PCF during the events of may 1968

[Manar]

I see a lot of ultralefts and Trotskyists decrying the role the PCF played in May 1968. I don't really mind, the PCF just isn't my cup of tea, but I do wonder: could the PCF have done anything in 1968 to please the ultralefts and Trots? Which course of action should they have taken? I mean, let's look at the balance of forces here. The PCF was the biggest and best organised anti-capitalist(at least in theory) force in France. I don't know how many members they had, but in the June 1968 legistlative elections, they got over 4,000,000 votes, and if only a quarter of those PCF-supporters were actual members, the PCF had at least 1,000,000 cadres. The ruling Gaullist party got almost 10 million votes in the same elections(almost 50 percent of the vote). And then you had the pro-bourgeoisie Socialist party under Mitterand, which got over 3 and a half million votes. So basically, about 70 percent of the French population explicitly supported the parties of capital in 1968. What options did the PCF have, then? The most obvious one is the one they chose: admit that you cannot conquer power and put an end to the events. Another option for the PCF would have been to accept its rightful vanguard role in the May 1968 movement as the biggest and most organised proletarian force in the country and try to launch an insurrection against the French government. That could either end up with the insurrection failing and the PCF being dismembered by the state with half of the PCF leaders shot, the other half imprisoned and the communist cause being set back by decades. The other outcome would be the PCF coming to power in France, but with more than half of the French population opposing the PCF putschists, the PCF would have to institute a harsh dictatorship and shoot at least a few hundred thousand counter-revolutionaries for good measure - and that wouldn't even handle the issue of imminent NATO intervention, which might spark a third World War with the Soviet Union, or might not, which doesn't really matter because NATO would kick the PCF the fuck out of France regardless of what the Soviet Union does.

Either way, it doesn't really look pretty for the PCF. Their capitulation to the State in 1968 was a disaster, yet every other option they had would have been an even bigger disaster. And the ultralefts and Trots would attack them no matter what. For "selling out", or for "hijacking the revolution" and then "wrecking" it. Tough shit, PCF.

Or am I wrong?

[The Douche]

could the PCF have done anything in 1968 to please the ultralefts

Burn.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

It seems safe to say that they had the opportunity to just keep quiet if the course of the insurrection was not something they could accept with their narrow ideology. But I guess siding with the police and telling the rabble to get back to work was too tempting to pass up.

[Tim Cornelis]

I suppose then the Bolsheviks should have sided with the Czar because they did not win the elections and making revolution is too risky, because you might get shot. I suppose the German revolution should not have been undertaken because the leadership was shot. Etc.
Ridiculous to assert that there was no other thing to do for a communist party than to side with the right-wing against workers' resistance and strikes wherein 22% of the French population participated.

[Per Levy]

That could either end up with the insurrection failing and the PCF being dismembered by the state with half of the PCF leaders shot, the other half imprisoned and the communist cause being set back by decades.

and now decades later, what is up with the communist cause today? its pretty much dead, isnt it?

[khad]

Which doesn't really matter because NATO would kick the PCF the fuck out of France regardless of what the Soviet Union does.
/sarcasm

Depends how fast relief forces negotiate the Fulda Gap and the North German Plain.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Counting votes in bourgeois elections isn't really the best way to gauge the readiness of the working class to sieze power, probably.

[The Douche]

France withdrew from NATO in 66. Just putting that out there...

Obviously certain capitalist powers would have come to the aid of France, but yeah.

[TheEmancipator]

In some parts of the so called revolutionary organ, it was a quasi-libertarian, somewhat hedonist revolution that had no interest in emancipating the working class or anybody else. I still do not get why people rant and rave about May 68 and what went wrong. It has been discussed at length. It was another revolution we must learn from, but move on from.

My view is that the PCF were trying to play establishment politics when they should have been at the front line of worker empowerment. They weren't. The students were doing a better job than they were.

We should rather be looking at what went wrong in Czechoslovakia at the time...

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

The time honored line of reformists is that it is NEVER time for revolution -- they certainly were saying that in 1917 in Russia, and in Germany after WWI, and everywhere else that there was a chance to overthrow capitalism. I am not well-versed in the events in France in 1968, but I do know that the PCF basically sided with the status quo. They did not say, "comrades now is not the time for insurrection, so let us take a small step back to organize properly to overthrow capitalism," they just said, "arretez-vous," to the French workers and students. In other words, there is almost no situation imaginable where they would have pushed for socialist revolution in France. If they wouldn't do it in Spain in 1936, where workers were in power in much of the country, well, it sure as hell wasn't going to happen in France in 1968.

[Anti-Traditional]

So what if most people in France didn't want revolution? Did the Bolsheviks in 1917 see the Soviets dominated by Mensheviks and decide to sell out the revolution? NO, they kept agitating.

[Luís Henrique]

If the PCF was the vanguard of the working class, as it styled itself, it should have led the working class in struggle. If it deemed impossible to overcome the bourgeois defences at the time, it should have led the working class into a strategy of erosion. If on the other hand the PCF was a minimally competent reformist party, it should have kept out from the struggle and denounced the arbitrariness and violence of the French State, hoping to cash the discontent on the next elections.

But the PCF wasn't the revolutionary vanguard of the working class, nor it was competently reformist, so it tried to profit on the conformist, reactionary positions of the French working class. In doing that, it was incomparably less competent than the UDR (who after all were professionals in such sport).

And so the PCF paved its way into its present insignificance, as a party who didn't know how to be revolutionary, didn't know how to be reformist, and, in the end, didn't even know how to properly be reactionary.

Luís Henrique

[Manar]

Burn.
Okay, thank you for your contribution.

[Manar]

France withdrew from NATO in 66. Just putting that out there...

Obviously certain capitalist powers would have come to the aid of France, but yeah.
A common mistake, actually. France did not withdraw from NATO. de Gaulle merely excluded French forces from the NATO military integrated command. France has always been a member of NATO, ever since the foundation of the pact.

[Manar]

I suppose then the Bolsheviks should have sided with the Czar because they did not win the elections and making revolution is too risky, because you might get shot. I suppose the German revolution should not have been undertaken because the leadership was shot. Etc.
Ridiculous to assert that there was no other thing to do for a communist party than to side with the right-wing against workers' resistance and strikes wherein 22% of the French population participated.
It's interesting that you invoke the Bolshevik example. What about the July Days? The significant part of the working class in Russia wanted to launch a revolution, but the Bolsheviks told them straight up: yo, bros, pack your bags and go back to work, to launch a revolution at this time is a dead-end strategically, don't bother.

Ignoring my anti-PCF rhetoric in the OP, why do you think that the PCF sided with the ring wing against the 'worker's resistence and strikes'? That's not really what happened. What happened was that the employers and the state yielded to the normal and PCF communist trade unions, and conceded an almost 40 percent increase in the minimum wage, raises, et cetera. In other words, the PCF and her allies won. That the PCF prevented various adventurists from launching an ill-timed insurrection, and thus prevented France from drowning in blood, is a positive thing. The problem is the PCF's increasing capitulation to the bourgeoisie years after 1968.

[Manar]

So what if most people in France didn't want revolution? Did the Bolsheviks in 1917 see the Soviets dominated by Mensheviks and decide to sell out the revolution? NO, they kept agitating.
How is that a criticism of anything? Yeah, the Bolsheviks didn't launch their revolution until they had a clear majority in the Soviets. They purposefully didn't launch it when they were in the minority. Similarly, because the PCF knew that revolutionary forces were a minority, they did not even consider launching a revolution. If the PCF launched a revolution, they would have had to enforce a harsh dictatorship against most of the country. How would that fit with the communist goal of fighting oppression?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

How is that a criticism of anything? Yeah, the Bolsheviks didn't launch their revolution until they had a clear majority in the Soviets. They purposefully didn't launch it when they were in the minority. Similarly, because the PCF knew that revolutionary forces were a minority, they did not even consider launching a revolution. If the PCF launched a revolution, they would have had to enforce a harsh dictatorship against most of the country. How would that fit with the communist goal of fighting oppression?
The Bolsheviks preferred to have the majority in the Soviets before the insurrection, but it was not a principle for them. They initially opposed the activities during early July in Petrograd ("The July Days") because they believed it was not yet time and that the workers would lose. They wound up involved in the July Days because they realized that they could not stop the uprising. So better to participate and minimize the magnitude of defeat -- where they could they provided leadership.

The PCF did not want a revolution in 1968. Theirs was not a calculation that the balance of forces was not propitious, but a rejection of the method of revolution. Their program was reform. Somewhere far off in the misty future there would be socialism. It is absolutely wrong to equate what the PCF did in '68 with the Bolshevik's approach to the July Days. The Bolsheviks, against some resistance from the right wing of the party, were doing everything they could to make a revolution. The PCF would have done anything it could have to thwart a revolution.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

What happened was that the employers and the state yielded to the normal and PCF communist trade unions, and conceded an almost 40 percent increase in the minimum wage, raises, et cetera. In other words, the PCF and her allies won.

Yes, and the correctness of the PCF's strategy was proven in the subsequent years, where the gains won in 1968 served as a springboard for spreading and deepening communist struggle, which eventually led to an insurrection when the moment was better. Oh, wait . . .

I'm going to throw a crazy suggestion out there - that when there's an insurrection in an advanced capitalist nation and it's paralyzed by general strikes, and it's occurring simultaneously with anti-colonial liberation struggles, as well as smaller revolts across the first world . . . probably it's the right time for insurrection, and not negotiating raises in the minimum wage.

See also. (http://libcom.org/library/worker-student-action-committees-france-1968-perlman-gregoire)

[blake 3:17]

Trying to compare France in 68 and Russia in 17 doesn't make that much sense...

[The Douche]

Okay, thank you for your contribution.

You asked, I fucking answered.

Is there anything the left can do to please communists? Yeah, they can stop being fucking leftists. When you ask dumb questions you're gonna get flippant responses, welcome to the real world...

[Anti-Traditional]

How is that a criticism of anything? Yeah, the Bolsheviks didn't launch their revolution until they had a clear majority in the Soviets. They purposefully didn't launch it when they were in the minority. Similarly, because the PCF knew that revolutionary forces were a minority, they did not even consider launching a revolution. If the PCF launched a revolution, they would have had to enforce a harsh dictatorship against most of the country. How would that fit with the communist goal of fighting oppression?

They didn't make a revolution but they didn't yield to reforms either. They carried on agitating, bringing the proletariat to the side of revolution, that is what the PCF would have done if they were Communists.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It seems safe to say that they had the opportunity to just keep quiet if the course of the insurrection was not something they could accept with their narrow ideology. But I guess siding with the police and telling the rabble to get back to work was too tempting to pass up.

I'd be shocked yet not shocked if the PCF actually collaborated with the police during the course of May 1918! :scared:

But as for getting back to work, the Bolsheviks were at the height of a real revolutionary period yet also told "told the rabble to get back to work" during the July Days, as Manar said above.


If the PCF was the vanguard of the working class, as it styled itself, it should have led the working class in struggle. If it deemed impossible to overcome the bourgeois defences at the time, it should have led the working class into a strategy of erosion. If on the other hand the PCF was a minimally competent reformist party, it should have kept out from the struggle and denounced the arbitrariness and violence of the French State, hoping to cash the discontent on the next elections.

Comrade, that's a unique response in all my years here regarding the PCF in May 1968. I was under the impression that the French state was becoming delegitimized enough that a revolutionary party would not have needed to denounce the state violence, call against "police brutality," and similar stuff.

I must ask, however, if the denunciation of the state violence was incompatible with a "strategy of erosion." Couldn't such denunciation be subsumed into the latter, minus the aim of "cashing the discontent on the next election"?


It's interesting that you invoke the Bolshevik example. What about the July Days? The significant part of the working class in Russia wanted to launch a revolution, but the Bolsheviks told them straight up: yo, bros, pack your bags and go back to work, to launch a revolution at this time is a dead-end strategically, don't bother.

Ignoring my anti-PCF rhetoric in the OP, why do you think that the PCF sided with the ring wing against the 'worker's resistence and strikes'? That's not really what happened. What happened was that the employers and the state yielded to the normal and PCF communist trade unions, and conceded an almost 40 percent increase in the minimum wage, raises, et cetera. In other words, the PCF and her allies won. That the PCF prevented various adventurists from launching an ill-timed insurrection, and thus prevented France from drowning in blood, is a positive thing. The problem is the PCF's increasing capitulation to the bourgeoisie years after 1968.

The problem is that the PCF was already collaborationist. For example, to what extent did it participate in or lead in lower-level governments in France, like its PCI counterpart did in Italy?