Alain Krivine was one of the leaders of the JCR (Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire - Revolutionary Communist Youth), one of the most important groups in the leadership of the youth during the May events, and which was banned by de Gaulle last June. Members of the former JCR and of the Internationalist Communist Party, which was also banned, formed the core of what became the new Communist League in April of this year.
Krivine was arrested last July and charged with reconstituting the JCR. However, the Government never brought him to trial, but released him on parole and drafted him into the army, where he is a private.
On May 25 I was able to speak with Alain Krivine and other leaders of the Communist League - Charles Michaloux, Hubert Krivine, Daniel Bensaid and Henri Weber - during a break in the hectic campaign schedule the members and leaders of the League are following. Eighty major meetings have been scheduled throughout the country for Krivine and other leaders of the League in the short campaign period, and many more smaller meetings are being run by local units of the League during the course of the campaign. The League has been given the use of two planes by sympathisers to transport league spokesmen to all of these meetings and appearances (there are too many for Krivine to appear at all of them). The newspaper ROUGE (red), which reflects the views of the Communist League, has moved from a biweekly to a weekly publication schedule and its press run has jumped from 30,000 to [illegible].
Those meetings which have already been held have been very successful. For example, on May 21 the great hall of the Mutualité in Paris was packed with over 5,000 people to hear Krivine and other leaders of the League. Campaign meetings have been held at Renault and other factories. In some provincial towns, attendance at meetings of the league has been higher than for meetings of the French Communist Party. In Rouen and Montpellier there were 1,200 and 1,500 people respectively at League meetings.
In discussing the election campaign with me, leaders of the League stressed that they are using the lessons of the May, 1968, events to make their socialist programme more concrete.
"For example," Krivine said, "take the idea of workers power. There are a series of examples we are recalling to people through the campaign, where the strikes of last May developed from a "passive" to an "active" stage, where workers occupying plants began to exercise limited power. In some places strike committees began to take over social functions, like the distribution of food, using trucks and other equipment in the factories the workers had seized control of.
"However, these embryos of workers power were decentralised, local, spread over the country. The power of the capitalists remained centralised in the government and state apparatus — their power was very much weakened, but it remained centralised. And, although the capitalist class was sharply divided (one of the indications that the situation in May, 1968, was truly a revolutionary one), it was saved almost in spite of itself by the Gaullist clique, with the help of the Communist Party. The CP did everything it could to divide the striking workers, limit the strike movement to non-political demands and finally to disperse it.
"We do not say that the great general strike of May and June could have immediately led to a socialist revolution. We do say that we could have smashed Gaullism through an insurrectional strike which would have shed very little blood. While we would have still had a bourgeois government with someone like Mendes-France or Mitterand, the working class would have grown in confidence and seen the power of extra-parliamentary mass action by the workers themselves. The strike committees would have continued to develop. And this could have led to a struggle for socialism, a struggle by the workers to take state power.
"It's true we are no longer in the situation we were in May-June, 1968, and the question of taking power is not an immediate one. But this doesn't mean that we should just sit around waiting for the "big evening" as the anarchists say, when there will be another revolutionary situation like May, 1968, but we have to prepare now.
"We are not only using the campaign to explain the potential of the 1968 events, but also to project demands and forms of struggle which will reach workers at their present level of understanding and at the same time raise their consciousness and bring them toward revolutionary conclusions.
"For example, we point to what has happened to the gains won in the May-June strike. As a result of the strike, there was an average rise in wages of 12 per cent., some workers having won even more. There were many other gains resulting from the strike, including promises about the reduction of the work week.
"Where does the situation stand today? Price rises have taken away at least three-quarters of the wage gains the workers won in May. The length of the work week has increased. Capitalist rationalisation and increased capitalist competition resulting in the shutting down of smaller uncompetitive plants have resulted in rising unemployment and a whole layer of small capitalists being forced back into the proletariat. Unemployment is hitting the youngest and the oldest workers the hardest.
"The tactic of the Government and the bosses is to divide the workers, and the CGT (General Confederation of Labour - the CP-dominated union centre) plays along with them. (For example, last winter there was an auto strike in Renault in Paris, in Le Mans and in other towns - the CGT kept all these strike struggles separated and isolated instead of uniting them, and as a result they were lost. Our militants in these factories attempted to begin to counter this policy by issuing a strike bulletin with information on all the strikes.) In the campaign, we are projecting demands which will help unite the workers and direct their struggle against the capitalist government and capitalist class as a whole."
To fight unemployment, the CL is raising the demand for an immediate return to a 40-hour work week with no reduction in pay; a sliding scale of hours. On working conditions, they are raising the concepts of workers control over the intensity and speed of work, etc.
"In addition to popularising these demands, we are using the election campaign to publicise local actions where workers have won through struggle some control over the speed of assembly lines, over the amount of time they have for lunch break, etc.
"In raising these demands," the League spokesman told me, "we tie them in with the need for a fundamental transformation of society, for a socialist revolution. The central focus of our campaign, against the concept of a peaceful and electoral transition to socialism put forward by the CP, is to explain that it is not possible for the working class to take power without a revolution.
"We cannot make a socialist revolution by electing better people to staff the posts of the capitalist government - in that sense Krivine is not running for president at all. We're using our campaign to explain the necessity of completely transforming the existing society, breaking up the old capitalist state and replacing it with a workers state."
One of the questions Krivine and the other Communist League campaigners have asked of them time and again is whether the CL advocates violence.
"We are against violence," Krivine explains, "and want to build a socialist society and socialist world free of violence. Violence is inherent in capitalist society - not only in its police and army, and not only expressed in the horror of war, but also there is the daily, continual violence done to individuals in the exploitation of man by man. We want to eliminate the source of this violence: capitalism.
"But we warn the workers that the capitalist class itself has absolutely no [illegible] using violence to maintain itself in power. It will [never] allow socialism to be "voted in". If it feels its power threatened, it will use its army and police, or if those fail, fascist gangs to [illegible] power and privilege. And [illegible] have the duty to prepare to defend themselves against capitalist violence and we are using this campaign to help to explain this to the workers.
"It's worth recalling a statement made by Trotsky on this subject: 'It is as absurd to attack ballot boxes with machine guns as it is to defend yourself against machine guns with ballot boxes.'"
Another question often asked of CL campaigners is just what kind of socialism they advocate.
"Neither the 'socialism' of Wilson or Husak," they explain, "Real socialism has nothing to do with reforming capitalism, making it run better, which is what the social democrats advocate. It is impossible to do what the 'left' social democrat candidate, Rocard advocates, that is, to transform the organs of the capitalist state, like capitalist parliament into organs of workers power. Neither are we for the bureaucratic system found in the deformed workers states like the USSR. We advocate the nationalisation of all major industry, banking and commerce, and the operation of the economy under a rational plan [illegible].
"Here [we can give] examples of the [illegible] to show how strike committees and [factory] councils could become the embryos of a new form of state power, based on democratically elected workers councils. The councils on a local or factory level would elect [delegates to higher councils], and [so] on up to a central council which would be the highest organ of state power in the workers state. We also favour, in addition, to such a democratic structure, other measures to combat bureaucracy, such as the right of immediate recall of any official, no wages of any official to be higher than those of a skilled worker, etc. Such a democratic workers state would be transitional to a truly socialist form of society where social classes and the state itself would gradually disappear."
In addition to such points the Communist League is using the campaign to explain why the French people should solidarise with the struggles of the Vietnamese against U.S. imperialist aggression (the CP candidate only supports the Paris talks). Krivine is also the only candidate who supports the Palestine liberation struggle. (Letters threatening Krivine's life have been sent by both Zionists who accuse him of betraying Judaism and by fascists who accuse him of being part of the "international Jewish conspiracy.")
Krivine is also explaining the Communist League's opposition to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, and his support to such communist dissidents as Kuron and Modzelewski in Poland, who call for workers democracy in their countries.
The Communist League has solidarised with revolutionary groups in the French colonies, which have urged voters in the colonies to boycott the elections, on the grounds that these colonies should be free of French rule and therefore should not participate in the French elections.
[illegible] also demanded a whole series [illegible] on democratic rights - specifically the lifting of the bans imposed by de Gaulle on various revolutionary groups after the May events; the return of scholarships taken from many students for their activities in May; the reversal of the expulsion and banning from France of student leaders [illegible] International, Joseph Hansen, editor of INTERCONTINENTAL PRESS, and others.
The response to the Krivine campaign among university students has been generally favourable. [The Communist] League has [illegible] majority of "spontaneists," however, who criticise the League for running a candidate because they feel this helps promote illusions in the bourgeois electoral process.
"We did not create the illusions in the bourgeois electoral process which, unfortunately, the vast majority of French people still have," Krivine observes. "Since these illusions do exist, however, the mass of people regard the elections seriously. To abstain from that would mean to allow the reformists, who do reinforce illusions in the elections and in capitalism, to go unchallenged. We enter the elections, and take advantage of such democratic rights which are part of the electoral process (these rights themselves were [won] by the people in past struggles with the ruling powers) to expose the sham [illegible] of our [illegible] up all over France, declares: 'Against the electoral farce, for the upsurge of class struggle'."
It is also said that the Communist League is attempting to monopolise the legacy of the May upsurge. The League spokesmen told me, "it is true that in May, the predecessors of the Communist League were only one grouping among [illegible] scores and dozens of groups. One of the key differences between us and [the rest] of the other groups was our insistence upon the [need] to build a democratically centralised combat party to [lead the] struggle of the workers for state power through to victory.
"During the May uprising itself, during the upturn in the struggle, it was understandable that many people should agree with the spontaneists. Cohn-Bendit was the best of them. But the need for serious organisation began to be felt as soon as the actual power of the capitalist state began to be felt, especially when the repression began.
"There is no question that in the final struggle itself, a combat party will be a necessity for victory. We are in the process of constructing such a party.
"So while we were just one (although an important one) group in May among many, we have been the one to consolidate organisationally the experience of May, putting these lessons into the context of the rich theoretical lessons of other struggles which are a part of the Marxist programme, and in that sense we are the [legitimate] continuators of May."
I asked the League representatives to make some comments on the other candidates.
"Well," they said, "Pompidou is presenting himself as the 'man of order' and keeps pointing to the 'dangers of May.' He says he is for 'continuity with an opening,' which means essentially the continuation of Gaullist policies and the Gaullist party.
"[illegible] wants to run capitalism more rationally, and wants to know [illegible] about prices, etc., and is pro-Washington. [He], the [man] 'in the continuity,' is an absolute mediocrity. He is fishing for support among the middle layers of the bourgeoisie, who have [some] grudges against de Gaulle, although he would rule in the interests of the big bourgeoisie just as Pompidou would, only he would be weaker than Pompidou.
"The [left] social democrat candidate Rocard calls himself the [candidate] of socialism in fact his [illegible] is reformist, asking for the gradual transformation of the capitalist state, from within, without destroying it. He wants to unite both the revolutionary and the reformist currents. In reality he is somewhere between Mendes-France and Krivine. He says he has two regrets: that his good friend Mendes-France is supporting Defferre; and that Alain Krivine, who was so good in May, has gone back to Trotskyism, which is an old-fashioned theory.
"During the campaign, Rocard falsely accused Trotskyism with being against independent trade unions. He cited a position taken by [Trotsky] during the civil war in Russia in 1921. My [illegible] gave us the opportunity to state our view that [unions should] not be mere 'transmission belts' for orders to the workers, but independent organisations defending the interests of the workers.
"The CP has put up an old Stalinist hack, [illegible] Duclos. He is presenting himself as the [candidate] of the 'unity' of the left - on a [illegible] reformist programme.
"Although [Poher] is trying to get the support of the [petit] bourgeois layer, he doesn't really know exactly what to say to them. So he is trying to say as little as possible - for every time he opens his mouth he loses votes. (It's just the opposite with us. The mass of the workers don't know [what we stand for] ... The more we speak, the more support we receive.)
As a result of the campaign, besides [reaching mil]lions of workers with the Communist League's [r]evolutionary socialist programme, Red Committees are growing rapidly. Red Committees are springing up in towns where [there] are no members of the League. Smiling, Krivine points out that [he is] the only candidate who can say beforehand that [illegible].
"There are two social democrats running, a left one and a [right] one. The right-wing one is Defferre, who has the support of Mendes-France."