[The following three items appeared in the December 29 Rouge.]
Tendency A
Since June 1972—despite the selfcriticism by the Central Committee majority of the call for a vote for the Left Radicals in 1973—most of our discussions have centered on the Union of the Left and the concrete tasks flowing from our analysis of it.
In the discussion leading up to the Second Congress, our tendency took the initiative against the outgoing majority in the Central Committee and the Political Bureau, which rejected characterizing the Union of the Left as a classcollaborationist popular front. The outgoing majority has always characterized the Union of the Left as a "plan for class collaboration" and not as an "active policy of class collaboration that the masses are already experiencing" (see First Congress theses). The majority pointed to the danger of "sowing confusion about the tasks of revolutionists" and said that "for the period ahead the focus of the struggle lies elsewhere" than in the demand for the workers parties to break with the bourgeoisie. It said that "the best guarantee against all future forms of class collaboration is the self-organization of the working class."
TD [Tendency D] thus breeds two kinds of illusions:
1. Implying that the Union of the Left can be "outflanked" more or less spontaneously, through the "self-organization of the masses" and what TD calls the "broad vanguard," without the conscious activity of a revolutionary party.
2. Downgrading the importance of counterposing a line of working-class unity to the policy of the Social Democratic and Stalinist leaderships of the SP and the CP.
The Union of the Left/popular front subordinates the struggles and interests of the working class to an alliance with the bourgeoisie. The Union of the Left does not open up "the road to revolution," but rather to betrayal of the interests of the proletariat. The Union of the Left is nothing but class collaboration organized by the Social Democrats, the Stalinists, and the bourgeoisie, through the alliance with the Left Radicals today, the Gaullists or Giscard tomorrow. The Union of the Left's main purpose is to defuse the working-class struggles that are on the rise today, and not to "stimulate a social dynamic, in spite of itself," as TD would have it.
When the Barre [austerity] plan surfaced after the cantonal elections, around October 7, we saw how the SP and CP refused to politically confront the openly bankrupt government that opposes satisfying the most elementary demands. The Common Program [of the Union of the Left] is not a working-class program, but a program for managing the bourgeois order. The policy of the Union of the Left, both in regard to the mass movement and the bourgeois forces, is what enables the regime to maintain its hold.
The Union of the Left is in the same vein as the Italian CP's "historic compromise," the "Democratic Coordination" in Spain, and the "people-MFA alliance" in Portugal. These popular fronts, which are different from those of 1936 (in France, for example), have been made necessary by the crisis now affecting both imperialism and Stalinism. The form of the alliance with the bourgeoisie and its impact on the mass movement may vary. But, to one degree or another, the results of this alliance, and its implications for revolutionary Marxists, are the same.
Should We Wait and 'Outflank' Them —or Strike Out on Our Own?
It is false to call for "outflanking" the Union of the Left. To "outflank" means to "go further, but in the same direction." We are not going in the same direction as the Union of the Left, because the Union of the Left is not heading toward socialism. The Union of the Left is not a "necessary stage" that has to be gone through. We don't have to wait until 1978 [the next parliamentary elections]. We have to counterpose our politics to those of the Union of the Left, point by point. Contrary to groups like the PSU [Parti Socialiste Unifié-United Socialist party] or the OCT [Organisation Communiste des Travailleurs-Communist Workers Organization] that advocate "people's unity" or "people's power" or "popular fronts of combat"-whose line is not even intended as opposing the popular-front strategy of the CP and SP-the LCR should put forward a "line of working-class unity."
This line must be counterposed to the program and practice of the Union of the Left in all areas of the class struggle, among the youth, and in the working class. Thus, we counterpose our line to the line of "participation" on the university campuses. We support the struggles of soldiers for their democratic rights, while the CP and SP capitulate to [former Premier Jacques] Chirac. We are for fusion of the trade unions—for a single, democratic trade union-but for the independence of the unions from the Union of the Left. Under all circumstances, we fight for a workers united front to arise out of struggles, for the workers to force their leaderships into unity in action to oust the government. And so today, rather than call for a Union of the Left government, we counterpose our perspective-the perspective of a government composed only of workers parties (SP and CP) without bourgeois ministers, without Radicals, without Gaullists, without Giscard.
Tendency B
What Do the Reformists Propose?
The leaderships of the CP and the SP claim that, in order to fight for the needs of wage earners and eventually create a society run in their interests, the leadership of these parties must be intergrated into the bourgeois economic and state apparatus (city governments, national education, nationalized enterprises, etc.).
Based on experience, Marxists have long understood that this policy can lead only to a change in the individuals administering the bourgeois state. Whether or not the cabinet ministers, military officers, or executives of big corporations are members of the CP or SP makes no difference. The state machine remains an instrument of the bourgeoisie; the working class cannot establish proletarian rule.
The great majority of the working class, however, has confidence in the policy of the reformists. Therefore, if revolutionists want to win the majority of the proletariat to their aims, they must study the reformist apparatuses-using the Marxist method, the materialist method-in order to understand them better and fight them more effectively.
Why This Class-Collaborationist Program?
If it is thought that their program results merely from an incorrect analysis, then our entire policy must aim at mobilizing the masses to put pressure on these leaderships to move forward to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We are not of the opinion, however, that the policy of the reformist leaderships is the result of error. It has a material basis, class roots. From their point of view, it is a rational policy, aimed at defending their social position. Contrary to the way it is presented, their real objective is to share power with the bourgeoisie's "traditional" hirelings, to broaden and consolidate their influence in the state apparatus. And their influence in the working class is their means to this end. In this way a relationship of forces is set up between the reformists and the traditional parties, based on the struggles of the proletariat, channeled and inserted into the framework of the bourgeois state (elections, respect for hierarchy, etc.). It is therefore clear that the reformists will never saw off the branch they sit on. Under no circumstances will they allow a challenge to the bourgeois state.
What does the LCR's Present Leadership Do?
It is possible to read and reread the daily Rouge from the time it was started without ever finding a Marxist analysis of the reformist leaderships. If, under these circumstances, the LCR's policy is—to say the least-ambiguous, it comes as no surprise. For months the paper has been filled with urgent appeals to the CP and SP leaderships to form a government, break with the bourgeoisie, and set about "resolutely inspiring the development of real working-class power (sic!)." (September 29.) In Mole Pamphlet No. 8, the leadership even concludes its list of demands on the reformists with, "these are the only conditions under which an SP-CP government could actually fulfill the promise held out by the Common Program: the road to socialism."
In our opinion, such a policy can only strengthen the illusions that the masses have in the reformist leaderships and encourage the advanced workers in their belief that the CP and SP can be "pushed to the left" and persuaded to make a revolution. We must never deceive the working class!
What Is To Be Done?
Tendency D supports the policies of the leadership. Tendency A, which thinks that the politics of the organization should revolve mainly around the demand for a "CP-SP government without bourgeois ministers," also winds up strengthening illusions in the real nature of these parties, implying that if the CP and SP broke with the Left Radicals, this would change everything. Our tendency, Tendency B, thinks that the primary task of the LCR must be to explain that the capitalist system must be destroyed and the bourgeois government replaced by a workers government, a government of the proletarian dictatorship, and to tell the truth, the whole truth, about the nature of the reformist leaderships, so as not to bolster illusions about them. This is not being done by the present leadership.
The LCR's task must then be to mobilize the working class around clear, educational objectives, enabling it to experience in action the need for a proletarian dictatorship. The present leadership is not doing this either. We will come back to this point in our next article.
Tendency D
The Common Program is a program for class collaboration, a plan to have the reformist workers parties run the capitalist state. The alliance forged around this program, the Union of the Left, is already practicing class collaboration. The CP and SP have undertaken to keep Giscard in office and to have the 1958 constitution amended; Mitterand has reassured the bosses at the colloquium sponsored by [the financial magazine] l'Expansion; neither the CP nor the SP are throwing all their strength into the struggle against the Barre austerity plan, but have come out instead for a wait-and-see electoral policy, wanting to avoid at all costs a test of strength in actual struggle. They now hope to broaden the Union of the Left to the bourgeois parties. An accord has already been signed with the Left Radicals, and appeals are being made to the Gaullists.
A New Popular Front?
Should the Union of the Left be considered a new popular front? In 1936, the popular front included the Radical party, which then had a majority in Parliament. The alliance with this bourgeois party gave the reformists an excuse for not putting their own program into practice. This is not the case today, however, because the Common Program is not basically different from the programs of the CP and the SP. The popular front was an alliance with a major bourgeois party that had been in power many times before 1936. In this sense the Italian CP, through its "historic compromise" with the Christian Democracy, which has been in power for thirty years, is carrying out a "popularfront" policy. But in comparison with the Radical party of 1936, or the Christian Democracy, the present-day Radicals are only a tiny group! The same goes for the popular front in Spain in 1936: the bourgeois parties took the lion's share of seats in the Assembly, which hardly compares with the few Radical deputies in the Assembly today!
The popular-front analogy, therefore, is not valid in France today. Because if the term popular frontism is to have any meaning at all, it cannot depend on the content of the program (otherwise, any reformist program would be "popular frontist," and the notion would lose its specific meaning), but on the nature of the class-collaborationist alliance, and the tasks resulting from it. Thus, the CP and SP justify their capitulation by saying that in order to safeguard their future electoral victory, legality (the constitution of 1958) must be respected and the bosses must be reassured. Their arguments are not based on the "restrictions imposed by the alliance"-that is, with the Left Radicals.
The Axis of Workers Control
Considering the Union of the Left to be a "popular front"-in other words, saying that the class-collaborationist policy of the CP and SP is shown primarily by the pact with the Radicals-leads:
• To advocating abstention in the municipal elections whenever a Radical is on the slate. Instead, we call for a vote on the second round for the slates headed up by the CP and SP, while condemning the inclusion of the Radicals, but not seeing in it grounds for a boycott.
• To making the call for "a CP-SP government without bourgeois ministers" a central slogan, unrelated to the actual ways in which workers are mobilizing and organizing.
This can only lend credit to the idea that a mere break with the Radicals would make the CP and SP embody "workingclass unity" as opposed to class collaboration, in defiance of historical experience (witness the first Allende government in Chile, or the Labour governments in Great Britain), which demonstrates how a government composed of the reformists alone can easily be an instrument of class collaboration!
What we are putting forward instead is a political line corresponding to the objective situation and capable of mobilizing the revolutionary and reformist workers to struggle side by side against the Barre plan, get rid of Giscard, repeal the constitution, and dismantle the strong state, while encouraging examples of workers control and self-organization. For when they are confronted by a real struggle, a struggle that is organized to win, the reformists will show their true colors by running the other way. Faced with these needs of the working class, we can challenge the parties that hold the confidence of the majority of workers, the CP and SP, when they refuse to assume their responsibilities.
This is the type of response that we think the present situation calls for. We are tracing a line of action that can prepare the workers for the battles to come, without subordinating their capacity for action to mere speculations about an electoral victory for the left.