lutte de classe / class struggle / lucha de clase FRA/ENG/ESP (1972-80) #21

22 Pages·2.304 MB·English

by  Lutte Ouvriere

FOR "THE REBUILDI
CONTENTS
• _Six Years After May 1968: The Balance-Sheet
of the Extreme Left
• Does the Example of the Portuguese Communist
Ministers Open Up Perspectives for the Western
Communist Parties?
*
Feminism and Communism
I . - September 1974
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PRICE: FF 3
CONTENTS
Page 2 Six Years After May 1968 :
The Balance-Sheet of the
Extreme Left
Page11 Does the Example of the
Portuguese Communist Ministers
Open Up Perspectives for the
Western Communist Parties?
Page16 Fem~.1ism and Communism
------------ NUMB E R 21
CLASS STRUGGLE
SIX YEARS AFTER MAY 1968:
THE BALANCE-SHEET OF THE EXTREME LEFT
Since May 1968, when the extreme left first made its mark on the French
political scene, it has been good form in the bourgeois press to announce period
ically its forthcoming disappearance. For the last few months, this phenomeno11
has reappeared with new vigor: the prophecy of the imminent end of the
extreme left, or at least the questioning of its chances for survival, are regular
features in the press. So it was that Le Monde of 5 September 1974 devoted
an entire page to this problem. It published «Two Points of View on the Fu
ture and the Role of the Extreme Left,» written by two leftists and whose
titles illustrate unequivocally the preoccupations of the moment, «Death or
Transfiguration?» and «At Bay?»
What is new in this and what makes the problem deserve some attention is that the
pessimistic declarations on the future of the extreme left today do not only cornr: from
political adversaries taking their wishes for reality. For the first time, the extreme-left press
itself is marked by a trend of reappraisals and admits it is seriously concerned about the
iuturc-when it is not more openly pessimistic.
This state of mind was perfectly obvious in the supplement published this summer by
the would-be leftist weekly Politique-Hebdo, an issue devoted to an open debate of the
different leftist tendencies. The way in which Politique-hebdo presented its initiative was
already a sign of a certain pessimism in the present situation:
It is significant that the main currents and organizations which make up the extreme left
feel the pressing need to question publicly their analyses, their practices, their objectives ...
The present conjoncture at least has the merit of forcing us to get ou·t of the rut of sect
arianism and self-justification.
But even more significant were the remarks attributed by the editors of Politique-Hebdo
to the representatives of certain leftist groups, where the expression5 «bankruDtCy of the
extreme left,» «failure,» and «present situation not very brilliant» cropped up.
Certainly all those statements must be considered with the prudence which is appropriate
where interviews are concerned. But similar statements are found in the press of o:r'.oin left
ist groups. In this way, in an analysis entitled «The ·Extreme Left Six Years After,»
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CLASS STRUGGLE
International, the organ of AMR (the French Pabloist group) stated in its Summer of
1974 Special Issue:
The organized extreme left is accumulating failure after failure when it involves playing
a functional and permanent role, on a mass basis ... At the end of a few years, a passivity
is created The accumulation of these failures becomes almost a political fact.
If Rouge does not put forward such alarming statements, nonetheless one can find the
echo of similar preoccupations in its columns. Certainly it is stated that the FCR
(«Revolutionary Communist Front») does not cease to strengthen itself. But it is certainly
not the time of the «triumphal period» of yesteryear, when the problem was, according
to the ex-Ligue Communiste, «to organize our red voters into revolutionary militants.»
(Headline of the first page of Rouge, 4 June 1969.) On the contrary, the day after the
presidential election of 1974, the leaders of the FCR questioned themselves on the future.
And in a study on «The Extreme Left After The Elections» (published in Rouge, 28 June
1974) one could read under the title «A New Course Is Necessary»:
Every organization wanting to go ahead should examine again in detail and studythor
ougftly its orientations regarding working-class struggles, the characterization of the Union
of the Left, and the perspectives of programs to put forward. On the other hand, it must
re-examine its system of organization, often conceived in other times, for other tasks.
How can this pess1m1sm of some and this self-questioning of others be accounted for?
By the fact that the disillusions are obviously at the same level as the illusions of each group
following May-June 1968: illusions as to the nature of the political situation first of all;
then illusions as to the possibilities of using such or such shortcut to build the revolutionary
party; and illusions of each group as to its own capacity of capitalizing on the organizational
level on the spring 1968 events.
In fact it is quite obvious for those who proclaimed six years ago that we had just lived
through the «first phase of the French socialist revolution» (title of the July 1968 special
issue of Fourth International) that the future seems not to have kept its promises. Now all
the extreme left was practically unanimous in seeing a revolutionary situation in the events of
May-June 1968. Lutte Ouvriere was the only tendency which explained ·that at no time
in the factories did the union apparatus see t~e situation escape them, that at no time was the
question of power posed in terms of a class alternative. By doing so, we appeared as a killjoy
in the eyes of the rest of the extreme left. The spring 1968 events could have been the
starting point of a process leading to the formation of a party on the left of the CP regrouping
the majority of revolutionary militants, had it g.iven the proof of its responsibility and of its
capacity to use the possibilities of the hour. But they did not constitute at any moment the
first act of the proletarian revolution in France. And i·t is not surprising that those who got·
involved in political activity in 1968 with the short-term perspective of a second and this
time decisive act are today bitter and disappointed. From there to speak of the «collapse»
of the extreme left is only a small step, as it is true that the glasses of petty-bourgeois oppor
tunism are as deforming and as magnifying in the periods of ascent as in the periods of reflux.
From there to question «orientations,» «perspectives of program,» and «organizational
system», there is also a short step, well .in the tradition of petty-bourgeois groups, always
on the look-out for new shortcuts in the building of a revolutionary organization and
towards the socialist revolution.
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CLASS STRUGGLE
THE FAILURE OF SPONTANEISM
One of the main lessons coming out of the six years which have passed since May 1968
is nevertheless the futility of the efforts of innovators of all kinds, searching for the key to
success in the reappraisal of the communist program. For the balance-sheet of the extreme
left is far from being the same for the different currents making up that extreme lett.
Moreover, since May-June 1968, the face of the latter has changed considerably. Certain
currents have almost completely disappeared, at least as far as oeing organized ones. In -this
way, the anarchist movement whose ideology had profoundly marked many of those
involved in the 1968 events, especially in the universities and lycees, showed itself incapable
of profiting from this situation in order to develop in any considerable way. In this way
also, the Maoist tendencies which six years ago enjoyed an influence at least equal to that
of the Trotskyist tendencies, are today in the background. After the short-lived success of
the an arch ist-spontaneist ex-Gauche Proletarienne («Proletarian Left»), it is the tendencies
of the Maoist movement appealing the closest to the traditions of the Stalinist CP (such as
Humanite Rouge) which organize the largest number of militants.
Today, it is those groups who proclaim themselves Trotskyist ( Lutte Ouvriere, FCR,
AJS-OCI) which constitute the core of the French extreme left, the second rank being held
by groups which have broken with Trotskyism but are still marked by their origins
(Revolution!, AMR), or by· Maoist groups which have kept a minimum of references to the
communist program. Thus, the development of spontaneist currents which many at the time
considered as one of the main traits of May 1968 was finally a short-lived phenomenon
corresponding to the importance of the mobilization of the intellectual petty-bourgeoisie
and disappearing as the barricades blended into the horizon. Spring 1968 had seen the
preachers of spontaneism in all its shapes (anarchist, Maoist, ultra-left) condemn forever
the groups proclaiming the Bolshevik idea of the party as senile organizations incapable,
we were told, of answering to the aspirations of rebellious youth. But it was not long
before these spontaneist tendencies reduced to ashes. And the principal result of May 1968
is the present-day reinforcement in the extreme left of only those groups aiming at the
construction of a revolutionary party. It is these groups, and these only, which allowed
a fraction of the young people who discovered socialist ideas in Spring 1968 to continue
to fight for those ideals.
The past six years have thus seen a veritable selection concerning the program in the
ranks of the extreme left-the Trotskyist program showing, despite some errors and
despite the opportunism of most of the groups claiming Trotskyism, its superiority over
all the other tendencies claiming revolutionary ideas. (The proof being the leading place
occupied by Trotskyist groups in the extreme left today.)
SHORTCUTS AND DEAD-ENDS
But within the Trotskyist movement, the problem of the balance-sheet and consequently
of perspectives does not pose itself in the same way for the different groups which make it
up. On the one hand, because the objective balance-sheet of each one is not the same.
And on the other hand, because here also, the disillusions which some feel today are as
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CLASS STRUGGLE
deep as their illusions of yesterday on the ways and means· of building the revolution::ry
party.
As for those who believed that the building of this party depended essentially on the
work of implantation in factories, on the recruiting and training of militant workers, and on
the building up of revolutionary groups in the factories, the balance-sheet, limited as it is,·is
undeniably a positive one. Today, there are working-class extreme-left militants intervening
in most of the large factories in this country, who have passed the stage of simple propaganda,
who play their part in the strugulr.s of the working class, and who sometimes play a deter
mining role. No doubt, there is still a long road ahead in the building of a revolutionary
workers' party, capable of leading the struggles of the working class on a national scale, and
of leading the proletari:it to the seizure of power. But the successes won these last few years
at least prove that this objective can be reached. Despite the weight of the Stalinist
apparatus, it is possible to train within the working class itself devoted and competent
militants, who will be the cadres of the revolutionary party tomorrow. And for all those
who are faithful to the communist prowam, that is to say, who believe that the working
class is the only social class capable of bringing about the socialist revolution, .this consti
tutes a perspective which, though it is not a short-term one, is sufficient in itself.
But the problem poses itself in quite different terms for those tendencies which, on
the contrary, put everything on their implantation in the petty-bourgeois intellectual
milieu, either in breaking openly with Marxism, or in substituting for the class struggle
of the proletariat «rebellion» in general (and that of the intellectual petty-bourgeoisie in
particular), or in elaborating theories destined to conciliate a posteriori their practices
with the fact that they claim the communist program as theirs (such as the theory of the
construction of the party «from the periphery towards the center» elaborated by the
Ligue Communiste after May 1968). Not that the years which have passed since May-June
1968 have been empty of student and lyceen mob ii izations. As recently as spring 1973,
we saw on the contrary huge demonstrations against the Debre law. Spring 1974 was marked
by demonstrations, less impressive no doubt, but not negligible. B'ut it is exactly by their
repetition even that lyceen and student mobilizations proved that they could not open up
any perspectives. They demonstrated the absolute deficiency of all the strateqics built up
by the leftist groups in 1968.
Because the student movement had, in May 68, played the role of detonator, and
because the barricades of rue Gay-Lussac had led to the general strike, some had concluded
that the activity of revolutionaries in the student milieu could make up for their absence
in the factories. But that was forgetting that even in May-June 1968 the narrow limi
tations of this kind of influence on the part of the revolutionaries on the events were
brought to light by the fact that at no time did the leadership of the movement in the
factories escape the -traditional apparatus: Even taking into consideration these limitations,
the relationship which was established in the events of May 1968 between the student rnov0-
ment and the working class movement was the exception and not the rule.
Following May-Junr~ 1968, leftist groups militated in the perspective of starting once
again the mechanism which had led to the general strike. This was in any case a false
perspective, as, because of the lack of implantation of revolutionaries in the factories, it
could not but lead-once-again to a· movement which at one moment or another would be
taken up by the bureaucratic apparatus: .. ff it had ever been lost by them. And the role
of revolutionaries is not to send the working class into the battle without worrying about
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CLASS STRUGGLE
the final result, but to lead that class to victory. But more than being a false politic-"I
perspective, it was a perspective which was awfully risky, as events have proved.
As a matter of fact, since 1968 there have been many lyceen and student mobilizations.
There have also been many struggles led by the working class, of which a certain number
were led by revolutionary militants. Sometimes these coincided. But at no time have student
struggles played a role, even on a more reduced scale, analogous to that they played in
May 1968.
Some had seen in the influence of revolutionary currents in sectors outside of the working
class («peripheral sectors» to use the expression of the ex-Ligue Communiste) or marginal,
a means of building the revolutionary party by taking a shortcut. by winning an influence
over the working class without having to make the effort of day-to-day work of implanta-
, tion in the factories. They were also to be disenchanted for it is just the opposite that
,happened. The Stalinist counter-offensive of «from the center towards the periphery» was
visibly more efficient than the strategy of «from the periphery towards the center» dear to
the ex-Ligue communiste. The French CP and its satellite organizations were seen to come
out almost intact from the test of May-June 1968 which could have cost it a lot in the
working class. Moreover, they regained influence in those milieus where they had appeared
to have long ago disqualified themselves, particularly in those of the students and lyceens.
CLASS ORIENTATION AND PERSPECTIVES
The bankruptcy of the leftist spontaneist ideology which developed in the wake of
May 1968 is evident. 8ut that of the policy of non-spontaneist leftist groups, if less obvious,
is nonetheless just as profound, in the sense thJl it prevented these groups from having
any real political perspective. And here is the origin of the present malaise felt by most
of the leftist groups.
As a matter of fact, it is not possible to have long-term revolutionary perspectives on
the basis of activities essentiJlly directed towards petty-bourgeois milieus, despite momentary
or local su·ccess, as these lead nowhere. And it is not possible to have any political perspective
at all on the basis of leftist activities, which cannot in the best of times but be self-supporting
and end up in the annual repetition of the same scenarios, al I the more devoid of perspectives
as the traditional apparatus and the state have learned to take them into consideration.
If the goal, the raison d'etre of every serious political organization is to part1c1pate
one day in the exercice of power, there are only two possibilities left in our society:
either to situate oneself entirely in the camp of the proletariat and work towards the
building of an organization which could be the instrument enabling the proletariat to
seize power; or to betray the working class by rallying the political forces on which lies
the domination of the bourgeoisie, including of course the reformist parties. The groups
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CLASS STRUGGLE
and tendencies which stand on the ground of petty-bourgeois leftism are thus placed
before a choice essentially limited to three possibilities: either to break with leftism and
turn body and soul towards the proletariat; or leave leftist waters and try to join those
of the traditional left. that is to say, the reformist parties; or finally, to remain on leftist
ground but to renounce thf'n any other perspective but that of a sect living for itself
alone.
Present day events show moreover that those are not hypotheses: proof, the undeniable
attraction exercised by Mitterrand's Socialist Party on those currents and those militants
who wanted not so long ago to be an integral part of the extreme left.
ROUGE AND OPERATION MITTERRAND
That the political context weighs on the manner in which the FCR, .for example, poses
its problems is evident in the reading of Rouge which writes (in the issue already cited):
With the presidential election, a political period ends: that of post-May 1968. The col
lapse of Gaul/ism, the electoral thrust of the Left, the restructuring under way in the
working-class movement trace the first lines of the period which is beginning.
The «restructuring» under way is obviously the operation «National Conference for
Socialism» attempted by the SP.
The perspective of the Socialist Party succeeding in regrouping to its bosom the core
of the militants of the PSU and a number of CF DT militants profoundly worries the leaders
of the FCR. The same issue of Rouge ;1clds:
It is absolutely necessary that this centrist current, polarized around the PSU, does not
return as one man to the social-democrat fold ... This would be a serious defeat for the
revolutionaries, a defeat which would leave them out of the game by giving credit to the
idea that the «current goes through,» that «things are happening» in the SP and ultimately
in the Union of the Left. To avoid such a mass capitulation, it is up to us to open the
debate.
Rouge is also worried about the evolution of the CFDT. «Is there no other solution (but
operation Maire Mitterrand) for those combative CFDT members wanting to give political
expression to their struggles,» one could read in Rouge of 21 June. And Rouge is so worried
that after asking this question it forgets that it claims it is a revolutionary communist paper!
It is so worried that after stating that, regarding the position of the National Bureau of the
CF DT in favor of entry into the SP, «the «left» and the «right» of the union met again on
the problem of the type of entry», Rouge simply adds: «We cannot let matters rest there.
We must look into this problem in depth,» and publishes without a word of commentary
some extracts from the declaration of the Hacuitex Federation of the CFDT stating that «the
federation cannot accept the confederal position which risks in the end leading our
organization to being in the service of a political party and to thus playing the role of
driving belt.» We believe that Rouge preferred the CF DT of 1969, apparently apolitical
(but not hesitating occasionally to support the candipacy of the conservative politician
Poher) to that of 1974, joining ranks behind the Socialist Party. The former CF OT had the
advantage of leaving Rouge with all its illusions on the possibility of making a «class-struggle
CFDT» (to use the title of a brochure of the ex-Ligue Communiste).
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CLASS ST RUGG LE
Rouge, moreover, is not more optimistic as regards the possibilities of seeing the militants
of the CFDT or of the PSU resisting the lures of the Union of the Left and the SP. We read
in the 16 August issue:
One can have no illusions. If no credible alternative appears, critical elements will finish
by rallying, even if that means joining the left wing of the SP.
But how tu put forward a credible alternative? That is the question that Rouge poses
a few years too I ate.
The «restructuring» under way in the working-class movement, to use the
expression of Rouge, has not in fact fallen from the sky. And it is true that it is to some ex
tent-but to some extent only-a failure of the extreme left. But it is an old failure, even if
Rouge did not realize it, at the time, any more than the other tendencies of the extreme left
who are today all worried about operation Maire-Mitterrand-Rocard (for if we speak above
al I of Rouge, it is not as a single case but on the contrary, as the most representative of a
general tendency).
AN OPPORTUNITY LOST
Many militants who are in the PSU today and who will be no doubt tomorrow for the
most part in the SP, and many of the militant workers of the CFDT who are also getting
ready to enter the SP (most of the time however these are thP. same people) could have no
doubt been won over by the revolutionary extreme left. But this is not the time to look for a
«credible alternative» to entry into the SP (it is not simply a problem of thinking the problem
over to find the gadget capable of holding them back from the road leading to the SP) Today,
it is too late. A'nd it has been too late for years. It was in the aftermath of May 1969 that the
problem arose, at a time when the entire extreme left could have, through uniting in a single
organization, constituted a pole of attraction not only for many of those who militate
at the moment in the PSU, or who are confined to would-be left wing activity within the
CF OT, but for thousands of young workers who had discovered the revolutionaries and
their ideas in May 1968 and who were waiting for the birth of a party regrouping all the
«leftists» of the period.
The building of such a party would certainly not have solved all the problems. Many
debates would have been needed, many internal struggles, and many clarifications, in order
to build a real revolutionary leadership. Success was not even guaranteed. It is never
guaranteed. But there was the only answer to the situation created by May 1968.
Besides Lutte Ouvriere which in June 1968 militated for the unity of the revolutionaries,
al I the other tendencies of the extreme left-at least those that counted-refused such a
perspective. Quite differently, each one considered itself as the axis around which the party
would turn and around which the majority of young people brought into political
life in May-June 1968 would regroup.· And the Ligue Communiste was no exception to the
rule as it developed, especially after the presidential election of 1969, a policy which
it qualified itself several months later, as «triumphalist.»
But none of the revolutionary tendencies which emerged from May 68 was strong enough
to gather around it what could have then been the basis of a revolutionary force. Each of
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CLASS STRUGGLE
the tendencies did recruit, but even the best results were without any comparison with
the number of young workers, university and high school students that a unitary orga
nization could have attracted. Tired of waiting, those who might have joined the extreme
left gradually lost interest in politics or turned either to the traditional organizations
which appeared more responsible than the «leftists» or simply to union activity.
The organization which ultimately benefited most from the coming of thousands of
young people into the political arena was the PSU. This was because the PSU existed on
a national level, was considered to be a party and not a grouplet, and because Sauvageot
and Geismar, two of the «Stars» of May 68 were, one a known militant of the PSU, and
the other a former militant of the party.
But the increase in the numbers of the PSU just after May 68 was, however, insufficient
to enable this party to play the role that its leaders had in store for it.
When the PSU came into being ten years earlier, its founders~at any rate those who
had a precise political plan, in particular the fraction of the social-democratic apparatus
which, with Depreux, Verdier (and the young Rocard!) had just broken with the SFIO
had in mind nothing less than building a party which might one day replace the apparently
moribund Socialist Party as a party of government. Though the plan ultimately failed,
it was taken very seriously at the time. Take for example Mendes-France's interest in it fora
certain time: he even became a member of the party. But the long stay in the opposition
that Gaul I ism forced onto the Socialist Party enabled the latter to renew itself. The rise
of the SP could not fail to attract to it the men who had left it because they believed it
finished. During the formation of the Federation de la Gauche («Federation of the Left»)
after the 1965 presidential election, a number of PSU leaders rejoined the «old house.» And
even more so, the success of «operation Mitterrand» could only encourage the majority of
the PSU leaders to envisage returning to the fold.
It is perhaps regrettable that they are taking with them some of the numbers that they
won over after May 68. But it is quite logical. What is especially regrettable is the irresponsibi
lity demonstrated by the leftists after May 68 which enabled the PSU to win over these num
bers and prevented a line from being drawn between the militants of this party who more or
less confusely stood for the socialist revolution and the true-blue reformists.
And what is even more re~rattable is not so much the fact that a number of those who
might have been attracted six years ago to the revolutionaries are now joining the Social
Democrats via the PSU or the CFDT, but rather that Stalinism, which is a· factor of social
stability in France and places an infinitely stronger curb on workers' struggles than social
democracy, was able to come out of May 68 practically unscathed, once again because
of the leftists' irresponsibility.
BREAK WITH LEFTISM
Thus it is of no use today to go seeking a «credible alternative» to the SP to counter
the operation Maire-Mitterrand-Rocard. This has not been the problem for years. And the
only credible alternative to reformism and Stalinism that one can strive to build is a
revolutionary organization having a strong foothold in the firms and which can offer vic
torious prospects to the workers' fights, even if Rouge believes that «you have to be
blind and sectarian like Lutte Ouvriere» to affirm such ideas.
9