promulgated by a regime they consider little effective.
*The European project, which was supposed to be the grand idea of "Giscardism, " the Paris-Bonn alliance, has been postponed indefinitely and the problem of the election of a European parliament is losing its function as a bone of contention within the Union de la Gauche.
*Finally, internationally, the prospect of the victory of the Union de la Gauche is contributing to discrediting the existing regime. The international boutgeoisie, the U.S. bourgeoisie in the first place, is osking itself about the consequences of a left victory and is preparing to work out what tactic to follow in the event that it takes place. The social base of theiregime is continuing to erode. This is a consequence both of the social and economic situation of the country (restructuring, liquidation of archaic sectors, etc.) and of the political and social crisis shaking various institutions (evolution in the church, for example. But this is not compensated for by any gain of influence among new layers, contrary to Giscard's hopes. Moreover, entire sectors of the traditional petty bourgeoisie are entering into direct opposition to the regime in an especially violent fashion since whole regions are now experiencing all the consequences of the policy of the strong state, particularly in the destruction of the classical relations of bought-and-bartered interests. Regional aspirations are thus crystallizing among homogeneous regional entities, leoding to defiance of the Giscard regime on the part of various social layers. This defiance and these aspirations may take on a lasting anticapitalist character under the influence of two factors:
*the massive radicalization of an exploited peasantry in face of stepped-up bourgeois projects aimed at liqvidating agrarian structures that are not adapted to the penetration of capital;
*the alliance of this peasantry, through local structures of struggle or regionalist currents, with the organized workers movement.
Although Giscard's project - win over some of these layers, born of the development of capitalism, in order to compensate for the disappearance of traditional points of support among the bourgeoisie - emerged from a lucid consciousness of the continuing erosion of the social base of the regime from De Gaulle to Pompidou, the failure of all modernist and reformist demagogy in face of a Socialist party that is fully benefiting from the development of these layers confines Giscard to the narrow social base of Pompidouism. This failure is enlivening the contradictions within the presidential majority, contradictions that cannot be reduced to clique or family quarrels. Rather, they manifest the profound disarray of the political personnel of the bourgeoisie, It is in this context that the results of the cantonal elections must be interpreted. In this sense, they are unusual elections, for in the present conjuncture they lose a part of their traditional function and become a national confrontation between two blocs, turning into an electoral crystallization of the growing political polarization of the country. Thus, these elections served to reveal the real situation on all levels: In the Union de la Gauche they highlighted the relationship of forces between the CP and the SP; within the bourgeoisie they acted as an alarm signal against the Union de la Gauche; finally, among the masses they highlighted the weakness of the regime. So much so that the consciousness born of the results of the cantonal elections (the majority becoming the minority) is becoming a weighty objective phenomenon in the struggles of the workers, especially if account is taken of the electorialist education of the workers movement. The diversity of responses proposed by the bourgeoisie - from Debré and his Government of National Salvation to Faure, who wants to excommunicate the SP, to Chinaud and his troika* - must create no illusions. All these responses have one point in common: They draw the balance-sheet of the failure of the Giscardian attempt to make an opening to the left (to attract the SP or a part of the Union de la Gauche voters) and they uphold the necessity of returning to the traditional themes of the right (order and security) by brandishing the specter of "collectivism. " What is involved, then, is a right turn on the ideological and political level. Clearly, Giscardism has not dismantled Pompidouism. The great Giscardian illusion of a liberal party overstepping or breaking the UDR (Union des Démocrates pour la République - Union of Democrats for the Republic, the Gaullist party) has gone up in smoke. The rule now is every man for himself. From this point of view, the nomination of Jacques Chirac as coordinator of the presidential majority is also a bitter return to * The reference is to a reconstituted majority, with its three components: the Gaullist UDR (Jacques Chirac), the Independent Republicans (Michel Poniatowski), and the Centre pour la Démocratie et le Progres, Center for Democracy and Progress (Lecanuet). -INPRECOR reality and will further accentuate the weight of conservatism in the new policy of the regime, making Giscard more closely dependent on the UDR, even if this nomination will also generate deep unease among the majority. The right turn had already been visible in practice with the development of anti-union repression in the factories. It has now been confirmed and accentuated. Thus, we must expect a much harder line in the regime's policy, an accentuation of the repressive policy in an attempt to break the combativity of the workers before the 1978 legislative elections and to make the workers bear the costs of the economic uptum. Breakthrough of the SP The cantonal elections confirmed the advance of the SP and the expansion of its base. Nevertheless, it may be noted that in the cantons in which the old SFIO Section Française de 'Internationale Ouvrière - French Section of the Workers International, the former name of the Socialist party) had its greatest strength, there was a levelling off, and even a decline, of votes for the SP. It was also in these cantons that it was most difficult to get the SP voters to vote for the CP on the second round. The facts testify to the profound transformation of the SP electorate, which is linked to the very evolution of the social structure; the SP electorate today can in no way be confused with the old electorate of the SFIO. One may also note the massive progress made by the SP in the working-class suburbs, which testifies to the expansion of the party's audience, if not its organization, in the factories. The nearing of new electoral target dates is also heating up the debates within the SP and obligates Mitterrand to more rapidly homogenize the party apparatus in preparation for the legislative elections of 1978. The extraordinary SP congress called for May 15 and 16 is intended to allow him to take the offensive in this direction. Even though the SP is continuing to respond to the accusations of the CP, a desire to limit the polemic may be noted. The personal role and weight of Mitterrand has clearly been strengthened by the success in the cantonal elections. In the eyes of everybody he is preparing for his function as chief of state by establishing the necessary relations on the international level:
*trip to Algeria in February 1976;
*meeting with the U.S. ambassador, during which there was probably discussion about conditions and guarantees in the event of a victory for the Union de la Gauche (NATO, relations with the USSR, etc.);
fin the framework of the Socialist International itself, within which his position has been aided by the election results, he is negotiating the attitude of Social Democratic Europe toward a France governed by the Union de la Gauche. Mitterrand is winning his gamble, which was to resuscitate the SP through an al-
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FRANCE fiance with the CP and win a position of hegemony within the Union de la Gauche in order to accede to power. However, after the cantonal elections, the SP has hastened to struggle against any "triumphalism" and to affirm that the party does not favor early elections. The SP is counting on the fact that time is on its side and thar berween now and 1976 the majority will suffer further erosion, If isalso counting on coming to power in a more serene economic context, leaving Giscard to deal with the current crisis. Finally, the SP wants * develop an apparatus capable of assuming the responsibilities of managing the state, responsibilities from which the party has been excluded for twenty years. CP's tactic The wenty-second congress of the French CP had provoked big emorion within the party. The party's place In the Union de la Gauche, the relations with the USSR, the questioning, and the malaise all crystallized around the problem of the "dictatorship of the proletariat. From this standpoint, the cantonal elections represented an important test for the line of party secretary general Georges Marchais, Now, the CP maintained its overall electoral positions, even though some erosion may be noted in. its old fles, most often to the benefit of the SP. Nevertheless, there was an improvement compared with the previous results in the legislative by-elections, The reaction of the CP to the election results is significant. If contisted of:
*systematic harping on "blemishes" see the report given by Rend Piquet in the name of the Political Bureau according to which 30 percent of the Socialist votes in the first Found did not go to the CP in the second round);
"deliberate underestimation of the electoral victory of the Union de la Gauche:
"beginning of an "Italian-style" policy: This majority, the CP says, is insufficient both numerically and NON A LA 20 in terms of political conviction. "Without a broadly majority popular assembling, we will not win, "declared Marchais. All this amounts to an attempt to justify for the CP militants the leadership's refusal to pose the question of power now (its rejection of early elections) by instead mobilizing them around the strengthening of the "party" and the "Union of the People of France." The policy of the CP is thus proceeding as though the cantonal elections had not taken place. The leadership of the CP refuses to pose any political perspective other than that of the municipal elections of 1977 and the legislative elections of 1978. In an editorial published in the CP daily, L'Humanite, Laurent Salini wrote: "There is no way out other than collective action, democratic action in which the ballot box is the crucial lever. In the workers struggles the CP offers is militants only one outlet, the strengthening of the party On the level of relations with the USSR, the CP continues to follow the policy of taking its distance from the Kremlin and is becoming more offensive on all fields, but without challenging the underlying solidarity thot unites the bureaucrats, Examples:
*the Suslow report in Pravda, which condemned. "regional or national variants of Marxism";
*the reaction of the Jeunesses Communistes (Communist Youth) to the visit of UDR and Giscardian youth to Rumania;
*the denunciation by Kanapa of: "Russian internationalism, "which was used to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia;
* Marchais's public affirmation of differences over the European conference of Communist parties. The CP is in the process of gaining maximum autonomy of the Soviet bureaucracy, following the Italian model. KENT POUN NEUy EMPLOI
Offensive revival of workers combativity On the whole, the French working class has resisted the employers' desire to make it bear the costs of the crisis. In terms of defense of purchasing power, the working class has resisted more successfully in France than in some other European countries. The high level of combativity has been maintained, as is testified to by the many struggles over jobs that took place throughout 1975. Nevertheless, since the public services strike of March 9, 1976, there has been an upturn in struggle, which has been picked up by the workers of the SNCF (the national railroad company) and the metalworkers. Some traditional Factors can account for this offensive revival: the period of contract negotiations, the first effects of the upturn on workers' combativity. But one of the predominant factors has been the results of the cantonal elections, which, by concretizing a political alternative, have strengthened the workers' confidence in their own will to struggle. The wait-and-see attitude that characterized the preceding period has changed a bit. The revelation of the weakness of the regime is stimulating the sentiment that it is possible to win demands immediately; af the same time, the idea of a probablevictory in 1978 is taking root. These various mobilizations (public services, SNCF) have several common characterisfics:
*The theme of the struggles has shifted from a defensive struggle around jobs to a more offensive struggle around wages and purchasing power, formulated everywhere in terms of across-the-board increases:
*The mobilizations are massive and give expression to all the built-up discontent. They are no longer limited to localized combative movements, but are drawing in entire sectors of the working class;
*Because of the very fact of the massive participation, there is a risk of a gap between the broad vanguard and the combative workers on the one hand (who are skeptical about the classical forms of struggle proposed by the trade-union leaders) and the mass of workers on the other hand, for whom the strike, even in this context, expresses an initial coming to consciousness;
*Finally, from the outset these movements have been viewed by the workers as profoundly united because of the participation, under their pressure, of all the unions, which has contributed extensively to the success of these mobilizations. The development of the deepest student mobilizations since 1968 was a powerful revealing force throwing light on the evolution of the conjuncture. Nevertheless, the difficulties in broadening these mobilizations of student youth reflect the absence of any central outlet, In addition, the "traditional springtime explosions" are no longer enough for the high school students and apprentices to go into motion; now they require precise objectives and guarantees. In this context, what must be done is simultaneously:
*continue to view the struggles of the university
BUSINE OCCUPEE + 300F pour tous LES 40 HEURES. students and student youth in general within the perspective of an overall offensive of the workers against this minority regime (while respecting the autonomous pace of the student mobilizations);
*lay the basis for a protracted mobilization against the education policy of the regime and group together all those who want to fight the battle for unity, for the construction of united movements in the various milieus of student youth on the basis of structures of struggle that emerge in the course of the mobilizations themselves. At the present time, the leaders of the CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail - General Confederation of Labor) and the CFDT (Confédération Françoise et Démocratique du Travail - French Democratic Confederation of Labor) refuse to propose a centralization of the struggles, which would pose the question of a political outlet, although it is true that after the SNCF struggles these leaderships were led to slightly alter their declarations. Thus, the CGT and the CFDT seize upon the fact that some unions, such as Force Ouvrière (Workers Power) or the independent unions in the SNCF had signed a separate agreement as a pretext to half movements whose massive character objectively posed the problem of going beyond the framework that had been set for them. The strikes in the SNCF at the end of March Illustrated this phenomenon more clearly- Thus, especially for the CGT, it becomes difficult to assure control over these struggles when the workers see a poTitical solution as perfectly possible, a solution that is in any cose put forward by the national leadership of the CGT ibelf. It can be predicted that the CGT and CFDT. leaderships will try to channel this wave of struggle into the framework of a day of action sometime during the third quarter of the year, thus putting forward an appearance of centralization. The toughening of the policy of the regime against struggles, the employers" establishment of an anti-strike system (transport of machine parts and labor force, etc.) can at any moment pose the problem of a regional and even national test of strength, thus transforming a conflict into a test during a pre-electoral period and requiring a high level of consciousness and organization on the part of the workers in order to offer a response.
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FRANCE Battle for workers unity In this conjuncture, the battle for strengthening the unity of the workers in struggle must be waged by revolutionaries on a priority basis, both against the "sectarianism" of the CGT and against the "leftist" attempts of some sectors of the broad vanguard. Thus, the establishment of forms of self-organization should not be a precondition for the necessary unity, even though we must do everything possible to develop these forms. Politically, the ongoing mobilizations must allow us to put forward objectives of centralization of the struggles in order to win our demands. For the great mass of worker, this perspective is not at all contradictory with the Common Program and the Union de la Gauche. It is in liaison with the concrete forms of this process that we can move from propagandist denunciation of the SP and CP's refusal to take on their responsibilities to the positive agitational formula of an SP-CP government as a function of the very forms of this centralization. This is the only way to break down electoral logic
Vie CHErE CAIS - PAUS IE LA VILLE SYNDICAT DU DE PARIS EN LUTTE CONTRE LI YIE CHERE Or - -E
PARS nE DA DI in real life, the logic within which we would be entangled by any other sort of initiative concerning the government formula. But while the primary axis must be the problem of centralization of struggles for demands and their inevitable confrontation with the regime (possibly leading either to a new May 1968 or to early elections, as in Britain in 1974), we must concurrently denounce the SP and CP's respect for the constitution of 1958. We must show that by refusing to demand early elections based on proportional representation and by proclaiming their submission to the constitution of 1958 the SP and the CP intend to avoid precipitating the political situation, whether through action or even through elections. In fact, they are preparing to administer the strong state by demanding a "social pause." This only intensifies the contradiction of the CP between its professions of democratic faith and criticisms of the SP on the one hand and its submission to the 1958 constitution on the other hand, a constitution that will grant decisive weight to a Mitterrand, president of the republic, in administering a strong state. But while today we put the emphasis on propagandist denunciation of the SP and CP's respect for the 1958 Gaullist constitution and their rejection of early elections on the basis of proportional representation, we do not advance the slogan of early elections and a constifuent assembly as positive proposals.
*We will possibly be able to advance the slogan of early elections, along with an agitational campaign, when a second political defeat of the regime occurs (partial or municipal elections). Moreover, in this case, the regime's refusal to call immediate elections could be a point of departure leading us to directly posing the question of an SP-CP government.
*The slogan of the constituent assembly will not be able to become comprehensible to the broad masses until the left, now mired in respect for the 1958 constitution, actually uses this constitution against the demands of the masses (for example, by keeping Giscard, by preserving the repressive arsenal of the fifth republic, or on the occasion of conflict between the president-Bonaparte Mitterrand and the workers parties, above all the CP, but also the SP or a faction of the SP). Of course, the scenario of the class struggle cannot be written in advance. Stages may be skipped and a general strike may give rise to the embryos of workers councils. The slogan of the constituent assembly would then amount to a retreat from the mobilization of the masses and could on the contrary serve the "democratic conterrevolution. " But today we cannot substitute for the masses themselves in determining the pace of their radicalization and the experiences they will have to undergo. On the contrary, through our slogans and our demand for "democracy through to the end" we must lead them to shed their bourgeois-democratic illusions and to undergo the experience of the superiority of workers democracy.