WHAT'S AT STAKE IN THE FRENCH GENERAL ELECTION

The French working class is approaching the most crucial election campaign since the formation of the Fifth Republic after General de Gaulle took power in 1958.

A victory for the workers' parties in March will open the way for the overthrow of the Pompidou regime and create the conditions for the eruption of the working class onto the scene as in May 1936 and May-June 1968.

The common electoral programme of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and a section of the Radicals is intended to preserve the institutions of bourgeois democracy in the Common Market and to hold back the working class. The correct revolutionary policy in this situation is to call for maximum support for the communist candidate in the first ballot and the bestplaced CP or SP candidate in the second ballot.

On no account, however, should workers support the candidates of the 'left' Radicals who represent the most bankrupt wing of the French bourgeoisie. As Trotsky put it in 1936: The Radicals are the tion is a lie any other defini- democratic party of The purpose of supporting the SP-CP candidates is to force the workers' parties to form a government of their own, to break their alliance with the bourgeoisie and to enact socialist policies. Such a demand is a necessary education for the working class to enable these treacherous leaders, and their real role, to be exposed.

Any action which cuts across this objective can only sow confusion and plays into the hands of the bourgeoisie.

What. therefore, are we to make of the fact that two revi. sionist organizations, claiming be Trotskyist-the Ligue Communiste and Lutte Ouvrière—-have come to an agreement to put up over 300 candidates?

What are these organizations and what principles, if any, lie behind this electoral combination?

The Ligue Communiste is the French section of the revisionist Unified Secretariat (Pabloite) whose best-known figure is Ernest Mandel. It grew out of a mainly student organization, the Jeunesses Communistes Revolutionnaires which sprang to prominence during the May-June, 1968, events.

Operating within the hothouse atmosphere of the Latin Quarter, it believed that it was actually leading a revolutionary movement. With these illusions of grandeur it presented its leader, Alain Krivine, as a presidential candidate. He has recently been confirmed as TV personality in a popular programme.

The Lutte Ouvrière group, formerly Voie Ouvrière, has existed since 1939 as a separate group in France not affiliated to any international body. It claims to stand for 'the reconstruction of the Fourth International'. It has many affinities-especially in its position on the Soviet Union and the workers' states -with the state capitalist, International Socialists in this country.

Invited to attend the Conerence of the International Committee of the Fourth InAlain Krivine of the revisionist group, Ligue Communiste which is standing candidates against the SP-CP in the forthcoming election. Above: A demonstration of workers in the Stalinist-led union, the CGT. ternational in London in 1966, it refused to recognize the historical continuity of the Fourth International from its foundation in 1938 and was expelled.

Although always pretending bitter opposition to Pabloism, after the events of 1968 it moved closer to the JCR and then to the Ligue Communiste. It put forward a policy of the unity of all left groups.

In 1971, after two years' discussion, it reached an agreement with the Ligue which envisaged closer working and eventual fusion. In fact, the Ligue did not show much enthusiasm for such an arrangement, which appeared to have stalemated until the question of joint participation in the election was raised last September on the initiative of Lutte Ouvrière.

Then, while leaving in suspense all the principled questions upon which the two organizations have profound differences, an electoral pact was reached.

The latest issue of 'Class Struggle', the bi-lingual theoretical magazine of Lutte Ouvrière, shows how profound these differences are. It contains a vigorous attack on the Ligue Communiste for its position of terrorism which it claims is 'undoubtedly closer to those of Bakunin than to Marx and Lenin'.

It gives as an example the support of the Ligue for the Argentine section of the Unified Secretariat, which carries out kidnapping and other terrorist acts, and to the Black September movement.

It accuses the Ligue of abandoning the terrain of the class struggle and refusing to stand on the programme of the international proletariat. It is no accident, 'Class Struggle' says, that the Ligue 'comes to grovel at the feet of characters like Charles Tillon, the Stalinist leader of the FTP [the organization of the Resistance], who personifies this policy of the Holy Alliance', ie the alliance of the Radical bourgeoisie and the Stalinist bureaucrats.

It says that the Ligue Communiste is not at all uneasy about supporting the ERPERT 'which proclaims its will "to win or die for Argentina"' Such examples, it goes on, 'all illustrate the abandonment of Marxism, ie the abandonment of the interests of the proletariat.

And the Lutte Ouvrière theorists spell out in well-chosen words a class characterization of those 'comrades' whose electoral campaign they will soon be supporting!

'In spite of their ambiguous features [?], the actions of the leftists have a clear class meaning. They reflect the impatience of the radicalized petty-bourgeoisie, just as Poujadism and fascism [!] expressed this impatience in other periods or in other surroundings. They are but the leftwing variant of a phenomenon which assumes many forms. History provides us with numerous examples.' Still more specific are the criticisms which the Lutte Ouvrière group makes of the trade union work of the Ligue. It claims that 'most of the union activities of the Ligue Communiste militants is devoted to the CFDT* and these comrades are championing a "class struggle CFDT" struggle" Yet quite a "class which means that the CFDT union but may become one'.

The CFDT union, led by Edmund Maire, is, in fact, dominated by Jesuits and other Catholics and may be seen as the arm of the Vatican in the working-class movement. But Rouge' • organ of the Ligue, characterized it as 'a new centrism with a labour base and a revolutionary syndicalist ideology. It sees the CFDT leadership as 'a good example of neo-centrism'.

Lutte Ouvrière is happy to point out these crass adaptations to which Krivine's organization resorts in an attempt to build up its mass influence. But this does not prevent it continuing its efforts to fuse with the Ligue as well as to co-operate in the course of the coming election.

While Lutte Ouvrière correctly portrays the Ligue as an expression of the petty bourgeoisie rather than of the working class, it is no less an emanation of the same social layer. It shows its contempt for the working class in not fighting through these issues and in helping to sustain the fiction that the Ligue is a Trotskyist organization.

This was clearly demonstrated when it first proposed an electoral coalition with the Ligue last September. At that time it wrote (referring to the Organization Communiste Internationaliste as well as the Ligue and itself):

"That revolutionaries should present candidates is certainly an excellent thing, but it would, on the other hand, be ridiculous to have three Trotskyist candidates in some constituencies carrying on a merciless struggle among themselves over differences which, while correctly considered to be extremely important by their militants, are usually incomprehensible in the eyes of workers' (Emphasis added.)

This is no more than a typically petty bourgeois contempt for workers, considered to be incapable of understanding important political questions reserved for the militants. The whole policy of Lutte Ouvrière is to avoid fighting through differences on principle; its own principles being extremely vague and flexible on important questions as its relationship with the Ligue Communiste alone shows.

The electoral agreement of the two organizations not only sows confusion, while pretending to avoid it, but acts as a diversion from the main issue: which is the return of a government based on the workers' parties and a campaign in the working class to force them to carry out socialist policies and to break unconditionally from its Radical bourgeois partners.

At the same time, these squabbling revisionist twins fraudulently present themselves as Trotskyists. This can only confuse workers and provide grist to the mill of the bourgeoisie and the Stalinists. The Press and TV will make the most of the intervention of Krivine in particular. Far from weakening Stalinism's hold on the working class, the antics of these groups only tend to strengthen it.

This manoeuvre must be exposed and condemned, but it cannot be done by the tactics currently pursued by the OCI, which split from the International Committee of the Fourth International in 1971. We shall examine the electoral position of this group in a future article.

* Democratic French Labour.

lanuary 8, 1973