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From The New International, Vol. 13 No. 5, July 1947, p. 160.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The convention of the Workers Party [1] fully endorses the decision taken by the PCI of France in asking the working class to vote “Yes” on the constitutional referendum in May. It hails this decision on the part of our French comrades as further evidence of their break with the sterile and doctrinaire sectarianism that dominates the politics of the IS and which has blighted so much of the heroic and self-sacrificing work of our European parties during and after the war.
The position of the revolutionary Marxists in the struggle around the constitution cannot be considered from the point of view of some abstract principle. Our position must base itself upon the essence of the question, i.e., the actual struggle of the classes for power, and the relationship of forces at a given stage of this struggle. The French bourgeoisie understood the political effect of a constitution that placed all power in the hands of a single chamber and did away with those traditional bourgeois safeguards against popular pressure such as independent judiciary and an independent executive branch in control of the armed forces and police. The bourgeoisie, therefore, chose to make the constitutional question a battleground in defense of its historic strongholds. The MRP, consequently, broke the three party coalition to rally the bourgeois front on this issue. This act determined the crucial class character of the referendum struggle by making it an issue of the MRP bourgeois front vs. the working class front led by CP-SP-CGT. This class lineup, not the bourgeois character of the constitution, had to be the point of departure for the revolutionary Marxists.
To call for a boycott of the referendum would have been the height of folly, unjustified and unjustifiable by a single valid argument. Under the given conditions of the referendum, the tactic of boycott would mean the replacement of Marxist politics with anarchist anti-parliamentarism.
To call for a “no” vote with the given relationship of forces would have been worse than mere isolation, it would have, in effect, landed the Marxist party squarely in the middle of the bourgeois front. Under the given conditions all declarations and proclamations as to our basis for opposition to the constitution could not have availed to distinguish us in the eyes of the masses from the camp of reaction. In politics it is the political line, not propaganda, that counts. A “no” position would mean, in political language, the same political line as the camp of reaction.
A “no” vote could only be justified if the relationship of forces would have placed the MRP power in balance between us (i.e., the Marxist party at the head of the masses) and the CP-SP camp as the props of the bourgeois order. In this event, however, we would be on the eve of the struggle for power and our participation in the referendum would have been only a “parliamentary” maneuver related to (or as a springboard for) the extra-parliamentary struggle for immediate state power. In this situation our political line would be “Against the bourgeois constitution-For the Soviet Power.” If in such a relationship an extreme right wing bourgeois camp also voted “no” it would be of no consequence since our struggle for power would crush it the very next day along with the Stalinist reformist center.
Had the MRP supported the “one chamber” constitution and remained part of the 3-party coalition in the referendum struggle, an entirely different relationship of forces would have prevailed. Under these conditions a “yes” vote would have no meaning, other than to sanction the 3-party coalition swindle that has for so long frustrated the desires of the French masses. Whether it would, under such circumstances, be most advantageous to vote “no” or to cast a blank ballot would depend upon many factors that cannot be posed in relation to such a hypothetical situation.
However, in the real situation, as it prevailed in May, the “yes” vote was indicated by the entire mechanics of the struggle since the liberation. These mechanics require as the next stage in the leftward movement of the French situation the adoption of the SP-CP Constitution.
1. This resolution was adopted as an appendix to the Resolution on the International Situation, published in our April issue, adopted May 1946.
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