TROTSKYIST POSITION IN THE FRENCH ELECTIONS
[The following resolution on the legislative elections to be held in France on March 5 and March 12 was adopted in January by the Nineteenth Congress of the Parti Communiste Internationaliste, the French section of the Fourth International. ]
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The populace by a big majority, particularly among the workers, is now following the electoral campaign and will participate in the legislative elections on March 5 and March 12. Due to this, the elections are an important political event toward which it would be wrong to adopt an attitude of abstention. But, on the other hand, we know that the elections can by no means transform society in any way. Social forces can be mobilized in them and, to a certain degree, they can hold back or facilitate certain developments depending on how they go.
Against the Gaullist candidates, against the spokesmen of the reactionary formations of the right and ultraright, the policies of the two big workers parties do not make it possible to turn the elections into a class against class demonstration of the workers against the capitalist system and for socialism. The Socialist party is associated, in the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left [FGDS], with bourgeois formations which, in addition, press this electoral grouping in the direction of an alliance or an agreement with formations that stand still further to the right. This pioc stands without a clear position against the American imperialist aggression in ~ ietnam.
Due to its reformist program of "genuine democracy" and its electoral deal with the FGDS, the French Communist party is not offering to the workers the only correct solution in this period of the decline of bourgeois democracy and of a strong state in the service of capitalism. As for the PSU [Parti Socialiste Unifié -- United Socialist party], it offers a motley crew of candidates ranging from a rather marked left socialism to a neocapitalist technocratic position that is little different from that of. the "left Gaullists." This formation has just made a deal with the FGDS in favor of Social
Democratic candidates, conventional or radical, who have nothing in common with the working class.
Because of its numerical weakness, the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (French section of the Fourth International) is unable to undertake an electoral campaign of sufficient scope nationally to enable the vanguard workers to register their class views in accordance with the program of revolutionary Marxism. A limited campaign in one or two districts would not have sufficient response.
In the popular vote, as it has developed in relation with the laws of the Fifth Republic and the evolution of the workers parties, the electoral platforms do not constitute a means of testing class relations in the country. These are indicated only by the way the various social classes regard the political parties.
Since the end of the second world war, the majority of the French working class, including its most militant sectors, has voted for the candidates of the French Communist party, while the Socialist party has enjoyed the support of only a minority sector of the working class -- the most politically backward.
Despite long experience, the bulk of the workers continue to view the French Communist party as the one they consider capable of achieving their aspirations. That is why, in order to give the greatest force to a simple vote of class opposition, the Parti Communist Internationaliste (French section of the Fourth International) calls on all the workers and all the partisans of a socialist society to vote in the first round for the candidates of the French Communist party whose relative success will be felt everywhere not so much as a measure of the power of this party as an indication of where the working class in France stands.
This vote does not in any way signify acceptance of the policies of the French Communist party. In particular it cannot signify approval of the agreement reached with the FGDS. In the second round, the Parti Communiste Internationaliste asks the voters to support, not the “candidate of the left," but the worker candidate highest on the list Las determined in the first round]. By worker candidate we mean any candidate of the French Communist party, the Socialist party or the United Socialist party, so long as this is not taken as a label for candidates who are obviously outside the workers movement like Mendés—France or Lacoste. We urge the vanguard militants, unionists and politically conscious workers everywhere to take the floor in the public meetings of the workers parties to express the genuine aspirations of the working class, to condemn class collaboration and to demand a policy of class struggle.
A new edition of the combination of workers parties with bourgeois formations (like the Popular Front, Tripartyism, etc.), if it should win the majority of votes needed to form a government, could only lead once again to the process of capitulation which, to say the least, has been of service only to reaction. Only a United Front of Workers Parties on the basis of a completely anticapitalist program can succeed in mobilizing the broad toiling masses to kick out the Gaullist regime and install a government of the workers to attack the capitalist regime and undertake the building of a socialist society. We urge all those who vote for the traditional workers parties to come out in favor of this demand as the only means of transcending the present situation and sweeping out the leaders committed to class collaboration.
200 FRENCH YOUTH VOLUNTEER FOR VIETNAM
According to the February 16 issue of the Paris daily Le Monde, 200