1 The crisis of the international imperialist system has deepened in recent years and is marked by a general decline in economic growth in all the imperialist countries. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, attempts to check the crisis of overproduction by increased inflation have run into grave difficulties: dollar inflation finally precipitated the destruction of the international monetary system and led to a monetary crisis which threatens to undermine international credit and, as a result, the expansion of world trade.
The principal stimulants of the economic expansion of the post-war period are subsiding; it follows that the underlying tendency for a fall in the rate of profit is emerging ever more clearly, holding back growth — as too does the restriction of the market relative to the colossal expansion of productive capacity.
U.S. imperialism has progressively lost its position of absolute superiority within the imperialist camp. Its share of the world market is constantly diminishing, as gains are rapidly made by its German, Japanese and E.E.C. rivals. Far from reducing inter-imperialist competition, this inflation, because of the protectionist measures it induces on the part of American imperialism, can only exacerbate it further.
2 In capitalist Europe, the end of the long period of expansion has involved a sharpening of social contradictions which, since May 1968, has taken the form of a generalized social crisis in several countries (France, Italy, Spain, Great Britain). And so, as new demands flowing precisely from the explosion of the productive forces have been experienced in a particularly sharp manner, the European bourgeoisie has become less and less capable of making new concessions to the working masses. On the contrary, it has often been forced to attack the gains won by the latter during the preceding phase.
The reappearance of substantial unemployment (five million unemployed in Western Europe) is simply the dramatic reflection of this phenomenon. Big capital is seeking to restore the rate of profit by increasing the rate of exploitation of the working class. The European working class has resisted this offensive by launching the biggest wave of strikes seen since the great recession of the thirties. But the current general rise in the level of struggle is occurring in a different context. As a result of a fifteen year decline in the numbers of the industrial reserve army, the European proletariat is entering this phase in a position of considerable strength and with a much higher degree of organization, in an international context marked by the crisis of the Stalinist camp and the political and military defeat of the dominant imperialist power in Indochina.
3 Faced with a difficult economic situation and sharpening social contradictions, the bourgeois political system is in its turn entering into crisis: a crisis of the political parties, a crisis of the forms of political domination (e.g. the paralysis of the centre-left governments in Italy, the collapse of Gaullist bonapartism, the decomposition of the Franco régime).
The European bourgeoisies, therefore, have before them a fundamental choice between attempts at 'integration' — designed to reduce and nullify the combativity of the working class through concessions, which will reinforce the mechanism of class collaboration but which are economically expensive — and increased repression, involving attacks on democratic rights, the right to strike and the right to free wage negotiation.
These two alternatives, at present being used simultaneously, accentuate the decay of classical parliamentary democracy and shift the centre of gravity of the bourgeois state towards an executive more and more removed from any control, thus underlining the current tendency for the establishment of strong states corresponding more closely to the [needs] of monopoly capitalism which characterizes [our epoch].
The most likely political perspective is that of a prolonged period of instability which will see a succession of different bourgeois governments and attempts at reform which will [nonetheless fail to resolve the crisis].
4 The [crisis of the bourgeois system] in Europe is well illustrated by the jerky evolution towards European political unity. The greater interpenetration of capital throughout Europe, accentuated by the enlarging of the E.E.C. and the exacerbation of competition with American and Japanese capitalism, militates in favour of a strengthening of European pre-state superstructures. But each step along this road implies sacrifices for one or other of the 'national' bourgeoisies, thus increasing — as decisive stages approach — the hesitations, the social contradictions and the political divisions. European unity will not come about in the framework of the capitalist system. Its accomplishment would be likely to lead one or more European countries to the brink of a social explosion that could spread throughout the whole system and bring [it down].
5 In France, the crisis of May 1968 revealed and precipitated the bankruptcy of the Gaullist bonapartist régime. This had been indispensable for leading the different sections of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie to accept policies necessary to place France on an equal footing with her European rivals; but in the process it has accumulated social contradictions which will finally [bring about] its [undoing].
The most conscious section of big capital envisages a realistic revision of its objectives and a modification of its forms of political domination, notably by getting rid of the bonapartist forms of the strong state.
This explains the birth of 'Pompidou-ism', whose principal function is to ensure a transition [from a bonapartist régime to a more classical bourgeois] parliamentary democracy.
The second priority of the Pompidou presidency is to work towards objectives for the French bourgeoisie more in accordance with its real economic power. This means renouncing Gaullist dreams of world-wide power and accepting the role of a secondary imperialism, with an honourable place — particularly in Europe. This is the explanation of Pompidou's re-orientation of policy on Europe.
6 After May 1968, the first task for the bourgeoisie was to restore a balance of forces which had shifted to the advantage of the working class — whose militancy has, however, remained at a high level for the past four years.
The Chaban-Delmas government elaborated a policy of integration of the working-class movement. This was based on the one hand upon the exceptional expansion of the years 1968-70, resulting from the increase in domestic consumption provoked by the gains made at Grenelle and from the growth of exports achieved by the revaluation of the franc, and on the other hand upon the inactivity of the workers' organizations, which were afraid of launching a new May if they went too far in pursuing claims.
Despite these two trump-cards, the total balance-sheet of this 'policy of agreement' has remained pretty unimpressive. It is perpetually threatened by the workers' militancy, which is maintained at a high level by inflation and continually rising prices — which the bourgeoisie cannot prevent without severely restricting growth. Despite all the efforts made, Chaban's 'new society', in which it was hoped to gain the voluntary consent of the workers to the norms and limits of the system, has not seen the light of day. [It has not] been possible to reverse the balance of [forces created in] May. On the [contrary], the objective crisis has raised the combativity of the working class to a level [normally in]compatible with the smooth functioning of capitalist [enterprises. Moreover,] the social layers traditionally tied to Gaullism have entered into open conflict with the policies of the Pompidou régime. [Small shopkeepers, small businessmen, small peasants], etc. — i.e. archaic petty-bourgeois layers — have begun [a movement] which is taking them into conflict with the régime, which is thus losing its former ascendancy over [these strata].
[This general] social [crisis is reflected within] the framework of [the bourgeois state itself, whose apparatus] — the police, [the administration], the judiciary, the mass media — carry out repressive and ideological functions more and more openly [contrary] to its own policies. This is what lies at the root of the various 'malaises' — of the police, the administration, the judiciary, the mass media, [etc.] — which generate scandals and undermine the authority of the régime.
The erosion of the latter is the [result] of a combination of factors, all of which impair the authority and legality of the [bourgeois] state: 'new forms' of working-class [struggle, the revolt] of the petty bourgeoisie, the revolt of young people, the crisis of established institutions, the exposure of [scandals] ... in a word, the Pompidou 'team' did not manage to bring any lasting stability to the régime. A new [attempt at consolidation] was made with the formation of the Messmer administration. But behind the [change] of facade, the policies and methods remain the [same, and the eventual failure of Pompidou-ism] is just as predictable.
This is why, in the absence of any immediately credible revolutionary perspective, a number of long-term alternative solutions are being prepared — both by the bourgeoisie and by the traditional workers' movement.
7 Neither the groups allied to the UDR (Giscard, etc.) nor the 'reformers' (Lecanuet and Servan Schreiber) have any strategic objective, either on the economic or on the European plane, which differs from that of the present administration.¹
However, they have serious doubts about the ability of the UDR to achieve its strategic objective. The UDR is merely a bureaucratic apparatus, not properly under the control of big capital, formed in the late Bonaparte's ['Society of December 10'²]. A motley crew of [adventurers] and incompetents, political fanatics and bovine henchmen, this party is incapable of transforming itself without a disastrous internal crisis, nor can it sink firm roots into the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois layers which constitute the social base of the régime.
The presidential régime outlined for the near future must, if it is actually to see the light of day and to establish itself solidly, have a large conservative party upon which to base itself. The objective of those warring brothers the Giscard-centrists and the 'reformers' is to achieve this without provoking too brutal a split within the UDR — which would open a breach in the shaky edifice which has existed since de Gaulle and allow the workers' movement to burst through.
They have chosen not to smash the UDR but to whittle it down gradually, and thus to shift the centre of gravity of the present majority first by a strengthening of the Giscardian wing and then by the entry of the 'opposition' centrists — an operation which Servan Schreiber and Lecanuet are jointly preparing.
The course they have chosen is fraught with difficulties, since any discrediting of the UDR weakens the régime itself which gave the latter its better days, and could operate to the advantage of the Union of the Left, which claims to be a global alternative to the existing order.
Thus a growing polarization is taking shape in bourgeois political life between a reconstituted majority and a Union of the Left dominated by the PCF. The way is being prepared for a decisive confrontation in 1976. In this way the post-bonapartist transitional phase will come to an end.
If the Pompidou régime has succeeded until now in negotiating the rapids without too many buffets, this does not necessarily mean that it will come through safely to its destination. Even if the restructuring of the bourgeois parties may be accomplished smoothly, that does not mean that the game is over. The self-defensive reactions of the wild men of the UDR, seeing themselves forced into a regroupment not of their choosing, cannot be predicted. Moreover, the Union of the Left is itself pregnant with inescapable contradictions and with a dynamic which could burst free of the bureaucratic apparatuses that conceived it.
8 The agreement concluded between the PCF and the PS³ is the response of two reformist parties to the demand for political change which has been evident in the working class since May 1968, in the context of a strong state which has considerably reduced the margins of parliamentary manoeuvre. The common programme is in no sense an anti-capitalist transitional programme lacking only the will and the means to succeed. It places itself explicitly within the framework of the Bourgeois state, even of the Fifth Republic, which it seeks to reform from the inside, without calling for the autonomous organization or mobilization of the working class. In a period of intense class struggle, when the bourgeoisie found itself driven into a corner, this programme might well be the last card that a section of the bourgeoisie would play, to try and prevent the success of the revolutionary process. But in the present situation, the PC/PS agreements cannot be characterized as a conscious machination of the bourgeoisie or of a significant section of it. Difficult though the situation may be, it does not justify the risk they would be taking in accepting a governmental solution which involved the participation of the PCF. Certain sections of the bourgeoisie are only prepared to consider a bonapartist solution in the person of Mitterand if and when he shows that he can utilize for his own ends the strength of a PCF reduced to the role of a hostage, as in 1965. The PC/PS agreement has changed the balance of forces in the short term and temporarily deprived Mitterand of the support of the distrustful right-wingers, which he banks on regaining in time for the presidential elections of 1976.
9 The PC/PS agreement represents the meeting-point of two reformist programmes put forward by parties whose aims are in fact quite distinct.
The leadership of the PCF was forced to come up with a concrete political solution in the face of the demands of a militant workers' movement. The general strike of 1968, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the growth of the revolutionary organizations — these factors made such an initiative necessary.
At the same time, the limitations which a strong state placed on the parliamentary game and the loss of any audience in the working class forced the leaders of the old SFIO to realize that the bourgeoisie would never again be prepared to entrust them with power. Without a credible governmental perspective, the PS found itself adrift. Deferre's electoral debacle in 1969 left it only two possibilities for survival.
The first was an alliance with the centre, which would make it possible to present an alternative to the UDR. But the existing political polarization made this operation too hazardous. From the Poher candidature to Servan Schreiber's 'crusade', the centre appeared too fragile a pole for a bourgeoisie already anxious over the disintegration of the UDR.
The second possibility was an alliance with the PCF, with the hope of regaining a broader social base, among certain layers of highly-skilled workers and among middle strata. One element of this plan was the abandonment of FO in favour of the CFDT.⁴ In order to accomplish this refloating operation, the SFIO accepted Mitterand's strategy almost unanimously, and its right-wing majority left the working out both of the party programme and of the Joint Programme to the left.
The signing of the Joint Programme thus allows the PS to refurbish its image, to strengthen its position vis-à-vis the PCF, and to prepare for the presidential elections of 1976 — in which Mitterand would benefit in the working class from the credit bestowed upon him in the campaigns of 1965 and 1973. He would then be able to make use of the Gaullist constitution of 1958 — which confers on the president the position of an arbiter and guarantees him a relative independence from his allies — and in this way collect the centre votes in the second round.
If the PC/PS agreement is not an acceptable solution for the bourgeoisie in the short term, because of the social dynamic which threatens to engulf it, from the point of view of the PS leadership it prepares the way, at the price of some real risks, for Mitterand's bonapartist operation — which could turn out to be a viable solution in 1976.
10 The contradictions of this kind of game are multiple. A failure for the PS in 1973 would strengthen the right wing of the party, which could then launch a fight for a break with the PCF and an alliance instead with the centre. The PS would then be in danger of a new split. A heterogeneous party — both in terms of the currents it contains and in terms of the conflicting perspectives which coexist within it — the PS today can be defined neither as a bourgeois party, nor as a working-class party which is bourgeois because of its weak implantation in the working class. The important thing for us is the function which the PS — incapable as it is of reconstituting itself simply on the reduced parliamentary terrain of the strong state — is fulfilling within the workers' movement through its alliance with the PCF.
Through its policies, the PCF is seeking to enhance the credibility of the PS in the eyes of the working class as a force that is indispensable to any social transformation, quite independently of its actual implantation. Already in 1965, the workers voted in their millions for Mitterand. Thus when one considers the contradictory and transitory character of the PS, the PC/PS agreement is not one of a Popular Front type which ties the PC to the coat-tails of a bourgeois party. For the first time, it is actually being obliged to open up some sort of socialist perspective.
11 In fact, in the present context, if an electoral victory for the Left remains unlikely, relative success could be enough to bring closer the beginning of a political crisis, by encouraging the mobilization of the workers and aggravating the divisions within the bourgeoisie. From this point of view, the anti-communist campaign which the bourgeoisie is mounting is not so much evidence of their fear of the PCF's aims as of their real fear of the social dynamic which could be concealed behind that of the PC/PS agreement.
The political solution put forward by the PC/PS agreement necessitates mobilizations controlled and channelled by the bureaucracy — which must at the same time block all struggles which threaten to break through the agreed limits. This contradiction is even more real today, when the working-class bureaucracy has not only spontaneous upsurges to fear, but also the conscious and active role in struggles of the revolutionary left, organized or otherwise, and of ourselves in particular.
Given this contradiction, we may expect to see the Stalinist bureaucracy punctuating the pre-electoral period with a series of national mobilizations and days of action, which will have the combined function of preparing for the elections and of channelling and dissipating the energy which could build up in the working class, by making use, in particular, of the CGT, which it controls, as a kind of electoral agent among the masses. The bureaucracy will endeavour to use these central mobilizations of opinion, altogether different from true class mobilizations.
Nevertheless, insofar as these mobilizations also express the aspirations of thousands of workers highly conditioned to belief in electoralism and the parliamentary system, their combination with an outbreak of sharp struggles, even if these are purely local, will provide very favourable conditions for the intervention and implantation of revolutionaries in the working class. And this is the case even if the battle to explain and denounce electoral illusions has been made more difficult because the signing of the PC/PS agreement gives a certain credibility to the perspective offered by the PCF.
The CFDT will not spare its criticism of the Joint Programme because it will want to preserve both its autonomy vis-à-vis the CGT and its own political role. It will also try to win a certain prestige on the basis of verbal criticisms of the Union of the Left. But, incapable organizationally and politically of putting forward any alternative solution, it will on the one hand be reduced to tactical battles aimed at increasing its strength in struggles and on the other will, in the final analysis, throw in its lot with the Union of the Left.
In the months to come, the election campaign will open up a period of political debate which will not be exclusively dominated by the PC/PS agreement. The two allies will have to try to capture the maximum number of votes in the first round, the PC insisting on the role of the working class and the PS claiming for itself, in a series of inexpensive political skirmishes, the role of guarantor of democracy in the alliance (hence Mitterand's interventions on Czechoslovakia and Jews in the Soviet Union).
12 Congress approves the decision of the Central Committee to put up candidates in the election. In the face of the reformist illusions of the Joint Programme, it is of vital importance to present in opposition a revolutionary Marxist perspective.
13 In the second round, our recommendation to vote must make clear our analysis of the PC/PS agreement as a global reformist alternative and not a new Popular Front. In the second round, we will call nationally for a vote for the Union of the Left, except where there is a local proposal to the contrary ratified by a decision of the Central Committee. This does not mean that we will depict an eventual PC/PS government as a workers' government; we will simply explain to the masses who still believe in the electoral system that the reformist traitors will not be able to blame their failure of tomorrow on our defection.
It is unlikely that the effects of the Union of the Left on the working-class movement will emerge clearly between now and the elections. And even if certain indications were to appear, these alone would not be a sufficient basis for a definition of policy on our part. In fact, the influence of the Union of the Left on struggles could be much greater after a relative success (and a fortiori after an electoral victory) than in the pre-electoral campaign. We must remember that the erosion of the Gaullist majority in the 1967 elections was not entirely unimportant in preparing the events of 1968. This is what we must evaluate. Our attitude to the second round would only be posed in new terms if the electoral campaign were to lead to a spectacular sabotage of struggles on the part of the PS and the PC. But in this event, as in June 1968, the clearest response to an electoral operation which was in direct opposition to the struggle would be a principled abstention and not a vote for the PC. This is the framework of our approach in the second round.
Of course, our tactics in the elections, as opposed to questions of principle, can only be decided in the light of the indications which emerge from the first round as to the attitude of the masses towards the electoral contest.
14 In this situation, one should not get involved in a discussion of the Joint Programme, reform by reform, to determine whether this or that one is anti-capitalist or not. We must start from a total characterization of the Programme and its underlying purpose, discuss particular reforms above all from the point of view of the problem of power, for which they present no solution, and denounce the fallacious character of the 'socialist' perspective it puts forward.
15 This polemic will give new life to our propaganda for a workers' government as defined in our Manifesto. However, we must be aware that — given the illusions which may be fostered by the PC/PS agreement — this propaganda, which is not made concrete in an alternative governmental formula, will remain somewhat abstract. The best way of relating it to practice is to intensify our agitation, on the basis of precise examples, on the themes of strike committees, support committees and workers' self-defence, as well as our propaganda for a genuine proletarian government, which can never be parliamentary, i.e. which can never exist without pyramidal structures of power which both support and control it.
16 Under present conditions, the 1973 elections will certainly accentuate the political crisis, by amplifying the disequilibrium of the bourgeoisie. A strong thrust from the Union of the Left, erasing the absolute majority of the UDR, will weaken the 'strong state' and push the UDR into unity with the other bourgeois forces, with the aim of increased repression against the working-class movement.
In the case of a Union of the Left victory, [we may] expect [a development of] workers' struggles [and a sharpening of] the political [crisis. In such] a situation, [confronted with the reaction of] the bourgeoisie, the Ligue Communiste will make every [effort to break out] of the framework imposed by the Union of the Left and will impel the struggle forward as far as possible, on the basis of two central themes: the self-organization of the class in a perspective of dual power (occupations, strike committees, workers' control); and the arming of the [proletariat, for which the] slogans calling for the establishment of working-class militia for self-defence will be put forward.
Footnotes
1 UDR (Union for the Defence of the Republic) is the Gaullist party which has been in government since de Gaulle returned to power in 1958. Giscard [d'Estaing's Independent Republicans] are coalition partners of the UDR. Lecanuet, who led the rump of the old catholic centre party, and Servan Schreiber, who took over the remnants of the radicals, joined forces to form the 'reforming' centre party.
2 The 'Society of December 10' is discussed at length in the second half of Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire. Marx describes it as follows: 'This society dates from the year 1849. On the pretext of founding a benevolent society, the lumpenproletariat of Paris had been organized into secret sections, each section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist general at the head of the whole. Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, [swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters,] gamblers, maquereaux, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ-grinders, rag pickers, knife-grinders, [tinkers, beggars — in short,] the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown [hither and] thither, which the French term la bohème: from this kindred [element Bonaparte formed the core of the Society of December 10.]'
3 PCF — French Communist Party. PS — Socialist Party (led by Mitterand), incorporating the old SFIO (French Section of [the Workers' International]).
4 FO (Force Ouvrière) is a trade-union federation formed by a split from the PCF-dominated CGT in 1948. It had organic links with the SFIO. The CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labour) used to be a catholic trade-union federation, but broke its confessional links and in recent years has assumed a radical/social-democratic role, often outflanking the CGT on the left.