[The following article appeared in the August 6 issue of Rouge, the French daily reflecting the views of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR- Revolutionary Communist League), the French section of the Fourth International.]
In a guest editorial published in Le Monde August 5, Victor Leduc tries to persuade the Socialist and Communist parties to form an alliance with the PSU so as to score an electoral victory in the 1978 legislative elections. We agree that to bring about decisive change, a victory for the left must be won by a majority far beyond 51 percent.
raises Leduc's central question:
This where is this majority to be found? He rejects the CP solution of an alliance cutting across class lines in a "Union of the French People," including all nonmonopoly layers. He also rejects the proposal by Jean-Pierre Chevènement for an alliance with the so-called national bourgeoisie, represented by the Gaullist faithful.
Instead, he proposes to win the needed votes among the 20 percent of the workers who abstain or vote for the right, and among the nonproletarian "popular layers" (the new and traditional petty bourgeoisie). But to do that requires a party to attract them.
The Socialist party presents itself as the guarantor of socialism with freedom, but the genuineness of its socialist talk is open to question. As for the CP, its past and its practice do not yet allow it to rely upon its new scheme of socialism in the French national colors. That seems to leave only the PSU. Socialist, democratic, and a supporter of self-management, it could take on the job quite easily.
After extolling the virtues of the prospective bride, Ledue of course says that he is unable to go further without a marriage contract-the betrothal requires a thoroughgoing discussion. Agreement has not been secured in advance.
Does the Union of the Left Seek to Change Society?
Leduc's proposal is suspect from the outset, because the Union of the Left is based on the Common Program, and is not a vacillating class front but above all a front of class collaboration. Neither the appeals of [French CP leader] Georges Marchais nor the proposal by Chevènement are, as Leduc seems to think, a strategic retreat from the goals the Union of the Left has set for itself. To the contrary, Marchais and Chevènement are pursuing a rightist course, in accordance with the old adage: "When the masses move to the left, the leaders move to the right."
This policy of class collaboration was set from the beginning, it will be recalled, by:
1. The alliance with the Left Radicals, who are ready to welcome the dissident Gaullists the SP and CP are today wooing.
petty bourgeoisie of widely varying class loyalties is deeply affected by the polarization between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. Accordingly, the proletariat's task is not so much to make concessions to these layers-as was the case during revolutions in countries with a strong peasantry-but rather to show its capability to take the offensive against the bourgeoisie.
The proletariat should expropriate the banks, the agribusiness trusts, and the industrial monopolies that are strangling the traditional petty bourgeoisie. It should make clear its capacity to construct a selfgoverning socialist society, and demonstrate concretely the superiority of the democracy of workers councils as opposed to the most democratic forms of bourgeois democracy. In short, it should carry out its program.
However, this is precisely the question on which Ledue has little to say. He does not state the conditions the PSU would place on a governmental agreement, or on support to a government of the SP and CP. He confines himself to stressing the need to assemble all the people's forces in a united bloc to defeat the right and open the road to socialism. He says only: "To help push forward the dynamic of unity among all layers of people, to effectively prepare the defeat of reaction ... we think it is necessary today to unite, in people's committees in the factories, neighborhoods, and small towns, all those who wish to contribute to this victory and what will come after it." In this way he makes clear that this "need" is negotiable, and in any event is not a precondition for the PSU going over to the Union of the Left.
To be sure, it is essential that revolutionists not get caught in the dilemma of merely exposing the reformists' capitulations while waiting for the masses to abandon them, or of giving tactical support to the Union of the Left while waiting for the hour to be sounded when it can be bypassed. But it is necessary to state clearly the conditions we put on support to a government of the SP and CP.
The Conditions for Support
To open the road to socialism, such a government must break with the bourgeoisie and its parties, starting with the splinter grouping of Left Radicals, and with its institutions, starting with the constitution of 1958. It must base itself on the mobilization of the workers, by supporting workers control in the factories, by expropriating and placing under workers management all factories that are shut down or that organize economic sabotage, as well as the factories in which a majority of the workers call for nationalization. It
Notes
2. The agreement to respect the Gaullist constitution, which led [French SP leader] François Mitterrand to reaffirm that he will do nothing to force Giscard out of office if the Union of the Left wins a majority in 1978 (thereby leaving the president the opportunity of using the