The Evolution of the SFIO

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The crisis of the democratic state of the bourgeoisie necessarily also signifies a crisis of the Social Democratic party. This interdependence must be pondered and thoroughly analyzed. The passage of the bourgeoisie from the parliamentary to the Bonapartist regime does not yet finally exclude the Social Democracy from the legal combination of forces upon which the government of capital reposes. As is known, Schleicher,in his time, sought the support of the trade unions. Through the medium of his Marquet, Doumergue naturally negotiates with Jouhaux and Co. Langeron, white baton in hand, indicates the road to both fascists and Socialists. To the extent that the Socialist Party is aware of the dependence of the Bonapartist equilibrium upon its own existence, it too still relies, so far as its leadership goes, upon this equilibrium; it pronounces itself against revolutionary fighting methods; it stigmatizes Marxism with the sobriquet of "Blanquism"; it preaches the almost Tolstoyan doctrine of "Resist not evil with violence." Only, this policy is just as unstable as the Bonapartist regime itself, with whose aid the bourgeoisie seeks to ward off more radical solutions.

The essence of the democratic state consists, as is known, in that everybody has the right to say and to write what he will, but that in all important questions the final word rests with the big property owners. This result is attained by means of a complex system of partial concessions ("reforms"), illusions, corruption, deceit and intimidation. When the economic possibility of partial concessions ("reforms") has been exhausted, the Social Democracy ceases to be the "main political support of the bourgeoisie." This means capital can then no longer rest upon a domesticated "public opinion"; it requires a (Bonapartist) state apparatus independent of the masses.

Paralleling this shift in the state system, important shifts take place within the Social Democracy. With the decline of the epoch of reformism (especially during the postwar decade), the internal regime of the Social Democracy is a reproduction of the regime of bourgeois democracy: every party member can say and think what he will, but the decisions are made by the summits of the apparatus closely bound up with the state. To the extent that the bourgeoisie loses the possibility of ruling with the support of the public opinion of the exploited, the Social Democratic leaders lose the possibility of directing the public opinion of their own party. But the reformist leaders, unlike the leaders of the bourgeoisie, have no coercive apparatus at their disposal. To the extent, therefore, that parliamentary democracy is exhausted, the internal democracy of the Socialist Party, contrariwise, becomes more and more of a reality.

The crisis of the democratic state and the crisis of the Social Democratic party develop in parallel, but opposite, directions. Whereas the state marches towards fascism across the Bonapartist stage, the Socialist Party approaches a life-and-death struggle with fascism across a "loyal," quasi-parliamentary opposition to the Bonapartist state. An understanding of this dialectic of the reciprocal relations between bourgeois state and Social Democracy is an indisputable prerequisite for the correct revolutionary policy; this is just the question on which the Stalinists broke their necks.

In the Bonapartist stage through which France is at present passing, the leaders of the Social Democratic party are endeavoring with all their might to remain within the limits of (Bonapartist! ) legality. They do not give up the hope that an improvement of the economic conjuncture and other favorable circumstances will lead to the restoration of the parliamentary state. Just the same, the experience of Italy, Germany and Austria compels them to count upon the other, less alluring perspective against which they would like to insure themselves. They are afraid of detaching themselves from the masses who demand a fight against fascism and await guidance. Thus the Socialist apparatus gets caught in the vise of a violent contradiction. On the one hand, it proceeds in its struggle against the radicalization of the masses to the downright preaching of Tolstoyanism: "Violence only begets violence; against brass knuckles and revolvers we must counterpose … wisdom and prudence." On the other hand, it talks about dictatorship of the proletariat, general strike, etc., and betakes itself to the road of the united-front policy. In the apparatus itself, a stratification takes place at the same time. The "left-wingers” acquire an ever-greater popularity. The official leaders are compelled to rest their right arm on Doumergue ("legality” at all costs!) and the left on Marceau Pivert, Just, etc. But the objective situation is not likely to preserve such an equilibrium. Let us repeat: the present condition of the Socialist Party is still more unstable than the preventive-Bonapartist state regime.

There can be no more devastating mistake in politics than to operate with ready-made conceptions that relate to yesterday and to yesterday's relationship of forces. When, for example, the leadership of the Socialist Party reduces its task to the demand for parliamentary elections, it is transferring politics from the realm of reality to the realm of shadows. "Parliament," "government," "elections" today no longer have any of the content they possessed before the capitulation of the parliamentary regime on February 6. Elections by themselves cannot produce a shift in the center of gravity of power; for this is required a leftward shift of the masses, capable of completely abrogating and effacing the results of the rightward shift of February 6.

But a mistake of exactly the same kind is made by those comrades who, in appraising the Socialist Party, themselves operate with the ready-made formulas of yesterday: "reformism," "Second International," "political support of the bourgeoisie." Are these definitions correct? Yes and no. More no than yes. The old definition of the Social Democracy corresponds still less to the facts than the definition of the present state as a "parliamentary democratic republic." It would be false to contend that there is "nothing" left of parliamentarism in France. Under certain conditions, even a temporary relapse into parliamentarism is possible (just as a man in death agony usually still retains a glimmer of consciousness). However, the general evolution as a whole is already proceeding away from parliamentarism. Were we to give a definition of the present French state that more closely approximates reality, we should have to say: "a preventive-Bonapartist regime, garbed in the desolated form of the parliamentary state and veering between the not-yet-strong-enough camp of the fascist regime and the insufficiently conscious camp of the proletarian state." Only such a dialectical definition can offer the basis for a correct policy.

But the same laws of dialectical thinking hold also for the Socialist Party, which, as has already been said, shares the fate of the democratic state, only in the reverse direction. To which should be added that, to a substantial degree, thanks to the experience of Germany and Austria, the evolution of the Socialist Party even outstrips the evolution of the state to a certain extent; thus the split with the Neos preceded the coup d'état of February 6 by several months. Naturally it would be a crude mistake to assert that "nothing” has remained of reformism and patriotism in the party since this split. But it is no less a mistake to talk about it as about the Social Democracy in the old sense of the word. The impossibility of employing henceforward a simple, customary, fixed definition is precisely the flawless expression of the fact that what we have here is a centrist party, which, by virtue of a long protracted evolution of the country, still unites extreme polar contradictions. One must be a hopeless scholastic not to discern what is going on in reality under the label "Second International." Only a dialectical definition of the Socialist Party, that is, primarily, the concrete evaluation of its internal dynamics, can permit the Bolshevik-Leninists to outline the correct perspective and to adopt an active, and not a waiting, position.

Without the revolutionary impulsion of the masses, which could shift the political center of gravity sharply to the left — or better yet, before such an impulsion — the state power must identify itself more openly and brutally with the military and police apparatus, fascism must become stronger and more insolent. Parallel to this, the antagonisms within the Socialist Party must come to the fore, that is, the incompatibility of the Tolstoyan preaching of "Resist not evil with violence" with the revolutionary tasks dictated by the class foe. Simultaneous with the Bonapartization of the state and the approach of the fascist danger, the party majority must inevitably become radicalized; the internal differentiation, which is far from being completed, must enter a new phase.

The Bolshevik-Leninists are duty bound to say all this openly. They have always rejected the theory of "social fascism" and hooligan methods in polemic, in which theoretical impotence unites with lie and calumny. They have no cause to stand themselves on their heads and to call black white. We advocated the united front at a time when it was rejected both by the Socialists and the Stalinists. That is just why we remain, even today, with a critical, realistic attitude towards the abstraction of "unity." In the history of the labor movement, demarcation is often the premise of unity. In order to take the first step towards the united front, the Socialist Party was compelled first to split away from the Neos. This ought not to be forgotten for an instant. The Socialist Party can take a leading part in a genuine mass and fighting united front only in the event that it sets out its tasks clearly and purges its ranks of the right wing and masked opponents of revolutionary struggle. It is not a question here of any abstract "principle," but of an iron necessity resulting from the logic of the struggle. The problem is not one that can be solved by any diplomatic turn of the phrase, as is believed by Zyromsky, who endeavors to find the formula that will reconcile social patriotism with internationalism. The march of the class struggle, in its present stage, will pitilessly explode and tear down all tergiversation, deception and dissimulation. The workers in general and the Socialists in particular need the truth, the naked truth and nothing but the truth.

The Bolshevik-Leninists correctly formulated what is and what is to be. But they have not been able — it must be openly avowed — to fulfill the task that they set themselves a year ago: more deeply to penetrate the ranks of the Socialist workers, not in order to "lecture" down to them from above as learned specialists in strategy, but in order to learn together with the advanced workers, shoulder to shoulder, on the basis of actual mass experience, which will inevitably lead the French proletariat on the road of revolutionary struggle.

In order the better to illuminate the tasks lying before us on this field, one must, however, dwell upon the evolution of the so-called Communist Party.