Politics in France: Phantom and Charade

...Insofar, however, as the students represented a new sort of politics, in which, for lack of anything better, they kept using the old Marxist vocabulary to grope toward new ideas and aspirations, then, I think, they behaved both as marvellous and heroic catalysts of social change and as dangerous and provocative impediments to social change...

...Insofar as the student leaders identified themselves with one or another traditional politics—Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, anarchism—they deluded themselves...

...It encompassed some elements of the traditional "revolutionary situation," but thereby was not the same...

...More, they unwittingly enabled de Gaulle to extricate both himself and bourgeois France from extreme danger...

...Some of its veterans may have fallen back with pleasure on the vocabulary of the barricades, but it is notable that nowhere did the French workers put up any barricades...

...Once the bourgeois government began to prepare for action against the students, once the workers began to occupy the factories and thereby threaten the stability of the regime, the students were all but brushed aside...

...The CP immobilizes the workers for either traditional revolutionary or traditional reformist activity, since the CP is unable to realize either perspective...

...and it gains its major support from theFrench working class...

...Probably...

...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Did the CP betray the French workers by failing to opt for insurrection, by its decision not to transform the general strike into an open violent battle for power...

...384), this has some positive potentialities...

...From all we can gather, there is a new stratum of younger workers, not yet very numerous and largely unmarred by the Left parties, which aspires toward a greater share not merely in economic rewards but also in social power...

...It is a party that collaborates with the "Establishment" on occasion, but is not part of the "Establishment...

...But wasn't there still more involved in the action of the workers...

...We...

...Yet through the pressures of the still-urgent old politics and the not-yet-clear new politics, which is to say, because of its own Marxist tradition and the example of what had just happened in Paris, the workers went on a spontaneous general strike...

...They were willing to see the general strike politicized to the extent that it would force the Pompidou government to resign and de Gaulle, with a trivial shift of votes in the Chamber, to appoint Mendes-France as Premier, probably in preparation for a new election...

...Besides, these slogans can still alarm men in power, and the workers were clearly in a mood to scare the hell out of men in power...

...That form of action, or acting-out, was left to the students...

...It is a power significant only when the major social classes or forces are quiescent...

...First, a portion of the fruits of French prosperity, precisely the portion the Gaullist regime had, in its fatuous notions of "grandeur," stolen from the workers...

...What the French are discovering, in their own special context, are those problems of politics in advanced capitalist society which we have all been experiencing...

...Writing about the French Revolution, he remarked upon the regularity with which the revolutionists, to give themselves an aura of historic legitimacy, employed the imagery of the Roman Republic...

...They could throw the fear of Soviets into the hearts of the French bourgeoisie, no small achievement...

...But insofar as it is meant topoint to the ruling classes or groups in a countrylike France, then it must be said that the CP is not an "Establishment" party...

...All this does not leave one with feelings of assurance...

...Wasn't there more to it...

...he could have tried to destroy the general strike by assaulting some of its main centers, such as the Renault factories...

...It has been argued by friends in Europe whose judgment I respect that if the workers had been urged by the Left parties to remain in the factories, de Gaulle would have had to accede...

...1I THE STUDENTS electrified the country...

...Did not workers in some factories release slogans of revolutionary conquest...

...Precisely to the extent that the politics of the traditional Left fails, either in its Communist or Social Democratic variants, there will be new quasi-anarchic outbursts employing a wild rhetoric and bringing together concrete aspirations for a greater share of economic and social goods with vague aspirations for a greater share of political power...

...For the democratic Left of France, COMMENTS AND OPINIONS bruised by a severe defeat in the elections, the immediate prospect is difficult...

...And thereby they suffered...

...Revolutionists without revolutionary ideas, calculating on the virtues of their contempt for calculation, they not only lacked any tactical sense, they refused the very idea of tactical sense...

...IV SINCE the spring events it has become fashionable in some "Left" circles to say that the CP betrayed the French revolution...

...They helped create the Gaullist victory...

...c) the Gaullist regime had sufficient power at its disposal (the army, the police) to sup press an uprising...

...itderives its politics and authority mainly from atotalitarian state, the Soviet Union...

...The very existence of the CP as a party to which the bulk of the French working class gives its allegiance is a political disaster...

...The welfare state, in France as in the U.S., is not at all the static crystallization of apathy which the theories of Marcuse make it out to be...

...It showed immediately the difference in social weight between students and workers, the difference between shutting down the Sorbonne and shutting down the economy of France, Yet, just as clearly, the French working class was not prepared for insurrection or civil war...

...It is not in power...

...For the essence of these recent, astonishing events is that nothing was what it appeared to be...

...And partly, it expressed these inchoate desires through the slogans of the past: which is entirely to be expected and, indeed, the way political life usually develops...

...It is not a revolutionaryparty in the traditional Leninist sense, or perhapsin any other sense, for it does not aspire to powerthrough insurrection...

...V ONLY ABSOLUTE CHILDREN would simply de clare without qualification that the path of in surrection should have been taken...

...What did the workers want...

...but whatever their sacrifice, they could not act out, in behalf of the working class, the revolutionary role which Marxism had assigned to it...

...III THE WORKING CLASS came into action...

...It is not a Social Democraticparty in the usual sense, since its tradition, externalconnections, and vocabulary keep it from acceptingthe limitations of reformism...

...There remains the trickiest problem of all...

...As Jean Bloch-Michel remarks in his dispatch from Paris (p...

...What then is the CP...

...They wished to but could not...

...Let us be honest...

...Whether it could indeed have succeeded no one with good sense is going to say from a distance...

...It is true that the CP was a major factor in preventing this kind of showdown...

...And anyone who says he has quick and ready answers to those problems is a charlatan or a fool, maybe both...

...It is a power that makes itself felt mainly in the absence of other powers...

...d) there was a large segment of the popula tion, perhaps even a majority, that would rally to the support of the regime in case of a show down...

...on the contrary, it carries within itself unavoidable social conflicts...

...Through the politics of the street, they were able to turn France around— for a few minutes...

...The students had helped frighten the French bourgeoisie with the specter of revolution, they had evoked the enormous counter-response of the 350,000 Gaullist demonstrators in Paris, but they had no idea whatever as to what followed upon the turmoil they had set into motion...

...And remember, too, that de Gaulle did not need to remove every last worker from the factories...

...There is no shorthand designation...

...The regime was able to cordon off the students, isolating their ultra-Left elements at the Sorbonne, and no doubt prepare—together with university reforms--punitive measures for the fall...

...At this point, for precisely opposite reasons, both the CP and the students are open to sharp criticism...

...All of which is true and, to some extent, encouraging...

...But what can be said is that such an outcome would not, in any traditional sense, have been an old-style "revolution" at all...

...The students could set the society on its ear, but could not put it on its feet...

...But there were grave drawbacks...

...There was a moment when de Gaulle was preparing to use the army, the workers remained locked in the factories, the students were racing through the streets...

...Students raising red and black flags...

...But just as the Jacobins were not Romans, so the recent French rebels, whatever they may have been, were not able to act out the drama of Marxism...

...It is a totalitarian or authoritarian party...

...But this general strike, for all that it challenged power, was not a strategy for taking power...

...Not because of our desires, which heaven knows were entirely directed toward the fulfillment of the great Marxist myth, but because of COMMENTS AND OPINIONS our comprehension, which should soon have made clear to us that while the French situation seemed to be following the classic Marxist pattern of a revolutionary situation, it was in reality something else...

...But before acquiescing in this notion, Iet us try to think clearly...

...By its very nature, the general strike did call into question the power of the French state...

...They were not quite so eager for Mendes-France to take office...

...Precisely at this point we ought to be especially careful...

...Yet when people say the French CP "betrayed the revolution," they usually mean something else, something that raises phantoms of insurrection and charades of civil war...

...it was caught up in a wave of rebellion, but it wanted to keep that wave within manageable limits...

...It is approaching astate of affairs where in many respects it resembles, or is like, an old-fashioned reformist party, but before it can become one it will have to undergomajor convulsions...

...You can say this represents an unfortunate empiricism on the part of the workers, but if you say it, then you had better add that it also embodies some hardheaded experience...

...b) the students talked about revolution but were not a serious force to be counted on...

...Like Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown in the U.S., but on a greatly magnified scale, they soon proved to be of value to the forces of repression—the very forces which only yesterday they had so brilliantly brought to social fright and paralysis...

...A general strike, we all remember from our classes in Marxism, signifies a fundamental threat to the existing order: one side or the other must gain COMMENTS AND OPINIONS the power that is called into question...

...Suppose, after all, that the CP—or any other party— made a hard-headed calculation which led to these conclusions: a) the working class was not physically and politically prepared for battle...

...and then a confrontation might have occurred that would have created a show-down of force...

...In a measure, then, traditional Marxism can be said to be vindicated: the workers showed themselves still one of the basic con tending forces in the society, and the students, whether "revolutionary" or not, were thrust into a subordinate role at the crucial moment...

...Heroic fools, foolish heroes: some of them...

...If France showed the possibilities, it showed still more the limitations of student power...

...he would have had no choice but to turn to Mendes-France...

...They pushed aside, as mere "Establishment" diversions, the tactical considerations of everyone from Lenin to the crustiest Social Democrat—and then these tactical considerations came to haunt them: When is there really a revolutionary situation...

...But as BlochMichel also indicates, the possibility of further outbursts has threatening elements—it gives rise to adventurism by middle-class students whose ultimatistic notions make them ultimately irresponsible, and thereby enables the Right to assault not only the students but the whole range of radical movements...

...and relevant to the nation as a whole (extension of democracy, etc...

...Was there not, this past spring, a certain thrill in the surmise that perhaps, after all, the Marxist categories might yet be vindicated—and vindicated in the streets of Paris...

...This is slipshodthinking...

...Mostly, the workers reacted to them impatiently, even contemptuously, treating them like middle-class kids who talked a great revolution but didn't know much about the problem of bringing home a paycheck...

...Yes, that is true...

...Socerers' apprentices, they were in danger of being destroyed by their own work...

...The term "Establishment" is too vaguefor serious discussion: it signifies no more than anall-purpose put-down...

...If he were alive today and writing about the French events of this past spring, he might be remarking that, as new possibilities emerged under old masks and classes seemed to be reenacting discarded roles in order to break past the phantoms of the past, the French rebels employed the imagery of Marxism...

...they were put off, even frightened by the students...

...In the France of 1968 that was, however, both true and false...

...Is this general strike really the kind foreseen in syndicalist theories...

...By their courage they could set off a spark that might ignite working-class action...

...If the major parties of the French Left had now decided to force a showdown, there might well have been the beginnings of civil war...

...Until, that is, the other France—which, in their willfulness they had refused to acknowledge as remaining an enormous force—the France of the shopkeepers and petty bourgeois, turned against them...

...Who is prepared to say that such a calculation was wrong...

...The crisis of France is not over...

...But remember that the capacity of workers with families to remain on strike is much more limited than that of students receiving checks from their middle-class parents to keep occupying the Sorbonne...

...And if vindicated, where better than in Paris...

...it draws its vocabulary mainly from an appropriated Marxisttradition...

...Perhaps...

...they retained kindly feelings for de Gaulle's foreign policy...

...It wants to play a role in factory management and planning...

...He could not have driven 11 million workers back to work...

...Are the workers really prepared to go into the streets...

...One also hears these days that the French CP hasbecome "an Establishment party...

...workers spontaneously engaging in a mass general strike, occupying factories and rejecting settlements made "for them" by Communist and reformist trade union leaders . . . old slogans breathing new life: workers' power, perhaps even All Power to the Soviets (not yet present, but still . . .) And then the Stalinist and reformist leaders betray the revolution once more, fail to take advantage of a strike that leaves the regime helpless...

...The CP stalled and, according to some reports, engaged in surreptitious negotiations with Pompidou...

...They saw, in the turmoil created by student demonstrations, an opportunity for themselves...

...but were never in a position to establish them...

...And if we, in distant America, felt this, must not our political friends in France have felt it all the more...

...Who could, or should, resist this view of things...

...They proved themselves to be a power...

...The students talked up a revolutionary storm and (almost absent-mindedly) raised the specter of civil war, but were never in a position to follow through in reality what they had induced by rhetoric...

...They raised issues legitimate in their own right (the university, etc...

...Nor will it do to rant about "the bankruptcy of the Left, of all the parties," etc...

...Now all this may be less lively than screaming"Establishment," but it has the advantage, I think, of a somewhat more precise description...

...Or, in other language, they wanted a large share of the product of the welfare state...

...But here, evidently, the Communists stuck their feet out...

...At most, it would have been a way of forcing new elections—that is, of forcing de Gaulle to abandon his authoritarian methods—on terms advantageous to the Left...

...Leaving aside the problem of democratic norms for a moment, and leaving further aside the problem of a revolution in which, if it occurred at all, the CP would almost surely emerge as the dominant force, these are considerations that serious political people, as distinct from mini-Chess, ought to reflect upon...