THE FRENCH CP DRAWS IIS BALANCE SHEET OF THE MAY-JUNE EVENTS
By Pierre Frank policy oi the PCF and the CGI good for, ii not to enable the workers to struggle against the bosses and the government?
For long Jears the leadership of the PCF and the CGI summoned the workers to action, but what kind of action? Petitions, elections, tame demonstrations Republi que and the Place de la Bastille, and forth between the Place de la where the only fighting the stewards engaged in was with the "ultraleftists." The discontent was there, without any doubt, but the PCF and the CGT were very careful not to provide the slightest "detonator" for it. If it had been left up to them, the working class still would have had a long time to wait.
In his report, Waldeck Rochet spoke in ambiguous terms about the general strike. Although recognizing that the strike (he never says "general strike") was indeed unleashed after the May 13 demonstration, he avoided saying that no strike call came from the CGI. Rochet was quite discreet in handling the very advanced form of the strike, that is the occupation of factories, which challenges capitalist property. Ihe role of the young workers in outflanking the tradeunion officials was passed over in silence.
There was still another very important "oversight." He spoke of the "successful breakthrough" of the Rue de Grenelle agreement, but completely passed over the fact that in the morning of May 27 the workers in all the big factories unanimously rejected this so-called
"successful breakthrough."
It is evident then that all this part of his report was not an analysis of the mobilization but a distortion in which omissions abounded. In the part concerning the government, Rochet declared on several occasions that the government was not inoperative. He claims that to say this was to advance "irresponsible if not provocative" claims. chat what was involved was a Gaullist "trap," eto.
But in the days from May 24 to May 30, the PCF and CGI leadership, like the "vitraleftists" as well as the great majority of the bourgeois and Social- Democratic political world, to say nothing of many foreign governments, thought that de Gaulle was on his way out. Wasn't the central slogan of the CGT demonstra-
"People's and Democratic tion of May 29 a Union Government"? Didn't the PCF leaders in this demonstration shout good-bye to de Gaulle?
Among the many omissions in this report, it is worth noting that in the part dealing with the government, Rochet did not point out the fact that on May 24
de Gaulle announced a referendum and that he found in the subsequent days that it was impossible for him to hold this plebiscitary referendum. To say that in these conditions, the question of power was not posed is again to distort the facts.
De Gaulle knows both the leaders of the PCF and of the FGDS [Fédération de la Gauche Democrate et Socialiste -- Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left — a formation made up of right-wing Social Democrats and liberals]. He knew that if he challenged them he would encounter no serious obstacles from these gentlemen. He knew that they would retreat when he offered them elections.
Today, Waldeck Rochet says that he
Gaulle was not ready to withknew that de draw and that all the rumors about his departure were merely a deception, a "trap" to entice the PCF into venturing into "il- Le alis that tee and rentert or to do legality, violence and adventurism." Today, that it did not fall into this trap.
Rochet recalled in passing that de Gaulle went to visit Massu. This visit in the conditions under which it was made proved that de Gaulle, for his part, thought that the question of power was on the order of the day. But why didn't Rochet draw this conclusion? Ihe reason is that if he had, he would also have had to face the fact that de Gaulle (and along with him the capitalists) think of the problems of power in terms of "forces" and not votes.
It did not enter into the PCF's analysis or its policy that the Gaullist government was established in 1958 by a military coup in Algiers and that in 1968 de Gaulle went to see the army commanders to plan an army intervention against the working mass who had risen up against the regime.
It is understandable that the PCF leadership should seek to deny that the May mobilization posed the question of power concretely. For as soon as they recognized this fact, they would also have to recognize that the situation had never been more favorable. Ten million workers factories were occuwere on strike, the pied, millions of members of the middle classes were struggling against the gov-
The polse tetes ten tired trite ranks of the capitalist world were breaking down. What more was necessary for them to recognize that the government was "on vacation" and that there was a revolutionary situation? Still more than in 1945, the PCF Ieadership "missed the boat."
The holes in the PCF leadership's analysis are accumulating. But there is more to come. According to Rochet, the
PCF leadership had the great merit of baring the Gaullist trap. But then, he said, de Gaulle decided to stage early elections to take advantage of the "fear" produced by the riots, etc. And, he ada-
"the Gaullist calculation was not mised, taken."
We remember that Rochet, one or two hours after de Gaulle's May 30 speech, by no means denounced the Gaullist "calculation"; he expressed satisfaction that de Gaulle had decided to hold elections. He claimed that was what the Communist party had always wanted. It can only be assumed that at the time he had not
"Gaullist calculation grasped that the was not mistaken."
This is still not all. If we follow Waldeck Rochet's reasoning, what do we find? Here we have a Gaullist government which for two and a half years had been losing ground on the electoral front. The parliament was rickety, although the opposition was unable to find the few votes necessary to pass a motion of censure. Ihe government saw the discontent of the masses rising.
Then, according to Rochet, all this government needed to do was push a few "ultraleftists" into provoking a few riots so as to lay the trap of a seeming- ]y "inoperative" government, which the PCF, however, escaped. But in this situation de Gaulle had a second trap, precipitate elections, and this time the PCF walked into the trap with both feet.
One would indeed like to know how Waldeck Rochet proposes to eliminate the Gaullist regime. According to his explanation of the May 1968 events, de Gaulle could not lose; heads or tails, the game either by bringing the army in against through elections, by stirring up the "party of fear."
In fact, Waldeck Rochet very inadvertently revealed in his report all the impotence of the policy which the PCF has been pursuing for several years now. Let us review this line. The Gaullist rea "democratic" regime which would "control" the monopolies. Io this end, "unity" on the left must be established, that is unity of the PCF trade-union federations on a gram" of government, which would rally a majority of the votes.
After 1965, this perspective seemed to be on the way to realization. The left had found a common candidate for the presidency of the republic and had forced de Gaulle into a runoff. The 1967 legislative elections had produced a National Assembly in which de Gaulle had a majority of only a few votes.
Only a little more effort was necessary for success. But the "common program" was long in being born. The discontent of the masses was rising. And the student movement touched off a gigantic strike movement, a general strike.
Then de Gaulle is supposed to have set his double trap, and...here we are now with an overwhelming Gaullist majority in parliament; the EGDS is in bad shape and less inclined than ever to complete negotiations on a "common program"; and the "ultraleftists," although their organizations have been dissolved, have more of an audience than in the past. Everyone foresees difficulties; struggles, a tenser social situation than in the past. The class struggle is going to be raised to level not seen since the end of the mobilizations of the immediate postwar period.
If the perspective established by the PCF Leadership a few years ago ran into difficulty because of the FGDS's unwillingness to come out with a "common because of "provocations" of the program, "ultraleftists" who do not seem about to disappear from the political scene,* and because of the skillful calculations of de Gaulle, what then does the_PCF leadership propose for the future? Exactly the same policy: a "common program,
" elections,
"popular action" "in the framework of legality, in accordance with the circumstances and the possibilities." Why should this policy have any more success in the years to come than it did in 1968?
In the face of the greatest mass movement in an economically developed capitalist country for several decades, the entire world felt the shock. Only the PCF leadership remains immovable -- its policy was correct, it is still correct, and it will continue to be correct no matter what happens. If there is some electoral set-
Thore ¡It is inadmissible to forget the adversary. It would be a strange kind of strategist who imagined that preparing fine plans was enough to settle everything and to proceed from victory to victory." They just need to warm over these "fine plans."
Some say (e.g., Le Nouvel Observateur) that there are divergences in the leadership, that there are "dogmatists" and "liberals," that a change could well come about one day, etc. I do not question that the leadership and the PCF in its entirety will undergo crises in the future. However, we cannot fail to draw a few conclusions from the attitude of the PCF leadership during the events of May 1968 and from the Central Committee plenum which followed it.
This leadership has shown itself more ossified than even the most conservative layers of French society. To the extent that "disagreements" could be discerned in this leadership, these involved tendencies more to the right which are emerging, tendencies toward a more marked adaptation to neocapitalism, to a heightened social-democratization of the party.
Such tendencies raise no objections to the policy of a "common program" with the FDS, "peaceful and parliamensocialism," and of "peacetary roads to ful coexistence" internationally. Moreover, it was an article by Dru published in Le Nouvel Observateur that provided the most skillful defense of this reformist policy in regard to the events of May this right wing blames
1968. Basically, Waldeck Rochet for a lack of talent and finesse, but not for being a reformist.
The main lesson the PCF drew from the May events was that "the most acute danger" was
"ultraleftism," that this danger was not well understood by everyone that since "a few Communist in the party, intellectuals" had once again expressed disagreements it would be indispensable to remind them that the party has more to worry about than them.
Waldeck Rochet summoned the party to an "ideological battle" against "ultraleftism." What will this battle consist of? A good part of his "arguments" were repetitions of the old Stalinist garbage, such as "ultraleftists" are tools of the police. It is true that in this Political Bureau, which is essentially the product of the selection made by Thorez, intellectual lights are particularly lacking, along with knowledge. In his researches on adventurism, Rochet came up with the
Indonesian Communist parexample of the 5y - which followed both Peking "theory and Moscow at the same time -- and the of the offensive" denounced by the Third Congress of the Communist International.
Poor Rochet did not notice that Lenin and Trotsky were agreed at this congress in defending a revolutionary policy which had nothing in common with the policy he conducted in May 1968. At this level of "ideological" struggle against the "ultraleftists," Stalin's slanders have relatively more weight. In any case nothing more could be hoped for from a Rochet or a Marchais.*
This time Waldeck Rochet included as a target in te struggle against "ultrathe PSU "dominated by representatives of the ultraleft groups, adventurists, and renegades," as well as the CFDI, to which seguy is also applying the cudgels in the name of the CGI.
The PCF leadership's animosity toward the PSU has especially sharpened since the end of May 1968. Ihe relationship between the CGI and the CFDT, which had been relatively good for the last two years when there was an agreement linking these two federations, deteriorated during the May mobilization.
The PCF holds a grudge against these two organizations because they supported the Mendés France maneuver* which was aimed at torpedoing a FGDS-PCF governmental combination.
The main accusation the PCF and CGT have directed against these two formations is that of protecting the "ultraleftists." But what has this "protection" consisted of? These two organizations, it is true, denounced the government's repressive measures against the vanguard groups. However, they were not alone in doing so and the PCF-CGI leadership has not raised any accusation against the others.
The CFDI is blamed for proposing a "codetermination" demand that had nothing "ultraleft" about it and which in the CFDT leadership's conception had rather the flavor of cooption into neocapitalisn. But this demand was interpreted by some parts of the working class as a transitional demand, as an anticapitalist demand. During the mobilization, the CFDT even recruited elements standing to the left of the PCF's reformist policy. So, what the CGT leaders want to do is frighten the CFDT leaders in order to get then to take measures against such elements.
The CP leaders' grievances against the PSU are on the one hand its use of "left" language (which, however, never had a genuine revolutionary character) and on the other hand the recruitment of elements who think that the PCF betrayed the movement and who feel that by organizing in the PSU they can provide a revolutionary leadership for the future. The PSU, moreover, cle to go into them. But the real question is whether Rochet deliberately made up these amalgams or whether they arose from a confusion in his brain, since he could only know these authors and theories second- or third-hand.
* The projected plan of boosting Mendès France as
a providential leader of a broad left coalition in which he would be "above the parties" and relatively immune to CP pressure.
gained part of the left votes which the CP lost.
The conclusion to be drawn from this Central Conmittee session is that the PCF leadership, which was the most important prop of the capitalist order in the working class during the events of May 1968, has just confirmed that it intends to play the same role in the coming period.
Its slogan is "the enemy is to the left" and one can be certain that this policy will be applied with vigor. Expulsions will not be long in coming. The repression in the CT will also certainly fall on militants with "ultraleft" tendencies. Everyone knows that in regard to "ultraleftism" there is no question of "peaceful roads" which must, it seems, lead from capitalism to socialisn.
The PCF and CGI leadership will only accentuate their ultrareformist course; there is no doubt about this. But May 1968 brought a big change in the situation in France. The class struggle will remain no longer at the level where it has stagnated almost continually during the last twenty years. The "participation" de Gaulle talks about will be primarily the participation of the Gardes Mobiles [Mobile Guards -- riot police] and the CRS [Compagnies Républicaines de
Alain Krivine and his wife, Michèle, were seized by the police in Paris July 16. They are being held incommunicado and it is not known what charges, if any, have been lodged against them.
Alain Krivine became known internationally as one of the main leaders of the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire, the Trotskyist youth organization that played a key role in the student demonstrations that touched off the giant social crisis in France in May and June.
The JCR, together with a number of other revolutionary organizations, was "dissolved" by a government decree signed by de Gaulle himself. Under the decree it is illegal either to continue the organization or to reconstitute it.
The JCR had announced its intention to challenge the decree in the courts, since it was issued on false grounds, alleging that the JCR had organized combat squads and a militia.
The arrest of Alain and Michèle Krivine followed a police raid on a meeting held July 10 in a hall at 177 Rue de Charonne. Forty-one persons present were
Sécurité -- Republican Security Companies - a militarily armed and trained elite security forcel in strikes and demonstrations. Flins and Sochaux will not prove to be isolated incidents. The workers will collide with determined resistance from the repressive forces because capitalism and the government have drawn their own lessons from May 1968.
The reformist policy of the PCF and CGI leaderships, which produced no results in the period preceding May 1968, will produce still less in the coming period. It is not the "ultraleftists" who will create the new situation; it is rather the new situation which will create more "ultraleftists."
For when you have to defend yourself more energetically, when the class struggle grows harsher, people will not fight for small stakes. The government can "dissolve" the vanguard formations; the PCF can choose to combat "ultraleftism" by similar methods. However, both, sharing in part the same policeman's conception ol nistory, will be surprisec
"ultraleftism"
to see this abhorrent gain new strength and prominence -- not only among the Jouth, as was the case in May 1968, but also in the heavy battalions of the working class.
questioned by the police and eight of then were then held incommunicado.
The press claimed that the gathering constituted a meeting of the JCR, since alleged members of the JCR were present. Ihis was vigorously denied by those questioned by the police. The meeting was actually an assembly of members of a "student-workers Committee of Action." Action committees formed during the upsurge have continued to meet.
Arrests have been made in other cities, bringing the total number of people held incommunicado by the police to twenty-one. The press has not reported their names; but all of them are said to have been herded into a police camp outside of Paris. On July 16 a mass meeting at the Palais-Royal to protest the ban and the arrests was banned and broken up by the police.
• An appeal has been issued for international solidarity, particularly for material aid in the defense efforts. Contributions can be sent to Emil Van Ceulen, Secretary, Fonds de Solidarite contre la Répression en France, 111 Seghers, Brussels 8, Belgium.
Notes
* If as the PCF leadership claims, a few ultraleft "provocateurs" were enough to do the job, any government could easily conjure them up.
* There are a great many extravagant amalgams of theories and authors. It would take a very long and detailed arti-