[The following article appeared in the May 24 issue of the French Trotskyist weekly Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
With the period of intense electoral activity barely past, it is important to keep a cool head and take our bearings with absolute clarity.
First, we must assess the importance for the future, apart from the electoral deceptions, of Mitterrand's vote total in the second round. Nearly 13 million ballots were cast in a vote that was seen, despite the efforts of the candidate to prevent it, as a class vote! That is, more than 49 percent of the votes cast. If elections are a distorted expression (at the expense of the workers) of the relationship of forces, this figure is enormous. Seeking to present himself as the candidate of all France, Mitterrand sought to avoid having the vote seen as a class vote. The fact, however, remains. The leaders of the Communist party and the Socialist party will draw from this an argument to use in consoling their troops, promising that the victory they just missed will be theirs next time.
We do not draw the same conclusion.
An authentic workers and peoples mobilization took place during this campaign, with huge meetings in Paris, Toulouse (40,000), Grenoble (40,000), Nantes (more than 20,000), Marseille, and Nancy. The upsurge of the left, which had never before attained such figures, reflects in its own way the rise in worker militancy. Above all its shows how far we have come, six years later, from the countercoup that followed the general strike of May 1968, whose lessons have become clearer and gradually penetrated an entire working-class generation.
This growing movement cannot be halted, much less smashed, by an electoral defeat of some 300,000 votes out of the 27 million that were cast. It would be naive to expect the 722 722
working class to draw antielectoralist conclusions from this. What is certain, however, is that the working class has felt and measured its strength, has seen victory within its reach, and will not stop there. Mitterrand himself knows this. He has not headed for the cloakroom or the shelter of some retreat; he has said that the struggle continues — no truce, no letup. That is not merely a loser's bravado.
The unprecedented vote for the left means that workers struggles will retain a political perspective. Mitterrand's campaign even attained one of its aims. It reintegrated the French CP into national political life and won acceptance for the idea of once again seeing Communist ministers. Given the strained, tense, if not explosive, economic and social situation, along with a regime that will have difficulty in establishing its equilibrium, Mitterrand and the leaders of the left are well aware that when push comes to shove they will be able to come forward as the saviors of society, the bourgeoisie's last card of national concord (as in Portugal). And they know that they will be in a much better position to do this than they were on the eve of the election campaign.
In short, it is not only the far left that doesn't think Giscard will be able to hold out for seven or even five years.
A New Era?
It is quite important to assess the importance of the second significant event of the campaign: the fall of Gaullism.
We have described the irreversible mechanism that led to this fall. The Gaullist regime emerged on the basis of a workers defeat. Behind the ideology of participation, it sought to promote a policy of class collaborationism based on the effort to recruit and appeal to the workers directly, going over the heads of their organizations. But the movement regained its strength and May 1968 consummated the break, breathing new life into the class struggle and bringing it to a higher level of activity than ever before. The political line of a mutual obligation between labor and capital was already no more than a degraded form of participationism. Following the death of its key personage and the blow its pretensions to popular support received from the decline at the polls in 1973, Gaullism could do no more than hang on, awaiting its agony. Chaban-Delmas's defeat is only the final chapter. It can in no way be attributed to his aristocratic bearing or phony maneuvers.
The deathblow was struck in 1968. What followed was inevitable and irreversible.
Today, Giscard finds himself at the head of a temporary, patchwork coalition. He is compelled to denounce the contradictions of a regime conceived by and for Gaullism. He must eliminate the threat of dead-end conflicts between the executive branch of government, which he represents, and an Assembly that risks falling back into its old divisions and returning to the game of changing alliances. To accomplish this, he would have to be able to base himself on a solid conservative party. All that he has, however, is a fragile electoral coalition that includes both hard-to-please reformers and a UDR [Union des Dé- mocrates pour la République - Union of Democrats for the Republic, the major Gaullist party] that is not at all happy to be in the coalition.
He may put his shoulder to the task, but it is not so simple. This is not 1945: The electoral and political basis for a big bourgeois, Christian Democratic party, a party tinted with social humanism to pick up the populist vote, simply does not exist. This is not the United States: The existence of a powerful and organized workers movement will make it very difficult to put together a big liberal-conservative party based on populist electoral support.
Giscard built his campaign by presenting himself as the protector of threatened social layers, of all the small owners tempted by [Jean] Royer. He built his presidential majority by beginning with the fear of the red menace, the threat of collectivism. But now he has to govern —for the benefit of big business and, above all, at the expense of those who elected him -through fear, using as bait some promises of a sprinkling of social reforms. His coalition is in a way the reflection of this social fragility.
It is easy to understand why the May 19 winners are not out thumping their chests but are instead trying to make it seem like a modest victory. They are extremely uneasy.
The only way out (and some people have already cast a sidelong glance in this direction and have brought it up) would be to smash the Union of the Left and reintegrate a section of the SP, the Left Radicals, and their electorate into a broader alliance. This is a perspective with little plausibility in a context of extreme social and political polarization, and in a situation in which the deepening of economic difficulties will leave Giscard little margin for a policy of class collaborationism based on substantial concessions.
The new era Giscard spoke of on the night of his electoral victory does not show any signs of being an era of great ambitions and vigorous policies on the part of the bourgeoisie, but instead an era of a decadent conservative regime. A transitional regime, which is what the new government will be will be forced to make its way from a former majority that they still cannot do without to a new majority that is more of an electoral slogan than a reality.
No Letup
For its part, the Union of the Left is going to continue the orientation it set for itself, notably by renewing parliamentary battles with a view to wearing down the new majority to force new legislative elections. This is a realistic perspective if you take into account the fact that a parliamentary majority, so much at variance with the presidential majority, is not immune to sudden reverses. It is true that Giscard has an immediate interest in not prolonging the period of instability and election campaigning that has held up a series of measures that are urgent from his point of view. However, he still must try to provide himself with a more solid parliamentary base as soon as the situation becomes more promising, at the eventual price of dissolving parliament.
And if a reversal of alliances is excluded, the stakes will be the nibbling away at the Gaullists' remains in the hope of someday broadening out the handful of surviving grouplets of the bourgeois center - those around Jeanneney, Pisani, and Marcilhacy. If this is Giscard's perspective, it must be pointed out that the present extreme polarization hardly favors this broadening of alliances. It is significant that Servan-Schreiber, after mature reflection, swung over to the side he always leaned toward. Significant also is the fact that a few corporation heads and Gaullist figures rallied to Mitterrand but brought him no more than 1.5 to 2 percent of the vote, that is, less than the far left.
This confirms that rather than a shift of alliances, it is the Union of the Left as such, including the Communist ministers but no new bourgeois component, that can in the event of a crisis become the ultimate bourgeois solution. The dynamic of the election campaign only made clearer, by concession after concession, the Common Program's perspective of class collaborationism, a perspective that neither implies nor requires new alliances.
Giscard may try for a time to back up his social rhetoric by a few measures that are more spectacular than costly (lowering the voting age to nineteen?), but without going too far, so as not to encourage inflation, which has reached a level he already finds disquieting. In reality, the inflation will continue without decreasing unemployment. The set of working-class demands that were on the agenda before the election (a minimum salary of 1,500 francs [approximately US- $310] a month, a forty-hour workweek) will again be pressed sharply.
But if these demands are to be won, the movements must not remain isolated or become fragmented. Instead they much be coordinated and generalized along the path indicated since December 6 by certain actions involving an entire region or branch of industry. Young people will not see themselves as represented by a president they did not elect — any more than workers will. If the elections failed, by a few thousand votes, to break through the logjam, it is still correct to begin to centralize the struggles with the perspective of a renewable general strike to attain satisfaction of the workers demands. And since the elections have shown the strength of the workers and popular current, it is correct to concretize this power by strengthening and uniting the working-class organizations. Fusion and unification of the trade unions, with the right to form tendencies, are now on the order of the day.
Vanguard workers should begin to concretize this perspective, beginning with interunion meetings and regroupments on the rank-and-file level.
The proletariat will have an even greater need for powerful and united organizations, in view of the fact that behind Giscard is arrayed the entire classical far right, from former OAS [Organisation de l'Armée Secrète — Secret Army Organization] members to apprentice Nazis, and in view of the cheers given to the CFT[Confédération Française des Travailleurs- French Confederation of Workers (a semifascist group of thugs claiming to be a trade-union)] delegation at a Giscard meeting at Porte de Versailles [an area of southwest Paris]. The new regime, when faced with workers struggles, can be expected to remain faithful to the methods of those who stand behind it, and to equip itself with supplementary parapolice gangs. Workers selfdefense must become a reality.
To propel these struggles forward while at the same time organizing the growing distrust of the maneuvers of Mitterrand and [Communist party General Secretary Georges] Marchais, building and developing a vanguard organization is more than ever necessary. From this standpoint, the election campaign has made a number of things clear. First of all, the unprecedented friendly reception and influence of the far left were reflected in the election results as well as the size of the meetings and the number of papers sold. However, the campaign also made clear the confusion of the far left and pointed toward important transformations. By its rejection of the [Charles] Piaget candidacy, and by its attitude to the campaign, the PSU [Parti Socialiste Unifié - United Socialist party] appeared clearly as an organization that, while still divided, had crossed the threshold and become an appendage of the Union of the Left. The AJS/OCI [Alliance des Jeunes pour le Socialisme/ Organisation Communiste Internation-
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aliste - Alliance of Youth for Socialism/ Internationalist Communist Organization (Lambertists)] also called for a vote for the "first secretary of the SP" on the first round, closing their eyes to the presence of the Left Radicals [in the Union of the Left] and overlooking the fact that a year before they had denounced the maneuver of the bourgeois Mitterrand with the SFIO [Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière - French Section of the Workers International, the official name of the Socialist party] of Guy Mollet.
Some ultraleft currents around [the newspaper] Libération also called for a vote for Mitterrand on the first round, falling for the electoral mirage. Lutte Ouvrière [Workers Struggle], on the other hand, sank further into electoral sectarianism (by reject-
Gandhi Breaks Indian
Speaking to a packed audience in the Socialist party headquarters in New Delhi May 27, a representative of one of the striking railway unions announced that the massive countrywide rail strike had been called off. "The government fought a miniwar," the unionist stated. "In a confrontation of that nature, the odds cannot but be against the workers."
The twenty-day strike was the longest railway strike in India's history. It ended only after the Gandhi regime unleashed one of the fiercest repressions against the labor movement in recent years. Between 30,000 and 50,000 railway workers were arrested during the strike, according to the May 29 New York Times. The regime invoked such emergency regulations as the Defence of India Rules (DIR) and the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), charging that the railway strike threatened the economy with collapse.
After the ending of the strike, George Fernandes, the head of the All-India Railwaymen's Federation and of the Socialist party, and other unionists were released from jail.
The May 18 Bombay Economic and Political Weekly reported that three members of Parliament visited the 724
ing the Piaget candidacy and by carrying out a campaign that was more "populist" than revolutionary). And finally, Révolution! had the correct electoral slogans, but they were based on reasoning that opened the door to elector al opportunism of the worst sort, a point we shall return to in the future.
The Front Communiste Révolutionnaire arose and took shape around the Krivine candidacy. It is ready to play, in an even better fashion, role that has been poorly filled since the dissolution of the Ligue Communiste [Communist League-former French section of the Fourth International]. The task is immense, but we will not be deterred. The election was only the beginning, not the end.
Rail Strike
Tughlakabad railway colony in Delhi and found "the spectacle of a deserted town in war-time." "The entire male population of the colony," they said, "is in self-imposed exile, following attempts by the police to hunt out railway employees and take them to places of work at the point of the bayonet."
Intercontinental Press correspondent Sharad Jhaveri, writing from Jamnagar, Gujarat, May 23, reported: "The Gandhi government has let loose a veritable reign of terror and repression to suppress the fortnight-old countrywide general strike of railway workers. Thousands of railway employees have been arrested. They are being forcibly evicted from the railway colonies with the help of the army, Territorial Army, and special police forces. Drinking water from taps has been discontinued. Food distribution shops in the colonies have been closed, threatening the workers with starvation. The massive propaganda machine is working overnight to give distorted news of the strike."
The reign of terror, moreover, was not restricted to the striking railway workers, but extended to their families. The May 17 New Delhi Hindustan Times described the situation in the railway colonies: "Large-scale eviction of families of striking railway employees from the staff quarters has become the talk of the town.... The railway authorities have pasted eviction notices on 353 staff quarters in various colonies. ... Neighbours of the evicted families said police did not even allow them time to take out their belongings."
Wives of railway workers, according to the May 18 Bombay Statesman Weekly, demonstrated May 13 in Durgapur, West Bengal, to protest the beating of wives and children by the Central Reserve Police and the government's railway police. The resolution announcing the end of the strike, adopted in jail by George Fernandes and other rail unionists, noted that wives of railway workers had been "raped by the minions of law and order."
Despite the level of the repression and the government's efforts to blame the strikers for India's economic problems, the railway workers received considerable support from other sections of the working class. Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and other major industrial centers were paralyzed May 15 by a one-day general strike called in support of the railway workers. Among the organizations supporting the general strike call were the All- India Trade Union Congress, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, the Hind Mazdoor Panchayat, the United Trade Union Congress, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, and the Hind Mazdoor Sabha.
The May 23 dispatch by Sharad Jhaveri noted: "Despite the government's censorship, several newspapers have reported that at many places the men of the Territorial Army refused to attack the workers."
On May 6, central trade union leaders and representatives of the Confederation of Central Government Employees and Workers issued a statement denouncing the use of armed force to break the strike, condemning the firing on railway workers in Malda, and appealing to their affiliates to extend "all manner of support" to the railway workers struggle.
The May 18 Economic and Political Weekly noted the overall economic situation that prompted such a show of militancy by the railway workers: "If despite the unrestrained use of the po-
'The Government Fought a Miniwar' 'The Government Fought a Miniwar'
lice, the railway workers have been able to keep the strike going for so many days, the reason is not that they were particularly well organised for the strike or that they have received any extraordinary support from the opposition parties. It is the desperate economic condition of the workers - the cumulative result of continuously and sharply raising prices, acute shortages of the basic necessities of life, and growing unemployment-which has made them unsuspectedly resilient and militant."
The same conditions that forced the railway workers to launch their massive strike also affect other sections of the working class. As the May 11 Economic and Political Weekly noted: "The government was going to make an example of the railwaymen and expected the working class as a whole to take the government's handling of the railway strike as a warning."
But true to his Stalinist perspective, he was quick to add that the time for such a political move had not yet arrived in India.
A special session of the central executive of the CPI was held in Delhi that day. It is reported to have been stormy, with heated discussion between pro-Congress and anti-Congress members of the executive. Some of them strongly criticized the attitude of Rajeshwar Rao, the secretary of the CPI, on the railway strike. They urged the party leadership to try to dispel the widespread impression among workers that the CPI is a supporter of Gandhi.
The meeting urged the government to end the rail strike "through a negotiated settlement without pre-conditions and without standing on any false sense of prestige." A resolution asked the government to declare in "clear and unambiguous terms" its acceptance of the six demands of the workers. It also demanded that an
Commission. Various organizations, including student unions, supported it. This was the first public protest meeting of workers in Hong Kong since the upsurge of 1967 was defeated.
Some of the workers were reserved in their attitude toward the sponsors of the rally, who were mostly young workers and student activists. But the fact that they turned out indicated that the radicalization of the youth in Hong Kong has begun to affect other layers. It was likewise significant that these workers participated in an action that was not approved by the trade-union bureaucrats.
Both the Maoists of the ultraleft and the Kuomintangers of the ultraright found the May 5 rally not to their liking. The ultrarightists attacked it as a noisy show put on by longhaired youth. The ultraleft sectarians refused to participate because of the involvement of Trotskyists of the Fourth International.