France May 1968
Source: La Cause du Peuple, No. 14, June 11, 1968;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.
A comrade is dead. A young high school student: Gilles Tautin of Lycée Mallarmé. A militant of the movement in support of the people’s fight. A militant of the Union des jeunesses Communistes (marxiste-leniniste) [Union of Young Communists (Marxist-Leninist)]. He died at Flins.
He died clubbed by the police, drowned. Other comrades have not yet returned. All day hundreds of young people were pursued, tracked down, arrested. And yes or no, was the proletarian killed at Flins? We will come to know the answer. Hundreds of proletarians wounded. Gilles stands witness for all of them.
*Who killed our comrade? : The cops, the Gaullist dictatorship. This government of assassins horrifies the people. Based on the power of the exploiters, this government is hated by the workers, the peasants, the intellectuals, by the entire working population. Our people has risen up against this government. The force of millions of proletarians making themselves masters of the factories has shaken the power of the exploiters; the capitalists trembled. Today their government wants to make the people pay, make it forget that it is an invincible force. It wants to divide it, repress it. It can’t.
The Gaullist government hopes that everything will return to “order.” Didn’t it promise legislative elections? Yes, elections so people would go back to work. So people would go back to work before the SATISFACTION OF WORKERS’ DEMANDS. Elections so that the workers would return to their factories under the pressure of scabs, cops and C.D.R. Elections to defeat the people. And when the workers resist, like at Citroen and Renault, the government of assassins sends in its C.R.S.
But like all reactionaries, the Gaullist government underestimates the strength of the people: the working class resists, and young people and the populace support the bastions of proletarian resistance. At Flins the workers, students and the whole populace are united, united in one cause, the cause of the people.
* Who assisted the government in its work of division and repression? : The anti-worker and anti-people politicians. The large masses of our people saw them at work: the leaders of F.O. [Force Ouvrière] licking the ministers’ boots, the leaders of the CFDT who signed all the capitulation agreements and, when the working class fought for the satisfaction of all its demands and for a popular government, found the means to present ITS candidate, a retired anti-communist politician, MENDES-FRANCE. Finally, the federal leadership of the CGT and the clique of politicians of the PCF.
The attitude of the federal leadership of the CGT was DISGRACEFUL. Through secret ballots and lies it called for the return to work. It sabotaged the self-defense of the factories. It opened the gates of Flins to the CRS so that THE ELECTIONS COULD TAKE PLACE. IT DISARMED THE WORKING CLASS. AND IT ARMED THE ASSASSINS AT FLINS.
What did the federal bureau of the CGT and L'Humanité say on June 7, 1968?
“The government failed to designate the true troublemakers and provocateurs whose actions, including those against the return to work, were covered up by a striking complaisance on the part of the government.”
The government responded to this appeal. It killed our comrade.
Our comrade is dead. Those responsible for his death are the Gaullist government and ITS ACCOMPLICES IN THE FDEREAL BUREAU OF THE CGT, and the LEADERSHIP of the PCF. Our comrade died in order to SERVE THE PEOPLE. For the union of the Youth Movement and the Workers’ Movement. He went to Flins to put himself under the authority of the workers and the proletarian syndicalists of the CGT. Because he was part of a political organization which was born in the heart of the working masses. An organization proud to count among its members the defenders of the CGT of the proletarians. He was a young militant who defended the working class and the cause of the great CGT of the class struggle, indissolubly linked. He didn’t confuse the traitors of the federal bureau with the hundreds of thousands of CGT militants who are ardent defenders of the working class. It must be made known WHY AND FOR WHOM he died: FOR THE WORKING CLASS, FOR THE CGT OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE, FOR THE PARTY OF REVOLUTIONARY PROLETARIANS that he assisted in building, FOR THE PEOPLE. Engraved in his spirit was the instruction of the great guide of the World Revolution, comrade Mao Tse-Tung: SERVE THE PEOPLE.
Comrade: from now on your name is inseparable from the popular revolution, from our people’s springtime!
We vow to you that we will follow the path you traced with your blood. The blood of the proletarians, the blood of our high school comrade, of those who have died WITHOUT THE PEOPLE’s KNOWLEDGE, is for us THE BLOOD OF MARTYRS. Martyrs of the POPULAR REVOLUTION. It causes an up-swelling of hatred, which is immense, as immense as the suffering inflicted on the People by its exploiters.
Comrades, gather around the red flag of proletarian resistance, of the Popular Revolution, of communism: UNITED UNTIL VICTORY!