FRENCH WORKERS ANSWER DE GAULLE WITH 24—-HOUR GENERAL STRIKE
By Pierre Frank
[The nationwide, 24-hour general strike in France May 17, appears to have been a very solid demonstration of the power that rests in the hands of the working class. The country's industries, offices, transport system and schools were completely paralyzed.
{A significant indication of the mood of the working class was a parade in Paris in which 150,000 demonstrators participated. They carried banners and placards opposing special powers deman-— ded by the de Gaulle regime and warning the government not to tamper with social security and other social benefits.
{The article below, written some days before the strike, indicates the political meaning of this new turn in the class struggle in France.]
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Paris
A 24-hour general strike has been scheduled in France for Wednesday May 17. To a certain degree people have become accustomed to work stoppages in France; but this time the demonstration is of exceptional amplitude and importance.
In practice all the unions have joined in it -- the Confédération Générale du Travail, Force Ouvriére, the Confédération Frangaise et Démocratique du Travail, and the Fédération de 1'Education Nationale. The Union Nationale des Etudiants de France joined in the action.
The exceptions: the Confédération Générale des Cadres, where the negative decision was carried by a single vote at the top level; and the Confédération Frangaise des Travailleurs Chrétiens, the rump organization which split away when the Christian unions decided to eliminate
reference to religious denomination and which has no support other than that accorded by the de Gaulle regime.
It is already certain that this strike will receive a much greater response than any of the preceding strikes. The mood in the plants leaves no doubt that the private and public sectors and the civil servants are all involved.
But the number supporting the action must be considered in conjunction with the fact that it is to the highest degree a political strike -- not only because a work stoppage of such size has political significance in any case but because of the reasons for the general downing of tools and the objectives.
The general elections were held
only two months ago. Parliament has just opened and begun to organize its commit~ tees. The administration has submitted a bill which it intends to railroad through on the basis of its hairline majority.
Under the proposed measure, parliament would give up its constitutional powers for six months in essential problems, authorizing the administration to legislate during this period by means of ordinances issued by the cabinet minis~ ters.
It was against this procedure, against this proposed law, that all the unions decided to call a general strike for May 17.
Thus it is no longer a case, as it so often was, of a strike for an increase in wages or other economic demands directed against the bosses or against the government due to the fact that it is also a very big boss. Nor is it a case of a general work stoppage of short duration such as took place during the Algerian war and which in fact supported the Gaullist regime against the partisans of "French Algeria." The May 17 strike is a strike against the government and even something more.
The procedure which the regime is seeking to have approved, that of full power to legislate by ordinances, does not have the excuse of an emergency situation despite the regime's declarations. It is a symptom of the incapacity of a regime of Bonapartist nature to function with a parliament in which it does not have a crushing and unconditional majority, as was the case in the preceding session of the National Assembly. We will return to this question after the strike when we assess its outcome. For the mo~ ment we will only point out that in suddenly exposing themselves by demanding passage of this measure, the Gaullist regime brought into focus for everyone to see a whole series of contradictions in French society, and showed -- of course not in the way it was done in Greece with a military coup d'état, but in a very specific way under present conditions in France -- the whole illusory and falla~ cious character of the parliamentary road, so dear to the old-line reformists and the most recent to join them, the leaders of the Communist parties.
They woke up on the morning of March 13 with a big parliamentary success. The Gaullist regime had only a slim majority in the National Assembly; and even within the Gaullist majority a faction had appeared, organized along independent lines (headed by the big bourgeois Giscard d'Estaing, former minister of finance), which openly proclaimed its desire to exert pressure "from within" on the regime. For parliament to be canceled out all that is required is that this faction bow to the government offensive in behalf of the projected law.
Since the social security structure is among the targets aimed at by the proposed law (although no one knows at all what the content of the ordinances will be), the "resistance" (in quotation marks) had to be immediately taken outside parliament. The unions most directly concerned with this point found themselves obliged to reply. After the electoral victory of the opposition and particularly in the climate of working-class discontent which became manifest in the preceding weeks through long, stubborn strikes, the unions decided on the May 17 strike.
In itself this reply was correct. But it was a reply decided on by leaderships that have not given up their reformist concepts by one iota, and that is where an error begins.
For these leaderships, the strike is a matter of meeting the pressure of the regime on the National Assembly by counterpressure from the unions (the day selected, May 17, is the day debate opens on the projected law) -- as if the Assenbly were a shaft that turned according to the intensity of pressures and counterpressures.
As a reply, May 17 must become the point of departure for a broader and broader struggle against the regime. The question that must be posed within the workers organizations and the vanguard militants is, "What do we do after May 17?"
Obviously a correct answer cannot be expected from the present leaderships. But this strike and its success can create more favorable conditions for the vanguard to act.
May 11, 1967