P. Frank | Trotskyist Writers | ETOL Home Page
A revolutionary situation is also distinguished, according to Lenin, by the bourgeoisie’s inability to govern the country. What was the condition of the bourgeois leadership in France during the month of May 1968.
The bourgeois leadership was itself notoriously deficient. Let us leave aside Pompidou’s and de Gaulle’s trips abroad, which testified to their failure to face up to the situation. The almost total silence of these two men was not the result of calculation. The student movement and then the workers movement had exceeded anything the bourgeoisie had experienced in its history. There was talk in a number of quarters, for example in a newspaper like Le Monde, noted for the seriousness of its analyses, about the government’s “errors.” This, however, was disregarding the lessons of history which show that a worn-out system commits such “errors” from the simple fact that every one of its acts rebounds against it. It cannot be said that de Gaulle decided to launch a referendum with the idea of giving it up a few days later. Just like the working-class leaderships, the leadership of French capitalism found itself left behind and outflanked. De Gaulle really considered resigning. His radio interview can be believed on this score. The statements of Mitterrand, Mendes-France, Giscard d’Estaing, and several others on May 28 were also in line with such an assumption. In those days the bourgeois political world was searching for an alternative.
It was only when he found himself in an extremely difficult, almost desperate situation that de Gaulle, who is a political tactician in the grand style, decided to move with the utmost audacity. The movement was close to breaking through all restraints. De Gaulle understood that in these circumstances, the final impetus could only be given by the opposing leadership. On spontaneity alone, by its own undirected strength, the movement had advanced much further than anyone could have imagined. To continue to advance it now needed a leadership which would dare to give the signal. De Gaulle knows the Communist Party’s men well; he was able to use them in his 1946 government. [1] He knew that they were incapable of such audacity. Having nothing but contempt, moreover, for “politicians on the shelf” of the Mollet or Mitterrand type, he decided to throw a scare into the lot of them. He accused the PCF of a policy which it had not the least intention of pursuing. He threatened a repression which made these spineless leaders tremble. And he offered them elections in exchange for their torpedoing the movement. Elections! These men found themselves back on their favorite ground! And thus de Gaulle saved his regime in extremis.
There was no long premeditated operation on his part. He resorted to a last-minute improvisation, a very slick improvisation which produced a guaranteed effect. However, it would be wrong to view this as a real solution for the situation. The strikes are continuing with great firmness. The elections are not entirely safe for de Gaulle. And even if he succeeds in surmounting this hurdle, difficulties will very soon reappear. If, for a period, a certain degree of repression could produce some results, other mass thrusts will show up profoundly marked by the experience of May 1968.
In conclusion, the French bourgeoisie, which is probably the world’s most experienced in the matter of mass movements, showed in the May mobilizations that it was not its intelligence and slickness that saved it this time. It was the reformist policy of the PCF leadership and its still very strong control over decisive masses of workers which saved the de Gaulle regime and the capitalist system. The bourgeois economist, P. Uri, a member of Mitterrand’s “shadow government,” talked in the London Times, June 5, about an “objective conspiracy” between the Gaullist government and the PCF leadership. As two British bourgeois journalists described it:
“But the paradox which underlies this controlled chaos is that the Communist unions and the Gaullist government they appear to be challenging are really on the same side of the barricades. They are defending French society as we know it ... The Communist Party thus stood revealed as the ultimate bastion of the consumer society which the student Bolsheviks are pledged to destroy. It is as if Washington and Moscow had got together to put down North Vietnam.” (P. Seale and M. McConville, The Observer, May 19.)
1. Here is what de Gaulle wrote in his memoirs on the presence of PCF leaders in his government in 1945:
“Taking into account previous circumstances, events since then, the necessities of today, I hold that the return of Maurice Thorez as head of the Communist Party can yield more advantages at present than difficulties ...
“Inasmuch as in place of revolution, the Communists seek preponderance in a parliamentary regime, society runs less risk ...
“As for Thorez, while trying to advance the affairs of Communism, on many occasions he was to serve the public interest. On his return to France, he helped put an end to the last vestiges of the ‘patriotic militia’ whom some of his people obstinately sought to maintain in a new underground. Insofar as the gloomy, hard rigidity of his party permitted him, he opposed the attempts at encroachment of the liberation committees and the acts of violence to which the overexcited groups turned. Among the workers – they were numerous – particularly the miners, who listened to his harangues, he did not stop advocating the slogan of working to the utmost and of producing, cost what it might. Was this simply a political tactic? It’s not my business to figure it out. It was enough for me that France benefited.” (Le Salut, pp.100-101.)
P. Frank Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 10.12.2005