France-fight for Cp-sp Govt

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As we go to press it is difficult to predict the likely result of the election for the French legislative assembly to be held on 12 and 19 March.

Whatever the outcome, however, there can be no doubt that the election will heighten the political and social crisis of the Fifth bourgeois French Republic.

There can be no doubt of the advanced character of the crisis in the forms of bourgeois rule in It is now 20 years since De Gaulle was called upon to set up the semi-bonapartist Fifth Republic in order to bring together warring factions of the bourgeoisie and through centralised Presidential power to come to terms with the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria.

It is 10 years since the general strike movements of 1968 were held back by the devout support from Stalinist and social democratic leaders of capitalist rule.

Yet the shock and stresses since then have clearly shown that the French bourgeoisie finds it increasingly difficult to go on ruling in the same way.

Jacques Chirac, Gaullist leader and inheritor of the centralised party organisation cobbled together by De Gaulle has tried to continue in the Gaullist mould by becoming Mayor of Paris and offering a populist policy of an "independent" France with unclear economic policies.

Raymond Barre, former economics professor and current Prime Minister was appointed by the Gaullists as an outside "technocrat" but has since tried to take over other aspects of the Gaullist-Bonapartist tradition.

Alliance

In the face of these divisions supporters of President Giscard d'Estaing have set up an electoral alliance known as the Union for French Democracy, the main aim of which seems to be to create a coalition with the Socialist Party if the electoral arithmetic makes this possible.

With these divisions within the capitalist parties and with the opinion polls consistently predicting 51% of the votes or more for the workers parties, it would seem that a government of the workers parties was almost inevitable.

However this can by no means be said to be so.

The leaders of Stalinism and reformism in France are so tied to the institutions of the Fifth Republic that they refuse to take any of the steps necessary to mobilise the working class against it.

For one thing the "Common Programme'" of the left on which they were campaigning till last November was signed by a tiny breakaway from the Radical Party, just in order to ensure that the "Common Programme" had a seal of respectability from the bourgeoisie.

However, towards the end of last year, the Stalinists decided that this alliance did not provide for enough weight for the bourgeoisie in their Popular On the excuse of a 'left' argument about the number of firms that ought to be nationalised the Stalinists withdrew from the electoral alliance.

The Stalinists know as well as any other student of French history that when the Popular Front government of 1936 came to power it unleashed mass struggles of a scope which forced the most enormous concessions from the government such as the legal minimum wage over which controversy is currently raging.

The French Stalinists know very well that a government with any weight of the workers' organisations within it it will will cause further movements of the working class.

They know that these movements will not only exacerbate the crisis of the capitalist republic but will also place enormous pressure on the leaders of the main workers' organisations and compel them to fight for concessions which they are not at this moment prepared to consider.

It is all very well for them to talk about the numbers of firms they might nationalise but everyone knows that without the mobilisation of the workers they will buckle under every capitalist argument about "economic necessity'.

When it comes to slogans on which workers might well go into action such as for a 37% increase in the minimum wage, then they naturally grow more coy.

Pretensions

The real meaning of the left prentensions of the Stalinists is shown by the support they have given in some constituencies to the 'left' Gaullists, preaching national independence and prosperous capitalism even against the candidates of the other workers' parties.

The Socialists meanwhile, while protesting their adherence to the 'Union of the Left' including its bourgeois participants, have certainly not precluded an alliance with the 'liberal bourgeoisie of the Giscard d'Estaing variety against an advancing working class.

There can be no serious doubt about the policies of Trotskyists in this situation. They must centre on the need for strike action, occupations and workers control demands in order to enforce the economic demands of the working class and the policies of nationalisation being promised by their leaders.

The demand in this election must be for a government of the Communist Party and the Socialist Party without any bourgeois participation.

Within this general policy it would seem to us preferabia to vote for the best placed workers parties in both the first and second rounds.

LIDS

Giscard d'Estaing However, there can clearly be no principled objection to putting up "revolutionary' candidatesvoting for those who call for a clear break from the Popular Front and the formation of a Socialist Party-Communist Party There can be no doubt that the call for workers unity in this election is of considerable importance.

Sliding scale

However, it does not seem to us adequate to campaign on this alone in the manner of the "Trotskyist" Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (OCI), without raising independent pro. grammatic demands such as the sliding scale of wages for workers in struggle or without placing other demands on the CP-SP leaders for nationalisation of basic industries and for a workers' plan of production.

The inadequacy of the OCI perspective has been indicated over the last weekend of the elecGandhi's electoral successes have stunned and bewildered bourgeois commentators.

Having pronounced that the former dictator was politically dead, they were then confronted with an undoubted resurrection.

The Congress (Indira) which she leads now holds an absolute majority in two southern states-Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In the north, its impact has been much weaker, but a handful of seats were won in Assam.

The Janata coalition has emerged as the largest single force in the crucial state of Maharashtra, which contains Bombay.

But there too the Congress (1) gained a quarter of the total seats, and could form a with the Congress (Reddy), which secured an equal number.

Gandhi's party has inflicted a humiliating defeat

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from ashes