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From New International, Vol. VIII No. 4, May 1942, pp. 118–120.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
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As a contribution to the discussion of the National Question in Europe and the problems of the coming European revolution, initiated by The New International, we publish below a resolution adopted in September 1941 at a National Conference of the POI (Workers Internationalist Party – French Trotskyists). Along with this resolution, we publish a minority amendment offered to it by the Regional Committee of the Unoccupied Zone (Vichy France). Although readers of The New International are well aware of our complete disagreement with the defensist position relating to the Soviet Union, stated in this thesis, nevertheless it is an important contribution to clarification of the basic problem of the European revolution and is, in addition, a clear expression of the differences that exist in the French Trotskyist movement on the “National Question.” It is curious to note the manner in which the magazine Fourth International has handled the entire matter, particularly its crude effort to conceal the disagreements within the French movement. In the March 1943 issue of Fourth International (Cannonite) a lengthy document of the Regional Committee of the Unoccupied Zone (Vichy, France) and admittedly “not adopted as such by the Conference,” is published. This document is clearly a polemic against the National Conference resolution we are publishing below. Furthermore, the National Conference resolution is printed in such an abbreviated and garbled fashion (again with the objective of concealing the differences) that parts of its meaning are unclear. Clarification on this burning issue for the European revolutionists cannot be attained by such methods. It is not hard to grasp the motive of “FI” in attempting to conceal that which clearly belongs out in the open, under the spotlight of Marxist discussion. Obviously this trickery is in the nature of a “concealed” and hidden polemic itself. – Editor |
(1) The imperialist war which began in September 1939 is approaching its climax. Virtually the entire world is at war.
(2) This war is fundamentally an imperialist war for a new distribution of raw materials and markets, for the conquest of new fields for the expansion of finance capital. It is not giving birth to a new progressive society – a “new order” – as the fascists and certain naive or cynical petty bourgeois politicians claim. Nor is it a war for the victory of democracy (even Pertinax denounces the de Gaullist plan for a monarchist restoration). Still less is it a war for the defense of socialism. Anglo-American imperialism tries to make use of the Soviet Union as a mere war machine directed against Hitler.
(3) Since 1917 the imperialist powers have constantly oscillated between two policies: a clash of two blocs struggling among themselves for a redivision of the world, and an imperialist coalition against the working class and the USSR. It is not only a question of a conflict between the imperialist powers, but also a sharp conflict between imperialism and the economic, military and revolutionary forces of the workers’ state and, through the latter, the forces of the international proletariat. In this conflict the workers of the world support the Soviet people and cooperate with them. They participate, by class methods, in this struggle against reaction so as to make this the first of the struggles for the socialist revolution. The USSR can depend only upon them. The imperialist “allies” will attempt a compromise with their rivals, on the back of the USSR and the oppressed peoples, just as soon as events threaten to overwhelm them. Given the present crisis of capitalism such a compromise can only lay the basis for a new and more frightful conflagration of the imperialist powers.
(4) Hitler means a Europe directed, colonized and crushed by the military boot for the benefit of German finance capital. An Anglo-American “liberation” is already defined by the eight points of Roosevelt-Churchill as the open military domination of the victors for the benefit of Wall Street and the abandonment of the pacifist and humanitarian Wilsonian formulas. For the workers of all countries, therefore, the task is to prepare for the proletarian socialist revolution by taking advantage of the military crisis. They must stand at the head of every economic and political struggle leading toward this objective. But this struggle assumes different forms in different countries.
In the so-called democratic camp, the revolutionary struggle has, as its lever, the demand for power by the working class so that it may take the war into its own hands and transform it into a genuine anti-fascist war.
In the camp of Hitler, the struggle of the workers tied down by fascism is necessarily more elementary (sabotage, strikes). This struggle is linked up with economic and political demands. In the oppressed and occupied countries, every direct anti-fascist struggle (sabotage, etc.) must be oriented toward a mass economic struggle.
(5) By straining to the utmost the strength of both camps, the imperialist war increasingly threatens their internal equilibrium and dislocates their military, political and economic apparatus (Axis crisis, crisis of German economy, the Hess affair – on one side; constant vacillations of the bourgeois democracies between a policy of concession to the different classes and a bureaucratic-authoritarian policy on the other side).
(6) Social problems inevitably tend to take first place as the war unrolls. The German crisis and the Russian war brought on guerrilla warfare in the Balkans. Military operations in the Near East (Irak, Syria, Iran) posed the problem of Arabian liberation. From India to China a gigantic uprising of the people is emerging. Finally, the stirrings of the proletariat in the “democratic” countries, the movement of great popular masses against poverty and famine, the movement of Europe’s oppressed nationalities, the first sign of a reawakened proletariat in the USSR – all these are forerunners of a new world revolutionary wave.
(7) The imperialist war has definitely compromised the Second International. The Russo-German conflict can only end with the liquidation of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the Third International. Confronted with this new revolutionary wave, the time has come for the international revolutionary vanguard to end once for all the era of small discussion and propaganda circles and to set down in deeds the activity of the Fourth International.
(8) France is the crossroad of all the imperialist rivalries. The Vichy government is a miserable clique whose existence is justified only by the balance of the existing forces: a balance between the two imperialist blocs; a balance between the rival clans of French imperialism (speculative capital against industrial capital); a balance between the classes momentarily incapable of promoting their historic solutions (fascism or socialism). Born of this extremely delicate balance, lacking an economic and social base, the Vichy government is leading an existence made up of perpetual wavering and impotence.
(9) The French Empire is Vichy’s only real base. Vichy tries to preserve it by every means in the face of its imperialist rivals, as well as against the demands of the native populations. But the extreme weakness of Vichy makes the dislocation of the Empire inevitable. The present period is favorable for the development of national liberation movements in the colonies. “Liberation of the colonies from the yoke of French imperialism” is one of the essential slogans of a revolutionary party in France.
(10) The needs of the German army do not permit the reconstruction of French economy. Increased unemployment, lowering of the living standards of the masses, low wages, high prices – such will be the essential characteristics of the months to come. The antagonism between the popular masses on one side and the state and the occupying power on the other can only increase. The only possible economic uplift is that offered by socialist solutions (workers’ control, nationalization). Every other solution can only strengthen the stranglehold that German imperialism has upon French economy.
(11) The Vichy government cannot build itself a base among the desperate petty-bourgeoisie. It can succeed only in organizing a clerical-police caricature of the totalitarian state. Its entire bureaucratic and reactionary structure is sapped internally by the existing political and economic contradictions. Political life constantly overflows the limitations Vichy attempts to impose upon it.
(12) The most immediate expression of popular discontent is the movement of national resistance to oppression. This is the first spontaneous petty bourgeois expression of the rising revolutionary tide. To the extent that France’s economic dependence and Germany’s internal difficulties will draw Berlin and Vichy closer and closer together, popular national sentiment will turn the masses more and more violently against Vichy.
(13) The development along proletarian and anti-capitalist lines of the popular movement of hostility to Hitlerism is the necessary condition for fraternization with the workers and soldiers of Germany. The party does not forget that without the collaboration of the German workers and soldiers no revolution is possible in Europe. Thus, fraternization remains one of our essential tasks. Every act tending to widen the breach between German and European workers is directly counter-revolutionary.
(14) A united party of liberation cannot, as British propaganda claims, exist. No program for power, accepted by all Frenchmen regardless of class, can exist. Still less can the masses, fighting for their freedom, advance the program of London, namely, restoration of liberal-capitalism, guardianship over the peoples of Europe. Only the United Socialist States of Europe and of the world can really raise the productive forces and solve the national and democratic problems (right to speak one’s own language, develop one’s own culture, self-government, free assembly, freedom of the press, of work, etc.).
(15) The formless “de Gaullism” of the masses nevertheless remains as the most important political phenomena of the moment. Actually, there are as many “de Gaullisms” as there are social classes. The possessing class will always be ready to give up the national struggle as soon as the oppressing imperialism offers it a few crumbs of profits, or as soon as the working class conducts a class action (sabotage of the coal miners’ strike in the North by the de Gaullist leaders, for example). By contrast, the de Gaullism of the workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie symbolizes something fundamentally healthy. It signifies the will to struggle so that the country may be freed from the Hitlerite yoke and democratic liberties and social conquests re-established. Our party is ready to struggle side by side with such a current. It supports every popular “de Gaullist” movement seeking to establish a broad front for democratic rights. It participates in the front ranks of such a movement despite its confusion and the dangers contained in it. Naturally, the revolutionary party reserves its full freedom of criticism and action so as to aid the evolution of the masses toward socialist solutions. It opposes every attempt to confine this movement to resurrected Popular Frontist summits, and struggles for mass organizations along appropriate lines in the shop, home, quarter and village.
This movement can lead to a serious political regroupment only in so far as its actions pave the way for the organic regrouping of the working class and give it political cohesion.
(16) Thanks to its apparatus and its large number of militants the Communist Party remains the principal organizing center of the working class. But its policy aims to permanently turn the masses away from the correct revolutionary path. After the Popular Front and the sabotage of the 1936 strike movement; after its “defeatism” in the war in 1939; after its collaboration with the German authorities in 1940; it now seeks to launch the masses down the blind alley of terrorism to save the Stalinist bureaucracy, along with its privileges, from the bottomless pit. The revolutionary movement now arising can triumph only under the leadership of a true proletarian Marxist-Leninist party. Based upon the first step of the workers’ upsurge, a preliminary organizational regrouping of the vanguard is now discernible. Decisive social and military events in Europe and the USSR will lead to the regroupment of large masses, under the leadership of the revolutionary party.
(17) The collapse, the economic crisis, the territorial division of the country, the downfall of the traditional workers’ organizations broke up the ranks of the working class and destroyed its organizational and ideological cohesion. The inability of the French bourgeoisie to create a totalitarian state has allowed the working class to reawaken to its historic mission. We note, at present, among the masses, a deep movement toward politicalization, toward radical and revolutionary solutions.
The first task of revolutionaries is to give the working class an elementary cohesion, to revive its organic unity based upon a policy that is alive to its class aims. We must use every legal possibility for this regrouping (unions or corporations, in particular), organize groups of workers’ action, or workers’ assemblies (popular committees, united front groups, groups of unaffiliated workers). Above all, our goal is to reestablish working class cohesion for action and in action.
(18) To lead such action effectively it is essential to advance a program linking up the masses’ immediate preoccupations with fundamental socialist demands (workers’ control, councils, arming of the people, United Socialist States of Europe).
The most urgent political task is the adaptation of the transitional program of the Fourth International to the present period.
(19) When decisive breaks make their appearance in the apparatus of the imperialist powers, there will burst forth into the political arena with irresistible violence, power and the confusion of an elementary force, those popular layers long oppressed by fascism and reaction. Only under the leadership of a proletariat aware of its historic objectives can such a movement definitively triumph; it can assure victory only on an international scale.
(20) The eruption of the masses will be as sudden as it is harsh. The rôle of the party, as an instrument of clarification and organization necessary for victory, will be more decisive than ever (a) in carrying out from now on the party’s activity among the masses; (b) in bringing about the re-unification of all the best elements of the vanguard into a large section of the International.
(15) The formless “de Gaullism” of the masses, leading them to hope for an English victory, nevertheless remains as the most important political phenomena of the moment. Actually, this tendency has as many varying contents as there are social classes. The possessing class will always be ready to give up the national struggle as soon as the oppressing imperialism offers it a few crumbs of its profits, or as soon as the workers pass over to class action (sabotage of the coal miners strike in the North by the de Gaullist leaders, for example). By contrast, this nationalism of the workers and peasants symbolizes something fundamentally healthy. It signifies the will to struggle so that the country may be freed from the Hitlerite yoke and democratic liberties and social conquests re-established. Our party is not afraid to conclude tactical agreements of more or less lengthy duration with every popular “de Gaullist” movement. Collaboration with such organizations must have, as a counterpart, a far-reaching ideological work. It is here that the vanguard must prove its political maturity. Our activity must have as its objective the dissolution of “de Gaullism” and liquidating it as a current among the toiling masses.
We participate in the front ranks of every broad movement for democratic liberties despite its confusion and the dangers contained in it. Naturally, the revolutionary party reserves its full freedom of criticism and action so as to aid the evolution of the masses toward socialist solutions. It opposes every attempt to confine this movement to resurrected popular front summits, and struggles for mass organizations along appropriate lines in the shop, home, quarter and village. This movement can lead to a serious political regroupment only insofar as its actions pave the way for the organic regrouping of the working class and give it political cohesion. With this in mind, we counterpose to the Stalinist slogan of “National Front” the slogan of “Socialist Front for Liberation,” underscoring by this the fact that the proletariat must stand at the head of the movement.
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