[The following article appeared in the July 10 issue of Rouge, the weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), the French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Paris—Several days ago the entire business press was speculating about whether limits might be placed on the nationalization program [proposed by the new Socialist Party government]. These circles hoped that the plans as a whole would be stretched out over five years. President Mitterrand's response was clear: the nationalizations will take place within two years.
Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy confirmed this in his [July 8] speech to parliament. But several areas remain shadowy. These are disquieting for the workers because they could open the way to a whole flock of maneuvers by the employers.
One of the decisions that Mauroy announced regarding the companies targeted for nationalization deserves particular attention. "Government delegates" will now be named for the companies to be nationalized.
These delegates will stay in contact with the managers and investigate measures to be taken. Working in close liaison with an interministerial commission, the delegates will receive suitable directives from the government.
We can view this measure as a response to the pressing demands that the workers organizations in the companies to be nationalized have been putting forward for some days. In fact, a delegation of workers from Logabax who were protesting 424 layoffs was received by the government at the end of the council of ministers meeting the very morning of Mauroy's speech.
But one question is still far from settled: what will be the real powers of these "delegates"? And what will be their instructions? Will they agree to layoffs and the elimination of jobs? Will they allow foreign speculation of the kind recently engaged in by Elf-Aquitaine in the United States or BNP in Spain?
Fair compensation
The second shadowy point concerns the question of compensation. Mauroy said that compensation will be carried out "fairly." But what standard of justice is involved? Why not clearly state, from the beginning, that compensation will be based on the past management methods of the companies slated for nationalization?
Does anyone propose paying anything at all to Marcel Dassault for his armaments plants? Or we could take the case of Thomson, another corporation that has greatly profited from public funds. For years Thomson's bills for materials delivered to the state, especially military materials, have been calculated on the basis of the hours of labor involved multiplied by 123 percent. Does anyone today propose that the state should "repurchase" these companies? Would Mauroy claim that this would be a "fair" expenditure of public funds?
Rather than again thrusting the question of compensation into the discussion, why not start by finding out the reality of who owns stock in France? More than 90 percent of all shares are held by a very small number of capitalists, and less than 10 percent are divided among several million investors. Therefore the workers should be able to express their views on the question of compensation. While there might be a decision to make an exception for the real small investors, it is quite obvious that there are better uses for the money than to further line the pockets of those who have profited for decades from the rule of the right wing.
What limits on nationalizations?
The list of nationalizations [in Mauroy's speech] closely corresponds to the one François Mitterrand made public during his election campaign. But Mauroy's speech seems to have placed some additional limits on nationalizations.
Regarding the banks, for example, those that are owned or controlled by foreign capital would escape nationalization according to Mauroy. This is not a small point. It involves around 15 percent of the total.
But there is more. The "mutual societies" would not be touched by the nationalization measures. In fact, this would even include Crédit Agricole, which is the third largest savings bank in the world.
Crédit Agricole actually owns millions of farmers and not vice versa! Therefore it would be grossly hypocritical to treat it as though it were "mutual property."
In addition, there are even exemptions that are apparently aimed at the Paribas banking group, one of the main financial and industrial powers operating in France. Mauroy seems to have decided to "return" to the private sector the shares that Paribas holds in various enterprises that are not part of the eleven groups slated for nationalization.
This is just bowing to a simple-minded definition of bourgeois law. Today finance capital cannot be separated out from industrial capital. It has reached the point where only the largest companies generate their own capital, the rest being strictly dependent on the banking system. Why limit in advance the takeover of control by the state through returning to the private sector some companies that have been placed under the control of the big investment banks by the functioning of the capitalist system itself?
In the months to come many questions will be at the center of debates. These include what the government's commitment is to preventing owners from harming the companies to be nationalized, whether the government should refuse to spend public funds to "compensate" speculators, and whether it will really decide to make the economy function in a new way.