Issuing body: Central Committee of the PCI (Parti Communiste Internationaliste — French Section of the Fourth International)
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RESOLUTION ON THE GENERAL ORIENTATION OF THE FRENCH SECTION
To the full and alternate members of the Central Committee
During the Third World Congress, a French commission was appointed. On the proposal of this commission, the World Congress adopted, in its general lines, a draft text applying to the French section the political theses it had adopted. This document of application was to be, and has been, finalized by the French Political Bureau and the International Secretariat. It is submitted for adoption by the Central Committee. Once adopted by the Central Committee, it is to constitute the general political orientation document of the French section. Subsequently, resolutions setting out this orientation in greater detail for the various fields of the party's activity will be drawn up by the leading bodies of our section.
• The PCI must orient itself above all towards the Communist workers
For countries such as France, where Stalinism is the dominant force in the working class, the Third World Congress set, as the principal task, an orientation towards the Communist workers, within the framework of the general perspectives laid down by the Congress. This orientation requires that the PCI, in every field of its activity, take as its starting point the concerns and aims of these Communist workers (for example, over recent months: the struggle against the Atlantic Pact, against the war preparations of American imperialism, for the victory of Ho Chi Minh and of North Korea, etc.). For France, the intensified preparation for war, while tending to raise the highest political problems in the consciousness of Communist militants, cannot, within a relatively short period, provoke broad breaks to the left within a strongly structured party. The task of the PCI in building the new revolutionary leadership consists in freeing the vanguard gathered essentially around the PCF from the grip of Stalinism. In the present situation, and within the framework of its development as foreseen by the documents of the Third World Congress, the PCI must proceed from the fact that the reactions of Communist workers will be increasingly determined by Communist class motives. The French party must not neglect those who, through their own experience, have broken with their old leaderships. It must seek every means of drawing the greatest possible number of them into revolutionary activity. But those who have broken with the old organizations constitute only a small part of the French working class. For the French party, task number one is to influence and win over the working-class cadres, the most decisive part of whom are in the PCF or under its influence. Under the new international conditions, nothing would be more dangerous than to turn towards an easier milieu of work, for this would in turn react upon the party's policy and would end by drawing it away from its objective.
The World Congress defined as the most probable perspective on which the party must base its activity, that the inevitable revolutionary movements brought about by the preparation of imperialist war will occur under the aegis of the present leadership of the working class in France, since time and experience will not allow it to be replaced by another; these movements will take place, at least in the first stage, under the leadership of the PCF. This does not mean that propaganda for a new leadership of the working class ceases to be an important task of the party. The construction of the PCI at this stage is possible only if its leadership combats every doubt that might exist on this score.
• The de facto united front with the Communist workers
The development of the situation will give growing importance to the political problems of particular interest to the Communist workers who, as the Third World Congress emphasized, have revolutionary concerns and aims which they have hitherto sought to achieve under Stalinist leadership. Without in any way abandoning its action for the united front in defence of the economic and political demands of the working class as a whole, the PCI must devote growing attention to the political problems that are bound to move Communist militants in particular. The World Congress indicates that it is on this basis that the PCI will be able to work towards the achievement of a de facto united front (that is to say, independently of any prior agreement between leaderships) with its militants, which, under the present conditions of preparation for war, is an indispensable condition for being able, on the basis of common experience, to combat the influence of Stalinism.
Propaganda for the slogan of the workers' and peasants' government, the central slogan of the PCI at the present stage, is particularly suited to achieving a de facto united front with the Communist workers. Given the state of the French working class, this government can only be conceived as a united-front government of the two great workers' parties, without capitalist ministers. The Trotskyists thus counterpose to the Communist workers in particular a common struggle for their leaders to take power in such a workers' and peasants' government. The campaign for action-unity committees is indispensable. But we do not make the constitution of the workers' and peasants' government, nor propaganda for this slogan, conditional on the prior existence of these committees. Our fundamental task is to bring the working class, through its own revolutionary action, to bring to power the great workers' parties that lead it at present.
The defence of the USSR, of the people's democracies, and of China, is not merely a general task given concrete form in the mass struggle against their own bourgeoisie. It is also a specific task of the same order as the struggle against the war in Vietnam or against any imperialist intervention. This defence takes on growing importance as war preparations intensify; it has quite particular importance in relation to achieving the de facto united front with the Communist workers, who are deeply attached to it. It is precisely by starting from a common struggle, and from proposals for common struggle with the Communist workers for the defence of the workers' states, that we shall be able to intervene with them against the policy of the Moscow bureaucracy and its agents in the Stalinist party. Of course, the PCI abandons neither its propaganda nor its agitation on any point of its programme that does not yet, for the moment, meet with the agreement of the Communist workers (the Socialist United States of Europe, the struggle against the Soviet bureaucracy in defence of proletarian Yugoslavia, etc.), but it will endeavour to clarify these questions by starting from the concerns of these workers.
• Trade-union activity
The slogans of unity and democracy find an echo in the French working class. Unity and democracy are the essential slogans of our trade-union tactics. As in the past, the party opposes the creation of new trade-union federations or company ("house") unions, and reaffirms its attachment to trade-union unity within a single, democratic federation. The existence, within the working class, of several trade unions and of a very large number of unorganized workers imposes on our organization, for as long as this situation persists, the permanent task of propaganda and agitation for the united front of trade-union organizations. A united front achieved between trade-union organizations, even in a bureaucratic manner, constitutes, at whatever level it is achieved, a progressive event, since it is in any case an element favouring the development of workers' struggles.
The PCI supports, and its militants in the trade unions and enterprises propose, that the federations conclude action-unity pacts at every level, and that they promote the formation of action-unity committees (CUAs), including all organized and unorganized workers, in order genuinely to underpin this unity of action, so as to ensure control by the whole class over the preparation, conduct and victory of the struggles.
Within the trade unions and the enterprises, PCI militants carry out tireless propaganda for action committees along the lines just set out. If the trade unions, above all the CGT, promote the constitution of these committees, even outside periods of preparation and conduct of struggles, PCI militants will fight in the front rank for the success and the durability of these experiments. But at the present stage, our militants generally do not have the possibility of setting up such CUAs themselves, together with the nuclei they may be able to gather, without the agreement of the most representative trade unions. An attempt along these lines would risk resulting in the creation of phantom bodies that have nothing in common with genuine CUAs. Such an initiative is possible only in cases — still exceptional given the party's present situation — where our militants can carry with them the great majority of the workers independently of the agreement of the trade unions. This cannot, therefore, constitute the essential perspective for the party's work! This propaganda activity for CUAs can in no case be substituted for, or set in opposition to, day-to-day activity within the trade-union organizations, above all within the CGT.
The working class, even though it is no longer organized in the unions in its majority, nonetheless still follows them in most of their day-to-day activities. We must strive to win and to hold trade-union posts (dues collectors, delegates, works-committee members, etc.), for the trade unions are neither outdated nor powerless. The growing combativity of the working class resulting from war preparations will make itself felt in particular through the workers' determination to impose the achievement of unity of action on their traditional organizations. The regime of trade unions run by the Stalinists does not make it easy to work within them. It raises particular problems of tactics inside the trade unions, but there can in no circumstances be any question of playing into the hands of the bureaucrats by underestimating the action to be carried out within the trade unions.
The PCI must orient its militants first and foremost towards work within the trade unions, particularly the CGT. Even when expelled, they call on workers to join the union. The party must take every measure suited to thwarting the bureaucratic manoeuvres aimed at expelling our militants from the trade-union organizations. One of the important trade-union tasks is the struggle of the expelled, and of all revolutionary militants, for the reinstatement of those expelled. This struggle, which must be waged with continuity, can find a particular echo among the mass of trade unionists and stand a good chance of success during periods of struggle, when PCI militants have the opportunity to appear as the best fighters.
The agreements that formed the basis of l'Unité (an essential element of the French section's trade-union work) rest on the principle of free expression for the various currents gathered around this newspaper. The party's general policy within l'Unité remains unchanged. The agreements for the constitution of l'Unité were made at a time when international tension was much lower. At that time, the progressive course of the YCP [Yugoslav Communist Party] was helping to draw the currents and individuals grouped in l'Unité towards a favourable evolution. The turn in the world situation, and the rightward course of the Yugoslavs, have to a large extent halted this process. Not only have some of the elements thus grouped together ceased to progress towards the revolutionary programme, but they defend positions hostile to it. This state of affairs has given rise to an anti-Communist danger within l'Unité. The whole party must guard against this danger, which the Congress moreover pointed out.
Within l'Unité, our militants must combat the tendencies towards a so-called independence in relation to political problems such as war preparations, the activity of the Gaullist bands, the Marshall Plan, the war in Vietnam, and the Korean War. The tendency to want to achieve unity of action among the workers solely on economic demands would inevitably cut us off from the most conscious part of the working class, and in particular from the Communist militants. On these questions raised by war preparations, the PCI must work out a response appropriate to the cadres of the trade-union movement.
• Youth activity must be centred on the struggle against war
The particularly combative character of young people will mean that the will for revolutionary struggle against war will grow within the working-class youth. The PCI must stake everything on this resistance; work among young people must be centred essentially on the struggle against war preparations and against war itself. Young people do not have as constant an attachment as adults to the old organizations. Their revolutionary maturing also takes place more rapidly. On the other hand, Stalinism exercises very great influence among the working-class youth, and above all among the most combative elements. This is what imposes on the party the task of finding the way to systematic work within this layer.
• How to carry out the turn in the party's activity
The necessary turn in the activity of the French party, as a consequence of the turn in the world situation, in no way signifies the abandonment of the activities already undertaken and of the results achieved in them. On the contrary, once the party has assimilated the tasks it will have to carry out, the essential point in the period ahead is to make use of all the results obtained in the past, of all the positions acquired, for the benefit of the new orientation. The party should in particular take all measures necessary to ensure that this turn is not carried out abruptly, but with the flexibility and tact required, both in order to bring along all the militants of the party and those with whom it collaborates, and so as not to give any purchase to the party's enemies within the workers' movement.
Given the rejection by the French section of the theses adopted by the Third World Congress, the application of the Congress's decisions requires, on the part of the leadership as a whole, an intense and rapid campaign to bring the whole party to assimilate the perspectives and the orientation laid down by the World Congress, and to facilitate their application.
Adopted unanimously by the Central Committee of the PCI, 30 September 1951.