Suggestions for a French Program of Action

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The national conference [of the Communist League] should not be a gathering for receiving reports, analyzing past experience and general perspectives, but rather a body for action and combat.

It should work out a program of action made up of essential points for directing all of our propaganda, agitation, and action.

Since this document is not ready, the national conference can concern itself with general discussion on the slogans to be introduced into the program of action and with instructing the Executive Committee (perhaps with the assistance of the IS) to come up with a definitive version within ten days at most. The EC can form a somewhat larger commission by bringing in some comrades from outside of the EC to work out the program of action.

Here are some suggestions for the program itself:

The question of the “economy,” “the balanced budget”: This is a question of reducing wages, pensions, unemployment compensation, etc., and it is now the most burning issue. We are on the defensive here, but we must conduct the fight in a concrete and vigorous fashion.

The ruling classes complain that they cannot afford new taxes. They heap taxes on the peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie and they want to starve the lower-ranking government employees, the disabled veterans, etc. The question is posed in this form: “Are the ruling classes going to become as poor as poor Chiappe?” The ruling classes have a very good idea of the incomes, wages, and pensions of the little people they starve and crush. But the people have no idea of all the wealth and income of the ruling classes. They conceal these by invoking “business secrets,” “professional secrets,” etc. All of these are nothing but the secrets of the employers used to promote their exploitation. Down with the secrets of the rich! Open the books! Before consenting to, or better, before refusing new sacrifices, we want to see what the real national income is and how it is divided.

The Stavisky affair showed us, in concentrated form, a tiny part of the “national economy” and its secrets. We want to know about all the Stavisky-type machinations of the ruling classes. After “unprecedented efforts,” they lay before us a few of Stavisky’s check stubs. The working class wants to see the bourgeoisie’s whole checkbook with its own eyes. That is the essence of workers’ and peasants’ control. The workers should have the opportunity to familiarize themselves in depth with all the affairs of their industry. With the help of honest bank employees, the peasants should have a complete financial accounting from the banks that force them into debt and ruin them.

Whatever the plan for the reform of the country’s economic life might be, the first condition is absolute clarity about the wealth of the nation and its division. The veterans, whom they are once again trying to influence with patriotic slogans, have the same interests as the workers and peasants in knowing everything about the machinery of the society which has led to crisis, confusion, and unprecedented corruption. Our slogan is: Workers’ and peasants’ (including veterans’) control of the banks, commerce and industry.

The bourgeoisie will never consent to this willingly. If its secrets are divulged, there will be nothing left for it to do but commit suicide, like Stavisky. That is why it is financing fascist gangs. From now on, the question of the division of the national income will be settled with arms. That is the policy of the exploiters at bay.

The exploited must defend themselves. To defend even their meager wages and pensions, they have to organize and arm themselves against the gangs of reactionary capitalism.

For months, L'Humanité has been calling for disarming and dissolving the fascist gangs. What democratic illusions! We have just seen the parliamentary commission of inquiry apply L'Humanité & slogan on “disarming.” They are beginning, it is true, with the fascists, since they are the only ones armed. By doing this, they are creating a democratic cover for not allowing the proletariat to have the means to defend itself.

Our slogan is not the disarming of finance capital’s gangs by finance capital’s police, but rather a workers’ and peasants’ militia, that is, the arming of the exploited people.

They want to frighten us with the specter of civil war. If the real people arm themselves, the exploiters won’t be able to launch a civil war. On the other hand, if the people are unarmed, they can be made to bow by successive bloodlettings.

Our slogan is: For a workers’ and peasants’ militia! Arm the people!

With the workers’ and peasants’ control and the militia we are still at the level of defense. We don’t want to allow society to be plunged into barbarism and decomposition. But that is not enough. It is necessary to lead society out of the impasse it finds itself in, and for that it is necessary to reorganize the national economy from top to bottom by adapting it to the interests of the working people and sacrificing the privileges of the usurers and Staviskys at the top.

To reorganize the economy, a government of the working people, a workers’ and peasants’ government, is necessary. There is a lot of talk about strong government, and this is not an accident. The exploiters have bogged society down in the mud to such an extent that ferocious energy and real revolutionary efforts will be required to extricate it. The Jacobins gave us a fine example 140 years ago. It was the poor, the little people, the exploited, who established the government of the Mountain,the strongest government France has ever known. And it was that government which saved France under the most tragic conditions. In addition, the October Revolution has given us a more recent example of what the working people can do when they take their destiny into their own hands. The first condition for establishing a strong government is for the workers to break all their political ties with the bourgeoisie. The bloc of the working class should extend a fraternal hand to the peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie so that together they can vigorously oppose the bloc of the exploiters, which is called “the government of national reconciliation,” “the national union,” etc.

The government issuing directly from the working people should liberate the small peasants from the debts that are crushing them, to assure them a place in the planned economy worthy of a civilized people.

The bourgeoisie, the real expropriators of the land and of little people in general, frighten the farmers with the specter of violent expropriation by the proletariat. That is a lie! The example of Soviet Russia, an example moreover that is distorted by the bourgeois press, is not the rule. France has some great advantages: (a) its population is far more cultured than the population of czarist Russia; (b) the French proletariat can expect support from the USSR; (c) it will be able to avoid not a few of the mistakes the Russian proletariat made when it began transforming capitalist society.

What crushes the peasant, the artisan, the small businessman, is competition and taxes. By expropriating the wealth of the exploiters for the benefit of the people, the government can ' considerably ease the burden of taxes that falls on the peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie. By eliminating competition through a planned economy, the workers’ and peasants’ government will be able to grant the small producers (peasants, artisans, businessmen) full liberty to dispose of their property and at the same time assure them of state orders at a price that will considerably raise their standard of living.

The nationalization of the banks, the large landed property holdings, the key industries, the railroads, does not mean the total bureaucratization of economic life. The state economy can create the necessary balance with the peasant and petty bourgeois economy, to aid it, raise it up, and give it free choice to transform itself. The proletariat can enter into an agreement with the peasants whereby the final transformation of agriculture will take place only with the consent of the peasants themselves. These honorable contracts between two classes can be realized and at the same time guaranteed by a workers’ and peasants’ government.

This is the perspective we see for workers’ and peasants’ control. In order to take the banks, transport, and key industries firmly in hand, the working people should begin by extending their union organizations — factory committees, bank committees, railroad committees — throughout the whole capitalist system. Workers’ and peasants’ control, in its first stages a defensive measure against crushing taxes and wage cuts, becomes quite naturally the preparatory stage for a planned, i.e., socialist, economy.

P.S. These are only hastily written suggestions which make no claim beyond serving as a point of departure for the discussion. The agrarian question has to be formulated in precise terms. It is necessary to try to give an overall picture of the large estates and to indicate how the land will be divided up (state farms, distribution to sharecroppers, agricultural workers’ production cooperatives with state credits, etc.). It would also be well to give an overall picture of peasants’ indebtedness and indicate the terms for liberating the small peasants’ holdings from the mortgages that are crushing them.

For the working class, it would perhaps be well to begin by stipulating that a planned economy would allow an immediate transition to a seven-hour day, and for mining and hazardous industries to a six-hour day, and the establishment of a comprehensive system of real social insurance.

Before launching the program of action, it would be well to submit it for analysis to the members and sympathizers of the League, impressing upon them the necessity for a concerted campaign. The manifesto containing the program of action should be concise and should be widely distributed in the form of a leaflet. A special issue of La Vérité (possibly even with an enlarged format) and a special issue of Octobre Rouge should be devoted to this campaign. Every comrade should participate with full understanding of the great task the League is undertaking.

P.P.S. The essential thing is that everything be done “quickly and decisively”: no more than ten days for working out the final text. The eleventh and twelfth days for preparatory meetings and speeches throughout France. During this time the manifesto should be at the printer’s. Within two weeks, the manifesto should more or less have “covered” France. It should be presented everywhere through speeches by adult and youth members.

Those are my thoughts on the subject.