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International Socialism, February 1973

 

Richard Kirkwood

Left Turn in France?

 

From International Socialism, No.55, February 1973, pp.4-6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Richard Kirkwood writes: As France prepares to go to the polls on March 4th and 11th it faces for the first time since 1958 the possibility of a different majority. Opinion polls are giving a lead to the ‘Union of the Left’.

Ever since it was ignominiously expelled from the government of ‘national unity’ in 1947 the French Communist Party has been trying to create a Left coalition within which it can gain the respectability to return. Now at last a section of the French ruling-class is willing to give it its reward for services renedered, notably in 1968. The CP’s Programme for Government published in 1971 showed the bourgeoisie how lime it had to fear. It was a programme which would have been quite acceptable to the Labour Party in one of its more radical phases. Nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights’, ‘democratisation’ (sic) of the police and the army, ‘progressive return to the 40-hour week’, a minimum wage of 1,000 Francs per month (£20 per week).

These last two points need further explanation. The legally enforced 40 hour week was one of the gains of the great wave of strikes in 1936. Since 1938 it has been a dead letter. Its immediate re-introduction would thus be merely a return to 1936 and the least one could expect of a government which was inspired by the Popular Front of that year. The fact that the CP was not prepared even to guarantee that shows just how far it is prepared to go in order to re-assure bourgeois opinion. As for the minimum wage, quite apart from the fact that the level proposed is absurdly low (it is in fact the same as the basic that the Renault workers were demanding back in 1968), the present government aims to reach this figure by mid-1973.

Since then the CP has succeeded in its basic aim and has created a common front with the other ‘Left’ parties. First it produced a Common Programme with the Socialist Party. Despite the lengthy and complex negotiations there was really only one problem – was the Socialist Party willing to risk a Red Scare in lining up with the CP in return for the votes it so badly needs and which the CP can supply through its solid and disciplined electorate. The newly refurbished Socialist Party took this basic step when it opened negotiations and the rest was a question of detail, reductions in the nationalisation list, a compromise on the Common Market, ambiguities on NATO and the deal was done. Now the CP not only had its ally but also a respectable leader for the alliance in former minister in innumerable bourgeois governments of the centre and centre-left, Francois Mitterand. It is important to note in passing that the Socialist Party is in no real sense a workers’ party. With the possible exception of parts of the North it has lost its working-class base to the CP and is a party of the urban and rural lower middle-class with some support from workers put off the CP by the spectre of dictatorship. Its main strength is its electoral hold over a large number of municipalities, won in most cases by its ability to put together left and centre-left coalitions at local level.

The signature of the Common Programme produced an immediate crisis in the main middle-class party of the centre-left the Radicals. Under their new leader ‘Kennedy-style whizz-kid’ Servan-Schreiber the Radicals had moved away from their traditional centre-left perspective towards the creation of a broad centre coalition, the ‘Reformist Movement’. Radical deputies saw immediately that the formation of a united left would leave them to be crushed in the middle of a Left-Right battle. They knew where they were most certain of the votes – on the Left. It was thus the vast majority of Radical MP’s who split to form the ‘Left Radicals’ and opened negotiations with the ‘United Left’. The ease with which they could accept the Common Programme is a clear indication of how little French capitalism has to fear from it. An appendix guaranteeing ‘fair compensation’ for industries nationalised, emphasising the importance of free enterprise in the development of the economy also explains that state intervention will ensure stability and economic growth and will be accompanied by a ‘sound financial and economic policy’ against inflation and for growth. What more can the French ruling-class ask for.

The real fear of the French ruling-class is a repetition of the events of 1936 when the victory of the Popular Front unleashed a vast wave of working-class industrial action which forced the government and the bosses to go much further than they intended. Alas there is little likelihood of that. The Popular Front was a response to mass discontent, the ‘Union of the Left’ is the result of electoral calculations. The CP has gone out of its way to reassure. Unlike in 1936 it has made no attempt to create local committees around the programme and Seguy of the CGT, the main union federation, has made it clear that the CP will use its control to ensure that workers behave themselves.

But the CP now has a force to its Left. Since May 1968 the revolutionary left has made a real if limited impact in the working-class. Krivine of the Ligue Communiste [1] got 1½ percent of the national vote in the presidential election of 1969. In local elections revolutionaries have got as much as 10 per cent in working-class areas. Some revolutionaries have taken a crude anti-parliamentarian, anti-CP line. The PSU as usual is vacillating. The three Trotskyist groups Lutte Ouvrière [2] the Ligue and the OCI [3] are all putting up candidates. At one stage it was hoped that the three could run some sort of joint campaign but the OCI dropped out, simultaneously calling the others ‘crypto-stalinists’ and urging its supporters to vote CP or Socialist where there is no OCI candidate and on no account to vote for the other two Trotskyist groups. Lutte Ouvriere and the Ligue have signed an agreement of mutual support. Lutte Ouvriere is putting up 176 candidates and the Ligue 133 covering all areas and all industrial centres. With the French system of two-round elections in which parties can withdraw for the second round this can in no way harm the chances of the ‘Union of the Left’ – indeed the parties of the ‘Union’ are running against each other on the first round.

What it does do is give a chance for revolutionaries to get their ideas across to a national audience and to measure their national impact. At the same time it offers workers the chance as Lutte Ouvrière put it ‘to put Marchais and Mitterand in power without giving them carte blanche’. And on the second round? The revolutionary groups understand that workers want to get rid of the present right-wing government and see the ‘Union of the Left’ as the only real alternative. Lutte Ouvrière has already offered to withdraw for any CP or Socialist candidate who will stand on a programme of basic minimum demands on workers’ living standards and will submit it for approval and amendment to mass meetings of workers. But no serious revolutionary can give blanket support to the ‘Union of the Left’ even on the second round. The radicals are an open capitalist party and cannot be endorsed. Unfortunately in the search for ‘logic’ this is what the Ligue Communiste has done. Lutte Ouvrière has said that it will ‘put no obstacle in the way of the election of a Communist or Socialist candidate on the second round’. While this remains a rather vague formulation it does differentiate between those parties in the alliance which are to a degree workers’ parties and the other openly capitalist party.

This election could see the election of a ‘left’ government. Even if Pompidou allows it to take office, it is clear that no real changes can be expected. It also gives revolutionaries a chance to get their point across to large numbers of workers and to relate to their concerns. Lutte Ouvrière is also drawing attention to the absence of actual worker candidates and of women candidates. It is putting up only working people and as many women as the major parties put together. The emphasis of the campaign is that the real struggle is not in the ballot-box but in the factories. If the ‘Left’ wins this message can take on flesh as workers watch the government slide like its predecessors into the open defence of the French ruling-class.

 

Footnotes

1. ‘Communist League’ – ‘French section of the Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International’, British section is the ‘International Marxist Group.’

2. ‘Workers’ Struggle’, independent Trotskyist tendency with fraternal relations with International Socialism.

3. ‘Internationalist Communist Organisation’ – formerly affiliated to the ‘International Committee of the Fourth International’, now in conflict with it and its main component the Socialist Labour League.

 
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