BY GEORGE NOVACK
Below we reprint excerpts of "Lessons of the French events" by George Novack, taken from Revolt in France. That booklet, which is out of print, is a compilation of articles from the Militant and the socialist news magazine Intercontinental Press on the massive social upheaval that erupted in France exactly 30 years ago, in May-June 1968. The individual articles can also be found in the 1968 bound volumes of these two publications.

Truly awe-inspiring is the popular upheaval engulfing France these May days. Overnight, virtually without warning, the mass movement has risen up like a fiery volcano from beneath the ground, covering the length and breadth of the country with its lava flow. From the disturbed dignitaries high above to the participants down below, everyone has been astonished by the extent and elemental force of the outburst.

Wave upon wave of protest has rolled on to encompass every significant segment of French society apart from the ruling bourgeoisie. One layer of the people after another has responded "present" to the summons to demonstrate their discontent with de Gaulle's played-out authoritarian regime. The students gave the signal. After them came the workers. Then the state employees and small farmers fell into line behind them - and even the police unions have expressed sympathy with the strikers!

The general strike of ten out of fifteen million workers has paralyzed all sectors of the economy. It is the most massive, the most unanimous walkout in the history of the world working class. This magnificent mobilization is more than a general strike. It is the spontaneous outpouring of an entire nation, declaring in a single voice: "Ten years of Gaullism is more than enough; now things must change."...

What do the confrontations to date have to teach the young rebels - and remind their elders - about the cardinal issues of our time?

They have strikingly verified in life the basic tenets of revolutionary Marxism and the perspectives issuing from them.

The social crisis that has gripped France shows that all the major capitalist powers of this era are not so strong and stable nor so immune to shocks and convulsions as may appear. It further shows that the crucial question of which class will be master of society can be posed without the onset of a severe economic depression. On the eve of upheaval France was comparatively calm, prosperous, and free from entanglement in costly colonialist adventures.

Nevertheless, its social equilibrium turned out to be so precarious that it was upset by clashes between the authorities and students. It was as though the dislocation of a few pebbles let loose an avalanche. Indeed, the momentum of that land slide quickly exposed the underlying weakness of de Gaulle's government and the domination of the capitalist class. The myth that authoritarian regimes can indefinitely keep the workers housebroken was shattered. For all its mystique, concessions and repressions, ten years of Gaullism did not succeed in reconciling the working class to capitalism let along breaking its will to resist. Once the opening presented itself, the antagonism of the toilers to the rule of the rich burst out with irresistible vigor....

What the shortsighted academicians failed to understand was that the passivity of the proletariat over the past two decades was not a permanent but a passing phase. After setbacks and disappointments, they needed time to reorient themselves and recharge their energies. Their revolutionary capacities were built up little by little until these could be transformed from a potential to an active state when the appropriate circumstances and occasion arrived.

The stalemate was broken through the initiative of the new generation of young workers and students who were not bowed down by the betrayals of the past twenty years or conservatized and depoliticized by economic prosperity....

The workers are obviously the dominant and decisive force in the present revolutionary offensive. But they are not the only element in active opposition. They were preceded by the students who were the first to challenge the state authorities and raise the banner of revolt. That honor cannot be taken from them by the "Stalinist creeps" at the head of the French CP who condemned the audacious initiative of the students and denounced their leaders.

The developments of the protest movement go far to clarify the controversy that has been conducted in many places over the relations and respective roles of the students and the workers in the struggle against capitalist power....

Marxists have consistently adhered to a dialectical conception of the interplay between the ranks of labor and other dissident elements like the students. This is based upon the inevitably irregular mode of development and readiness for action among the diverse participants in the anticapitalist struggle.

As a rule, the separate social forces do not come upon the arena of open combat all at once or en masse but one after the other and in successive detachments. In the revolutionizing process students, intellectuals, oppressed minorities, peasants, and other oppositional layers actuated by their own grievances, can set the ball rolling and take on the authorities before the mass of workers are ready or able to move. Their first steps, their encounters, their calls for support can spur the heavy battalions of labor into action on their own account.

That is precisely the kind of chain reaction that has taken place in France. What the students started set the stage for the entry of the workers. Younger workers were the link between the two sectors in the sequence of developments. In the early Latin Quarter demonstrations they came out to contact and aid the students, fought side by side with them against the cops, and then transmitted to their fellow workers in the factories the spirit of resistance and mood of solidarity against Gaullism. They acted as a conduit through which the workers became aligned with the students despite the reluctance of the union bureaucracy....

Between the workers and the prospects of power stand the cowardly and conservative leaderships of the traditional parties and union organizations.

Foremost among them are the heads of the Communist party. The full strength of its apparatus and influence has been flung into the breach to slow down and hold back the workers so that French capitalism can once more be protected and rescued from their socialist aspirations. The CP is trying to split the workers from the students.

The role of the CP is the most important political factor in the further evolution of the present revolutionary situation in France. In a desperate last ditch effort to preserve his Bonapartist functions, President de Gaulle has asked for a referendum in June to renew the national mandate for his personal rule.

To his request for full powers, the answer of any working- class leadership worthy of the name would be: "No power to the General or any other representative of the ruling class! All power to the workers! Forward to a Socialist Republic based on the workers, farmers and students committees!"

But nothing of the sort can be expected from the Stalinist betrayers. They have no intention of mobilizing the masses for an assault upon the bourgeois state or of expropriating big business. They envisage and propose nothing more than a shift from the extra-parliamentary rule of de Gaulle to the restoration of a bourgeois-democratic government. Under the aegis of the "Popular Front" Communist ministers are to help administer the affairs of state on behalf of a decaying capitalism in disregard of the welfare and wishes of the workers, just as they did in the French government from 1944 to 1947....

Although they have different ends in view, the Gaullists and Stalinists are each following a common strategy of gaining time. Both bank on letting the revolutionary ardor of the workers ooze away while they haggle over paltry reforms which can be whittled down or snatched back by the bosses and their government with the next turn of the tide....

May 26, 1968  
 
 
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