[The following resolution adopted by the LCR Political Bureau was published in the April 5 issue of Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press/Inprecor.]
1. Electoral Defeat Does Not Mean Ebb in Workers' Militancy
The March 19 electoral defeat of the CP and SP constitutes a political defeat not only for those parties, but also for the workers who were looking forward to a victory at the polls as a way of getting rid of the Giscard-Barre government and its austerity policy.
But the key aspect for the time being lies in the confirmation provided by the elections of the class relationship of forces. The workers parties won a majority on the first round relative to the governmental coalition, and they exceeded 49 percent on the second round. Such an outstanding result in the context of bourgeois democracy and a bourgeois electoral setup reflects—in the unfavorable electoral arena—the unstable equilibrium of the relationship of forces between the two fundamental classes, and its extreme polarization.
Within the context of the period inaugurated by May 1968, we are entering a new political situation, characterized by the persistence of the economic crisis and attacks on the working class, by the latter's capacity for resistance and strong politization, by the instability of institutions and lack of an immediate political outlet.
The electoral defeat does not mean either a reversal of this trend or an ebb in working-class militancy. While awaiting the arrival of March 1978, the workers deferred their battles against inflation, unemployment, and working conditions. The effects of unemployment have not made a dent in the workers' potential for struggle (except perhaps in the Lorraine region, given the magnitude of the blows to steelworkers), as attested by the membership gains of the workers organizations and the outcome of trade-union elections, irrespective of the shift in votes from the CGT to the CFDT.
There is no reason today to assume that the workers, cheated out of an electoral victory, will be passive spectators to the blows that the government appointed by Giscard cannot fail to deliver. Though centralizing them will be difficult now that the right has won, struggles stand to be more explosive, even if they will inevitably have a sectoral character at first.
But if the division that was the immediate cause of this defeat is perpetuated and deepened, it may be reflected in the long run, especially in terms of the unions, in the demoralization of those sectors of the working class that have been severely hit by unemployment for several months, and in isolated outbreaks of resistance lacking an overall political perspective.
2. The Divisions Have a Long History
The first question asked by millions of workers, who thought for months, especially after the municipal elections, that a victory over the right was guaranteed, is, How did we get to this? Whose fault is it?
The CP and SP put the blame on each other. The CP accuses the SP of having disoriented the workers by "swinging to the right." The SP accuses the CP of having shattered the momentum toward unity by opening up an artificial polemic, and by engaging in blackmail over the issue of standing down, only to come to an agreement on March 13 that could have been signed on September 22.
While from the standpoint of the workers' basic interests the CP and SP can be lumped together, from the immediate standpoint of the election results the CP is especially to blame for having placed conditions on its withdrawal on the second round, subject to an accord on the program and government, at its January 8 conference.
If the CP had really wanted to obtain the maximum number of guarantees against any kind of austerity policy, whatever the government in office, it should have separated the two questions. On March 19, on the second round, what was in order was eliminating the right, by making a commitment and mobilizing early on for an unconditional vote for the workers candidate with the best chances, against the Radicals and "left" Gaullists. An electoral victory over the right on March 19 would have inspired such feelings of strength and confidence in the workers, who have put up with this regime for more than twenty years, that it would have been infinitely harder for anyone to force sacrifices on them on the grounds of the crisis of capitalism.
A commitment to stand down would have removed bitterness and mistrust, and paved the way for a discussion of program, and for mobilizations. But the CP's real motives were the polar opposite of such concerns. Its criminal position on standing down is what makes it appear to many as the main, and indeed the sole culprit.
In fact, the roots of the division go back to the Common Program itself, and to the electoralist outlook of the parties that signed it. The CP and SP are thus equally to blame, at bottom, for the March 19 defeat.
The division and defeat do not stem from the municipal elections, the negotiations on updating the Common Program, September 22, or March 13. They go back much further.
What made them possible was that since the signing of the Common Program, the CP and SP did everything in their power to shatter the dynamic that could have brought about unity between the two main workers parties. They did everything in their power to prevent self-organization of the masses, which could have sealed unity at the grass roots, and to repulse a working-class offensive against the Giscard government that could have upset the timetable for the elections.
The fact is that the trade-union leaderships consistently subordinated the struggle against austerity and defense of workers' demands to a presumed electoral victory. Following the municipal elections, they refused to widen their lead by centralizing struggles, demanding immediate dissolution of the discredited parliament, and calling for a CP-SP government. They dissipated the fight against the Barre plan in one-shot days of action-October 7, May in one-snot days or action-October, May 24, and December 1-that were neither economic struggles around clear demands with provisions for following them up, nor political mobilizations to bring down the government with a general strike. At that rate, the scattering of struggles and the more or less enforced inactivity in the plants paved the way for political divisions, and disarmed the workers in face of the bureaucrats' division.
In the process, the SP and CP remained completely faithful to the Common Program and to the Union of the Left. Ever since it was signed, the Common Program has been a program for class collaboration, one that does not start from the common, basic interests of the workers, but from what the bourgeoisie is able to accept within the confines of the profit system and respect for its state apparatus, and which contains the seeds of division. By accepting the principle and constraints of the capitalist economy, it engages in a succession of compromises and concessions to the bosses that can only lead to selling out the workers' interests, and thus to dividing their ranks into categories, layers, and sectors, into jobless and employed, men and women, French citizens and immigrants.
Not once in the course of their polemic did the CP and SP question their alliances and pacts with the bourgeoisie. They remained in agreement on the NATO alliance, the 1958 constitution, and Giscard's tutelage. After the first round, the SP withdrew thirty-four of its candidates in favor of the Left Radicals, but the CP, which had been so critical of the SP, withdrew its candidates in favor of the Gaullists Gallet and Binoche. Right up to the end, they both ran after the Radicals, whose function was illustrated by R. Fabre's "outbursts" in defense of private ownership, and by the haste with which they took to their heels following the de feat.
All of these compromises chain the workers to the conditions and dictates of the bourgeoisie, at the price, inevitably, of division. For while it is difficult but possible to forge unity of the workers on the basis of the class interests that they have basis of the class interests that they have in common, asking them to choose the best way of protecting the bourgeois order can only divide them.
The CP used the cover of programmatic differences over subsidiaries, the minimum wage, or wage differentials. But rather than give workers an opportunity to give their opinion in a united way on the issues in dispute, it organized a kind of plebiscite under its own emblem, demanding 21 to 25 percent of the vote as the sole guarantee against austerity. Then it wound up signing an agreement where neither subsidiaries, wage differentials, a tax on capital, nor an immediate return to a forty-hour week are mentioned!
As for the SP, it found itself in a weak position in face of this offensive, because it was vulnerable to the charges, because it was in fact getting ready to administer austerity, because it took a lot of coaxing to get it to support a demand as popular and elementary as a 2,400-franc [about US$480] monthly minimum wage. It was for these very reasons that the SP could only respond to division with division, and that it was impossible for the SP to appeal to the workers' united judgment in the workplaces, at the risk of being unmasked and repudiated itself.
That is why we say that in the race to collaboration and division, the CP and SP tied one another in a deplorable way, to the detriment of the workers.
For us, unity and the most open discussions of program were not incompatible, just the opposite. An open comparison of positions and full democracy allow all points of view to be expressed in a struggle or mass meeting, without endangering unity in action.
In this way, the role of the Union of the Left is confirmed. It brought about unity between the two major parties of the working class in a distorted way, and channeled the desire for change that has been outspoken since 1968 wholly into the electoral arena. But as a front for class collaboration, because of its program, alliances, and electoralism, it carried with it compromise, division, and defeat for the workers.
3. CP Preferred Risk of Electoral Defeat to Risk of Losing Control Over the Workers Movement
Considering the way in which the CP carried out its campaign, many workers are asking whether it wanted to come to power or not.
The question is framed in the wrong way; it confuses cause and effect. Why would the CP not want to enter the government?
• So as not to have to administer the crisis? That would be giving it more credit than it deserves. As a reformist party, the CP knows very well that it will never be called on to govern when business is booming for the bourgeoisie, but when the workers must be made to swallow a bitter pill. It would therefore be more accurate to say that the CP did not wish to administer the crisis at the risk of provoking its own crisis.
But isn't the lack of a central political perspective just as dangerous for the CP? The Common Program was signed in 1972, four years after May 1968, precisely to divert the working-class upsurge, and the prospect of March 1978 and alliance with the SP were effective means of warding off an offensive by the workers.
• Because it was complying with a turn in the international Stalinist line laid down by Moscow? The whole history of the last few years shows that there can be an effective convergence between the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy (its way of perceiving the international status quo) and the policy of the mass CPs in western Europe, without implying a political and organizational subordination of the latter to the former. Earlier, the same theory was put forward in 1974-75, when the CP launched its first polemic against the SP in the wake of the presidential elections.
However, since then, the CP muffled the polemic at the time of the municipal elections, when the pact with the SP enabled it to win new municipal posts. But above all, between 1975 and 1978, the CP has not softened, but rather intensified its criticism of the Eastern Europe regimes on the question of democratic rights. In the eyes of the Soviet bureaucracy, this constitutes a much more serious point of difference than repudiations of doctrine on the dictatorship of the proletariat, which do not threaten or challenge its system of domination over the masses as directly.
The only explanation that can account for the CP's policy since 1968 in a consistent way is the one we have offered. Within the context of its partial Social- Democratization and distancing itself from Moscow, the CP has undertaken a march to power that is modifying its ties both with the masses and with the state apparatus.
To speed its course and enhance its electoral standing with executives, small businessmen, and the "middle strata," the CP has come out for pluralism, variety, has become the champion of "just wage differentials," "democratic" order, and "efficient management." But each new step in this direction brings greater benefits to the most credible electoral alternative, the Socialist Party, as every election since 1973 has shown. At the same time, the CP is being exposed on its left flank. The first warning of this came during the 1977 municipal elections, with the vote for the far left in the big cities, notably in the working-class districts.
The CP was further alerted to this peril by the discrepancy in votes between the SP and CP in Spain and Portugal, to the detriment of the CP.
A victory for the Union of the Left, far more than participation in the government after the liberation under exceptional domestic and international circumstances, would have indicated a qualitative step forward in the CP's integration into the state apparatus, but a step fraught with peril at a time of economic hardship.
Imagine for a moment that the March 13 agreement had been signed as of September 22. Once more, the electoral trend would have worked to the advantage of the Socialist Party, with a new danger for the CP-the business of standing down for the candidate with the best chances might have resulted in a diminishing of the CP's strength in parliament within the context of a left victory. On the other hand, for six months the CP had allowed the far left to monopolize the campaign against austerity, a campaign that corresponded to real needs and expectations, as its unmistakable echo in the campaign the CP carried out among certain layers proves.
Eroded on both flanks, the CP thus ran the risk of being nothing but a second-rate political force that the Socialist Party could get rid of once it had been used. For the CP, the evolution of the relationship of forces in the trade-union movement foreshadows what might happen in the political arena. And the fact is that for ten years the membership of the CGT had remained at the same level, while that of the CFDT had grown by 50 percent.
For the CP bureaucracy, relative voting strength is one element among others (such as implantation of factory cells, influence in the trade unions, posts in municipal governments and institutions) in determining the vital issue-whether it still has control over the majority of the organized workers movement.
So for the CP, the question did not consist of whether or not to participate in the government. Or at least, this question was dependent on two prior conditions—containing or smashing the SP's drive, and strengthening the CP itself-whatever the cost of this absolute imperative, up to and including the risk of ultimate defeat.
An electoral defeat was not the goal deliberately pursued by the CP, but it consciously took this risk to keep control over the majority of the workers movement. The contradiction between maintaining its dominance over the working class and its penetration into the bourgeois state apparatus reached a critical threshold for the first time. The pursuit of the process of Social-Democratization, rather than proceeding in a linear fashion, can only aggravate internal confliets and provoke a major internal crisis.
4. Crisis of Giscard Regime Has Not Been Settled
We have said that the electoral defeat did not mean an ebb in working-class militancy. This assessment can be verified from two angles.
a. From the point of view of the crisis of the regime.
The bourgeois media rushed to hail Giscard as the big winner in the elections. This is true only to a certain extent. The electoral groundswell of Giscard's Union for French Democracy should not make us lose sight of the fact that it is only an electoral coalition and future parliamentary bloc, and not the big liberal party that Giscard seeks. Especially since the Assembly for the Republic remains the principal formation of the presidential majority, and fully intends to take its distances from administering the crisis, state its terms (rejection of a tax reform), and put Chirac into the running for 1981.
Moreover, a broadening out to a center-left coalition does not seem likely to be achieved in the short run. In the first place, the present majority has exhausted all its resources in the center, at least until such time as Fabre or someone else manages to resurrect the Radical family (reduced to a bare minimum, both caucuses included, in these elections), or until cracks appear in the SP.
Secondly, the crisis is not over with. If there is a partial recovery, it will take place at the cost of eliminating businesses and sectors maintained through "transfusions" while awaiting the elections (and thus an increase in unemployment as well), and of continued austerity to try and restore the bosses' profits without any guarantee of industrial investments. It already appears that the bosses have precious little to offer to revive a climate of negotiations (a fifth week of paid vacation and wage increases for certain categories of workers, but no 2,400- or even 2,000- frane minimum wage), in exchange for removing price restraints.
b. For the same reason, the reformist parties may sanction the demise of the Common Program, but they cannot bring themselves to totally bury the prospect of the Union of the Left, at the risk of no longer having a solution to offer in the event of social mobilizations. Therefore, they are putting it in cold storage, leaving the details of its possible revival to a later date. The CP insists that it has no other strategy but the Union of the Left, while [SP National Secretary Michel] Rocard has taken up the cudgels on behalf of a union that would no longer be weighed down by the cumbersome provisions of the Common Program, which was overladen with specific economic demands.
In other words, the SP cannot respond to the Giscardists' overtures without risking internal divisions, and especially without the risk of canceling out the advantages of its reintegration into the workers movement as a result of its alliance with the CP since the Epinay congress.
For its part, the CP cannot return to political isolation, which would set it back dozens of years, to the time when it relied on its apparatus, defense of the USSR, and propaganda for soviets. Therefore, it will pull the alternate levers of class collaboration and division as the occasion calls for, while keeping the prospect of the Union of the Left on the horizon.
The conduct of the traditional political and trade-union leaderships in their [postelection] meeting with Giscard bears the stamp of their contradictions. They are determined not to precipitate a test of strength with the regime; accordingly, they fear the social explosions predicted by Mendès and many others, if the right were to trail on the first round and come out the winner on the second. They cannot sign a pact with the Elysée in the name of the "national interest" that would provide authorization for austerity and serve as the French equivalent of the Moncloa pact in Spain; but they know that there will be no central political focus, from their point of view, until 1981. The SP and CP are already beginning to line up their respective candidates for that decisive contest.
Finally, for the first time in nearly half a century, the trade-union movement finds itself unarmed, with no immediate hope for a change brought by the elections, and with the economic crisis in full swing. Hence the renewal of negotiation proposals by the CFDT, as well as by [CGT leader] Georges Séguy in his interview in Le Figaro after the second round. What the reformist parties are ultimately after, via the endless discussions over the status of the opposition, is a negotiated status quo enabling them to resist a possible loss of control over their ranks, without destroying their usefulness by rallying openly and prematurely to the government's austerity policy.
Giscard's inability to unravel the institutional crisis of the regime, and the inability of the CP and SP to forgo their alliance gives practical proof of the maintenance of the relationship of forces between the bourgeoisie and the working class.
5. What Kind of Workers Unity and How to Achieve It?
The struggle against austerity remains a priority, and is given special urgency by the number of issues and demands left hanging on the assumption that there would be an electoral victory over the right.
But in order for this struggle to get under way with some hope of success, it will be necessary to bandage and overcome the wounds of division. Those resulting from the division between the CP and SP, from top to bottom, will not heal so quickly, inasmuch as each leadership needs to make the other shoulder responsibility for the defeat. Above all, however, political division threatens to be extended by tradeunion division. The conduct of the union leaderships during the campaign-the way the CGT leadership lined up totally with the CP, the more cautious support given by the CFDT leadership to the SP, the rejection of any joint campaign by the trade unions between the two rounds-paved the way for this.
The CFDT leadership, taking its cue from Michel Rocard, is already considering de-emphasizing its alliance with the CGT in favor of an alliance with the FEN and FO, whose leaderships are tied to the SP. In the absence of an immediate political outlet that would enable them to "control militancy" by wearing it out in one twentyfour-hour joint strike after another, the leaderships of the CFDT and FEN seem ready to move in the direction of the policy of negotiations practiced by FO. [CFDT leader] Edmond Maire's request to meet with Giscard can thus be seen as nothing more than a belated, farcical tribute to Bergeron.
As for the CGT leadership, after having denounced the threat of austerity of the left," it has nothing to offer as a means of struggle against austerity of the right except the search "for real solutions via discussions, so as to reach a compromise acceptable to all." Thus, after having subordinated struggles to the prospect of elections, after a verbal game of oneupmanship with the SP, after having contributed its share to dividing the workers and compromising the chance of an electoral victory, the leadership of the CGT is bending over backward to Giscard and again relegating struggles to oblivion.
It can be expected, therefore, that the trade-union tops will intensify class collaboration and division. Nevertheless, the level of militancy and heightened politization of many trade-union activists are likely to dim the hopes for trade-unionism Italian-style, with demands for "class austerity," that the CFDT bureaucrats are expressing more and more openly, and that the CGT does not criticize.
For Trade-Union Unity, For Workers Democracy
In view of such a policy on the part of the trade unions, which draws the wrong lessons from the electoral defeat, there is a chance that currents will develop among youth, in the women's and ecology movements, and even among a section of the working class, that equates the unions with their leaderships. To counter these dangerous tendencies, our guiding principle will continue to be workers unity. This policy of unity and independence of the working class is rigorously opposed to class collaboration in any form-not only political alliances with the bourgeoisie, but also participation in management by the trade unions.
Under such circumstances, the battle for unity is first and foremost the battle for unity in action of the trade unions around their demands. What was promised through an electoral victory must be wrested by means of struggle: a 2,400-franc monthly minimum wage, a sliding scale, a thirty-five-hour week, the reopening under workers control and nationalization without compensation of businesses that shut down, free abortion on demand, abundant high-quality social services.
Struggles must be organized democratically and the platform of demands discussed in union meetings and joint tradeunion assemblies, in shop meetings and mass assemblies. To fight unemployment, it should be up to the workers themselves to decide on working conditions and the necessary number of employees. In the plants and neighborhoods, once the shock of the electoral defeat has passed, the heightened determination of the workers to take matters into their own hands must find expression through the implementation of workers control.
Unified mobilizations of the rank and file, jointly drawing the lessons of division, should make a discussion on trade-union and workers democracy timely. This should culminate in the prospect of a fusion of the trade unions and of a single trade-union federation.
As a matter of fact, in the CGT a priority should be placed on discussion of the relations between the CP and CGT. This discussion cannot fail to be stirred up both by the loss in CGT votes in the trade-union elections, and by the impact of debates within the CP itself.
In the CFDT, a debate is unavoidable over the methods of a leadership that claims to be for self-management while flouting the authority of its national coun cils (from involvement in the "Sessions for Socialism" to the Moreau report, once repudiated and now implemented, and by the proposal to shorten the workweek without maintaining full wages) and dissolving opposition groupings.
The crisis of teacher unionism ascribable to the inertia of the FEN leadership will reactivate discussion of the federation's corporatist structure and lobbying methods. Such discussions should make it possible to raise the prospect of tradeunion fusion in terms other than simply merging the bureaucratic apparatuses, while unleashing the powerful dynamic of unity that a single trade-union federation would have.
But unity means not only trade-union unity; it also means unity in action of the various social movements with the unions. This means unity of the independent women's movement with the trade-union movement, Family Planning, and various organizations (of doctors, parents) for the right to free abortion, and for high-quality child-care centers in sufficient number. It means unity of the soldiers' movement and union movement in the campaign for free transportation, for the establishment of commissions of inquiry into health and safety conditions, for the defense of soldiers' committees and the right of soldiers to organize unions. It means that tradeunion bodies should participate in antinuclear demonstrations. It means unity of the blue-collar and teachers unions and the university, high-school, and technicalschool movements against the Haby reform.
The Need For A Political Focus
It is quite clear that after the electoral defeat of the workers parties, and the victory of the right by a more than eightyseat margin, that the main political slogans of the campaign—such as "kick out Giscard, for a CP-SP government that breaks with the bourgeoisie and meets our demands, repeal the 1958 constitution"_ no longer have the same appeal and timeliness for direct agitation. They will shift to the background, without being dropped from our propaganda.
To win our demands, scattered movements will not be adequate. Struggles must be extended and centralized around specific goals by branch of industry and region. But each step in this direction that is the least bit successful will inevitably raise the question of the government and of Giscard, as happened in the 1974 postal strike.
Any wide development of social struggles, any general strike-even occasional ones-will inevitably place the question of its political goals on the agenda.
Today, the Common Program is dead; the Union of the Left is under discussion. The great mass of workers view the political avenues as blocked. It would be a mistake to respond to this situation by saying that the electoral phase is over with and that the time has come for the "alternative of struggles," or by creating the illusion that the influence of the CP and SP among the working class is going to collapse, in favor of a "revolutionary alternative." It is first and foremost in the arena of struggles that the basis for a working-class program to deal with the crisis will emerge. But this remobilization will remain deadlocked if it is not linked to the fight for political unity of the workers organizations and the establishment of a workers government.
For a May Day of Unity and Struggle
With this concern in mind, we should seize on the questions that both CP and SP members and many trade-union activists are asking: What kind of unity do we need? What is the relationship between unity at the top and among the ranks? What kind of program do we need and how can we work it out? With whom should we unite? Revolutionary militants will elicit these discussions and take part in them, not by being satisfied to draw the lessons of the past, but by pointing these lessons toward the future. Unity? Agreed-but with no exceptions within the workers movement, and to the exclusion of all bourgeois parties! Unity at the top? Agreed-but also at the bottom. Unity around a program? Agreed-but around a program of struggle taking up the demands raised in mass mobilizations!
For the time being, preparations for a May Day of struggle, based on a platform of demands discussed in a united way in the plants and leading to joint contingents should constitute the first step in the direction of a unified mobilization of working men and women for their demands.
6. To Build the Revolutionary Party, Turn Toward the Mass Workers Parties
Ten years ago, the workers went through the experience of a general strike, both of its strength and of the impasse that results when it does not culminate in the question of political power. Today they have experienced their strength at the polls, as well as its ineffectiveness when it is not based on powerful, united mobilizations of the rank and file.
In both cases, the workers have experienced the treachery of the reformists—and the need for workers unity. Not unity at any price, making an electoral victory a foregone conclusion. Such an outcome would only intensify the electoralist illusions fostered by the bureaucracies. But unity from the ground up, rooted in the workplace, cemented by a democratic discussion of demands-such unity opens up the possibility of organizing a struggle against the bosses continuing beyond the elections, as well as the extraordinary possibility of winning an electoral victory by the power of attraction that the achievement of unity and the determination to struggle would have.
Divisions to Be Expected Within the Reformist Parties
It is to be expected that the discussions and ripening of the debate will be reflected by divisions within the mass reformist parties, the CP and SP, which revolutionists should be able to take advantage of.
Within the SP, the discussion in the top echelons over what tactic to adopt from now on with regard to the CP, and over the race to fill the post of first secretary, may be relayed to the ranks by way of criticism of the Social Democratic perspective of administering capitalism and of the SP's way of functioning from the top down. The policy of the CERES leadership, of seeking to act as a go-between between the CP and SP, not by relying on mass mobilizations, but by playing off intrabureaucratic rivalries inside the SP, is likely to open the eyes of many activists who had seen in CERES a possible instrument for breaking out of the two dead ends of Social Democracy and Stalinism.
The CP has recruited and educated the absolute majority of its members to the prospect of the Union of the Left. To tighten its grip on the ranks, it was able to turn the issue of struggling against austerity to tactical advantage, and in its initial stages, the CP's polemical onslaught bore some fruit. But starting in January, when bureaucratic concerns broke through the programmatic cover, it has been at a standstill.
In the final analysis, the CP's results were very mixed. It did manage to partially block the SP's momentum, but was not able to strengthen its own position significantly, and its electoral gains in forty-four départements do not even make up for the erosion in its traditional strongholds. It revived its image as a workers party, but resurrected that of a Stalinist party at the same time, an image it was trying to lose, by claiming to be the only party of the workers, and by strictly subordinating the CGT to its political interests.
Finally, after having spent six months denouncing the threat of austerity of the left, it has no intention of launching a determined struggle against the imminent application of austerity by the right.
These are some of the contradictions that are bound to roil the membership and shake up the party.
While the leadership has been able to temporarily contain the SP drive, it has, on the other hand, weakened its own authority in a lasting way. The appeal to party patriotism and loyalty to the general secretary will not be able to stifle questions about past practices and democratic functioning. The criticisms made by the Spanish CP of the policy of the French CP can only intensify discussions of the question of unity. The persistence of criticism of the USSR by the French CP, accompanied by its change of position on self-management and feminism, can only intensify the membership's demands for democracy.
Despite its anticipated decline in comparison with the 1977 municipal elections and owing to the CP's propaganda campaign, the vote for the far left, which was over 3 percent on the first round, testifies to the existence and tenacity of a skeptical current to the left of the Common Program. The growth and organization of this current, however, remains blocked by the serious strategic errors of most of the organizations, and the limits they place on revolutionary unity.
The OCI met with undeniable success by championing the cause of unity without a program. It did not run candidates; it carried out its entire campaign around the theme of standing down, without taking a position on the issues under debate. It based everything on the assumption of "victory on the 19th" (as its posters said, without explaining what kind of victory it would be, whether of the workers or of the "popular front," and by suddenly muffling its condemnation of the Radicals.
Criticizing us for having signed an agreement, under which we campaigned under our own banner and around our own program, with the OCT, which was calling for a vote for the candidates of the left on the second round, the OCI used this as a pretext for refusing to call for a vote for our candidates on the first round. Accordingly, without having independently explained its program on the key issues, on the demands that prepared the way for either of the two possible outcomes of the elections, the OCI chose to vote on the first round for the declared allies of the "left" Radicals and Gaullists. For the sake of unity without a program, unconditional withdrawal on the second round turned into de facto unconditional support on the first round.
The OCT, in the name of building a revolutionary alternative or a revolutionary opposition to a possible government of the left, turned its back on the key issues and tasks, rather than see its sand castles washed away by the first wave. Refusing to distinguish between the parties that are answerable to the workers and those that, like the Radicals, are not, it called for an indiscriminate vote for the candidates of the left, only to behold the spectacle of Robert Fabre switching hats once the second round was over, with the votes of the OCT in his pocket.
Above all, the OCT refused to consider workers unity as anything other than unity of the rank and file, while ignoring the workers' most representative organizations, the trade unions and political parties. Such an approach can only be understood as a battle for unity around the revolutionists' program, that is, as an additional kind of division. This error was given practical ratification with respect to the second round, when the OCT agreed to give lip service to the call for withdrawal without really campaigning for it, while at the same time explaining that a victory over the right would be more favorable to the workers. If the OCT really thought so, it should have led a real fight for unity of the working class and its organizations to beat the right.
Finally, Lutte Ouvrière, which had rejected any kind of unity pact, even for dividing up election districts, on the grounds that it had a harder line on the characterization of a possible government of the left, carried out a campaign in which no mention was made either of unity or of program. LO did not ask for votes on the basis of clear demands, preparing the way for a struggle against austerity, but on the basis of confidence in its candidates, who as honest workers would not be like other politicians. Nor did LO state prior to the first round what it would do with the votes entrusted to its candidates, which in effect were mandates. It came out for withdrawal only after the first round, without carrying out any campaign around it, and even refusing a common approach to intervening in support meetings for CP or SP candidates.
If we add to this that the PSU for months held the CP up as the motor force for change, that it adopted the CFDT program as the basis of compromise between the CP and SP and as the platform of a fourth partner of the Union of the Left, that it gave up all thought of running its own campaign and strictly dissociating itself programmatically to run through the vehicle of the Self-Management Front, in the hope of getting ministerial posts, the record is hardly an encouraging one for the future.
Only the LCR and CCA put forward a line of workers unity in a consistent way.
Building a Revolutionary Workers Party
This does not mean in any way that we should turn our backs on the far-left organizations, at a time when the discussion is going to crisscross the workers movement. But these organizations too must be able to draw their own lessons. Any united efforts on their part must be directed toward the mass workers parties. Revolutionary unity does not constitute an alternative to the Union of the Left. It has no meaning unless it is consciously applied in the fight for unity of the workers and their organizations.
The electoral defeat of the Union of the Left starkly raises this question of unity while at the same time putting the debate on revolutionary strategy in a new light.
The answer to these two questions points to the need, which is clearer than ever, to build a revolutionary party rooted in the working class and capable of working for unity around a clearly anticapitalist program. Recent events have taught a cruel lesson to those who believed in the possibility of "reforming" the reformist parties under pressure from their ranks. They should not cherish any opposite illusions as the possibility of rapid regroupments around minimal platforms. On the contrary, the greatest possible programmatic clarity is the key to fraternal debate that can lead to real progress.
As the French section of the Fourth International, the LCR intends to be the best builder of such a party, with neither sectarianism nor shortcuts.
Without shortcuts—for it would be illusory to think that the far left could advance significantly toward building a revolutionary workers party without winning the thousands of workers who are still active in the traditional organizations, even though they are more and more critical of their leaderships.
Without sectarianism—for self-proclamations have never been a substitute for fraternal debate, the unity in action that is essential, evaluations and discussions carried out on the basis of common activity.
Notes
1. The day after the first round of the French legislative election. French elections are held in two rounds. Only candidates who poll 12.5 percent of the vote or more are eligible to run in the second-round run-off.
2. Eve of the open split between the Communist and Socialist parties. See "The Split in the French Union of the Left," Intercontinental Press, October 10, 1977, p. 1102, and "Why the Union of the Left Blew Apart," Intercontinental Press, October 31, 1977, p. 1192.
3. The date of the next French presidential election.
4. André Bergeron, leader of trade-union federation Force Ouvrière.
5. See "Massive Protests in France Against University 'Reforms,'" Intercontinental Press, May 3, 1976, p. 727.