The Victory of Charles de Gaulle

[p006] The Victory of Charles de Gaulle A turning-point—Two reasons for de Gaulle’s victory—-Working-class parties. discredited—Social-democratic ‘betrayal—Gaitskell is Britain’s Mollet—‘Peaceful co-existence’ means class collaboration—Stalinism disarmed the workers—The lesson of Germany—How to defend democracy?—Khrushchev’s message—Lessons for British Labour E GAULLE’S advent to power is the most signi- ficant turning-point in European politics since the end of the second world war. It is a defeat for the French working class and a victory for American im- perialism. A third world war is brought a stage nearer. Fascism is now raising its head in a manner reminiscent ‘in some respects of Hitler’s rise to power. All the forces of reaction are heartened and strengthened at the expense of the working class, particularly in the metro- politan countries. The important question with which the Marxists of the world must get to grips is this: why and how did de Gaulle achieve such a major victo so painlessly? ~ NE immediate reason for de Gaulle’s victory is, of course, the worsening economic crisis. France is bankrupt as a result of the Algerian war. Foreign loans have been exhausted, and the only way forward for the French bourgeoisie is to reduce drastically the standard of living of the working class. Up to now it has been impossible to do this on the scale needed, be- cause of militant resistance. A new offensive against French Labour stands high on dictator de Gaulle’s agenda. Another and equally important reason would seem to be the contradiction between the political pas- sivity of the working class and the gravity of the ‘military and economic issues that confront them. Right up to de Gaulle’s accession a series of important strikes was in progress among bank employees, civil servants and office workers. But when it came to a strike on the political issue of preventing his taking power, apart from Nantes and St Nazaire—always centres of working- class militancy—the response was poor. T would be a superficial reading of events to assume that the struggle in France is at an end, that the defeat is decisive. It would be no less wrong to fail to draw the necessary conclusions—and they are bound to be harsh ones—from the actions of the Communist Party and Socialist Party of France. They are the main political parties of the French workers. But their policies have led to their being politically discredited as never before. . ARXISTS long ago reached quite clear and definite conclusions about French social demo- racy, as about social democracy in general. Since the beginning of the first world war the parties of the Second International have presided over one defeat after another, have been guilty of one betrayal after an- other, in country after country. The policies of social democracy are policies of class collaboration, and in the end they lead the workers, not to socialism, but to the slaughter-house of fascism. Take any social-demo- _ratic party and you will find fundamentally the same type of leader—little men grovelling after parliamentary honours, and aping the political leaders of the bour- geiosie. They preach peace between the classes. They are the most violent opponents of revolutionary change. They will support the vilest forms of capitalist re- action against the working class, provided they are found jobs in some department of the administration. They have no scruples about torturing and butchering the colonial peoples or breaking strikes, provided the powers that be can spare them a few crumbs. The main quarrel of Right-wing social democracy with re- actionary régimes is not about their brutality (what Mollet condoned in Algeria is know to all) but rather because these régimes see no further use for the social democrats and eventually get rid of them. UY MOLLET is a twentieth-century Right-wing y social democrat. He has pursued the policies of _ collaboration to their logical conclusion. Standing four-square against the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist State, he realistically defends it to the last ditch under de Gaulle. Now Hugh Gaitskell will in the last resort act no differently from Mollet. When Gait- skell complains about the difficulties of British Labour in judging ‘our French comrades’, he is merely serving -hotice that when he is faced with the choice of military dictatorship in Britain or the establishment of workers’ power, he will, come what may, support the Army High Command—provided he and his colleagues get due re- cognition for services rendered. No Marxist should have cause for surprise about the part played by French—or 67

[p007] LABOUR REVIEW for that matter British—Right-wing social democracy. Naturally we separate these leaders completely from the sincere militants in their parties, in the ranks as well as the leadership, who have fought gallantly against the policies of the Mollets and the Gaitskells. OR Marxists the supreme lesson of France is once more the lesson of Stalinism: the way it rots and chokes and stifles the working-class movement. The policy of the French Communist Party, like that of its British counterpart, is the policy of so-called ‘peaceful co-existence’ between the Soviet Union and the im- perialist powers. In practice this means class colla- boration, because if you want to exist peacefully with imperialism you cannot at the same time stand for its overthrow. Since the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union in the early twenties, this has been the foundation-stone of Soviet policy and, along with social democracy, it has led to one defeat after another for the international working class: the defeat of the German revolution in 1923, the defeat of the 1926 General Strike in Britain, the defeat of the Chinese revolution of 1925-27, Hitler's victory in Germany, Franco’s victory in Spain. The Soviet bureaucracy pur- sues what are in essence reformist policies, similar to those of social democracy in their accommodations to imperialism. The result for the working class is always defeat, and France to-day is only one more vivid and instructive example. RANCE’S Communist Party emerged from the F second world war with the largest membership of any Communist Party outside the Soviet zone. It controlled the CGT (General Confederation of Labour), which at that time had a membership of six million. The party had the backing of a powerful Resistance move- ment. A great number of its militants had died courage- ously in the struggle against Nazi occupation, and this fact alone gave it tremendous prestige. Facing it was a discredited bourgeoisie, who had either fled to North Africa, supported Pétain or collaborated with the Nazis. When General de Gaulle became head of the Free French provisional government in Britain it was im- mediately recognized by the Soviet Union and sup- ported by the British and French Communist Parties. This provisional government had as its main aim the re- construction of the capitalist State in France under the jurisdiction of the allied powers, and it enjoyed the full support of Thorez and Duclos, the principal leaders of the French Communist Party. With the defeat of the Nazis the French working class, arms in hand, had power within its grasp. But at that very moment the Communist Party saw to it that the Resistance move- 68 May-June-July 1958 ment was disarmed and power handed over to de Gaulle’s provisional government. France must have ‘one State, one army and one police force’, declared Thorez not long after his return from Moscow at the end of 1944. True to the Soviet policy of ‘peaceful co-existence’, the French Communist Party disarmed the workers and consolidated the capitalist State. Step by step since then it has continued supporting that policy, right down to voting for Pflimlin’s special powers, which were promptly handed over to de Gaulle when he took charge. This class collaboration, by Thorez no less than by Mollet, made an enormous contribution to de Gaulle’s victory. This can be seen when one studies the evolution of the French Communist Party since the end of the war. From six million the membership of the CGT has dwindled to scarcely more than one million. From one million the numerical strength of the Com- munist Party has declined to some 400,000. Its Paris evening paper Ce Soir long ago went out of existence, and the circulation of Humanité and its regional Press has dropped from year to year. TALINISM’S liberal apologists and blind fol- lowers, who conveniently forget even the most recent history, noisily remind us that French com- munists voted against de Gaulle inside the National Assembly and called upon the workers to demonstrate against him outside. Just so. A similar thing happened in Germany before Hitler took power. For five years the German Communist Party denounced the social democrats as ‘social-fascists’, thus splitting the Labour movement from top to bottom. It was this split which brought Hitler to power. But a short time before fascism triumphed the line was changed. Hasty proposals for a united front were made. By then it was too late. This, of course, did not prevent the apologists for Stalinism from making the false claim that theirs was the ‘policy of the united front’ in that fatal period. ARXISM is the science that prepares the working M class for power. For this it is necessary to win the confidence of the working class by consistently demonstrating to the workers in the course of their struggle the correctness of Marxist policies. It is just this which the French Communist Party, like the German Communist Party twenty-five years ago, has failed to do. Instead, it turned its back on power and collaborated with the capitalist State. UT, our liberals and fellow-travellers may ask, was it not necessary to defend French democracy? And did not the French Communist Party have this at

[p008] THE VICTORY OF CHARLES DE GAULLE heart when it voted for Pflimlin’s decrees? Here is an old source of confusion, with which before the war the Stalinists justified the class collaboration of the Popular ' Front government. To the working class democracy means the right to organize, demonstrate, express their political opinions and struggle. To maintain these demo- cratic rights means a constant struggle against the capitalist State. So long as it is possible to defend their power and privileges through a parliament elected via the ballot box, the capitalists maintain their ‘demo- cratic’ facade. But the moment this is no longer possible they quickly prepare their State for more authoritarian measures. The fate of the working class of France is not bound up with the capitalist ‘democratic’ state of Pflimlin or Mollet, but with its ability as a class to defend the democratic rights won through struggle. This defence is inseparable from the fight to overthrow the capitalist State and replace it with a workers’ State based upon the organizations of the working class. By tying the French working class to Pflimlin and his State machine, the French Communist Party in effect voted for de Gaulle. The decrees which Pflimlin demanded gave sup- port to General Salan, and General Salan in turn brought de Gaulle to power. HE anti-Marxist policies of the French Communist Party should be studied and assessed in the light of the appalling revelations at the Twentieth Con- gress. No serious student of Marxism can understand what happened in France without a detailed, serious and objective examination of the history of Stalinism. It is not possible to appreciate Khrushchev’s private message to de Gaulle without appreciating the Stalinist policies pursued over the decades by the bureaucracy in the USSR. When thousands of members of the Ger- man Communist Party were rotting in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany Molotov could assure Ribben- trop that ‘fascism was a matter of taste’. IKE the French Communist Party, the British Communist Party paves the way for working-class defeat in Britain because it remains a Stalinist party, with Stalinist methods and a Stalinist programme: The British Road to Socialism. (If ever a document deserved the appellation ‘revisionist’, that is the one.) But militant workers are less and less deceived by Stalinism. That is why the Communist Party came such a cropper at Wigan. Workers feel in their bones that what happened in France could happen here. For British Marxists, who face the task of forging a new and vigor- ous leadership of the British Labour movement, the lessons of France are of paramount importance. Events are moving swiftly. The opportunities that confront us are immense. We shall pay a heavy price if we fail to grasp them. An Independent Socialist Weekly sive THE NEWSLETTER Editorial Board: Michael Banda, Brian Behan, Harry Constable, Coun. Harry Finch, Peter Fryer, Coun. Price Jones, Tom Kemp, Peter Kerrigan, Brian Pearce, Cliff Slaughter CIUIIIHILUUTAALUIHILITIMIUMIU Subscription 8s. for 12 issues post free from 180 Clapham High Street, London, S.W. 4 69

[p009] LABOUR REVIEW May-June-July 1958