The following article appeared in the October 13 issue of Inprecor, a fortnightly news bulletin published by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.]
When the workers began returning from their summer vacations, the economic, political, and social situation in France was dominated by the application of the austerity policy that had been defined by the government of Prime Minister Raymond Barre in September 1976. (See Inprecor, No. 60, 21 October 1976.)
In most respects, this austerity plan has failed. In spite of the initial claim that the annual inflation rate would be brought down to 6%, it is probable that this year's price increases will exceed 10%. In spite of the gaudy campaigns and widely publicized measures around jobs for youth, the number of unemployed, even according to official statistics, will rise by several dozen thousand this year. By the end of the year, more than a million and a half will be unemployed. Finally, the government has been unable to reduce the foreign trade deficit significantly.
There is, then, only one point on which this plan has been scrupulously implemented: the wage freeze. The overall buy. ing power of the workers has dropped by 2.5-3%. But if one looks behind this overall figure, taking account of the disparities in industrial branches, regions, and categories, it becomes clear that entire layers of the working class are now beset by poverty, even misery. Concurrently, the capitalists have managed to reestablish profit margins, although they have not achieved an upturn in industrial investment. Probably their political uneasiness has something to do with this. But more fundamentally, the structural crisis of the accumulation of capital persists. And the prospect of a new international recession is already in sight.
It may be asked to what extent the application of the austerity plan i has eroded the combativity of the working class, since this past year has brought hardly any important victories on the wage or job fronts. Entire regions (like Lorraine) and dozens of occupied factories have been offered but one perspective by the trade-union leaderships: hold out until the "democratic change" of 1978. (The legislative elections are scheduled for March 1978.) In fact, ever since the sweeping Union of the Left victory in the municipal elections last March, which heralded the Left's almost certain victory in the upcoming legislative elections, the reformist leaderships have been staking everything on the 1978 elections. Far from taking advantage of the favorable relationship of forces created by the municipal elections to launch an offensive against austerity, which could have brought down the Giscard-Barre government, they have combativity in squandered workers dispersed days of action by region or category. These culminated in a belated general strike (last May 24), which was never followed up, since it was viewed more as a preelectoral show of force than as a real mobilization around a united platform of struggle with concrete objectives.
After the municipal elections, the Communist Party (PCF) asked that the Common Program of the Union of the Left be brought up to date. (The program had been drafted in 1972 and signed by the PCF, the Socialist Party, and the Left Radicals.) The SP, initially reticent, finally agreed, hoping to make some quick changes and wind the matter up before the summer vacations if possible.
But a polemic broke out in early August, after SP leader François Mitterrand announced that if the Left won the elections a referendum on the French nuclear striking force could be held. The PCF immediately denounced this proposal as a disavowal of the work done by the tripartite commission to update the program. In fact, the PCF has recently made a turn on the military question and has now adopted the Gaullist policy in support of the nuclear striking force. In the discussions on updating the Common Program, the PF had gotten its partners to agree to amend the passage promising that the nuclear arsenal would be maintained in its present state" (en l'état), altering it to read "maintenance in working order" (en état), which implies not only the mainenance, but also the development of the nuclear arsenal. The PCF thus seized upon Mitterrand's referendum proposal as an opportunity to accuse the SP of "selling out national independence" by renouncing the defense system.
Later, at the beginning of September, when the "summit meeting" to sign the updated Common Program was being prepared, disputes broke out on other issues. In addition to the problems of arms and nationalizations, differences arose on what the minimum wage should be and on the breadth of wage differentials.
On the first point the PCF adopted the position of the two major union federations, calling for a 2,200 frane (about US $440) monthly minimum wage as of April 1977, which would imply a 2,400 franc minimum by April 1978. The SP leaders were even more moderate; Michel Rocard thought it more reasonable to promise a 2,000 frane minimum.
Finally, on wage differentials, the PCF proposed reducing the wage spread to oneto-five. But this proposal, which amounted to a major PCF turn on the question, remained quite vague and sufficiently far off in time ("at the end of the legislative term") to remain negotiable.
In sum, the PCF opened an offensive on issues that were of immediate concern to the workers and popular layers (except that of the bomb) and were simultaneously open to compromise. Thus, at the time of the break, the discussion of the minimum wage was about to be concluded through agreement on a 2,200 franc minimum at the time of the formation of a Left government followed by sweeping wage negotiations between the government and the unions during subsequent weeks.
On the other hand, none of the parties signing the Common Program had taken it upon themselves (and they still haven't) to begin discussing more thorny and explosive issues, such as jobs or government institutions (the role of the president, the preservation of the Gaullist constitution, etc.). Thus, the PCF was able to polish up its image in the working class as the party of the toilers and even to catch the CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labor] leadership off guard: For the first time, the latter was compelled to publicly take some distance from the SP, which CFDT Secretary Edmund Maire accused of being presidentialist rather than an advocate of self-management.
Finally, during a third period, in the course of the Left summit itself, the polemic crystallized almost exclusively around the question of nationalizations, while the other contentious issues seemed resolved. The break then occurred in two stages.
First the Left Radicals walked out. Their president, Robert Fabre, lent the break a spectacular character, seizing on a highly symbolic pretext. At issue was the "little phrase" in the Common Program stating that the workers of a factory will be able to ask parliament to nationalize their factory. The Socialist leaders had repeatedly stressed the "inoffensive" character of this phrase, remarking that in any case the decision would rest with parliament, that additional nationalizations would mean additional compensation and therefore new taxes, and that the deputies would reject such a dynamic. But the Radicals nonetheless made opposition to the phrase their battle cry. This allowed them to play their role within the Union of the Left: defenders of private property and guarantors of the interests of the bourgeoisie.
This was the role they wanted to highlight by this break and this blackmail, in a way both the bourgeoisie and the workers could understand. When the Left Radicals returned to the summit, a compromise was arrived at: the "little phrase" would be preceded by the words "in conformity with the constitution." Of course, none of the signers of the Common Program had challenged the constitution to begin with, but when it comes to the interests of the bourgeoisie two precautions are better than one.
During the second summit, in September, a break occurred between the Communists and Socialists, and it has lasted to this day. The official cause was a dispute over whether the subsidiaries of nationalized capitalist groups should also be nationalized. The Common Program calls for the nationalization of nine industrial groups. In the PF's view, this should include holding companies and subsidiaries, lock, stock, and barrel. The SP claims it means nationalizing 98% of the holding companies and subsidiaries and turning the stock owned by the holding companies into state participation. Each claims to be defending the 1972 program.
It is amusing to note that neither side
The PCF correctly observes that the SP has proposed several bills to nationalize groups including subsidiaries, that one SP leader has said that nationalizations of groups but not their subsidiaries would be "empty shells," and that the idea of nationalizing only the holding companies but not the subsidiaries on grounds of legal complexity appeared rather belatedly and cautiously in the Socialist press (after the municipal elections).
As for the Socialist Party, it stresses that the calculations of the cost of compensation published by the PCF last May did not include all the subsidiaries.
In addition, each party, although claiming that its position was a matter of principle, tried to compromise. The PCF reduced the number of nationalizations it demands from 1,450 to 1,008 and then to 729. The SP upped its ante from around 60 to 250, on the basis of utterly fantastic criteria. In the end, the difference boils down to about 400 companies, representing only 0.77% of French corporations and employing less than 150,000 workers all told. In the meantime, the PCF suddenly renounced nationalization of Peugeot-Citroën (180,000 workers); the nineteen largest trusts which are not on the nationaliza. tion list (among them Michelin, Hachette, and the cement companies) alone employ nearly 700,000 workers.
These figures suffice to demonstrate that the real differences between the PCF and the SP do not reflect two qualitatively different versions of the Common Program, one anticapitalist and one reformist. The question of nationalizations is a pretext, but a revealing one which conceals other stakes. To understand this, one must go back to the deeper reasons for the polemic.
Some people have said that the SP wanted to cut the PCF loose and govern alone. There is no doubt that this is the long-term plan of at least a portion of the SP leadership. But not immediately. It is through the alliance with the PCF that Mitterrand rehabilitated an excessively compromised Social Democracy. And it was through broadening the SP's ideological gamut, from professions of faith in selfmanagement to promises to loyally administer an austerity policy, that he made it the biggest vote getting party in France. Abandoning these conditions would risk losses, including among a very heterogeneous and unstable electorate.
But more important, if the Union of the Left wins the elections and the SP is called upon to administer an austerity policy, it will have to involve the PCF in government responsibility. Mitterrand knows full well that a homogeneous Socialist government would be worse for him, at least initially. He understood this as early as 1968, when he opposed the stubborn anti- Communism of some Socialists by explaining that a Communist presence in the government (provided the posts were modest) would be an additional guarantee for the bourgeoisie and that Georges Séguy, the head of the PCF-dominated CGT (General Confederation of Labor), was the best guarantor of order, for the moment.
Thus, although Mitterrand, like Soares, Schmidt, and Callaghan, is willing to take responsibility for an austerity policy, he knows that his chances of success as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned depend on his ability to make the PCF take coresponsibility for it-but without making any concessions to the PCF. Too much flexibility toward the PCF would endanger the SP's electoral hopes. That is why the margin for negotiations is so narrow.
As for the PCF, there has been no lack of explanations for its behavior, up to and including the famous "hand of Moscow." Everyone in France knows that the Soviet bureaucracy does not regard the Giscard regime unfavorably. This became quite clear when the Soviet ambassador paid an official visit to Giscard right in the middle of the 1974 presidential campaign, and it was confirmed by the warm welcome extended Barre during his visit to Moscow in early October.
But one month of polemics between the Communist and Socialist parties does not wipe out a several-years long evolution during which the PF has increasingly and explicitly taken its distance from Moscow. And this is not a momentary flipflop or whim of the leadership group. It is related to the crisis of decomposition of the Stalinist bloc and cannot be reversed without a deep modification of the international relationship of class forces.
Some comrades (such as the OCI, Internationalist Communist Organization, for example), while not going so far as to endorse the theory of remote control from Moscow, have tended to offer a Stalinophobic explanation which is really not an explanation at all. The Stalinists, they say, were and remain splitters, and they are seeking to preserve the status quo by breaking up the Union of the Left. Must one then conclude that the Union of the Left and its electoral victory would threaten the status quo? Or else that there are two ways of preserving the status quo: a Union of the Left government or the division of the Union of the Left? Maybe the PCF apparatus is divided over which
In reality, the fundamental contradiction for the PCF lies in its continuing close links with the working class and the deeper integration into the state apparatus its participation in the government would entail. This contradiction could become particularly acute should a Union of the Left victory occur in a context of capitalist crisis requiring an austerity policy. The PCF apparatus knows full well that if this happened, the party would have the dirty job of keeping the working class in check, and for the first time since the Popular Front there would be a risk of entire sectors of the working class contesting the party's bureaucratic control. In addition, every time the PCF has retreated a bit, every time it has further effaced its own identity and doctrine (discarding the dictatorship of the proletariat, for example) in order to look more like a respectable "government party," the united electoral efforts have been of benefit mainly to the Social Democracy.
This twofold danger for the PCF was illustrated by the municipal elections. On the one hand, the SP became the leading party; on the other, a current of defiance took shape around the far left. One section of the PCF apparatus, apparently grouped around Roland Leroy, reacted defensively. In the view of this grouping, the party's specific character as the party of the working class has to be reasserted. And it might be better to remain in opposition rather than risk entering the government under such bad conditions.
If Georges Marchais is to overcome this reluctance in his own apparatus, he has to offer solid guarantees. The prize has to be worth the risk; the Communist ministers must not be tossed out like in 1947; the party must conquer lasting positions in the state apparatus.
Hence the test value of the polemic around nationalizations. What lies behind the question of the number of subsidiaries to be nationalized is the problem of management. The CGT holds the majority in most of the companies concerned. The PCF asks that the managing director of the company be elected by the employees. The PCF would thus control the leadership of many key companies. In addition, it must not be forgotten that during the updating of the Common Program the PCF rather crudely raised the delicate problem of the division of ministerial portfolios.
The PCF bureaucracy thus stands at a turning point in its history. The turn cannot be made without a violent battle in the apparatus, the initial signs of which could be seen at the twenty-first party congress.
That said, neither the PCF nor the SP have any alternative policy right now. The majority of its members around the prospects of the Union of the Left. The latter was reconstructed through this alliance after hitting bottom in 1969, when its candidate, Gaston Defferre, got less than 10% of the vote in the presidential elections. But the PCF is even more devoid of any short-term alternative strategy. Turning inward on its own apparatus would be a short-sighted policy offering no perspective to party members.
Beyond the polemical reactions of the bourgeoisie, which is denouncing the irresponsibility of the Union of the Left, drawing dire pictures of the chaos that would result if such a break took place after an electoral victory instead of right now, the bourgeois parties are not doing any excessive breast-beating. The Giscardians, who have always counted on a breakup of the Union of the Left and the recomposition of a "real Social Democracy" whose members would be temporarily dispersed among the government majority and the opposition, are coming in ahead of the Gaullists in polls for the first time. The Gaullists, speaking through Jacques Chirac, leader of the Rally for the Republic, are saying that the government parties should not be diverted, that the PCF and SP will wind up reconciling, and that the SP remains the main enemy.
In fact, if the bourgeoisie is not evincing more optimism, it is because the initial polls taken after the PCF-SP break do not indicate any electoral decline of the Union of the Left and because in the final analysis the inflation and unemployment figures will weigh heavier in the upcoming elections. It is not unlikely that the PCF and SP would win a majority even if they ran separate campaigns, each upholding their own version of the Common Program, and agreed to support each other's candidates in the second round vote. In that event, as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, it would be easier to keep things in hand if they have a government program. It is for this reason that a compromise remains probable in our opinion, despite everything.
The effect of the polemic in the working class is contradictory. On the one hand, it is generating uneasy skepticism among most workers, along with an elementary electoralist reaction in favor of unity. This business about subsidiaries, the workers say, isn't worth a break; it's secondary, let's win the elections and then we'll see. On the other hand, among a more conscious sector of the working class the copain
MARCHAIS
polemic is bolstering the PC's image as the hardest and most vigilant party. Finally, it is stimulating a critical politicization around the two reformist leaderships. Those who thought the Common Program had an answer to everything have now discovered that there is not one but several common programs and that there is something to argue about.
Nothing, then, is settled. The question is what will happen after the elections if the Union of the Left wins or loses. If it loses that would be a relative success for the bourgeoisie, which would have managed to implement the Barre plan and retain the majority. The blows the working class has suffered this past year could then cause a genuine demoralization among some sectors. But more probably there will be significant social explosions whose scope and effectiveness may be limited by the divisions in the working class itself. That would become the major problem.
If the Left wins, the contradictory aspects of the present polemic will be extended. On the one hand, it has placed a huge number of problems on the agenda for discussion and has touched off a politicization. On the other hand, it has demonstrated the fragility of the PCF-SP accord and strengthened the PCF's control over its own ranks.
The PCF-SP division has highlighted both the hopes and illusions of the great majority of workers in their mass parties and the importance of not subordinating their interests (the necessity for a struggle against austerity) to chancy electoral objectives. This is why we of the Ligue Communiste
Révolutionnaire (LCR-
Revolutionary Communist League) are emphasizing the workers unity that is needed.
In reality, the aspiration for unity corresponds both to an opportunist and electoralist reflex (channeled into class collaboration by the Union of the Left) and to a profound need for a united class front. We base ourselves on this second element in lending a class content to the desire for unity. This axis will remain important even if the PCF and SP finally reach a compromise. But since such a compromise remains the most likely variant, it is important to anchor the fight for unity in lasting tasks; we must not be advocates of unity for its own sake (which in practice would lead to acting as a marriage coun sellor for the PCF and SP), but must stress demands that lend this unity its class content. We are therefore intervening around the following axis: Putting an end to austerity and the Giscard-Barre government requires the unity of the workers and their organizations; the workers themselves must make decisions independently; there must be a break with the bourgeoisie (Left Radicals, the constitution, Giscard).
We insist above all on the fact that it is not true that there are two versions of the Common Program, one collaborationist the other anticapitalist, divided by 500 nationalizations more or less. The Common Program as such is a program of class collaboration. It is important to firmly maintain this characterization in order to resist any temptation among the far left to give critical support to the PCF.
That said, we are not indifferent to the minimum wage, the wage differential, the number of nationalizations, or the possibilities of workers control. This is what we explained in a four-page supplement to our daily newspaper, Rouge, and in an open letter on nationalizations to the members of the PCF and SP:
• For a 2,400 franc minimum wage? Of course, but with a sliding scale, workers control of the price index, etc.
• A one-to-five wage spread? Yes, if it is to be achieved through an offensive against fortunes and capital, the opening of the account books, nationalizations, a single bank, monopoly of foreign trade, etc.
• Is the number of nationalizations important? Yes, but then let's nationalize without compensation the nineteen groups which alone employ four times as many workers as the 500 subsidiaries the PCF
and SP are arguing about.
Moreover, we must add the questions not being dealt with in the PCF-SP polemic, mainly jobs, around which we have traditional demands.
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Finally, we take the proposals advanced at their word:
• The PCF repeats the CFDT proposal for the formation of delegates' councils in the workshops and service departments of the nationalized enterprises. These would be united structures well rooted in the ranks. But why limit them to nationalized enterprises? And more important, as long as the idea has been raised, why wait for an election victory before acting on it?
• The CGT has announced that the functions of the factory committees will have to be expanded, not limited to the right to examine the accounts, but extended to the right to full information about all wage scales, plans for hiring or for layoffs, or transfers of factories. Very good. But if this is to be real workers control, if the workers are really to be able to have their say, then secrecy must be abolished, and, most important, the information given the factory committees must be verified and examined by all the workers in the shops and service departments. The workers delegates to the factory committees must have real veto power.
The PCF-SP division broke out over the heads of the workers, even though it relates to questions that concern them most of all, that affect their daily lives and their ability to resist austerity. Thus, the workers themselves must now have their say and make the decisions. A great debate must unfold.
Marchais and Mitterrand are both appealing to the workers, but only to ask for their confidence, to invite them to join their respective parties, without providing them the means by which to speak out and make decisions. The workers must meet in general assemblies in the shops to work out a platform with precisely delineated demands which are neither mere amendments to the Common Program nor negotiable objectives that can be revised downward, but vital demands that the workers will be prepared to defend and fight for against any government. The leaderships of the CGT and CFDT have met together, but without deciding anything, simply keeping up appearances and maintaining an image of unity that will enable them to function under the best possible conditions no matter what happens. But at the same time, strong pressure is being put on rankand-file unionists to support one of the two parties in the polemic.
Finally, the Barre plan, which has already done heavy damage to jobs and purchasing power, is still being applied. No balance-sheet of the trade-union tactic of dispersed days of action, which has enabled the plan to be applied, has been drawn. The workers must meet in general assemblies of the various federations to draw this balance-sheet and to put forward perspectives of struggle against austerity. In common, they must assert their own demands against the PCF-SP polemic; they must define their platform and the means of achieving it without handing their demands over to hypothetical negotiations with a Union of the Left government; they must forge rank-and-file tradeunion unity on this basis and pose the problem of the unification of the unions, with tendency rights for all.
The PCF has often criticized the Popular Front, saying that it was a mistake not to establish rank-and-file committees. In 1973 the CERES (a leftist tendency in the SP) raised the idea of such committees, although not very insistently. Now that the polemic is reaching its peak, now that the question of what program the workers stand for and on what basis they want their parties to govern has been raised, nobody is talking about such united, nonexclusive committees to discuss and act to impose a government that meets their demands.
In the municipal elections last spring the workers gave the majority to the parties they see as their own, the PCF and the SP. They thus indicated their desire for these parties to form a government. But not a government to work with Giscard and give in to the blackmail of a Fabre. Not a government to continue an austerity policy and respect the reactionary constitution of
1958. We, along with them, struggle for a PCF-SP government that breaks with the bourgeoisie and satisfies their demands.
As for practical initiatives, we have launched a public propaganda campaign, with a massive distribution (200,000 copies) of an appeal from the Political Bureau, distribution of an open letter to the PCF and SP on nationalization, and the organization of meetings and public discussions in the cities and sectors where we are active.
It also appears important to us to make sure that this political event gives rise to a confrontation—and if possible, a common public response-among the revolutionary organizations. We see this as a test of the possibility of running a united campaign in the legislative elections on the basis of a solid agreement. Elsewhere in this issue of Inprecor there is a brief rundown of the positions of the various organizations. Up to now we have reached agreement on a common appeal with the OCT (Communist Workers Organization) and the CCA (Communist Committees for Self-Management), which will lead to public meetings (already held in some cities) allowing for broad discussion of where we agree and what our differences are. We would have liked other organizations, especially Lutte Ouvrière, to have joined in this appeal. But for this organization has refused the moment, even to participate in united meetings and seems to have begun its preelection campaign alone.