France - Lutte Ouvrière (1995)

Party News from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party plans to participate with a literature stall and possibly hold one or more meetings, at the Lutte Ouvrière Fête to be held at Presles. near the Forêt de Nile Adam, about 20 miles north of Paris, on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, the 3rd, 4th and 5th of June

To make a success of this venture, and to introduce as many French workers as possible to Socialist ideas, we will need members and sympathisers to assist and, of course, enjoy themselves at the fête!

Would readers who are interested, and would like more details, please write to me c/o The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Peter E. Newell

How to combat Fascism (1970)

Lutte Ouvrière 1970.

From the September 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

On February 3 the French trotskyist journal Lutte Ouvrière (No. 75) reproduced a passage from Socialist Worker criticising the Socialist Party of Great Britain for opposing the National Front in public debate. We sent a letter which was published in full in their issue of 17 March (No. 81). In it we pointed out:

   In Great Britain the public debate is traditionally a way of opposing another party and the SPGB has debated with Conservatives, Labourites, so-called Communists, trotskyists as well as with the fascists.
   We hold that the way to fight fascism is to build a strong and uncompromising Socialist movement and not to form a non-socialist anti-fascist front. This is why we are opposed to the policy of the "International Socialism” group of debating only with some capitalist parties (such as the Labour Party) but not with others (such as the National Front). We say this encourages the illusion of the “lesser evil” and the idea of a non-socialist “popular front”. 

Lutte Ouvrière replied:

  It is difficult for us to make a hasty judgement on the tactical differences of the English revolutionary movement as long as it is only a simple question of information. But we are in complete opposition to the principles set out here by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. We make a distinction between bourgeois parties and parties such as the Labour Party which represent the interests of the bourgeoisie within the workers’ movement. We also distinguish between classical bourgeois parties, those which use essentially parliamentary and electoral methods, and fascist parties which try to mobilise the petty- bourgeoisie and the lumpen-proletariat to physically liquidate workers’ and even simply democratic organisations. That the attitude which revolutionary Marxists should adopt towards a party which counts many workers in its ranks, to one which groups only bourgeois notables or to one which mobilises its troops to beat up working class militants or to attack strike pickets should be the same at all times and under all conditions, on the grounds that in the last analysis all three represent the interests of the same bourgeoisie, seems to us one which could be adopted only with difficulty. This has nothing to do with the acceptance or rejection of any “popular front”.

Lutte Ouvrière here distinguishes three kinds of capitalist party, which we translate into the context of British politics:

1. Openly capitalist parties (Conservative, Liberal).
2. Allegedly workers’ parties (Labour. Communist).
3. Fascist parties (National Front, Union Movement).

They say that the attitude “revolutionary Marxists” should adopt towards these three types of capitalist party cannot always be the same. Unfortunately they do not tell us how the attitude should be different. We can only interpret their statement to mean that under certain circumstances they would urge workers to support a capitalist party of one type against a capitalist party of another and we challenge Lutte Ouvrière to deny this.

Our attitude is clear. As we say in our Declaration of Principles:

  As all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working-class emancipation must be hostile to every other party. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action, determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist.

Under no circumstances would we urge or have we urged workers to support any capitalist party since this would be to abandon the class struggle and betray the principle of no compromise.

We do say that the attitude a socialist party should adopt towards fascist parties should be exactly the same as that they adopt towards other capitalist parties: complete opposition. To single out fascists for special opposition can only lead to compromise with other capitalist parties.

Editorial Committee

Lutte Ouvrière: Workers Struggling for What? (1969)

From the October 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many ideas which are basic to Socialism are accepted among far wider circles than the ranks of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Indeed there are many organisations throughout the world which would appear to endorse whole areas of the socialist case. These groups (who often tell us that ‘we are all socialists’) would generally argue that our aims are identical and that it is only on the question of means to achieve the ultimate socialist society that we differ. One such case is Lutte Ouvrière — a group based in France which, on the face of it, appears to share many of our ideas. Their programme socialiste (Lutte Ouvrière — June) correctly summarises the principal features of capitalism:

. . .  the capitalist system, based on the private ownership of the means of production, organises production for profit, without caring about the real needs of men, but on the contrary subjecting man completely to the needs of profit.

and points out why Socialism has become possible and how it will differ from capitalism:

. . . with the development of technology and science it is possible to give to all men a decent standard of living under conditions of total liberty . . . What stands between us and socialism is not scarcity of technical resources but simply the political system (des entraves politiques) which throws the economy into anarchic production, full of contradictions and resulting in insecurity, the destruction of wealth and the alienation of liberty.

But between Socialism and capitalism, argues Lutte Ouvrière, there must be a transition period during which the workers’ state will have a double goal: “to raise individual salaries (as long as the wages system lasts) but above all to develop free and collective facilities (housing, transport, education, public health, sport, leisure, etc.)." This, of course, is merely a rehash of the old Bolshevik maxim that “an epoch of proletarian dictatorship must inevitably intervene between a capitalist and a communist society.” The twin tasks of this transition period or ’dictatorship of the proletariat', said the Bolsheviks, were to boost production through industrialisation and above all to crush the “resistance of the sometime capitalists, landlords, bankers, generals, and bishops. . .” This is obviously a perspective shared by Lutte Ouvrière since they write that workers’ power will involve such measures as an “embargo on the banks, the finance societies, the insurance companies . . .”

To the Socialist Party this seems a completely false assessment of the problems that will face a socialist working class. With Marx we recognise that one of the first priorities for society after a victorious socialist revolution will be to develop rapidly the forces of production. But with Marx too we also understand that this will be achieved within the framework of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production—in other words within the framework of the moneyless, wageless society of Socialism. This is not the ‘transition period’ but a stage in the development of socialism itself. Hence Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, where he partially deals with this question, refers not to a ‘transition period' but to different phases in a communist (or socialist) society. And, of course, the idea of the workers applying terror during an entire ‘epoch’ to “sometime capitalists, landlords, bankers, generals, and bishops . . .”, which is central to Bolshevik thinking, becomes ludicrous when it is set against the Marxist concept of a democratic revolution by a majority of conscious socialists. We cannot say how fierce the struggles will be at the time of the socialist revolution but it should be clear that once the capitalist class has been stripped of its wealth it will certainly pose no kind of threat to “the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” (The Communist Manifesto). It is the Bolshevik fetish of leadership which still makes groups like Lutte Ouvrière cling to their ideas of a ‘transition period’. In the Bolshevik plan of things one minority, the ‘revolutionary vanguard’, holds down other minorities, such as the former ruling class, while the workers are attaining consciousness. The whole scheme might have some slight merit as a rather ingenious fairy tale except that it has always masked the rise to power of a new ruling class.

Lutte Ouvrière are also deeply influenced by Boshevism in their attitude towards parliament. Elections are a ‘masquerade’:

  A masquerade first of all in the goal which is given to them. To elect for seven years a president of the Republic . . .  is no more nor less than choosing the man who for seven years will have the right to send the CRS and the police forces against struggling workers and peasants, against demonstrating lycéens or students.
   . . . They ask the elector to put his trust for seven years in a man who for one month will have come out with beautiful promises as bait, but who once he is elected, will not have to answer to anyone.

Obviously, many of the points made here are valid — but how they can lead Lutte Ouvrière to the conclusion that elections are a masquerade is beyond us. When a capitalist party gains a majority in the national assembly or when a capitalist candidate is elected as president, this indicates that a majority of workers look upon the capitalist system as the only practical method of organising society. This was well illustrated in the presidential elections in France recently when the vast majority of working men and women voted for one or other of the capitalist contenders. Behind the ‘masquerade’ of the millions of votes for Pompidou, Poher, Duclos etc. stood a working class committed to capitalism.

But Lutte Ouvrière claim that this election was different from others because a ‘revolutionary' candidate (the trotskyist Alain Krivine) was standing.

  It is in this sense that the elections are a barometer. That Krivine should obtain 20, 300, 10,000, or 50,000 votes is not a matter of indifference. His score will permit us to estimate approximately the influence of left ideas among the population . . . the trotskyist candidature allows revolutionaries to count themselves . . .

Once again there are valid points here. A revolutionary candidate is useful as a thermometer of support for Socialism — but, as the Socialist Party has always emphasised, this is only achieved if he runs on an exclusively socialist ticket. A reform programme, such as Krivine embraced and which caused Lutte Ouvrière to support him, defeats the object of the whole exercise. Our criticism of Krivine’s programme is well summed up by this passage from Le Prolétaire (Programme Communiste):

  The ‘socialism' of the trotskyists does not cause the economic categories of capitalism to disappear: the wage slave remains a wage slave, the product remains a commodity. Nothing is changed . . . Mr Krivine and his friends then have nothing in common with the historical programme of the proletariat, nor as a result with the struggle of the working class and the revolutionary and scientific socialism of Marx and Engels.

Another hangover from the bourgeois ideology of Bolshevism in the programme socialiste of Lutte Ouvrière is their idea that the socialist revolution will be essentially a national affair, the workers gaining power country by country.

  The workers’ power will maintain economic and political relations with other countries by giving in the first place its support to the exploited of these countries.

It seems that they seriously imagine that Socialism will be achieved in France while Britain and Germany, or America and Russia, or Japan and China remain gripped by capitalism. But ideas today are international. When a group like Sheng Wu Lien in China points out that China is a capitalist country and explains that the so-called cultural revolution has merely enabled the ‘red capitalists’ led by Mao to tighten their hold on the means of production, they are talking a language which radicals in every continent can understand. Or when a tin-pot capitalist revolution on a small island in the Caribbean led by unoriginal political thinkers like Castro and Guevara is successful, its repercussions echo round the world. So Lutte Ouvrière should ask themselves what would be the likely effects on the world working class of a mass socialist movement starting to appear in any one country. The Socialist Party of Great Britain suggests that by the time the workers in France or anywhere else are turning to Socialism and preparing to take power they will be doing the same in every other advanced industrial country. World Socialism will be the outcome of a world socialist revolution..

It is on these grounds that the Socialist Party urges the members of Lutte Ouvrière and the many groups like it to examine their strategy and tactics. Like them we think that “world communism which will co-ordinate in a harmonious fashion the sum total of human activities yet also protect the peculiarities and customs of each section of the population” is an aim worth struggling for. But the Socialist Party also maintains that means and ends are indissolubly linked. A world socialist community can only be achieved by a majority of conscious socialists capturing political power in order to reorganise society on a basis of common ownership and democratic control. Attempts to apply Bolshevik or syndicalist techniques to the struggle for Socialism are self-defeating because inevitably such means cause those who use them to arrive at a different end from Socialism.

John Crump

Party news — Socialist activity in France (1986)

Party News from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Paris-based group of the World Socialist Movement, which publishes the journal Socialisme Mondial, recently held the latest in its series of public meetings. The meeting, on the subject of socialism and working-class organisation, was quite well attended, and was also participated in by several members who had travelled over from London, as part of a weekend of socialist activity in Paris.

The rest of the weekend was devoted to running a stall for Socialisme Mondial and the Socialist Party as part of the Fête [de] Lutte Ouvrière or "Workers' Struggle" festival, which is held in the extensive grounds of a castle in the Val d'Oise. just north of Paris, every year towards the end of May. Lutte Ouvrière  is one of the main French trotskyist parties, not unlike the SWP of Britain in some respects, though perhaps better known. Like the SWP, Lutte Ouvrière  continues to cling to various Leninist dogmas about the workers' supposed need for strong political "leadership" from a self-styled professional vanguard; they regard the state capitalist dictatorship in Russia as being worthy of workers' support On the other hand, they are rightly highly critical of the main reformist parties in France, and in particular of the French "Socialist" Party, which is a reformist party like the British Labour Party and which formed the government in France for the first half of this decade

It is generally understood that the dozens of different political groups with stalls at the festival do not necessarily support Lutte Ouvrière  in any way; they simply pay a small hire fee and then proceed to put their ideas and literature across to some of the many thousands of visitors who pass by during the weekend. It is, in other words, a kind of bazaar, a "free market" of political ideas. (There was. however. no sign of Margaret Thatcher; she must have been peddling her wares elsewhere that weekend). Our own uncompromised and clear case for socialism was amply voiced, both in French and English, and a good deal of the literature was sold.

The festival itself is in fact a remarkable event, and well worth attending, as there is currently nothing comparable in Britain. It is quite a feat of voluntary organisation, with the total number of stalls running into hundreds. Aside from various political parties and groups, there were stalls with food and music from many parts of the world. There is an attempt to create a fraternal atmosphere to contrast, for two or three days, with the alienated and antagonistic world of capitalism. While this can never properly be achieved in isolation there is a strong camaraderie in the holiday atmosphere Long lanes of stalls were renamed with mock road-signs such as "Marx Road' and "Freedom Avenue". Banners were displayed with slogans such as "No socialism without women's liberation, no women's liberation without socialism" One stall invited passers-by to complete a vast jigsaw of the world, as the banner overhead proclaimed: "the whole world is my country".

Perhaps the only dubious gesture of this kind is the issuing of "labour voucher"-type token money for use inside the festival. Extra "token francs" are issued against "real francs". so that the festival currency is "devalued", forcing stallholders who are selling their goods to each other effectively to reduce their prices. This may be of some passing benefit to those who buy more than they sell at the festival (which, of course, would have applied far more to the many trotskyist groups present than to ourselves) But there is a dangerously misleading impression created, that socialism will perhaps have some need of a new type of currency, with which to ration and distribute goods according to some "just” scheme. In fact, socialism means that all property relationships will have ended, so that any means of exchange becomes unnecessary and the money-rationing system for distributing poverty can be replaced with a system of free access, according to self-determined need.

There was an incredible range of American and French trotskyist groups at the Fête [de] Lutte Ouvrière. Indeed, it was rumoured that some of the American groups had travelled over only to set up their stalls opposite one another and shout tirades of abuse at each other across the grass verges, in a holiday atmosphere. Such scenes did take place. Perhaps the most depressing experience, though, was stumbling across a couple of stalls from which could be heard the familiar English (as opposed to French) jargon, as representatives from the British SWP and RCP stood and sweated over how many years it was before the Russian Revolution "degenerated". To suggest that the Bolshevik or Leninist model for social change should itself be questioned meets with howls of derision from these experts in historical confusion.

The need to propagate a clear case for revolutionary, democratic socialism is more urgent than ever, and at the Fête [de] Lutte Ouvrière we made sure that some steps, however small at first, were being taken in that direction.

Clifford Slapper

Trotskyists in the European Parliament (2000)

From the September 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not many people know this but there are Trotskyist members sitting in the European Parliament. For the 1999 elections two Trotskyists groups in France—Lutte Ouvrière and the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire—presented a joint list and managed to get more than 5 percent of the national vote, so entitling them to 5 seats. It is this example that has inspired the main Trotskyist groups in Britain, led by the SWP and Militant, to get together as the so-called "Socialist Alliance" in the hope of repeating this performance.

But supposing they did get elected to Parliament what would they do? The French Trotskyist MEPs can provide a clue. In order to get full parliamentary facilities they have had to join a parliamentary "group". The one they have chosen to associate themselves with is the "European United Left/Nordic Green Left" made up of "Communist" and various other left-of-Labour MEPs. Too much should not be read into this as it is essentially an arrangement to get access to meeting rooms, interpreters and funds. The French Trotskyist MEPs use some of their share of the money to produce a "bulletin des députés" (members' bulletin) in which they publish their speeches and details of their other activities.

Lenin was not an anti-parliamentarist (he wasn't wrong about everything) but was in favour of Bolsheviks getting elected to Parliament and using it as a tribune from which to get their message across to workers in the country at large. As good Leninists, this is what the French Trotskyist MEPs try to do. There is nothing wrong with this as such. It is what Socialist MPs and MEPs would try to do too, only the message would be different—very different.

Whereas Socialist MPs would emphasise that capitalism can't be reformed to work in the interest of wage and salary workers who should therefore get together to bring it to an end and replace it by a system based on common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit, the Trotskyist MEPs merely repeat the slogans demanding reforms that they shout on demonstrations and publicise in their papers.

Thus the front page headline in the May 2000 issue of their Bulletin des Députés reads: "IT'S THE BOSSES' PROFITS THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN TO CREATE JOBS". Their speeches seem to indicate that they actually believe that unemployment could be ended by doing this. Here's Chantal Canquil (of LO):

    "It is not that it's impossible to immediately end unemployment but that would require a voluntarist policy which would not hesitate to draw on the profits of the financial and industrial groups and on the personal wealth of the big shareholders."

And Arlette Laguiller herself, LO's perennial candidate for President of France, called for a mass movement

    "to force big capital to take from its profits the wherewithal to create non-precarious jobs, paid at a decent wage".

Alain Krivine, of the LCR, who has often been Laguiller's rival in French presidential elections, even outlined a detailed programme as to how capitalism and capitalists could create full employment and decent wages for everyone:

    "A reduction in working time with the obligation to take on people and without introducing flexible working practices; wages to go up in line with productivity; a tax reform harmonising upwards taxes on income from capital; a Tobin tax aimed at discouraging financial speculation; and finally the implementation of a planned programme of energy saving."

Do they really believe this nonsense about keeping capitalism and being able to force, either by legislation or by strikes and demonstrations, the capitalists to use their profits to create jobs for everyone at a decent and ever-rising wage (anyone who knows how capitalism works will know that this would provoke a massive economic crisis)? Or is it just a populist slogan to attract gullible supporters who they believe they can then lead in an assault on capitalism (in fact to replace existing mixed private/state capitalism by full state capitalism)?

Either way they are condemned as anti-socialist. If they believe this is possible, then they stand exposed as reformists, and naive and unrealistic reformists at that. If they don't believe it, then they stand exposed as dishonest and cynical demagogues perpetuating reformist illusions just to win a popular following. Perhaps Krivine and the LCR believe it and LO don't. The LCR does offer more specific reforms than LO who confine themselves to vague general slogans. On the other hand, the LCR could be the more Machiavellian (or Leninist—the same thing) since it thinks the more practical you appear the better chance you have of attracting a bigger following.

Genuine Socialist MEPs of course would not advocate such reforms or encourage such reformist illusions. They would tell it like it is: that unemployment is inevitable under capitalism and will go up and down depending on which stage of its unavoidable business cycle capitalism happens to be in and that there's nothing that can be done to stop this; that there is no such thing as a decent wage since capitalism is based on the exploitation of wage labour with wages always being less than the value added in production and appropriated by the capitalists. Having said this, we would be less than honest if we didn't concede that occasionally the Trotskyist MEPs have used their speaking time to make the same criticism of capitalism as we would, even if from the perspective of establishing full state capitalism rather than real socialism.

But what about their voting record? This is a tricky one even for Socialists as this has been a subject of controversy within our own ranks. In the early days there were members who argued that Socialist MPs shouldn't take their seats and others who advocated that they should either vote against or abstain in all votes. But the majority position, which is still our current position, was that whereas Socialist MPs shouldn't propose anything (other than Socialism) they might under certain circumstances vote for something proposed by others i.e. a measure considered by the Party to be in the interest of the working class or the socialist movement). So we can't criticise the Trotskyist MEPs for sometimes abstaining, sometimes voting against and sometimes even voting for. For the record, they have generally voted against or abstained on economic issues and have only voted for general anti-racist declarations and pro-ecology measures.

Basically, the French Trotskyist MEPs either are or have behaved as leftwing reformists and so have done nothing to further the cause of Socialism. There is no reason to suppose that Trotskyist MPs in the British House of Commons would behave any differently.

Adam Buick

Next Sunday in France

From the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back

Next Sunday people in France will be voting in the first round of the French presidential elections. They will have a choice of 12 candidates, including one from the so-called Socialist Party, another from the so-called Communist Party, three Trotskyists and an "anti-capitalist".

We are often asked why all those calling themselves socialist don't just get together. The programme of the Trotskyist candidates in these elections provides one answer. When we contest elections, we campaign only for socialism as a worldwide system of society, without frontiers, based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with produced solely for use not for profit. When the Trotskyists contest elections, they hardly ever mention even their (mistaken) conception of socialism (which in reality is state capitalism). They assume that capitalism will continue and offer only reforms to it, thus contributing to the illusion that capitalism could be made to work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers.

A case in point is Lutte Ouvriere, the premier Trotskyist organisation in France. Here's how they describe their candidate's programme in the latest issue of their French-language theoretical journal Lutte de classe:

"The three major problems for the popular classes are the persistence of unemployment at an unacceptable level, the continual decline of the purchasing power of the toiling classes and the catastrophic state of housing for the people. These necessitate an urgent solution. This urgent solution requires a different use of the high profits realised by enterprises over many years. It is from these profits as well as from the hand-outs given to enterprises by the State at a loss that must be taken the funds needed to finance the maintaining of employment in the private sector and to create new ones, useful to the population, in the public sector".

In other words, capitalism, including a private sector, is to continue and there is a "solution", even an "urgent" one, within it: to use the profits of capitalist enterprises to create new jobs and build new and better houses. This is just demagogy as there is no solution to unemployment and bad housing under capitalism, as the experience of capitalism shows let alone a knowledge of Marx's analysis of how capitalism works.

But it gets worse. The naughty capitalists have, apparently, not been using their profits properly:

"The unprecedented profits accumulated by enterprises are not used for real investments, i.e. for the building of new factories, the manufacture of new machines, the enlargement of productive capacities with jobs as a consequence. That's the essential reason for the present economic crisis. Instead of enlarging the basis of production, the accumulated money is more and more financialised and only used for those false investments that are the take-over of enterprises by each other. Unable to enlarge the market with a sufficient rate of profit, the main aim of enterprises is to dispute with others their share of the market. The competition between them to outbid each other sustains a speculative spiral which, in addition, threatens the economy with a new stock exchange or monetary crisis".

There's a solution to this too:

"The only way to stop this rush towards the abyss is for the popular classes, the population, to impose their control over enterprises, over the choices made by their managements. The population must be able to exercise control over the enterprises day by day, over their finances, their strategies, their choices, their short and long term projects, so as to be able to oppose projects which manifestly go against the interests of society".

We don't know if they really believe that all that is needed to get enterprises to produce in "the interests of society" rather than for profit is popular control over their investment decisions, but that's what they say, so giving the impression that this would be possible under capitalism. That capitalism could be reformed in this way is of course just another reformist illusion.

We suspect we know what they are going to reply in response to this criticism: that these promises are only a "transitional programme" designed to lead workers, who can't understand the "abstract" idea of socialism, to realise through the experience of the failure of these reformist measures the need to get rid of capitalism (actually, to establish state capitalism as in Russia under Lenin and Trotsky).

In other words, there's a subtle theory for the "vanguard" and demagogic reformist promises for the thicko "masses".

Either they believe their promises (in which case they are reformists). Or they are just offering them as bait to win followers (in which case they are disreputable manipulators). Either way they stand condemned. Which is why we are just as opposed to them as to the openly pro-capitalist candidates.

We say that workers in France who want socialism can show this by dropping a paper marked "SOCIALISME MONDIAL" into the ballot box.

Adam Buick