P. Frank | Trotskyist Writers | ETOL Home Page
A few words must be added on the organization of the working class by the PCF leadership through the CGT apparatus. For a good many years the Stalinists have stifled workers democracy in the organizations they dominate, above all in the CGT. It was almost impossible for a worker to rise to the most modest post in a union local, in a national union, or even to the position of plant delegate – no matter how devoted or how active he might be – without the endorsement of the factory cell or the trade-union apparatus in his plant. Only those who had passed through this screening were eligible to be officially entrusted with the confidence of the workers, even at the lowest level. That is, while they were not necessarily members of the Communist Party, they were not to constitute an obstacle to the policy which it conducted through the intermediary of the CGT. Only rare exceptions could be noted in recent years: For example, some union activists held PSU cards. Furthermore, criticisms in union meetings could not go beyond a certain limit. In these conditions, the opportunities for activity open to critical elements were restricted if not nonexistent. There was never any question of getting a serious hearing in trade-union congresses, or being able to openly advocate a different line than that of the leadership. Known oppositionists were barely tolerated.
In the course of the movement, “strike committees” were designated in the factories. But for the great majority of workers, the concept of a “strike committee” was not clear, for the simple reason that the union leaderships never seriously explained it – because it was not in their interest to do so. They never explained to the workers that in a strike the leadership of the struggle must be democratically elected by all the strikers whether or not they are union members. This occurred only in rare exceptions, in scattered plants, since workers had not been alerted to this question. Generally, the union local leaders were baptized “strike committees” during the strike. The result? These “strike committees” continued to operate in the same way they did when they were the executive boards of the union locals. They served therefore much more as transmission belts to bring the CGT’s policy down to the workers than transmission belts for bringing the aspirations and desires of the rank-and-file workers up to the union tops. This, of course, helped to keep the union leaders in the dark about the aspirations of the class and to make them think that the workers would accept the agreements which they had negotiated on the Rue de Grenelle without any problem.
But this camouflaging of the union locals leadership as “strike committees” had another consequence which was really grave. These “strike committees” were bound together only by the union apparatus. If there had been real elected strike committees it is probable that we would have seen, at least in certain places, the tendency which has always manifested itself when there were elected strike committees – that is the tendency for these committees to federate on the local, then regional, and finally national levels. Then, instead of a bureaucratic halter and brake on the movement, there would be a network of democratically elected committees from the ground up which would tend to give birth to a much more representative leadership of the class in struggle, to a leadership subordinated much more to the strikers than to a trade-union apparatus or party whose special interests ran counter to the most profound natural tendencies of the movement and notably to the revolutionary tendency which was carrying it toward the conquest of power to create a socialist society.
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Last updated: 10.12.2005