Issuing body: International Secretariat of the Fourth International
Letter from the International Secretariat to the Political Bureau of the PCI
Dear comrades,
We are transmitting to you the text which defines the line that the IS considers it necessary to apply at present in France in the field of trade-union work. The previous resolution of the IS on the more particular question of Unité falls within the framework of the present text. We ask you to bring both texts to the knowledge of all members of the CC and of the trade-union commission, and further, that they be placed on the agenda of the party's next CC, so that the latter may responsibly take a position on the line defined by the IS concerning our trade-union work in France.
We take this occasion to express clearly to you our point of view on the course followed by the party since the Third World Congress, and at the same time to reply to certain points raised by the resolution which you voted at your session of 3 December.
The precise aim of the IS, in carrying out the mandate it received on this subject from the world congress, is to work so that the leadership of our section in France effectively and efficiently applies the line of the Third World Congress. Until now, we have placed full confidence in your leadership to accomplish this task and have left it every opportunity to demonstrate in practice its will and its capacity to apply this line. Progress has been recorded along this path. But at the same time we discern an attempt not to depart deliberately and once and for all from the idea that a turn of the party is necessary in every field in order to apply the line of the International — a line which, naturally, is not the one that was defined by the Seventh Congress of the party.
Moreover, to give the party the constant impression, as you still do in your resolution of 3 December, that the whole execution of the International's line is carried out by you essentially only through discipline, but that in reality this line entails, in your view, the liquidation of the party, is a manner which can only maintain and aggravate the mistrust of part of the organization towards this line. Thus, when you say in your resolution that the Political Bureau "will endeavour to apply with discipline [the IS resolution on Unité] in the belief that it does not imply a liquidation of Unité," etc., you create from the outset an atmosphere of mistrust and confusion around the IS resolution — a resolution which permits, neither in its spirit nor in its letter, the entertaining of the doubts you express about its meaning.
The IS, moreover, in no way wishes at the present stage to replace or substitute itself for your leadership. Its aim is to help you understand and apply the line of the Congress as effectively as possible. It is only in the event that it finds that you are systematically disregarding this line, and that you maintain towards it a latent opposition rendering its effective application impossible and paralysing the party's activity in mistrust and confusion, that the IS would reconsider its position and refer the matter to the IEC with a view to a definitive decision on the case of the French party leadership.
Such an eventuality may arise at the time of the next IEC, which will be held towards the end of February 1952. There will then have been more than six months of activity by your leadership since the Third World Congress, and it will then be possible to arrive at a conclusion as to your will and capacity to apply its line.
We sincerely hope that the IEC will not feel the need to discuss this question.
With fraternal greetings.
7 December 1951
Resolution of the IS for the reorientation of our trade-union work in France
1. Like all the other fields of work of our organization in France, the trade-union field too must be integrated into the framework of the orientation and perspectives affirmed by the Third World Congress. There can be no real turn in the activity of our French organization in the direction indicated by the congress of the International, and there can be no real will on the part of its leadership to engage the whole organization in this direction, so long as the party's principal field of work is not integrated into this orientation and does not carry it out.
2. The meaning of this orientation, as it was defined in the documents of the Third World Congress for countries such as France, where the great majority of the militant working class is under Stalinist influence, consists in this: that real mass work in France is conceivable only in the direction of the Stalinist workers; that this work is particularly necessary in the present period, which is that of the active preparation of imperialism's counter-revolutionary war, a preparation entailing precise consequences for Stalinist policy and for the evolution and orientation of Stalinist workers.
The world congress explained that in such a conjuncture Stalinist policy will be obliged, will be forced to base itself practically on the militant mobilization of the working masses against the preparations for war, and that consequently all the other themes of its policy (national independence, national union, the campaign of signatures for peace, etc.) will be reserved for a parallel, complementary, and practically non-essential mobilization of primarily petty-bourgeois strata, as well as directed towards a part of the "neutralist" European bourgeoisie. Under the impulsion of this practical policy of the Stalinist leadership, and above all forced by the logic of the evolution of the situation towards imperialism's counter-revolutionary war, the mass of Stalinist militants will orient itself increasingly towards a mobilization and class action which will necessarily, inexorably, reach — should war break out — the level of armed struggle, of the struggle for power. These considerations illuminate the meaning that the International attributes to work directed towards Stalinist workers at the present stage, and the revolutionary perspectives of this work.
3. The events that have unfolded in France immediately after the Third World Congress have, more quickly than had been thought, borne out the International's assessment concerning Stalinist policy and the course of the mass of Stalinist workers. The turn carried out by the Stalinist leaders on the trade-union question and the united action of the working class has at once created a new situation in the French workers' movement.
Stalinist policy is becoming in fact, practically, a policy of militant mobilization of the working masses against imperialism's preparations for war. It is only open to criticism at a level above trade-union activity properly speaking, at the level of the aims and political perspectives of this mobilization of the class. It constitutes, moreover, a turn that is not episodic and ephemeral but rather the expression of the forced march which the evolution of imperialism towards counter-revolutionary war imposes on the Stalinist leaders. This assessment of Stalinist policy at the present stage does not exclude oscillations to the right or left of this line, but ones which will not fundamentally alter it.
If the political perspective is correct — that is, if the international situation is evolving towards war, a war which will have the character defined by the International — there can be no other policy than that, broadly speaking, currently followed by the Stalinist leaders, who find themselves obliged to lean, in their own fashion, on the working class and to mobilize it. On the other hand, within the framework of this same perspective, it is inevitable that the reformist and centrist leaders, agents of the bourgeoisie within the working class, despite all the manoeuvres they will employ — under pressure from the masses — to camouflage their policy against effective mobilization and the united action of the working class, will in the end sabotage both. Possible progressive currents within the reformist organizations will include rank-and-file militants and subordinate cadres, who will have to struggle against their leaderships. On the eve of the preparation of imperialism's counter-revolutionary war against the USSR, there can be no other mobilization and unification of the working class than that achieved in action, against the reformist and centrist leaders, and leading to their practical isolation.
4. All practical work within the class, but particularly all mass work, carries the danger of falling into sectarianism and opportunism if it is not led by Bolshevik leaders, fully conscious and clear-sighted as to the political assessment and perspective. Particularly at the present stage, in no field can work in France be correctly conducted and acquire its true meaning unless it is conducted within the framework of the orientation defined at the congress of the International and illuminated by the perspectives of this orientation.
It is necessary that the party leadership and all trade-union militants make an effort to rethink trade-union work politically within the framework of these considerations.
5. The conditions that characterized the situation of the trade-union movement in France since the end of the world conflict, and particularly since the beginning of the Cold War up to the Korean War, have practically thrown us back into trade-union activity outside the organizations under Stalinist influence, and essentially centred on base-level work in extra-CGT circles. Moreover, throughout the whole period when Stalinist policy was centred on the theme of collaboration and compromise, and when the prospect of a new war was not yet clear, it was correct and possible to struggle, as we did, on the basis of a third trade-union tendency outside both the Stalinists and the reformists, working for class mobilization and the united action of the proletariat. It was during this period that our effort to serve above all as an example to the Stalinist workers, by undertaking limited autonomous class actions — sabotaged at the time by both the Stalinist and reformist leaders — had a precise meaning within the framework of our general political orientation of that time: to attract and detach, in the immediate term, the Stalinist workers from their leadership, by building, outside the Stalinist organizations, with the help of other currents and worker elements, a pole of attraction sufficiently powerful and active to achieve such a result. That through the force of such work we should have, to a certain extent, practically drawn away from our ultimate goal of reaching the Stalinist workers, that we should have neglected to hold tenaciously to and strengthen our positions within the Stalinist organizations — this in no way constitutes a blanket criticism of the policy followed at the time, a policy correct in its overall thrust.
6. Changes have become necessary as a result of the new international conjuncture and its implications in France, of which the Stalinist turn in the trade-union field is one manifestation. At present, the aim of our trade-union activity can no longer be, under these new conditions, to act as a distinct tendency, attracting through independent example and regrouping the Stalinist workers in the immediate term around another pole, but rather to take advantage of the unitary current propelled by the Stalinist leadership itself, so as to integrate ourselves into the mass of organized Stalinist workers. Such an integration will at once be an integration of our militants into the trade unions and into the mass of Stalinist workers — that is, it will simultaneously achieve our general political aim here in France and allow us to integrate into the real trade-union movement in France, from the base to the top.
7. If the leadership and militants of our French organization understand the unique conjuncture currently open in the French trade-union movement, and seize this opportunity skilfully and promptly, they will take a decisive step towards their real integration into the mass movement. The unitary current, currently propelled by the Stalinist leaders and swelling as a consequence of the bourgeoisie's policy of rearmament and war, allows our militants to play an important role in the reconstruction of permanent unitary trade-union bodies (single trade-union sections, single unions), to undo the effects of the exclusion of some of our militants from the CGT unions, and to find themselves alongside Stalinist militants not only at the base but even, in places, at certain levels of the trade-union leadership.
8. In order to achieve these currently attainable objectives, it is necessary not to seek to stand opposed as a distinct tendency, which is not objectively justified at the present stage, but to integrate into it by promptly becoming the best artisans of the unitary reconstruction of the trade-union movement, taking everywhere a clear, unambiguous position in favour of the CGT's unitary proposals, and manoeuvring skilfully in relation to the Stalinist leaders so as to allay their suspicions towards us and let them regard us as valid instruments of the unitary policy. This will facilitate our integration or reintegration into the CGT, and may even, in places, open access to certain levels of trade-union posts.
9. Within the framework of this reorientation of trade-union work, there is no question of abandoning any position acquired within trade-union organizations other than the CGT, nor of deserting these organizations, nor of failing to take account of their specific conditions in presenting our policy tactically. But our activity within these organizations must tend, at the present stage, more directly than ever in the past, to facilitate our link and our fusion with the mass of Stalinist workers. This means that, under no pretext, should our militants in these organizations avoid declaring themselves in favour of support for the CGT's unitary proposals, taking the lead of such a current within these organizations, and using their base-level contacts to establish joint bodies of united action with Stalinist militants, and pushing these bodies, where possible, towards more stable forms of trade-union unity (single trade-union sections, single unions).
10. The revolutionary party, in order to impose its supremacy over the other political bodies of the working class and win its confidence, must always in its struggle have the advantage of the initiative in understanding the situation and its turns, and in adequate action. There is at present a new international and national situation, and if our party, through lack of political understanding, hesitates, lags behind events, and wastes time, it will in reality lose a great political opportunity. It is in this sense that the rapid reorientation of the party's trade-union work, the result of its political reorientation, is a vital question for the future of Trotskyism in France and cannot be delayed too long.
The International Secretariat
6 December 1951