MAY-JUNE 1968 Left Press fails to grasp the role of

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Rastafarianism is s the most powerful cultural force in Jamaica today.

Through the medium of reggae music, the ideas of Rastafarianism are spread amongst the youth of Jamaica where 53% of the population is In Britain, too, largely through reggae music, many black youth identify to a greater or lesser extent with the Rastafarian movement.

Since Rastafarianism is identified in the minds of many with progressive-even revolutionary -politics, it is important for Marxists to have some knowledge of the history and ideas of the movement if its influence is to be successfully combated in the fight to win black youth to Narxism and the task of building a revolutionary party.

The ideas of the Rastafarian movement draw very heavily on religious and religious/political movements that preceded them.

These include the early black Christian churches and the 'Back to Africa' movement of Marcus Garvey.

Ethiopia

This becomes immediately apparent if we look at their concept of Ethiopia.

As the 18th century slave-owners forced the Christian religion onto their slaves these slaves were able to discover from the Bible-which referred to Egypt and Ethiopia as Africa-that the blacks in Biblical times had made an important contribution to the development of culture.

(The word Ethiopia is Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word for black and the whole North East area had been populated by blacks until 814 BC).

As the black man's memory of Africa became obliterated in the course of time, all that remained were Biblical references to Ethiopia.

Ethiopia, ie. Africa, was seen as a homeland to return to in the same way that many Jews saw Israel as a homeland to which they would return.

The effects of this discovery by blacks of an ancient African civilisation subsequently played an important role as a focal point of opposition to whitebased mythology as to the inferior nature of the blacks.

While the first Ethiopian Church in Jamaica was founded in 1784, it was the Back to Africa movement of Marcus Garvey at the beginning of the twentieth century that embodied in its highest form the The Rastafarian movement has a large following amongst black youth both in Jamaica and Britain.

In this, the first of two articles, Winston Smart points to some of the movements from which the Rastafarians took many of their basic ideas.

Next week he discusses the history of Rastafarianism and looks at the beliefs, rituals and social significance of the movement in Jamaica today concept of Ethiopianism prior to the Rastafarians.

According to Garvey, God would now be worshipped through the spectacles of Ethiopia and he made frequent references to the superiority of the black race-one of many ideas that the Rastafarians were to take from the Garvey movement.

Disarray

Biblical sources were used to "prove" that whites and other races were corrupt. The will of God would come through Africans and, according to Garvey, the task was to restructure a fallen race.

"The power and sway we once held passed away but now in the twentieth century, we are about to see the return of it in the rebuilding of Africa; yes a new civilisation, a new culture shall spring up from among our people"

With Garvey, Ethiopianism was transformed from an ideology to a movement with its leader being designated Provisional President of Africa and its "anthem of the Negro race" beginning with the words: "Ethiopia, Thou Land of Our Fathers"

When Garvey left for America in 1916, the Jamaican movement fell into disarray. Many small Garvey movements emerged and continued in existence until 1930.

In that year the Prince Ras Tafari was crowned Negus of Ethiopia.

"Redeemer"

- He took the name Haile Selassie (Might of the Trinity) to which he added "King of Kings, Lord of Lords and Lion of the Tribe of Judah'. He also claimed direct descendence from Solomon.

Marcus Garvey, on his departure for the United States, was supposed to have said: "Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black King; he shall be the Redeemer"

For four men-Leonard Howell, Joseph Hibbert, Archibald Dunkley and Robert Hinds -the crowning of Ras Tafari, which they read about in the Daily Gleaner, was the fulfillment ' of Marcus Garvey's "prophesy", and they launched the Rastafarian movement shortly after the coronation ceremonies had taken place in Addis Ababa.

Most of the left press has recently carried articles looking back ten years to the events of May-June 1968 in Paris.

These times were quite a litmus paper for the European left.

At points of social explosion and crisis the policies and practices of various political tendencies become most clearly revealed.

It is important for us to examine the turning points of history, therefore, in order to see where the method of different tendencies leads or misleads their followers.

1968 was a year when the crisis of revolutionary leadership was sharply and dramatically posed.

Dual power

It was a year which began with the Tet offensive in Vietnam; an offensive which marked the beginnings of the defeat of US imperialism in IndoIn August there was the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Russian troops and the whole crisis of the Stalinist bureaucracy was brought sharply into the open.

In between these events fell the May-June events in During this period 10 million workers were on strike, factories were occupied; students held the Latin Quarter in Paris; colleges and schools were under the control of their students; the force of the state was paralysed.

The De Gaulle government was for a period unable to govern -De Gaulle himself had to leave Paris for hasty consultations with the heads of the armed forces-and the situation verged on dual power, with all the possibilities of the revolutionary seizure of power.

Conscious How then did De Gaulle survive? It might seem that by conceding massive wage increases and turning to the ballot boxes he managed, with a simple electoral victory, to reestablish capitalist stability.

Yet the real answer to this question does not lie sımpıy witn the actions -:.. --.:11_ 11. - of the bourgeoisie.

It was the mass French Communist Party which in those crucial days took conscious steps to prevent the situation developing to the point where the question of power would be posed A a Tantalrrint- =• a d an da na used to this being of world Stalinism.

In 1968, however, this fact was clearly revealed to all-and the stakes were so high that the Communist Party had to act in the most blatant way in order to block the struggle.

The major lesson of May 1968 is the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism.

1968 also marked the opening hour of a whole mode of politics rooted in the student milieu.

'Flower power' ', 'student power' hippiedom and gestural protests were attemnts to find suhstitutes for action by the mass ALLANS organisations of the working class.

For Tariq Ali in 1968 and After, "revolutionary socialism was reborn in 1968"

For 'others of us it had never died. Ali's conception is based on the notion that the working class. and patient, consistent struggle within its organisations and against its leadership for the construction of a , revolutionary party is not the road to power.

De Gaulle In 1968 French capitalism like its rivals stood at the end of the long boom, beginning to feel the impact of the impending economic crisis.

There were half a million unemployed and workers were demanding an end to the wage freeze.

trench capitalism had inherited from its past many weaknesses which rapid technological change and increasing foreign competition had worsened.

France was also suffering a crisis consequent on its demise as an imperialist power with the defeats it 41..- 1 In this situation there was growing unrest within the universities.

This unrest and revolt was to be the spark which lit the struggles of May.

However, while a spark can light a nearby explosive it cannot itself even threaten to explode the might of the bourgeois order.

There had been a massive increase in student numbers -from 200,000 in 1961 to 500,000 in 1968.

French schools and universities were overcrowded, authoritarian institutions which gave students no rOom to criticise and develop.

Student protests began to develop particularly at Nanterre, just outside Paris.

Nanterre strike

In November 1967 there was a strike at Nanterre and numerous incidents followed indicating the students' frustration with their lack of control over the university and the role in society they were being prepared for.

In March 1968 five students were arrested as a result of anti-Vietnam war activities.

A protest meeting was called in Nanterre on March 22 and gave its name to one of the most important of the student groupingsthe Movement of 22 March.

Thè most significant figure in this group was the anarchist Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

Rejecting the need for a revolutionary party, this group put forward demands for a 'critical university' and a permanent challenge to authority.

Spontaneity

The stress on spontaneity rather than leadership held by this group was echoed by the "Trotskyists" of the Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire (French youth section of the USFI) who scarcely differentiated themselves from the anarchist policies of the Movement of 22 March.

As a commentator from the period remarked:

"The JCR was the first political faction to recognise Cohn-Bendit's potential for revolutionary struggle and to join forces with him ... The JCR won the confidence of Cohn-Bendit and his friends by not seeking to take over the movement, or manipulate it to its own exclusive ends; instead it gave the Movement of 22 March uncon191Seale and 1 In May struggles Nanterre Quarter in Sorbonne levolution McConville the focus of the moved from to the Latin Paris.

On May 3 a demonstration took place against the closure of the Faculty of Letters in Nanterre.

The demonstration was within the courtyard of the university building of the Sorbonne when the police were called in.

Calling in the police was a question of the arrival of an armed force, the dreaded CRS, with teargas and baton attacks.

Barricades went up and the students took to the Thus began many nights of ferocious street battles. The Sorbonne was closed, and by May 10 35,000 students were marching through Paris.

Their slogans were vividthey introduced a sharpness of phrase, an assault on bourgeois values in their graffiti and slogans.

"Nous sommes tous un groupuscule" (We are all a tiny group), they cried, marching in the streets.

Challenge to CP

This was a challenge to the attitude of the Communist Party which had felt able to dismiss the students and the Trotskyists as "tiny groups"

The Communist Party's attitude to the student demonstrations and the students' nightly-and frequently heroic-battles with the state was first one of indifference.

However, the growing outrage within the workers movement and indeed the passers-by and Metro travellers whose eyes stung with teargas from the police attacks and who were themselves also mercilessly clubbed if caught in the wrong place-convinced the CP of the need to take a position and to attempt to capture such a movement before it got quite out of its control.

Night of barricades

The battle of the students continued with the 'night of the barricades'May 12-when 367 people were wounded and 460 arrested.

"Liberez nos camarades" (free our comrades) was then the cry.

On 13 May the Communist-led union, the CGT (Confederation Generale de T.. "1% 1 1 1 11° 1 ravall) and the other

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Students and workers joined in common struggle against capitalist oppression and exploitation unions called a one day general strike in protest at police repression.

A massive demonstration of workers and students was now on the streets of Paris.

'It was an extraordinary day" said student leader Alan Geismar "The students Sorbonne. left the university ghetto to join the workers who had left the ghetto of the factory. Those who had fought in the streets met up with those who had looked on. The workers had joined the This was very much the students. conception of the timethat the "backward" workers lagged behind-that the student struggle was the centre-the "foco" (in Britain. "Red Bases" were to be : up in colleges) from which the students would occasionally go out to teach the working class how to This was the conception of the USFI: Counterposed to it was the view of the Federation Etudiante Revolutionaire-the student section of the OCI, part of the more 'orthodox' Trotskyist International Committee.

Correctly this group saw the need for patient, consistent work within the working class movement, recognising that the occasional day out amongst the workers was not enough.

However, the FER shared with British Trotskyist leader Healy a strong streak o! sectarianism, anc at crucial points turned aside from working in the student movement, from the barricades, from the occupation of the However, the FER, almost alone in France, understood the significance of the Stalinists.

After May 13th, Prime Minister Pompidou withdrew the police from the Latin Quarter and released the imprisoned students. The Sorbonne was reopened and then occupied by the Immediately there began a wave of factory occupations and strikes, beginning with an OCI-led occupation at the aviation plant at Nantes, and spreading throughout the country.

The CGT and the Stalinists stood uncomfortably at their head.

But they were determined that the striking workers would be kept insulated from the students.

On the May 13th demonstration as Tariq Ali reports:

"A group of menacing PCF (CP) marshals had erected a physical barrier to prevent the students from fraternising with the workers."

The hated CRS riot force Students intending to march in solidarity with workers occupying the Renault works at Billancourt were leafletted by the CP.

"We have just heard that students and teachers are proposing to set out this afternoon in the direction of Renault. This decision was taken without consulting the appropriate trade union sections of the CGT, CFDT and FO.

We greatly appreciate the solidarity of the students and teachers in the common struggle but are opposed to any ill-judged initiative which might threaten our developing movement and facilitate provocation which might lead to a diversion by the government.

We strongly advise the organisers of this demonstration against proceeding with their plans. We intend, together with the workers now struggling for their claims, to lead our own strike.

We refuse any external intervention, in conformity with the declaration jointly signed by the CGT, CFDT and FO unions."

Earlier the Stalinists had attempted to smear the Trotskyists, trying to link them with fascists and label them 'provocateurs'.

The demonstration went ahead however and the CP attempted to prevent any dangerous fraternisation.

Why did the CP take this line? And why did the CP, in supporting the Grenelle agreements (which were used to call off the strikes and occupations) so violently fear the connection between workers and students, the continuation of the struggle?

"Not revolutionary"

The answer can be found in the words of a present day French Stalinist writing in Marxist Review. Jean ellenstein, paradea today a 'dissident' Stalinist on platforms of the French Trotskyist' LCR, insists that «the situation • was not at all revolutionary in the traditional meaning of the word."

The PCF fought what it called ultra-leftism' "because there was a great danger involved in trying to make a revolution, cutting off the vanguard from the masses thereby leading to the isolation of this vanguard and of the PCF."

In reality, of course, the PCF- was in no sense prepared to make the challenge to bourgeois rule that a bid for power would involve.

Its whole policy was one of containment. Just as CP marshals physically• stood between the workers and the students, the CP politically stood between the workers and state power.

As even bourgeois commentators saw:

"The Communist Party's line was clear. It had turned its back firmly on insurrection... On the labour front it was ready to back the strike in favour of economic claims alone:

On the political front its aim was to supplant the Gaullist regime, in alliance with the non-Communist Left-but acting strictly within the framework of Republican légality."

On Monday May 20th the Stalinist-led CGT issued a statement which said:

•The great popular masses whose action is decisive, are not engaged either in an enterprise to refurbish the personal power nor in an insurrectional strike, but in a vast movement tending towards the elimination of the government and of the Gaullist regime."

The aim was to speed up the kind of parliamentary coalition with the left-wing of the bourgeoisie that was represented so disastrously in the popular front 'Union of the Left' slates in the 1978 elections. The move towards 'Eurocommunism' was on. But even without leadership, the strike spread. The aim of the CP was to contain it.

Negotiations

The CGT entered into negotiations with the state and the employers on limited trade union questions of wages, hours, pensions etc..

This mealy-mouthed inadequacy was the Stalinist notion of the demands appropriate for the workingclass-who had actually seized control of their factories and paralysed the In the Grenelle agreements the Communist Party led the French workers back to work.

For Stalinists like Ellenstein, however, the 1968 events merely confirm their belief that revolution is impossible and undesirable: "For a century and a half we have been running after a non-existent revolution in the West.

For me the revolution in our century can only be the product of an accumulation of reforms, on condition that these are structural reforms.

We must abandon the old schemas and find new ones"

"the victory of De Gaulle is evidence that a large part of the French population, public opinion, did not look favourably on an insurrectionary seizure of power at that time"

• But the most decisive opponent of insurrection and social revolution in France was not 'public opinion'-which, in any event, was not even consulted until after the mass movement had been brought to an end-but the counter-revolutionary Stalinist leadership of Ellenstein's own Communist Party, which set out first and foremost to preserve "peaceful co-existence" in Europe, and its 'own bureaucratic power in How did the revisionists the JCR (USFI) see this?

Alain Krivine-leading. JCR element at the time, and present-day leader of the USFI section, the LCR,, writes thus in the Socialist Review May 1978:

"When the workers turned to the CP and SP and saw that they were not prepared to go further and raise the question of power, workers spontaneously ended the strike, understanding that it was finished and stupid to continue a general strike with all its effects, without any perspective"!

That is 'spontaneity' gone berserk. The CP leads the workers back to work, while the USFI argues that they have gone back 'spontaneously'!

The USFI's whole political approach evades the question of confronting Stalinism and its role in the working class.

Roadblock

Their vain hope is that at various times a group of workers can somehow spontaneously break free of the bureaucracy and without the building of a revolutionary Party as an alternative leadership succeed in organising itself.

Krivine claims that the first lesson of 1968 is that the events:

"showed that the working class when it wants a change, even though its will is expressed in a very confused form, is able to initiate a mass movement which, for a certain time totally bypasses the bureaucracies of traditional reformist organisations."

No, France in 1968 and Portugal in 1974-6 showed conclusively that there is no bypassing the roadblock of Stalinist and reformist bureaucracy-no ways round the struggle for the building of Trotskyist parties to give leadership in the fight for power.

Writing in Socialist Challenge-the paper whose projected audience is the "children of 1968"-Ali omitted even to use the word Stalinism in his article "It could have turned into a revolution" (25th May).

For Ali, predictably, the lesson is the need for more 'unity' and for more democracy in the Eurocommunist CPs!

For us, as Trotskyists, the lesson is much more serious.

A revolutionary leadership rooted in the working class could have taken the working class to power in 1968 in France.

Our task is to ensure, through the building of Trotskyist parties in every country, that no such opportunity is allowed to slip by again.

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