The Birth of French Trotsky Sm

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In July 1939, after Cannon bourgeois authorities could not had been sent by Trotsky to accuse them, as they could the make a final attempt to PCF, of 'complicity with the persuade the refractory majority enemy, their position on the of the POI, the Executive Com- unconditional defence of the mittee of the Fourth Interna- USSR and on the inter-impertional ceased to recognise the ialist war were sufficient motivmilitants to enter the PSOP as Some militants were The POI dissolved. Some of for military service. The various its former members resigned groups becáme illegal. Links themselves to joining the earlier with the International were June 1936 was the high point achieved by the French workers' movement.

The end of the strikes, although it was claimed by the big partners and unions as a great victory for the workers, was in fact the beginning of a sombre period of successive defeats.

This was the phase leading to the war.

Every country was engaged in feverish preparations, rearmament policies accompanied the diplomatic waltz among fascist regimes, bourgeois democracies and the Soviet Union.

Hitler was not long in invading Austria and then the Sudetenland. In Spain the revolution was defeated by the combined onslaughts of the bourgeois republicans, the social democrats and the Stalinists, the latter being uncontestably the worst enemies of the revolution.

Falling apart

It was the period of republican 'unity'. Quite logically, Franco proceeded to introduce the most bloody repression. Spain was plunged into darkness.

In France the bourgeoisie's counter-attack began at the end of 1936, clawing back the workers' gains one by one. The Popular Front was falling apart.

The Blum Government crashed against the 'Silver Wall' erected by the capitalists, and was forced to decree the 'Pause' and put an end to the flow of pay claims.

Abandoned

The electoral alliance of the "left' collapsed over the question of intervention in Spain: the 'sister' republic was abandoned to its sorry fate.

The Popular Front came to grief definitively after Munich.

Throughout this whole period the workers kept up a desparate resistance against the counter attack of the bourgeoisie, hoping to salvage something of the gains of 1936.

This resistance was marked by numerous wildcat' strikes, which met with severe repression.

The French bourgeoisie invoked the needs of national defence to destroy the workers' resistance, utilising rule by decree, backed up by force and propaganda.

The isolation of the Trotskyists, their splits and their desperate attempts to link themselves with the workers must all be seen in this general context.

Without doubt they had recruited members during the Popular. Front, but their ship remained ridiculously fragile in the storm which was beginning to blow.

Birth of the Fourth International.

September 1938: the founding conference of the Fourth International was held somewhere in the suburbs of Paris.

Thirty delegates were present, representing ten countries. The situation of the Trotskyists in most of these countries was no brighter than it was in France.

A number of militants strongly disputed the appropriateness of creating a Fourth Artificial They argued that it was artificial to found a new International during a period of utter shipwreck of the international workers' movement.

The previous Internationals had each been constituted around a dynamic party strongly rooted in the masses: the First International around the French workers' movement; the Second around the powerful German Social Democracy and the Third around the glorious Bolshevik Party.

By contrast the Fourth could only assemble a few tiny groups struggling against the stream.

People like Serge and Deutscher considered that the initiative was artificial and insane.

Trotsky and his followers made a revolutionary criterion of adherence to the Fourth The Third having failed and become irredeemable, it was necessary to create the Fourth.

In 1915 the participants in the Zimmerwald Congress could be carried in four cars; two years later the Russian revolution came about.

Trotsky put his faith in a new revolutionary epoch arising from inevitable overthrows during the war.

During this phase the workers would mass themselves under the banner of the Fourth International. This was the conviction he affirmed frequently.

Fresh quarrels

In the short term, in any case, the creation of the Fourth International boosted the morale of the Trotskyists.

The solidarity of militants in other countries is precious, especially when one is fighting in very difficult conditions.

However, very soon fresh quarreis were to break out. The Trotskyists and the PSOP In June 1938 at the Congress of Royan the SFIO expelled Pivert's minority Gauche Revolutionnaire faction.

The GR had, in the preceding period, bravely defended its positions which were often close to those of the Trotskyists.

Pivert had written in June 1936 in Le Populaire an article which had caused a great stir. He stated:

"Anything can happen now, and very quickly. We stand at a point which without doubt will not appear on the stage of history again for a long time"

But Pivert turned towards Leon Blum, urging him to take the leadership of the revolutionary movement [!].

He was to go further.

Thunderbolts

Accused by Thorez of Trotskyist adventurism, he let himself be tied to the Blum government: he was appointed to lead the Secretariat to the President of the Conseil with political responsibility for control over the press, radio and cinema.

The • attitude of the GR attracted some thunderbolts from Trotsky, who accused them of centrism, which by phrase he meant they that oscillated between public revolutionary positions ana a reformist opportunist practice.

The GR was to find this contradiction unsurmountable until 1938, when it was expelled.

Along with Pivert went Guerin, Collinet, Jacquier, Audry, Lefeuvre, Herard, WeilCuriel and a leading nucleus from the Young SocialistsWeitz, Meier and Stibbe. A number of them were later to find their way into the present PSU.

The expelled GR set up its own party: the Parti Socialiste Ouvrier et Paysan (PSOP). The new party hoped to regroup 30,000 members. In fact it won about 6,000 but it had an undoubtedly proletarian base.

Throughout his period of exile Trotsky had followed developments in France closely. The split between Pivert's group and Blum created an entirely new situation.

Henceforth the PSOP could find the revolutionary road, with the help of the Trotskyists. The POI would no longer be forced to retreat into sectarian isolation.

majority Entry into the SFIO had been a good thing even if its outcome was not precisely what had been hoped for. Today the construction of the revolutionary party passed through the work in the PSOP.

Trotsky authorised a fusion between the POI and the PSOP. Fusion discussions began but there was a hostile majority in both organisations.

In the PSOP many militants mistrusted the 'sectarianism' and 'spirit of infiltration' of the Trotskyists, whom they had known during their period in the SFIO.

Among the POI one tendency appeared complacent about their isolation, while another took Naville's view that the imminent approach of war made it impossible to establish a wider revolutionary vanguard.

The future was to prove the latter correct. However it was the PSOP who were to break off the discussions. Pivert did not want fusion, but was prepared to accept the entry of individual Trotskyists.

Already, since the end of 1938 the POI had decided to dissolve itself. Its members had inined the new partv. with the Judasem AAW IT 44450 exceptions Frank and Molinier, whom nobody wanted.

In the POI an important minority led by Craipeau and Rous and supported by Trotsky decided in February 1939 to try to win over the PSOP.

Guerin' has written off the loyal efforts of this group, which together with him had not only organised a brave team of militants but also a certain implantation into the class, which was led by Craipeau in Nantes. The group published a review La Voie de Lenine.

POI as its section. It invited ation.

quickly as possible.

entrists. Some hung around the broken.

CelsDir LET alo fringes of the PSOP.

Others such as Navilie, Filiatre, Hic, Rousset and Rigal refused to join the PSOP.

Yet others of whom Boitel and Livillier were the most nersistent. attemnted to PVIJIEN maintain the POI.

They brought out a few issues of 'Lutte Ouvriere' before dispersing.

Events however were hurrying onwards. 23 August 1939. The French CP was declared illegal as a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. (Ironically by their "ally' in the Popular Front).

3 September. The war broke out.

Witch-hunts and persecutions were not reserved for the PCF alone.

The revolutionaries were to get their share. Although the arrested, others were called up Humanitel French CP mourns death of Stalin

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