French C.P. approaches 50th anniversary

It was at the Congress of the Socialist Party (SFIO)

held at Tours in 1920 that a majority voted to form the Communist Party as the French section of the Third International.

The leadership of the Party in the main resolution for the Congress to be held in February spells out in the plainest form its acceptance of the bourgeois social order.

In dealing with the May-June events of 1968 it ignores the significance of the great class actions of the workers, the occupation of the factories and the paralysis of the bourgeois state.

It stresses the role of the Confédération Générale de Travail (CGT) and makes a virtue of the fact that, against reading french Revolution Betraved Available from New Park Publications, 186a Clapham High Street, SW4.

BY TOM the left opportunists', this CP-controlled trade union body confined the movement to wage demands.

The main emphasis in the resolution is upon the willingness of the Communist Party to enter into 'loyal co-operation with all democratic parties and organizations' to establish what it calls 'an advanced democracy.

The Socialist Party has suftered severe losses in the past two years, as was shown by the poor showing of Gaston Deferre in the Presidential elections, and its base in the working : class, outside a few areas, has disappeared.

The 'democratic parties and organizations' with which the Communist Party desires united action are the old rump parties and splinter groups of the bourgeoisie not yet under Pompidou's umbrella.

It is clear that 'advanced democracy' is not the dictatorship of the proletariat, nor even a workers' and peasants' government.

Nor, given the decline of the Socialist Party, could it correspond even to the Popular Front of the 1930s.

In fact its centre of gravity would be further to the right in the camp of Mitterand, Mendès-France and company.

While the Communist Party declares that the government of democratic union which it proposes 'will create the best conditions for the passage to socialism in France', in practice it corresponds to no viable political grouping, least of all one which prepares the way for socialism.

It is simply electoral verbiage designed, while keeping control as far as possible over the working class, to establish a barrier to renewed revolutionary action on the lines of May-June, 1968.

The contempt for people which was part of Grand's character in the novel has been shifted away from him in the film and becomes part of the petty-bourgeois ideology of the makers. plan to secure power, but part of a tactical ploy to head ofi further class actions, break up the opposition tendencies within the Party and oppose the revolutionary and left groups outside it, which are now much stronger than in 1968.

There is, of course, nothing basically new in what the Waldeck - Rochet — Marchais leadership is proposing.

It is the old 'peaceful road' stuff which, in 1947, Maurice Thorez spelt out in classic form for the benefit of the London "Times'.

When Kautsky summed up the policy of the parliamentary roaders by saying "The aim of our political struggle remains, as hitherto, the conquest of state power by winning majority in parliament and by To lie to so The Pier anto a Malic or taco ece des is seen facing the camera Grand's capriciousness is continuity of the film and moral is repeated over and over again, or rather Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers, grense shoot in t)e fim ine Magic ringo Stare, left arm themselves with hears artillery for their 1 converting parliament into the master of the government', Lenin commented:

"This is nothing but the purest and most vulgar opportunism: a repudiation of revolution in deeds while accepting it in words.' Gollan and Marchais, all the Communist Party leaders who put forward their own national roads to socialism by parliamentary means have, indeed, retreated from the position of Kautsky.

Instead of a majority in parliament for the workers' party, they conceive of the Communist Party as a loyal partner in a government which includes bourgeois representatives.

The coming Congress of the French Communist Party offers the French Trotskyist Organmiddle-class dream, that the world is there to be bought and sold.

Undoubtedly the intention ization a great opportunity to make inroads into the ranks of Communist Party members and supporters in the same way as has taken place here on the basis of the campaign led by the Workers Press.

In fact, such a campaign in France is still more urgent because of the hold which the Communist Party exercises on the working-class electorate and on the main trade unions in large-scale industry. -One feature of the rising combativity of the French workers since May-June is an influns and parterry the CGT.

The union bureaucrats must thus be relentlessly pursued on all their compromises and of the Socialist Party (SFIO) held at Tours when a majority voted of the film is to 'explode' all the stuffy, pompous, reactionary elements in society.

The exact complement to the guarantees of good political behaviour which the Communist Party offers through its reformist programme of 'advanced democracy? is the willingness of the CGT, in return for some formal concessions, to discipline the working class.

The very weakness of the Pompidou coalition, compared with the Bonapartist regime of de Gaulle, makes necessary some sort of compromise with the labour bureaucracy with the Stalinists at its head The opportunities offered by the preparations for the Congress and by the Congress itself must therefore be taken advantage of to win sections of advanced workers in and around the Party to Trotskyism.