REVOLUTIONARY PLATFORM
MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS
Municipal elections will take place throughout France on March 17. These elections are especially
Important this year and will serve as a political test of the state of the confrontation between the right and the left parties, the latter grouped behind the Common Program of the Union de la Gauche
(Union of the Leff), the bloc composed of the Socialist party, the Communist party, and Left
The right has been in a minority since the last cantonal elections, which were held in March 1976.
(See INPRECOR, No. 49, April 15, 1976.) The political crisis is intensifying day by day and has now led to a break between the two components of the presidential majority: the Gaullist Jacques
Chirac and President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. (See INPRECOR, No. 65, January 13, 19773)
The only solution the workers parties are offering in face of the government's austerity plan and the growing discontent of the workers is to patiently wait for the results of the municipal elections and
To the great mass of workers the Union de la Gauche appears as the only credible alternative. It is in this context that three revolutionary organizations - the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire
(LCR - Revolutionary Communist League, French section of the Fourth International), Lutte
Ouvriêre (Workers Struggle), and the Organisation Communiste des Travailleurs (OCT - Communist
Workers Organization) — have just signed a "pact of alliance, " the text of which we are publishing below. This pact should enable revolutionaries for the first time to present in a united manner an alternative to the policy of the parties that claim allegiance to the Common Program. The accord was concluded on clear bases: First, unequivocal denunciation of the Common Program, a program of class collaboration which places itself within the framework of bourgeois institutions; second, a call for the centralization of struggles against the austerity plan around a platform of unifying demands; third, an initiative of unity toward the CP and SP, which is concretized in a call for a
To be sure, many disagreements continue to exist among these three organizations. But the unity that has been achieved will not fail to generate great interest well beyond the periphery of the organizations involved. United meetings will be held throughout France.
*French elections are held in two rounds. If no candidate for a given post wins an absolute majority on the first round, a run-off is held between two candidates in a second round.
Rodical politicians.
vote for their candidates on the second round of the elections.*
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----- pull-quotes on this page ----- FRANCE FOR THE then, above all, for the results of the legislative elections in 1978.
Barre plan's claim to have frozen prices for three months. Unemployment is spreading. Thousands of layoffs are still being announced, in the steel industry for example. The employers are openly and cynically demanding the right to lay off whomever they want. It may be that in coming months the number of unemployed in the country will no longer be one million - a figure that appeared enormous two or three years ago, but has been a reality for a year and a half now - but two million. Through the Barre plan, the present government has thrown its full weight into the balance to make the workers pay for the crisis. It has openly given the employers a green light to lay workers off. It has decreed a wage freeze for the coming year. And, setting an example itself, it has annuled the so-called contracts for progress which hod more or less guaranteed that wages in the public and nationalized sectors would follow rising prices, although with much delay. Nevertheless, the government and the president of the republic himself are facing increasing dissent, and even discredit. This is true even within the ruling majority. The resignation of former Prime Mininster Jocques Chirac was a good illustration of this. The various Formations of the majority are tossing obstacles in one another's paths, trying to trip one another up. With the creation of the RPR (Rassemblement pour la République - Rally for the Republic, the new Gaullist organization - INPRECOR), a portion of the right is seeking the means through which to evade responsibility for the economic crisis and the policy of the government, it is preparing an alternative. There is a constant possibility of a political crisis, which could lead at any moment to a government crisis, dissolution of parliament, and the calling of early In face of such on anti-working-class offensive, the should take part in such a response: increase in the number of workers.
*Against factory shutdowns, we demand that not a demand the nationalization of the enterprise by the state with no compensation and no resale to the capitalists, under conditions imposed and controlled by the workers.
*We reject the wage freeze and the cancellation of wage gains:
*maintenance of purchasing power, not on the basis of the index of the government, but on the basis of indices worked out by the workers and the trade-union organizations;
*substantial and across-the-board wage increases (of at least 300 francs a month);
*No wages less than 2, 300 francs a month.
*We reject the challenging of the social gains that have been won: for the elimination of personal charges, extension of sociai security, free health care.
*We refuse fo let our struggles be broken and our organizations repressed by the official or parallel police and the judicial system of the regime and the employers: for workers self-defense. Fearful of being carried into the government on the basis of a workers mobilization for their demands, the Communist and Socialist parties, with the support of the leaderships of the union federations, instead of assembling the workers and their allies in action around such a platform and against the consequences of the crisis and the present government, are trying to limit and control the workers response. They are essentially devoted to preparing for a parliamentary majority in the framework of the electoral calendar defined by Giscard, if possible without any popular mobilization. The leaderships of the CGT (Conféderation Générale du Travail -General Confederation of Labor) and the CFDT (Con-
FISCAR
FRANCE fédération Francaise et Démocratique du Travail -French Democratic Confederation of Labor) are organizing days of action but at the same time are preventing any real coordination or unification of struggles. They back down before any test of strength with the regime. The CP and the SPare allying themse ives with the Left Radicals; they are extending their hand to the left Gaullists, And above all, they are preparing to govern along with Giscard, with full respect for the constitution of 1958. They commit themselves to administering the profit economy, they are thus prepared, once they enter the government, to impose on the working class and the other toiling layers the austerity policy that the right is having difficulty imposing today. The workers must make no mistake. The Common Program offers no way out of the crisis, for it does not allow for eliminating the system that causes the crisis. A majority for the Union de la Gauche represents neither. workers power nor the "road to socialism. Stakes of the municipal elections The coming municipal elections, regardless of attempts to lend them a primarily local significance, appear as a national test and will be considered as such not only by the politicians but also by the workers and popular layers who place their hopes in a change in government. It is now necessary, without abandoning the field of struggle for the sake of an electoral truce, to defend working-class solufions to the crisis during these elections. We will do this against all the formations of the right, against all those responsible for the anti-worker. policy of the present government and its predecessor, but also against the parties of the Union de la Gauche, which reject any policy that would permit the costs of the crisis to be borne by the capitalists and not by the workers and other popular layers. It is not our intention to prevent the CP and SP from conserving or extending their positions in the municipal governments against the right. We affirm right now that this will determine who we will vote for on the second round of the elections. The presentation of slates "For socialism, for workers power" will enable all the workers, all popular voters:
*To say that they have had enough of the right and of politicians in the service of the employers and their state;
*To say that they have firmly decided not to bear the costs of the crisis and are prepared to fight for this without waiting until 1978, whatever the results of the elections;
*But also to say that they have no confidence in the compromise policy of the parties of the left, and that if these parties enter the government, they are determined not to allow them to carry out the policy of the right as they have done so often in the past. 30
Defend the interests of the workers in the municipal elections We do not pretend that life or society can be changed by a city government. The political rights and material resources of the municipal administrations are narrowly limited by the bourgeois state, in which the municipal administration is a cog surrounded by a genuine straitjacket. The city governments possess no autonomy to speak of. Even in the odministration of municipal affairs, the state apparatus subjects the city governments to a control much more powerful than that of the citizens: manifold financial control over the budget, spending, and possibilities of borrowing; thus, the city budget is made up of the crumbs the state feels like leaving to the cities. The fight for democracy in the cities thus requires a fight against the bourgeois state apparatus and can achieve success only by replacing the bourgeois state with a state of the toilers. In addition, since Gaullism came to power, the futelage of the central state over municipal institutions has been strengthened. The budgetary strangling of most cities bears testimony to this. Only the "right thinking" cities receive significant subsidies from the regime. The limited polifical independence the cities could have commanded thus tends purely and simply to disappear. Our participation in the municipal elections therefore does not aim at sustaining the illusion that a city can be transformed into an "island of socialism" in a state that remains fundamentally bourgeois. Even with revolutionaries at their head, city govemments in the context of the present society and institutions would have no greater resources with which to profoundly alter the conditions of the workers. Thus, we refuse to subject ourselves to the logic of simply managing the city institutions, even "democratically, " u logic which aims solely at reorganizing municipal institutions as an integral part of an allegedly "democratized" bourgeois state. That said, in our program we do propose increasing the budgetary resources of the cities in the framework of our general struggle for:
*elimination of the sales tax (VAT);
*a Fiscal system essentially directed against the capitalists and those with large incomes. We will participate in all mobilizations to demand that the state subsidize all the urgent projects which the cities are unable to carry out because of lack of funds. Likewise, we support extending the competences of the municipal councils, against the tutelage of the prefectures and the central administration, and against the twofold function of the mayor as agent of both the state and the city. The mayor's powers must be reduced to those of a simple executive of the municipal council.
But we know that such changes can be achieved only though an overall struggle by the entire toiling population against the bourgeois state. Moreover, this is true even of the limited demand that the cities be reimbursed for the VAT, the battle cry of the parties of the Union de la Gauche. Nevertheless, it is in the context of the city that the toiling population finds itself confronted by the thousand and one problems that flow from the capitalist organization of society. It is thus in the context of the city that revolutionaries can demonstrate, deal with, and link together the many aspects of capitalist society's inability to assure a life worthy of men and women for all those who create social wealth.
* We propose to wage the municipal election campaign around the following axes: 1 Develop the possibilities of Workers Control Democracy is a fiction today. A genuine municipal democracy would require that the elected representatives of the workers be under the constant control of those who voted for them. It would require permanent participation by the toiling population in all the affairs and decisions of the cities, which in tum requires that they have the time and information with which to do so. Elected officials should be recallable at any time. But this is not the case today, elected local officials are not recallable by the voters. The mayor himself, once designated for his six-year term, can be removed by the minister of the interior but not by the municipal council. And the council itself can be censured by the prefect if he decides that any council decision is "illegal." The workers will not be able to radically overturn this situation unless there is a central political change. But it would be possible, beginning right now, for a municipal council that really represented the interests of the workers to place the council and all important municipal decisions under the direct control of the workers and toiling layers of the city. To do this, it would aid in the development of organs of struggle and control that include both voters and non-voters, to any and all organizations that represent the toiling population (trade unions, tenants associations, users of public services, etc.). These orgars, which could take various forms (neighborhood or local commissions, struggle committees on particular problems, etc.), provided they were genuinely democratic mass bodies, would have the right to propose and control, would have de facto power over the questions with which they deal. Revolutionaries would commit the municipal council to respect the decisions of these organs and to submit to their control.
2. Support the struggles of the workers and the toiling population. No municipal government can replace the struggle of the people themselves, but a municipal government that really represents the interests of the toiling population would fully support the struggle of the workers and all the exploited or oppressed layers of the population, in particular women, youth, and immigrants. This implies moral and material support to all the organizations these workers or layers of the population in struggle create democratically: frade unions, committees, various associations. This implies, in addition to financial support to the full extent possible, placing the offices and material resources of the city government at the disposal of these organizations.
*The municipal govemment will support striking workers (free services for strikers and their families, canteens, etc.), respecting the decisions made democratically by the workers in struggle.
*The municipal goverment will grant all aid to women struggling and organizing against their oppression and double exploitation; it will support and strive to satisfy their essential demands:
*possibility of information on sexuality and contraception for women and men in consultation centers as close as possible to work places and housing areas;
*equal rights and employment possibilities, equal job training and wages with men;
*total freedom of abortion through the development of adequate facilities, staffed by competent personnel, in each hospital;
*complete reimbursement by social security, development of child-care centers and nursery schools with mixed and well-trained personnel and with adequate material focilities;
*free availability of meeting places and discussion halls (women's centers).
*The municipal govemment will extend full aid to unemployed workers so that they may come together and struggle, If will support and strive to satisfy their demands (free transportation, unemployment stipends to all those unemployed); it will facilitate links between employed and unemployed workers in the fight to reduce the workweek and hire unemployed workers. It will strive to force the offices of the national employment agency to remain open permanently so that the unemployed can organize and meet with the workers and trade unions of the factories in the area.
*The municipal government will strive to foster class solidarity between French and immigrant workers against racism and will ban all racist propaganda in the territory of the city. It will place at the disposal of the immigrant workers material resources enabling them to safeguard their own culture,
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FRANCE *The municipal government will materially and politically support the workers in uniform, backing the ir demands and their struggle for the right to organize. It will demand the right of a municipal commission to inspect all barracks. 3. Defense and extension of democratic rights A municipal government, even one headed by revolutionaries, would be unable to prevent money from continuing to confer privileges, even in the realm of the expression of ideas. But by genuinely and completely placing its offices and material resources at the disposal of the population, a municipal government representing the interests of the tailing population would considerably alter the present situation. All the political and trade-union organizations of the workers and toiling layers, with no exclusion or restriction, will have the possibility of freely using the offices and means of expression commanded by the municipal government. They would thus be guaranteed the right of assembly and expression, in reality and not merely in theory. Open to all the population, the city offices (with the aid of permanent posters, open municipal bulletins, etc.) would become a real permanent living forum in which all people could present their problems and attempt to resolve them. The municipal govemment will stand on the side of the workers instruggle in opposing the intervention of the official or parallel police of the employers and the regime. In order to effectively oppose police occupations of factories and homes, evictions and seizures of the 32 property of tenants and immigrant workers, if will foster the development of workers self-defense. No confidence will be placed in the police, even the local police, in the maintenance of order. We will base ourselves on the collective organization of the workers. And the municipal government would do everything:
*To alert the population to the police harassment to which youth and immigrants are particularly subject;
*To shed maximum light on the activity of the local repressive organs (police stations, precinct stations, etc.). 4 Change the conditions of the life The problems that relate to the conditions of life cannot be resolved in the fromework of the cities and within the limits of their present material resources. To simultaneously build housing, child-core centers, schools, and hospitals, to be able to staff them with qualified personnel, to establish a comfortable and effective network of mass transportation certainly exceeds the material resources currently af the disposal of municipal governments. Nonetheless, the city budget will be subjected to the control of the entire toiling population; it will be determined in consultation with this population and its organizations. But regardless of the financial resources that limit its projects, the municipal government will politically and materially support all struggles to improve the living conditions of the population, which are in fact struggles against the state: the fight for free transit, for child-care centers, for adequate public services, Editeur responsable: René Groslambert, 34 rue Nothomb, 1040 Bruxelles against pollution, for health-core centers, for women's Although it is no* possible for the municipal govemment to construct decent housing for all, it nonetheless can aid in organizing the population around this important problem, among others. In order to put an end to the scandal of vacant housing while there are so many illhoused people or people living in the streats, the municipal govemment, aided by neighborhood committeas, will make a count of the vacant housing and the needs of the population. It will support all occupations of vaçant housing. Likewise, supported by neighborhood committees, all the workers organizations, and tenants associations, it will call upon the entire population to defend workers threatened with eviction or seizure of property and to prevent these incidents, which will rise rapidly given the crisis and unemployment. Municipal governments in the hands of real representatives of the interests of the workers would be able to aid the struggles of the workers and all the oppressed layers of the population. This would significantly change the conditions under which these struggles unLigue Communiste Révolutionnaire Lutte Ouvrière Organisation Communiste des Travailleurs