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.]

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The latest Oxfam report which was released at 4th UN Financing for Development meet in Seville, Spain, shows that since 2015 the top 1% people in the world have amassed US$ 33.9 trillion in new wealth which is enough to end annual poverty 22 times over. 

(Scoop Independent News)

In some cases, health professionals perform FGM [Female Genital Mutilation] secretly in exchange for payment, turning the practice into a commercial enterprise, 

(People Daily)

The island is currently facing its worst economic crisis since the 1959 revolution. Long and daily power cuts, scarce internet connection, food and medicine shortages, and high prices are the realities of present-day Cuba. Some staple items like beans are nowhere to be found; rice production has declined and much is now imported. Sugar, too, has become an import in Cuba, which, until recently, was the leading sugar exporter in the world. People cannot make ends meet with their meager incomes — a doctor’s monthly salary is approximately $50. Even by conservative World Bank estimates, 72 percent of all Cubans live below the poverty line. Beggars seem to be everywhere, with the African community descendant from slavery being the most economically victimized. 

(Consortium News)

The entire political and intellectual machinery of the French ruling class is now moving in this direction. That includes the miserable little left, led by the Socialist Party, who bark at us from morning to night. They don’t realize that they’re participating in a broader establishment strategy: acting as the left-wing auxiliary of the right. They live in a dreamworld, wanting France to be like Germany, with a grand coalition of the centre: Social Democrats who are indistinguishable from liberals, Greens who are always clamouring for war. These people are doing the work of dividing us every day while pretending to be for unity.

(Portside)

One recent survey discovered that 70 percent of Americans are the most financially stressed that they have ever been in their entire lives. That figure alone tells us that we have a major economic crisis on our hands. The cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have been, and most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month. Anyone that attempts to deny this is simply not living in reality. 

(Zero Hedge)

Donald Trump styled himself as a populist, ‘anti-establishment’ president. But look at what he has actually done in office, and you see he’s a status-quo politician with nothing to offer working Americans.

(Jacobin)

Will voters finally stop both blaming politicians for their troubles and depending on them to end them? Will voters—and non-voters—transform themselves into people who act for themselves, in their own interests, instead of allowing others to act for them? That would be what social change looks like. The survival of the human race may well depend upon it. 

(The Brooklyn Rail)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

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)

Our View Of The Recent Municipal "Entente". (1905)

Party News from the November 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Quarterly Meeting of Delegates held on Saturday last at the Communist Club it was unanimously resolved to send the following telegram and letter to the National Congress of the French Socialist Party in Chalon :

TELEGRAM.

London, Oct. 28th, 1905.

To the President of National Socialist Congress, Chalon, France.

Fraternal greetings but we protest against action of Paul Brousse and other Municipal Councillors, members of your Party, last week in London.

(signed) CARTER. 

Secretary of The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

LETTER.

1a, Caledonian Road, London, W.C.

October 29th, 1905

To the President of National Socialist Congress, Chalon, France.

Dear Comrade,

We have the pleasure of confirming our telegram of yesterday which read: “Fraternal greetings, but we protest against action of Paul Brousse and other Municipal Councillors, members of your Party, last week in London.”

While we note that your Party is based upon the class-struggle, we desire to point out that the recognition of the class-struggle alone is, however, not sufficient guarantee for uncompromising Socialist action in open hostility to all capitalist parties or alleged labour organisations supporting the capitalist class. We hold that Socialist principles must at all times be honestly translated into politics. Hence any alliance or co-operation with the enemies of Socialism can only tend to confuse the minds of the working-class and thus retard the achievement of their emancipation from wage slavery. If the Socialist Party of each country are to seize the political machinery, national and municipal, they can do so only by carrying the class-struggle to its logical conclusion, that is, by acting throughout in antagonism to the class which, under the present system, control the political machinery, and by doing so are enabled to retain possession and control of the means of production and distribution.

We therefore protest strongly against representatives of your Party feasting and receiving or being feasted or received by the political representatives of the capitalist class. The fact of Paul Brousse and other members of your Party having been feasted and received by the municipalist representatives of the capitalist class in this country has been a severe blow to the Socialist Cause, not only in Britain, but to the whole International Socialist movement. It appears to us that this municipal “Entente” between the capitalist administration of London and the so-called Socialist municipal administration of Paris is but a municipal endorsement of the “Entente” of two capitalist governments already established. And it further appears to us that the fact of Parisian Socialist Councillors having taken part in the interchange of capitalist municipal courtesies will be utilised by the Liberal Party (which controls the London County Council) to obtain the votes of the British working class at the approaching General Election.

Seeing that at your Congress you are to consider your political action we sincerely trust that you will take such steps as will prevent in future representatives of your Party coquetting with or paying homage to the representatives of capitalism in France or abroad.

In conclusion we wish to point out that by the expression of the aforegoing sentiments we do not presume to interfere with your internal affairs but to convey to you our opinion as to the action pursued by members of your Party which seriously affects the propaganda of Socialism in this country.

With fraternal greetings, I remain, dear Comrade,

Yours in the Cause of International Socialism,

(signed) G. C. H. Carter,

General Secretary,

The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

50 Years Ago: Argument about War in 1907 (1957)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Hervé, in France, had been carrying on anti-militarist propaganda. Bebel, in Germany, denounced it. Hervé referred to a recent tense situation between Germany and France over Morocco. When war did break out in 1914 Hervé supported it]

Hervé:

“If war had broken out over Morocco between France and Germany, the two proletariats, French and German, would have protested through the voices of their parliamentary tenors; resolutions proclaiming eloquently the fraternity of the two peoples would have been exchanged, and then, fraternally, the French and German working classes would have gone to massacre each other in order to find out with which of the two capitalist classes Morocco would remain.”

Bebel:

“The ideas and the anti-militarist propaganda of Hervé are impossible in German Social Democracy. German Social Democracy is the avowed adversary of the present military system, but it considers that a military organisation is necessary in the states now existing so long as all the civilised nations shall not have established conventions and institutions which would once for all render war impossible. So long as the danger exists and wars are possible, every nation should possess a military organisation sufficient for resisting an aggressive war and defending its own territory against the invasions of the enemy.”

(From the “Socialist Standard," June 1907.)

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)

Evolution and Revolution. (1905)

From the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “New Method” is evolutionist. The “New Method” is reformist. The “New Method” stands above all for legality. In order to fully understand it in all its beauty, in all its power, we must first study its conceptions of evolution, reform, and legal revolution. Let us proceed in this order and commence with evolution.

The partisans of the “New Method”, quite honestly, without doubt, put certain stupidities into the mouths of revolutionists, which naturally appear to them quite in order. The revolutionists, they say, believe that the social revolution will be the result of a coup, a struggle with the police, or, better, to employ the favourite expression of (is it necessary to name the minister?) “the stroke of a magic wand”. The revolutionists are travestied as social magicians or miracle-workers; and the realists of state Socialism — in theory very idealist — never miss an occasion of showing their sovereign contempt for these dreamers of impossible catastrophes. They alone are in complete agreement with modern science, founded on the principle of evolution. The revolutionists are romanticists, Utopians. Has not Bernstein himself said that Marx even was but a common Blanquist?

What is the truth?

Let us first point out that all the great masters of contemporary Socialism, those very men who introduced into it the idea of evolution, and who have in some measure saturated the spirits of man with their ideas, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Ferdinand Lassalle, Peter Lavroff, were throughout their entire lives convinced revolutionists. It is an incontrovertible fact, and we will prove it.

The social work of Marx has been compared with that of Darwin in the domain of Nature. In fact, his classic work, the "Manifesto," which alone perhaps, of all books of our time, contains in a small space (some thirty pages) so many great and fertile ideas, develops quite a system of evolution in capitalist society. In the "Manifesto" we see Socialism burst forth, as the very consequence of things, from the very entrails of capitalist society. It is capitalism itself which fashions its own “grave-digger”, the proletariat organised as a class party.

The Manifesto concludes with the ultra-revolutionary declaration which follows:

  “The communists consider it beneath them to cloak their ideas and designs. They declare openly that their end cannot be realised but by the violent destruction of the existing social order. Let the ruling classes tremble before a communist revolution. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to gain”.

Here we are very far from the theory “take care to make fear” (“Ayons peur de faire peur”) which has conducted its author to the ministry of commerce. Yet, Marx put to flight all the miracle-workers, all the manufacturers of little projects put forward as so many panaceas guaranteed to save society from the misery of capitalism. It is true that he had not foreseen the project for the participation of socialists in the central power of the bourgeois state, which renders the revolution altogether unnecessary, and, above all, dangerous. A revolutionary party which does not inspire its adversaries with fear is ripe for government. But, it will never “conquer the world”.

The idealist, Peter Lavroff, was in complete agreement with Marx, the materialist, on the question of violent revolution. Throughout all his glorious life he preached the Revolution in the name of reason, “justice and humanity”. He sought to establish scientifically that “every Socialist who thinks logically must be a revolutionist”. And he always added that the Revolution cannot be brought about without violence. Peter Lavroff introduced scientific philosophy into Russia, thus contributing more than anyone else to the overthrow of metaphysical and theological ideas in his country. He was the sworn enemy of miracles, and understood the miracle of social transformation by the word participation.

The partisans of legality are often pleased to quote a Preface of Engels where he traces a magnificent picture of the growth of the Socialist Party during the legal period. But the rascals forget to add that Engels himself protested against the publication, declaring that his ideas had been falsified through the omission of a conclusion containing an affirmation thoroughly revolutionist.

The statement of Marx is likewise invoked, that in England the Revolution could be achieved pacifically and legally. In his preface to the English translation of Capital, Engels, on including the words of his great friend, wrote: “But he never omitted to mention that he doubted very much if the ruling classes in England would ever accede to a pacific and legal revolution” (Capital. Introduction. 1887). Otherwise stated: the revolution will be superfluous if the dominant classes are in humour for committing suicide. It is perfectly evident that Marx, who thoroughly understood the economic condition of England, wished to say nothing more than that all the material and technical conditions were at hand.

In order to accomplish the Revolution nothing was wanted but the revolutionary lever. “Force is the midwife of every new society”. The pains and violence of birth cannot be overlooked on the grounds that the embryo should be allowed to develop in an easy and regular manner. One might as well overlook volcanic eruptions on considering that modern geology has abandoned the catastrophic theory of the formation of the earth. The new-born will develop pacifically, “legally”, but he comes into being revolutionary. The subterranean forces accumulate slowly, invisibly, but once arrived at a certain degree of intensity, they explode. “Revolutions in history are as necessary as tempests in nature”, writes Malon, whom our good evolutionists do not qualify as “sectary”. In truth, this class of “tempest” does not agree with ministerial combinations. But, since when do the phenomena of nature and history rest on the decrees of ministers, being “out of control”.

In 1887 at the Congress of Saint-Gall, Bebel, who of course is nothing but a romantic dreamer, declared:

“He who says that the final end of Socialism will be realised in a pacific manner does not know the final end, or, mocks us”.

Further. It is only during its scientific period that, based on the principle of evolution, Socialism becomes revolutionary. The great Utopians, Fourier, Owen, Saint-Simon were pacific in their methods. They preached the social transformation to make the “revolution” needless.

It was exactly at the time that the social reformers addressed the monarchs, assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle, soliciting their “Collaboration” in social reform in the name of “social conservation”. That was also the good old time when the noble dreamer Fourier used to look daily for his “millionaire”, pacific redeemer of suffering humanity.

The triumph of the truly realistic spirit was at the same time that of the revolutionary spirit. None but empiric minds who see no farther than the tips of their noses or who have some interest in cloaking historic truth, believe that revolution is contrary to evolution of which it is, in reality, only the fatal and irresistible outcome. Thus, the Utopian period of Socialism was pacific. The scientific period adopts revolutionary tactics.

Ferdinand Lassalle, who was the promoter of universal suffrage in Germany, a man of immediate action and pacific par excellence, recognised the revolution as a means of achieving any serious reform. He pointed out that many great reforms were brought about only by revolution. For him, as well as for every modern Socialist, revolution is but a moment, a period of crisis in the “normal” evolution of society, an evolution which comes to a head.

The abyss which our ministerialists seek to find between evolution and revolution under its sudden and violent form exists but in their imagination. But there exists an insuperable abyss between revolution and ministerialism.

Translated from the French of Charles Rappoport by P. J. Tobin

'Le Programme Commun': The General Election this month in France (1973)

From the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 27 June last year a programme commun de gouvernement was signed in France between the “Socialist Party” and the “Communist Party”. These two parties, together with some left Radicals (Liberals) who later endorsed the programme, thus enter the French elections this month with a common policy which they promise to implement if elected.

In 1905 the various self-styled Socialist groups in France came together in a “United Socialist Party” under the leadership of Jean Jaurès. Adopting Marxism as its theory this party was the French equivalent of the German Social Democratic Party. In 1920 a majority of the delegates to its conferences at Tours voted to affiliate to the Third International and to become the Communist Party of France. The anti-Bolshevik minority led by Leon Blum split off calling themselves the “Section Française de l'internationale Ouvrière” (SFIO), by which name they were known until June 1971 when they joined with various left radical clubs led by François Mitterrand to become “the Socialist Party”. Mitterrand, a typical bourgeois politician under the Fourth Republic and later joint candidate of the Left against de Gaulle in the 1965 Presidential election, became the leader of this new party.

Support for Reforms
In the 1930’s the SFIO was the largest party in France calling itself socialist, the French Communist Party (PCF) having lost ground as it came more and more under Moscow’s control. During the second world war (but only after the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 of course) the PCF regained this lost ground, and has been the larger party ever since. In fact at every election since the war the PCF has consistently retained the support of about 20 per cent of the electorate.

The new PS still claims to be Marxist in inspiration and it is still possible to find references in its literature to the abolition of the wages system as an eventual, albeit very eventual, aim. In practice, however, its stands for state capitalism to be achieved gradually by a series of social reform measures. Its main theoretical difference with the PCF has been its insistence on the importance of political democracy both as a means of achieving its state capitalist aim and as an essential feature of that society. In other words, it has stood for what might loosely be called “democratic state capitalism" as opposed to the bureaucratic state capitalism on the Russian model favoured by the PCF.

When the Cold War came, while the PCF — naturally — adopted a pro-Moscow attitude, the SFIO was pro-Washington. It supported NATO and the Common Market, took part in the CIA-sponsored split in the CGT, the main trade union centre in France, and denounced the Communists as agents of Russian imperialism. As one of its leaders once put it, cruelly perhaps but accurately: “the CP is not so much on the Left as in the East”. The PCF replied in kind. The SFIO, they said, were right-wing traitors to the working class and agents of American imperialism. A clear case of the pot and the kettle calling each other black.

Own Image Recognized
Now all this is forgiven, at least on the surface. The two parties have got together and drawn up a joint programme. If they win a parliamentary majority, Mitterrand would become the Prime Minister with Communist Ministers in his Cabinet. This is not the first time the two parties have collaborated on the electoral, and the governmental, fields. In 1934 the two parties made an electoral alliance which marked the end of the Comintern’s "social fascist” policy and paved the way for the Popular Front government of 1936 under the SFIO leader Léon Blum. For a couple of years after 1945 there were Communist Ministers, first under de Gaulle and then in coalition with the SFIO and the Christian Democrats. Then in 1947 came the outbreak of the Cold War and the unceremonious dismissal of the Communist Ministers. More recently the two parties agreed to field Mitterrand as the joint candidate of the Left against de Gaulle in 1965. Then in June last year came this agreement on a common government programme. What has really made this possible, it should be noted, has been the thaw during the past decade in relations between American and Russian imperialism. This has allowed the two parties to forget their foreign-policy differences and come together with a joint programme of reforms both of them had long been independently advocating.

For the much-vaunted Common Programme is merely this: a list of promised reforms of capitalism. There is nothing in it that would not be endorsed by the Labour Party in this country, except perhaps that the Labour Party with more recent experience of governing capitalism would be more cautious about promising so much at one time. The list of reforms is familiar: retirement at 60, a 40-hour week, a new Labour Code, a minimum wage, free medical treatment, a tax on increasing land values, 700,000 houses a year, votes at 18, a National Investment Bank, price controls, abolition of capital punishment, re-introduction of proportional representation, no French nuclear weapons or tests, etc, etc, etc. The arms, aerospace, nuclear energy and drugs industries, along with underground resources, are to be nationalised with compensation. So are parts of the computer and chemical industries. And the State will take a share in financing and running certain other industries like steel, petrol, telecommunications and water supply. But, as the programme itself is at pains to point out, “an important private sector” will still survive.

Letting a Tuck In

Now, nationalisation is state capitalism not Socialism, but it is what the PCF falsely says is Socialism. So how do their leaders explain watering down their aims and not fighting on a “socialist” programme? Georges Marchais, its general secretary, has, as our quotes show, [See the bottom of the article.] been quite frank with his followers. The Common Programme, he has told them, is not and is not meant to be a socialist one, even in the false Communist Party meaning of the word.

So, if the implementation of the Common Programme would not establish “socialism” what is it supposed to establish? According to the programme — and this part reflects PCF ideology — it would establish “a genuine political and economic democracy”. So yet another “transitional stage” is being introduced between capitalism and Socialism! Marx and Engels did indeed hold that between the capture of political power by the Socialist working class and the establishment of Socialism there would need to be a political transition period during which the capitalist class was dispossessed. By Socialism and Communism (the two words meant the same to them) they meant a wageless, moneyless, Stateless society. Lenin later inserted a further stage before such a society (for which he used the word Communist only). For him this new stage, “socialism”, would be characterised by the State ownership of the means of production, equal wages, etc. Then he inserted yet another stage, “state capitalism”, where the so-called proletarian state would control private capitalist industry. Now we have yet another stage — “a genuine political and economic democracy”, a reformed capitalism run by a PCF-PS coalition.

Same Old Problems

What does all this nonsense of a moneyless, wageless, Stateless society being reached via “a genuine political and economic democracy”, “state capitalism” and "socialism” mean? Is it not the old gradualist and reformist argument that capitalism can gradually be transformed into Socialism through a series of social reforms passed by a government claiming to represent the working class? Of course it is. The PCF, and its counterparts elsewhere, in fact have long been just as reformist as the Social Democratic and Labour Parties of the world. They too suffer from the illusion that it is possible for a political party to use government power to make capitalism function in the interest of the working class. The sad thing is that in France this illusion is obviously shared by many ordinary workers who are enthusiastically backing the Common Programme and are expecting great things from its implementation.

Will the PCF-PS alliance win a parliamentary majority? This is certainly a possibility, though the electoral system which over-represents the conservative countryside works against them. But if they do win, what then? Assuming that there is no constitutional conflict with President Pompidou, a Gaullist, we would predict that the new reformist government would get off to an enthusiastic start. Some of its more popular social reforms would be implemented. But then, in time, the new government will settle down to the job of governing French capitalism and the enthusiasm will wane as the workers notice no basic difference in their daily lives. The government will come into conflict with groups of workers demanding wage increases. Ministers will begin to appeal to workers not to strike and cause difficulties for “their” government. Lagging exports or balance of payments difficulties or an international monetary crisis or a too-slow rate of growth — the everyday problems of any government of capitalism — will force Ministers to make excuses for not implementing their reform programme as quickly as they would have liked. Workers will be urged to work harder and increase productivity. The familiar pattern workers in Britain experienced under the last Labour government. For many French workers, however, this will be something new since they haven’t been under a full “Labour government” since just after the war.

Needless to say the various Trotskyist groups in France (besides fielding their own candidates in the First Ballot) are saying: “Vote for the Common Programme” just as they say “Vote Labour" here. Our advice would be different. The best thing workers in France can do in these elections is to go to the polling booths and write the words "Socialisme Mondiale” across their ballot papers.

Adam Buick

Georges Marchais quotes:

  “Does this mean installing communism or even socialism? Evidently not. A socialist society has for its basis the collective ownership of the principal means of production and exchange, and the exercise of power by the working class in alliance with other segments of the toiling population. It suffices to look at the common programme to appreciate that its achievement would not lead to the installation of such a regime in France”. Georges Marchais, speech to the national congress of the French Communist Party on 13 December, reported in The Times, 14 December 1972.

  “Obviously by applying this programme we shall not establish communism, or even socialism, in France. But we can introduce democratic and anti-monopolistic reforms of unprecedented scope. And we think that this new democracy will be a step forward, a form of transition towards socialism, which is suited to the conditions of France today”. Georges Marchais, General Secretary of the French Communist Party, in an interview with The Times, 17 November 1972.

Bebel’s Answer to Jaurès on “Political Tactics”. (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

International Socialist Congress 1904

(Translated from El Heraldo de Madrid, by P. J. Tobin)

When the German Social-Democracy discussed at the Dresden Congress the proposition that is being now debated, nobody thought of bringing it before the International Congress. Nevertheless I am pleased that the Parti Socialiste de France have submitted it to the consideration of the bodies which form the great International Socialist Party, because, contrary to the opinion of Jaurès, this proposition is applicable, in the same manner as it is to Germany, to Belgium, France, Holland, and all other countries.

When Kautsky and Singer drew up the Dresden proposition they took into consideration not alone the conditions under which things exist in Germany, but also certain circumstances that are inseparable from the social ambient created by the system of capitalist production in all the countries where it reigns.

Jaurès pretends that there is such an enormous difference between Germany and France that it is absolutely impossible that an International Congress could adopt rules of Socialist conduct practised with success in one of these nations so as to apply them to the other. Jaurès suffers from a sad error, because although there are differences between France and Germany, they are not so great as he supposes.

I must point out that in the treatment of this question I do not consider it from a particular standpoint which the country where I live supplies me with, but from a general standpoint. All nations may see themselves very soon attacked by this illness that we want to put an end to now, Switzerland as Holland—

Troelstra (Holland): We are not ill.

Bebel: You are not, but you could be so tomorrow, and it is necessary to avoid this happening.

Two perfectly defined tendencies exist in the German Social-Democracy. The two were discussed in the Dresden Congress, and afterwards the proletariat decided in favour of that one which it considered as having best hit the mark. Once the subject was resolved upon, nobody has been found wanting in respect to what was agreed, nobody has produced disagreements in our great party. In France the situation is very different; between Socialists there are serious disputes which do not exist in Germany.

Jaurès admits, like ourselves, the class war, and considers its antagonisms as irreducible; but he also believes that the proletariat ought to work with the radical elements of the middle class, to ensure its own emancipation, if these elements lend themselves to help them in their struggle for liberty. These words of Jaurès enclose a censure for those who do not march in unison with the so-called “progressive” forces of the middle-class, since we spurn a means of serving the cause of the proletariat.

The censure is not just; we avail ourselves of all means for bettering the condition of our comrades the workers. We do not spurn reforms; but what we do refuse, and that in the most explicit manner, is the coming to an agreement with any faction whatsoever of the middle-class, no matter by what name it may go. An agreement of this kind cannot be of any other consequence than to make Socialism responsible for the oppression which the capitalists exercise over the masses of the working-class. Besides, this agreement would give rise to an error that being persevered in by the workers, would lead them to abandon the saving camp of Socialism to throw themselves with closed eyes into the abyss of anarchism. The policy adopted by the French Socialist Party has had two effects: to throw from its bosom the best elements for the fight, the most self-denying, and give entrance to those who accept the attitude of this party in relation to the Minister Combes in order to reach high political posts. As you see, the results of the Revisionists’ policy could not be more disastrous.

In the most flourishing period of French Ministerial Socialism, France has given spectacles which incite the passions of all those who feel the flame of Socialism burning in their breasts. Millerand, the Socialist Millerand, who received, as the most correct of courtiers, during his occupation of the Ministry, kings and queens visiting Paris on the occasion of the Exhibition of 1900, did not remember that an international Socialist Congress was about to be held at approximately the same date; more, he consented that the free exercise of the right to public demonstration should be denied the Socialists, a thing that was permitted to them in 1889. Strange paradox. The Liberal Ministry of Waldeck-Rousseau did not permit in 1900 the exercise of an individual right which the Conservative Ministry that ruled France in 1889 authorised! I cannot understand [with great indignation] how all the delegates did not uprise possessed of the same anger, to protest against the cynicism of those governors that call themselves “democratic”—

Adler (Austria): If you refer to what occurred in the Père-Lechaise demonstration, I must state that the Congress had already concluded its tasks.

Bebel: That is true, but it does not matter; the delegates who were still in Paris and the French Socialist Party ought to have formulated that protest.

Jaurès, in order to explain his reasoning on the diversity of proceedings that should be applied in France and in Germany, tells us Germans: You cannot compare your situation with ours. You live under an Imperialist regime, while the regime to which we are subject is the Republican. The observation is correct. We must confess that did it depend on us, the Imperial Government of Germany would not have another instant of life. But this does not justify the attitude of the Ministerial Socialists, because the proceedings of the French Republic are so dull and arbitrary that I find myself in the sad necessity of becoming an advocate of the Monarchy.

In Germany we have liberty of union and of association, which the Authority respects. In our strikes armed force never intervenes. On the other hand, in France the liberty of union and association is constantly being trampled upon, and in all strikes, and under any pretext whatever, the Government sends infantry, cavalry, and even artillery to the field of action. Now, before this conduct which shows how great is middle-class precocity, I ask Jaurès: How is it possible to explain that a Government which proceeds in this manner has included amongst its number an individual Socialist, and now has the aid of a Parliamentary minority?

The exterior clothing with which the Monarchy clothes itself does not hide its pretensions. At first sight all of us know what a Government of the capitalist class symbolises. Nevertheless, sometimes conscience pricks, and abandoning being logical with itself, realises acts of justice to the workers, which injure the masters.

The bourgeois Republic decks itself out in raiment which cajoles the masses, lulls them with fine words, makes them promises which are on the lips but not in the heart, and this acts so that later, when workmen are assassinated in Châlons-sur-Marne, in France; in Colorado of the USA; or in Vale, of Switzerland, the cynicism, the shamelessness and criminality of these actions appear in greater relief. As you can observe, there is not the difference that Jaurès establishes between the Monarchy and the Republic. And this, I say, in reference to the economic system, takes place as well with militarism, clericalism, and other problems.

After acts such as those I have related do not be astonished that I deduce that there is an absolute incompatibility of the office of Minister to a capitalist government with the character of a militant socialist.

The force of working-class emancipation has taken root in the class-consciousness that the workers possess. I remember very well when on a certain occasion Marx and Engels were asked how was it that England being a country where industry was so developed and having so liberal and progressive a Government, how was it that under such conditions Socialism was so little evolved? They answered that the English middle-class was so astute and intelligent, that they had arranged everything so that historic and social acts were mystified, introducing confusion and division into the ranks of the working-class.

I think it to be my duty to affirm that in questions of greater importance, in those of more interest for public life and national prosperity, Germany has nothing to envy France; on the contrary, in what concerns the navy and colonial question, etc which affect the productive classes in so great a manner, France has made no concession whatever, and in Germany, yes. Further, in the fiscal system, the income tax in Prussia is an ideal compared with what exists in France.

Although it may appear strange, on account of what is now going on in France, the capitalists will never destroy clericalism, because it is an arm which in crucial moments can be used against the workers. I agree and applaud the work now being accomplished in France, but it must not be forgotten that in thirty years’ time nothing worthy of note will have been done in this sense.

If a fight of this nature were undertaken tomorrow in our country we would assist with vigour, but we would take good care not to contract any compromise that might diminish our independence, and would not abandon the defence of working-class interests, not even in moments when the struggle may be hottest. The Jaurès method is of use only in making anarchists.

It cannot be denied that this Congress is competent to give judgement on the question of tactics. Jaurès himself maintained this opinion when the Kautsky resolution was voted upon at the Congress of 1900. Moreover, if we can discuss protection and free-trade, the general strike, etc, why cannot we treat of tactics?

With respect to the design which guides us in asking that the Dresden Proposition be voted upon, everyone who knows us will say what is true, that we do not attempt to whimsically impose an opinion, but to give an advice, to furnish a rule of conduct that is the outcome of thirty-six years of experience.

Tactics may be modified, but the idea will never disappear which inspires the Dresden Resolution, an idea that the proletarian will never abandon, because it is the only one capable of carrying it to the close of its day’s labour—the expropriation of the dominant class.

Refuted by Himself. (1910)

From the January 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Translated from Le Socialisme by F. C. Watts

We have an erudite Minister of Agriculture. If you doubt it spend a half-penny on the Journal Official of 16th of March last. You will find therein, spread over thirty-nine columns, a speech delivered by M. Ruau, on the 14th of March 1909, at the Musée Social under the auspices of the French National Federation of Friendly Societies (Fédération Nationale de la Mutualité Française). You will not repent of your extravagance because there is something in the speech that will amuse you. In the first place notice at the foot of each page, the reference to the numerous books the author has made use of. There Marx’s Capital is quoted a dozen times, Kautsky’s Agrarian Question is also referred to; as is Frederick Engels, Vandervelde and David. It is quite a Socialist Library. In the text of the speech you will at each step come across the same names, and also those of Gatti, Jaurès, and others, including even our Limoges Congress, not to speak of the Congresses of the French Parti Ouvrier.

What an honour!

The fact is that the speech is entirely designed to “demonstrate” (against the Socialists) that capitalist concentration does not operate at all in agricultural property, and that “the present state of small property is flourishing”, and that even “with regard to the future growth there is reason to believe in an increase in its vitality”.

I do not know to which of his subordinates M. Ruau (having to deliver a speech) gave the order to make the discourse he read. But I know that he must be a good practical joker. He took it for granted that his chief, happy to find himself at the head of all those quotations from books which he had never read, and perhaps never opened, would not notice anything wrong. And he has amused himself by causing his chief to give in support of his statements, arguments which prove exactly the opposite of his assertions. His joke has succeeded, and doubtless he laughed up his sleeve to know that his minister, with all the “side” and self-sufficiency of a man sure of his facts, had “found” that the number of small proprietors does not diminish, by reading to his astounded hearers the following statistics:

An enquiry in July 1908, made by the Ministry of Finances, gave as 5,505,464 the total number of agricultural proprietors, which is thus split up according to the area exploited:

           1908

            Very small property (less than one hectare)                    2,087,851

            Small property (1 to 10 hectares)                                       2,523,713

            Medium property (10 to 40 hectares)                                   745,862

            Great property (40 to 100 hectares)                                      118,497

            Very great property (100 hectares upwards)                          29,541



            The corresponding figures for 1892 are

            Very small property                                                           2,235,405

            Small property                                                                   2,617,557

            Medium property                                                                  711,118

            Great property                                                                       105,391

            Very great property                                                                 32,280

  This comparison appears to show that small property has increased sensibly by 2,845 exploitations, as much to the detriment of ‘very small’ property as to that of the ‘medium’ and ‘great’, and that the ‘very great’ property has slightly increased by 2,739 exploitations, to the detriment of ‘great’ and perhaps a little, very little, at the expense of the ‘medium’. The development of ‘very great’ property noticeable from 1882 to 1892 has stopped in order to give place to that of ‘small’ property: the slight increase in ‘very great’ property will have continued, but this time it clearly appears that the movement does not touch ‘small’ property at all.
  The most reliable statistics tend therefore to prove that there exists no movement toward the absorption of small rural property.”

All this beautiful reasoning had but one misfortune, for without taking the trouble to find a pencil and work it out, it is seen at a glance that the 2,523,713 of 1908 are less (and not more) than the 2,617,558 of 1892. Consequently instead of “increasing” from 1892 to 1908, “small” property has “diminished sensibly by 93,245 exploitations”.

That is what the Minister of Agriculture has been pompously giving forth at the Musée Social.

It is true that a friend, a little better at arithmetic, has apparently warned him that he was giving arms against himself. A week after he sought to retrace his steps by giving (Journal Officiel of 22nd of March) a so-called erratum of his speech, which, so far from confirming, still refutes his thesis.

M. Ruau, in that erratum, recognises that 93,000 exploitations less is a decrease. But, says he, there is only question here of the element “number”; if we consider the superficial area “the facts change entirely”.

Let us see, then. The minister gives us now, as the figures of “very small” property (sterile and uncultivated land not included) super,

            for 1892   1,243,200 hectares

            for 1908   1,228,597 hectares

As figures regarding the superficial area of “small” property

            for 1892    10,383,300 hectares

            for 1908    11,559,342 hectares

And he cries triumphantly:

  “Thus ‘very small’ property has diminished by 14,603 hectares, apparently to the profit of ‘small’ property; ‘small’ property has increased by 1,176,042 hectares.”

But, excuse me! In the first place and in passing, if the “small” property increases to the detriment of “very small”, it will be because, always weak, the plots of land nevertheless are being concentrated. This would already be the contrary of what M. Ruau affirms.

And as for the principal point of his argument it hasn’t a leg to stand on. If there are 93,000 less proprietors in possession of one million hectares more land, it is therefore (just the contrary of his assertions) that the “small” exploitations increase in area, and that consequently there is still concentration.

Each “small” proprietor instead of possessing an average of 3.9 hectares as in 1892, owns 4.5 in 1908.

Fewer proprietors to more land owned, that is what is put forward as proof that agricultural concentration is a Socialist fiction.

And that’s what comes of accepting the role of simpler reader of a lucubration that one doesn’t understand.

Bracke

50 Years Ago: Imported nonsense (1956)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The sapient gentleman whom the Daily News is pleased to claim as its own special correspondent in Paris, in referring to the appointments of Viviani and Briand to the Clemenceau Cabinet says: “The Socialist ideal is, of course, the substitution of “collective" exploitation for “capitalistic" exploitation. The Daily News gentleman had better try again. "The Socialist ideal is, of course"—nothing of the kind. It is the substitution of collective ownership and control for capitalistic ownership and control with the consequent extinction of exploitation altogether. The Daily News gent has been studying the work of those Socialists who unfortunately afflict the movement in France as in England. He has correctly stated their ideal. They are for State capitalism or collective exploitation. We are not concerned with State capitalism. We are concerned with Socialism. Socialism is the negation of capitalism. Consequently State capitalism cannot be the ideal of any Socialist. Ergo those who preach State capitalism or collective exploitation are not Socialists. The Daily News gent has been studying in the wrong school .

(From the Socialist Standard, December 1906).

France: No Socialist President (2012)

From the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

   Despite what the media said, France has not elected a “Socialist President”.

What did happen on 6 May was that a member of the so-called “Parti socialiste” (PS), which is not a socialist party but a party of capitalist reform similar to the Labour Party in Britain, won the presidential election there.

François Hollande finished top in the first round of the election in April, but as he polled less than 50 percent a second round took place in which he beat the outgoing President, Nicholas Sarkozy. In the first round 6.4 million (18 percent) voted for Marine Le Pen of the National Front and a further 4 million (11 percent) for Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Left Front.  This means that some 30 percent voted for isolationist nationalism. It seems that the history of the 1930s may be beginning to repeat itself.

Mélenchon, a one-time PS minister (and a former Trotskyist – of course), left the PS in 2008 to form the Left Party. He has been seen as more “socialist” than Hollande but the Guardian came up with some more accurate descriptions. Seamus Milne (3 April) described him as a “radical left populist” (comparing him to George Galloway) while for Philippe Marlière (19 April) he was a “radical reformist”. He certainly employed a more anti-capitalist rhetoric but, while he is opposed to “neo-liberal”, corporate capitalism, what he stood for was an isolationist, state-capitalist France.

Record of failure

The PS was formed in 1971 as a result of the merger of the old, reformist SFIO (which, believe it or not, was the French for “French Section of the Workers’ International”) and various other groupings, under the leadership of François Mitterrand, who was to be elected President of France ten years later.

In its founding declaration, the PS proclaimed its equivalent to Labour Party’s former Clause IV:

  “Socialism fixes its object as the common good not private profit. Progressive socialisation of the means of investment, production and exchange constitute the indispensable basis for this”.

It went on:

 “The socialist transformation cannot be the natural product of reforms correcting the effects of capitalism. It is not a question of re-arranging a system, but of substituting another one for it.”

This was just rhetoric. When Mitterrand was elected President of France in 1981 he made it quite clear that he had not been elected to bring about a change of system, but only to bring about a change in the existing system. It was the same distinction that had been made by the pre-war SFIO Prime Minister of the Popular Front, Léon Blum, between “the conquest of power” (for socialism) and “the exercise of power” (within capitalism).

Like François Hollande, Mitterrand promised “growth”. His government immediately drew up a plan to reduce unemployment by growing the economy 3 percent a year through increasing both popular consumption and government investment. The government did increase the minimum wage and benefits and it did employ more people as well as nationalising the banks, but the economy didn’t grow by 3 percent.

Instead, the workings of capitalism forced the government to devalue the franc three times within two years, the first as early as October 1981 (Mitterrand had only been elected in May of that year). A second followed in June of the following year. The third, in March 1983, was accompanied by a programme of austerity which clawed back the increase in wages and benefits introduced in May and June 1981. (For those who can read French, there’s description of what happened and why here: http://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/frechec.htm )

In short, the Mitterrand government’s attempt to grow the economy by increasing government and popular spending failed miserably. It failed because governments can’t control the way the capitalist economy works. It’s rather the other way round:  the workings of the capitalist economy oblige all governments, whatever their original intention and whatever they might prefer to do, to give priority to profits and the conditions for profit-making. In a slump such as today, this means imposing austerity, as President Hollande will find out, despite the fact that the people of France have just voted against it – yet another demonstration of how the workings of capitalism frustrate what people want.

Bid to reform capitalism

Like Mitterrand before him, Hollande only wants to “exercise power” within the context of capitalism and its rule of “no profit, no growth”. On a visit to London in February he blamed financial deregulation for the crisis and said this needed to be reversed. Ed Miliband, who was with him, chipped in:

 “We need to reform the way finance works and to reform the way that capitalism works. He is absolutely right” (Times, 1 March).

It’s clear, then, that Hollande wants to try to reform “the way that capitalism works”. He has set himself an impossible task. We can predict here and now that he won’t succeed in making capitalism work in the general interest, and that, like the last so-called “Socialist” President of France thirty years ago, he will fall flat on his face.  He will then have to pick himself up and accept the economic realities of capitalism and keep austerity to facilitate profit-making. TINAUC. There is no alternative under capitalism.

Adam Buick