(The following excerpts from the positions taken by other organizations appeared in the October 13 issue of Inprecor The introductory note is by the editors of Inprecor.]
The crisis of the Union of the Left has been politically revealing of the evolution of the far-left organizations, which have been compelled to detail their analyses of the Union of the Left and the nature of the parties that make it up. The discussion around the updating of the Common Program has also provided an occasion for defining the axes of an action program for the coming period.
Below we are publishing excerpts from the declared positions of four organizations: Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (Internationalist Communist Organization), the Organisation Communiste des Travailleurs (Communist Workers Organization), and the Comités Communistes pour l'Autogestion (Communist Committees for Self-Management).
Lutte Ouvrière (LO) is an organization which directs its activity almost exelusively toward the factories. Their militants are active in the CGT (General Confederation of Labor), and sometimes in Force Ouvrière (FO-furthest right of the three national union confederations). Lutte Ouvrière publishes a weekly of the same name and a monthly journal, in English and French, entitled Lutte de Classe and sub-
"For the Reconstruction of the titled Fourth International." LO is the present expression of a current which never joined the Fourth International. For the past several months it has been conducting discussions with the United Secretariat of the Fourth International and the LCR.
The Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (OCI) is active primarily in the CGT and FO. It claims that the CFDT (the second-largest union confederation) has in no way broken with its past as a union linked to the Catholic hierarchy. It is also active among teachers (especially in primary schools). Within the National Education Federation (FEN) the militants of the OCI play a leading role in the "workers united front" tendency. The OCI's youth organization, the Young Socialist Alliance (AJS) is mainly active in a very small student union, the "UNEF-Unité" The OCI publishes a weekly, Informations Ouvrières, and a monthly, La Verité. It is a member of the Organizing Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (OCRFI), of which Pierre Lambert is one of the major leaders. This current refused to participate in the reunification of the Fourth International in 1963. Discussions have recently opened between the OCRFI and the United Secretariat of the Fourth International; these are aimed at organizing a public discussion, the first exchanges of which, on the question of Stalinism, will be published soon.
The Organisation Communiste des Travailleurs (OCT) came out of a split in the Ligue Communiste in 1971. The group then took the name Révolution and evolved toward Maoist positions. In 1976 it fused with the Gauche Ouvrière et Populaire, a Maoist current which had split from the United Socialist Party (PSU). The OCT is now active in the CGT and, more heavily, in the CFDT. A substantial part of its forces are active in the student milieu. Internationally, the OCT maintains contacts with Avanguardia Operaia in Italy and the Left Socialist Movement (MES) in Portugal. The OCT publishes a weekly, L'Etincelle, and a magazine, Premier Mai. The OCT, along with LO and LCR, participated in forming the united slates "For socialism, for workers power" during the municipal elections of March 1976.
The Comités Communistes pour l'Autogestion (CCA) came out of a recent split from the PSU; it is led by former militants of the Alliance Marxiste Révolutionnaire (AMR-Revolutionary Marxist Alliance). The latter is affiliated to the International
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Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, of which Michel Pablo is one of the best-known leaders. The CCA represents a limited political force which is now in the midst of a debate preparatory to its coming founding conference. Several dozen members of the LCR and OCT have joined this organization. For the moment, it has no press
Lutte Ouvrière
It is with the word "unity" on their lips *hat Marchais and Mitterrand are once again attacking each other, Marchais accusing the Socialist Party of challenging the essence of the Common Program, Mitterrand openly envisioning governing the way the Socialist Party did in 1936, relying on the support of the PCF but not bringing it into the government....
The PCF has long been aware that its only chance of entering the government and staying in is to have the maximum number of Parliament members, so that Mitterrand is unable to dispense with them in maintaining a majority in Parliament.
But neither the Communist Party nor the Socialist Party has any interest in a break. Whether the Common Program is amended or not, the CP and the SP need at least a mutual agreement to support each other's candidates in the second round of the elections. Each will insist on reconstituting the Union of the Left between now and the elections, at least in the form of an electoral accord equivalent to what has existed up to now.
Nor does the fact that both sides are raising the tone change much from the standpoint of defending the interests of the workers.
The polemic is increasingly focussing solely on the question of nationalizations. But who can possibly believe that the confused, obscure, and derisory quarrel over whether or not to nationalize the
Organisation Communiste
"To accuse us of wanting collectivism is a slander," retorted the secretary-general of the PCF to Robert Fabre, leader of the bourgeois party of Left
Radicals. A
slander, no more, no less. And, to be more precise, the PCF repeats again and again that the Common Progam is a program of defense of the capitalist system; it is neither socialism nor communism. Very good.
Indeed, neither socialism nor communism. The Common Program is a program of defense of the capitalist system, more precisely of the Fifth Republic....
The Stalinists and Social Democrats, "twins of the counterrevolution," as Trotsky wrote, must erect a counterrevolutionary barrier to try to preserve the system of private property, the Fifth Republic.
organ.
The excerpts below are taken from editorials or articles that have appeared in the newspapers of the various groups, with the exception of the CCA statement, which a column published in the appeared as "free tribune" section of Rouge, the daily newspaper of the LCR.
subsidiaries of the large groups is of that much concern to the workers?
No, this whole discussion about the number of companies to nationalize is only a crude pretext for electoral demagogy, on both sides. The SP and the Left Radicals are demanding a little less because some of their voters tremble at the very mention of the word collectivism. The PCF is demanding a little more in an attempt to make the workers believe that they can have confidence in the party, that it is more exacting, and that it advocates more profound transformations than its allies and rivals.
Even if the PC's view prevails in this bargaining, it would result in no advantage or additional guarantee for the workers; it would be no response to their uneasiness about unemployment and would not mean any real proletarian control over an economy which vitally and indispensably requires planning if catastrophe is to be avoided. But the PCF will not even make its point of view prevail, for it has no means of compelling the SP and the Left Radicals to line up behind PCF positions. On the contrary, the SP and Left Radicals have much greater means by which to force the PCF to back down.
So, workers, we must not have confidence in all these people. We can act to put them into the government tomorrow. But we cannot hope that once in power they will try to change our lives. Whether they are in the government or not, we will have to fight to win what we need.
Internationaliste
The leaders of the PCF and SP have no differences on this point...
The Union of the Left is a popular front, neither more nor less. It follows that the PCF and the SP are afraid to break up the Union of the Left and will have great difficulty doing so at a time when the revolutionary crisis has not yet broken out, for then they would be unable to deal with the revolutionary mobilization of the masses.
It is in the light of this analysis that we parat raint eat che can assess the breadth and import of the crisis now shaking the Union of the Left popular front.
The Stalinist leaders have a precise objective: to protect the Fifth Republic; that is, to prolong the reign of Giscard-
Barre as much as possible.
Unlike the SP, the French agency of the international apparatus of the Kremlin is not motivated by the search for an "electoral victory." Is that a slander?
No. The policy of the PCF is fundamentally determined in accordance with the defense of the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy, which struggles against the world revolution with all its might. Obviously this does not mean that the links between Moscow and the PCF are comparable to what they were at the height of Stalinism. But that is another story.
The "updating" of the Common Program the PCF has demanded, as well as its calls for the entry of a fourth, Gaullist component, represent efforts by the PCF to implement this policy of division, the objective of which is to prop up the Barre government and the Fifth Republic in its death agony.
It is clear that the leaders of the PCF are taking many initiatives in an attempt to demoralize workers and militants; in the concrete this means directly supporting Giscard-Barre.
To struggle for the formation of a PCF and SP government without Gaullists or Left Radicals and for the resignation of Giscard, as is proposed in the appeal of the Central Committee of the OCI (for the reconstruction of the Fourth International), means to concretely counterpose the workers united front to the Union of the Left.
There is not and there will never be a "good common program" for the working class.
That is why the OCI fights unconditionally for the unity of the PCF and SP, for
Organisation Communiste
There has been great surprise. What we thought was a mere rift in the relations between the parties of the Left has become a real crisis, a crisis which no one predicted, beginning with the OCT itself. (See L'Etincelle, No. 30.) Underestimating the intensity of the test of strength the CP and SP had plunged into, we concluded that they would not endanger their alliance before the elections. But nothing is going well on the Left today. Those who marched in all the demonstrations drowning out the slogans of struggle with their sonorous, insistent chant, "Union, action, Common Program," are now trumpeting their own division. The CP and SP are vying with each other to convince the workers to come over to their side against yesterday's partner. ...
The workers must of course intervene in this debate, but on their own basis. Neither the Common Program of 1972, nor the CP version, nor the SP version can respond to the victory of the candidates of the PCF and SP in the elections, and for the resignation of Giscard. This means working in practice to open the road that will enable the masses to realize their aspirations, to sweep away the Fifth Republic and the constitution, to open the road to a workers and peasants government. That is the policy of the Fourth International.
MITTERRAND
des Travailleurs today's demands of the workers as they are expressed in struggle.
Unity is necessary. But what does genuine unity of the workers mean today? Unity is the determined struggle against unemployment (which divides employed and unemployed workers so deeply), against the discrimination against immigrant workers, against the superexploitation and oppression of working women. The answers of the Common Program, whether in the CP or SP version, are more than weak on these points.
And in the nationalized enterprises, what will enable the workers to become something other than machines of production, what will enable them to control the work pace, to know why, how, and for whom they are producing?
Common Program, SP program, or CP program, what will happen to the overwhelming majority of the workers, those employed not in the nationalized companies but in companies over which "the employers will retain power," as Marchais himself has put it?
These are the questions the workers are asking every day. Today more than ever we must find ways of talking about this in the factories and offices; we must find ways of organizing discussions and general assemblies with the unions to find out what the workers think and what they want....
The debate over what kind of society we want is not between the CP and SP, but between the various projects of class collaboration and the revolutionary project for socialism and workers power.
Comités Communistes pour l'Autogestion
One lesson must be drawn from all this. The search for agreements with the bourgeois forces inevitably leads the workers parties (even the reformists) to retreat from their own positions, even if they hold the majority in the coalition. The workers must count on their own forces and their own strength, their unity around their own needs and demands. To achieve success they must build this unity, beginning right now, around the thirty-five-hour week, the sliding scale of wages and hours, and the massive nationalization without compensation and under workers management of the great enterprises that are closing down or laying workers off. Their strength is their unity with their organizations: what is needed is a PCF and SP government, without Gaullists or Radicals. This government must throw Giscard out. It must satisfy the workers demands; the workers and the Communist and Socialist militants must have their say; they must be able to really intervene. The Communist, Socialist, and revolutionary workers must unite in support of such measures, to make the workers parties break with the bourgeoisie, break with the logic of profit and the capitalist system, and take the road of socialism. ..
These are the stakes of the upcoming election campaign, in which a united current of revolutionaries must come forward fighting around clear positions capable of bringing about the uncompromising unity of the workers against the bourgeoisie. ... Thus, there must be no delay:
• Build discussion committees wherever the revolutionary forces are present;
• Let us act together in the nationalized or nationalizable enterprises so that the central question of who decides and who will decide is posed during coming months;
• Let us start a common discussion and initiate common action, from the ranks to the leadership, among forces and militants who uphold revolutionary perspectives.