Despite the fact that large quantities of ink have been spilt on the question of the events in France in May and June, and that new problems have come to the fore on the international scene, we make no apology for taking up this question. The reason is, or should be, very obvious, and this is that the French events were of such a character and scale as to make them of prime importance for Marxists, especially in the advanced capitalist countries.
What we witnessed was, at the very least, the most powerful general strike in history. This in itself would be sufficient to make us examine the event carefully. However, that is not all, it was the greatest general strike in a specific oountry at a specific time. Both the place and the time have an extraordinary importance and significance. The pre-revolutionary situation in France can be seen as a qualitative change in the West European situation, and marks the opening of a new period.
Contrary to what many Marxists have assumed - Marcuse, Sweezy et al - about the combativity of the working class in neo-capitalist society, this strike demonstrated that the working class is still the most powerful, dynamic and potent factor for revolution. This has, in effect, taken the controversy out of the books and into the streets and in the process laid to rest the whole idea that somehow workers have become less revolutionary because of the relative material well being they have enjoyed since the end of the last world war, or at least since the mid-fifties. Those people who talked about the workers becoming 'bourgeoisified' etc. were men who talked about 'what is' and not 'what could be', they were men of ‘common sense' and therefore could not see any further than the end of their noses.
Each period of capitalism has brought specific problems to the fore and these have tended to be magnified out of proportion by those who have become submerged in their own environment. Each period has brought about its own crop of revisionists, many of them making significant contributions to our understanding, even if only - at the lowest level - because they had to be rebutted. The period 1890 - 1914 saw the blooming of Bernstein's revisionism, and the interwar period the proponents of the apocryphal ‘final crisis' of capitalism, sometimes known as the third period. Both of these schools of thought in their own way were victims of the inability to grasp the historical methods of Marxism, This is also the case with our latter day 'revisionists'.
What was the immediate background to the events of May/June? On the economic front, there had been a decline in the workers' standard of living. In the ten years preceeding there had been an increase of consumer prices of 45% and a fifth of the industrial labour force had a take home pay of less than £8 per week. In January of this year there were half a million men unemployed, brought about by a combination of deflation and a decline in world trade in 1967. Among these unemployed were a high percentage of young workers.
Along with this there was of course the regime of the General, which for ten years had hung like a pall over France, blocking all efforts at even the most timid reforms. This had been a period of growth and expansion
for the monopolies, who today dominate the French economy,
Nevertheless, the upsurge of ten million strikers when it came was unexpected. This was not a crisis that had grown and matured in the open. It is true that the students had been active for some time, and this activity had been gathering momentum. Starting from small groups clashing with the police, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, it escalated to the occupation of Nanterre and finally erupted into the erection of the barricades and the occupation of the Sorbonne and the Odeon. But even then this was not qualitatively different for society, even though it was for the students. There have been other clashes between students and police, most European countries have witnessed this to some degree or other in recent years. However, even these clashes have been between minorities of the students, albeit very large ones. The French situation became qualitatively different because for the first time the majority of the students became involved. The significance of this event should not be passed over for it represented a new stage.
But it was the eruption of the French working class—which dramatically raised the whole movement onto a new plane and opened up a new perspective. When the workers became involved it was like a volcano erupting. Again, this is an aspect that needs careful consideration. If one compares the slow, almost painful, trundle of the TUC up to the 1926 General Strike with the mercurial flare up of the French workers in 1968 the contrast is startling. Leaving aside the obvious differences, e.g. 1926 was a defensive strike, 1968 offensive, this rapidity of action reveals that the apparent stability of neo-capitalism is poised on a razor edge. Beneath the gloss of the 'consumer society’ there are explosive forces at work. The relative economic stability of the post-war years have produced new antagonisms, new contradictions which are in many respects even more explosive than the old ones, e.g. Students, Black Power. But right at the heart of these is still the determinant contradiction of capitalism, that between labour and capital.
This contradiction is still the one that must in the last analysis provide the motor force for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. The fact that it has been overlaid somewhat in the post-war years should not obscure its central reality. This became clear after the night of the barricades (10th May). The original reason for the workers striking was the disgust and rage at the brutality of the police and CRS towards the students in the battles in the Latin Quarter. However, this soon became submerged in a generalised battle between labour and capital. Many of the demands of the students became merged with those of the workers, the demand for student power, ise. control of the universities, became part of a general’ demand for control of the factories by the workers. But such demands did not become the focal point for the whole movement, they were subordinated to the economic or trade union demands.
Disoriented by the long years of boom, many Marxists have either come to regard the working class as a spent force or to assume that old style clashes between labour and capital would not be the motor force of social change. Both these assumptions have been dramatically faulted by the events in France. It is very necessary to re-emphasise that no society can
indefinitely escape its own internal.-contradictions, nor scan the central, determinant one be swept under the carpet.
In view of the role that the student movement played in sparking off the French events, there is a danger of the illusion being sown that the only thing necessary to begin such an upsurge in Britain is that British students should be drawn into similar actions. In fact the French events point to precisely the opposite lesson.
Let us look at this point further. There is no doubt that today students as a body cannot be viewed in the same way as in the past. Both in form and content their life and struggles become increasingly proletarianised. The university explosion that the needs of neo-capitalism has engendered has brought large new layers of youth into university life and there has developed a crisis within the universities because of this changed condition. The joke about certain institutions becoming degree factories is in reality no longer a joke, they are institutions for providing monopolycapitalism with necessary technicians etc. to man the technological
revolution,
However, one important fact must not be obscured. The ability of students as students to directly and immediately affect the capitalist class is very limited. They have no role in production. Therefore their ability to disrupt bourgeois society is one that has to be mediated through other agents.
There is no doubt that the student movement in France acted as a vanguard during May/June of this year. Moreover the JCR came to the fore as the most widely supported and respected organisation in the student movement, most of its competitors being discredited during the course of the struggle. Because of this the JCR emerged as the vanguard of the whole movement.
But if one compares the scope of the struggle, the militancy and the mood of the French workers with the results there is an obvious and glaring discrepancy. Only those who wish to cover up the perfidious role of the French Communist Party argue that there was not a pre-revolutionary situation in France during this period. The reactionary and counter-revolutionary role of the CPF has been well testified to, not only by Socialists of all complexions but also by the bourgeois press, so we do not intend to dwell upon this point. However, the role of the CPF needs to be examined from another angle. . The possibility of the CPF playing this role rested upon its continued ascendency within the working class. Therefore it is not enough to denounce the role of the CPF - which must not be taken to mean that this should not be done - but an understanding of the process by which it maintains its dominance must be sought.
When one begins to look at the problem in this way certain lessons begin to emerge. The most obvious and overriding one is that there was no socialist revolution in France in May/June because there was lacking a revolutionary mass party. And the mass party of the working class barred the way. These two things are not the same. Given the existence of this mass reformist party - the CPF - which had a clear line of counter-revolution, this meant that the possible emergence of an alternative mass
revolutionary leadership was ten times more difficult. In Western Europe it is not only because # bourgeois regimes are much more deeply entrenched than in the third/ Wh ie makes revolution much more difficult, it is the presence of the traditional working class leaderships having political hegemony. These leaderships, as both France and Britain demonstrate, act as trans - mission belts for bourgeois ideology within the working class.
Without the presence of such leaderships it would be possible during such upsurges as in France for a new leadership to be thrown up much more rapidly, and perhaps decisively, given the premise that such a leadership had been in the process of formation over a period beforehand. Therefore one conclusion that we draw is that although the importance of student politicisation should in no way be underestimated, nor seen as something separate from working class struggles, they - in and of themselves - cannot be decisive. Moreover, it becomes very obvious that for revolutionary struggles to be successful such vanguard elements as do arise within the student milieu should consciously orientate themselves to building strong links with other sections of the working class, i.e. those within productive industry. Any idea that students can act as a substitute for the working class received its death blow in France (as did theories of sponteneity). Only slow and patient work among all strata of the working class can build the necessary mass party capable of overthrowing capitalism. We do not doubt that the events of May/June will have speeded up this process in France.
For us here in Britain there need to be some lessons drawn. Firstly, although the Labour Party has seemed to be on the verge of disintegration at certain times this year - because of the catastrophic by-election results - it would be most unwise for Marxists to conclude that this has in fact happenéd, and that the role of Social-Democracy as a mass party here has finished. Hopes of a collapse of the Labour Party should be put firmly to one side, life is never that easy. Until there is a Marxist party that is capable of challenging the L.P. for the leadership of the working class it -Social-democracy-~ will continue to serve its purpose. The history of the working class indicates that this process can only be carried through by struggle inside the existing organisations, and in the British context the trade unions are of great importance. Secondly, Marxists need to become more flexible in their approach: to questions of tactics. There is no doubt that for large layers of the young an open and direct appeal to them on the basis of revolutionary ideas will invoke a ready and increasing response. Thirdly, the development and building of a Marxist cadre, one that is rooted in the working class, one that is capable of a real ideological challenge to the bourgeoisie, one that groups together cadres in a dialectical unity, i.e. one that rejects monoiithic practices - this becomes the most pressing task before us. Fourthly, Marxists need to fully understand their role in changing objective conditions. Without becoming wildly voluntaristic, we need to understand that the relationship between the objective and subjective elements in a given situation are dialectical and therefore dynamic. Boldness tempered by understanding must be the key.
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