reformist scramble for position
FRANCE parties by ALAIN KRIVINE In the past few weeks three parties of the French left have held national meetings whose implications are extremely important for the workers movement. There was the National Council of the Parti Socialiste Unifié (PSU - United Socialist party), at which the leadership found itself in a minority; there was the "Assises pour le Socialisme" (Assembly for Socialism) organized by the Socialist party, which laid the basis for the integration into the new Social Democracy of a faction of the PSU and a section of the apparatus of the Confédération Francaise Démocratique du Travail (CFDT - French Democratic Confederation of Labor); and there was the special congress of the Communist party, which laid out the perspective of a government open to the Gaullists. These three meetings represent a significant stage in the process of recomposition of the French workers movement that began after the general strike of May-June 1968. To understand the import of these meetings and to draw their consequences for revolutionary Marxists it is first necessary to recall briefly the main features of the political situation after Giscard d'Estaing's victory in the presidential elections last MayAn unstable situation The electoral victory of the right, which was fully united and still won by less than 1 percent, in no way strengthened the system of bourgeois rule that had been shaken in 1968. Confronted with a very high inflation rate (prices going up 15-20 percent a year) and with the beginning of a recession, the government today is incapable of halting the spread of unemployment (which threatens to hit the 1 mil8 lion mark in the next few months) or of preventing the bankruptcy of hundreds of small and middle-sized companies that are falling victim to the policy of restriction of credit. At the time of the elections the present ruling group, while a minority among the wage earners, was able to group together virtually the entire right and far right against the peril of the Union de la Gauche (Union of the Left, the bloc of the CP and the SP, supported by the Left Radicals). But this mass of ballots failed to lead to the construction of the body so fondly dreamed of by de Gaulle's successors: a real conservative party able to assure the regime a minimum of stability. The contradictions among the bourgeoisie were too strong, and Giscard d'Estaing now has to try to maneuver without a party and with a very narrow social base, drawing his support essentially from the state apparatus. The first decisions of his government were aimed basically at winning over a few hundred thousand leftist voters by adopting some of the demands of the Common Program (the program of the Union de la Gauche). Thus it was that with a great swell of demagogy the right to vote at eighteen was granted, a few sham measures were taken on police repression (like the official elimination of wiretapping), and abortion was legalized. But all this daring failed to move the masses of workers, who are concerned above all with rising prices and the threat of unemployment. In this area the impasse is total, and while the bourgeoisie agrees to negotiate with the trade-union organizations, it is only to tell them that not much can be granted, particularly in the nationalized and public sector, where wages are lowest. The problem is posed concretely: How to ward off
LA POLiTIQUE, C'EST COMME LA BOUILLABAiSSE ON Y MET DES COMMUNiSTES, DES SOCIALISTES
... ETMÊME DES GAULLiSTES..
ÇA RELEVE
LE GOUT!
MARCHAL a groundswell of social struggles that is foreseen by everyone? Since the experience of the struggle at the Lip watch factory, the only effective decision made by the government has been to grant one year's wages to all workers who fall victim to collective layoffs. In the absence of a generalized movement of the working class, a measure like this could lead to an effective demobilization. But there is the decisive question. The level of combativity of French workers has attained a threshold such that threats of unemployment no longer generate timid reactions; on the contrary, they lead to tougher and tougher struggles. Thousands of workers are now posing the problem of the recession in political terms. It is this radicalization of the mosses that has forced the CP and the SP to listen and prevents the regime from imposing in the immediate future a presidential system that would result in political life consisting of the alternation in power of the right and a Socialist party that had burned its bridges to the CP. The French bourgeoisie today is unable to stabilize its regime without winning a decisive victory over the working class. Workers parties and workers combativity As we have indicated in previous articles, the Union de la Gauche created by the CP, the SP, and the Left Radicals on the basis of a common governmental program was the only response the reform-
"politics iș like a bouillabaisse, you throw in some Communists, some Socialists, and even some Gaullists. that spices it up!" ist leaders were able to offer to the new political concerns of the workers, who since the 1968 experience are no longer satisfied with a few economic gains, but more and more want to "change life." Broader and broader layers of workers are taking up themes like unifying demands and self-organization. Many workers are lending a political perspecfive to their struggles, which is a change from 1968. At the present stage, what they see in the Union de la Gauche is more the unity that has been established between the two big workers parties than the fact that this unity is based on a program of class collaboration. The breadth and duration of the social struggles now going on comes from the combination of the effects of the crisis and the existence of the unity of the left parties; the content of this unity will bring about the betrayal of these struggles. Along with the general new rise of struggle in the country, there has been the development and more systematic intervention of a brood workers vanguard that has seen through experience in struggle the impasse of the reformist program but nevertheless suffers from great political confusion and has not assimilated the perspectives upheld by the revolutionary organizations, which have not yet sufficiently proven themselves on the field of struggle. These observations make it understandable how the continued credibility of the reformist program in the eyes of the masses can be accompanied by the development of centrist currents and the strengthening of the revolutionary Marxists. These three elements - reformism, centrism, and revolutionary Marxism - are contributing to shaping the phenom-
9
FRANCE ena of recomposition now going on within the workers movement. The current policy of the leaders of the CP and the SP is thoroughly dominated by their preparation for entering the government. They are hoping this will come about through the growing defection of deputies from the UDR, the Gaullist party, from the present parliamentary majority. This could result in the scheduling of new legislative elections in which the left could win more than 50 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, while the CP and the SP are facing this situation with a common program, their immediate concerns are different, for they are parties different in character. That is the key to understanding the paradoxical attitudes taken by these parties during their recent congresses. While the Communist party is explaining that the task of the hour is not socialism, that we must not go beyond the Common Program, and that the present alliance must be broadened to include the Gaullists and the "nonmonopolist" employers, the Socialist party drafts a Charter explaining the necessity for socialism, self-management, and a "class front" against the bourgeoisie. A Rip Van Winkle might wonder what's going on. The Social Democrats are developing a more radical program than the Stalinists! The explanation can be given in one sentence: In the current period, the French Communist party has to get recognized by the bourgeoisie as a valuable interlocutor, while the Socialist party, in order to become useful to the bourgeoisie, has to do all it can to reestablish its ties with the working class and begin to challenge the CP's monopoly in this field. When you're talking to the bourgeoisie, you push a chauvinist, rightwing policy; when you're talking to the working class in a period like this, you have to sound a little more leftist. Revitalization of the Social Democracy Although it was a minority in the working class at the time of the Liberation, the Social Democracy never completely disappeared in France; it always retained a working-class electoral base in certain regions with a Guesdist tradition.* The Socialists have hegemony in the Fédération de l'Education Nationale (National Education Federation, the teachers union), and they retain control of the third-largest trade-union federation, Force Ouvrière. Nevertheless, with its 80, 000 members, * Jules Guesde was a founder of the socialist movement in France and the leader of the French Socialist party. Before the first world war he polemicized against Jaurès from the left, but ended up entering the national union government when the war actually broke out. - INPRECOR 10 some 20,000 of whom were elected officials, the old SFIO (Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière - French Section of the Workers International, that is, the Second International) was in process of disappearing. The weakness of its ties to the working class made the SFIO not very useful to the bourgeoisie, which accepted the Social Democrats' loyal services one last time in wrecking the Fourth Republic and setting up the Gaullist strong state in 1958, but no longer had any need for them under the Fifth (Gaullist) Republic itself. The Socialist party's death agony was arrested by the entrance into the party of Francois Mitterrand, who was able to point out the road to renovation to the collection of beggars in search of a king. In this sense, Mitterrand did not change the character of the SP; on the contrary, he tried to make it really play its role as a workers party. He understood that the only way out for the Social Democratic party was to preserve and develop its ties with the working class in order later to be capable of conducting a policy of class collaboration credible to the bourgeoisie. This "return to the class" could not be carried out in just any old way. The SP had to take account of the Communist party's hegemonic weight in the processes of political radicalization. The task thus became clear. The only way to renew the fies with the working class was through unity in action with the CP - provided that the SP would be simultaneously able to differentiate itself from the CP on the level of recruitment of members by stressing all the weak spots of the CP, raising questions of democratic rights and Stalinism and advocating self-management, which correspond to the workers' desire to challenge the bureaucracy and the hierarchy and to their will to assert their own control. It was along that axis that after the Epinay Congress of 1971 the new SP began to recruit both to the left and to the right of the CP, making a real impact among the cadres of the CFDT (the secondlargest union federation), who were seeking a political party capable of bolstering them in their competition with the CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail - General Confederation of Labor, the largest union federation), which is led by the Communist party faction. A good number of CFDT unionists who had been politicized in May '68 were repulsed by the practices and methods of the CP; in a confused fashion they recognized in the theme of self-management the aspirations shared by a whole section of the broad workers vanguard. Their confused anti-Stalinism was susceptible to manipulation by the reformist leaders of the union, who understood the workers' sensitivity on this score and cleverly substituted anti-Leninism for anti-Stalinism.
But the new credibility of the SP was in part forged by the CP, which by rallying to the support of Mitterrand's candidacy in the presidential elections allowed the SP to capitalize on all the increased prestige generated by the electoral breakthrough of the Bonaparte of the left. Mitterrand organized the Assises pour le Socialisme flushed with this success. The Assises represented a very concrete attempt to complete the first stage of reconstruction of the SP by lending it a trade-union base through incorporating the leadership of the CFDT and a left cover through absorbing the leadership of the PSU. This operation succeeded on the whole. The Assises were officially organized by the SP, the leadership of the PSU, and the "third force, " that is, several thousand CFDT militants, among them the majority of the national leadership. A Charter was adopted unanimously, and thus was prepared the fusion of these three currents during the January 1975 SP congress, af which will be born the new Parti des Socialistes (Party of Socialists), In point of fact, however, this will amount to a pure and simple integration of the other forces into the present Socialist party. As a program designed to bolster recruitment, the Charter certainly has nothing at all to do with the future electoral program of the party. But it neverthe less represents one of the most advanced documents of European Social Democracy. What a sign of the times! Let's look at a few examples. In the section that explains that "socialism is on the agenda, " self-management is presented as "the keystone," and it is even explained that "beyond a certain level, control can be exercised only in terms of specific directives and these can be furnished only by the (national economic) plan... • Democratic planning of priorities is inseparable from self-management and is its generalized form." Stress is also placed on the forms of delegation and control: "Election of administrative bodies and of management bodies by the workers concerned must take place in all factories. " To be sure, the manner in which the members of such bodies could be recalled is not detailed; the document simoly insists on the necessity for "precise and controllable mandates." So far, so good. But as might have been expected, our Social Democrats do not cross the Rubicon. For our new Socialists, occupation of the state apparatus precedes the conquest of power. It is a question of "an overall political fight aimed at conquering the state, transforming it, and, in time, overthrowing the regime of the ruling class." That's the whole problem. First the state must be managed and then "democratized" before power is taken. But because of the example of Chile, the document adds later on: "To maintain the structures of the capitalist state would be to perpetuate the rule of the bourgeoisie and to place a question mark over the conquests of socialism af any moment. " Of course, we have no illusions about the fine programmatic words of the Social Democrats. But it would be wrong not to understand the significance of such a document. For a Socialist party that may be on the eve of power to be obliged to draft such words in order to be able to recruit among the working class really shows that something has changed and is changing among this class. "Socialism, " "class front, * "se If-management, "coming out of the mouths of Social Democratic leaders! That means that hundreds of thousands of workers today are sensitive to the themes put forward by the vanguard. In writing this way the SP, which must have more than 110,000 members, more than half of whom never belonged to the old SFIO, is letting some wolves into the manger. When the practice of the party clashes with the exigencies of the class struggle, it will not be very easy to tame those wolves. Rocard, left; Mitterrand, right. Hence, we can expect the emergence of centrist currents within this party, which is totally dominated by the apparatus of Mitferrand, who in his own organization is already playing the role of a Bonaparte between the "left" and the still silent but nevertheless powerful right. The official left of the party (which includes about 20 percent of the membership) is represented by the CERES (Centre de Recherches et d'Etudes Socialistes -
11
FRANCE Center of Socialist Studies and Research, led by J.-P. Chevènement, G. Sarre, G. Martinet, and D. Motchane) and has twenty parliamentary deputies. It has been strengthened by the regroupment process but has not yet differentiated itself From Mitterrand, who has temporarily stolen its principal themes. The left might be thrown out of the leadership, which no longer needs it to hold a majority; in addition, it may prove incapable of attracting new layers of adherents, who may subsequently group together elsewhere. So far, before things are clarified by the next steps, it is Mitterrand who is coming out of the operation as the big winner. The SP is beginning to implant itself in the factories; it is in process of overtaking the CP on the electoral field; it has in part broken the prestige of the PSU, a small left-socialist formation led by Michel Rocard (with 10,000 declared members); it is incorporating the leadership of the second-largest trade-union federation in the country. It will soon be ready to be drafted into service; but first the bourgeoisie will have to be fully assured that the SP will not be outflanked. However, in spite of its leftist allure, the Assises pour le Socialisme operation ran info strong opposition in the PSU and the CFDT. Thousands of trade unionists and some national union federations (banks, construction, textile, fur and leather) opposed the position taken by CFD T Secretary Edmund Maire in favor of the Assises pour le Socialisme and refuse to see rallying to the SP as the solution and outlet for their struggles. Within the CFDT, debate has been opened up on all the fundamental questions of the workers movement. The first regroupments occurred when the majority of the PSU condemned the policy of the party leaders, who had officially committed the PSU to the process of integration into the new SP. The crisis of the PSU The PSU was a grouping of left Social Democrats, centrists, and revolutionaries. The left Christian origins of the majority of the membership explains the combination of the party's verbal leftism and Social Democratic practice. After May '68, when ultraleftism was at its height, the PSU tried to play the role of arbiter between this current and Trotskyism. Then the development of the Union de la Gauche shifted the center of gravity, and the PSU tried to be a bridge between the revolutionary far left and the reformists, all the while increasingly being caught up by the latter. It was at that time that more than 200 PSU members decided to leave the party and join the Ligue Communiste, then the French section of the Fourth International. With Mitterrand's candidacy in the presidential elec12 tions, the PSU cast its lot basically with the SP, which resulted in the departure of a few hundred militants close to Mao-populism. The proposal by the left of the PSU to present Charles Piaget, a central leader of the Lip struggle, as a candidate in the presidential elections permitted this tendency to line up 30 percent of the party's vote against the Rocard leadership. During the last National Council meeting more than 60 percent of the votes were cast against joining the SP. The outgoing leadership was beaten and replaced by a new leadership led by Michel Mousel, secretary of the PSU's Paris federation, and supported by Charles Piaget. Former members of the CP now in the PSU played a not inconsiderable role in this overturn. In the coming weeks the deposed right, which controlled the old leadership, is going to leave the PSU to join the SP, taking with it a thousand members at the most. Once again the PSU finds itself facing important choices. Its new leadership stands on the ground of the revolution, but is encumbered by a whole series of illusions about the possibility of creating a vast "movement for workers control and self-management" by grouping together what they call "the vanguard of struggles" as the basis for a future revolutionary party whose role, functioning, and goal they do not explain. These comrades quickly draw an identity between Stalinist party and Leninist party. To be sure, the PSU will not have a body of militants stronger than the FCR (Front CommunisteRévolutionnaire - Revolutionary Communist Front, the French Trotskyist organization), but it has influence among sectors of the working class and among leftist trade-union currents, especially in the CFDT. Lacking "recognition" from the reformist parties, the PSU will have to work out its own strategy and its own tactics of alliances. Neverthe less, because of its type of functioning and its theoretical flexibility, the PSU will remain an organizational pole for a section of the broad vanguard not yet prepared to make the leap into the camp of revolutionary Marxism. Thus, while the strengthening of the SP expresses in a deformed way a certain politicization of the masses, the split in the PSU expresses in its own way the growing impact of revolutionary ideas within the broad vanguard. But this period of politicization is also enabling the Communist party to develop and increase its audience among some sectors - at the cost of growing contradictions, however.
The CP special congress The CP's special congress was called around the same time as the Assises pour le Socialisme. In the CP cells it generated one of the most important debates since the Liberation. The draft resolution submitted to the membership perfectly summed up the objectives set by the leadership: The victory of the Union de la Gauche is at hand; achieving it necessitates not only going beyond the fateful 50 percent mark in the elections, but also taking special care to avoid becoming isolated from the petty and middle bourgeoisie the way the Chilean left did. For CP General Secretary Georges Marchais, France is divided into two blocs: on the one side the monopolies and the representatives of the multinational firms; on the other side all the French victims of the monopolies. The latter camp includes the workers, the small and middle-sized employers, the nonmonopolist employers, career officers, and so on - "everyone in this country who is exploited by the big monopolies. " The outlook, then, is simple. On the basis of the Common Program of the left, the Union de la Gauche must be broadened into the "Union of the People of France"; on the political level there must be unity with the Gaullists, "who have been present in all the great national causes. " In their attempt to attract the Gaullists, the CP leaders explained that socialism is not on the agenda, that things have to be limited to reforms, and that later on measures will be taken according to whatever is decided by the electoral majority. In any case, the role of the party, "a party for France today, " is limited to "speeding up the changes. " After having abandoned the perspective of socialism, the initial resolution proposed a new type of recruitment that would no longer be based on the potential member's will to construct socialism but rather on his will to be a leading fighter for the application of the Common Program. The resolution indicated that the "CP is open without restrictions to all those who want to take part in the fight for democratic change. " This draft resolution triggered off a big debate throughout the party, especially since it was put forward just at the time that the CP had lost votes to the SP in five by-elections and since the CP youth had already implemented the line by officially meeting with the leadership of the Gaullist youth, the Union des Jeunes pour le Progrès (Union of Youth for Progress), which is linked to the UDR and supported Chaban-Delmas in the presidential elections. The political discussion in the CP's daily newspaper revealed a great uneasiness among the militants on three points: the policy of alliance with the small and middle bourgeoisie, the new definition of the vanguard role of the party, and the abandoning of socialism as a criterion for recruitment. The malaise among the ranks was so widespread that at the congress the leadership was forced to retreat and accept some formal amendments capable of calming down the membership without challenging the general orientation. The document that was adopted explained that "what we propose to our people is a new, precise, limited experience." "It is a change that conforms to reason. " Then the resolution had to add that the CP is fighting for "a French sort of socialism" and that the passage to socialism "can only be the work of a democratic movement of the majority of the nation." For the immediate future, the problem was to apply the Common Program of the Left to establish the Union du Peuple de France, including the working class, intellectuals, artisans and merchants, officers discontented with the regime (which according to the CP questions independence and rejects a national defense policy), and, finally, "the directors of small and middle-sized enterprises affected by the measures of concentration of capital. " The resolution said: "What threatens these owners is not the legitimate demands of their wage earners, supported actively by the CP, but the policy of the big companies, the banks, and the regime. This situation should lead them to act with all the popular forces for democratic change. " As for the Gaullists, "who do not support a policy that leans away from the independence of France, limiting its proper international role, " they have their place in the Union, for Communists and Gaullists "find themselves side by side in the essential battles for the independence and dignity of France. . That is what is new. That is why the Gaullists can see their place in a broad alliance whose goal is to assure unity, prosperity, and the grandeur and flowering of the national community." Finally, the CP "is open without exclusion to all those men and women who want to act for the great democratic transformations. " "To become a Communist, " the resolution added, "is to participate in the fight for advanced democracy, to act for the ultimate triumph of socialism. " This general line is not new; it was applied during the Liberation. But in the new period today it arouses lively contradictions. Like the other mass Communist parties in Europe, the French CP has to propose a political solution to the crisis of the system of bourgeois rule. This is the only way the apparatus can avoid being totally outflanked and can maintain control over the masses. But for this Stalinist leadership, there is no question of considering challenging the European status quo by proposing to destroy the bourgeois state. Consequently, the alliance with the Social Democrats has to be accompanied by an alliance with the
13
le parti communiste a cœur ouvert venez dialoguer iste nonmonopolist sectors of the bourgeoisie. But the CP, unlike the SP, offers no guarantee to this bourgeoisie. Its Stalinist nature makes the CP constantly appear as a foreign element to the bourgeois state, as a representative of the Soviet state. Thus, the leadership of the French CP has to give the bourgeoisie the maximum guarantees in order to be accepted by the bourgeoisie and at the same time must set out a framework preventing itself from being outflanked on the left. But this general orientation has given rise to big problems. The alliance with the SP has given the SP new life, and from now on the CP no longer holds a monopoly of intervention in the factories, because of the existence of factory fractions of the SP and of revolutionaries. Electorally, the CP is in process of being overtaken by the SP, and this is provoking a very lively reaction from militants who have been taught to judge the validity of a political line by the electoral results it produces. But all this was predictable. A good reformist voter who wants to be more effective prefers today to vote for the SP rather than the CP. Here the CP is paying the consequences for its own orientation. The CP thus has problems justifying its existence separate from the SP. Programmatically, it cannot distinguish itself from Mitterrand, who, as we have seen, sometimes talks a line to the left of the CP's. 14 the co •an "open heart" Hence, Marchais had to wage a campaign about the possibility of the SP selling out, harping on the SP's past. This is simply "mouthing off" within the CP; it is reported throughout the press, but its only real effect is to harden up the CP ranks on the basis of their old distrust of the Socialists. The leaderships of the SP and the CP are condemned to work together. In the present period of workers combativity the CP leaders have to take account of two contradictory factors: on the one hand the real impact on broad masses of the Union de la Gauche as an electoral solution to the crisis, and on the other hand, the development of struggles that can appear to contradict an electoral solution. This contradiction is dealt with today by what we call the "spanning tactic. " The Stalinists have understood that they can no longer frontally oppose these struggles as they did in 1968 or openly denounce them as they did after the assassination in 1972 of the Maoist worker Pierre Overney, who was shot to death in front of the Renault-Billancourt factory by the company's private police. The bill to be paid for such a policy would be too high. Today, when they are confronted by a mass movement, the CP leaders prefer to allow the struggles to develop and to take leadership of them, even on a very radical platform, as is the case currently with the postal workers. (The workers are fighting for accreditation of 100,000 auxiliary workers, an equal wage increase for everyone of 200 francs a month (about US$40), and no monthly salary less than 1,700 francs.) Then the CP leaders
count on the time factor. That is, they wait for the regime to demonstrate that it will not give in, and then, in a second stage, they explain to the workers that the government has to be changed, and since that is not possible immediately, they have to back down by emptying the platform of all its most subversive demands in order to find a new negotiating base. If the CP leaders are not discredited during the first phose of the struggle, they can more easily organize a response in the second phase. This tactic, linked to the Stalinists' classical knack for adapting, allows them to avoid being outflanked in a massive way and at the same time to make their electoralist political solution more credible, even if a more consistent broad vanguard emerges in reaction each time. Thus, it would be wrong to anticipate a massive challenging of the CP's line in the present period. That will happen only after the CP directly sabotages a test of strength or after a few months of experience with a reformist government. But that said, we can expect the oubreak of local crises in which Communist militants through their experiences in struggle become conscious of the contradictions between the orientation of their party and the struggle itself. In fact, these crises have already begun. Generally, the CP militants do not have the political means to challenge the whole strategy of their party; the first breaks are beginning to take place around the concrete consequences of this strategy (in trade-union work, solidarity with Chile, work in the army, the women's movement, etc.). Leftist critiques are being developed in the CP and especially in the Communist Youth; but at the same time, we can count on the emergence of genuine Social Democratic currents, particularly among the intermediary CP cadres, who are both the agents and the products of the process of social democratization. In the CP, twenty years of practicing peaceful coexistence without any left turn have educated a whole generation in the spirit of parliamentarism, electoralism, and legalism. The Soviet Union is no longer threatened as before, and is therefore dealing directly with American imperialism and the French bourgeoisie without the need for any diplomatic pressure from the CP, from which the Kremlin bureaucrats ask only one thing: that it block any revolutionary process. The French workers do not any longer join the CP in order to defend such a discredited Soviet system. In this context, the links between the Soviet bureaucracy and the French CP apparatus, while they are still decisive, are nevertheless somewhat strained. (During the Union de la Gauche electoral campaign, the Soviet ambassador showed up of his own free will to pay a visit to and shake the hand of only one candidate: Giscard d'Estaing.)
The apparatus of the French CP is more and more intrigued by the stipends handed out by the bourgeois state and is preparing in every way to manage that state. Finally, the relations between the party itself and the working class are beginning to change The CP is no longer recruiting the vanguard of the struggles in the factories where there are already vanguard nuclei, buf is tending to recruit less politicized workers for whom the struggle and adherence to the CP represent only an initial stage of politicization preparatory to essentially leaving the CP in a later stage. Thus, the CP (and the CGT) is losing members in the workers bastions that have a strong tradition of combativity,* while it is recruiting in the small and middle-sized factories. The CP apparatus, well on the way to renovation, is increasingly composed of young members, managers of trade unions who are accustomed to breaking struggles and often lack the prestige of the older generation. The dynamic of the CP's orientation is leading to a lowering of activity in the factory cells and on increase in that of the neighborhood cells. In such a context, some currents could push this dynamic to its logical end and ask themselves questions about the reasons for the division of the CP and the SP. But there should be no illusions. They will be met with a strong ripost from the central apparatus, which is already waging (as yet without success) a vigorous campaign to revitalize the work of the factory militants and to reaffirm the Soviet Union as the international reference point. The Stalinists are ready to make many.concessions, but they know how to guard their independence as a measure of self-defense. Thus, Fitterman, Marchais's personal secretary, declared at the CP congress: "There sometimes exists a tendency in our ranks not to appreciate the real value of the results achieved by the socialist countries. Today, by making known and understood the unvarnished reality of the socialist coun tries, we have the means to go on the offensive." The French CP remains a Stalinist party, but its process of social democratization allows revolufionary Marxists new opportunities for intervention, especially within the bastions of the working class. *In the Renault factories (33,000 workers) the CP claimed 2, 500 members in 1971 and 1,300 members in 1974. At Peugeot-Sochaux (36, 000 workers), the CP has 200 members. At Usinor-Dunkerque (12,000 workers) the CP claims 70 members. And so on.
15
ECONOMIC
The phenomena of the restructuring of the French workers movement that we have analyzed briefly here are the results of the political and structural changes of the past few years. They are taking place at a time when the workers, after recovering from the aftermath of the failure of May '68, are preparing for great confrontations with the employers and the state. In coming weeks and months, we must expect the outbreak of struggles of great breadth around the problems of wages and employment. These struggles will lead to a strengthening of the revolutionary Marxists, but at the same time they will temporarily strengthen the reformists, who are armed with a political solution that remains broadly credible in the eyes of the masses. In this framework, one of the tasks of the militants of the FCR is to address themselves to the various