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From International Socialist Review, Vol.29 No.4, July-August 1968.
Transcribed & marked up by Andrew Pollack for ETOL.
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(Following is the full text of a June 12 statement by Alain Krivine, secretary of the Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire (Revolutionary Communist Youth) on de Gaulle’s order for its dissolution.) |
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The Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire has been dissolved. The Council of Ministers has decided it has the power to invoke a law passed on January 10, 1936 against “combat groups and private militias.”
What combat groups are “provoking armed demonstrations in the streets”? There are such groups – the CRS [Compagnies Republicaines de Securité – paramilitary security police], the Gardes Mobiles [Mobile Guards], to say nothing of their “private” counterparts, the SAC [Sections d’Action Civique – Civic Action Committees] and CDR [Comit#es de Defense de la Republique – Committees for the Defense of the Republic].
Who are the “private militias” which for example, attacked the workers at Sochaux for the benefit of the Peugeot family? They are the fascist right wing. We demand the dissolution of these armed bands. A Council of Ministers has spoken, but in whose name? This government does not represent the real power. The real power has asserted itself in the factories, in the streets, by the action of ten million strikers. Nor does the de Gaulle government speak in the name of the Assembly, which has been recognized as powerless and dissolved.
General, who made you president? Who did you consult in 1958? Who did you consult at Baden-Baden in May ‘68? We demand the dissolution of the government of “armed bands.” The ministers and the president have proposed that we “participate.” We are not consulted about participating; hence we’re not concerned with participating.
The bourgeoisie is offering the elections to the workers. Everyone is supposed to be able to express himself, or almost everyone. The Place de l’Etoile [rich neighborhood] tolerates the Place Kossuth [neighborhood of the CP and CGT headquarters] which accepts it, but not the Place Edmond-Rostand [student center in the Latin Quarter], which scares both of them.
If the CPF [Communist Party] and the CGT [General Federation of Labor] do not defend these first organizations to be victimized by the repression, who will stand up to the next moves of the Gaullist government? Will the ballot safeguard all workers organizations tomorrow, all organizations that stand for democratic right and civil liberties?
The choice is not between de Gaulle and Mitterrand, but between the bourgeois elections and the socialist revolution. The power of the workers is in the streets, not in the ballot boxes. The government understands this perfectly.
We were expelled from the UEC [Union des Etudiants Communistes – Federation of Communist Students] for refusing to support the candidacy of Mitterrand, and the JCR was formed. Today, for having confronted the Gaullist armed bands in the streets, for having participated in the general strike which is still continuing, the JCR has been dissolved by the government.
But the revolutionary movement cannot be dissolved, the socialist revolution remains on the agenda. The need for action has already led to the formation of action committees. It is only the beginning – the struggle continues.
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