From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-For Bread, for wages, general strike-PCI Declaration, undated, by internal evidence July 1947
... in times of class upsurge like after World War II in Europe (and for a shorter period in the U.S.) even small smart propaganda groups (in the Marxist organizational sense) can make great gains if they have the right programmatic calls and can agitate effectively.
Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.
... in times of class upsurge like after World War II in Europe (and for a shorter period in the U.S.) even small smart propaganda groups (in the Marxist organizational sense) can make great gains if they have the right programmatic calls and can agitate effectively.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff.
********
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff.
********
5: For Bread, for wages, general strike-PCI Declaration, undated, by internal evidence July 1947
Working men and women,
Starting with the Renault strike, from April to July, most categories of workers have gone on strike to win better living standards.
Metal workers and office workers, railway workers and miners, public employees and agricultural workers have joined the battle against the bosses and the government.
Metal workers and office workers, railway workers and miners, public employees and agricultural workers have joined the battle against the bosses and the government.
The PCF, PS and CGT leaders have used the worst kind of manoeuvres in order to discredit and demoralise workers, to stop them from moving towards a general strike.
Hand in hand with the bourgeois ministers, Thorez, vice-president of the Cabinet, is the inventor of the wage freeze, as L’Humanité of 19 February 1946 testifies: “The government will maintain wages at their present level.”
Hand in hand with the bourgeois ministers, Thorez, vice-president of the Cabinet, is the inventor of the wage freeze, as L’Humanité of 19 February 1946 testifies: “The government will maintain wages at their present level.”
Slanderers, like Victorien Duguet, Secretary of the Miners Federation, who dared to declare at the CGT congress that “strikes are the weapon of the trusts”.
The Stalinists, forced by the workers’ strength to leave the government, still remain a party of bourgeois government. Didn’t Duclos, that servant of social peace, declare in April: “Only fools are capable of talking about a general strike.”
For three months, they’ve used every crafty tactic to divide the will to fight of the workers, to distort and divert the direction of their class action, trying to get Renault to go back before Citroen comes out, the railway workers before the public services, the bakery workers before the railway workers; the loyal Stalinist lackeys of capitalism split the movement, and generalise sectional strikes as a divisive weapon to prevent a general strike of all trades, which would strike a decisive blow against the capitalist system which produces crisis, inflation and poverty.
All workers must draw the lessons of the powerful strike wave of April to July, which developed outside of, and against, the instructions of the Jouhaux-Fractions, who nevertheless succeeded in keeping control of these movements in the best interests of the capitalists.
Today, faced with the anti-working class measures of the Ramadier government, workers understand that they must fight together and unify their struggle for bread and wages through a general strike.
Platonic demonstrations at the Champs de Mars will only wear out the workers’ shoe-leather. These demonstrations and limited work-stoppages will only serve to exhaust the workers, in order to prevent them launching a general strike.
How should the general strike be prepared? Committees of struggle!
Workers can place no confidence in the leaders of the CGT to prepare, organise and launch the general strike. More interested in discussions with the top bosses of the CNPF [employers’ federation], Jouhaux, Frachon and Co intend above all to ensure social peace against the most legitimate interests of the working people.
Workers should count only on themselves to prepare action.
Irrespective of, and transcending, all party or union barriers, the advanced workers of the PCI, the revolutionary tendency of the CGT, the Workers Front, the CNT, the PCF and the PS, the Anarchists and those without a party who have understood the betrayal of the leaders of the big workers’ organisations, must get together to prepare action in committees of struggle.
What are committees of struggle? Towards a congress of enterprises!
During the engineering workers’ strike in February 1947, workers from different political and union tendencies got together in committees of struggle in order to discuss programme and the ways and means of conducting the strike. At Renault and Unic, they understood that within the framework of the bureaucratic discipline of the Jouhaux and Fractions they had no chance of preparing the struggle.
Today, at Peugeot in Sochaux, the committee of struggle has brought together the most militant workers. These committees of struggle need to be generalised, their experiences in preparing the general strike shared, in preparation for a congress of enterprises.
In every enterprise, the workers who are ready to go into action should get together and meet in order to establish a committee of struggle. They should, after work, convene meetings where the programme and methods for launching actions would be democratically discussed. The enterprise committees of struggle must make contact with each other and organise together around a central committee of struggle which must prepare a large-scale meeting where all the workers of whatever tendency would meet in a ‘congress of enterprises’ in order to launch and organise generalised strike action. There is no time to lose. We must move quickly. Today the provinces are restless. They’re waiting for help, for a push, for leadership from the workers of the Paris region.
How to conduct the general strike. For elected strike committees.
The PCF trade union bureaucrats want us to believe that they’re for action. They’re not. Their leftism only covers up their intention to keep control of the movement, to wear it down and sink it. At Sochaux, Lyon and Brest workers booed the Stalinist bureaucrats who preached quiescence and passivity.
There must be no confidence in these servants of the bosses in disguise. From the beginning of the strike, we must democratically elect a strike committee which will flush out all those who have preached “Produire d’abord” (production first) and the class collaborationist policies of the PCF for the past three years. Spreading the strike will be the work of those workers who, en masse, will go to other factories and call on them to elect strike committees which will be organised in a central strike committee.
The programme of the general strike
The results of three years of ‘Production first’ are laid out clearly in front of us: cuts in the bread ration and price increases. Aviation factories without work and 300,000 public employees threatened with unemployment in order to meet the 300 billion (franc) budget for the war in Indochina.
Inflation is rampant. The capitalist ship is leaking everywhere. The lot of the working masses gets worse every day.
The responsibility for the situation falls entirely on the leaders of the PS, PCF and CGT who for three years have had a policy of ‘unity’ with the patriotic bosses, the MPR and the bourgeois parties.
It is Ramadier who has taken all the anti-working class measures on behalf of the bourgeoisie.
The French Communist Party is even more responsible, if that’s possible, since, while having the total confidence of the working masses, it has been the initiator of the policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie for the past three years. Thorez remained vice-president of the Cabinet, Croizat, Minister of Labour and Marcel Paul, Minister of Industrial Production, all in the governments whether of De Gaulle, Gouin, Bidault or Ramadier.
And today, after this disastrous experience, the PCF advocates that its ministers re-enter the government with the PS and bourgeois ministers.
This solution will bring no relief for the ills that are grinding down the workers. Because there is no solution in the framework of a system where the boss is the master of his enterprise and the government of the bosses remains master of the country.
Working class and revolutionary solutions? They exist for wages: a living minimum
The cost of living rises constantly. Since the beginning of 1945, when the CGT demanded a minimum of 4000E per month or 23 francs an hour, prices have quadrupled. Today, to have the same purchasing power as in February 1945, a labourer should receive 75 francs and the lowest monthly-paid worker, 13 000 per month.
Guaranteed by a sliding scale
No confidence should be placed in charlatans who daily promise to stabilise prices. As a first step against price increases, the general strike will impose a sliding scale. For every price increase, a wage increase, and then the bosses will think twice before increasing prices.
Stabilisation of prices under workers’ control
The price watch commissions, in which the CGT honchos collaborated with the bosses and the bourgeois state functionaries, have failed miserably, just like the enterprise committees.
The fight to keep prices down means the ending of business secrets and control, through elected delegates, of prices at all levels of production and distribution.
No invoice, no accounting document will be valid if not countersigned by the elected delegates of the workers’ control committee.
The general strike is the fight against inflation
By stopping the 100 million a day spent for the war in Indochina, by ending the 300 billion in military credits, and by the confiscation of the billions that the banks and big trusts have in reserve.
Expropriation without compensation of all national enterprises.
General strike for bread
The impotence of the bourgeoisie and its Stalinist and Socialist agents brings unending poverty. As a first step, workers in struggle will force the bourgeois state to maintain the bread ration.
The peasants want ploughs, fertiliser, clothes and tractors. The capitalists build bombers and explosives.
By instituting workers’ control of production, the workers will orient production towards peaceful works and basic necessities. If the peasants could buy what they need at affordable prices, they would deliver at affordable prices wheat, meat and potatoes.
For a workers’ and peasants’ government
Only a general strike of all sections of the working class can win these demands. The general strike is the question posed by the masses in struggle.
Will the capitalist anarchy continue?
Will the boss remain master in his enterprise?
Will the bourgeois government, manager of bourgeois business, remain master of the country?
The PCF leaders explain that everything will be solved if the Stalinist ministers return to government.
They are liars and traitors!
Is it possible to win a minimum living wage of 13,000 francs a month, to protect this minimum against price increases through a sliding scale and workers' control? Is it possible to win bread through workers’ control of production, with a government that defends the capitalists' interests and where Thorez and Croizat keep company with Bidault and Ramadier?
No!
Only an anti-capitalist government, a workers’ and peasants’ government, breaking the coalition with the bourgeoisie, supported and installed by workers in struggle can put in practice the programme of the general strike.
The proof of the betrayals of the PCF, the CGT and PS is that, having the confidence of the broad masses, they don't want to rely on this will to fight to constitute a government of the workers’ parties and the CGT, which would be controlled by the masses in struggle and by their organisations.
Build a revolutionary leadership! Join the PCI
To impose this revolutionary programme, we need a new revolutionary leadership. The Stalinist party, the Socialist Party, and the leaders of the CGT, have gone bag and baggage into the camp of the bourgeoisie. The workers’ vanguard, which has understood the betrayal of its leaders, must organise in the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI), world party of Socialist revolution.
The only party whose programme is capable of leading the masses to victory against capitalism:
The Parti Communiste Internationaliste, IVe Internationale
The Stalinists, forced by the workers’ strength to leave the government, still remain a party of bourgeois government. Didn’t Duclos, that servant of social peace, declare in April: “Only fools are capable of talking about a general strike.”
For three months, they’ve used every crafty tactic to divide the will to fight of the workers, to distort and divert the direction of their class action, trying to get Renault to go back before Citroen comes out, the railway workers before the public services, the bakery workers before the railway workers; the loyal Stalinist lackeys of capitalism split the movement, and generalise sectional strikes as a divisive weapon to prevent a general strike of all trades, which would strike a decisive blow against the capitalist system which produces crisis, inflation and poverty.
All workers must draw the lessons of the powerful strike wave of April to July, which developed outside of, and against, the instructions of the Jouhaux-Fractions, who nevertheless succeeded in keeping control of these movements in the best interests of the capitalists.
Today, faced with the anti-working class measures of the Ramadier government, workers understand that they must fight together and unify their struggle for bread and wages through a general strike.
Platonic demonstrations at the Champs de Mars will only wear out the workers’ shoe-leather. These demonstrations and limited work-stoppages will only serve to exhaust the workers, in order to prevent them launching a general strike.
How should the general strike be prepared? Committees of struggle!
Workers can place no confidence in the leaders of the CGT to prepare, organise and launch the general strike. More interested in discussions with the top bosses of the CNPF [employers’ federation], Jouhaux, Frachon and Co intend above all to ensure social peace against the most legitimate interests of the working people.
Workers should count only on themselves to prepare action.
Irrespective of, and transcending, all party or union barriers, the advanced workers of the PCI, the revolutionary tendency of the CGT, the Workers Front, the CNT, the PCF and the PS, the Anarchists and those without a party who have understood the betrayal of the leaders of the big workers’ organisations, must get together to prepare action in committees of struggle.
What are committees of struggle? Towards a congress of enterprises!
During the engineering workers’ strike in February 1947, workers from different political and union tendencies got together in committees of struggle in order to discuss programme and the ways and means of conducting the strike. At Renault and Unic, they understood that within the framework of the bureaucratic discipline of the Jouhaux and Fractions they had no chance of preparing the struggle.
Today, at Peugeot in Sochaux, the committee of struggle has brought together the most militant workers. These committees of struggle need to be generalised, their experiences in preparing the general strike shared, in preparation for a congress of enterprises.
In every enterprise, the workers who are ready to go into action should get together and meet in order to establish a committee of struggle. They should, after work, convene meetings where the programme and methods for launching actions would be democratically discussed. The enterprise committees of struggle must make contact with each other and organise together around a central committee of struggle which must prepare a large-scale meeting where all the workers of whatever tendency would meet in a ‘congress of enterprises’ in order to launch and organise generalised strike action. There is no time to lose. We must move quickly. Today the provinces are restless. They’re waiting for help, for a push, for leadership from the workers of the Paris region.
How to conduct the general strike. For elected strike committees.
The PCF trade union bureaucrats want us to believe that they’re for action. They’re not. Their leftism only covers up their intention to keep control of the movement, to wear it down and sink it. At Sochaux, Lyon and Brest workers booed the Stalinist bureaucrats who preached quiescence and passivity.
There must be no confidence in these servants of the bosses in disguise. From the beginning of the strike, we must democratically elect a strike committee which will flush out all those who have preached “Produire d’abord” (production first) and the class collaborationist policies of the PCF for the past three years. Spreading the strike will be the work of those workers who, en masse, will go to other factories and call on them to elect strike committees which will be organised in a central strike committee.
The programme of the general strike
The results of three years of ‘Production first’ are laid out clearly in front of us: cuts in the bread ration and price increases. Aviation factories without work and 300,000 public employees threatened with unemployment in order to meet the 300 billion (franc) budget for the war in Indochina.
Inflation is rampant. The capitalist ship is leaking everywhere. The lot of the working masses gets worse every day.
The responsibility for the situation falls entirely on the leaders of the PS, PCF and CGT who for three years have had a policy of ‘unity’ with the patriotic bosses, the MPR and the bourgeois parties.
It is Ramadier who has taken all the anti-working class measures on behalf of the bourgeoisie.
The French Communist Party is even more responsible, if that’s possible, since, while having the total confidence of the working masses, it has been the initiator of the policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie for the past three years. Thorez remained vice-president of the Cabinet, Croizat, Minister of Labour and Marcel Paul, Minister of Industrial Production, all in the governments whether of De Gaulle, Gouin, Bidault or Ramadier.
And today, after this disastrous experience, the PCF advocates that its ministers re-enter the government with the PS and bourgeois ministers.
This solution will bring no relief for the ills that are grinding down the workers. Because there is no solution in the framework of a system where the boss is the master of his enterprise and the government of the bosses remains master of the country.
Working class and revolutionary solutions? They exist for wages: a living minimum
The cost of living rises constantly. Since the beginning of 1945, when the CGT demanded a minimum of 4000E per month or 23 francs an hour, prices have quadrupled. Today, to have the same purchasing power as in February 1945, a labourer should receive 75 francs and the lowest monthly-paid worker, 13 000 per month.
Guaranteed by a sliding scale
No confidence should be placed in charlatans who daily promise to stabilise prices. As a first step against price increases, the general strike will impose a sliding scale. For every price increase, a wage increase, and then the bosses will think twice before increasing prices.
Stabilisation of prices under workers’ control
The price watch commissions, in which the CGT honchos collaborated with the bosses and the bourgeois state functionaries, have failed miserably, just like the enterprise committees.
The fight to keep prices down means the ending of business secrets and control, through elected delegates, of prices at all levels of production and distribution.
No invoice, no accounting document will be valid if not countersigned by the elected delegates of the workers’ control committee.
The general strike is the fight against inflation
By stopping the 100 million a day spent for the war in Indochina, by ending the 300 billion in military credits, and by the confiscation of the billions that the banks and big trusts have in reserve.
Expropriation without compensation of all national enterprises.
General strike for bread
The impotence of the bourgeoisie and its Stalinist and Socialist agents brings unending poverty. As a first step, workers in struggle will force the bourgeois state to maintain the bread ration.
The peasants want ploughs, fertiliser, clothes and tractors. The capitalists build bombers and explosives.
By instituting workers’ control of production, the workers will orient production towards peaceful works and basic necessities. If the peasants could buy what they need at affordable prices, they would deliver at affordable prices wheat, meat and potatoes.
For a workers’ and peasants’ government
Only a general strike of all sections of the working class can win these demands. The general strike is the question posed by the masses in struggle.
Will the capitalist anarchy continue?
Will the boss remain master in his enterprise?
Will the bourgeois government, manager of bourgeois business, remain master of the country?
The PCF leaders explain that everything will be solved if the Stalinist ministers return to government.
They are liars and traitors!
Is it possible to win a minimum living wage of 13,000 francs a month, to protect this minimum against price increases through a sliding scale and workers' control? Is it possible to win bread through workers’ control of production, with a government that defends the capitalists' interests and where Thorez and Croizat keep company with Bidault and Ramadier?
No!
Only an anti-capitalist government, a workers’ and peasants’ government, breaking the coalition with the bourgeoisie, supported and installed by workers in struggle can put in practice the programme of the general strike.
The proof of the betrayals of the PCF, the CGT and PS is that, having the confidence of the broad masses, they don't want to rely on this will to fight to constitute a government of the workers’ parties and the CGT, which would be controlled by the masses in struggle and by their organisations.
Build a revolutionary leadership! Join the PCI
To impose this revolutionary programme, we need a new revolutionary leadership. The Stalinist party, the Socialist Party, and the leaders of the CGT, have gone bag and baggage into the camp of the bourgeoisie. The workers’ vanguard, which has understood the betrayal of its leaders, must organise in the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI), world party of Socialist revolution.
The only party whose programme is capable of leading the masses to victory against capitalism:
The Parti Communiste Internationaliste, IVe Internationale
************
4: Taking off again ...
From La voix des travailleurs de chez Renault, No.8, 3 June 1947
Taking off again – this time with the left foot forward!
According to official figures, production has doubled within the last year, but nevertheless, the situation of workers has got worse. In high places they try to confuse workers with ‘technical’ explanations and speeches about the “race between wages and prices”.
But if the situation is catastrophic for the masses, it is not so for everyone. We can be sure that the rich, despite the lack of bread, ate as usual, Monday as Sunday, today as yesterday, and will also do so tomorrow ... if workers don’t react. Because the explanation for the whole situation and all the difficulties for the masses is the action of all governments up till now, who have all had a policy in favour of the rich and against the poor.
With a government of the workers, wouldn’t the growth in production naturally improve the life of the masses? This is so obvious and the discontent so great that the entire working class, in the provinces and in Paris, the entire population, is indignant and wants to fight. All-out efforts were needed, not just official, but above all by those organisations which still pretend to be workers’ organisations, in order to keep this discontent from transforming into a groundswell.
But the wave is swelling. On Monday morning, several hundred workers and clerks demonstrated in front of the Hotel Matignon [Prime Minister’s residence]. In our factory, the Collas sector and Bas Meudon struck for a half-day in immediate reaction to the government’s manoeuvres. Indeed, it [the government] only pushed the bakery workers out on strike (their punishing work is very badly paid) with the unstated hope that this latter strike, which affects the whole population, would incite it against the strikes in general.
In addition, with what’s happening in the factories in the provinces and in Paris, we can see that the general strike movement (which the Collas strike committee called for) is tending, day by day, to become a reality.
The need for this struggle is making so much progress in the consciousness of the workers that the CGT leaders, who first presented a general strike as an idiocy, are now trying to say that it is premature, that “we don't know where it will take us”, that this will be an insurrectionary strike, that “the reaction is just waiting for this.”
Why are the CGT leaders threatening us with the reaction?
The working class has been through two general strikes: February 1934 and June 1936. In the first case, the general strike was intended precisely to crush the reaction, which had fed on passivity and parliamentary scandals. And, despite the formation of governments such as those of Doumergue or Laval, which were reactionary governments, the working class constantly improved its position through struggle and, finally, it was with the general strike of June 1936 that, for the first time, it succeeded in winning demands which were urgent and indispensible for its life: paid holidays, the 40-hour week, wage increases ... It is because later struggles, in 1937 and 1938, were sabotaged by the official leadership that the working class later pulled back.
The government is already relying on the reaction, on the capitalists, their high-level bureaucracy, and the corps of generals to smother workers’ struggles (through requisitions, etc). And it is only because these reactionary forces don’t feel able to attack the working class head-on that they hide behind a government which is socialist only in name.
It’s not insurrection that’s posed.
Today, as in June 1936, what’s posed is self-defence.
The CGT policy is everyone for himself, when only a general strike (not including essential services) can make the capitalists and the government capitulate. In a general strike of industries which are non-essential for daily life, the wages of bakery workers, for example, would go up like all the others, without them going on strike.
Isolated and dispersed strikes waste precious time; in the long run they wear down both the workers and the population. This is what the reaction is waiting for, and if the so-called workers’ representatives are supporters of these methods it is because their goal is above all to use workers’ struggles to accomplish their own ministerial designs, and not to defend the workers’ bread.
As in June 1936, the working class, all together, must once again put its left foot forward!
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