Crisis France By Tom Kemp

IN early 1962 the situation in France has come to resemble the last months of the 4th Republic four years ago. Political incoherence and spreading symptoms of the accelerated decomposition of the regime could lead, quite suddenly, to a new crisis which the de Gaulle regime would not survive.

In Algeria the French government has practically handed over to the OAS, while negotiating half-heartedly with the FLN.

The operative law is that of the lynch-mob, the assassin's gun and the bomb. Practically the whole European population is now aligned with OAS, which operates with growing impunity.

At the same time, the position of the settlers becomes increasingly desperate. The main question is whether, if de Gaulle comes to an arrangement with the FLN to preserve the main stake of French capital in North Africa, will he be able to enforce his decision? Such an inclination might solidify the officer corps and part of the ruling class around a new military-fascist putsch by Salan and his friends.

If the situation in the metropolis is, on the surface, less critical than in Algeria, the regime is beset by a palsy of indecision and by the obvious willingness of many in the capitalist class and in government circles to make a deal with the fascist Right.

The OAS lacks mass following in France, but it is now turning its attention to spreading its influence by appearing as the safest force against 'communism'. The desperate fear of tion like that created by the Anglo-Soviet alliance.

What needed to be discussed, it seems to me, was the political implications and the actual consequences of the Communist Party's 'second front agitation. As they conducted it, it most probably did foster a great deal of dangerous confusion on fundamental issues-especially as they coupled the campaign with support for the Churchill government. Would it have been different if they had continued their call for a change of government, issued in June 1941 but withdrawn at once after the first conversations between Churchill's and Stalin's representatives?

LETTER The point of view of those who participated in the 'second front' campaign should be understood, it one wishes to understand and not merely to mock or moan. To the simple-minded it seemed that a British tank, while useful in the hands of Red Army soldiers, might be even more useful to these same soldiers if sent to France to force Hitler to withdraw some of his forces from the eastern front.

In fact, as things turned out, the 'second front' in the sense of the invasion of France, was not launched until the Red Army had already got the Germans on the run, and when the Russians were already sure they could finish the job single-handed. It was launched more to counter the Red Army's advance than to aid the working class which exists among the French capitalist class, despite prosperity and the apparent apathy of recent years, is a factor upon which the OAS is playing with some success.

Nor are de Gaulle and Salan polar opposites. As upholders of the established property system they disagree about methods, not about fundamentals. For the present de Gaulle seeks, with some success, to integrate the official labour movement into his system-fear of OAS in the leadership of the latter facilitates his task. But, now that in street demonstrations the Left has shown some signs of life, the temptation to smash the working class organisation completely is an attractive proposition.

Tomorrow it may be too late; the present political indifference of the mass of the workers may be too good to last. The machine-gunning of the CP's headquarters in Paris, and other attacks on communist and socialist personalities, are, as it were, practical demonstrations by thugs of the OAS that they are ready to do the job.

As evidences of a pre-fascist situation accumulate, and the teeming political underworld so typical of France comes into its own, the lack of real leadership for the working-class movement becomes ever more apparent. Unless such a leadership is built in the near future the French working class may be swept into a horrible tragedy comparable with that of 1933 in Germany.

The question which arises is: was it not inevitable that a 'second front' campaign such as the Communist Party mounted was bound to fail to secure a 'second front' when this would really have helped the Red Army -that there would necessarily be no 'second front' until this suited the needs of the ruling class? This is the kind of question that Communist Party members should be asked to think about.

Broadly, the political position is clear enough: the best assistance the working class of an imperialist ally of the Soviet Union can give to the latter is to carry through a revolution and establish a workers' government. But knowing this does not absolve us from facing the practical need to force the imperialist government to do everything possible to help the Soviet Union; and to utilise the struggle for such measures of aid not to damp down but to stir up struggle against the imperialists.

Trotsky touched on this type of problem in his article 'Learn to Think'. recently reprinted in ' Labour Review'. The process of serious thinking exemplified in that article needs to be carried forward, not backward.

Let us avoid, even by implicafion, the standpoint of those who regret that the Russians ever made their revolution—or at least that, once it became clear there wasn't going to be a revolution anywhere else for a time, they didn't decide o pack theirs in, lest they 'create problems' for socialists in the stillcapitalist countries!

BRIAN PEARCE