New Page: Letter From Europe column (1979-1986)

As promised, new pages for the blog. These new pages of old Socialist Standard columns will eventually be grouped together in one page at the head of the blog alongside the pages for the current Socialist Standard columns, film reviews and theatre reviews.

Letter From Europe was a regular Adam Buick column in the Socialist Standard in the late 1970s and early 1980s which focused on political events in Belgium, Luxemburg and, most importantly, in France. As the eighties wore on, the column applied a forensic eye to the efforts of President Francois Mitterand and his French Socialist Party's government's to enact a left-wing programme to challenge — and transform — French capitalism. It'll be no surprise to regular readers of the blog that it ended in tears.

To access the individual articles, click on the months.

1979

• Jun: Congress of French reformists [Article on the French Socialist Party.]
• Jul: Dictatorship of the proletariat [Article on the French Communist Party.]
• Aug: SOS Longwy [Article on the French steel industry.]

1980

• Feb: The French movement for abundance [Article on Jacques Duboin.]
• Jun: A Shorter Working Week? 

1981

• Feb: Communist Party's racist policy [Racist rhetoric from the French Communist Party.]
• May: France's presidential election [The triumph of Mitterand.]
• Aug: Communists in Government [Article on the French Communist Party.] 
• Dec: The French bomb [Article on the French nuclear programme.]

1982

• Feb: Bordiga and the Idea of Socialism [Article on Amadeo Bordiga and Left Communism.]
• Mar: The French Nationalisations 
• Apr: "Produce French": who benefits? [Article on the French Communist Party's nationalism.]
• May: General Strike in Luxemburg
• Jun: Interpreting Marx [Article on Maximilien Rubel.]
• Aug: Mitterrand clamps down [Austerity and devaluation in France.]
• Sep: Money must go [The Sun newspaper and Herbert Lomas.]
• Dec: Enter the green reformists [The rise of the German Green Party.]

1983

• Jan: Wage-freeze in France [Wage restraint under Mitterand.]
• Apr: Allah under the bed [Islamophobia in France.] 
• Jun: France: from failure to fiasco [Article on Michel Rocard and French politics.]
• Dec: The Belgian public sector strike 

1984

• Jun: Applying the logic of capitalism [Austerity in France.]
• Sep: Exit the "Communist" Ministers [An article on the French Communist Party.]

1985

• Jan: Mitterand organises poverty [Article on the difficulties of the French 'Socialist' government.]
• Aug: Racism and anti-racism in France

1986

• Jan: Greenpeace killing [The sabotage of The Rainbow Warrior.]
• Mar: Whose turn to screw the workers? [Article on the French General Election.]

Letter From Europe: Mitterrand clamps down (1982)

The Letter From Europe Column from the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

It had to happen sooner or later. The attempt by Mitterrand's PS/PC government to revive the economy and reduce unemployment in France by giving people more money to spend—increasing “popular consumption" as it was called—just couldn't last. Since capitalism is a system which cannot be controlled or manipulated by governments and since most of the money to finance the social reforms in question came straight off the printing press, what happened was inevitable: the general price level in France rose, and at a rate faster than in other countries, leading to a fall-off in exports and a record balance of payments deficit which in turn made a devaluation of the franc inevitable. The effect on employment, on the other hand, was minimal: sales of consumer goods picked up for a while but the number of unemployed continued to grow, by nearly 16 per cent since Mitterrand came to power, passing the 2 million mark in October.

Exactly a year ago the Socialist Standard, analysing the economic policy of the then brand new PS/PC government, wrote:

It will fail completely and within a year or so they will be faced with growing working class discontent over persisting unemployment and rising prices which they will not be able to satisfy, since the continuing crisis will force them to recognise that under capitalism priority must be given to profits and profit-making rather than to social reforms and popular consumption. The crunch will then come and they will be forced, like all governments of capitalism sooner or later, to take openly anti-working class measures. 

As a matter of fact the crunch has come sooner rather than later, less than a year after the PS/PC government took office at the end of June 1981. On 12 June this year the French franc was devalued within the European Monetary System, for the second time in less than 9 months in fact, since Mitterrand had already been forced to devalue last October too. The October devaluation had been accompanied by rather timid price controls and mere appeals for some wage moderation. This time it was different. The government has adopted the following measures:

• a legally-imposed wage freeze lasting till the end of October, the only exception being the rise in the minimum wage due on 1 July; a legally-imposed price freeze also until the end of October but with some important exceptions such as oil, gas, electricity and imported goods;
• an increase in contributions to the health service accompanied by a cut in some benefits;
• a similar operation of increased contributions for less benefits regarding the unemployment insurance scheme.

The Minister of Finance, Jacques Delors, has already announced that austerity will not finish at the end of October but will continue. in the form of a restrictive “incomes policy", at least until the end of 1983; in other words, for at least 18 months in all.

Delors has also made no attempt to disguise the fact that the living standards of workers will have fallen by the end of October. He has publicly admitted that, while wages will be completely frozen, prices will rise by at least 2.8 per cent during this period. This will happen not only because prices are much harder to control than wages, but also because a number of exceptions to the so-called "prices freeze” are being allowed, particularly oil products (petrol, heating oil. paraffin) and imported goods. Since one effect of the devaluation will precisely be to increase the prices of imported goods, it is evident how large a loophole this latter will be.

So the government has now done a complete U-turn. The aim is now not to increase popular consumption but to reduce it! The Prime Minister, Pierre Mauroy, had already forewarned, even before the devaluation. that wages were soon going to come under direct attack from the government when he told a PS meeting on 21 May: 

Excessive nominal increases in incomes and wages maintain inflation and deprive our economy of the means to create jobs. The government has decided to act and we will shortly have occasion to talk about this again (Republicain Lorrain, 22 May).

It is clear from this that the government accepts the old. mistaken theory that it is wage increases that cause inflation. In fact, wages only increase in a period of inflation because inflation—an overissue of an inconvertible currency—inevitably leads to a rise in the general price level; wages, the price of labour power, merely rise in line with all other prices. Wage and salary earners are the victims not the cause of inflation.

The government's hope is that its austerity package will bring price rises—currently running at an annual rate of 14 per cent— down to an average of 10 per cent over the 12 months of 1982. This means of course that for the remaining months of the year the rate will have to fall well below 10 per cent. But unless they limit the amount of inconvertible paper money in circulation to what the level of economic activity requires—and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is their intention—then the pressure for prices to go on rising will continue.

If the currency is being overissued, then freezing wages and prices can’t stop prices rising. Certainly this can work for a limited period, just as a dam can stop a river flowing . . . for a limited period. Thus it is possible that the government could achieve a short term success but in the long run they will fail. Eventually, and sooner rather than later, the dam will burst and prices—including wages—will resume their upward trend. Delors is in fact very worried about what is going to happen after the legal wage and price freeze is over and this is why he is hoping to persuade the unions to moderate their wage demands over a longer period.

The union leaders, or some of them, may be prepared to go along with this. French union leaders are also politically involved and may well be prepared to betray their members’ interests to help a government they support just as British union leaders have done when Labour has been in power.

Indeed, just like Labour governments in Britain, the PS/PC government in France hopes to exploit its links with the unions to keep wages down and is publicly boasting that it will be better able to get the unions to co-operate in this than the opposition parties. And it is true that when the previous "right wing’’ government decided in September 1976 to block prices for 3 months it didn't dare block wages as well, as the present "left wing" government has done, limiting itself simply to asking employers not to offer excessive wage increases. But even this brought trade unionists out on to the streets proclaiming "No to Austerity". History shows that allegedly "socialist” governments in all countries are better able to impose austerity on workers than openly capitalist ones. (A case could even be made out for saying that this is their role within capitalism.) What is happening in France today is a further confirmation of this rule.

Two further points must however be made. First, in a period of high unemployment real wages (what wages can buy) will tend to be under pressure anyway for purely economic reasons, irrespective of government policy or of whether the union leaders betray their members or not. Second, if inflation of the currency continues, then nominal money wages will go on rising, once again irrespective of what governments and union leaders may or may not do. But government action to try, in the one case, to reinforce downward pressures on real wages and, in the other, to try to counter the upward pressures on nominal wages clearly reveals that all governments are forced to run capitalism in the only way it can be — against the interests of the wage and salary earning majority. A sustained policy of increasing “popular consumption” under capitalism must sooner or later restrict popular consumption to protect profits.

Actually, as we pointed out in the article last August, Delors did not have such a simplistic solution to the economic crisis as the PCF, the CGT trade union and some of his PC colleagues — that economic activity could he revived by giving people more money to spend. He realised that the French economy was part of the world economy and that a revival in France could not be sustained without a revival in the world capitalist economy. But he too was naive in believing, without any reasonable grounds for doing so, that this world revival would occur within a year and that therefore the French government could safely "reflate” its economy (print more money to finance government spending) in anticipation. In June last year he declared that "the reflation measures already taken by the government . . . are a limited anticipation of the recovery of the world economy which the experts foresee for the end of this year or the beginning of next (The Times, 24 June 1981).

The end of 1981 came, but there was no world recovery. The months of 1982 passed, still no world recovery. The "experts” began to creep back into their holes. Meanwhile, as a direct result of the government's spending financed by the printing press, the rate of inflation remained higher in France than in other countries. . . leading eventually to the devaluation of 12 June and the current austerity measures.

When Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy announced the devaluation he could only remark pathetically that his government had done what it could "but the international recovery was not at the rendez-vous”. It takes two to make a rendez-vous and the PS/ PC government has found out the hard way that governments are in no position to impose a rendez vous on the capitalist economy. Capitalism is a world system which operates according to its own economic laws, going through its regular boom-slump. boom-slump cycles, irrespective of what governments may or may not do. It is true however that, while governments can do nothing to bring about a recovery before it would normally occur, they can. as Marx pointed out. make things worse by mistaken monetary policies, as the present French government just seems to have done. Mauroy would have been better to have employed some other metaphor: "we took a risk and we lost" or "we took a leap in the dark and fell flat on our faces". Or even Harold Wilson's "we were blown off course”!

This utter failure of the PS/PC government in France is yet another confirmation of our contention that capitalism can never be made to work in the interests of the wage and salary earning majority. It is a profit-making system based on the exploitation of wage-labour and can only function as such, whatever the political colour the government may happen to have. Any party which takes on the responsibility for governing under capitalism is sooner or later forced, whether it originally intended to or not, to respect the economic logic of capitalism which decrees that profits must come before wages, that the consumption of the wage and salary earning class must be limited so as to allow profits to be made.

Mitterrand's failure is proof that reformism is a futile waste of time. Since the Labour Party’s economic policy resembles very closely that pursued by Mitterrand until 12 June, there's a lesson here for workers in Britain too.

Adam Buick (Luxemburg)

Letter From Europe: SOS Longwy (1979)

The Letter From Europe Column from the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some miles before Longwy there comes into view the reddish cloud which permanently hangs over it and over nearby Rodange in Luxemburg. As you get nearer you can see on the top of the slag heap which dominates the centre of the town a sign flashing “SOS EMPLOI". Longwy, in other words, is a steel town, and a steel town threatened with massive redundancies.

The world steel industry has been in crisis since 1974—productive capacity exceeds what can be sold profitably—and this has had serious repercussions in the old steel-making areas of Europe, such as Lorraine. The Lorraine steel industry began to develop a hundred or so years ago when a method of using the iron ore found in abundance in the area was discovered. Now that there are more modern methods of production and cheaper sources of iron ore, Lorraine is inevitably suffering the measures to reduce capacity which, within the framework of capitalism, is the only way of “solving” the current crisis. That such drastic measures were going to be necessary was evident as far back as 1976 when, instead of expanding again after a year or so of recession as on previous occasions, steel sales and production continued to stagnate.

The French government waited until the general elections of March 1978 were over (and won) before considering what to do. By then the privately-owned French steel firms were virtually bankrupt. Towards the end of last year the government announced that it was going to take over the running of these firms, appointing its own nominees to preside over the “restructuring” of the industry—the suppression of “excess” capacity—and jobs.

Over Lorraine, the government had a difficult decision to make: where to build a new modern steel works, in Longwy or in Neuves-Maisons, 100 or so kilometres further south near Nancy? In the end they chose Neuves-Maisons. As soon as the announcement was made there was consternation and anger in Longwy since the whole population realised that, on top of the already announced loss of jobs, this meant mass unemployment and a slow decline for their town. Thousands of school-children were assembled in the town centre to release balloons bearing the message “Longwy vivra” (Longwy will live). International passenger trains were stopped; wagons carrying Swedish iron ore were emptied on to the tracks; the frontiers with Belgium and Luxemburg were blocked; and lorries carrying steel products from Holland and, in particular, Germany were stopped and unloaded onto the motorway.

CRS move in

At the end of January two top managers of the steel firm Usinor were held hostage in their offices in Longwy. This led to the first violent clash with the CRS (the para-military riot police with a justified reputation for brutality) when they intervened to free the managers. The local police station was attacked with stones and other missiles. But the attack of 30 January was mild compared with what was to happen on the night of 23/24 February. Members of the CFDT trade union had been occupying a television relay station on a nearby hill and interrupting programmes to screen written messages opposing the planned redundancies. In a surprise attack in the middle of the night the CRS recaptured the station. News of this was announced to the population by the sounding of factory sirens and in no time a crowd of several hundreds had gathered in the centre of town in an angry mood. A bulldozer was commandeered and used against the gates of the police station. The crowd only dispersed after the intervention of the local Communist Party MP, Antoine Porcu, who had arranged a tacit truce: retreat by the crowd and their bulldozer in return for the withdrawal of the CRS (but not the local police) to outside the town limits. Later on in the morning the leaders of the Communist Party (PCF) dominated trade union, the CGT, organised the sacking of the local office of the steel employers’ federation; furniture was thrown out of the windows and files burned.

By now Longwy had acquired a national, and even an international, reputation of being in a fighting mood. The authorities decided that discretion was the better part of valour and kept the CRS out of Longwy, well aware that their very presence there would provoke fresh violence.

But the violence was not yet over. The two trade unions, the CFDT and the CGT had both established radio stations the latter in Longwy’s town hall with the evident blessing and support of the PCF mayor. Since the state in France has a monopoly of broadcasting these stations were technically illegal “pirate” stations and on 17 May jamming began of the CGT station. Radio Coeur d’Acier (Radio Heart of Steel). The result was the worst violence to date. The population was again called out by factory sirens and in the course of five hours fighting during the night 25 people, from the CRS as well as the crowd, were injured and 5 arrests made. Unusually, these 5 were not held in custody and, when they came up for trial, the charges against them were dismissed. The jamming of Radio Coeur d’Acier also stopped.

Clearly, the population of Longwy has shown a remarkable degree of solidarity and determination and this has enabled them to restrict the authority of the central State which has seen itself obliged to keep its riot police away and to allow the trade union radios to continue broadcasting illegally. But, and this is why the central State can afford to sit back and wait, the working class in Longwy are fighting a battle they cannot win. For in trying to keep open an unprofitable and outdated steel works they are not simply fighting against a government decision but against the economic laws of capitalism. If central governments not only in France but in Britain, Germany, Belgium and other countries too have had to bow to the logic of capitalism and cut back their steel industries, then the action of a small town, however determined, is not going to be able to override the iron law of “no profit, no production”.

Defensive Struggles

The sad fact is that the loss of the steel jobs in Longwy is inevitable and the most that the workers affected can hope for is a short postponement of their sackings and bigger redundancy payments. Indeed, this is what their solidarity and determination may bring them in the end and. if it does, it will not have been entirely in vain. But, when analysed unemotionally, it’s precious little. Like its neighbouring town of Athus in Belgium (which also had its clashes with the police when its steelworks was closed—but who remembers this now, except a few old men wondering what’s going to happen when their three-year redundancy benefits come to an end?). Longwy is doomed to decline even if its working class population had chosen to go down fighting.

There are those who don’t share this analysis but who see the clashes in Longwy as “the first flames of a renaissant proletarian flare-up” (Revolution Internationale, April 1979) and who talk of “the flare-up of proletarian violence that has restarted from Longwy” (Jeune Taupe, March-April 1979). According to these starry-eyed idealisers of violence, the events are the beginning of a revival of the working class’ “lost” revolutionary consciousness. Let’s scotch this myth before it goes any further. First, willingness to fight the police is no gauge of revolutionary consciousness (otherwise Manchester United supporters would have to be regarded as hardened revolutionaries). What allows someone to be described as a revolutionary is the aim he seeks—a complete transformation of society. In Longwy, despite the violence, the struggle is purely defensive: to save jobs (and on an issue where, unlike defensive struggles over wages and working conditions, failure is inevitable). Even the fights with the police have been defensive in the sense of being responses to actions started by the police. As for the political consciousness of those involved, unfortunately it is at the same level as in similar industrial towns in other parts of France: mostly support for the so-called Communist Party. Longwy has a PCF member of parliament and a PCF mayor.

The French CP, although still hypocritically paying lip-service to Marx’s ideas, has gone completely nationalist and analyses the steel crisis in France as an attempt by the German steel barons to eliminate a competitor. The German steel barons are supposed to control the Common Market Commission in Brussels and to have instructed Viscount Davignon, the Belgian Commissioner responsible for industrial affairs, to draw up a plan involving the dismantling of the French steel industry. This analysis would be laughable did it not provide the basis for a deliberate campaign by the PCF to stir up anti- German feelings. The PCF mayor of Longlaville, a small commune between Longwy and the Luxemburg border, has put up the following slogan on his town hall: “1870-1914-1939. La Lorraine ne sera pas vendue aux trusts allemands” (1870-1914-1939. Lorraine will not be sold to the German trusts). The present writer has seen this with his own eyes and is therefore prepared to believe reports of similar sentiments being expressed by other PCF members, the worst of which is the following from a certain J Gillet, a local CGT trade union official:

What's going to come about is the domination of Europe and France by the German capitalists. What the Germans were unable to obtain in 1914 and 1939, they are conquering today. Our action can be likened to that of the Resistance. It is a struggle for national independence (quoted in L'Anarcho-Syndicaliste. April-May 1979).

CP Chauvinism

This is not to say that the working class of Longwy are rabid German-haters. Far from it. They are ordinary workers worried about their future who, besides, being for the most part immigrants or children of immigrants from Poland and Italy, have no reason to see themselves as French chauvinists. This is why it is quite disgusting that the PCF should be exploiting the very real fears of the ordinary workers of Longwy in this way. Without exaggeration, their campaign can be said to be on a par with that of the pre-war German Nazis who blamed, again falsely, the problems of unemployed German workers on the Jews. To give credit where it is due, the smaller CFDT trade union has tried to counter this chauvinistic anti-German campaign of the PCF.

Those who see the combative attitude of the workers of Longwy as the beginning of a revival of a revolutionary, socialist consciousness among the working class are deluding themselves. We only wish that it was, but sober reality forces us to recognise that it isn’t. Yet it is an indication of the solidarity and determination the working class are capable of, a display which enables us to confidently conclude that when the workers really do want and understand socialism nothing is going to stop them getting it.

Adam Buick (Luxemburg).

Letter From Europe: Exit the "Communist" Ministers (1984)

The Letter From Europe Column from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

After three years of sharing responsibility for governing French capitalism (for two of which, beginning with the four-month wage freeze imposed in June 1982, the government pursued an openly anti-working class policy), the PCF has decided it has had enough. When Mitterrand changed his Prime Minister in July the PCF found an excuse not to participate in the new government of Laurent Fabius, a whizz-kid of bourgeois origin (his father is a rich art dealer) the successor of Pierre Mauroy.

Although Mitterrand did not insist that the PCF should be excluded he was probably satisfied that they decided to go of their own accord. He had after all changed his Prime Minister precisely to give the impression. in the run-up to the 1986 General Election, that he had broken with his failed past policies. He wanted to alter his government's image by having as Prime Minister a man who better incarnated the change of policy towards the crisis forced on the government by the operation of capitalism: the “modernisation” of industry.

His government had in fact been pursuing this policy for some time but the presence of Mauroy as Prime Minister — and of the PCF ministers — represented a visible link with the previous, failed policy (on which both Mitterrand and his parliamentary majority had been elected) of trying to make capitalism work in the interest of the working class. This policy had been abandoned as long ago as June 1982 when the wage freeze was imposed and a deliberate policy of helping enterprises to restore their profit margins was adopted. It was abandoned, we hasten to add, not because Mitterrand and his government had decided to betray the working class but because it was unrealistic, in fact impossible, since capitalism just cannot be made to work in the interest of the working class. That the previous policy was unrealistic in capitalist terms was explicitly recognised by Mitterrand who repeatedly declared, for the benefit of the PCF and certain members of his own party who wanted to continue the old policy, that the policy adopted in June 1982 was "the only one possible”.

During the presidential campaign in 1981 Mitterrand and his supporters had promised to end the crisis and reduce unemployment by increasing “popular consumption”, by giving people more money to spend as a way of stimulating production. This wouldn’t work as crises under capitalism are not caused by a lack of purchasing power but by a lack of prospects for profit-making.

But it is true that Mitterrand and Mauroy did begin by honouring their promise. The minimum wage was increased, social benefits were improved, more civil servants were taken on. This increase in “popular consumption" financed by the printing press led to prices rising in France faster than among its commercial rivals, bringing about an increase in imports and a drop in exports, a balance of payments crisis and as early as October 1981 a devaluation of the franc. From then on it was downhill all the way: June 1982: Second devaluation. First austerity package. March 1983: Third devaluation and second austerity package.

Meanwhile unemployment grew from the 1,630,700 it was when Mitterrand came into office to 2,147.700 in June 1984.

Parallel with this economic failure went a growing disaffection of those who had voted for Mitterrand and the Left in 1981. Local elections and by-elections all showed a steady swing to the rightwing opposition parties, including the National Front (basically the same as its British counterpart) which, in the recent European elections, polled nearly as many votes as the PCF and won itself 10 members in the 81-member French delegation to the European Parliament.

Here too Mitterrand and his party decided to operate a tactical turn. Instead of appealing to the working class — to whom they had now learned they had nothing to offer given the way the capitalist system operates — they decided to try to show that the Left was just as capable as the Right of managing capitalism—and of imposing the anti-working class decisions that this necessarily involves. If we are going to lose the 1986 General Election, the reasoning went, let us at least show that we are capable administrators of capitalism so that the charge of economic incompetence cannot be levelled against us in the 1991 elections.

Mitterrand began to adopt the language of his conservative predecessor. Giscard. The same terms — modernisation, enterprise, innovation, competitivity, risk, initiative. profit — rolled off his lips. Taxed about this in a newspaper interview on the third anniversary of his election as President. he replied:

What! The words modernisation, enterprise. innovation and the rest are rightwing? That’s an absurd assumption. (Liberation, 10 May 1984).

"Modernisation” is a nice-sounding word, suggesting the building of new factories with robots, automation and the rest. In fact it is a euphemism to describe what always happens when capitalism is in one of its periodic depressions. The least productive enterprises go to the wall and are eliminated from the competitive struggle for profits. This results in a rise in the average productivity in particular industries and so in a fall in their average costs, this putting them in a better competitive position against the same industries in other countries. In other words, the rise in average productivity and so in competitivity comes about not so much through the introduction of modern machines as through the elimination of old-fashioned ones — and of the jobs of those who operate them.

This is what modernisation means in practice. So the workers of France have nothing to gain from the new government’s declared intention, expressed in the new Prime Minister’s first declaration on the very evening of the day he was appointed, to "modernise the country”. This inevitably means more closures, more sackings, more job losses, more unemployment. Fabius openly admitted this in the new government's policy declaration before the National Assembly on 24 July:

Modernisation — one must have the honesty to say so — may cost more jobs before creating them (Liberation, 25 July).

This argument that the way to full employment lies through letting unemployment grow in a depression through the elimination of inefficient firms is true to the extent that slump conditions, if allowed to work themselves through, do eventually prepare the ground for the subsequent period of boom (and vice versa of course, though capitalist politicians are not so keen on mentioning this, anxious as they are to maintain the illusion that a boom can be made to be permanent). But this represents a complete U-turn compared to the pre-1981 election promises of Mitterrand and his parliamentary majority. Not that there was really any choice in the matter: any government has to adopt this approach sooner or later, whether willingly (like Reagan and Thatcher) or reluctantly (like Mitterrand, perhaps), since it is dictated by the economic logic of the capitalist system within which they work.

Mitterrand himself, in his interview with Liberation on 10 May, had also been explicit enough about what modernisation would involve:

If you consider that being on the Left rules out modernising the country because of the suffering that all change causes, then I can't follow you. And yet I ask myself everyday about what I have the right to ask of the working class which has been the victim of so many injustices and so much oppression since the coming of the industrial era.

And two months later, on a visit to the Auvergne region of France, he told complaining trade unionists:

The state is not an industry, and the nationalised enterprises are not there to serve the state. Certainly, they have particular duties, but they must manage, invest, organise according to the idea which they form. If they were to be transformed into a government department, you would see the substitution of a bureaucracy for all the living forces. The idea that a nationalised enterprise can escape from the crisis and artificially create jobs? No, that would be to undermine a sector that I have extended (Le Monde, 8/9 July 1984).

Adding, as off-the-cuff remarks that might have come from Thatcher or Reagan (or Kinnock after he has had three years experience of administering capitalism — if he ever gets the chance, that is), “the state does not have the task of creating industries. of rushing to the aid of enterprises in danger" and “one cannot ask the state to be satisfied with covering losses. It must also make profits" (Liberation. 7/8 July).

In a sense, in belatedly withdrawing from the government the PCF has been more loyal to the promises on which Mitterrand and the PS/PCF parliamentary majority were elected than have Mitterrand and the PS. But what the PCF fails to realise is that these promises were quite unrealistic and could not have been honoured because of the very nature of the capitalist system within which they were to be implemented. Capitalism just cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary earners. It is a profit-making system that can only work in the interest of those who live off profits derived from exploiting wage-labour. Mitterrand and the PS learned this within a year of coming to power and then settled down to administering capitalism in the only way it can be: against the working class.

The PCF, even though it accepted for at least two years to go along with the anti-working class policy any government of capitalism is sooner or later obliged to adopt, still entertains the old illusions. But there's no particular merit in remaining loyal to promises that have been proved to be illusory.

The PCF will no doubt now go before the workers telling them that Mitterrand and his government have failed because they have deliberately chosen to pursue a pro-capitalist rather than a pro-working class policy, whereas this failure was not a question of intention or sincerity or determination but due to the nature of capitalism. Mitterrand, the PS and indeed the PCF failed because in the context of capitalism this was pre-programmed. No government can make capitalism serve the interest of the wage and salary earning majority.

Adam Buick

(Luxemburg)

Letter From Europe: Congress of French reformists (1979)

French Socialist Party in session, Metz 1979. Mitterrand b/r.

The Letter From Europe Column from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The National Congress of the so-called Socialist Party (PS) in France took place in Metz the week before Easter. It was marked by preliminary manoeuvrings for the position of the Party’s candidate for the 1981 Presidential elections. The two contenders were the present leader, Francois Mitterrand, a recycled wheeler-dealer politician from the old IVth Republic (1946-58) now posing as a socialist, and Michel Rocard, an ambitious technocrat who was once leader of the left wing breakaway “Parti socialiste unifie” (PSU).

Both have been Presidential candidates before. Mitterrand in 1965 and 1974 (when he missed by only 1 per cent beating the present President, Giscard d’Estaing). Rocard in 1969 when he was the candidate of the PSU, standing against the official candidate of the PS, which he did not rejoin till 1974.

The real issue before the Congress was not the choice of a Presidential candidate although this was at the back of the delegates’ minds. In France the conferences of trade unions and left wing political parties do not have before them, as in Britain, a list of resolutions to be voted on one by one. Instead they have to vote on rival global strategies, long wordy statements called “motions”, presented by “currents” within the organisation. For the PS congress at Metz seven such currents had been formed to propose a motion, only four of which were significant: apart from those of Mitterrand and Rocard, that of Pierre Mauroy, mayor of Lille and boss of the PS machine in the North of France, and that presented by CERES (“Centre d’etudes, de recherche et d’education socialistes”) which regards itself as the left wing of the PS.

Reversal of Alliances
In the end, the Mitterrand motion obtained 47 per cent of the votes of delegates, Rocard’s 21 per cent, Mauroy’s 17 per cent and CERES’ 15 per cent. These four currents will be represented proportionally on the Party’s management committee and executive bureau but at the start only Mitterrand’s supporters were on the National Secretariat which runs the day-to-day affairs of the Party. A few weeks after the Congress representatives of CERES were admitted to the Secretariat so that the Party is now run by a Mitterrand-CERES alliance. Since, for the previous four years, the Party had been run by a Mitterrand-Rocard-Mauroy alliance, with only CERES excluded, this reversal of alliances is regarded as a turn to the left by the PS.

But this all depends on what you mean by “left”. It is a virtually meaningless term that is best avoided, a position which is reinforced from an examination of CERES’ claim to be left wing. For CERES (like the so-called Communist Party in France) is a staunch defender of French national independence, opposing the Common Market as an American-backed threat to this independence. Again like PCF, it wants to see established in France a nationalist state capitalist regime, cut off from the rest of the world market. Policies which, before the last war, would have been regarded as “right wing” and even fascist. In addition, many members of CERES are practising Catholics even though they claim to be Marxists (no wonder Marx once said that he wasn’t a Marxist!).

Mitterrand too is a Catholic and this illustrates a change that has come over the PS since it was reorganised on a new basis in 1971. Up until 1969, it has been known as the SFIO or “French Section of the Workers’ International”, a name it gave itself when it was founded as a uniting of rival groups in 1905 under the auspices of the Second International with the open reformist and anti-Marxist Jean Jaures as leader. In 1920 most of its members voted to affiliate the Party to the Comintern and to become the Communist Party; the minority led by Leon Blum broke away reviving the old name of SFIO. By the 1930s, the SFIO had grown bigger than the PC and it was Blum who became Prime Minister of the Popular Front government in 1936. During and after the war it was the PC that emerged as what the trotskyites would call “the party of the working class” or the party that most factory workers and trade unionists supported.

The SFIO was a militant anti-clerical party—much more so than the PC—whose strength and support was drawn from traditionally Republican and Radical areas. For a reformist party, a party seeking the support of as many workers as possible on a programme of reforms, this was a handicap since it thereby cut itself off from half its potential supporters: the Catholic-minded workers. Overcoming this handicap, which enabled the Party to penetrate traditionally Catholic areas in the West and East of France, is the main reason for the success of the new style PS under Mitterrand’s leadership.

Rivalry
The PS has now once again overtaken the PC as the main left wing party in France. Despite an often acrimonious rivalry, the PS and PC are both committed to the strategy of the “union of the left”; in other words, an electoral alliance and coalition government (together with a much smaller group of breakaway Radicals who call themselves “Left Radicals”). The closeness of this alliance was one of the issues which divided Mitterrand and Rocard, with Rocard urging that the PS should take a more independent line. Another issue between these two currents was the degree of central State ownership and control of the economy. Expressed in terms of arguments that have gone on in Eastern Europe, Mitterand can be said to be for a more or less centralised State capitalism while Rocard favours so-called “market socialism” and workers’ councils.

In actual fact these differences are not important since, if the PS ever comes to power, it would be faced not with the problem of putting into practice some airy principles it might have adopted but with the problem of running capitalism. It would be capitalism that would dictate the priorities, just as it has done to the various Labour governments in Britain and to the various Social Democratic governments in the other countries of Europe.

No Experience
The PS has never had experience of trying to govern capitalism. though some of its individual leaders have including Mitterrand himself. But that was before he claimed to be a socialist and his record then was not particularly “left wing”: it was he who as Minister of the Interior banned a number of PC and trade union marches in Paris in 1954 and 1955 and it was he who as Minister of Justice signed the death warrant in 1957 of a member of the PC in Algeria. Because it has not had this experience the PS has many more illusions than similar reformist parties in other countries about what it thinks it will be able to do if it comes to power. Thus the Mitterrand motion, which obtained the most votes at the Metz Congress, declares:

  The object of the PS is not to modernise or to moderate capitalism but is to replace it with Socialism.

Such language has not been used by the Labour Party in Britain since 1945, even if by “socialism” is only meant “state capitalism”. The PS missed a chance of coming to power last year when it failed to win the March general election. Its next chance won’t come till 1981 when either Mitterrand or Rocard will be put up to challenge Giscard d’Estaing, who will be seeking a further seven-year term as President. But if it does come to power in 1981 it will be to try to modernise and moderate capitalism. Not having (not even having sought) a mandate for socialism, it will have no alternative but to continue capitalism. But capitalism can only be run in one way: as a profit-making system in the interest of those who live off profits, which any PS or PS-PC coalition government in France would be sooner or later forced to recognise and put into practice.

Adam Buick

(Luxemburg)

Letter From Europe: The Belgian public sector strike (1983)

The Letter From Europe Column from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

In September civil servants and other public sector workers in Belgium carried out a nation-wide strike, lasting for over a week, against the government's proposals in its draft budget for 1984 to economise on its spending at the expense of their wages and pensions.

The strike started on Friday 9 September, after a section of the railwaymen heard the details of the government's proposals from their union officials. Against the advice of their officials, they immediately stopped work. The strike, still at this stage unofficial, quickly spread to the rest of the railway network. The unions then decided to follow the movement and declare the strike official from the following Monday. On the Monday some other public employees unofficially joined the striking railwaymen, leading to the unions calling an official general strike of all public sector workers as from Thursday 15 September.

The strength of this strike lay in its essentially spontaneous nature. It was not something that had been planned and called by the union bureaucracies, but arose from a general feeling that, in view of the cuts in living standards workers have suffered in recent years, enough was enough. The present government — a coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals that emerged from the general election held in November 1981 — had assumed, soon after entering office, “special powers" to deal with the economic situation, which meant that it could rule by decree rather than by act of parliament. These powers had been used to end the automatic indexing of wages and salaries to rises in the cost of living, to increase social insurance contributions and to reduce benefits. It was the fall in living standards resulting from these measures that made the public sector workers so determined to resist any further cuts.

Trade unions in Belgium organise workers on the basis of their political opinion. This, of course, is absurd and has led to workers being divided into three more or less rival union federations: the Christian Democrats (SC. 1.3 million members). The “Socialists” (FGTB. 1.13 million members) and the Liberals (CGLSB. 210,000 members). But on this occasion the strength of feeling among ordinary union members was such that the rival unions had to act together in a “common front". This, together with the fact that the strike took place in Flanders as well as in the traditionally more militant Wallonia, greatly strengthened the bargaining position of the strikers.

At first the government was somewhat bewildered by the strike, the Minister of Communications declaring: “I have absolutely no idea why there is this strike; there was no warning, no notice, no presentation of demands. It is a rather amazing action" (Le Soir, 14 September 1983). The government soon realised however that the strength of feeling of the ordinary strikers was deep-rooted and that, in proposing its attack on increments, bonuses and pensions of public employees — the section of the working class best able to resist downward pressures in a crisis because their work still needs to be done whatever the economic situation — they had perhaps gone too far. In the background too was the fear that the strike might spread to the private sector, resulting in a general strike as happened in 1960-1 (also sparked off by workers in the public sector reacting against a proposal to reduce their pensions). So instead of refusing to negotiate “under duress", as governments often do in those circumstances, the government agreed to start negotiations straight away as from the Friday, indicating that they were prepared to make concessions. The Civil Service Minister spoke of a “misunderstanding" as to the government's intentions.

An agreement was reached on 21 September. The government guaranteed that the increments, bonuses and pensions due to public sector workers would remain unchanged at least until the end of 1985; salaries would however be paid at the end instead of at the beginning of the month. The Christian Democrat and Liberal unions accepted straight away and the FGTB on Friday evening after consulting its members.

A number of lessons can be drawn from this strike. First, any strike against a government decision inevitably has political undertones. The unions managed to avoid this by concentrating on the decision as it affected the wages and conditions of their members rather than on challenging (other than verbally) the government's general policy of spending cuts. Having obtained a relatively satisfactory result on the bread-and-butter issue, they wisely called off the strike. Otherwise they would have provided the government with a stick to beat them — that the strike was politically aimed at a change of government which, in the Belgian context, would only have meant a change of coalition partners. The Belgian PS, in opposition since 1981 and forgetting its role in helping to impose austerity when it did share power, did, in fact, try to exploit the strike for its own party political ends. The leader of its French-speaking wing declared that “the government must go" and clearly hinted that his party was ready to enter the government again. Fortunately neither the trade union leaders, nor even less the strikers. took any notice of this. If they had. the result would have been disastrous. If the strike had become political in the sense of demanding a change of government, it would have broken ranks, the resulting division among the workers would have strengthened the government’s bargaining position. In any event, the participation or non-participation of the PS in the governing coalition is of the utmost indifference from a working class point of view since, whatever party or parties are in power, capitalism can only function against working class interests.

Second, like the majority of strikes, it was entirely defensive, a reaction against an action taken by the employer — in this case the government. In the event the government employer was forced to withdraw' the main proposals, but the workers still had to make some concessions, which meant that their conditions of employment had deteriorated even if by a great deal less than their employer had originally intended. In other words, the strike only slowed a downward movement. This, of course, is necessary and was worth fighting for, but shows up the limitations of trade union action. The workers are always on the receiving end under capitalism, however militant they are.

Adam Buick (Luxembourg)

Letter From Europe: General Strike in Luxemburg (1982)

The Letter From Europe column from the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 5 April 80,000 workers in Luxemburg staged a one-day warning strike against government proposals aimed at preventing wages rising in 1982 as fast as the cost of living.

A few months ago such a general strike seemed inconceivable. Even the Trotskyists who put forward demands they con­sider unrealisable only in order to appear militant, were taken unawares. On a mass trade union demonstration held on 27 March they were distributing a leaflet headed “For a 24-hour General Strike”; little did they imagine that four days later most of the trade unions would accept this demand! Luxemburg’s last strike (apart from those by EEC civil servants) took place in the private sector in 1973 and in the public sector in 1949.

Luxemburg, with a population of about 370,000 (of whom 30 per cent are non-citizens), is in close economic union with Belgium, both countries having the same currency and trading as a single unit. Its major industry—steel—is owned by Arbed, a private company with international connections. The other main source of employment is government ser­vice, including the railways, Post Office and, in recent years, banking and a Good­year tyre factory. The rest of the work­force is employed in small and medium-sized enterprises. There are also some 5,000 EEC civil servants.

The one-day general strike was called to protest against the government’s pro­posal to end the automatic link between wages and the official “cost of living” which had been introduced in 1975. Under this arrangement each time the cost of living rose by 2.5 per cent, wages automatically rose by the same percentage. There is nothing particularly generous or extravagant about such an arrangement; as a matter of fact it is only a way of ensuring, in a period of rising prices, that the laws of the capitalist market are respected; that, in other words, sellers, in this case of labour power, continue to obtain a price more or less equal to the value of what they are selling. If wages do not rise as fast as the cost of living then in real terms-in terms of what wages will buy—they fall and workers are paid less than the value of their labour power.

Since trade unions exist to try to defend workers’ wages and conditions, it is only natural that the Luxemburg trade unions should have tried to resist the government’s openly proclaimed intention to reduce real wages. The government proposed to achieve this by abolishing the automatic indexisation of wages and limiting wage increases in 1982 in most cases to 5 per cent, while at the same time announcing that it expected prices to rise by at least twice this amount. 

This proposal was not motivated by malice, but was imposed on that government by the way that capitalism operates. Capitalism is a system that can never work in the interest of the wage and salary earning majority. Certainly, in its periods of expansion, workers can expect rising wages (even if this is offset by having to work more and more intensively) but such periods of expansion are only one side of the coin. Capitalism does not, and cannot, expand in a smooth and continuous way; its growth pattern is one of fits and starts, of alternating periods of expansion and contraction (booms and slumps). The other side of a period of expansion and rising wages is the period of contraction and falling wages which inevitably follows it.

The last period of expansion came to an end in 1975 when capitalism entered into its current world recession. Wages—real wages, that is, what they can buy—tend to fall in a slump because the increased unemployment turns labour market conditions more in favour of employers. Supply of labour power comes to exceed demand so, as always happens in such circumstances, its price (wages and salaries) tends to fall. Workers can, by trade union organisation and action, slow down this tendency but they can’t reverse or even halt it. Thus in Britain over the past few years trade unions have been forced to settle for single-figure “increases” even though prices have been rising in double-figures. In Germany too unions have had to settle for rises smaller than that expected in the cost of living.

Until now workers in Luxemburg, like those in Belgium, had been protected against such decreases in real wages by this automatic linking of wage increases to price increases. Indexisation should in theory work in both directions: if the cost of living falls then so should wages and by the same percentage. Before the present period of chronic currency in­flation began in all countries after the last world war, indexisation, then known as “the sliding scale”, was popular among employers because it meant that in a slump if prices fell then so automatically did wages. The sliding scale was unpopular with workers and their unions because, although they had no illusions about being able to maintain money wages at their old level in a period of falling prices, they felt with some justification that a less rigid system held out the hope of negotiating a fall in money wages less than that in the cost of living.

The new element nowadays is that, because of government inflation of the currency through the excessive issue of inconvertible paper money, prices no longer fall in periods of slump. On the contrary, they continue to rise. Hence the phenomenon of “stagflation” which so baffles capitalist economists. But, with indexisation, such currency inflation means that money wages go on rising in line with prices even in a slump or, more precisely, that real wages do not fall.

This is all very well while it lasts—but it can’t last because maintaining wages artificially high by such a mechanism goes against the logic of capitalism which requires that real wages fall in a slump as one of the ways of creating the con­ditions for the next period of expansion. In the end any government of capitalism has to take the only action open to it in the circumstances, namely, the abolition of the mechanism—the automatic indexisation of wages—which prevents real wages falling. The Belgian government had al­ready done this. Now it has been fol­lowed by the Luxemburg government.

As we have already said workers, through their trade unions, should resist such a blatant, frontal attack on their living standards. However they should have no illusions about being able to pre­vent real wages from falling in a slump. Under capitalism, even in times of expan­sion and boom, the cards are stacked in favour of the employers who are in the dominant bargaining position because they own the means of wealth production. In times of slump and contraction the employers’ hand is strengthened even further by the existence of an increased pool of unemployed. In these circumstances the most that unions can achieve is to slow down the fall in real wages, limiter les dégâts, to limit the damage, as the French say.

One thing however is clear: if workers sit back and do nothing they may well lose more than if they stand up and strike. In fact on such occasions—as in Britain in 1926—a general strike is often the only means of testing the situation, of finding out what the true bargaining strength of both sides is. In the case of Luxemburg it was undoubtedly because of the previous strike-free record of the workforce that the government felt so confident about going as far as it did, openly proposing measures to make living standards fall in 1982 by at least 5 per cent. EEC civil servants who were under similar pressure last year managed to come out relatively well in comparison in negotiating a fall of about the same amount but over five years.

Even if the strike of 5 April was not successful in terms of getting the govern­ment to make concessions—the govern­ment’s austerity measures were passed by Parliament the very day of the strike—this reaction by the workers will at least have shown governments that in the future they can no longer take the working class in Luxemburg for granted.

But all this is purely defensive, purely concerned with trying to slow down things getting worse. But things will get worse as this is what happens under capitalism in a slump. Later on, as the capital­ist economic cycle continues and the slump gives way to a new period of boom and expansion, there will be some improvements, some increases in real wages. But these improvements will be precarious and temporary and will be wiped out when the next slump comes round.

We put to workers in Luxemburg the same question we put to workers in Britain and elsewhere: is this merry-go-round, this running fast just to stay still, all you want out of life? Because this is all that capitalism has to offer you.

Adam Buick 

(Luxemburg)

Letter From Europe: "Produce French": who benefits? (1982)

The Letter From Europe column from the April 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

   This month we translate a leaflet issued last year by a group of workers in Mayenne, a town in the West of France, attacking the slogan “Produce French”. This is a slogan which the French Communist Party and the trade union grouping it controls, the CGT, have made great play of. During the presidential election campaign last year it shouted from hoardings; it can still be seen daubed on walls. In fact the PCF Minister of Health, Jack Ralite, has been trying to put it into practice by ordering only “French-made” hospital equipment (not equipment made entirely from French products of course, but hypocritically only equipment whose final stage of manufacture took place on French territory).
   The slogan is of course quite anti-socialist. It is mistaken—even from a simple trade union point of view—for the reasons explained in the leaflet. We can endorse the views expressed in the leaflet as far as they go, but they don’t go far enough. The authors don’t explain that, while it is necessary to wage the defensive trade union struggle as long as capitalism lasts, the only solution to our problems is the abolition of the wages system. We reproduce the leaflet however as it is a good answer to those who in Britain stand for “Backing Britain” and “Buying British”—even though we know that comparatively few workers practise what is preached here.

“Produce French”?

“Produce French, Consume French, Repatriate French Factories from Abroad”, is a slogan taken up by the Left as well as the Right and put forward as a remedy for the crisis and unemployment.

“Produce French” would imply to begin with French raw materials. Take for instance a household electrical appliance: the whole framework is plastic, a material which comes from Germany, Holland, and is made from oil bought in the Middle East; for the motor, it’s copper coming from South Africa, South America, and which passes by way of England for processing; not to mention the machine-tools, some of which are made in Switzerland and elsewhere. The example of the manufacture of a car would have been even more blatant. And what about uranium, oil and certain food products? In fact there is no purely national economy, but an economy that is more and more international: no country can be self-sufficient.

“Produce French” would also mean producing with French capital and closing foreign factories in France. The workers for instance at Sobio (a firm recently taken over by the English trust Beecham) in Mayenne know what that would mean for their employment.

Defending the slogan “Produce French” means being in agreement with closing French factories abroad, choosing for instance that Moulinex should make thousands of Spanish or American workers unemployed, or that the textile and electronics industrialists should throw thousands of Hong Kong, Korean and Moroccan workers onto the streets. It means that we French workers should choose who should be made unemployed; it means that we would be prepared to let workers who already live in atrocious conditions die of starvation: in Brazil, Morocco, Vietnam and elsewhere, 6-year-old children work; a worker has to work 12 to 14 hours a day to be able to afford a kilo of rice; there is no social coverage.

They want to make us believe that the trouble comes from workers abroad, as if they were not victims—just as much if not more than us—of the exploitation of the employers. It is exactly the same when immigrant workers are accused of causing unemployment in France, and it is advocated that they should be sent back to their country of origin. Continuing this line of argument means telling Corsican workers to go back to their island, Breton workers to stay in Brittany, workers from Laval not to leave their town and so on. and why not say “Everyone at home and God for all” . . .  Thus the employers have a free hand, division reigns.

So defending the slogan “Produce French” is to divide workers by countries, by regions, by towns, by wards; it’s forcing them to defend the factory where they are and so “their” employer; in other words, the interests of the rich and powerful who exploit us.

Logically, if we workers were to defend French cars against Japanese, or Renault against Fiat, we should have to go further because that wouldn’t be enough: we should have to support Moulinex against Seb, Jouve against Floch, Leclerk against La Motte, and so on.

Further, they want to make us believe that if all Frenchmen, employers and workers, close ranks and make an effort then things will get better, we’ll get out of the crisis. As if the exploiters and the exploited suffer from the crisis in the same way.

If French employers exploit workers in the Third World to such an extent, this is to maximise their profits. In France it’s the same; in the name of the national economy, of defending the company and its competitiveness, the employers force workers to tighten their belts more and more: our situation here gets worse from year to year: restructuring, automation bringing redundancies, speed-up, increased recourse to the modern slavery that is temporary work, wages which don’t follow the rise in prices (many workers in Mayenne are forced to survive on the minimum wage).

What the employers want is to sell more commodities than competing firms from France and elsewhere. And for this they exploit us as much as possible. This is in fact the best proof that we have no common interest with these exploiters.

Poverty, accidents, exhaustion, that’s for us. Profits, that’s for them. That’s the situation, whether you are a worker in Mayenne or in Ireland, in Argentina or Japan. Everywhere our condition is the same: increased exploitation.

That’s why the workers’ movements in the various countries of the world put forward the same demands, whether it’s Polish workers, Brazilian engineering workers, or workers in Western Europe or Japan:

• increases in wages 
• reduction in hours of work 
• organisations to defend their interests, independent of employers and the State.

The slogan “Produce French” plays to people’s nationalist and patriotic feelings. We mustn’t be taken in, the employers want to divide us in this way so as to weaken us. And tomorrow, for identical reasons, they will be able to push workers of all countries to kill each other in a new war.

We reject division by nationalities and categories:
The worker in Hong Kong like the worker in Mayenne,
The unemployed like the employed,
The old like the youngest.
All workers have the same needs.

Letter From Europe: Racism and anti-racism in France (1985)

The Letter From Europe Column from the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

They seem to be everywhere. Posters in blue, white and red proclaiming "France and the French First". "Three million immigrants. Three million unemployed". “Halt to anti-French racism" and other such slogans and signed "le Front National".

The Front National is almost the exact equivalent on the French political scene of the National Front in Britain. Like the British organisation, its original members were a mixture of traditional conservatives and neo-Nazi lunatics. But, unlike the National Front, the Front National has, thanks to proportional representation, been able to overcome the credibility gap. Ten of the 81 French members of the European Parliament sit for the National Front and a solid phalanx of National Fronters are expected to be elected to the French National Assembly in next March’s general elections — ironically, thanks to the change over to proportional representation which the outgoing "socialist" government has decided to introduce as its only chance of avoiding utter defeat. Already the Front’s leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is regularly interviewed on news and current affairs programmes as an established national political leader.

Le Pen, an ex-Poujadist MP and paratroop officer, founded the National Front in 1972. For the first ten years his party was just one of a number of small competing extreme right-wing grouplets and in fact was unable to get enough signatures to present Le Pen as a candidate in the 1981 presidential elections. The breakthrough came in 1983 in the municipal elections when Le Pen himself was elected a municipal councillor for the 10th arrondissement of Paris, in the past a "communist" party stronghold, while in Dreux. an industrial town west of Paris with a high immigrant population, the National Front's list obtained 17 per cent of the votes, enough to go through to the second round. In the event the National Front and the traditional conservative opposition parties did a deal which resulted not only in the election of a number of National Front councillors but also in some of them being given municipal responsibilities.

Although the National Front claims to be a proper political party with a full range of policies on defence, Europe, law and order and so on. it is basically a one-issue organisation with a single crude political message: Arabs Go Home! Over the years there has been a considerable migration across the Mediterranean of workers from France’s ex-colonies in North Africa — Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia — to fill labouring and other lowly jobs in France. The figures show, however, that most migrants to France since the war have come from Southern Europe, from Portugal, Spain and Italy. But it remains true that the North Africans are the most conspicuous and, as Muslims, the most "alien” of recent migrants and as such the perfect scapegoats for an anti-immigrant party like the National Front.

Although the evidence seems to be that the National Front has expanded at the expense of the traditional conservative parties, the Gaullist RPR and ex-President Giscard’s UDF, it is clear that its rise has been a direct result of the failure of the reformist PS-PCF government that came to power in 1981. These parties had promised to end the economic crisis, to reduce unemployment and to improve the living standards of ordinary people. They did none of these things, basically because they are not within the government’s power to do: the capitalist economy works according to certain economic laws which demand in particular that priority be given to profit-making over popular consumption and governments, whatever their political colour, are in the end forced to comply with them. The PS-PCF government had learned this when, after only a year in office, they were compelled to impose a wage freeze. So not only were their promises not honoured but the crisis got worse, unemployment continued to rise steadily and living standards were reduced. This failure earned them the resentment, even the hatred, of large numbers of ordinary people which the National Front was able cleverly to exploit, blaming immigration and immigrants rather than the workings of capitalism for their continuing problems and worsened conditions. But since immigrant workers generally perform the most ill-paid jobs and live in the worst housing conditions it should be clear that they are fellow victims of capitalism rather than the cause of other workers' problems.

The government's reaction to the rise of the National Front has been to proclaim that it has been just as firm on immigration as the previous government and that it too is just as keen on tracking down "illegal immigrants''. In other words, to give in to anti-immigrant sentiment as a means of preserving votes which could make the difference between victory and defeat, especially at local level.

Mitterrand, who with his repeated wordy declarations on “human rights" must be a front-runner for the Nobel prize for hypocrisy. expressed the following sentiments in 1983 (at the time of the Dreux municipal election):

   Illegal immigrants must be sent back to their countries (Républicain Lorrain, 1 September 1983).
   I must protect the employment of French people . . . Illegal immigrant workers must therefore leave France (Le Monde, 17 September 1983).

Of course at the same time Mitterrand preaches that all human beings are equal, and that discrimination and racism are bad. but this does not alter the fact that the line between being "anti-immigration" (like him) and "anti-immigrant" (like Le Pen) is a thin one easily crossed in the minds of the politically ignorant electors who vote for one or other of the parties of capitalism, including his own PS and the PCF.

The French "Communist" Party, of course, is a past-master in this hypocritical game of behaving in a racist way without actually having to utter racist or anti-immigrant sentiments (the incident of the bulldozer sent by one of its mayors to demolish a hostel for African workers at Bitry in the South of Paris in December 1980 is not likely to be forgotten for a long while). There is also a very real sense in which the PCF helped to pave the way for the National Front. A widely-used PCF poster proclaimed "Produisons français" ("Produce French"), which the National Front capped with another reading "Produisons français. d'accord, mais avec des travailleurs français" ("Produce French, yes, but with French workers").

A more interesting reaction to the rise of the National Front than this, or the traditional Trotskyite policy of "Smash the Fascists" (which provided wonderful free publicity for the Front during the 1983 municipal and 1984 European elections), has been the campaign SOS Racism with its badge in the form of a hand proclaiming "Touche pas à mon pote" ("Hands Off My Mate"). Here the appeal has been not to violence but to people's common humanity.

This naive approach runs the risk of being exploited politically (and in fact the government has already begun to do so), but it has had a remarkable success. In schools in the big towns in particular, children whose parents came from various parts of Europe. Asia and Africa study and play together and therefore tend to know that racism is a load of nonsense. But then so is nationalism, and the logic of the argument "we're all human beings" should lead to the conclusion "and we have only one country: the world”. There is no automatic guarantee that this conclusion will in fact be drawn, but appealing to people as members of the same human race is a much more fruitful response to racism than shrill calls to use violence against misguided workers, who have imbibed racist nonsense. It at least allows a reasoned dialogue to take place, the only logical conclusion of which can be a recognition that world socialism is the only way to end racism and all other forms of oppression and discrimination.

Adam Buick,

Paris

Letter From Europe: The French Nationalisations (1982)

The Letter From Europe column from the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

President Mitterand and his PS/PC government were hoping that the nationalisation measures voted in December would be in force by the beginning of February, but an appeal to the Constitutional Council by the opposition parties in Parliament delayed matters. The Council ruled that, although the nationalisation measures in themselves were not unconstitutional, the compensation terms were not generous enough to comply with the rights of property as laid down in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. The government was thus obliged to revise this, and certain other aspects of their proposals, and to resubmit them to Parliament. Hence the delay.

The original plan was to nationalise 36 banks, two financial holding companies (Paribas and Suez), the steel industry and five other industrial groups involved in' such fields as chemicals, electrical goods, telecommunications, electronics, glass and fertilisers. Previously, the state had already acquired by mutual agreement a 51 per cent holding in two armaments firms, Dassault (Mirage jets) and Matra. Three other, mainly foreign-owned, companies—Roussel Uclaf (chemicals), CI1-Honeywcll Bull (computers) and ITT France—are to be nationalised later. The state sector in France is thus being considerably extended.

The last wave of nationalisation in France took place in 1945-6 and was initiated by De Gaulle. It involved coal, gas, electricity, civil aviation, the Renault motor firm and parts of the aircraft and arms industries. A number of banks (BNP, Crédit Lyonnais and Société Générale) and insurance companies were also nationalised. The railways had been virtually nationalised before the war and the manufacture of matches and cigarettes has been a revenue-raising state monopoly since the time of Louis XIV. To this list can be added the state oil company, ELF, set up in 1965.

France will therefore have quite an array of state capitalist enterprises, most of them competing in their fields mainly against foreign-owned firms at home and abroad (as Renault has been doing, fairly successfully for years). Although in their internal documents the PS talks about nationalisation being “anti-capitalist" and part of their strategy of “rupture" with capitalism, before the general public these measures are being justified on quite other grounds. Mitterand, for instance, has said that they will provide France with an “economic strike force", both to compete on the world market and to “reconquer the home market” from foreign suppliers, so placing these measures squarely within the logic of capitalism. He has been echoed here by his Minister of Industry, Pierre Dreyfus, who speaks from experience since under De Gaulle he was a managing-director of the state capitalist car company Renault.

In a very real sense this is a continuation of the policy pursued by De Gaulle, after his return to power in 1958, and by his successor Pompidou to try to make France a leading industrial power. De Gaulle wanted to encourage the emergence of French-owned industry able to compete on equal terms with the foreign-owned multi-national corporations which were threatening to take over the French market. These enterprises, which remained in private ownership, were brought into being and survived with help from the government, particularly in the form of orders but also by generous loans. These companies (CGE, Rhone-Poulencc, PUK, St. Gobain, Thomson-Brandt) are now being nationalised; but their role is to remain unchanged: to be French capitalism’s “industrial champions" at home and abroad. The new state capitalist concerns that have been set up will join Renault, Elf, SNECMA (aircraft engines), SNIAS (aerospace, headed by the President's brother. General Jacques Mitterand) and the others—with the exception of the bankrupt steel industry—as pace-makers for technological innovation; at least that’s what the government hopes.

The French capitalist class is well aware that these nationalisations are in no way opposed to their interests; indeed, those facing nationalisation only fought a rearguard action to get the compensation terms increased. Thus the financial daily Les Echos (14 October) headlined its front page the day after the debate on the nationalisation proposals opened in Parliament: “Pierre Mauroy pleads the case for the nationalisations. STATE CAPITALISM AND Till STRATEGY OF PACE-MAKERS”. The accompanying article explained:

   The socialist government wants to apply the doctrine of State industrial capitalism in the name of the strategy of large technological pace-makers. Pace-makers for the reconquest of the internal market, for independence and influence. Not a punishment nationalisation, but a move to give more dynamism to the factories of the Hexagon (France).

Shades of Harold Wilson and his “white-hot technological revolution”!

When a company or an industry is nationalised all that is changed is that the top management is henceforth appointed by the state instead of as previously by the biggest private shareholders. Everything else remains unchanged: the workers remain wage-earners selling their labour-power and producing surplus-value; the former owners remain capitalists living off the income derived from the compensation they are paid; the industry continues to be run on capitalist lines, producing for profit.

As practised in the long-established Western capitalist countries, nationalisation does not affect the social standing of the former owners as capitalists living off the exploitation of the workers. For nationalisation takes place within a legal framework which protects the rights of existing property-owners. In France in fact the “rights of property” are enshrined in the Constitution which requires the state to pay a “fair” compensation when it nationalises an industry or a company—something reaffirmed by the Constitutional Court in its ruling on the first version of the current nationalisation law.

Nationalisation is a buying and selling transaction between the state and the former owners. The state buys the assets in question from their owners more or less at their value. The wealth of the former owners is not reduced at all; it merely changes form. Previously they were shareholders, now they become bondholders. This is precisely what is happening in France, as Le Monde (22 January) explains:

   The shareholders of the companies to be nationalised are going to have to exchange their property titles for State bonds. These will be redeemed capital and interest over 15 years. The interest on these bonds will be paid by two sinking funds, one for the banks and one for the industrial groups, which will be constituted by grants from the budget but also by “contributions” paid by the nationalised industries if they make any profits. Each year the State will lay down how much of the interest payments are to fall on the budget of the State and how much on the industries themselves.

For 1983 it has already been decided that, of the 5,000 million francs (about £460 million) that will be needed to pay that year’s interest on these bonds, 3,000 million francs will be provided by the Budget and 2,000 million francs from the profits of the nationalised industries. The rate of interest payable will be the same as that paid in other medium-term state bonds. As can be seen, the workers in the nationalised industries will continue to be exploited by the former owners, part of whose interest will come directly from the surplus value they produce. And this is supposed to be a step towards “socialism”!

Apart from continuing to receive a property income as interest, the former shareholders will also be getting their capital back. Each year from 1983 until 1998, when the operation will be completed, a number of bonds will be chosen by lot for redemption at their face-value. Most of the former shareholders are in fact expected to sell their compensation bonds fairly quickly so as to be able to re-invest in shares. Thus, the former shareholders will, after a brief period as government bondholders, go back to being shareholders again! The bonds will end up in the hands of those financial institutions which specialise in investing in government bonds.

It has been estimated that the government will have to pay out over the 15 years a total of about 40,000 million francs (about £3,670 million) as compensation—and this is only the cost of redeeming the bonds: the interest payments (another 40.000 million francs) are in addition to this. The government upped the compensation terms (the price the state is to pay to buy up the industries it wanted to take over) twice, once on its own initiative and then again following the ruling of the Constitutional Council. The capitalists concerned must be quite happy with the final terms for the sale of their industries to the state, helped considerably as they were by the obstructionist parliamentary tactics of the opposition Gaullist and Giscardian parties, many of whose members and leaders have close connections with the business world.

The other great change often promised (but never put into practice) in connection with nationalisation is what used to be called “industrial democracy”, now revived by Benn and the Labour Party under the name of “workers’ control”. In France the term is autogestion (“self-management”) and is the official policy of the PS. In fact it is their (mistaken) definition of socialism: a society where the most important means of production would be nationalised and run by management committees composed of representatives of the workers, consumers and the government. But this would not be socialism because production for sale on a market with a view to profit would continue and the management committees, however democratically chosen, would still have to run the industry in accordance with the logic of the capitalist economy: keeping costs, including wages, down so as to remain competitive, making profits, accumulating capital, and so on.

But in any event the Mitterand government is only taking a token step in this direction. The existing elected works councils will be consulted more often and will be given more information. A number of so-called “workers’ representatives” (trade union bosses) have been appointed to the boards of the new nationalised companies, but real power will be in the hands of the government-appointed managing directors.

Even if it wasn’t just a façade, such “participation” in the organisation of their own exploitation, dressed up as an extension of democracy, is something workers in France and elsewhere would be well advised to refuse even from a simple trade union point of view. It blurs and is in fact meant to blur—the fundamental conflict of interest between wage-labour and capital which is built into capitalism. As long as capitalism lasts workers and their trade unions should avoid getting involved in the management of industry and should stick to being a permanent opposition to "management” (i.e. the owners or their agents) over wages and working conditions.

Adam Buick (Luxemburg)