WORKERS SAY "NO"
TO AUSTERITY
FRANCE October 7, the day of struggle against the government's "austerity" plan, during which strikes and demonstrafions took place throughouf the country, was the biggest day of struggle of the French working class since May 1968. This was true in terms of both the number of strikers, especially in the private sector, and the size of the demonstrations, hundreds of thousands in Paris, tens of thousands in the provinces. It was a massive and clear response to the austerity plan that had been presented several days earlier by the new government of Prime Minister Raymond Barre. The plan had been greeted with much skepticism in the bourgeois press and among the employers. Their openly expressed fears related essentially to two points: the economic credibility of the measures taken to reduce inflation; the government's political ability to get the public to accept a plan that is undoubtedly the most severe one the workers have faced since 1958. The economic situation in France is not good, Not only is production no longer growing (after a small upturn of about six months' duration) but foreign trade is running into heavy deficits because of an inflation rate that is twice that of the other major capitalist powers. The government's objective is thus to significantly reduce price increases in order to conserve the competitive strength of French products abrood. This initiative implies a very violent attack on the workers, who are accused of being responsible for the situation because of their excessive wage increases. The prime minister has said it several times: "The French people are living beyond their means." The employers want to strike hard To achieve a lasting decline in the standard of living of the workers is a necessity for French capital in its present stage of crisis. The essential feature of the past two years has been that in spite of the economic crisis, the division of value-added between wages and profits has returned to its 1972 level, which was a time of strong economic growth. The result is an extremely difficult situation for the French employers. The fall of the rate of profit induces them to freeze their profits
PIERRE JULIEN instead of investing, the immediate consequence of which is to render a lasting upturn of economic activity impossible. Thus, the employers require austerity in order to reestablish a division favorable to their own profits. This is what explains the severity of the measures announced by the government. The Barre plan is certainly the toughest the workers have faced since 1958. For the first time, a government has openly declared a freeze on purchasing power for an entire year as one of its objectives, even though the measure is cleverly camouflaged behind statistical artifices. The mechanism advocated is this: In 1977 wages must not rise by more than 6.5 percent, it being understood that price increases are not to exceed this figure. This, of course, amounts to a twofold scandal. First because the French government has always lied in its predictions of the rate of inflation. Was it not Fourcade, minister of finance in the previous government, who announced in June 1974 that inflation would be held to 6 percent. in 19752 The real rate of inflation that year, according to the CGT (Conféderation Générale du Travail - General Confederation of Labor, the country's largest trode-union federation), was 14,2 percent. Second, it is an enormous fakery to attempt to make wage increases coincide with price increases as measured by the official index of the INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies). This index has been broadly discredited for several years now. In 1975, for example, the INSEE set the rate of price increases at 9.6 percent, while the CGT said it was 14.2 percent, a rather large difference. Which clearly means that when the government speaks of maintaining purchasing power, what it really means is a decline in living standards of about 4,6 percent. The attack on purchasing power does not relate simply to the freeze on wage increases, which will be strictly applied during the contract negotiations in the public services and will be automatically recommended for the negotiations in the private sector. The plan also entails a series of measures that directly eat into the workers' The most spectacular of these measures relates to the Increase in the price of gasoline and the rise in the Vignette (the annual automobile tax). As of November
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I the price of a liter (roughly a quart) of "super" will rise from 1.96 francs to 2.25 francs (about USS. 39-,45) and the tax on automobiles will go up by more than 50 percent on the average. It's easy enough to odd up the figures. For a Family that owns an "economy car" the bill will come to something like 500 francs a year (slightly more than $100).
les revendications Touverture rapide des negociations escaping the fiscal surtax by resorting to borrowing, which simply amounts to a transfer of savings, etc. In principle, the non-salaried middle layers are supposed to receive increases in income that do not exceed the official 6.5 percent. But since the state has no means by which to impose such a norm and since the rate of Fiscal fraud among these categories runs to an average of 50 percent of income, if may be expected that the principle will not be applied. Finally, the small and middle-sized companies will benefit from the advantages of the loans that will be floated for them. Of course, the plan also contains promises of an intensification of repression for fiscal fraud and decisions on taxation of conspicuous consumption, all of which will scarcely affect the most clever fortune holders. In all, the whole "anti-inequality" package amounts to a rather ridiculous totality when compared to Giscard and Barre's repeated affirmations at the time when the principle of "austerity in equality" was decided. And the character of the plan will not be changed by the price freeze which is supposed to be in effect until December 31, 1976 (and until April 1977 for public rates). This is a completely ineffective measure, the effect of which has already been preventive price increases in September, which will be continued with a probable price explosion when the freeze is lifted. Likewise, the reduction in the sales tax (VAT) on certain products from 20 to 17.6 percent will serve only to improve the price index at the beginning of next year in order to boost the government's credibility during the contract negotiations. Finally, we must odd two supplementary elements to the analysis of the plan. No measure has been envisaged to reabsorb unemployment, which now stands at 1,200, -000, even though all institutes of economic prediction expect an increase in underemployment during coming months. Finally, the "plan of struggle against inflation" (which is the official name for austerity) is but a stage preliminary to further and even more serious measures. In this regard one may mention the broad attack that is being prepared against social security for next spring, which, like the decrees of 1967," will challenge some of the fundamental gains of the Liberation. A unanimous NO' The reactions of the workers movement to the Barre plan were unanimous. Nevertheless, the position "No to the austerity" was argued differently by the Socialist party and the Communist party. The former, which is looking toward its probable accession to the government after the next legislative elections, wants above all to lend itself the image of a "resporsible" organization. It thus explained its rejection of the austerity plan on the grounds that no concurrent measures of "social justice" had been taken. And the Socialist leaders seized upon the example of Germany to say that it might be possible to assemble a consensus for austerity if the present majority in parliament changed. Clearly they were addressing themselves to the French bourgeoisie to inform the bourgeoisie that its plan had no chance of success but that when the SP is in the government the Socialists will be able to obtain the consersus of the workers. The Communist party took advantage of the SP's attitude to appear as the most intransigent defender of the demands of the workers. In many cities the CP had organized demonstrations against the austerity even before October 7, sometimes in a quite sectarian manner. Its initial "No" to the austerity plan nevertheless gave way to more nuanced statements, for example: "The effects of the austerity plan must be limited." On the trade-union level, the essential aspect of the October 7 general strike was the realization, for the first time in two years, of a common front of the CGT, CFDT, and FEN (Fédération d'Education National -National Education Federation, which includes several hundred thousand teachers). The FEN, which last year had signed contracts in the public services amounting to a decline in real purchasing power, was no longer able to justify in the eyes of its rank and file the signing of a contract for next year that would guarantee only a 6.5 percent wage increase, with an official freeze on purchasing power. It should also be noted that some *In 1967 the government, acting through "rulings" not controlled by the parliament, decreed a reduction in payments of health insurance as well as an end to the right of the workers themselves to choose which social security agency to utilize.
FRANCE of the unions of FO (Force Ouvrière - Workers Force, which constitutes the right wing of the trade-union movement in France) also participated in the strike. But while unity was realized at the top, the same was not true at the rank-and-file level. The banners in the demonstration were rarely united ones and the hazy inter-union platform negotiated at the top did not include unifying slogans that would have permitted the axes of the fight against the Barre plan to be concretized. This aspect of the balance-sheet is intensified by the lack of central political perspectives. The reformist leaderships of the CP and SP carefully refrained from using the mobilization to advance a political alternative to the regime, which according to all polls now has the support of only a minority of the population. (One of these polls revealed, significantly, that 73 percent of employers consider a leftist victory in the next elections "probable. ") Rather than sending their militants out to march side by side with the trade-union organizations, the Communists and Socialists were content with delegations of parliament members and elected officials who simply "greeted" the demonstration from the sidewalk. It is true that the Socialist party and its top leader, François Mitterrand, is now issuing statement after statement on its respect for the existing institutions and particularly for the electoral verdict of 1974, which means that Giscard should remain president until 1981, and on the maintenance of the market economy when the Common Program (the platform of the Union de la Gauche) is applied, The first secretary of the Socialist party, who was not in the streets on October 7, recently held a public dialogue with 500 employers during which he assured them that nationalizations under the Common Program would respect competition and profits and above all revealed that the nine nationalizations called for in the Common Program had been reduced to seven since two of the "nationalizable" companies had been bought out by foreign groups. As for the CP, it is trying to make the workers believe that there is o subtle dialectic between the struggle in the factories and the parliamentary struggle. An editorial in the CP daily 'Humanité, for example, said: "Far from working at cross purposes with the activity of the public powers, the people's struggle is also a constituent part of the democratic totality. " On several occasions CP chief Georges Marchais has reaffirmed that in the event of the victory of the left, Giscard should "submit or resign. " Which amounts to a position that is not very different from that of the SP. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the CP carefully refrained from reacting to certain statements by Socialist leaders who, like Mitterrand, challenged what the Communist economists call the "keystone" of the Common Program (i.e., nationalizations). For the moment, the CP does not want to reopen a polemic that had proven not to be very profitable electorally. At the end of 1974, following resounding electoral defeats in some by-elections, the CP had opened up a very hard polemic against the SP. 18
The balance-sheet on this polemic was generally negafive, including on the electoral level, even though it did enable the CP to remobilize its militants in the foctories in a sectarian manner. Dissolution of the National Assembly! Giscard and Barre out! Given the fact that the workers parties are not offering any concrete perspectives except to wait for 1978 (the year of the next legislative elections), revolutionaries must structure their intervention around two axes during the present conjuncture. First, they must stress the need to develop an overall relationship of forces against the austerity plan. The fact that the very first level of response was set so high by the trade-union leaderships poses a problem for continuing the actions. "What do we do now?" the workers are asking. This is why the mobilization of October 7 was used as an occasion to again raise demands that had been left in suspension. Georges Séguy and Edmond Maire (heads of the CGT and CFDT respectively) were content to call for continuing demonstrations on October 23, a day of action against youth unemployment which had been called some time ago. They called for actions at the union federation level, without drawing up the slightest perspective for possible centralization. Nonetheless, this is the question that is now on the agenda for defining a clear platform of response and for systematically developing forms of active resistance to the austerity (such as refusal to pay the tax surcharge, organization of workers control over prices, etc.). But the political situation in France nevertheless requires another dimension to the intervention. The cantonal elections of March 1976, which had already demonstrated that the present regime had the support of only a minority, opened a period favorable to the utilization of agitational slogans on central political perspectives. (See INPRECOR, No. 49, April 15, 1976.) The present crisis of confidence in the regime, the enormous decline in Giscard's popularity, even among his own supporters, and the power of the workers response on October 7 have strengthened this tendency. In the eyes of the great mass of workers the austerity plan now appears as an imposition of a discredited government. In addition, even from the standpoint of bourgeois democracy, it was a non-representative parliament that voted the austerity plan. Instead of denouncing if as such, the deputies of the workers parties participated in the parliamentary charade, introducing a motion of censure that had no chance of passing. It is now time to say to the CP and the SP: "Let us together demand the dissolution of this rump National Assembly! Let us together demand the ouster of Giscard-Barre, the austerity duo!" Any hesitation on this point will only give a second wind to a regime that has already run out of breath. October 14, 1976
SPD SQUEAKS BY
Challenger Kohl confront» Chancellor Schmidt "A (too narrow) victory." That was the West German weekly Der Spiegel's comment on the results achieved by the coalition of the Social Democratic party (SPD and Free Democratic party (FDP) in the legislative elecfions of October 3. The coalition won approval from 50.5 percent of the vaters, while the Social Christian parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) won 48.6 percent, nearly the best result they have ever achieved since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 (with one exception). The parties of the goverment coalition lost 3.2 percent (SPD) and 0.5 percent (FP); their majority in the Bundestag (the federal parliament) was reduced from forty-six seats to eight. This too narrow victory raises the threat of crises within the government coalition, given the number of unresolved problems around which there are contradictions between the SPD and the FDP: the 1 million unemployed, the rapid growth of the public debt, the problems of guaranteeing the financing of retirement pensions, the Increased charges for health insurance. In the view of the most lucid representatives of the West German and foreign bourgeoisie, the electoral result entails a donger that the government of the Federal Republic of