EIGHT MONTHS OF THE
LEFT GOVERNMENT IN FRANCE
By Daniel Ben Said
Eight months have gone by since the defeat of the right in the French presidential and legislative elections. The change in government has led neither to economic catastrophe nor to social revolution, in contrast to the dire predictions of the right, which were designed to arouse the "silent majority. As a result, the SP and CP have no alibi for not meeting the demands of the
In its first general assessment of the new residency, Le Monde speaks rather of c smooth transition "seeing in this proof of the solidity and democratic character er of the institutions of the Fifth Republic imposed by the coup d'etat of 1958.
MITTERRAND IS TAKING
However, such an analysis is superficial. The fundamental features of the new sitvation lie elsewhere :
o First of all, the depth and duration of the international economic crisis, which is forcing the employers to take drastic steps to restructure their operation at the expense of the workers.
• Secondly, the unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of parties that claim to represent the working class -- the presidency of the republic, with the extensive powers invested in it by the constitution, the cabinet, most of the big city governments and the parliament, in which the Socialist Party alone has a o Finally, the profound disarray of the bourgeoisie's political parties - - which were built up, and functioned for over a quarter of a century, on the basis of enjoying exclusive control over the state
Clearly all these circumstances are tending to set the stage for a major test of strength between the classes. Nevertheless, Mitterrand's main argument today is that his government "can wait". Unlike previous experiences of left governments, this one is not going to be a brief episode, or a race against the clock. The president is elected for seven years and the parliamentary majority for five. Therefore, he claims, he can spread the payoff on his promises over a longer period and thereby avoid disrupting the economy and upsetting society.
The government leaders can only get away with talking like that because of the sort of situation that exists in the workers movement. The May 10th and June 21st, victories were the electoral expression of the relationship of forces between the classes. But they were not extension of mount| ing mobilisations. Since 1977, while the workers movement has maintained a strong underlying militancy, it has been weakened by hi divins, bet on eh pritior component
In 1980, the number of strike days was the lowest since 1953. Over the last four years, the largest trade-union confederation, the CGT, has lost nearly half its membership, dropping from 2.3 to 1.2
Since September, the electoral victories have been reflected in a new rise of struggles in the workplaces to force reinstatement of fired trade-union militants, to regain lost buying power, and to defend job security. But unlike June 1936 (1), there has been no tendency toward generalisation and centralisation of these
The most conscious worker militants have learned from the experience of the general strike of 1968 ( a general strike without a political solution) and of the Union of the Left (an electoral coalition without a united mobilisation of the ranks). They understand the stakes that such a generalised movement would immediately involve. It would mean a head-on confrontation with the bosses in order to force through solutions to a structural crisis of the system that are in the interests of the
Before starting down that road, a new accumulation of experience is necessary. The illusions that several million workers still entertain about the new majority have to be dispelled. But above all, what is needed is a reorganisation of the most advanced workers on the trade-union and political levels. This lag is what Mitterand is trying to turn to his advantage when he says his government can "wait."
In this, the bourgeoisie can only agree with him. It too needs time. It is using the weight of the established institutions to obstruct the government's policy. The bosses are exercising a continual pressure of blackmail. Their political spokespeople never miss an opportunity to raise a hue and cry about a new Social Democratic Gulag in France. But it would be wrong to conclude from this that the bourgeoisie is looking for a confrontation in the near future. It has first to re-organise its political forces. It cannot afford to remain politically naked for too long, with the employers organisation (the CNPF) acting as its main instrument.
The capitalists' noisy complaints make it possible for the government to seem to take a tough tone, while being nothing if not obliging on matters of substance.
The government's measures with respect to the length of the workweek are symptomatic. The legal workweek will be reduced from 40 to 39 hours, But in return for this cut, the bosses will be granted concessions that they had been unsuccessfully trying to obtain since 1978. While those wage earners on the bottom of the scale will not have to take corresponding wage cuts, the others probably will. Moreover, the bosses were given the right to take a whole series of steps to reschedule working hours over the period of a year in order to achieve a better utilisation of machinery and a closer adjustment of working hours to the ebbs and flows of production. The result will be the growth of night shifts and employment of part-time workers and other such practices.
THE TIME OF DECISIVE CHOICES
IS APPROACHING
This is the context and relationship of forces that have conditioned the policy of the Mauroy government.
Mitterand has been trying hard to present his policy as different from that of traditional Social Democracy. At a time when the economic crisis is making it difficult everywhere to keep up faithful administration of the welfare state, he claims to want to focus on extending the nationalised sector and democratic planning
On closer examination, what is the balance sheet of the first months of the new government? In the area of democratic rights, the new cabinet and parliament have taken a number of impressive steps. They have abolished the death penalty. They have re-established the right of asylum (although Basque political refugees continue to be subjected to house arrest). They have abolished special tribunals such as the State Security Court (but not the military tribunals). And they have repealed a number of vicious
While these measures have created a favourable disposition toward the new government, the real test lies elsewhere -- on the issues of wages and jobs.
For the last six months, the inflation rate has been 15.5%. The yearly average has been 14.1%. The net result is that the steps taken to improve incomes 1. After the election of the Popular
have at best only held off a decline in purchasing power.
The number of jobless has passed the two million mark. Of course • the increase in unemployment is essentially due to the crisis and to what is generally called the "legacy" of the previous government. But none of the steps taken so far offer any prospect of improving the situation. Cutting the workweek to 39 hours will not in fact create any new jobs, given the gains in productivity.
The nationalisations voted by parliament would expand the nationalised sector to include 30% of sales and 25% of wages in the industrial sector. But so far firms dominated by foreign capital have been set aside. The compensation promised for those holdings that are to be nationalised has been described as "fair"
by the bosses' own representatives.
The concessions extended by the government will enable firms such as
Matra to re-organise their operation around their most profitable divisions.
At the same time, the government has no control over private investment, which remains at a very low level.
For the time being, therefore, the government has been content to stimulate a moderate recovery by slightly upping the real incomes and social benefits of the most underprivileged as well as by increasing the budget deficit. For 1981, the deficit has climbed from 29 to 76 billion francs. In 1982, it will reach
This policy of mild recovery is designed to gain time and prepare the conditions for gearing into an international upturn. The latest predictions of the OECD -- always on the optimistic side -- assume an average growth rate of 1.25% in 1982 for the EEC and 2.5% for France. This slight recovery will merely allow France to avoid the worst out not to reabsorb unemployment. The time is drawing near when the decisive choices will have to be made -- either take on the bourgeoisie or set about carrying out a "left" austerity policy.
Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the government is planning a series of measures designed to divide the collec*'ve-bargaining and arbitration process into a number of separate steps at diferent levels. Its aim is to block the cossibility that the hyper-centralisation of the institutions of the Fifth Republic could serve to focus demands on the government.
This is the reason why the government was so quick to come up with a decentral -sation bill that will give regional assemblies new responsibilities in administering the unemployment problem. --is is also the meaning of the bills seing drafted on the rights of workers in enterprises. And more generally, it ex= ains the official advocacy of a policy = working out agreements at all levels -- management-labor negotiations on the workweek, creation of local tripartite commitees on jobs, including representatives of labour, management, and the government, mutual understandings (2)
between the national government and the municipalities, and so on.
THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IS REORGANISING What will be decisive in this situation is the reorganisation that has begun in the
The Socialist Party came to power as an electoral machine, not a party rooted in the masses. There is an enormous gap between the nine million people who voted for it and its 200,000 members. Its success so far has not led to a big influx of recruits, and it remains quite weak in the workplaces. The SP wants to extend the advantage it has gained over the CP in the electoral field onto the trade union level, hoping to relegate the
CGT to second place after the CFDT. But it is wary of a massive influx of activists, which could lead to increasing areas of conflict between the party and the government.
Up until two months before the presidential elections, the Communist Party was counting on a victory for Giscard. It paid the price for its policy of division, losing between 4% and 5% of its vote.
Under the circumstances, the CP then opted for signing an accord for forming a government in which it would participate. At the same time, it tried to keep a more militant image, on the basis of tough talk and some formally more radical positions taken by the CGT.
However, the bureaucratic military coup in Poland will certainly quicken the pace of the crisis, both in the CP and the CGT. It brings out sharply the contradiction between the CP's allegiance to the USSR, which was reaffirmed at its last congress, and the party's growing integration into the national state machinery. This contradiction is tending more and more to cut across the party apparatus
In its first stage the crisis of Stalinism has benefitted Social Democracy. An example of this is the spectacular success of the Socialist Party in the legistative elections. It can also happen on the trade-union level, temporarily, as the CFDT gains from its actions in solidarity with Solidarnosc. But what in the last analysis will be decisive is the attitude the masses of workers take to the key problems--jobs and wages.
(DR) On these questions, both the CP and the SP, and both the CFDT and the CGT agree about the need to treat the bosses with consideration. This is why the crisis of the workers movement is not taking the form of a simple straightline shift away from
Stalinism towards Social Democracy.
Rather, what is developing is a broader process of regroupment, marked by the emergence of opposition currents in the trade unions as well as in the CP and possibly in the SP.
The Revolutionary Communist League,
French section of the Fourth International, held a congress in early January to develop its answers to this new situation.
They revolve around the following three
1. In response to the deep crisis, it is necessary to formulate immediate and transitional demands that point the way toward solutions that are in the interests of the working class. Given the centrality of the jobs issue, the LCR is involved in particular in a campaign to pressure the government and parliament to adopt a law reducing the workweek to 35 hours without loss of pay and without the workers giving anything in return.
2. To overcome the crisis, the workers movement has to be led to break with the bourgeoisie. This involves both a firm counterattack against the bosses' blackmail and maneuvers and a rejection of the straitjacket represented by the institutions of the Fifth Republic (both the Constitutional Council and the Senate have been trying to stall changes by dragging out procedural points). It means rejecting the demands of the military hierarchy and the imperialist systems of alliances. On the latter point, Mitterand has come out openly for deploying Pershing missiles in Europe. Moreover, the decentralisation bill does not recognise the right to independence of the colonies in New Caledonia and the
3. The need for a strong revolutionary party rooted in the industrial working class, as the essential mainspring of the process of political clarification within the working class and in the emergence of a vanguard. 2. Agreements by which the government grants early retirement to civil servants, with the understanding that the municipalities will hire an equivalent number of younger people.
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