[Pierre Frank is a leading member of the French section of the Fourth International and a member of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.]
Paris
To influence the mighty mass movement sweeping France and assure its victory it is well to begin by placing it in historical perspective. The crisis of rrench capitallsm, which Irom the seconc nost powertul in the nineteenth century droppea to a second-rate status, has taken the form of gigantic convulsive swings from left to right from 1934 to the present. Ihe dates are well known: 1934, 1936, 1940, 1945, 1958, and now 1968.
On the right, the French bourgeoisie has never been strong enough to achieve a fascist solution, not even when Hitler's armies occupied the country. On the left, the masses have never lacked
1eaoir does and borera Brooked. energy, but the leaderships -- reformist, Stalinist, or post-Stalinist -- have so far by their default and betrayals blocked the socialist solution to the crisis, the creation of a socialist republic of France. Ihis is still more apparent in the May 1968 upsurge than in previous ones.
The present movement is at least as strong numerically as those of 1936 and 1945-47 but on a much higher political plane. Iet us sum up the evidence which testifies to this. Each time, the mass mobilizations and notably the factory occupations came in the train of events which played the role of detonator.
In 1936, it was an electoral viatory - the victory of the Popular Front. In 1945-47, It was the military victory over Nazism. Ihis time, the role of detonator was played by the vanguard movement of university teachers and students, and high-school students, which culminated in the barricades of May 10. Ihat is not all.
In 1936 and 1945-47, the masses followed the leaderships with confidence. In 1936, it was the socialist party and the Communist party; and in 1945-47, primarily the CP. At present, these leaderships, including the CP, no longer enjoy their former prestige and authority. Inis does not mean, nowever, that the people no longer follow them, for at the moment there is no alternative leadership. Unquestionably, the student movement's prestige is great and the sympathy of the workers for it is real, but it cannot take the place of a leadership -- even a minority leadership -- emerging from the workers movement.
And these are not all the changes which have occurred on the leadership level. In 1936 and 1945-47, the revolutionary groupings were not only numerically weak (they are not much more numerous now), they were quite isolated. They were then literally "grouplets, whose essentially propagandistic activity elicited no response. Today these groupings have gained a response from a minority which is neither numerically nor qualitatively inconsiderable -- quite the contrary. The overwhelming majority of the university jouth, a great majority of the high-school youth, and a growing number of young workers
"grouphave followed the lead of these lets," or "dozen or so wild men, " depending on whether you pick the term used by l'Humanité or that of the minister of education.
And this is not a transitory response. This part of the youth has become conscious -- its demonstrations show this -- on a series of essential political questions: the need for a socialist revolution; the hopelessness of peaceful and parliamentary roads; the harmfulness of the "peaceful coexistence" policy; the need for democracy and struggle against bureaucracy in the workers movement.
The break between this vanguard and the CP leadership has proved very deep. The present upsurge has made it starkly clear to this vanguard that the basic problem for the victory of socialism in France is to rid the working class of the ultrareformist CP and CGI [Confédération Générale du Travail -- General Federation of Labor] leadership. In pursuance of paltry maneuvers, this leadership has adopted formulas placing it to the right even of the FGDS [Fedération de la Gauche Démocrate et Socialiste -- Federation of the Democratic Socialist Left -- an amalgamation of petty-bourgeois democrats and right-wing social Democrats| and the CFDI LConfederation Française et Démocrate de Travailleurs -- French Democratic Labor Federation -- the former Catholic trade union].
This vanguard clearly lacks the organizational forms which would enable it to multiply its effectiveness. It is now seeking such forms. It is striving to promote committees in the plants on the model of those created in the universities, elementary schools, and nigh schools, which represent in embryonic form a type of organization similar to the soviets of 1917 in Russia. It is also striving to break the bureaucratic straitjacket imposed by the CP and CGI leadership, which is still stifling workers democracy in a revolting manner.
And finally there is the problem of the revolutionary party, wnose tion depends primarily on the Trotskyist movement. This movement at the time this mobilization developed was divided essentially into three organizations
(the [In-
Parti Conmuniste Internationaliste ternationalist Communist party], the Union Communiste [Communist Union] and the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste [Internationalist Communist Organization]). Iwo youth organizations were under its influence: the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire [Revolutionary Communist Youth]; and the group around the journal Révoltes.
In the course of the upsurge, the OCI and the youth organization under its sway had a disastrous political line. However, the others carried out spontaneously converging actions and have now created a permanent coordinating committee. It may be hoped that this step forward will further the reunification of the Trotskyist movement without undue delay.
***.
Ihese general considerations make possible an understanding of the conditions in which the new period of workingclass upsurge began, a period which cannot halt even with the end of the immediate thrust. It will certainly bring other days of sharp battle. However far this immediate thrust goes -- which still depends on many unknown and unforeseeable factors - it will certainly not go to the point of the decisive solution of a seizure of power by the workers, as a result of betrayal of those leaderships which today have a decisive influence over the working class.
In this article, which does not propose to answer the questions arising day by day (it is the business of daily leaflets to deal with these questions), I want to point out some important points which have already emerged in the course of the current mobilization.
The role of the high-school students cannot be overstressed. These 14- to 15-year-old youths have shown a remarkable courage and most of all a political maturity which has astonished older militants. Nothing has ever been seen like it. The origins of the high-school movement date back to the end of 1967 and it offers the brightest promises of a vibrantly developing vanguard in the next years in which the decisive battles of the period beginning in spring 1968 will be waged. It is the greatest hope the French revolutionary movement now has.
I leave aside here the international repercussions of the current movement, but it must be mentioned that it has helped to revive the struggle for proletarian revolution in Europe. This struggle has been paralyzed, frozen, world war, since the end of the second to such an extent that a defeatist attitude toward the workers in the economically developed capitalist countries had become dangerously widespread in politically advanced circles. This mobilization, which has immediately had powerful reverberations in all of West Europe, will sweep away the pessimistic "theories" based on this defeatist attitude and will give new impetus to the spread of revolutionary Marxism to much broader strata than ever before. Moreover, this movement has exhibited an internationalist spirit of a very high order. If l'Humanité ever made a monstrous "mistake" it was when it used the expression "the German Cohn-Bendit" in the attempt to discredit a man who has more than honorably served as one of the leading spokesmen of the Paris students. On May 22, |'Humanité hurled infamous slanders against him, and the same day the government expelled him from France. Here also, the CP leadership has entered into complicity with the government against this Joung revolutionist.
It can be counted on also that this movement before long will have reverberations beyond West Europe. It will certainly be understood in the Soviet Union and East Europe that this movement is very different from the picture of it presented in the bureaucratic press.
The CP and CGI leadership has shown a frantic fear of attempts at a worker-student rapprochement not under its control, or, in fact, of any rapprochement going beyond generalities. This leadership knows that such a linkup would revolutionize the workers movement and break its control over it. All the doubts which have been developing for years among the militants would be more than reinforced; they would go over into a merciless critique of the neoreformist policy conducted in the postwar period.
The action which the CP has Launched to prevent this linkup, to prevent papers and leaflets, and most of the student delegations, from getthe ting into the lactories, nas been most intense part of this organization's operation during the upsurge.
At Renault, on Friday, May 1?, a column of students who had walked about six miles from the Sorbonne to the factory arrived to find the gates more vig-. ilantly barred by a handpicked team of CP marshals than by the plant guards in normal times.
Here is another example: When UNEF [Union Nationale des Etudiants Français -- French National Student Federation] organized a demonstration on May 22 to protest the government's expulsion of Cohn-Bendit, the secretary of the CGI, Séguy, called this decision (not the government's move) a provocation and broke off the CGT's relations with UNEF.
Thus, the post-Stalinist leadership prefigures the role that the bourgeoisie will expect it to play when it turns the government over to it -- a role that it is ready and willing to play, the role of policeman, the role of a Noske.* But in the conditions which have developed in the course of this mobilization, an element is taking shape which though it cannot change the nature of this leadership can weaken its power -- in the course of this upsurge itself, which is still on the ascendant as I write these lines and in which new leaps could occur.
Criticisms of the leadership's default have begun to arise in the rank-andfile CP bodies, of its delay, its failure to understand the student movement, its nostility towards it, Its chauvinism. This is happening while the party members are applying themselves to their daily tasks, which are more numerous than ever.
It would be surprising if on the outcome of this mobilization, these criticisms were not repeated and raised to the level of a challenge to the CP's general policy. It would be surprising if they did not culminate more or less rapidly in a crisis in the CP of completely different dimensions than those tion. „Proceeded from the "de-Stalinizawhich
Iwo principal elements are tending to produce such a crisis. First is the bankruptcy of the CP policy toward the youth. For more than six years, first at the time of the Algerian war and then in the campaign for Vietnam, this leadership has driven any sort of "leftist"
* [Gustav Noske (1868-1946). A leader of the Social Democratic party of Germany. He became Minister of War in 1919. He was responsible for crushing the Spartacus killing 15,000 in nine months.
uprising, a key role in the murder of
He played revolutionary leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. ]
out of the organizations and demonstrations which it controlled. It has used its marshals' squad against them, which has not fought against the police for many years.
And now these "leftists" are returning at the head of tens of thousands of Jouth, after vigorously confronting the forces of bourgeois order in the streets. The CP leadership's policy on the youth has resulted in a bankruptcy identical to that of the Gaullist government in the same sphere.
Moreover, a number of CP and CGT militants cannot be insensible to the widespread feeling that the mobilization in progress poses the question of power, that the problem of the seizure of power could be easily solved if the leaderships wanted to do so. Indeed, in these days when an unproclaimed general strike is in effect, it would be possible to force de Gaulle's departüre and to impose a CP-FDS government by nonparliamentary but peaceful means. For, indecision now reigns among the forces of order. Ihe police themselves are considering going on strike. There is news from the army of ferment in the ranks. Ihe fascists, backed by the Gaullists, have only been able to mobilize tiny groups of demonstrators who want primarily to make trial runs in preparation for the future.
At a time when everyone can the "Papa Fs leaders are Calling on the National Assembly -- this discredited parliament, most of whose members are a motley crew of opportunists elected on de Gaulle's coattails _ to censure a government which de Gaulle must considerably change anyway if he wants to stay in power.
Many CP and CGI militants see here also their leadership's incapacity to seize on a situation still more favorable than the Liberation. It cannot ven point now to the presence of American troops on French territory -- there are only Yankee diplomats negotiating with the representatives of victorious Vietnam. And this is the second essential element of a profound crisis in the CP in what cannot be the too distant future.
At the time of this writing, this mobilization must be pushed as far as possible. It cannot go too far. The gains achieved will serve as the point of departure for succeeding waves. Repression will only become a serious threat later, on the occurrence of a decline. It will be aimed primarily at the vanguard (with the tacit complicity of the CP and FGDS
leaderships). But if this vanguard has a clear view of the situation, of the relationship of forces, of the relationship between the vanguard and the masses and between the masses and the leaderships, if it demonstrates the political capacity to keep one or two steps ahead of the masses, without getting too far ahead, such a
• repression will neither be able to decapitate it nor make any deep inroads into it. To the contrary repression might act as a stimulus and enable the vanguard to reinforce its mass influence.
We are out of the stagnation. The class struggle has entered a period of battles to be fought. The conditions at the outset are much more favorable to the vanguard than in the past. For the first time, the vanguard has real opportunities. The majority of the Trotskyist movement is off to a good start.
The road before us will be rough and filled with pitfalls, but we are confident that we will follow it to the end.