[The following interview with Alain Krivine, Trotskyist candidate for president of France, was published in the first issue of Le Quotidien Rouge, dated April 22. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Question. Since you are supported by the Front Communiste Révolutionnaire (FCR/- Revolutionary Communist Front] which has just been founded, you seem to be running as the representative of an organization. In view of what was said around the proposal to run Piaget, do you think this is consistent with the tasks at hand?
Answer. After Pompidou's death our first response, in fact, was to bring the far left and the vanguard workers together in a united campaign around Charles Piaget. Our reasoning was that this workers candidacy would be the best symbol and expression of the most advanced concrete experience in the class struggle since May 1968. We wanted to regroup all those forces that refuse to put their confidence in the Union of the Left and Mitterrand and that depend primarily on their own mobilization and organization to cut through obstacles and open the way to socialism. That was our first response, our first attempt. Inasmuch as the majority of the PSU [Parti Socialiste Unifié - United Socialist Party] rejected that candidacy, our attempt was not a successful one, and Comrade Piaget bowed to his party's discipline.
In line with this thinking, we proposed to all the far-left groups, and especially to Lutte Ouvrière, which had already announced that it was running a candidate, that the far left run as its common candidate a worker militant who would not be part of the leadership of any organization. Lutte Ouvrière categorically rejected this. We then decided to run me as a candidate, although we were aware that this campaign would not have the same impact or the same function.
It's clear what this function is. Farleft militants who only yesterday were ferocious antielectoralists, and sick of the Communist party, some of whom even rejected the trade unions, and all of whom accused us of being "moderates," are now to be seen jumping over the fence and bumping into each other at the polling booths in their haste to vote for Mitterrand. In the face of this electoralist pressure, it is important that there be a candidate who can challenge the Common Program and the Presidential Charter [of Mitterrand], by expressing firm positions and a revolutionary program.
Then, too, it is necessary to combat all the demagogy that says that an "organization candidacy" is unfortunate because its base is too narrow. There are enough candidates competing to become the president of all the French people. I claim only to be the spokesman for a program and an organization. And that's already saying a lot; it's the result, the synthesis, of the experience and militancy of several thousand workers and youth in their daily struggles. My candidacy is the expression of the way they have developed the rich lessons of their experiences.
Finally, since the election gives us a tribune, it is also an opportunity to use this valuable means to get a hearing to carry forward the struggle against the dissolution of the Ligue Communiste, which was banned by Marcellin for having fought fascism.
Q. But doesn't calling for a vote for Mitterrand on the second round conflict with the revolutionists' desire to organize the workers' distrust of the reformists?
A. In the eyes of the majority, of the mass of workers, Mitterrand's election would give them the means of getting rid of the regime that orig inated in the 1958 coup and although mortally wounded, survived the general strike of May '68.
The Communist party and the Socialist party are striving to control this extended mobilization of the workers and the population to their own advantage.
And to a certain degree the election of Mitterrand would remove an obstacle. It would illustrate that a change has already taken place in the class relationship of forces, and it could be the point of departure for a new surge forward.
Finally, Mitterrand is the candidate of the unions, the CP, the SP, the PSU, in short, of the majority of the workers organizations. And that's certainly how the bourgeoisie sees it when they tell Mitterrand: "You are a capable moderate man, but the danger lies in those who are following you."
For all these reasons, a vote for Mitterrand means a class vote for millions of workers. That is why we will call for voting for Mitterrand on the second round - after having explained on the first round the limitations and suicidal contradictions that burden the reformists' plans.
Q. The weekly Rouge the Front Communiste Révolutionnaire, and you yourself had already stated that you would vote for Mitterrand on the second round only if he did not in the meantime make any compromises with representative sectors of the bourgeoisie. But doesn't the whole orientation of the Union of the Left already tend toward such alliances and such compromises?
A. Yes, it tends to, inevitably. This is its logic. We are convinced of it, we are aware of it, and we say so. And our task is to explain this.
But it must be understood that this analysis of ours is not shared by millions of workers who still have confidence in the CP, the SP, and the leaders of their unions. That majority will only be convinced through experience, with firsthand proof. It will only be torn away from the reformists' solutions by taking the measure of their failures, and then rallying to the revolutionary solutions, with the establishment of a workers' government and the expropriation of the bosses.
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That is why we will vote for Mitterrand despite his cowardly, compromising, and bankrupt policies.
But we add: Only if he has not concluded in the meantime any pact with significant sectors of the bourgeoisie. That's not just for the record. Take the example of Chile. There is a difference between the Chilean government without the military before October 1972 and the Chilean government with the participation of the mili- May 13, 1974
tary after October 1972.
The change concretized a capitulation of the Popular Unity that was visible and understandable to thousands and thousands of workers, who drew their own conclusions by beginning to organize themselves in the factories, the neighborhoods, and the famous cordones industriales. They began to outline the perspective of a people's power, built by themselves, parallel to the national assembly and the government coalition with the military-
For us, the Union of the Left is heading toward the same compromises. Mitterrand is preparing the way for them. But few workers yet believe us when we say so.
Mitterrand is maneuvering. And that is reason enough for us to ruthlessly denounce all his openings toward the right, his implicit promises to grant ministerial posts to right-wingers, and so on. That is also why we must respond to the large number of workers who will be convinced of our position only when Mitterrand has capitulated - once a coalition government has been set up, for example. Then it will be up to us to go into high gear by setting ourselves objectives that would otherwise be beyond our means.
Q. But then, after having campaigned, why not withdraw before the first round, as a symbol of our contempt for the electoral farce, without taking responsibility for dividing Mitterrand's votes on the first round?
A. Our candidacy is aimed at explaining and illustrating everything I've just said, and popularizing Rouge's action program, preparing for the struggles to come, whatever the election result. For it is not certain that Mitterrand will be elected and we must also explain what we will
(The following article was published in the April 30 issue of Le Quotidien Rouge, which is supporting Alain Krivine, candidate of the Front Communiste Révolutionnaire for president of France.
Révolution! is the weekly newspaper of an ultraleft grouping that originatdo if we find ourselves facing a Chaban or a Giscard who has just been elected for seven years!
Without feeding any illusions that elections are the road to socialism, it is not a matter of indifference to us that even a limited number of workers vote to show their agreement with our positions and our perspectives. A vote for ideas and proposals has all the more meaning and significance when it is done without any illusions as to its immediate effectiveness. These are people who are telling Mitterrand: We will vote for you against the candid ates of reaction, but be aware that we have drawn the lessons of May '68, and of Chile, and that we are ready to fight against you if necessary rather than repeat the same tragic errors.
And when they point to rather dubious polls, and ask us, "Isn't it unreasonable to hang tight on the first round if Mitterrand's stock continues to rise, if there's a chance he'll win on the first round?" we reply: Mitterrand and the Union of the Left can't win on all counts. By making bigger and bigger concessions to the right, out of deference for institutions and profits, in order to round up the ten or fifteen percent of the electorate that normally votes for the Réformateurs [bourgeois liberals], they are increasing the distrust on the left of the one or two percent of workers who are in the vanguard. They shouldn't come to us to complain. It is this legitimate distrust by the revolutionary workers that we want to express. We do not invent it; it stems from the capitulations of the reformists. We have already seen enough of the Noskes, the Eberts, the Mochs, and of Mitterrand himself in France, repressing the working class! So, no carte blanche and no blank check! That's what we are demonstrating on the first round.
ed in a split from the Ligue Communiste in 1971. Révolution! participated with the Trotskyists of Rouge in a joint initiative to get Charles Piaget, a leader of the Lip strikers, to run as a united far-left candidate in the presidential election. When that project was unsuccessful, and Rouge nom-
Ultralefts Reconciled With Mitterrand Ultralefts Reconciled With Mitterrand inated Krivine Révolution! accused it of "giving in to electoralist maneuvers."]
"Voting for Mitterrand can improve the relationship of forces for the working class.... And what's more, if Mitterrand wins, his success, while only electoral, will open up more important opportunities for the mobilizations of workers and other layers, based not on reformist initiatives, but on struggles in the factories. ... We will be at their [the workers'] side on May 19 in voting for Mitterrand, at the side of the workers who will be expressing their desire to resist and challenge the bourgeoisie."
All of this can be found in issue Number 54 of Révolution!, which has just appeared, under the headline: "The revolutionaries and the elections."
It's a "flaky" position if you compare it to what Revolution! said during the [1973] legislative elections, in a series of articles entitled "Vote for the Union of the Left?" (Issues 21, 22, 23). There we read: "Not one vote to the small-time politicians of the Radical party, the colonialists of the Socialist party, to the strikebreakers of the Communist party.... The only solution is to abstain!"
So what is there to justify such a spectacular change? Doesn't Mitterrand have behind him the same smalltime politicians, the same colonialists, and the same strik ebreakers?
Would his election improve the relationship of forces? That was also true a year ago. Would it create more fa vorable conditions for the struggles and activity of the revolutionists? That was true a year ago. R'évolution! argued then that the victory of the Union of the Left would create objectively more favorable conditions, but "by disarming the working class today in the face of the bourgeois offensive, it could not go against its own nature by arming the workers for the struggles of tomorrow." Would Mitterrand arm the workers today? His perspective remains the same: a social truce, respect for the constitution, and class collaboration.
Another slip: The same issue Number 54 of Révolution! publishes an open letter to members of the CP, the CGT [General Confederation of Workers], and readers of L' Humanité.
It accuses "Mitterrand and the SP of wanting to dump the Common Program [of the Union of the Left]." And in another article, they explain that it was "thanks to the SP's position within the Union of the Left" that a bourgeois line was able to develop. When are we going to hear the slogans: "The CP must break with the SP! CP, apply your program! For a workers united front!" As if the classcollaborationist policies of the Union of the Left were not the ultimate aim of the CP's program! As if the CP were not itself ready to advocate the widening of the Union of the Left to the right, provided it was allowed to keep a few odd jobs for itself-just as it did in 1936, when it proposed a "National Front" wider than the Popular Front, and in 1946, when it sat in the Bidault government!
Do the comrades of Révolution! think that the SP is a party that represents the bourgeoisie? In that case they should call on the CP to break with it. And in that case, they couldn't call for a vote for Mitterrand on the sole argument of its social dynamic, for that could be used to justify voting for Perón in Argentina - and why not Spinola in Portugal, tomorrow?
Or do they characterize the SP as a bourgeois workers party, sharing with the CP the same class-collaborationist plans? In that case they must call for a break with bourgeois legality and institutions, and for rejecting any coalition government. This would mean reconsidering the use of unitedfront tactics and an orientation in the unions.
You can't carry two lines at the same time, and get away with it!