P. Frank | Trotskyist Writers | ETOL Home Page
In studying the various stages of the movement closely, the following conclusions may be drawn. Within the “detonator” group [“detonator” is the term the students themselves used], there were several elements capable of playing a leading role: political groups and the UNEF and SNESup leaderships, which included politically educated militants independent of the traditional leaderships and opposed to their policies. Without exaggerating the forces on which these UNEF and SNESup leaders based themselves, or the strength of the politically conscious groups, it can be said that these few “dozen wildmen,” in the objective conditions of the revolutionary crisis, played a considerable role in touching off the movement and later in advancing it through the various stages I have pointed out. They continued to perform this function up until the last stage, in which the “detonator” could have only worked again had exceptional circumstances developed – and this was not the case, as will be seen further on.
Once it was off the ground under the impetus of the “detonator,” the workers movement itself went forward despite its traditional leaderships. These leaderships held back from demonstrating solidarity with the students when they were struggling against the police. They wanted a demonstration on May 15 only; but following the night of the barricades of May 10-11, they found themselves obliged, under the pressure of popular anger, to declare a 24-hour general strike for May 13.
Once that day was over, they thought they were back to peace and quiet, when, spontaneously, the workers – essentially the young workers – began to occupy factories without any directive from the unions. Once more, the union leaderships only recognized the de facto situation this created. They negotiated with the government and the bosses under the shock of the night of rebellions on May 24, but they did so ignoring the workers’ real desires and so again found themselves outdistanced on May 27.
The leaderships of the CFDT and FO, whose respective influence in the working class was limited, can be left aside. No one expected the CFDT or FO to assume a vanguard role. The CGT leadership, however, had behind it the decisive battalions of the working class, as was seen in the demonstration of May 29. While revolutionary minorities were conscious of the pernicious role the CGT leadership could play because of its allegiance to the policy of the PCF, the large masses of the workers placed their hopes in this leadership. The CGT and PCF leadership was outdistanced by the mass movement as early as May 3 and for all the days following. It was only on May 29 – or four weeks late – that it seemed to regain the leadership of the actions by calling for a political change and the establishment of a “people’s government of democratic union.” While it was still being constantly outflanked to the left by the mass movement, it strove to limit the movement’s advance by directing its principal blows against “ultraleftists,” “provocateurs,” etc. At no time did it undertake to criticize the leaderships of the other trade union federations, and with reason. However, it felt the need to denounce and even break with UNEF – and in harsh terms. This bureaucratic PCF and CGT leadership must have thought that once the “ultraleftists” were denounced and eliminated the movement would return to “order.” Hadn’t it been the case for many years that the CGT’s “monitors” forcibly removed “ultraleftists” and other “provocateurs” from demonstrations organized by the CGT without the least altercation with the police? Hadn’t it been seen how these disrupters were eliminated who threatened the “calm” and “dignity” of the CGT’s demonstrations, that is, threatened to break agreements reached beforehand with the police? The enemy is on the left, that was the CGT and PCF leaders’ slogan. And that meant not only the “ultraleftists,” but the entire mass movement which was moving in a left direction.
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It was not, however, so much its utterances which proved particularly harmful in the course of the movement. This movement had such power that it very often ignored these. What was chiefly harmful to the movement was the fragmentation which the CGT leadership maintained and fostered and in which it was followed by the leaders of the other trade-union federations. The students and teachers as well as the high-school students were first of all carefully divided from the workers. Everything was done to deepen this separation. For the universities, the CGT and PCF put forward slogans like “A Democratic and Modern University” which had nothing in common with the demands of the striking students and teachers. In practice, the factory gates were closed to the students, who the CGT leaders feared would contaminate the workers with their “ultraleft” politics. In order to facilitate this result, the leaders also did their utmost to reduce the number of strikers occupying the factories, urging the majority to stay home most of the time, so that the factories were chiefly occupied by those elements which were considered most reliable – from these leaders’ standpoint.
Furthermore, their negotiations with the government – which should not have been considered a valid party to discussion in the first place – were conducted right from the start in a way that divided the workers of the private sector, those in the nationalized sectors, and salaried personnel. In other words, there was no general strike for these leaders. They refused to launch this slogan at one time apparently under the pretext that the general strike was already an accomplished fact and didn’t need to be called. But the reality of this was their fear that if they had issued a general strike slogan they would have had to set political objectives because political demands alone expressed the common denominator of the movement struggle. These bureaucrats saw the movement only as an arithmetical sum of separate and distinct economic struggles in which each group was negotiating on its own account. This was their policy in the weeks preceding the Rue de Grenelle negotiations and during them; it remained the same immediately following the rejections of these agreements by the workers.
Even at the time when the CGT organized the May 29 demonstrations it did not establish any link between the immediate demands and the slogan of “a people’s government.” It never declared that the general strike, nonexistent in its eyes since it had not been called, had the objective of creating this “people’s government.” Finally, when de Gaulle, to create a red scare, accused the PCF and the CGT of conducting a political strike with the aim of changing the government in the country, both organizations rejected this accusation. At last, the PCF and CGT leaderships aligned themselves with de Gaulle’s decision to hold legislative elections.
Thus, the CGT leadership, which had rejected the accusation that it was following a revolutionary policy (and certainly did not follow such a policy), which claimed that all political problems were the sole preserve of the political parties, reconciled itself to politics by floundering in parliamentarism. The CGT, which never failed to say all through the mobilizations that it was only concerned with economic demands and that governmental problems were the business of political parties, which ignored the question of government as long as it could and later rejected anything remotely approaching a revolutionary orientation, only began to show signs of political life when de Gaulle put the question on an electoral basis.
Turning to the PCF’s own policy through May, first of all, like the CGT, it directed almost all its fire against the “ultraleftists.” After the l’Humanité article by Marchais, the organizational secretary of the PCF, denouncing “the German Cohn-Bendit” on May 3 – the very day the struggle began – hardly a day passed without some more or less severe and more or less crudely expressed condemnation of “ultraleftists.” The variations in this regard are not without interest. It is easy to show from the columns of l’Humanité that the virulent denunciation of the first days was progressively (if this adverb can be used in this instance) attenuated as the movement took rapid leaps forward and grew, that it took a sharper turn just before any possibility that the leaders would be outflanked, and that it assumed a heightened form after de Gaulle’s speech and above all as soon as the back-to-work movement developed. Now that elections are the order of the day, monopolizing the PCF leaders’ attention, the “ultraleftists” are increasingly becoming the target of virulent attacks. [2]
Throughout May, the PCF leadership’s favorite term for attacking revolutionary militants was “ultraleftist.” Now it is resorting to the term “provocateur.” The June 8 issue of l’Humanité is a choice specimen in this regard. The “provocateurs” at Flins were not the government and the Gardes Mobiles but the students along with Geis-mar from the SNESup, who went there to express their solidarity, with workers driven out of the factory and to fight alongside them against the forces of repression. The students there were not organized in disciplined commando groups (which would not have been a bad idea in facing the forces of “order”). However, l’Humanité, through its published statements, can only be said to have played the role of an informer. These are the real provocations whose infamous ends must be denounced. And the reason for the PCF’s outburst can be found explicitly stated in a declaration by the CGT Railway Workers Federation, which is Seguy’s own union: Incidents with the state forces, they say, could have a bad effect on the election campaign. The distance from this to condemning those who came to support strikers is not long. After all, the Stalinists are not novices in these matters. Didn’t one Stalinist secretary of the CGT declare in December 1945 “strikes are the weapon of monopolies?”
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But the “enemy on the left” slogan is only one side of the CGT leadership’s policy. How did it conduct itself toward its right, that is toward the FGDS?
The line the PCF leadership has been following for some years is well known. It wants to reach a “common program” with the FGDS to wage a joint election campaign. It was rather neatly added that this would be linked to a mass movement of “unrivaled breadth.” One doesn’t know whether for Waldeck Rochet this meant a revolutionary movement, which is doubtful, or whether his vision of such a movement corresponded to the one which occurred in 1968. In passing it can be remarked that he isn’t known for such imagination. In any case, when this movement of “unrivaled breadth” occurred, he did not seem to recognize it or to feel any need to draw conclusions from it. From the first day and almost up until the end of May he stepped up his appeals and letters to Mitterrand to speed up the negotiations on a common program. This leadership refused to serve as an “auxiliary” (its own term) for UNEF in organizing a demonstration against the Algerian war in 1960, but pleaded day after day to the FGDS to agree to a meeting to negotiate this mysterious “common program.” Moreover, no one knows what this program could be since the Declaration of February 1968 was not to serve as the model. The PCF did not want to be an “auxiliary” of UNEF in the struggle against the Algerian war; but it was acting as if it was anxious to be an auxiliary of the FGDS, on the basis of no-one-knows-what program, at a time when the mass movement had reached an exceptional peak.
From May 3 to 27, the PCF leadership did not advance in action a single slogan on the question of the government. Its decision was, so to speak, subordinated to an agreement with the FGDS on this “joint program” which no one has yet seen. The PCF leadership thus had no political solution of its own for the crisis for more than 25 days. For it, everything depended on an agreement with the FGDS. Does this leadership, after that, still dare to claim that it is leading the party of the working class, and even that it is its vanguard?
But the PCF leadership made a turn toward the end of May, declaring itself for a “people’s government of democratic unity” and calling for the constitution of “committees of action” for such a government. A few preliminary words are necessary. First of all, one cannot find any definition of the content of such a government in the CP press. “With Communist participation,” PCF agitators chanted in the May 29 demonstrations. But, assuming this, who would they be “participating” with? The FGDS, one might think. There is a small difficulty in this, which I will take up right after noting one other point. The PCF leadership used the term “action committee,” which refers to manifold organizations created during the May mobilization with a policy quite different from the one the CP has been following. Here, the CP duplicated the operation it carried out a few months earlier when it created “Vietnam Committees” totally different from those which for long months had been waging a real struggle for Vietnamese victory and which the CP continually fought as “ultraleftist.” When it does not slander the “ultraleftists,” the PCF tries to mix up political labels. It creates “action committees” whose objective in regard to real mass action is inaction.
Having said this, we can return to the question of the government itself. The formula “people’s government of democratic union” did not drop out of the blue. While the PCF leadership was pleading heart and soul with the FGDS leadership to come to an understanding on the “joint program” which did not seem to be about to see the light of day, a little operation had been plotted for several days by the FGDS leadership and other forces on the left. A good many people were aware of it or in on it and it was revealed at the very moment the PCF (also on to it) presented its new formula.
The May movement itself posed the question of government. This was correctly appreciated even in Gaullist ranks. It was then that Mitterrand, having totally forgotten the existence of his “shadow government,” made a declaration in favor of a “government of transition” which had little in common with a special alliance between the FGDS and the PCF and consequently with an FGDS-PCF government. Mitterrand added that he was ready to take the lead of such a government, but – oh, what rare generosity for the political world! – others were as worthy to lead it as he, for example, Mendes-France. The name which had been quietly whispered about for some days was finally pronounced publicly.
What was the meaning of this political operation? Mendes-France did not exclude participation of Communists in his government, but at the same time Lecanuet [3] himself would not have done less. Mendes-France added that such a “provisional government” should not be based on a “concoction” of different political parties. This became very clear. The operation consisted in replacing the right bonapartist government of de Gaulle with an equally bonapartist government, but a “left” one, with Mendes-France. This would not be a government based on a parliamentary majority but one which would continue playing the game of balancing between opposing social forces in the country. This balancing game would be more anchored to the forces on the left in distinction to that anchored to the forces of the right in de Gaulle’s time. Mendes-France is no novice in this type of operation. His government in 1954 was the groundbreaker. It contained, moreover, several politicans who have since reappeared in de Gaulle’s governments (among others, Fouchet [Minister of Education under de Gaulle]).
In the face of such a powerful movement de Gaulle’s “strong government” might no longer be the most indicated solution for French capitalism. There was, however, no question of a return to bourgeois democracy. Another team under the leadership of a so-called man of the left would have operated in the same way as de Gaulle.
The PCF leadership saw a danger to itself in this attempt. Hadn’t it served before (when Thorez was its leader) in such a government led by de Gaulle? It wanted a government, whether led by Mitterrand or someone else, in which it could bring pressure to bear – not for the victory of socialism (if it had wanted that, it would not have needed to take a detour through Mitterrand or anyone else). What it was seeking was essentially concessions in a direction favorable to what the Kremlin wants – notably in international policy. A parliamentary government of the Mitterrand type would have been more sensitive to pressure than a bonapartist government of the Mendes-France type. In the minds of its organizers, the May 20 demonstration for “a people’s government,” ostensibly directed against de Gaulle was at least as much against a Mendes-France coalition.
Finally, when de Gaulle decided to turn and fight, the first response to his decision to call legislative elections came from Waldeck Rochet. De Gaulle, he said, had only adopted the PCF’s own demand on this score. The PCF leadership then called on all PCF members to roll up their sleeves for the coming elections, which could only be done by draining the energy devoted to continuing strikes.
One can legitimately doubt the PCF leadership’s desire to oust de Gaulle. Reading the Soviet and East European press shows that de Gaulle has the favor of the governments in these countries. He has been enthusiastically received there in recent years. A change appeared only after his recent anti-Communist statements. While this is debatable, there can be no hesitation on another point. In a pinch, the CP might replace de Gaulle’s regime with another, but not on the basis of a mass movement like the one in May. It wants to do this only on the basis of an electoral success. This is less dangerous for the government which could result.
Let us sum up the May 1968 balance sheet of the Stalinist PCF and CGT leadership:
This betrayal of the PCF leadership equalled and surpassed the oft denounced betrayals of the Social Democracy. If this leadership has not up until now acted in the manner that the Noskes and the Eberts acted against the German revolution of 1918-19, it is because the bourgeoisie has no need of it. But its conduct toward the “ultraleftists” leaves no doubt that it is ready to do so should the need arise.
2. It should not be forgotten that the UNEF and CGT leaders could not come to an understanding because the CGT leadership refused to condemn the government’s measure banning Cohn-Bendit from France. What authority will the protestations of the PCF or the CGT have tomorrow when the government expels foreign workers? Their aversion to “ultra-leftists” has taken precedence for them over solidarity with foreign militants struck by administrative measures. Of course, the Stalinists never defend oppositionists persecuted by the bourgeoisie.
3. The leader of the Centrists or the party of “Progress and Modern Democracy.” This party is identified with a program of bourgeois modernization and strengthening the “Atlantic Alliance.” – Ed.
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Last updated: 10.12.2005