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1968: The general strike andstudent revolt in France

Part 4How Alain Krivines JCR covered forthe betrayals of Stalinism (2)By Peter Schwarz

7 July 2008

This is the fourth in series of articles dealing with theevents of May/June 1968 in France.Part 1,posted May

28, deals with the development of the student revolt andthe general strike up to its high point at the end ofMay.Part 2,posted May 29, examines how theCommunist Party (PCF) and its associated trade union,the CGT, enabled President Charles de Gaulle to regaincontrol.Parts 3,posted July 5, and 4 examine the role

played by the Pabloites; the final part will examinePierre Lamberts Organization Communiste

Internationaliste (OCI).

A cover for StalinismAlthough the Stalinists in the French Communist Partyand the CGT trade union detested the rebellious spirit ofthe youth and therefore hated the left-wing studentgroups, which they referred to as gauchistes(left-wingradicals) and provocateurs, they were quite able to livewith thempolitically speaking. The anarchist stunts ofDaniel Cohn-Bendit hardly threatened the dominance ofthe Stalinists within the working class. The same wastrue of the Maoists and their enthusiasm for the ChineseCultural Revolution and the armed struggle.

And the Pabloites carefully evaded conflicts with theStalinists. They refrained from any political initiatives

that would exacerbate relations between the working

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class and the Stalinist leadership and precipitate a crisisfor the latter. At the high `point of the 1968 crisis, whenworkers rejected the Grenelle accord and the question

of taking power was on the agenda, the JCR (JeunesseCommuniste Rvolutionnaire) provided a cover for theStalinists. Twenty years after these events, Alain Krivineand Daniel Bensaid published a retrospective of 1968thatwhile attempting to paint the JCR in favourablecoloursclearly exposes its real role. [11]

The JCR participated in both of the largedemonstrations called by the social democrats and theStalinists at the height of the mass movement themass meeting on May 27 at the Charlty stadiumorganised by the UNEF (Union Nationale des tudiantsde France) student organisation, the CFDT(Confdration Franaise Dmocratique du Travail)trade union and the PSU (Parti Socialiste Unifi), andthe mass demonstration of the PCF (Parti communiste

franais) and CGT (Confdration gnrale du travail)on May 29.

The aim of the meeting at the Charlty stadium was toprepare the way for a transitional government under theexperienced bourgeois politician Pierre Mends-France,who was then a member of the PSU. The task of such agovernment would have been to bring the strike undercontrol, to restore order and prepare fresh elections.Even sections of the right-wing press were at this pointconvinced that only such a left government would beable to save the existing order. The financialnewspaper Les Echoswrote on May 28 that the onlychoice was between reform and revolution, or anarchyas the newspaper put it. Under the headline A way outmust be found, it commented:

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Nobody is prepared any more to listen to or believeanybody. Up to now it seemed that the CGT was abastion of order and discipline. But now it has been

destabilised by a mutinous common folk whose rebellionit had underestimated. The trade union leaders havebeen forced to the sidelines by the strikers who nolonger believe any promisesirrespective of who makesthem. Not to speak of the government.... Yes to reform,no to disorder was how the General (de Gaulle) put itrecently in an unfortunate expression. Today one hasboth reform and anarchy under conditions where it

remains unclear which will prove victorious.The PCF was quite prepared to enter a bourgeoisgovernment at this time. Its general secretary, WaldeckRochet, proposed on May 27 that he and FranoisMitterrand immediately meet to discuss the conditionsfor a replacement of the Gaullist regime with a peoplesgovernment of democratic unity on the basis of a

common programme. For those familiar with Stalinistterminology, there could be no doubt that the meaningof a peoples government of democratic unity was abourgeois government dedicated to defending capitalistproperty.

The PCF feared, however, that Mitterrand and Mends-France could form a government without it. Therefore itorganised, together with the CGT, its own massdemonstration on May 29 under the slogan of aPeoples Government. This slogan adapted to therevolutionary mood of the masses, even though thePCF never dreamed taking of power via a revolutionaryoverthrow of capitalism and only strove for a coalitiongovernment with Mitterrand or some other bourgeoispolitician.

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Party understood this demand as a coalitiongovernment with the social democrats and petty-bourgeois radicals, whose most important task would

have been to maintain the existing order. Nothing wasfurther from the thinking of the PCF as the revolutionarytaking of power. The Pabloites never challenged thisstandpoint and fell into line behind the Stalinists.

What should the JCR have done?

Of course the JCR lacked the support necessary for theassuming power itself. However, there are numeroushistorical precedents that demonstrate howrevolutionary Marxists - even in a minority - can fight fortheir programme and win the majority of workers to theirside.

In Russia, at the beginning of 1917, support for LeninsBolsheviks was considerably less than that for theMensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries. However,

using skilful and principled politics, the Bolsheviksworked to win the support of the working class and takepower in October. In France, where Trotsky lived in exilefrom 1933 to 1935, he took an active interest in theactivity of the French section and submitted detailedproposals on how it could fight for a revolutionaryprogramme as a minority. The central question wasalways the political independence of the working classfrom the reformist (and later also the Stalinist)apparatuses and the building of an independentrevolutionary party.

When Lenin returned from exile to Russia in 1917, heattacked the half-hearted attitude of the Bolshevikstowards the provisional bourgeois government in whichthe Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries hadassumed minister posts. He insisted on unwavering

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opposition and a programme that aimed for theconquest of power via the soviets.On the basis of this programme the Bolsheviks used a

tactic that deepened the gulf between the workers andtheir reformist leaders, aimed at ultimately breaking theformer from the latter. The Bolsheviks demanded thatthe Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks break withthe liberal bourgeoisie and take power in their ownhands. Although the Social Revolutionaries and theMensheviks proved incapable of forming a governmentindependently of the bourgeoisie, Trotsky later

commented on this experience in the TransitionalProgramme, writing that the demand of the Bolsheviks,addressed to the Mensheviks and the SRs: Break withthe bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!had for the masses tremendous educationalsignificance. The obstinate unwillingness of theMensheviks and SRs to take power, so dramaticallyexposed during the July Days, definitely doomed thembefore mass opinion and prepared the victory of theBolsheviks. [13]

In 1968, the JCR was posed with demanding that thePCF and CGT take power, based on the mobilisation forthe general strike. Together with systematic agitationagainst the conciliatory attitude of the Stalinists towardthe bourgeois parties, this demand would have carried

enormous political weight. It would have sharpened theconflict between the working class and the Stalinistleadership and helped workers to politically break fromthem. However, nothing was further from the minds ofthe Pabloites than to place the Stalinists in a dilemmawith such demands. As the revolutionary crisis reachedits highpoint, they proved to be reliable props for theStalinist bureaucracy.

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The Pabloites could not, however, simply ignore thecounterrevolutionary role of the Stalinists underconditions where it was being openly addressed in the

bourgeois press. In June 1968 Pierre Frank accused thePCF and CGT of having betrayed 10 million strikers inthe quest for 5 million votes. He even compared thisbetrayal of the PCF leadership with the historicbetrayal of the German Social Democratic Party: If thisleadership has not up until now acted in the manner thatthe Noskes and the Eberts acted against the Germanrevolution of 1918-19, it is because the bourgeoisie has

no need of it. But its conduct toward the ultraleftistsleaves no doubt that it is ready to do so should the needarise. [14]

However, insofar as the JCR concentrated its entirepolitical energy on adventurist actions and declared thestudents to be the revolutionary avant-garde, thePabloites evaded the most decisive issue: the building

of a new revolutionary leadership in the form of asection of the Fourth International. They deliberatelyavoided questioning the domination of the Stalinists.The Pabloite perspective of liquidating its organisationinto Stalinism, which led to the 1953 split in the FourthInternational, also formed the core of their policies in1968.

They did not call for a break with Stalinism, nor did theyfight for the building of the Fourth International. Instead,their policies were based on the conviction that theactivities of students and youth could spontaneouslyovercome the Stalinist betrayal and resolve the crisis ofleadership in the working class. The JCR itself therebybecame the most important obstacle to the developmentof a genuine revolutionary avant-garde.

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In 1935 Leon Trotsky promoted the building ofcommittees of action in France, which would oppose thepeoples front, which he characterised as a coalition of

the proletariat with the imperialist bourgeoisie, in theshape of the Radical Party.Every two hundred, five hundred or thousand citizensadhering in a given city, district, factory, barrack andvillage to the Peoples Front, in time of fighting actions,elect their representative to the local committee ofaction, he wrote. Those able to take part in the electionof committees of action include not only workers but

also civil service employees, functionaries, warveterans, artisans, small merchants, and smallpeasants. Thus the Committees of Action are in closestharmony with the tasks of the struggle of the proletariatfor influence over the petty bourgeoisie. But theycomplicate to the extreme the collaboration between theworkers bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie. Trotskystressed that it is not theformaldemocraticrepresentation of alland anymasses but therevolutionary representation of the strugglingmasses.The Committee of Action is an apparatus of struggle. Itis the only means of breaking the anti-revolutionaryopposition of party and trade-union apparatus(emphasis in the original). [15]

In 1968 the Pabloites adopted this demand for

committees of action. On May 21, e.g., the JCRdistributed a leaflet that called for the establishment ofstrike committees in the workplaces and of committeesof action in the university faculties and in the suburbs.The leaflet called for the setting up of a workersgovernment and stressed: The power that we wantmust arise from the strike and action committees of theworkers and students. However, the adaptation of thePabloites to the Stalinists and petty bourgeois radicals

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robbed this demand of any revolutionary content.Divorced from the building of a new revolutionaryleadership, the demands raised by the Pabloites merely

resembled the radical background noises to what werethoroughly opportunist policies. [16]

Trotsky vs. Pierre FrankThis was not the first time Pierre Frank was to play sucha political role. He had been fiercely criticised by Trotskyin 1935 for similar reasons and was eventually expelledfrom the Trotskyist movement. At that time he led a

group together with Raymond Molinier around themagazine LaCommune, which in the name ofrevolutionary action proposed unification with centristmovementsin particular the Revolutionary Left led byMarceau Pivert. Pivert was an incorrigible centrist. Whilequite inclined to use revolutionary phraseology, inpractice he was the left wing of the Peoples Frontgovernment led by Lon Blum, which suffocated thegeneral strike of 1936.

Trotsky was irrevocably opposed to Piverts centrismand the manoeuvres of Molinier and Frank. Theessence of the Pivert tendency is just that: to acceptrevolutionary slogans, but not to draw from them thenecessary conclusions, which are the break with Blumand Zyromsky [a right-wing Social Democrat], the

creation of the new party and the new International.Without that, all the revolutionary slogans become nulland void. He accused Molinier and Frank of attemptingto win the sympathies of the Revolutionary Left bypersonal manoeuvring, by combinations in the lobbies,and above all by abdication of our slogans and ofcriticism of the centrists. [17]

In a further article, Trotsky described the stanceadopted by Molinier and Frank as a political crime. He

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accused them of hiding their program and submitting tothe workers false passports. It is a crime! He insistedthat the defence of the revolutionary program had

priority over united practical activity. Mass paper?Revolutionary action? Communes everywhere? ... Verywell, very well. ... Butprogram first! [18]

Without the new revolutionary party, the Frenchproletariat is doomed to catastrophe, he continued.The party of the proletariat can only be international.The Second and the Third International became thegreatest obstacle to the revolution. It is necessary tocreate a new Internationalthe Fourth. We must openlyproclaim its necessity. They are petty-bourgeoiscentrists who falter at every step before theconsequences of their own ideas. The revolutionaryworker can be paralyzed by his traditional attachment tothe Second or Third International, but when he hasunderstood the truth, he will pass directly to the banner

of the Fourth International. That is why we must presentthe masses with a complete program. By ambiguousformulas, we can only serve Molinier, who himselfserves Pivert, who in turn covers for Lon Blum. And thelatter puts all his forces behind [the fascist] de laRocque ... (19)

Three decades later Pierre Frank had learned nothingfrom his conflict with Trotsky. If anything, he stood evenfurther to the right in 1968 than in 1935. This time he notonly sought unity with centrists such as Marceau Pivert,but also with anarchists, Maoists and other anti-working-class tendencies. Trotskys reproach of a politicalcrime in 1935 was even more justified in 1968. ThePabloites constituted the crucial obstacle, whichprevented workers and youth from turning to

revolutionary Marxism.

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Eventually they transferred responsibility for the betrayalcarried out by the Stalinists and their own abject failureonto the backs of the working class. Some 20 years

later Krivine and Bensaid wrote: One can charge theweakness of the organized revolutionary forces at thestart of the movement to the crimes of Stalinism andsocial-democracy. But if one seeks to avoid beingplunged into a crazed idealism, then, in a distorted way,it is also an expression of a more general condition ofthe working class, their militant currents, their naturalvanguard in the factories and trade unions. There were

contradictions between the dynamic of the struggle andthe Communist Party, they continue: however theseremained secondary.... The mass of the strikers wantedto regulate a social conflict and to shake off the yoke ofan authoritarian regime. From there to revolution wasstill a long way to go. [20]

Another 20 years later, Krivine was even more explicit:

In his autobiography he wrote: Sure, in the leadershipof the JCR we did not know how far the movementwould go. But we knew quite exactly where it would notgo. It was a rebellion of unsurpassed size, but it was nota revolution: There was neither a program nor credibleorganizations, which were prepared to take power. [21]This line of argumentation is typical of Pabloiteopportunism. In his polemic with the Spanish POUM

Trotsky once described it as an impotent philosophy,which seeks to reconcile defeats as a necessary link inthe chain of cosmic developments, [and] is completelyincapable of posing and refuses to pose the question ofsuch concrete factors as programmes, parties,personalities that were the organisers of defeat. [22]

The LCR today

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The French Interior Minister Raymond Marcellin bannedthe JCR and its successor organization the CommunistLeague (Ligue communiste) on no less than two

occasions: on June 12, 1968, when he dissolved a totalof 12 left-wing organizations and on June 28, 1973,following violent clashes with the police after an anti-fascist demonstration in Paris. However, following 1968,the more farsighted elements of the ruling elite wereclear that the LCR did not represent a threat to thebourgeois order and that it could rely on theorganisation in times of the crisis.

Following the ebb of the revolutionary wave of 1968, theLCR and the organizations it worked with became afruitful field of recruitment for the establishment parties,the bourgeois media, the universities and the stateapparatus. Former LCR members can be found inleading positions in the Socialist Party (Henri Weber,Julien Dray, Grard Filoche, etc.), occupying chairs of

philosophy (Daniel Bensaid) and on the editorial boardsof leading bourgeois newspapers.Edwy Plenel, who rose from the ranks of the LCR tohead the editorial board of the renowned daily LeMonde, writes in his memoirs: I was not the only one:we were certainly in the tens of thousandsthose, whoafter being active in extreme leftTrotskyist or non-Trotskyistrejected the militant lessons and look back

in part critically at our illusions from that period,nevertheless retaining a loyalty to our original anger andwithout concealing our debt to the training we received.[23]

The anarchist Daniel Cohn-Bendit became the politicalmentor and close friend of Joschka Fischer, Germanforeign minister from 1998 to 2005. Cohn-Bendit today

leads the parliamentary group of the Greens in the

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European parliament and belongs to the right wing ofwhat is now a thoroughly right-wing party.In 1990, the Maoist Alain Geismar took over as head of

the General Inspectorate for National Education andwent on to fill a number state undersecretary posts invarious Socialist Party-led ministries. The founding ofthe daily Librationalso had its roots in the Maoism. Itwas originally created in 1973 as a Maoist publication,with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre as editor-in-chief.

The large number of 68 radicals who were able to climbthe career ladder in France cannot be simply explainedon the basis of the return of prodigal sons. It is ratherthe result of the perspective of the Pabloites and theirallies who, despite their radical rhetoric, always pursuedopportunist policies that were entirely compatible withthe bourgeois order.

In light of an economic and political crisis that is farmore serious than that of 1968, the services of the LCR

are now needed more than ever. The globalisation ofproduction, the international financial crisis and rising oilprices have stripped away the basis for socialcompromises in France, as in every country. In themeantime the PCF and CGT are a pale shadow of theirformer selves and just 7 percent of the workforce isorganized in trade unions. The Socialist Party, whichwas founded in reaction to the events of 1968 andproved to be the most important prop of bourgeois rulefor the past three decades, is rent by divisions andrapidly losing support. Social tensions are at breakingpoint, and for the past 12 years the country has beenrocked by one wave of strikes and protests after theother.

Under these circumstances the ruling elite requires a

new left prop capable of disorienting the increasing

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number of workers and young people who have lost anyconfidence in a reformist solution of the social crisis,thereby preventing them from taking up a revolutionary

alternative. This is precisely the role being mapped outby the new anti-capitalist party, which the LCR plans toestablish at the end of the year. Its spokesman OlivierBesancenot, a protg of Alain Krivine, has beenwarmly embraced by the media following the lastpresidential election, in which he won 1.5 million votes.

The parallels between the JCR of 1968 and the LCRsanti-capitalist party of today are only too apparent.They begin with the glorification of Che Guevara, whoBesancenot has acknowledged as an important rolemodel. He even authored a book on Che Guevara lastyear. Additional parallels include the LCRs uncriticaladaptation to various petty bourgeois radical currents.

According to Besancenot his new party is open for ex-members of political parties, activists from the trade

union movement, feminists, opponent of liberalism,anarchists, communists or anti-neo liberals. In additionhe explicitly rejects any historical connection toTrotskyism. Such an unprincipled and eclectic party,which lacks any clear program, can easily bemanipulated and trimmed to serve the interests of theruling class.

The lessons of 1968 are therefore not merely ofhistorical interest. At that time the ruling class was ableto restore its control and stabilise its rule in a period ofrevolutionary crisis with the help of the Stalinists andPabloites. The working class will not allow itself to bedeceived a second time round.To be continuedNotes:

11. Alain Krivine, Daniel Bensaid, Mai si! 1968-1988:Rebelles et repentis, Montreuil : 1988

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12. ibid., pp. 39-4013. Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program, LabourPublications, New York: 1981, p. 24

14. Pierre Frank,Mai 68 : premire phase de larvolution socialiste franaise15. Leon Trotsky, Committees of ActionNot PeoplesFront, November 26, 1935, inWhither France?16. Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire,Workers,Students,May 21, 196817. Leon Trotsky, What is a Mass Paper? in TheCrisis of the French section (1935-36), New York: 1977,

pp. 98, 10118. Leon Trotsky, Against False Passports in Politics,ibid, pp. 115, 11919. ibid, pp. 119-12020. Krivine, Bensaid, ibid, p. 4321. Alain Krivine, a te passera avec lge,Flammarion : 2006, pp. 103-10422. Leon Trotsky,Class, Party and Leadership23. Edwy Plenel, Secrets de jeunesse, Editions Stock:2001, pp. 21-22

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