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From The New International, Vol. XXIV No. 2–3, Spring–Summer 1958, pp. 120–125.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
FOR SOME TIME NOW it has been ISL policy to advocate the entry of European revolutionary socialists into the social-democratic mass parties of their countries. This position was most forcefully stated by comrade Shachtman in his discussion with Hermann Möhring of Pro und Contra in Fall 1951. In his final rejoinder to Möhring’s article Shachtman wrote:
A Marxist [should be able to see] that unless the Marxists succeed in restoring an inseparable contact with the working class vanguard, in imbuing this vanguard with revolutionary principles, and in reorganizing the political ranks of this vanguard into a revolutionary socialist party, the Marxists are doomed – and, what is more important, so is the prospect of socialism.
Shachtman then advised the Marxists in Europe:
The road to the reconstruction of the revolutionary socialist party lies through your entrance and patient, systematic work in the social-democratic parties of the indicated countries.
In short, the ISL advocated the entry of the revolutionary socialist minorities into the social-democratic mass movements in order to escape isolation and in order to prepare the foundations for future revolutionary socialist parties.
At the same time we explained that these objectives could not be achieved by working within the Stalinist parties, even when the latter represented the mass movement of the working class as in France and, to a lesser extent, in Italy. Why? Not primarily because of the moral and political corruption of these parties, but because of their sociological nature: the total dependence of their controlling apparatus on the Russian State. We said: even though the social-democratic leaders might be a reprehensible type of people, and even though they will lead the labor movement to defeat if left to their own devices, they are at least vitally interested in maintaining a free labor movement – if for no other reason than that you cannot sell out something that doesn’t exist. The situation of the Stalinist leadership, we added, is different: their power base being located outside the labor movement they control, the preservation of the latter is a secondary consideration for them. Numerous examples (Poland and Spain among others) have shown that the Stalinist leaders are perfectly prepared deliberately to smash their own movement along with the rest of the labor movement if it serves the interests of Russian state policy.
I have always been in general agreement with this position. I also believe that it is essential for revolutionary socialists anywhere to remain an integral part of the mass movement of the working class, and that building separate organizations in countries where a political mass-movement exists leads to isolation. I also agree that the main positive function of social-democracy in post-war Europe has been to preserve the existence of an independent labor movement and that, for this reason, the place of independent socialists is within it, wherever it represents the major working class organization.
Today this applies in a general way to the Scandinavian countries, to Britain, to Germany, to Austria, to Switzerland, to Belgium and to the Netherlands. It does not apply, however, to Greece, where the conditions for a social-democratic mass movement do not exist, nor to Italy, where the social-democracy is a small and corrupt coalition of petty-bourgeois cliques, while the left-socialist PSI is unquestionably an independent mass movement with a strong working class base. I believe that it does not apply to France either.
I am not basing my objections to “living and working” in the S.F.I.O. on the quality of its leadership, or its policy, or the difficulty of working within the party. There is no significant difference between the intelligence of Lacoste or Ollenhauer, or the integrity of Guy Mollet and of Paul-Henri Spaak. There is probably no more bureaucratized and monolithic party in existence, outside the Stalinist parties, than the Austrian SPO. There is probably not a single betrayal of socialism by the S.F.I.O. that the leadership of the Dutch Labor Party would not commit if given the opportunity. Nevertheless, we continue to advocate membership and work in these parties because all the negative factors mentioned above do not cancel out the cardinal advantage of remaining an integral part of the mass movement.
It should be quite clear by now that in our appraisal of the S.F.I.O. we have not applied different standards: we oppose work and membership in the S.F.I.O. because it does not represent in any meaningful sense a mass movement of the working class, and because it does not fulfill any of the functions which we consider sufficient reason for entering a social-democratic party.
As we have seen from the data of Rimbert, the S.F.I.O. represents a very small minority of the industrial working class (about 25,000 out of 6.5 million, or approximately 0.4%). More important, these workers are among the most conservative sections of the French working class and not in any sense a vanguard. Further, they are not organized, either geographically or professionally, in such a manner as to represent a specific influence in the party.
It will not do either to point out that the party represented an even smaller percentage of the working class in 1905 (perhaps it did, I did not check): there is a qualitative difference between the situation of a new organization that sets out to organize the working class at an early stage of its political history, and an organization that has crumbled to a similar size as a result of a process of degeneration and decay. Again: this process is not primarily the result of the mistakes and betrayals of the leadership: it is an irreversible sociological trend produced by the existence of the Communist Party, which has deprived the reformist party of the most active and devoted elements at the rank-and-file level and of any leeway for political maneuvering at the top-level. The policy of the leadership, itself a product of that situation, has then compounded the process.
Secondly, there is no meaningful way in which it can be said that the S.F.I.O. is preserving the physical existence of an independent labor movement. The Force Ouvrier never carried much weight as a trade union organization. Except for one or two sectors (metal and certain public service unions) it is a completely discredited organization (corrupt in the political and in the literal sense) which all decent trade unionists are trying to get out of. If there has been any doubt about it, this is no longer the case after Lafond and Le Bourre have joined the “paratrooper wing” of the neo-Gaullist bandwagon. The only significant exception is the Metalworkers Federation which is under the influence, not so much of the S.F.I.O. as of anarcho-syndicalist elements.
If it comes to the preservation of an independent labor movement, the Catholics have surely done better with their C.F.T.C.
Now the existence of the party itself is endangered by the Mollet leadership: the complicity of Mollet in the Gaullist coup and the present support of de Gaulle by the S.F.I.O. leadership has created a split in the party which is unlikely to be patched over as was customary for earlier conflicts. This is all the more true since the right wing of Mollet’s faction would not hesitate to integrate the party into an authoritarian, right-wing “one party” movement sponsored by de Gaulle: there are public statements to that effect.
Thirdly, there is no way in which membership in the S.F.I.O. furthers the contact of the socialist militant with the working class. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that militants of the S.F.I.O. of whatever tendency are better off to hide or minimize their party affiliation if they want to make themselves heard at all. This, of course, may vary according to the local situation, but it is certainly true in all big industrial and urban centers, that is, wherever advanced workers are concerned. If anything, membership in the S.F.I.O. is a factor of isolation.
Pivert, who always hoped to make an honest woman out of the S.F.I.O., often remarked that membership in the party represents membership in the Socialist International, that is, a link with healthier sectors of international social-democracy. This, unfortunately, is a purely formal argument, which makes no sense in terms of the French situation. Membership in the Socialist International is a relationship on a very high level of abstraction, comparable to being one’s “brother in Christ.” Insofar as actual work in the French labor movement is concerned, it has no meaning. This, incidentally, does not apply to the trade union internationals; the difference is that the trade union internationals actually exist, and that certain aspects of their work are actually relevant to the problems of the French working class.
Finally, it is particularly irrelevant to argue that if all socialists who have left the party had stayed in, they might have been able to stop the Mollet gang. From the historical point of view, the argument is beside the point: it could have made absolutely no difference if any of the dissident groups – from the A.S.R. to the “Action Socialiste” – had stayed in the party. Their departure was less an active factor influencing the party’s evolution than a symptom. From the present point of view, the argument is futile, for it offers no perspective: nobody, absolutely nobody, is now going to join the S.F.I.O. on its left, and it would make no difference if anyone did.
IF THE HISTORY OF THE S.F.I.O. teaches anything, it teaches that you cannot use an institution for the purposes of the labor movement after it has become the channel for social forces hostile to the working class. Must we not allow for the possibility that this can happen to a social-democratic party? Politically and organizationally, the S.F.I.O. has become the party of a certain kind of petty-bourgeois conservatism; this is not a passing aberration, but the result of an evolution within a specific social and political situation over which independent socialists (or, for that matter, most other people) have no control. To wish for a powerful left-wing in the S.F.I.O. is to wish for a different social and political situation in France and in the world. It explains nothing and advances nothing.
If the lesson is to be understood, we must ask ourselves the question: at which point did the S.F.I.O. cease to become a party worth supporting? If there was a qualitative change, when did it take place? Now this sort of question is as difficult as it is important, and can hardly ever be answered except in retrospect: partly because it is not easy to judge the trend of an evolution when you are in the midst of it, partly because an evolution of this kind is never completely predictable, and people hang on in spite of the evidence, in the hope of a change. The date of the turning-point matters little. Mollet’s capitulation in Algiers on February 6, 1955 can probably be considered as the date after which membership in the S.F.I.O. ceased to be useful from the socialist point of view. It is clear, however, that if there is an irreversible trend it existed for some time before that date. In a more fundamental sense – and armed with retrospective wisdom – one could say that the victory of the Mollet apparatus in 1947, coinciding with the beginning of the cold war, set into motion the machinery of self-destruction which nobody in the S.F.I.O. has been in a position to resist since.
What occurred from 1947 to 1956 was a process of bureaucratization and corruption preparing the party to become a channel for social forces opposed to the labor movement; the actual process of “reversal” took place from 1956 to 1957.
As the case may be, we are now faced with the situation that “Social-democratic reformism” in France, as represented by the S.F.I.O., has ceased to resemble any set of facts that this definition calls to our minds. To continue considering it as the main area of activity for revolutionary (or any other kind) socialists at the present time is a triumph of abstract and formal thinking.
All this, however, does not answer the question of what is to be done. Comrade Shachtman suggests that a balance sheet of the numerous efforts to build a socialist movement outside and against the S.F.I.O. would show failure. He is right. Beside the continued existence of the Trotskyist PCI, which is neither a failure nor a success, there have been three attempts: the PSOP, led by Marceau Pivert, which did not survive the war; then the RDR, the most erratic of the three, which the ISL supported at the time, and today the PUGS. It is not too early to predict failure for the PUGS, even in its own frame of reference, which is not exactly one of “irreconcilable conflict” with the S.F.I.O. But we are not suggesting commitment to the Union Gauche Socialistes (PUG), as an alternative to entering the existing mass parties.
Our problem is not merely one of building a “good” party to oppose to the “bad” parties; it is, unfortunately, far more difficult.
The central fact of the present situation is that there is no longer any such a thing as a French labor movement. More precisely: there is no longer any labor movement once you leave the office buildings. There are headquarters, office staffs, newspapers and electoral machines: there is no movement, nothing in the plants, no cells, no locals, no organization. This is even true of the CP and the CGT, to a much greater extent than one imagines. If this wasn’t true, we would not have de Gaulle and his paratroopers on our hands. All considerations on the French Left have to start from this fact. It is clear that no top-level operations will lead to any positive results as long as this situation exists: neither synthetic creations of new parties, nor Fronts, be they United, Popular, Republican or what have you, nor bureaucratic mergers between staffs of organizations.
The other important fact is that since the Algerian war and the crisis of Stalinism there has been a growing tendency towards new political alignments in the working class. On all important issues, the tendencies have cut across party lines. This is only natural in a situation where the majority of the working class stands outside the parties, and where the parties are too weak to impose their discipline on their followers. Today every single party with a working class following is threatened by a split in one degree or another: the S.F.I.O. is practically split already, the C.P. could easily split on the issue of de Gaulle, the P.U.G.S. could split on the issue of Stalinism. The only reason why the M.R.P. is not about to split is because the bulk of the Catholic workers have withdrawn from it at an earlier time, and now occupy an independent position. The unstable and provisional character of the parties and of party commitments, then, is another central fact. Most socialists in France are agreed that a new movement is in gestation, of which we know nothing except that it will not be centered around any of the existing parties, even though it will include elements from all.
THE PROBLEMS WHICH WE are facing today cannot be solved by the parties or through the parties, but by new organizations cutting across party lines. What is involved is re-building the labor movement in France from the bottom up: create factory organizations that work, connect them in a united, decentralized trade-union movement solidly based on its local units, democratically controlled on all levels, including many different tendencies on equal terms. On the political level, the corresponding task is to reconstitute a united socialist labor party, including the majority of he communist workers, such social-democratic workers as there are, the Catholic workers, the revolutionary minorities.
These are not abstract tasks and perspectives: events are forcing these tasks and perspectives on all of us: those who have been wanting to do this very thing for years, and those who reluctantly tag along because there is no other solution. If no progress is made in this direction within the next few months, fascism is virtually certain, and the work will still have to be done under fascism.
What is the point of leverage for socialist action in the present situation? In my opinion all movements that work toward a reconstruction of the French labor movement along the lines described above. At the present time, the “Mouvement pour un syndicalisme uni et démocratique,” led by Forestier of the Federation of Teachers Unions, Pastre of the CGT and Lapeyre of FO is agitating for a united trade union movement, inclusive of all tendencies and independent of parties; the “Comité de liaison e d’action pour la Démocratie Ouvrière” (CLADO) stresses the need for an independent class policy and for direct rank-and-file control. The function of revolutionary socialists is to initiate or support all movements of this type, from whatever vantage point seems most effective in the given situation.
What this vantage point is, depends largely on one’s personal possibilities. The object is to turn all movements for the reconstruction of the labor movement into rank-and-file movements, if they do not already originate at the base. In the present situation valuable work is being done in this respect by elements scattered among various groups and organizations. Undeniably some groups offer greater possibilities than others; part of my argument is that the minority in the S.F.I.O., although not altogether useless, is among those groups which have the least to offer in that respect.
It is unlikely that the present parties or trade unions will survive under the pressure of coming events. They do not deserve to survive. Their disappearance is a condition for the reconstruction of an effective labor movement in France. Engels wrote in 1858 that “one is really almost driven to believe that the English proletarian movement in its old traditional Chartist form must perish completely before it can develop itself in a new viable form. And yet one cannot foresee what this new form will look like.'' Today these words seem meant to describe the French situation. To cling today to organizations which are organically involved in the process of decay (both as a cause and as a byproduct) is to shut oneself off from all possibilities of effective action.
June 1958
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