[The following article appeared in the May-August double issue of Quatrième Internationale, bimonthly journal of the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontiental Press.]
The dissolution of the Ligue Communiste and the repression of its members are among the most important political events in French political life. To some degree the Ligue Communiste represented the revolutionary movement of May 1968, and because of this its dissolution is politically significant; but that is not at all sufficient to fully explain either the government's move or the powerful reaction that it triggered. The reasons for the repression and the huge solidarity that has arisen against it are to be found in the facts of the current political situation.
The situation in France is marked by two sorts of phenomena that picked up speed after the March 1973 legislative elections and that showed, each in its own way, that the electoral victory of the governmental coalition was illusory. In the first place, the rise of mass movements-which temporarily marked time owing to hopes for a Union of the Left electoral victory - reasserted itself more vigorously, especially in regard to the political level attained. High-schoolers, students, women, intellectuals, artists, and immigrants all took to the streets in turn. Marcellin [profascist minister of the interior] declared on June 20 that since the beginning of the year there had been ninety-three demonstrations in Paris, an average of one every two days! And what's more, the working class has for months been ceaselessly waging struggles in every corner of France, whether it be unskilled workers like the Algerian, Portuguese, and other immigrants at Renault or highly skilled workers who, on the social scale, may even belong to skilled pettybourgeois layers, like the air-traffic controllers.
Beyond demands for wage increases to counter the prices driven ever higher by irresistible inflation, the demands raised have been essentially political in character: The semiskilled workers at Renault were challenging the whole wage hierarchy structure; the air-traffic controllers were struggling for the right to strike; and finally, for several weeks, the Lip workers at
Besançon have in practice been flouting capitalist property rights, the authority of the and management, and employers bourgeois law; and they have been doing this with the sympathy of the masses of the whole country, making a government that wants to be strong impotent for fear of touching off a social explosion.
The second sort of phenomenon falls in the framework of the decomposition of the UDR [Union des Démocrates pour la République- Union of Democrats for the Republic, the Gaullist party] and of this period of a Bonapartism with no Bonaparte, in which Pompidou has been trying so far as possible to play the role of arbiter. Beyond the intensified attrition of this aprés-Gaullism, a situation in which there scarcely exists a plausible alternative solution from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, the rumors of Pompidou's impending involuntary departure from the political scene (rumors that seem to be verified by the plethora of possible candidates for succession to his post) are week by week intensifying centrifugal currents within political circles and within the bourgeois state.
The perspective of a presidential election being held before too long and the consequent possibility of Mitterrand being elected president of the republic are setting off the development of all sorts of tendencies within the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. Obviously, to speak of a fascist threat in the strict sense of a seizure of power by fascistlike elements or groupings is out of order; that is excluded. But one can sense a rising potential, a swarming of currents and tendencies seeking a forcible solution. Their desire is to put an end to what for them is an intolerable "disorder" that has existed since May 1968.
The government that Messmer set up after the March elections is itself an attempt to gather together theforces of a decaying bourgeoisie in order to try to dam up "disorder" and "anarchy." Several ministers have spoken in terms that seem drawn from the last century; worn out formulas worthy of a Thiers have been expressed. It is this set of conditions that explains the repression against the Ligue Communiste. It is an operation of a preventive type, aimed at decapitating, before the big test comes, the far-left organization that is strongest and most vigorous, that the regime considers to be politically the most competent. It is an operation that was set in motion in the belief that it would not unite the two big partners of the Union of the Left and would not set off serious political ferment.
The troubled waters that arepushing along the degeneration of the UDR are now extending into the state apparatus, into an army that, don't forget, got a taste of coup d'etat in 1958 for the first time in ninety years, and into a police force that the minister of the interior is reorganizing in order to make it more efficient in "maintaining order." A machination was mounted at the time of the [June 21] Ordre Nouveau meeting aimed at strengthening the most brutal repressive tendencies within the police force —there is no longer any doubt about this. It does not matter whether this machination was mounted directly by Marcellin or, whether, as is more probable, he simply became aware of what was in the works and closed his eyes to it with the idea of taking advantage of it.
In either case, the repression against the far left, and more exactly against the Ligue Communiste, flowed directly from the current political situation, although obviously this should not be taken to mean that the dissolution necessarily had to come down at the precise moment that it did.
An essential element in that situation has been the response-no less surprising for its breadth - triggered off by the repression against the Ligue Communiste. That the government had not counted on such a response is proven by the very words Marcellin spoke on television, when he seethed with indignation at the fact that Marchais [central leader of the Communist party], who yesterday was denouncing the "Marcellin ultraleftists," had taken up the defense of Krivine. But it must also be said that, even among the most optimistic revolutionists, nobody had expected such a mass of defense statements, beginning with the entire far left and going even beyond the traditional workers organizations to take in such unexpected protests as the very measured one put out by the magistrates union.
The government's error, and error it was, is in part explainable by the political vacuity of the minister of the interior and the prime minister, respectively a former lieutenant general in the Foreign Legion and a former colonial governor, two posts that do not compel one to acquire great political savvy.
The very broad united front that was formed, the like of which has perhaps never before been seen in France, has its origin in the present mass movement, which by its power and dynamic is shaking the routinism of the old leaderships. The leadership of the Socialist party is certainly not going to neglect the 2 to 3 percent of the vote that was gotten by the far left in the last election; what is determining the SP leadership's attitude is its hope of co-opting (as it has just done in the case of Régis Debray) a section of the far-left militants in order to infuse the SP's political personnel with a greater dynamism at the moment that its electoral returns are approaching those of the CP, while the SP still lacks the active members needed to take full advantage of the situation.
No one has the slightest illusion about the sentiments the CP leadership holds toward Trotskyism. Despite its successes, the Ligue Communiste has not transformed the relationship of forces to the point of being able to shift the CP's attitude toward the Ligue solely on the basis of that altered copain
POMPIDOU: Trying to play the role of arbiter.
relationship of forces. When it is recalled what position the CP and the CGT took at the time of the murder of Pierre Overney, the intense campaign now being waged against the dissolution of the Ligue Communiste and the arrest of Krivine (going so far as to include Jacques Duclos's participation in the Cirque d'Hiver meeting) indicates that powerful forces have dictated such a change in attitude.
What has happened since the elections of last March? The CP and CGT leaderships, after having vainly attempted to double-cross the Trotskyist leadership that was democratically elected by the high-school and university movement, had to join in this movement or find themselves isolated. In the case of the semiskilled workers at Renault, the union leadership was compelled to maneuver in order to regain control of the representative bodies of strikers elected independently of the leadership. Other examples point in the same way toward a weakening of the apparatuses' control over the workers. The leaderships of the CP and the CGT understood that if they maintained their previous attitude, they would risk being outflanked to the left during the movements that are developing. They thus understood very quickly that the response to the repression against the Ligue Communiste would not be insignificant; they did not want to risk being isolated, even temporarily, as had happened in the case of Pierre Overney.
Further, they could not help but be aware of the reactionary danger of the threat we referred to above, and, for the first time, they had to grasp the fact that if they allowed the repression of the Trotskyists to go unhindered, they would risk paying for it themselves in coming months.
The powerful response to the repression against the Ligue Communiste and the change in the CP's attitude cannot be considered immutable elements in French politics, but their importance for the future should not be underestimated so far as the Trotskyist movement is concerned - both in France and internationally. After what the CP leaders have done, it will be very hard for them to claim that Trotskyism is not part of the workers movement and to stifle its voice within the organizations of the working class. The change will not occur without a struggle, but the struggle will take place in much more favorable conditions.
And in places where the Stalinist movement lacks the authority that the French CP has within the working class, the sections of the Fourth International will have greater possibilities of intervention and more extensive means of defending themselves against the repression that cannot but fall on all revolutionary organizations.
If one does not forget the political situation that gave rise to the dissolution of the Ligue Communiste and the perspectives that this situation implies -to anticipate the inevitable great tests, the great class confrontationsit becomes obvious that the struggle to repeal the decree dissolving the Ligue Communiste, and more generally the struggle against all antidemocratic measures taken by the French regime since the great fear of May 1968, is not and cannot be a struggle to return to the former status quo. Such a struggle cannot be separated from the struggle that the masses are increasingly tending to wage in order to transform their lot, to create a socialist society - contrary to the claims of the champions of the theory that envisages bourgeois democracy extending itself little by little into "advanced democracy," which by some miracle is then supposed to lead to socialism without provoking resistance from Marcellin and the others of the same stripe that are bred and developed by the capitalist system. That is where the role and function of the revolutionary party come in.
In its own way the regime has shown that it understands this fact and also understands that the Ligue Communiste would be fulfilling this function in accordance with its growing ability. There is no doubt that the present repression will involve tempo-
DUCLOS: Sent by CP to speak at meeting in defense of Ligue.
rary inconvenience in the expression of revolutionary Marxist ideas and in the organizing of the current that is the carrier of those ideas. But living through difficulties is not unusual for revolutionists, and the Trotskyist movement in France, which is nearly forty-five years old, has known many difficulties. It will come through this test with courage, and may even be able to transform it into a source of power and progress. In truth, the Trotskyist movement enters this test under infinitely better conditions than it entered those of the past.
The history of the Ligue Communiste, a short history of four or five years, has been a history of the first breakthrough for the Fourth International in France, in the vanguard of the international Trotskyist movement. Trotskyism in France will emerge from this test it has just engaged — and it will be more powerful, having greater implantation and authority within the working class and the working masses. It will come out of the test better prepared to fulfill the role it set for itself when it began to combat the Stalinist and Social Democratic degeneration: to know how to provide a revolutionary Marxist leadership able to lead the masses to the overthrow of the bourgeois order and the construction of socialism.
One would have to totally lack a sense of the ridiculous to think that what a Stalin was unable to destroy, a Marcellin could destroy. Trotskyism has been buried many times before, but it has never yet disappeared from the political scene. Like the phoenix, it is ever reborn from its ashes. And this time, as even most bourgeois commentators and politicians have admitted, the dissolution decree was a political error from the bourgeois point of view.
Political errors are always paid for, and the revolutionary Marxist vanguard in France and throughout the world will try to make sure that the bourgeoisie pays as dearly as possible for this particular error. The Fourth International has never faced the future with as much confidence as it faces it now, at the very time that its section has just been disstrongest solved.