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Dear Comrades of the League for the Revolutionary Party,
We received on April 14 the letter from comrade Walter in the name of
the LRP of the USA dealing with the Groupe Bolchevik’s tactics during presidential
election of April and May
Your contribution refers to two “declarations”, which are the last two
editorials of the GB’s organ, Révolution
Socialiste. These editorials referred not only to the presidential election
but to the legislative elections, applying the analysis and the line defined by
the 5th Conference of our organization in October 2006, about France
workers’ movement after the restoration of capitalism in Russia.
The GB appreciates the interest you show in political life abroad and
for its tactics. Thus it has translated your letter to distribute among its
cells and also among the militants of the Permanent Revolution Collective who
read French but not English.
Your reasoning, if we have understood it correctly, is the following:
1. The line of the GB is critical
support for the Parti Socialiste in the first as well as the second round of
the presidential election.
2. One cannot electorally support a
reformist party except if it is at the head of struggles.
3. The PS, according to the GB, has
participated in the bourgeois attacks.
4. Consequently the GB is wrong to
support the PS.
If this is true, one seeks to discover an alternative proposition, a
better electoral tactic. But Walter says not a word about this. What’s more,
the argument is false from end to end. Certainly, the LRP has the excuse of
distance and lack of familiarity with mass reformist parties, as well as with
two-round elections; but nothing excuse either the travesty of the position of
the Groupe Bolchevik or silence about Comrade Walter’s actual position.
In Cde. Walter’s syllogism, premise No.1 is obviously indispensable.
As
you point out in your January 21 statement, most of the votes that will be cast
for workers' organizations will go to the PS rather than to the PCF or to the
smaller centrist groups, for reasons of ‘electoral effectiveness.’ The PS is
the only workers' party that has any chance of reaching the second round of the
presidential election. Therefore it seems to us that your position, despite
your disclaimer, amounts to a position of critical support for Royal and the
Parti Socialiste.
This is inept, since the Groupe Bolchevik has written clearly:
Partisans
of breaking every workers’ organization from the ruling class, Bolsheviks do
not oppose the expression, however deformed and partial, of the struggle
between classes by way of elections. In the first round as well as the second,
in the presidential as well as the legislative, the votes of the workers can
only go to the workers’ organizations and parties (PS, PCF. LO, LCR), and never
to the candidates of bourgeois formations. (Révolution Socialiste No. 22, January
2007)
The
Groupe Bolchevik cannot support any candidacy. Nevertheless, it calls on workers
who can and who wish to vote to choose, on the first round, a candidate of an
organization issuing from the working class (PS, PCF, LCR, LO) against all the
bourgeois candidates. For the same reasons, if a candidate of a workers’
organization remains on the second round, the Groupe Bolchevik calls for voting
for him or her, or for abstaining. (Révolution Socialiste No. 23, April 2007)
Since when is a prediction a recommendation? If Bolsheviks say, “isolated struggles against layoff plans are
very difficult” or “the youth revolt
in poor neighborhoods adopts weak and counterproductive forms because if the
isolation the workers’ movement has left it in,” only an imbecile or an
ill-intentioned person would translate it to mean: “the Bolsheviks are oppose to strikes against layoffs and are partisans
of the isolation of youth devoted to
being declassed.” If Cde. Walter affirmed that “it will probably rain in Paris during Pentecost”, must we then
understand that “Cde. Walter wants it to
rain tomorrow on the heads of Parisians”?
The French presidential election takes place in two rounds, under direct
universal suffrage. If no candidate obtains an absolute majority on the first
round, the two candidates who obtain the most votes in the first round remain
on the ballot for the second. The legislative elections also allow for two
rounds. If no candidate obtains an absolute majority in the first round in a
given district, all those who obtained more than 12.5% of the votes can run in
the second, and then the one who obtains the most votes is chosen to be the
representative.
The Groupe Bolchevik analyzed, four months before the first round of the
presidential election, that the PS would probably obtain many workers’ votes on
the first round – more than in 2002, at the expense of its reformist
competitors:
The
proletariat and part of the youth will attempt to utilize the vote to realize
what the union leaderships, the PS, the PCF, their adjuncts in the LO and the
LCR have prevented them from accomplishing through the class struggle since the
first round of the presidential election of
In passing, the Groupe CRI, which you mention and which has published
several articles from your journal, saluted the referendum of May 29, 2005 as
an important success of the working class, as did all the products of the
advanced decomposition of the Fourth International in this country. But how
then explain that the electoral defeat of 2007 followed so rapidly after the
victory of 2005, that the working class went in two years from more than 54% of
the votes (“No” in the referendum) to... 6.5% only (LCR + LO + PCF + PT in the
presidential)?
In contrast, the prediction of the GB has turned out to be on the mark,
since the PS collected, on the first round, 3 million more votes than five
years ago: Jospin obtained 6.5 million votes on April 21, 2002 (16.18 % of the
votes) ; Royal won 9.5 million on April 23, 2007 (25.87 %). As for the rest of
the workers’ movement, the PCF candidate Hue obtained 0.9 million in 2002
(3.37%), Buffet obtained
In fact, for Marxists, the elections illustrated the bourgeois workers’
party nature of the PS and the PCF. The official categories “ouvriers”,
“employés” and “professions intermédiaires” of the INSEE [National Institute
for Statistics and Economic Studies] correspond – approximately – to the
working class. According to the inquiries of the polling institutions, 24% of
the “ouvriers” voted for Royal on the first round, 54% on the second. The
“employés” voted 25% for Royal on the first round, 54% on the second. The
“professions intermédiaires” voted 31% for Royal on the first round, 49% on the
second.
The
sympathizers of the MEDEF and the CGPME (small enterpreneurs) voted 96% for
Sarkozy. Royal, even though she had campaigned for “the reconciliation of
French people with business,” convinced only ... 2% of the bosses. (L’Humanité,
paper
of the PCF, May 5, 2007)
Cde Walter rejects the tactic which he falsely attributes to the GB
(vote for the PS on the first and second rounds) without ever giving its
positions on the PCF, LO the LCR and the PT.
When
you call on workers to vote for the PS on the first or the second round, on the
grounds that it is a workers' organization, you in reality say that a vote for
Royal is a class vote. Does this not help solidify the workers' illusions in
the PS? ... For these reasons... we think it is incorrect to call for a vote
for the PS in the presidential election.
In 1977, James Robertson, based on the United States where there is no
bourgeois workers’ party, created a rule for all elections in the world. Thirty
years afterward, Cde Walter has invented another, which is worth hardly more
and owes nothing to Trotsky. It allows for voting for reformist candidates if
two conditions are fulfilled:
1. That they are leading the masses in
struggle;
2. That an important fraction of the
workers is under the illusion that electing particular reformists would allow
the advancement of their struggle.
To support his thesis, he cites no case drawn from the rich and long
history of the workers’ movement. In place of an example, he satisfies himself
with a citation from Trotsky which has nothing to say about elections in
general, nor about tactics toward reformist candidates in particular.
“Reformism
daily reaffirms the possibility of treason. But that does not mean that
reformism and treason are identical at every moment. When the reformists take a
step forward, one can make provisional agreements with them. But, when
frightened by the mass movement, they betray it, to maintain the coalition with them amounts to tolerating traitors and
concealing treason. (“Critique of the program of the CI », 1928, part II,
Ch 8, The Communist
International after Lenin, PUF)
Cde. Walter is careless both with regard to Trotsky and to those he is writing
to. The two sentences he invokes do not show that Trotsky has decided that it
is no longer possible to vote for the British Labour Party. We are very anxious
for cde Walter to prove this for us.
Trotsky’s advice does not apply to the GB, whose reduced forces do not
permit us to at all impose a “coalition” with the reformists. Our organization
has therefore not been able to commit the error of maintaining a front such as
when the reformists betrayed a general strike.
In fact, the bloc with the PS, the PCF and the union leaderships, during
the most recent mass movements in France, from 1995 to 2006, was the work of
rotten centrism. The same products of the decomposition that the FI underwent
announced that they rejected withdrawing in favor of the PS candidate in the
second round of the presidential election of 2002 (some of them in the end
voted for Chirac, along with the PS and the PCF). In the winter of 2005-2006
and in the spring of 2006, the bloc of all the reformists against the general
strike was more than once extended to bourgeois parties, in the form of public
meetings involving PCF, LCR, LO, MRC, PRG... (see Révolution Socialiste No. 20).
The workers’ united front is not necessarily a tactic for elections. Had there existed a
revolutionary party in France in 2007, even a minority one, it would have had
to present its own candidate against those of the reformists of all kinds. This
was the position Stéphane Just advocated for the PCI, against Lambert and
Moreno, who called for voting for Mitterrand on the first round in the French
presidential election of 1981. This was the advice of Trotsky for the SWP for
the American presidential election of 1940. Faced with the dilatory pretexts of
the leadership of the American section, Trotsky recommended that they campaign
for the Stalinist candidate, since the CPUSA
ran one against the Republican and above all against the Democratic
candidate, Roosevelt. The SWP leadership’s electoral abstentionism in reality
covered up its refusal to break its bloc in the unions with pro-Roosevelt
bureaucrats.
Today, it is Cde Walter rather than the GB who nourishes illusions in
the masses... and in the counterrevolutionary apparatuses themselves.
The united front applies to elections only if the communists lack the
means to participate, or in the case of withdrawal when there are two rounds,
as in France. In the case where candidates of parties issued from the working
class, which preserve the confidence of a part of the working class, confront
the direct representatives of the bourgeoisie, revolutionaries do not abstain.
Cde. Walter has a thermometer which permits him to know when the masses “hold the illusion that the election of
particular reformists will aid or advance their struggle” and when they
have illusion that “electing reformists
will in some way aid the workers even in the absence of struggle.”
In reality, these feelings are evidently mixed together, and
participation in elections generally implies the domination of the second
component. The conditions dear to Cde. Walter were not mentioned by Lenin in
1920 when he advised the British communist organizations to support, almost
everywhere, the Labour Party candidates:
We
would put up our candidates in a very few but absolutely safe constituencies,
namely, constituencies where our candidatures would not give any seats to the
Liberals at the expense of the Labour candidates. We would take part in the
election campaign, distribute leaflets agitating for communism, and, in all
constituencies where we have no candidates, we would urge the electors to vote
for the Labour candidate and against the bourgeois candidate. Comrades Sylvia
Pankhurst and Gallacher are mistaken in thinking that this is a betrayal of
communism, or a renunciation of the struggle against the social-traitors. On
the contrary, the cause of communist revolution would undoubtedly gain thereby.
(‘‘Left-Wing
Communism in Great Britain’’, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, 1920)
Cde. Walter thinks that one must not vote for a reformist party which
has betrayed.
Revolutionaries
can critically support reformist candidates only so long as they stand at the
head of the masses in struggle. ... The PS and its leaders have not at all been
in the forefront of working-class struggles. On the contrary, as you have
pointed out, this party – and Ségolène Royal in particular – have been
participating in the bourgeoisie's attacks against the workers.
But can he say clearly which are the reformist parties that have not
betrayed?
As the citation chosen by the comrade says, reformism and treason “are not identical at every moment.” Almost
all the members of the GB have had an opportunity to participate in mass
struggles at their place of study or of work. They know from experience that
the betrayal of the struggle by the union leaders, the PS, the PCF, the LCR and
LO (these are sometimes the same) does not appear clearly at every moment, and
to all the workers, especially when no party or even a veritable organization
denounces them and outlines an alternative orientation.
And elections occur rarely at the moment of struggle. When this is the
case, the reformist candidates would be stupid to display their treacherous
character overtly at such a moment. For example, in April 2007, all the
candidates of the organizations issuing from the working class – Royal, Buffet,
Laguiller and Besancenot – went to “support” the strikes of the PSA auto
factory at Aulnay.
In the 1930's, Trotsky completely ignored all the virtuous warnings of
Cde Walter, both for the British elections of 1935 and the French elections of
1936. Responding to a young comrade who was won via the entry into the
Socialist Youth, Trotsky recommended:
As
for the legislative elections in France, I don’t think that we can accept a
boycott. Propagandize for Committees of Action, yes. Oppose the future
Committees of Action to the present electoral action, no! One can only boycott
parliamentarism when one is strong enough to replace it by direct revolutionary
action. (Letter to Fred Zeller, 1936)
Following this advice, the French section of the FI and the
Revolutionary Socialist Youth presented several candidates and called, in the
majority of districts, for voting for the PS-SFIO and the PCF-SFIC. He gave
equivalent advice to a member of the British ILP:
The Labour Party should have been critically
supported not because it was for or against sanctions but because it
represented the working class masses. (L. Trotsky, “Once again
the ILP”, November 1935, Writings on Britain,
vol. 3, p. 117)
It is difficult to be more clear: revolutionaries give critical
electoral support to reformists, when they don’t have their own candidate, for
a sole reason: because the working class regards them as its representatives. Not
because of their program. In this passage, the formula of Trotsky resembles
very much the “permanent critical support tactic” which Cde. Walter denounces.
On the contrary, his own condition, that “the reformist candidates lead the masses in struggle,” is
ambiguous. For one thing, the electoral candidates are rarely those who are at
the head of the masses in struggle; and for another, all the bureaucrats betray
the struggles in one way or another.
Paradoxically, Cde. Walter’s rule would oblige us, in the case of
struggles led by reformists, to participate in bourgeois elections. However,
when the masses are “in struggle,” it is not obvious that it is necessary to
accept elections, not to speak of supporting the reformists.
For example, Lenin always demanded boycotting the Duma elections in
1905. Since we are discussing France, Cde. Walter will permit us to evoke a
situation of this kind. During the general strike of May 1968, de Gaulle, much
shaken, retook the initiative after visiting the head of the French troops in
Germany, General Massu. On his return, he issued a threatening declaration, at
the same time proposing as a way out the upcoming legislative elections.
I will not withdraw. I have the mandate of the
people, and I will fulfill it. ... Today I dissolve the National Assembly. ...
Legislative elections will take place after the period indicated in the
Constitution, unless we intend to muzzle the entire French people by preventing
them from expressing that they are being prevented from living by the same
means that prevent the students from studying, the teachers from teaching, the
workers from working. ... (C. de Gaulle, Speech, May 30,
That day de Gaulle galvanized the counterrevolution ... and gave the
“reformists” the opportunity of ending the general strike. On June 23, on the
first round, the Gaullist party, the UDR, got 43.65 % of the votes (Sarkozy on
the first round got 31.11% in 2007) and, after the second round, 358
representatives out of 485.
In the aftermath of May 30, the general strike
disintegrated from within, in the name of the dissolution of the National
Assembly and preparation for new elections. ... Taking advantage of the
illusions of the working class, the union apparatuses and the PCF, immobilizing
the general strike, seized on the dissolution of the National Assembly in order
to defuse it politically and transform it into a simple movement of demands and
disintegrate it from within. The election results sanctioned the liquidation of
the general strike and expressed the retreat of the working class. (La Vérité No. 543, April 1969)
In contrast to the PCF (at the time very much implanted in the working
class) and the PS-SFIO (at the time reduced to almost nothing), the
organization issuing from the French section of the Fourth International, the
OCI (from which the Groupe Bolchevik itself has issued) denounced the call for
elections instead of supporting the candidacies of the PCF and the SFIO
according to the rule of Cde. Walter. The OCI committed many errors, in May
1968 and afterward, but it was right on this question.
There are therefore circumstances in which revolutionaries must try to
oppose bourgeois elections and even boycott a vote. For other reasons, that was
the position of the GB for the second round of the presidential election of
2002 and for the referendum on the Constitutional Treaty of the European Union.
We live in a difficult period. But
revolutionaries do not choose the conditions under which they live and fight
collectively. In elections as well, they affirm that two classes oppose each
other.
In the present state of the construction of the revolutionary working-class
party, that is, at a catastrophic point after the destruction of the Fourth
International in 1951-53 and the subsequent degeneration of all of its
sections, including the French and the American, it is impossible to present
candidates who defend communism and advance an action program, a transitional
program for the current situation of the country. Nevertheless, not every
workers’ organization has disappeared from the political scene.
The orientation of the Groupe Bolchevik is defined by the resolution
“Construct a New Communist and Internationalist Party to Resolve the Crisis of
the Workers’ Movement by Distinguishing the Revolutionaries and by a United
Front Policy,” which has been available since its adoption on the GB website. It
conforms to the traditions of the Communist International during Lenin’s
lifetime and of the Fourth International during Trotsky’s lifetime.
Cde. Walter never says what he would propose to do in France in 2007. We
are therefore reduced to some conjectures: either it is necessary to vote for
the PCF, LO, the PT or the LCR since they are not reformist; or it is necessary
to abstain in a permanent manner. The discussion would gain in clarity if the
comrade stated his position.
The French Bolshevik-Leninists are not much impressed by radical phrases
against all electoral support to the PS. They have stated that in practice, the
majority of “Trotskyists” who reject the workers’ united front collaborate with
former Stalinists, up to the point of jointly managing Gaullist institutions
(that includes the CRI). During mass struggles, the enemies of
“social-liberalism” generally form a bloc... with the PS, against the general
strike. Over the years, we have seem not a few of them rejoin... the PS.
To go forward, we allow ourselves to ask you for some clarifications:
•
What
purpose does it serve you to analyze the PS as a bourgeois workers’ party?
•
Can
you specify what tactic you would have recommended for the French elections?
•
Does
your focusing on a relatively minor subject signify that you are in general
agreement with the rest of the activities and positions of the Groupe Bolchevik
and the Permanent Revolution Collective?
With our internationalist greetings,
The Central Cell of the Groupe
Bolchevik