[The following article appeared in the June 8 issue of La Gauche, weekly newspaper of the Ligue Révolutionnaire des Travailleurs ( Revolutionary Workers League), Belgian section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
If an example were needed to illustrate the Marxist view that under a bourgeois system elections can't provide a reflection of the social relationships except one vastly distorted in favor of the bourgeoisie, no better one could be found than that of France in the weeks immediately following the March 4 and 11 legislative elections.
Less than two weeks after these elections a youth movement broke out - beginning with the high-schoolers, then joined by the university students and the apprentices of the technical schools - that clearly encompassed more than a half million young men and women, challenging in particular the bourgeois army and giving rise in Paris to the April 2 demonstration of about 300,000 persons, the largest street demonstration since May 1968. July 2, 1973
At the same time, a strike of several hundred OS [ouvriers specialises - semiskilled workers], most of them immigrants, broke out at Renault. It finally drew several thousand workers into stoppages, raising at the same time the questions of the status of so-called foreign workers and the question of the structure of wages and the regimen inside the factories.
During these same weeks, an incident in Grenoble in which a physician was arrested and prosecuted was enough for the 1920 antiabortion law, still formally in effect, to be condemned to death in real life, as organizations and physicians openly proclaimed that they had performed abortions and would continue to do SO.
And finally, the provocative words of the new minister of culture touched off significant street demonstrations by intellectuals, artists, etc. And it is not over yet.
The Game Preserve of a Mafia
Although the months preceding the elections saw only a few stirrings break through the electoralist orientation of the policy set by the traditional leaders of the workers movement, once the elections were over, all that had built up in the way of discontent, hope, and desire for action took form, sometimes with enormous intensity. A tendency that had manifested itself only in a minimal way a few months earlier - the tendency of various social categories to take the law into their own handswas accentuated in a more and more significant way.
As is known, the [Gaullist] majority emerged from the elections weakened on the parliamentary level. It was the UDR [Union des Démocrates pour la République- Union of Democrats for the Republic] that especially lost ground in this operation, for it no longer commands an absolute majority in the National Assembly. During the course of forming the new government it had been bandied about in official circles that "change within continuity," that is, making an "opening toward the center" might be in order. But once again, it turned out to be nothing but words, and it could not be otherwise, for the regime is at present the game preserve of a mafia.
It is true that Pompidou had to remove Debré from the government, along with some other old Gaullist stalwarts, but this was largely for personal reasons. The men who compose the present government have two essential characteristics: first, they are dependent on Pompidou and are submissive toward him; second, they are the most reactionary pack to have governed France for at least a century. We have the everlasting minister of the interior, Marcellin, obsessed with the existence of an "international plot" and always asking for more and more repressive measures to the point that even some police get nervous. At Marcellin's side we have a Malaud, who complains that the ORTF [Office de Radiodiffusion et Télévision Fran- çaise - Office of French Radio and Television] is not sufficiently governmental; and a Galley, minister of war, who before the elections was minister of transport and broke a strike of air-traffic controllers through measures that probably cost the lives of sixty-eight passengers on a Spanish plane, and who began his new funetions with a speech to reserve officers the tenor of which belongs to a period about a half century back.
We see designated as minister of cultural affairs the academician Druon, a prolific but mediocre writer, famous for having his books ghost-written, who began his new functions by denouncing modern art in police terms and by promising to grant subsidies only to the most hackneyed art and to government flunkeys.
Reestablishing 'Order'
The composition of the government expresses the desire to make use of the recent movements- which aimed not only at quantitative demands, but at changes that challenged the system itself - in order to create fear and thus get together a reactionary mass movement to confront the revolutionary upsurge, which is taking on a growing breadth. Thus, we can expect an attempt to mobilize some "strong-arm" currents, which may not be limited to miniscule fascist groups like Ordre Nouveau. This is an attempt to set forces of intervention not only against 808
the revolutionary vanguard, but against the broad laboring masses as well.
In the trade-union sphere, we have seen attempts in two directions. On the one hand, Pompidou held a meeting with Bergeron, the secretary of Force Ouvrière, that miserable tradeunion federation that avers political neutrality toward such a government, copain
POMPIDOU: Heads the "game preserve of a mafia."
in order to give FO a little extra publicity. On the other hand, several UDR deputies asked, with a greater insistence than in the past, that the CFT [Confédération Française des Travailleurs - French Confederation of Workers], a supposed trade union composed of company goons in the factories, be recognized by the minister of labor as a "representative organization" of the workers, with all the benefits that would derive from such recognition.
In short, it appears that broader and broader currents within the bourgeoisie no longer believe that May '68 was only a passing incident and that they are looking for ways to reestablish "order."
Traditional Workers Organizations
What have the traditional workers organizations done since the elections? As for the Socialist party - which has been somewhat silent during the recent movements— at the Congress it has scheduled for June, we will see what lessons it has drawn. It is probable that it will remain on the axis that has allowed it to make an electoral comeback. The next congress of the CFDT [Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail - French Democratic Confederation of Labor] will also give some indication as to what its leaders want to do; it is probable that a pseudoleftist orientation will be maintained.
In this same period, the leaderships of the French Communist party and the CGT [Confédération Générale du Travail - General Confederation of Labor] have exhibited a certain moodiness and have felt the need to effect some tactical maneuvers. At a meeting of the Communist party Central Committee, Marchais (head of the CP] said, in substance: For ten years now, we have been following the poliey that led to the formation of the Union of the Left and its Common Program; now, after ten years, at the moment that we have attained this goal, it is not we the Communist party, but the Socialist party that is reaping the electoral profits. We are stagnating in the electoral arena.
It is probable that this indisputable observation has raised some problems in the top leadership of the CP. In his speech, Marchais vigorously defended the necessity of continuing more than ever the policy of the Union of the Left. But he did not say how this would be possible, how the masses could stay mobilized around an electoral program for elections that are to take place five years from now.
The recent movements (youth, OS, etc.) drove the Stalinist leaders into a corner. Among the youth, the attempt of the CP's high-school organizations to outstrip the committees elected by the high-schoolers - in which the Ligue Communiste, as is well known, played a leading rolewas a fiasco. After that, the CGT leaders found themselves obliged in the course of the movement to make contact with these committees and to participate in demonstrations led by them. This could only have been a temporary tactical turn, which was not extended when the movement receded. Nevertheless, the Stalinists felt the way the wind was blowing, and at the Young Communist conference that just took place, they simultaneously pronounced resounding words about socialism and denounced the "ultraleftists"- all the while encouraging their own youth (whose numbers were somewhat reduced) to make use of the enthusiastic, colorful forms of the far-left demonstrations. But it is quite difficult to bring off militant demonstrations around a flatly electoral policy.
In the recent OS strike, the union officials were forced to accept (reluctantly, and all the while carrying out various maneuvers) that representatives designated by the OS themselves should participate with the union leaders in negotiations with the factory management. We have not yet reached the point that the union bureaucracy will accept elected strike committees (it should be stressed that the CFDT leadership, as well as the FO leadership, is also hostile to this form of leading struggles), but it is a sign of the times in France that the bureaucrats may in certain cases already be constrained to maneuver around this question within mass movements.
In sum, the elections settled absolutely nothing. Through its most hardline currents and through its government, the bourgeoisie is seeking to prepare for assembling more massive forces in anticipation of social conflicts in many spheres. It took only a few big movements after the elections for the Union of the Left to prove to be nothing but an electoral gimmick that offers no political perspectives for the battles that are ripening.
Among the masses, who since May 1968 have resorted to hard forms of action, there has now been added an ever-growing tendency to apply to their struggles forms of organization in which workers democracy begins to come through. This is a sign that the revolutionary upsurge is continuing.
"Hot, hot, hot, springtime will be hot!" That was one of the main war cries of the youth during the March and April demonstrations. It is possible that springtime may not be as July 2, 1973
hot as the young demonstrators expected, but this will be only a postponement - and not for very long.
The atmof 1973 cold well be very hot.