[The following article is reprinted from the Jan. 3-9, 1984, issue of Rouge, weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Solidarity toward the Kanak people's struggle seems to pose problems for some organizations and figures that traditionally take a stance of militant anticolonialism. That is the case with lawyer Denis Langlois, the comrades from Lutte Ouvrière (LO), and from the newspaper Le Monde Libertaire.
For example, what LO sees in New Caledonia is a struggle "placed under the leadership of Kanak notables." Without buttressing its argument with a detailed analysis of the structure of Kanak society, LO feels that the FLNKS's objectives are "to open the way for the development of the Kanak
"and that this is confirmed by rebourgeoisie, cent events.
Finally. LO feels that the FLNKS would never concern itself with what LO feels are the common interests between the Kanaks and the "poor Caldoches" [French settlers], which shows that the FLNKS is not a proletarian current.
For its part, Le Monde Libertaire wrote on December 6: "It would appear that the FLNKS expresses the desire to impose a veritable dic-
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South Pacific Ocean tatorship over everything not inspired by Marxism, and in that way tries to impose its own conception of the liberation struggle." The paper also criticizes the LCR for its support to "a movement that displays so much intolerance and so clearly makes calls to racial hatred."
All these different positions start from a common false theoretical basis. They are in fact based on the supposition that the general interests of the workers present in New Caledonia transcend the question of Kanak national oppression. This debate is as old as the workers movement, and historically has never decided in favor of those who reproached the oppressed for their nationalism.
A colonial social formation, and that is what it is, does not divide the population into simple, well-defined social classes. What intrudes is the oppression of a people and a nation. The national liberation struggle in Algeria amply showed that the national question can, for a whole historic period, play the driving role in the anticolonial mobilization. This is an objective fact, independent of the character of the leadership of the specific nationalist movement.
The mobilization begins around national demands, starting from the level of consciousness of the oppressed, before it can express more precise social objectives.
You therefore cannot claim to want to radicalize the class struggles in a colonial situation while ignoring the importance of a people's national sentiment. The question of the character of the political leadership of the nationalist movement obviously comes into play around assuring the further development and growth of the struggle.
But the analyses made by LO, Denis Langlois, or Le Monde Libertaire are marked by an an incorrect focus regarding the FLNKS as well as a more fundamental lack of understanding of the Kanak national question.
1. FLNKS is a Kanak organization open to non-Kanaks
The majority of those anticolonialists who worry about the FLNKS's supposedly "racist" or "totalitarian" positions do so without having much understanding of the content of the FLNKS's positions, actions, or even composition.
The founding congress of the FLNKS reiterated the call to non-Kanaks to join their fight.
White pro-independence militants are subjected to threats, to being shunned on the job, and even to acts of violence.
The local rightists do not hesitate to hound those they consider "traitors to their race. Pierre Declereg, the white secretary-general of the Union Calédonienne was murdered in 1981. In protest demonstrations, banners bore the inscription "Pierre, first white martyr of Kanak and socialist independence.
There are some non-Kanaks in the leadership of the organizations that make up the FLNKS and in its political bureau. One of them, the leader of the Caledonian Socialist Party (PSC), Norbert Caffa, told Agence-France Presse last month: "There are about 1,500 of us whites who support and vote for the independentists. But only about 50 are active, because people are afraid of being found out."
(USTKE was Exploite
The creation in 1982 of the Federation of Kanak and Exploited Workers Unions (USTKE) was the result of a long debate in the other union, the Federation of Workers and Employees Unions of New Caledonia (USOENC), around the Kanak demand for independence. The term "exploited" in the USTKE's name is explicitly aimed at all those workers who are ready to simultaneously fight for their class interests and for the demand for self-determination of the oppressed people. Half the leadership of the USTKE, moreover, is non-Kanak, and a good number of those who joined in the last period were workers originally from [the French Pacific colony of] Wallis and Futuna.
2. Self-determination of the oppressed people means the right to Kanak independence
The Kanak independence forces have always appealed to progressive whites to take part in their fight. The genesis of the demand for Kanak and socialist independence is the product of a radicalization in recent years, partly due to the weak response to the Kanak people's call among the ranks of the non- Kanaks and especially the "small whites.
If you today view the demand for Kanak independence as a racist slogan, you fall into the trap set by the colonial right and the government, who speak of "multi-racial" or "pluriethnic" independence, in an attempt to disguise a neocolonial solution in which the dominant white community would preserve the greater part of its interests.
Colonial domination did not turn New "pluri-ethnic"
Caledonia into a which the mixture of communities has overshadowed the colonial question. The Kanak people exist as a national entity: politically they have not been reduced to the scale of just one ethnic group among others in their own territory.
The anticolonial struggle therefore blends in with the battle for the reestablishment of all the legitimate rights of the Kanak people: political rights, but also the right to land, to work, to housing, to health care. Progressive Europeans over there must thus join with the FLNKS in accepting the slogan of Kanak independence.
From the beginning the FLNKS has explained the free choice of Kanak citizenship for those who want to remain in the country after independence. They will have the choice between Kanak citizenship, or the status of immigrant worker if they wish to keep French citizenship.
3. The white working-class has special interests
A non-Kanak working class exists because the colonial administration has done everything to hold back the proletarianization of the Kanaks. Certain Europeans and Wallisians have responded positively to the pro-independence appeals. The USTKE defends these workers, even when they are not for independence. In addition, on several occasions this union has made initiatives for unity in action with the USOENC, which has a non-Kanak majority and is mainly based in the nickel industry and the ports. But we are in a colonial situation.
It is one thing to carry out general propaganda in favor of the non-Kanak workers joining the struggle for Kanak independence. The FLNKS, and before it the Independence Front, has done so on numerous occasions. But it is a dangerous error to believe that a large segment of these layers are going to respond to that appeal
The FLNKS cannot base its policy on such an illusory expectation. The European wage workers are not simply "exploited" layers in New Caledonia, as they would be in France. Because of their racial affiliation and their privileges, they form a sort of aristocracy of labor" and are fully conscious of belonging to a dominant colonial bloc.
The end of the colonial system would mean the end of the inequalities the Kanaks suffer. This in turn would mean the end of the privileges of the whites, including the "small whites." Indeed, in the event of independence the "small farmers" would have a harder time turning to something else than the big European capitalists. But this in no way changes the fact that the future of the Kanaks rests in a radical land reform that gives them the right to recover lands stolen from them.
To defend the right to private ownership of the land by the "small whites" would mean sending back the Kanaks to their tiny reservations, denying any content to the demand for self-determination of the oppressed people. and supporting the present form of colonial and capitalist domination of the land.
By contrast, recognizing the right to self-determination of the oppressed Kanak people is the only way to open the way to a truly democratic solution to the problems of the land, work, or health in New Caledonia.
4. The FLNKS is now the national organization of the Kanak people
Last July the FLNKS decided to leave the colonial institutions and to mobilize the Kanak masses in the field. This does not make the FLNKS a revolutionary communist leadership, which no one claims it is. But it explains how the FLNKS could respond to the needs of the mobilization and the expectations of the Kanak population.
Lifting the roadblocks did not stem simply from tactical needs in the negotiations, but also from a need to take the time to prepare to move to a new stage of the mobilization, and to do so without precipitating an overly premature confrontation with the local reactionaries and the colonial repressive forces.
By the way, as background, it is necessary to understand that there is no Kanak bourgeoisie, nor even a well-off Kanak pettybourgeoisie. In addition, the use of the term "notables" shows the embarassment of some people who have some inkling of the complex social reality before them, but do not want to upset their prepackaged schemas.
Thus far, whatever differentiations might exist among the Kanak people have not led to the crystallization of definitive social strata. And you cannot base your present analysis of the FLNKS and its leadership solely on the vague premonitions of someone sitting in a Paris office regarding the future development of certain FLNKS members.
Whatever the differences in income among the Kanaks, or the weight of certain conceptions forged through the activities of the churches or participation in colonial institutions, the present leadership of the FLNKS is a pragmatic nationalist leadership. But it is anchored in an exceptionally powerful Kanak national sentiment that is directly related to the customs inherited from the historic traditions of the Kanak people. This, moreover, is what lays the basis for the FLNKS's hegemony.