fulfill the prophesy ungenerously suggested by Georges Marchais.* The elected bodies include more nonconformists than was supposed and a good number of May militants were able to pressure a father who was a town councilor or an uncle who was a mayor into providing one of the precious signatures. In a word, the Krivine candidacy received more than double the required endorsements.
As for the military regulations, they provide that a candidate in the armed services is entitled to a special furlough, leave without pay, and freedom from military discipline in speaking and writing as soon as hè leaves his base. Could Private Krivine be considered to have "met the requirements of the draft laws" upon rejoining his regiment? Ihe minister of the army let it be known that he did not think so. Iwo appeals to the Conseil Constitutionnel and then to the interim president of the republic by Krivine's comrades made it possible to clear away the last obstacles.
With his special leave -- without pay - and 230 signatures of notables, Alain Krivine inaugurated his "presidential" campaign Thursday -- it will culminate on May 28, with a mass meeting in the Palais des Sports. Here at least is a splinter group that has grown up.
* A member of the Political Bureau of the French CP who gained a certain notoriety in the period leading up to the May explosion by baiting Cohn-Bendit, in an article in the CP organ l'Humanité, as a "German anarchist" at a time when
• the student leader was under violent attack by the government and reactionary press. When Krivine's candidacy was announced, Marchais wrote that if the young revolutionist had any signatures, difficulty getting the required Marcellin, the red-baiting French minister of the interior who commands the country's police, would be happy to provide them. - I.P.
result of the generosity of the government propaganda office which the ORIF [Office de la Radio et de la Télévision Française -- French Radio and Television Office] represents today. If I can speak to you, it is because of the extraordinary mobilization of ten million workers that developed in May 1968.
Recently Monsieur Marcellin, the minister of the interior, told you that power comes from the ballot. In fact, when we think how Monsieur Marcellin became the minister of the interior, how the Gaullist regime was established as the result of a military coup, we might ask Monsieur Mar-
The rosal or any electio nor i it not cellin very simply whether he got his power from the ballot. We might ask him if he did not use force to become the minister of the interior.
It is clear to us that the socialist left can never look forward to taking power and imposing its solutions by means of elections or any kind of an electoral consultation. Experience in both France and other countries shows conclusively that one of two things can happen. If the left develops a right-wing program and then wins the votes of the right, it can, in fact, achieve a governmental majority.
Wilson did this in England and Guy Mollet and Mitterrand did it before him in France. But when the left develops a much more advanced program, a program which cannot win the approval of the bourgeoisie, then the capitalist class is prepared to violate its own legality and impose its solutions by military coups d'etat.
We are familiar with the example of Greece and the fascist regime that rules there today. We are familiar with the example of Indonesia.
And we are familiar with the example of Republican Spain. In fact, we have absolutely no confidence in the ballot.
We think -- and May 1968 showed it -- that the workers have their own methods of struggle. In May 1968, through demonstrations, through occupying the factories, the workers achieved something that no vote had ever been able to accomplish. They forced the "strong state, which the Gaullist regime was then, back down. In a few weeks, the Gaullist state gave concessions which it had reto give throughout its ten years fused in power.
But for us, May 1968 will not be the anniversary of a historical battle which we will commemorate like old soldiers. Nor will we bury it, as all the official left parties are trying to do now. For us, May was a great promise, and what we will strive to do through this campaign -- which we want to make a revolutionary activist campaign above all -- is to explain what happened in those days. We want to draw all the lessons and show all the failings of the May movement in order to arm the students and workers for the coming struggles, which will not and cannot be, electoral ones.
The lessons are many. For years we were told that a working class no longer that the capitalist, the neocapitalist, system had resolved all its that today the standard of living could be continually raised.
Now, what do we see? And the workers saw this in May 1968. There are hundreds of thousands of unemployed. loday there are tens of thousands of young people without jobs. Or when they find jobs in factories the jobs usually don't measure up to their skills. Today, the production-line tempos are being speeded up in the factories in pace with the opportunities for increasing profits.
In May 1968 the workers by the millions realized that the problem was not to fight for some reform, for a 2 or 3 percent raise that the bosses would immediately take back. They learned that they had to win their broad demands, to transform society radically, and take the centers of production into their own hands.
This is what they started to do by the factory occupations and by starting up the factories in some areas without the bosses.
A period of real freedom reigned in France during May, in that month of May 1968. At that time we said that anything was possible. And we were called "ultraleftists" and "wild men." But when you look at the situation closely, when you read all the books on this period that are coming out today, when you 1ook at the panic that reigned in the government ministry offices - which were mostly deserted -- when you consider how isolated the big bourgeoisie was, cut off from the students, from the intermediate strata, and the peasantry, you can understand that, reality, if the workers parties had provided a real political alternative, a socialist alternative offering the perspective of a workers government and offering the workers the means to struggle for this goal, then everything would have been completely changed. If that had happened, we would not be deciding now in this election campaign whether we should have a Pompidou or a Poher as head of state.
Today, in the absence of workers' struggles, the bourgeoisie has been able to restabilize its system temporarily. It has even allowed itself the luxury of sending de Gaulle back to Colombey-les-Deux- Eglises. Clearly, de Gaulle made it possible to achieve a decisive change in the political institutions in May 1958... But after May 1968 the instability of his regime became apparent. De Gaulle suffered an enormous loss of prestige and, faced with the possibility and predictability of new struggles, the bourgeoisie recognized that it had to get rid of de Gaulle in order to look toward a regime capable of confronting the working class in the months to come.
We are offered two candidates -- Poher and Pompidou. Ihere is a lot of difference between their programs, as you can judge for yourself. One is for progress with continuity; the other is for continuity with progress...That is the democracy, that is the real choice that is being foisted on us today. And it is because of the official left that this can happen. Their candidates offer no alternative.
A number of candidates have thrown their hats in the ring. But we might ask
"Where were you in nem all tne question. lay, when there wasn't any hustling for votes going on, when the workers were on strike? Where was Molstruggling and let? Where was Defferre? Where was Mitterrand?" This question deserves an answer, but I think everyone can give it...The left was unable to lead the May battle.
Today the left assumes a stance of opposition to the Fourth Republic and a return to the ways that prevailed then. But tomorrow vetterre, Mitterrand, Mol- Let, and the others will come and tell us,
"We must object. We are against the ways of the Fifth Republic." What we have to understand is how we could come to such a pass a year after May 1968. In fact, the left lives on two myths which paralyze it - its belief in the ballot and in this celebrated Unity of the left. As for us, and we say it clearly, we are against this Unity of the Left, because this expression has absolutely no meaning today.
If "left" means a location in the chambers of parliament, that is, the section to the left of the chairman, all right then, it's a geographical definition. But if it refers to political program, then we may venture to ask the question: "When Jules Moch* was minister of the interior and called out the cops to club the miners; was he further to the left than Marcellin? Was Guy Mollet a man of the left when he sent the paratroopers to Suez? Was Mitterrand a man of the left
"French Algeria"?
when he talked about a reputation for extreme brutality in the May-June days.
-- I.P.
Haiti's dictator François Duvalier has reportedly sent troops to the north of the country to suppress a popular revolt. The May 25-26 Paris daily Le Monde said an "authoritative source" had revealed that high army officers had joined
We don't see any "left"; what i we see is a working class. We see organizations that support the demands of the working class, but we can't go any further than that.
The unity that is needed now to achieve a radical transformation of society 1s unity oI all the workers, which can then provide a basis for an alliance of the workers -- united on a socialist program -- with the midale strata. As IOI us, we refuse to get entangled in this game oi left politicians, no matter who they are.
May 1968 brought a new communist current to the fore in france, a current for which socialism is something totally different from the caricature that exists today in the soviet Union. For us, concentration camps are not socialism, for us a regime like the one in the Soviet Union which puts its intellectuals in prison, which stifles all workers democracy, which does not hesitate to reestablish what it calls law and order in a sister country, as was done in Czechoslovakia, for us such a regime cannot be socialism.
I'his new communism, this new vanguard does not exist in France alone. It exists today in a whole series of countries in Europe, Latin America, and even in the United States.
This socialism is not represented today by Brezhnev or Kosygin. It is personified much more by Che Guevara. And we think that May 1968 put Che Guevara's famous phrase squarely on the order of the day: "The duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution."
When we see how many opportunities were missed in 1936, in 1946-47, and just recently in 1968, we can see - and it is clear today -- that you don't win the right to call yourself a communist by paying dues. Ihis name is not the monopoly of one party. This name must be won by participating in the actions of the working class. This name must be earned in the class struggle.
As for us, we see this campaign as a means for presenting the balance sheet of the struggle that ten million workers waged in May and offering a means for continuing it.
the rebels, as well as political exiles who had returned to the country clandestinely. "According to this source, President Duvalier was said to have undertaken a violent repression against the opposition to his government."
REVOLT REPORTED IN HAITI REVOLT REPORTED IN HAITI
The bureaucracy of the French Communist party could hardly have done better than it did when it decided to offer Jacques Duclos to the public as the party's "finest."
A vintage piece of the "popular front" days, renowned in his time as one of Stalin's most faithful nacks, the seventy-two-year-old former pastry cook is fighting with all he has to save French Stalinism from being outflanked on the left.
The veteran of many a sly deal and shady combination with the bourgeois political machines, Jacques Duclos knows the electoral game.
As the presidential candidate of the Communist party, he is not appealing to the revolutionary youth -- that is not his strong point -- but to the staid papas who feel that they have at least a little stake in the capitalist system.
At the same time, to keep up appearances among Communist-minded workers, he does touch on socialism -- to be sure not in a way to make the hair of conservative small shopkeepers stand on end.
DEPENDABLE JACQUES DUCLOS
copri
Pao at pitch to tho ference in Lyon May 20:
"If elected, I am convinced that the forces of the left would present a common program in the elections following the dissolution of parliament which I would proceed to invoke. We are not wreckers. We are not for the black flag lof the Anarchists]. Besides it was never anything but the emblem of hopeless mourning. We are builders; we will show this in the municipalities where we are in office. And we know that in the not too distant future we will be called on to play our part in conducting the affairs of the country. The truth is, it is not the socalled activist minorities who -- with Mr. Krivine's permission -- can impose their law. As for us, we represent a political, economic, and social potential
The French CP, fearful of the new revolutionary youth to its left, is doing its best to prevent Alain Krivine from speaking to workers at plants where the CP union is in control. On May 19 Krivine, with a delegation of some 300 young students and workers, appeared at the big Renault plant southwest of Paris. A handpicked "reception committee" of roughly
WORKERS DEMOCRACY, DUCLOS STYLE WORKERS DEMOCRACY, DUCLOS STYLE
DUCIOS: No babbling about socialism.
which the country cannot do without, a force without which a genuinely democratic policy cannot be practiced."
At an election rally the same day in Lyon; Duclos inveighed against Alain Krivine, saying that his youthful opponent, who came to national prominence during the revolutionary crisis of May 1968,
"babbling about socialism."
was
Jacques Duclos does not engage in babbling about socialism. But it is highly dubious that the babbling he does engage in will save the French Communist party from being bypassed by the new generation of revolutionary socialists now coming to the fore in France.
the same size was lined up at the factory gate with banners reading, "Oppose the diversionary anti-Communist candidate!" "Vote for Jacques Ducios, the union candidate!" They hissed, whistled, booed, and sang the Internationale, trying to drown out the Trotskyist speaker. But Krivine made himself heard and again challenged Duclos to debate him on the issues.
DANIEL COHN-BENDIT — FOR PRIME MINISTER OR PEOPLE'S
COMMISSAR?
The announcement of the Communist League May 5 that it was running Alain Krivine for president had considerable impact among the circles that were most involved in the actions leading up to the revolutionary crisis in France a year ago. It became a central topic of discussion, the comment in general being favorable.
The current known as "spontané- ism," which is strongly influenced by the anarchist outlook, appeared to have somewhat mixed emotions about the campaign. Repelled by capitalist society, but also by communism (which they equate with Stalinism), the spontanéists are opposed to constructing a revolutionary combat party in the Leninist tradition. Decrying the role of leadership, they count on spontaneous action by the masses to overturn capitalism and do away with the exploitation of man by man.
The spontanéists, who were very prominent on the barricades in Paris last year, conduct themselves in the spirit of the old-time anarchists. They are especially good at scandalizing the bourgeoisie with irreverent exposures of the hypocrisies of capitalism.
They incline toward ultraleft actions, but it remains to be seen whether they will succeed in avoiding the path taken by leading anarchists in Spain during the revolutionary crisis of the thirties. Ihese forerunners of the spontané- ists, despite all their opposition to the state in general, accepted posts in a bourgeois government and thus helped save capitalism when it was on its last legs in Spain.
A typical gesture from this current toward the campaign of Alain Krivine came from Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the student leader of greatest international renown last year. On May 7 he sent a telegram to Alain Krivine, announcing his readiness to serve as prime minister in the event the candidate of the Communist League should win the election.
Krivine had not yet been granted the furlough from the army which he needed to campaign for the presidency and so he was absent at his first press conference. Three leaders of the Communist League spoke for him.
Mentioning the telegram, Charles Michaloux expressed astonishment at Daniel Cohn-Bendit's "bourgeois" concept of politics. He explained that if the candidate of the Communist League were to win, the post of prime minister would hardly be available in view of what could be expected to occur to the structure of the state as the Communist League carried out opám
COHN-BENDIT: Withdraw at very last moment!
the teachings of Marx and Engels on this point. He agreed, however, that Daniel cohn-Bendit might well fill one of the posts of people's commissar that would be created.
On May 20 Radio Europe 1 featured Alain Krivine taking questions by telephone from listeners. Daniel Cohn-Bendit put in a call from Frankfurt.
: The candidate of the Communist League, said Cohn-Bendit, was "the only robe total about was Goodmovement about the May movement
• But in order to make a demonstration that "electoralism doesn't get you anywhere and you don't fight the class struggle by dropping paper ballots in a box," he suggested that Krivine withdraw at the very last moment.
Krivine agreed about continuing to oppose electoral politics but held that the revolutionary movement should not make it a principle to boycott elections. "I am well aware that the number of votes we may get will not correspond to our possible influence in the country, if only because tens upon tens of thousands of youth who were on the barricades and who participated in the May movement cannot oldest voic tee tectonds can help to indicate our political influence somewhat. In counting up votes, we utilize the elections -- to use Lenin's expression -- something like a thermometer."!
Cohn-Bendit raised some additional questions, among them the following: "The
Some 630,000 workers staged twentyfour-hour national strikes in Australia between May 16 and May 21 to protest the jailing of a union leader for refusing to comply with government restrictions on the right to strike.
The strike wave, described by Agence France-Presse as the most important in Australia in more than twenty years, was touched off by the May 15 jailing for contempt of court of Clarence O'Shea, the sixty-three-year-old secretary of the Victorian Tramway Men's Union. He had relused to pay an #8,100 fine Ior having led an "illegal" strike. On the same day, twenty-seven unions in Victoria, representing 65 percent of the total union strength in the state, went out on a twenty-four-hour strike.
The London Times reported May 19 that though the workers in Victoria had gone back to work, their leaders had de-. clared: "If O'Shea is not released by Monday afternoon, further industrial action will follow immediately."
The Australian Council of Trade workers or minority of workers who may agree with us on revolutionary perspectives or needs in France don't know the differences we have among ourselves -- and with good reason, because they don't give a damn. Wouldn't it be possible to have a debate with Duclos or one of the others?"
Krivine said he was not the candidate of the May movement as a whole but of a definite political organization, "the Communist League, which has a whole series of differences with you, as you know, and with other groups."
It would sow confusion to cover up these differences. "The meetings we are organizing throughout France will all be debates in this sense, and we always invite discussion....Just the same, I am the candidate of a political organization and I think it is necessary to make this clear in order to avoid confusion."
Eighteen unions in New South Wales, with a membership of 150,000 workers, called a general strike for May 20.
In Sydney, maritime workers set their strike for May 21, promising to tie up all major Australian ports. The Federal Cabinet met in Canberra to discuss the situation.
The union actions won widespread support from the student movement. The London Times reported:
"For the first time in union demonstrations in Australia banners inscribed 'worker-student power' have been displayed as a result of university students being invited to take part."
The Paris daily Le Monde commented May 21: "The threat of a general strike which is presently pending in Australia draws attention to the importance of the penal clauses contained in the legislation defining the relations between the government in Canberra and the unions. This sort of crisis could be produced in England if equally severe penal clauses are inserted in the proposed antistrike bill of Mrs. Barbara Castle."
Australian Labour Minister L H.E. Bury and Attorney General N.H. Bowen met with representatives of the ACTU in Sydney May 18. In a joint statement the next day, the two government representatives warned, according to the May 20 Iondon Guardian, that "the situation might get worse."
MASSIVE PROTEST STRIKES HIT AUSTRALIA MASSIVE PROTEST STRIKES HIT AUSTRALIA
Broke for Monday, a at onions in al ent days.
On May 19
some 130,000 workers in
Queensland in thirty-six unions struck, paralyzing the region. Public transport, power stations, the metal trades, building, waterfront, and food industries were all shut down.
Notes
* A right-wing Social Democratic politician most famous for his role in organizing the repressive forces to defend French capitalism from the postwar working-class radicalization. Among other things, ne organized the urs Lcompagnies Republicaines de Securite -- Republican Security Companies], the elite security troops which gained