Letter: Communists and Kings (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communists and Kings

It was of course very wrong of the Morning Star to have published an attack on any aspect of the capitalist State, it should know that only the SPGB is allowed to do that. At any rate that is the opinion of the SPGB. Indeed the outside cover of your March issue should have read “Royalty, Rates, Taxes and the Working Class, Tzar Brezhnev and the Jews, Do They Matter?”, since without rates, taxes and Tzar Brezhnev capitalism would still exist as your pages of Socialist Theory make clear.

I notice that although you do not approve of the Morning Star article you nevertheless follow its lead in exposing the character of royalty. You in the end come down in its support because it gives “pageantry and a show”. If they did not get this some workers would have to start reading the Socialist Standard to find out why Royalty was not Rubbish.

Tom Braddock 

East Preston

Reply:

Obviously the Socialist Standard makes you wild by being right. If you are prone to the Morning Star, that is understandable; though, curiously enough, we never mentioned the Morning Star in the article you object to. We do not think, either, that anyone else thought the final paragraph “came down in support” of royalty.

However, since you draw the Morning Star to our attention, we will say that no notice need be taken of it. First, because it does not attack the capitalist state. It supports it in Russia all the time and elsewhere some of the time, as expedient. Second, because Communist parties and papers are quite prepared to support national figureheads. The Morning Star's predecessor The Daily Worker in 1947 (21st June) wrote of the present Queen’s 21st birthday:

The dignity of a modern state can only be met when its titular head is chosen from among its most eminent citizens.

In July 1938 the French Communist paper L’Humanite welcomed a visit to Paris by the King and Queen of England in these terms:

We applaud the visit of these rulers in the measure to which it is devoted to this end . . . Our good feeling is extended to that England which fights on the front of Collective Security; that England in the name of whom leading bourgeois such as Lord Cecil, Churchill, Lloyd George, and prelates like the Dean of Canterbury, pronounce regularly such grave warnings . . .

And haven’t you heard yet that a royal visit to Moscow is in the air? Tom Braddock, you are confused.

Editors.

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.]

Socialism through the looking glass, or wage-labour as liberation (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone on the left in France during the past two decades cannot help but be struck by the constant references to the need for the Labour Movement to defend, yes defend, wage-labour (le salariat.) The problem here is partly that of translation. For English speakers, a ‘salaried worker’ is an ’employee’, often someone who has a certain security of employment. Salaried staff were paid monthly by direct payments into a bank account. Le salariat retains something of this flavour. In Britain in the sixties, indeed, parents were happy if their offspring could get the qualifications needed to work in a bank, earning a salary; regular work, a permanent contract, good pay, and the chance of finding accommodation. Salaried work was what got you out of the uncertainties of hawking yourself around for factory work in return for low earnings paid in cash. Those old enough to recall the sensation caused by Clive Jenkins when he succeeded in recruiting white-collared salaried staff into the trade union movement know all about this. However, that was then. Nowadays, insecure and poor pay has made massive inroads into the world of white-collar employment.

Similar considerations hold for France of course. But in this case the increasingly frequent inroads into employment conditions undertaken by the capitalists have led some Communist Party intellectuals to openly defend le salariat notably against the promotion of the pseudo-independence of workers in the so-called ‘gig economy’. As a result, calls for ‘l’abolition du salariat’ have become inaudible, if not incomprehensible. The CGT trade union literature which once considered the elimination of le salariat as tantamount to the abolition of capitalism now call for the former’s consolidation. Take for example, the 2002 leaflet by Bernard Vasseur Vers l’après capitalisme (‘Towards post-capitalism’). Or the very popular writings of Bernard Friot, very much the leading expert of social security on the left. In these publications there is the idea that le salariat represents something of a power independent of capitalist relations of production, French workers having succeeded in imposing preconditions on the employment of labour which have not only improved the bargaining power of workers but largely conquered a bulwark against exploitation. They have done this collectively by partially socialising the wage itself through reforms based on the contributory welfare system, unemployment insurance, family allowances, municipal housing and so on. In all this, the building of the code du travail has been a major vector in this progressive tendency.

Doubtless, the popularity of the notion of le salariat is due to the massive entry of women into paid work and the expansion of the service sector. This has undermined traditional trade union practices largely centred on manual workers or their French equivalent, les ouvriers. In France (but not exclusively) ouvrièrisme tended to be heavily gendered even when practised by the so-called Marxist left and white-collar workers were seen as doubtful class allies. The notion of le salarié by contrast encompasses both white and blue-collar work irrespective of gender and is clearly a step towards the notion of a wage-earning class. Nonetheless it creates its own peculiar difficulties. For example, it implies that militants have to wrestle with the intricacies of social policy given that the state is necessarily more heavily involved in the social reproduction of this class than in the simple cash nexus of nineteenth-century exploitation. The remaining confusions probably derive from the difficulties involved in capturing the reality of an exploitation which was once exclusively identified with noisy factories in the private sector.

True, however, to their often eccentric reading of Marx, the French Communists of this tendency have signally failed to rise to this challenge, their confusions over the centrality of exchange value production leading them to badly fudge its relationship to wage-labour (see Alain Bihr ’Universaliser le salaire ou supprimer le salariat. A propos de “L’enjeu du salaire” de Bernard Friot). As a result, when wage-labour is identified with the separation of the worker from the means of production and subsistence, they are surprisingly silent. Perhaps this is a tribute to the all-encompassing nature of the French ‘welfare state’, now up for grabs. For whatever reason, students of le salariat on the French side of the Channel are more prompt to mask the reality of lack of property than English social historians. Hardly surprising then that the former civil servants enjoy an almost legendary status as exemplary salariés largely because they benefit from the security of lifetime employment. It’s surely not an accident that many of the policy recommendations outlined by Friot and his collaborators read like an extension of the terms and condition of public service employment into the private sector. With politicians tending increasingly to move the cursor in the opposite direction, it is surely important to devote some effort to understanding the link between capitalist growth and the reality of dispossession.

So what then is le salariat? 

Much of the conceptual groundwork for this thinking is to be found in Robert Castel’s Les metamorphoses de la question sociale. Une chronique du salariat published in 1995. The American edition, which heroically translates ‘salariat’ as wage-labour, tends to over-determine the notion but is fairly uncontroversial. Castel usefully traced the development of wage-labour from its origins on the fringes of medieval society where (artisanal) work took place in organised guilds operating in parallel to peasant production. Such forms of labour were gradually supplanted by employment in its modern form as factory work although semi-artisanal forms of labour persisted and indeed still do. Marx, of course, concentrated his attention on the situation of those who begin their working lives as the sellers of labour-power on the open market. Similarly, in constructing his own particular genealogy, Castel (rightly) laid stress on the long transitional phase where a certain class of workers were pitchforked into vagrancy as a result of the dissolving of feudal relationships. Here propertyless workers emerged as vulnerable vagabonds and marginals; the despised scum of a traditional culture.

The singularity of Castel’s approach to this historical development is the emphasis he placed on the long period in France wherein semi-artisanal forms of labour co-existed with the continuation of small and medium-scale peasant holdings. Because the French economy was less subject to the large-scale enclosures typical of English agriculture, the mobility of the French working class tended to follow seasonal patterns of inter-sectional mobility. Much of the large-scale economic development took place in the rural hinterland where wannabe capitalists tended to rely upon sub-contractors and worker-peasants, classes which defy easy definition. The sharp cut-offs and sudden take-off into capitalist industrialism of the English case are not so evident in France.

In this context, employers were often sub-contracting entrepreneurs hiring members of peasant households. But there were also forms of labour involving skilled artisanal workers in the urban areas and a fluctuating group of nomadic semi-artisanal workers who dovetailed seasonal patterns of work in agriculture with occasional remunerative work in the urban areas. With the advent of industrialisation French workers managed to transform what could have been an unpromising situation of economic dependence by mobilising what civic advantages were available.

Following the French revolution, the existing code civil was extended to produce the famous code du travail. This was a movement towards a legal framework which clearly identified employers as the agents responsible for undertaking the tasks outlined in a work contract based on legal equality. (In England, of course, the relations between workers and their employers were governed by the class-biased Master and Servant Acts backed up by the severely repressive Poor Laws.) Although the emphasis placed upon legal égalité, took the form of an explicit recognition of the subordination of the wage-earner to the employer, this subordination was limited by co-managed industrial courts.

In the case of some workers, a very varied population of workers (ouvriers) recruited by sub-contractors into piece-work were increasingly paid time-wages and identified as salariés. The employers were obliged to accept their legal responsibilities towards their workers and could no longer rely upon management through intermediaries. Over time, the collective power of the working class has consolidated around trade unions which have skilfully used these legal structures to good effect. This has meant that in France permanent contracts still operate as the standard of employment in industrial tribunals and employers often have difficulty in opting out of their obligations in this respect. This is very much the reality that the notion of the salariat (or the société salariale) seeks to capture.

The current situation

This being said, Castel later traced the unremitting efforts of the French capitalist class to weaken the collective strength represented by le salariat with legislation aimed at creating a more precarious class of hired hands. (The list is long.) Against this the French Communists involved in promoting the salariat are really all involved in defending the way wage-labour has been constructed around integrative measures. This is a good way to avoid welfare-statism, or the patronising idea that wage earners as helpless workers need protection against poverty. After all, many of the measures identified with ‘welfare’ were constitutive of wage-labour and its reproduction. To a large extent, their elimination is often not at all on the agenda. On the other hand, de-naturalizing is more often than not the objective sought after.

Thus, for example, the existing pension schemes in France were better defended against budget cuts by arguing that they were in fact a continuation of the salary of the worker rather than depicting them as deferred savings granted to the elderly poor. In the same way, unemployment insurance can be seen as nothing more than a continuation of the salary during the inevitable downswings of economic activity and redeployment. Similar things can be said about family allowances which, for all their shortcomings, constitute a real salary capable of replacing the haphazard pseudo-equality of nominal wages. These are some of the more interesting points contained in the notion of the salariat, students of Titmuss would do well to note.

These points being made, does all this mean that wage-earners should be satisfied with their current position within global capitalism? Obviously not. Interestingly, Friot himself promotes measures aimed at the abolition of what he describes as ‘lucrative property’ presumably meaning private ownership of the means of production. But this is precisely the axis around which the relationship between capital and wage-labour turns, the workers being obliged by their slim grasp on the means of subsistence to sell their labour-power to employers bent on the expansion of capital. This is the point we already raised. At the moment, the impersonal forces operating within the sector of finance capital are imposing conditions of work which have more to do with profitability than with the preservation of le salariat, however defined. So to some extent the fraught relationship between capital and labour is being dragged backwards towards the conditions of the nineteenth century.

M.M.

Editorial: Looking Back and Looking Forward (1945)

Editorial from the March 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

We may reasonably hope that our Party Conference at the end of March will be the last to be held while the war in Europe is still in progress. It is an appropriate moment to take stock and glance back to the time when the last world war was nearing its end. The columns of the Socialist Standard in 1918 contain plenty of material to provoke useful contrasts and to enable us to weigh up our prospects in the future.

There are likenesses as well as contrasts in the two situations. First the cynical observer may provisionally conclude that “wars to end war” tend to get longer and worse, and to leave the world in ever greater disorder. He may observe, too, that the active and increasing opposition to war that asserted itself in all countries in the later phases of the last one is missing now. This can be explained by the surface changes that have taken place in the administration of capitalism and by the enormous advance made by the ruling class in their technique for keeping the working class quiet. Thirty years ago the ruling class, with their figureheads of kings, czars and kaisers, were only beginners at the craft of using labour leaders and the phraseology of the labour movement as means of allaying and blunting working class discontent. Under the strain of that war, masses of war-weary soldiers and workers came to feel hatred, mistrust and contempt for the ruling class politicians in their respective countries. This time it is all looked after. No capitalist government that knows the tricks of the trade would now try to rule in times of stress without its ministers drawn from labour ranks, and its contacts with the trade unions and political labour organisations. By this means and by bountiful promises of social reforms (not to mention the official adoption in some countries of the title “Socialist”) the ruling class have delayed the storm of discontent. But have they weathered it finally? We are confident they have not. Capitalist exploitation and capitalist contradictions have not been eliminated merely because the iniquitous system has been labelled “Socialism” or because labour leaders grace it with their presence in Cabinets and with their blessing.

One aspect of this change is that no events have occurred this time capable of stimulating the working class and giving them new (if illusory) hope such as the war-time revolts in Germany and the overthrow of Russian Czardom. A sign of the times is that with Russia a first-class Power. represented at “Big Three” conferences, the Communist Party falls into line as defender of the Allied capitalisms (including, of course, Russian State Capitalism). Last time it was the “right wing” labour leaders (denounced by those who later formed the Communist Party) who supported capitalist campaigns to get the workers to work harder and join in the scramble for more trade. Now it is Mr. Harry Pollitt who “has sent an appeal to all his mining members to speed up coal production” (Daily Express, February 19th). The Express report continues: —

“His [Pollitt’s] more serious concern, however, is that lack of British coal supplies for devastated European countries will delay the fruits of victory, and substitution of American and South African coal supplies may permanently injure British export markets.“

In France it is the same. The Observer Paris correspondent reports (February 18th):—

“Temporarily at least, Conservatism has triumphed in France. The Provisional Government of General De Gaulle is to-day eminently Conservative. It is a Coalition Cabinet based solidly on the support of moderate Roman Catholic elements on the Right and of the Communists on the Left, for the catchword of politics in France just now is the new conservative role being played at present by the Communists.”

As if to clinch the matter, the French Communist leader Maurice Thorez recently gave an interview to a French Catholic journal Temps, in which he is quoted as declaring that Marxism “is only a dogma,” and that he is “infinitely respectful of religion.” His present slogan is “One army, one police force, one administration.” (Quoted by L’Humanité.)

Russia now, with its restored Greek Orthodox Church, its nationalist propaganda and worship of military success and pre-revolutionary national heroes, its great and growing inequality of wealth, is not the Russia that gave fire to working class discontent all over Europe at the end of the last war. A country in which, even before the Russo-German war, there were said to be 30 rouble millionaires in Moscow alone, as well as rouble multi-millionaires, is not the country to encourage the uprising of the dispossessed !

Other items in the news in 1918 strike a familiar note. The Labour Party was reconstructing itself with an eye on gaining office. The Liberals were trying to stage a comeback. The Tories were getting ready by an education bill and by their propaganda for cheaper production, to reap the fruits of victory. “Intervention” was an issue—but intervention in Russia, not in Greece.

Here are two quotations from the Socialist Standard that are as applicable to-day. The first was on the glaring deficiencies of the Trades Union Congress : —

“If the rank and file of the trade unions desire the Congress to become a useful gathering, they must drop their apathy, take an interest in its actions, and, above all, send representatives from their own ranks instead of the case-hardened officials with their dirty tricks and old ambitious, who use the Congress to crawl further into the graces—and the jobs—of the master class.” (Socialist Standard, September, 1918.)

The other concerned the urgent efforts of the Party to get funds to carry on and expand its work:—

“The failure of the capitalist system to properly meet the requirements of human society—clear to us in times of “peace”—is now, in the course of the struggle on the bloody battlefield, faintly dawning on many others of our class, and a greater opportunity, as well as a greater need, for Socialist propaganda may speedily present itself.” (Socialist Standard, May, 1918).

What about the condition of the S.P.G.B.? Our membership, small though it is, yet is very much greater than it was in the difficult period at the end of the last war. Our production of propaganda material has been likewise greater, though now we are crippled by the paper restrictions, which were far less stringent then. We have a larger head office and larger income and expenditure. We have made a beginning with the appointment of a full-time Provincial Propagandist Organiser, and hope to be able to put others in the field. Above all, we have many more young speakers and writers acquiring the experience that will make them efficient workers to spread the Party’s influence in the years to come. The harvest is there—for, despite superficial appearances to the contrary, the workers are more and more recognising the need for fundamental social change—let us therefore all resolve to do our best to reap the hardest without delay. Down with capitalism—forward to Socialism.

Vietnam-again? (1972)

From the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

If one war can be more depraved and dehumanising than another, then only in these terms is there a winner in Vietnam. For more than thirty years, virtually non-stop, Vietnam has been ravaged by the modern military hardware of rival armies. Back in 1941 the Japanese; then the British, then the French, the Vietnamese themselves, and finally the Americans. The wholesale slaughter and destruction, and the indifference to human suffering has been common to them all. The lying and hypocrisy of the politicians on all sides has been outstripped only by their gory deeds.

In the name of peace, the war steadily escalated for eight years. In the name of freedom, brutal dictators were installed and people whose “freedom” was denied burned themselves alive in protest. In the name of democracy, elections were suspended. In the name of liberation, many hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have been blown to pieces or burned alive with napalm. On the ideological pretence of stemming “communism” every conceivable horror and outrage has been practised. Regardless of how many Vietnamese were killed in the process, they had to be “saved”. The utter ruthlessness of governments purporting to be champions of the “free” world could hardly be surpassed by those of police-state dictatorships.

Humiliation & Protest

America has suffered the humiliation of having to bring members of her armed forces to trial, accused of atrocities against the people they were supposed to be defending, while those atrocities were condoned by the then deputy leader of British Labour government. We have witnessed the spectacle of returning military personnel denouncing the war and their own brutal conduct. The American Army has had to face the desertion of tens of thousands of its men, while the scale of drug-taking was so vast among those who remained in the war, it had to be virtually ignored.

There have been massive demonstrations against the war, throughout America’s largest cities, with the added irony that the same coercive State apparatus which carried on the war was frequently used against the demonstrators. In Britain, as in other parts of the world, there were also demonstrations. The British “left” which organised the protests here were not opposed to the war as such, but were anti-America, and favoured a Northern victory. They dragged out all the anti-working-class arguments about national independence and home-rule to justify their support for the bloody butchers on the other side. As with CND before them, the protest reached fever pitch and then fizzled out. Since October 1968 there has been hardly a peep out of them. Such movements inevitably dissipate the enthusiasm of the workers who support them. Capitalism mocks all such limited objectives when its vital interests are at stake. The tragedy is that this same enthusiasm coupled with Socialist ideas could rid the world of the scourge of capitalism itself.

Amazing Gracey

As the misery and the bombing drag on towards the end of another year, it is worth remembering that it was the post-war British Labour government who restarted the war after taking over from the Japanese in 1945. In September of that year 20,000 British troops arrived, and General Gracey was set up as military dictator.

Despite the fact that the Vietminh (the forerunners of today’s Vietcong) had control of Saigon, the Labour government co-operated with the French ruling class, who wanted their colony back. The Labour government helped ship back French troops. General Gracey closed down the press and used the Japanese army to post a proclamation saying: “I hereby warn all wrongdoers, especially looters and saboteurs of public property and those carrying out similar activities, that they will be summarily shot.”

After arming former French prisoners who immediately started shooting up the Vietminh, Gracey disarmed them, and used Japanese forces to put down the guerrilla war he had sparked off. He ordered British troops: “Always use the maximum force to ensure wiping out any hostiles we may meet”. Like the Americans, the British had no way of knowing “hostiles” from innocent people. A British and Japanese military operation followed before the British left it to the French to continue the slaughter in March 1946. It was thus that “liberation” came to the people of Vietnam. Even the great American butcher General MacArthur (who wanted to use A-bombs in Korea) condemned as “ignoble” the conduct of the British Labour government in Indo-China.

With Friends Like These …

The French government carried on the war for eight years with financial aid from America, and the active support of the French Communist Party, whose deputies consistently voted for increased arms expenditure, in full knowledge that the arms were being used for killing their own “comrades” in Indochina. During 1946 Charles Tillon, a Communist, was in fact Minister for Armaments. These same deputies including Thorez, the C.P. Vice-Premier, voted unanimous congratulations to General Leclere after the bombardment of Haiphong where 6,000 civilians were killed.

On the other side, Ho Chi Minh wasted no time proving himself at least as treacherous and murderous as his adversaries. After running phony elections in January 1946, where 70 seats were promised to non-Communists (provided they did not compete in the election) he spent the next ten months liquidating 202 out of 444 elected representatives. The Vietminh carried out wholesale murder of opponents, in particular Trotskyists. One popular Trotskyist leader Ta Tu Thau, had three trials and three acquittals before he was shot. As a result of Cardinal Spellman’s campaign of propaganda half a million Catholics left North Vietnam in the mid-1950’s. This helped create serious food shortages, which led to peasant uprisings in late 1956. Ho Chi Minn’s army crushed the “rebels” and killed or deported 6,000 farmers.

. . . who needs the Enemy?

The Chinese ruling class whilst pouring military aid into the North and conducting a propaganda war against “American Imperialism” has supplied steel for American army and air bases. The Russian bosses have done much the same thing, trading with both sides, and there have been the usual hypocritical accusations and counter-accusations hurled between the Chinese and Rusian rulers.

If Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon have been the wililng tools of American capitalism in prosecuting the war, (backed up by Wilson and Heath on behalf of British capitalism) Mao Tse Tung, Brezhnev and Ho Chi Minh were as soaked in the blood of the working class as their western counterparts.

Wilson’s Labour government supplied some of the napalm which American forces used to burn alive so many thousands of men, women, and children. They also trained South Vietnamese forces and built bases for the U.S. air force.

Workers Have no Country

If anyone doubts that the sordid economic motives of capitalism lie behind the war in Vietnam, the U.S. News and World Report for the 16 April 1954 said: “One of the world’s richest areas is open to the winner in Indo-China — tin, rubber, rice, key strategic raw materials are what the war is really about” (quoted in Solidarity Pamphlet, The Rape of Vietnam, from which other material in this article has been taken).

The fact that the world has absorbed the emotional shock waves of the war in Vietnam, and a generation has lived with the stock-piling of H-bombs, is a measure of the terrifying extent of capitalism’s conditioning. It is also a damning indictment of this system of society.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties including the World Socialist Party of the U.S. have consistently opposed all wars. Taking our stand on the basis of the interests of the world’s working class, we condemned the two world wars as thieves’-quarrels of rival capitalist classes. We declared that no war is worth the shedding of a single drop of workers’ blood. We re-affirm that attitude. Vietnam is likewise a thieves’ war. The workers and peasants own no country on either side. They will find themselves as firmly shackled to the juggernaut of exploitation, whoever emerges as their new masters. Neither can “peace” be long secure, for fresh conflicts and future wars are inseparable from continuing capitalism. Vast air bases and thousands of planes stand in readiness to continue the war, despite the much-trumpeted withdrawal of ground forces. More than three million dead for nothing. And how many more millions will be slaughtered before the working class gets rid of the slaughter-house, remains a very open question.

Harry Baldwin

Communist Party tactics exposed (1958)

From the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are often told by members of the so-called “Communist” Party, in their endeavours to excuse the strange somersaults of a Party professing working class interests that such behaviour is merely “tactical manoeuvres” on the political front.

The latest sample of—“Tactics, Comrade” comes from the upheaval in France among the ruling clique over their difficulties in Algeria. It shows just what anti-working class actions this tactic can lead to.

We take the following extracts from their own beloved organ—that fighter for working class CONFUSION—the Daily Worker of May 17th: —

“The special powers asked for by the Premier Pflimlin— which would automatically lapse if the Government fell— gave the authorities the right to close any public buildings, to impose a curfew, the right of search, the censorship and control of the Press, Radio and other means of communication, the right to order house arrest, to forbid movement of traffic or people.

“The group of 150 Communist M.P.s decided before the National Assembly Meeting this morning to vote for the powers under the present circumstances. Jacques Duclos, leader of the group, told the National Assembly! . . .

“The danger is great—the government of the Republic must present a solid front. The Communist Party will take part with all its forces in the defence of the Republican institutions. Considering the circumstances, the Communist group will vote for those special powers." (Daily Worker, 17th May, 1958.)

If voting for such powers of coercion as outlined in the Daily Worker report has anything to do with the struggle of the working class for Socialism—then the moon certainly must be made of “green cheese! ”

One more indictment of the Communists is contained in the following telegram sent by the British Communist Party to the Communist Party of France:—

"In this hour of grave menace of the renewed offensive of Fascist and Militarist reaction in France, we express to you, dear Comrades of the French Communist Party, our solidarity with you and with all people in the fight for the defence of democracy.

“The shameful attempted coup of the same reactionary militarist elements who betrayed France to Nazism and who torture Algerian Patriots, has aroused universal anger and disgust in Britain.

“The immediate response and leadership of the French Communist Party has won Universal admiration. The interests of the French and British peoples are indissolubly united in the fight against Fascism.

“Signed by—John Gollan, Harry Pollitt and R. Palme Dutt.” (Daily Worker, 17th May, 1958.)

Little remains to be said. From the above it will be seen by all workers understanding Socialism that the signatures to this telegram could just as easily have been —Winston Churchill, D. Eisenhower and Earl Attlee! Indeed, the phraseology is remniscent of the Churchillian exhortations in the days when “Comrade” Stalin was his ally.

G. R. Russell

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).

50 Years Ago: Socialists and General de Gaulle (2008)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are opposed to what de Gaulle stands for on principle, because he stands for French capitalism, and Socialists do not support any capitalist faction anywhere or at any time. But the Socialist principle on which we oppose de Gaulle just as imperatively lines us up against the French political parties that oppose de Gaulle, the so-called “Communists” and the minority of the French party misnamed Socialist (its majority supports de Gaulle).

The immediate issue which so bewildered de Gaulle’s opponents of a few weeks ago that many of them ended by voting him into power, was the alleged “defence of democracy.” Faced with a threat of civil war from the rebel generals and French settlers in Algeria and their sympathisers in France, they chose what they thought the lesser evil, making de Gaulle head of the government in the hope that he could and would control the generals. The French Communist Party, which defends the Russian dictatorship and still applauds the bloody suppression of Hungarian workers by Russian troops in 1956, came out hypocritically for the “defence of democracy” against the “Fascist” de Gaulle. We need waste no words on them except to wonder whether their failure to back up their outcry against de Gaulle with something more than words may not have been due to a lurking fear—that perhaps de Gaulle may do a deal with the Russian government behind their backs.

But although the Communist Party did not change its ground while the crisis was on, the French Labourites, the so-called Socialist Party, made themselves ridiculous with a series of somersaults. Starting with a resolution not to support de Gaulle in any circumstances, they followed this with a decision to let the M.P.’s have a free hand either to follow their leader Mollet, who backed de Gaulle, or to vote against him; then another decision a few days later to let them abstain from voting on the question of handing over power to de Gaulle. With Mollet and others of their leaders in de Gaulle’s government the party is split into nearly equal halves; with the likelihood that more will swing over to Mollet.

(From front page article by ‘H’, Socialist Standard, July, 1958)

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)

The French Non-Revolution (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago this month students were erecting barricades and battling with the police in the streets of Paris. Over nine million workers were on strike. Industry was at a standstill with most factories occupied by strikers.

This social explosion had started at the beginning of May when the government, hoping to stop the student unrest that had been growing over the preceding months from getting out of hand, ordered the police to arrest certain student activists including the most prominent. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, known as Danny-le-Rouge. The result was to provoke the very thing they had been hoping to avoid. Barricades went up in the student quarter on the left bank of the river Seine and fierce street battles took place on the night of 10-11 May as the police tried to reconquer the area, dispensing indiscriminate brutality to all who got in their way.

To protest against this police brutality against the students the trade unions called a one-day general strike for the following Monday 13 May. Many workers — wage and salary earners had their own grievances against the government, which had been treating them in much the same way as Thatcher has been treating workers in Britain since she came to power — did not return to work the next day or came out again later in the week and a full-scale general strike, with factory occupations, which was to last several weeks, spread throughout the country.

Some thought that France was on the brink of a revolution that would sweep away capitalism and usher in workers' control of society. But this was an illusion. In the absence of a socialist-minded working class, the most that could have happened was the collapse of the Gaullist regime and its replacement by some left-of-centre government of capitalism similar to that then in office in Britain under Harold Wilson.

De Gaulle himself had come to power as a result of an army and settlers' revolt that had begun in Algeria ten years previously. In terms of the then existing constitution — that of the Fourth Republic — the way he came to power was perfectly illegal but such changes of regime by extra-parliamentary means have been a frequent feature of French history since the French revolution of 1789. Since that time there have in fact been a number of such changes — France has had five republics, two empires, two monarchies in addition to Vichy France under Marshal Petain — and this is what the term revolution has come to mean in French politics.

Such a "revolution" — resulting in the restoration of the Fourth Republic or in the establishment of a sixth one — was indeed a possibility in May 1968 but would have had nothing in common with what socialists mean by revolution — a change in the basis of society. From a socialist point of view, a change of political regime carried out by action on the streets is no more relevant than a change of government carried out by electoral means. Both are merely ways of rearranging the political administration of capitalism. Both leave the capitalist basis of society unchanged.

In any event the opponents of the Gaullist regime — from the student activists to the left politicians — underestimated the determination of De Gaulle and the solidity of his regime. When at the end of May he disappeared from Paris, opposition politicians thought that he was about to go and began to stake rival claims to the posts they would like to occupy in the new government. De Gaulle had in fact gone to Germany secretly to meet the leaders of the Army. On his return, on 30 May he immediately went on radio and TV to announce that a general election would be held in June in which the issue would be: maintenance of the Gaullist regime or a left-wing government dominated by the French Communist Party (which was at that time indeed much stronger than the non-Communist left). Faced with this choice, in the election which took place on 23 and 30 June, the voters gave De Gaulle a landslide victory. The May events had resulted, not in the overthrow of the Gaullist regime but in its consolidation. Of course they also brought university reform and wage increases and other benefits for the workers but as an attempt to change the political regime in France by extra-parliamentary means May 1968 was a complete flop.

This wasn't evident immediately, at least not to the student and extreme-left activists. They argued that it would have succeeded if only the workers had taken the next step and instead of just occupying the factories had started operating them without the bosses or if only the French Communist Party (PCF) and the trade union centre it controlled (the CGT) had not betrayed the revolution by taking up a moderate, constitutional line. The Trotskyists put on their scratchy old gramophone record about the revolution having failed for want of a vanguard party to lead the workers. More interesting was the attitude of Cohn-Bendit both at the time and later.

In a book written with his brother Gabriel in August 1968. entitled Leftwing Radicalism. Cure for Communism 's Senile Disease (an obvious play on the title of Lenin's pamphlet Left wing Communism. An Infantile Disease which the PCF quoted against him and other "leftists"). Cohn-Bendit argued that the Gaullist regime could have been toppled on the night of 24-25 May if the student demonstrators who had moved over to the right bank of the Seine had stayed there after burning the Stock Exchange (or rather starting a fire inside it since stock exchanges, being built of marble, don't burn easily) and had gone on to capture the ministries of Finance and Justice a few streets away instead of returning to the left bank.

Today, however, he argues that what the opponents of the Gaullist regime should have done in May 1968 was to have called for a general election in mid-May at the height of the factory and university occupations which he reckons they would easily have won. He has even gone on record as saying that the biggest mistake he has ever made was "not to have called for an election sooner in 1968" (The Economist 14 February 1987). In other words, Dany the Red, the student revolutionary, now says that the way to have overthrown De Gaulle was through elections. As a member of the German Green Party he now actively participates in electoral activity and has even been their candidate for the post of mayor of Frankfurt.

As a matter of fact this is not all that much of a U-turn since, even in May 1968, Cohn-Bendit was well aware that the student movement, despite its revolutionary rhetoric, was in practice struggling not to replace capitalism by socialism but to replace Gaullism by some left-wing government. So it is not really a big change, that he should now be saying a better way to have achieved this would have been through the ballot box. When he spoke about "revolutionary action" he did not mean action to overthrow capitalism but merely street demonstrations, seizure of public buildings and strikes to overthrow De Gaulle. This emerges clearly, for instance, from the interview the pretentious philosopher and ex-PCF fellow traveller Jean-Paul Sartre had with him in the middle of the events and before his expulsion from France on 22 May as an "undesirable" alien (his parents came from Germany) and which was published in Le Nouvel Observateur on 20 May. Here he stated clearly that the aim was "the overthrow of the regime". explaining that in his view:

  A radical change in the structure of our society would only be possible, if, for example, a serious economic crisis, the action of a powerful workers' movement, and vigorous student activity suddenly converged. These conditions have not all been realised today. At best we can hope to bring down the government. We must not dream of destroying bourgeois society (translation in The Student Revolt, Panther. 1968).

But to say that all that could be done in the circumstances was to bring down the government without destroying capitalism is tantamount to saying that all that could be done was to replace one government of capitalism by another. Cohn-Bendit did not shrink from this conclusion:

  Suppose the workers hold out too and the regime falls. What will happen then? The left will come to power. Everything will then depend on what it does. If it changes the system — I must admit I doubt if it will — it will have an audience, and all will be well. But if we have a Wilson-style government, with or without the Communists, which only proposes minor reforms and adjustments, then the extreme left will regain its strength and we shall have to go on posing the real problems of social control, workers’ power, and so on.

So Cohn-Bendit was lucid enough to recognise that, in the circumstances obtaining in May-June 1968, the only possible alternative to the Gaullist regime was some left-wing government. In the end this did come but 13 years later, when Mitterrand was elected President and appointed a Wilson-style government with PCF Ministers. As was inevitable, since capitalism can never be made to function in the interest of the wage and salary earners, this government failed miserably to solve working class problems — just as it would have done had it come to power in 1968.

This being so, it is pertinent to ask if raising the issue of a change of regime was not a diversion from the economic objectives of the general strike such as higher wages and better conditions. Actually, the French working class behaved in a remarkably intelligent way: refusing to get themselves killed in an attempt to replace the Gaullist regime by a government of left-wing politicians, which would have brought them no benefit, they profited from the momentary weakness of the regime in place to extract higher wages and a number of other concessions.

Naturally the student and political activists (Trotskyists. Maoists and other assorted followers of Ho Chi Minh. Che Guevara and Castro) found this a rather timid attitude and blamed the trade unions for betraying the workers who, according to them, were waiting for a lead to take action to overthrow both Gaullism and capitalism. But it is clear that it was the unions who were more representative of working-class opinion and had the more realistic if less exciting attitude. Workers are not as stupid as Leninists imply in their contemptuous dictum that ’’left to themselves, workers are only capable of acquiring a trade union consciousness". Trade union consciousness alone is indeed far from socialist consciousness but it is far in advance of Leninism. As one wit has put it, it would be more correct to say that, left to themselves, students are only capable of acquiring a Leninist consciousness.

May '68 was, however, rather more than a general strike for economic ends sparked off by student riots. It also had a deep and lasting effect on social attitudes in France — decline of authoritarianism and paternalism in all fields — and it led everywhere to an interest in radical social ideas. Books by and about Marx as well as Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick and other radical thinkers became readily available (alongside, it is true, less helpful works by Trotsky). All sorts of ideas came to be discussed. Tariq Ali. who saw himself as the British equivalent of Dany-le-Rouge. even declared in June 1968 on a television programme about the student revolt "we believe in the abolition of money". Naturally, with such ideas springing up spontaneously, socialists were able to get our point of view over much more easily than normally. The revival of genuine socialist ideas may prove to be the most lasting historical effect of May 1968. In any event, we are still working to ensure that it is.

Adam Buick

News in Review: Maurice Thorez (1964)

The News in Review column from the September 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Maurice Thorez

Maurice Thorez, who led the French Communists when they were the largest political party in France, died last July. His career is a classical example of the Communist technique of forming alliances of conveniences, of employing any means to achieve their ends, of compromising and of plain double-dealing.

Thorez’s early years followed a familiar pattern of agitation and imprisonment. In the middle of this he was elected to the French Parliament and in 1930 became the party's Secretary-General. Then came these highlights in Communist history:—

• 1934. French Communist Party join the Popular Front Movement, in alliance with Leon Blum’s “Socialists” and Daladier’s “ Radicals.”
• 1936. Communists refuse seats in Blum's government, back strikers against the government.
• 1939. Communists support Russo/German Pact of non-aggression and friendship. Deladier declares Communist Party illegal. Thorez called up but deserts to Russia.
• 1940. Thorez and Duclos sign appeal which attacks the “warmongering French Bourgeoisie ” urges overthrow of Leon Blum. but omits to condemn the Nazi occupiers of France. Communist Party tries to obtain permission of German Occupation forces to resume publication of the banned paper Humanite.
• 1941 German invasion of Russia. French Communists join forces with de Gaulle, who excuses Thorez’s desertion and makes him Minister of State. 
• 1946/7. Thorez serves as Minister of State in governments under Gouin, Bidault and Ramadier until alliance between Communists, “Socialists” and MRP breaks down under the strain of Indo-China war.

Since then, the fortunes of the French Communist Party have declined. No longer are they the country’s largest party, no longer have they any prospects of filling important ministries in a government.

One of the men—Bidault—they once supported as an act of Left Wing expediency is now the darling of the Right-Wing extremists. Another—de Gaulle—is virtually dictator of France.

One thing, however, remains. The French Communists still trim their sails to catch the lighter breeze from Moscow, still recast their policies overnight to suit the interests of the Russian government.

This is established Communist policy all over the world. The Communists defend it by arguing that it is intended to gain working class support, and to elect a Communist government which will then introduce Socialism.

This policy has always been theoretically wrong and has been shown up as hopeless in practice. In many countries it has been exposed and France, where Thorez left a party in the depths of impotence and futility but still churning out the the old confusion, is one of them.


Meaning of affluence

One of the myths which have helped to buoy up British capitalism over recent years has been the great illusion of Affluence.

This “Affluence” has had some gaps in it glaring enough to be spotted by even the most deluded worker. Equally obvious should have been the mean standards by which working class conditions have been judged.

A cramped, nondescript little house which is being bought on a lifetime’s mortgage; a mass produced car at the kerbside; a television set. These are what add up to “affluence.”

How the ruling class—or the more perceptive of them—must chuckle at this massive deception! Because they are the people who know what affluence really means. They live in style, in what may fairly be described as houses. They do not fear the prospect of sickness, or unemployment, or old age, as do the “affluent” working class.

Consider, for example, the case of Mr. Michael Fitzgerald Heathcoat-Amory, ager 22, address Oswaldkirk Hall, Yorkshire. This young man’s income at the moment is £11,000 a year—interest from a trust fund left by an uncle who was killed in the war—and what the Daily Telegraph described as ". . . a large sum from other sources.”

But there has recently been some rearrangement in the affairs of Mr. Heathcoat- Amory. As the result of a High Court ruling, he will now receive a lump sum of about £175,000, which is around 65 per cent. of the original trust fund. The balance— about £85,000—will remain in trust, accumulating interest to be inherited by any children Mr. Heathcoat-Amory may have.

Now this is Affluence. And nothing done for it, by the young man or his children yet unborn, except to be conceived in the right womb, and born in the right room at the right time.

We have, of course, come across Mr. Heathcoat-Amory's name before. He is the nephew of the Mr. Derek Heathcoat-Amory who made his name as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who fed the pigeon on his window sill on Budget Day. The Chancellor’s job partly consists of trying to keep British capitalism prosperous by urging the workers not to press wage claims.

It is obvious that the Heathcoat-Amorys know it all—about poverty and affluence and about where they come from.


The Stock Exchange

What's that you're reading son?

It’s an ad. about die Stock Exchange- jolly interesting.

What’s it say?

Well Dad, it's written like a chat between a boy and his father. The boy’s doing some lessons at school on the Stock Exchange and he’s asking his Dad about them.

School, eh?

Yes Dad, and a posh one it sounds, too —boys called This Minor and That Major and their fathers are jobbers and things like that and I know that’s posh because the ad. says they're the people stockbrokers buy shares from and sell them to.

That’s real interesting, son. Anything else?

Well, it says the Stock Exchange benefits us all, Dad. And we all invest in it I know you pay the insurance man every week but you never told me that that makes you an investor. We must be posh! Think I’ll add Major to my surname.

Hang on, son. That isn’t why I take out an insurance. I couldn’t care less what they do with my premiums; I’ve got to pay them because on my money I’ve got to put something by for when I’m sick or when 1 retire. If there weren't insurance firms I’d probably keep it in an old sock or something.

You’re not like the fathers in this ad., then?

That's it, son.

Anyway, I suppose if you were an investor getting all those profits you wouldn’t really need an insurance policy or anything?

As they say in this ad., son, you’re catching on quick.

What’s it all about then, Dad?

Well, it’s true that I can invest in stocks and shares if I want to. It’s like the old song; if I didn’t eat I’d have money to burn.

But you might get dividends, Dad.

I might. Three or four per cent of what I’d invested, perhaps. I might even make a bit of money buying shares when the price was low and selling them when it was high . . .

But that cuts the other way. If 1 may say so, Dad, you might buy when the price was high and sell when it was low—so you’d lose money.

Correct But whatever happened I could never expect to make very much. How much can I afford to invest? And what sort of dividend or capital gain, as they call it, would I make on it? How long would that last if I got the sa . . . sorry, if I became redundant?

Not long. Who does make money on the Stock Exchange, then?

Just like in any other form of gambling —the big gamblers. But the dividends come from the profits which are made by people like me going out to work for an employer. And you, when you’re old enough to work.

What else comes out of the profits?

Well, an employer has lots of things to pay out of them—rent, interest on loans, perhaps, government taxes, and so on.

So where does the Stock Exchange come in, Dad?

Well, it only deals in the stocks and shares, which are the legal documents which give the right to the dividends. And if a company or something needs more money the Stock Exchange can organise it, by selling lots more of those documents. But this doesn’t alter the fact that profit comes from the exploitation of the working people.

So the Stock Exchange isn’t really necessary?

Well, Son, I suppose that as far as capitalism goes it isn’t a bad idea. Something's got to do the work of the Stock Exchange, just like something’s got to do the work of judges and policemen and insurance salesmen and the rest If they didn’t exist, capitalism would have had to create them, in a manner of speaking. But this makes no difference to you or me, or to anyone like us. We’d be better off in a world which didn’t need all those things.

So the Stock Exchange isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in this ad., eh, Dad?

Well, Son, like I've always said, don’t believe all you read in the papers.

Rachmanism revised

Fears that Rachmanism still stalks the borough of Willesden have edged the Council there into setting up a permanent rackets watchdog to probe housing scandals. (Kilburn Times, July 10th, 1964).

Social researcher Mr. Peter Whittaker has drawn up a Black Dossier to be studied by the Milner-Holland Committee. Labour Alderman Reg Freeson says that the rackets are still increasing in the borough; “Every housing racket we investigate we get the terrifying feeling that just around the comer there is another racket we cannot put our finger on.”

Councillor Winnick was even horrified to see fresh rackets on the council list this year. This was capped by Conservative Councillor Miss Wallis, who said, “Wherever there is a shortage you will find the spivs.”

Capitalist parties have always told us that they could manage the problems of society by just a little oil there, a tightening of a screw here; no need to get rid of private property, the profit motive or the wages system. Far too sweeping they said; it may be alright for later on, but we must deal with this or that problem right now. In Willesden they are not only still dealing with the immediate problem—it appears to be getting on top of them.

Shortly these same parties will be padding from door to door cadging for votes. They will point to their glowing records of social service and endeavour, and promise to cure what they promised to cure at the last election and the one before that, and before that, and before that . . .

M.Ps. who have been conspicuous by their absence from their constituency will soon be seen smiling concernedly on street comers, knocking on doors enquiring about the needs of their electorate. They do these things because they need the workers’ votes to give them power to run capitalism as they think best

While the workers support capitalism, the problems of poverty, rackets, bad and short supply, housing, crime and unemployment will continue. In its struggles on the international field, capitalism will often produce a war of some sort or the other.

Capitalism is one big Rachmanism. Since when have even the most pious of property owners been free of the taint of exploiting others? When the Rachmanites apply strong arm methods on a small scale on their tenants, isn't this what the Big Boys do on a large scale when they wish to annexe or “ protect ” someone else’s possessions overseas?

Rackets do not begin and end in Willesden.

The VC10

The VC10 affair was one of the government’s more publicised mistakes.

Aircraft are always newsworthy objects— nothing pleases a patriotic British worker more than reports that a British ’plane is selling well abroad. He enthuses over the aircraft’s sleek lines, over its tasteful livery. To him it is a lovely object, a thoroughbred—unlike American aircraft which, he thinks, are slipshod jobs whose engines are always going wrong and whose wings cannot be relied upon not to fall off.

So it came about that the VC10 carried a lot of hopes, including those of the government and the British aircraft industry.

But the clouds gathered quickly about the new airliner and rumours grew thick until BOAC’s new chief, Sir Charles Guthrie, in the unkindest cut of all, clearly indicated that the VC10 was not the aircraft he would choose if his airline was to run at maximum profit.

The government, falling between the two stools of its own support for the new ’plane and its unequivocal instruction to Guthrie to run BOAC as a purely commercial undertaking, compromised by cutting BOACs order and holding up some of the other aircraft already on the way.

This has made the Ministry of Aviation look rather foolish.

Everyone now knows that the VC10 was expected to be a winner because it needed shorter runways than its American rivals— and could therefore land at places which were closed to the Boeing and the Douglas —but this advantage has been wiped out by the smaller airports lengthening their runways especially to take the big American jets.

Everyone now knows that the British Aircraft Corporation originally recommended building an aircraft almost identical to the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC8, but were overruled by the Ministry: who thought that an aircraft which looked different would sell better.

Everyone now knows that the VC10 was spectacular gamble and that it is Mr. Amery’s bad luck that it did not come off. But if the opposite decisions had been taken on the aircraft’s design they would also have been gambles, with no better chance of success than those which have collapsed about die government’s head.

All of capitalism's investment and production is a gamble, depending for its success upon the caprices of an uncontrollable, unpredictable market. This holds true for a barrow boy buying up a job lot of apples and for a great aircraft firm building a glamorous liner.

The VC10 will not be the last project, heavy with national pride and vested optimism, to crash before it leaves the ground

Race riots

In Harlem and in Rochester in the United States, in Singapore and in British Guiana, there are race riots—ugly, bloody affrays in which human beings suddenly descend to frantic animals.

In Germany the trials of the guards of the concentration camps, which were the obscene fruition of racial theories, drag on, revealing their sickening evidence of men at their most degraded.

In South Africa the Nationalist government continues its dour, inflexible policy of apartheid, while riot simmers beneath the thin crust of surface peace. The Australian government refuses permission for a Burgher family from Ceylon to land because they are not “. . . substantially of European origin,” but it does not say exactly what this means.

All over the world, racial strife continues. In many cases it needs only the most trivial of incidents to spark off a storm of violence and counter violence which seems almost to have no end.

Racial theories are a chronic sickness, holding back the progress of the human race to a sane and harmonious social system. Even more, they are based on the absurdest of fallacies, are shot through with inconsistencies and are usually inspired by the most primitive of suspicions.

The interests of working people in all countries are the same. Society's crying need is for the international unity of the working class to abolish capitalism and substitute for it a cooperative world of abundance and freedom.

It is the need for dignity, for progress, for survival. The people of the world can have Socialism if they want it or they can choose, in one way or another, extinction.

“Young Socialists”

Our recent feature “Labour's Young Lions” has provoked the usual sort of reaction from the Young Socialists.

The June issue of Young Guard, their paper, offers the customary sneer about ". . . the revolutionary virgins in the Socialist Party of Great Britain . . .”, but carefully avoids any attempt at dealing with our criticisms.

The Socialist Standard has replied to this, inviting Young Guard to send us a reasoned argument, which we will publish with our reply.

But the young lions are silent, and still. So far (mid-August) they have not replied.