From Socialist Worker, No. 124, 29 May 1969, pp. 2–3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
JUST ONE YEAR AGO France was at the climax of the greatest general strike in her history. It seemed that the Gaullist regime was on the point of collapse and that, just possibly, working class revolution was round the corner.
In London demonstrators raised the enthusiastic slogan ‘France today, Britain tomorrow’.
No one was able to predict the upheaval in France last spring. But what is even more remarkable is that scarcely anyone who observed the turmoil and enthusiasm of last May could have predicted the state of affairs a year later.
The bosses still run the factories occupied last May. The Communist Party still keeps Left-wingers away from the factory gates.
The hack politicians are still making alliances and and breaking promises. Elections are being held, in which no one can tell the difference between the two main candidates.
And the overall peaceful atmosphere is broken only by the police brutality and right-wing thuggery which have existed in all the last dozen regimes in France. To a superficial observer, it looks as though May 1968 might never have happened.
This may seem excessively pessimistic. And, of course, it is.
The first and greatest lesson of May was that despite so-called ‘prosperity’, ‘stability’, the working class is still ready and willing to fight.
There is no substitute for it in the struggle to change the world. We were quite right to ram this lesson home into unwilling ears.
The French events may have been influenced in the form they took by certain factors peculiar to France – the curiously inefficient education system, the historical tradition of fighting on the barricades. But in essence nothing happened in France that could not happen in Britain as well.
Having said this, it is important to try and see the French events in perspective. Already about a hundred books have been published on the subject.
This proves the deep problems the events posed for capitalists and revolutionaries alike. But it is still very difficult to estimate just how much and how little was achieved.
The events of last May were an episode in a very long process. To see them as anything else can lead to disastrous confusion.
The most obvious example is the theory of the role of students as a ‘detonator’ for a revolutionary situation. Students did play a vital part in the May events, but not a part that can be translated into other situations.
French higher education is, purely and simply, worse organised, worse provided for and more irrelevant than in most countries. Hence the particular sharpness of the student struggle.
To imagine that similar crises could be provoked at will is worse than an illusion. There are no short cuts to revolution.
France since the Second World War has provided an example of the trends of modern capitalism in their most developed form. Five-year economic plans (after the style of Wilson’s ill-fated National Plan) have existed ever since 1945.
The planning commissions (whose power is greater than that of parliament, even more a charade than in Britain) include representatives of all trade unions, including the Communists. In many factories the trade unions control the canteens – though not the production line.
It is this type of modern capitalism that all the orthodox political tendencies in France defend. As the political climate varies, the emphasis may change – sometimes the ruling class needs a right face to reassure its supporters, sometimes a left to delude its opponents.
With de Gaulle, a flood of rhetoric about the national tradition combined with a firm appeal to order. With Mendes-France, the trappings of a watered-down, modernised socialism. For Rocard of the United Socialist Party (PSU) even a bit of marxist jargon – but he is not a serious competitor.
In this kind of capitalism, the working class develops in two contradictory ways.
It becomes increasingly divorced from politics. Its support for political parties and trade unions has shown a long-term decline since the Second World War, despite some increases lately.
But at the same time the nature of modern society is such that workers increasingly come up against ‘political’ questions – that is, questions affecting control and decision-making.
Hence the paradoxes of the movement in May – on the one hand its refreshing spontaneity, its direct concern with workers’ control, its elaboration of direct democracy on the shop floor and in the locality.
On the other hand, the absence of political direction in the strike, the divorce between students and workers, the possibility for the Communist Party to capture the leadership of the movement.
It is important to recognise that June was neither victory nor defeat. There was no question of another all-out general strike. In May a whole generation of workers lost their political virginity – something that no one does twice.
The fears of fascism raised by the release of Salan and the return of Bidault have proved groundless. In the present elections, for the first time in many years, there is no candidate to the right of the Gaullists.
The events of the last year, from the devaluation crisis to the elections, show two important processes.
Firstly, the strike seriously affected France’s international economic situation. The luxuries of Gaullist foreign policy are no longer available. France will have to be a bit more orthodox – back up American imperialism in Vietnam and elsewhere, be nice to Israel and, probably, let Britain into the Common Market.
At the same time, there is a complete regroupment of political forces in France. The probable victory of Poher will lead to the emergence of a broad, adulterous union in the centre.
Many social democrats are already supporting Poher, the Defferre-Mendes-France team will doubtless join in on the second ballot perhaps after a bit of haggling over government jobs).
At the other end of the spectrum, Poher may get support from the left Gaullists, at the moment reluctantly backing Pompidou, and he should have no difficulty in coming to terms with most of the Gaullist Party. He will probably not need to dissolve the National Assembly.
A whole swarm of grey-headed career politicians from the Fourth Republic, like Radical Felix Gaillard, are crawling out of the woodwork on the look-out for office
Of course a Poher government will make no difference to anyone (except those who have well-paid jobs in it). The argument of a return to a more ‘liberal’ regime is laughable. Press censorship, for example, has been lighter under de Gaulle than it was under socialist Guy Mollet, a Poher supporter.
All this leaves the Communist Party out in the cold. In private, they must be regretting de Gaulle’s departure and hoping for a Pompidou victory.
Not just because Moscow prefers Gaullist foreign policy, but because a clearly right-wing figure allows them to campaign for the ‘unity of the left’. Without an electoral alliance with the socialists, the CP have no hope of becoming a serious force in parliament.
While they are still very strong in industry (they have actually increased the number of factory cells during the 60s) they have no industrial strategy, but only a parliamentary one; thus they are damping down strikes during the election period.
In the long term, the CP are in a dead end. Hence the revolutionary left can grow, if it develops constructively beyond the positions of May.
Unfortunately, it is still hopelessly divided. The call made by the comrades of Lutte Ouvrière for a united revolutionary organisation has, as yet, met with little success.
Maoism, which played a leading role in May, seems to be on the decline, naturally enough, since it is essentially religious and not political. To know that the Great Helmsman loves you may be a great consolation in the face of tear-gas grenades but the Little Red Book offers no answer to basic historical questions such as why the present strategy of the CP was elaborated back in the thirties when the immortal J.V. Stalin was alive and well.
The PSU contains many good revolutionaries, but its politics are still technocratic and it talks in terms of alliance with the CP and Socialists. A thorough-going faction fight is necessary to clarify the issues.
The presidential candidature of Alain Krivine offers a chance for the revolutionary Left to establish itself. There may be reservations about the line of Krivine’s organisation, the Communist League (affiliation to the moribund Fourth International and constant invocation of Che Guevara do not indicatea concern for roots in the French workers.)
But if the campaign is carried on in parallel with steady work in the factories and with serious unity in practice between the Communist League, Lutte Ouvrière and other groups, a small but substantial advance may be made. If so, the next few weeks may be the most hopeful period since May last year.
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Last updated: 14 January 2021