It is naturally disagreeable to have to speak to you again only a few years after the departure of the right-wingers on the need of some kind of a new beginning for our movement here in France.
In effect, the desertion of an important part of our organization which has just occurred unquestionably places us in a difficult situation and obliges us to begin again in large part the task which we started so many years ago: to build a genuinely Marxist revolutionary organization which has real ties with the real movements of the masses of the country.
In view of the very numerous setbacks we have suffered up to now in carrying out this task, some people will have a tendency to yield to discouragement or to skepticism as to the correctness of our ideas, or as to the objective possibility of accomplishing such a task.
In reality, if we have failed up to now in the accomplishment of this task it is not due to the fault of our ideas, which have passed the victorious test in so many historical events and in the practical success realized in several other countries, nor to the fault of a so-called national reality which is irremediably hostile to the construction of a Marxist revolutionary organization. I do not propose today to go into details in what I consider to be the principal reasons for this defeat. I will content myself with emphasizing the principal elements which have contributed to perpetuating the crisis of French Trotskyism and which have prevented it from resolving this crisis up to now in a progressive manner: the inability of crystal-izing the nucleus of a stable leadership and of infiltrating the genuine revolutionary forces into the masses of the country in order to find a stable social basis among them. There is naturally an interaction between these two elements. The unstable social climate of the country whose economic potential corresponds neither to its political role as the head of an Empire which it can no longer maintain nor to its situation in Europe and in the world as a great power; the great shifts which this unstable international position creates in public opinion, dominated by sentiments, traditions, and reactions which are greatly influenced politically by the urban petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry, as well as the existence of a relatively very strong Stalinist movement, reacted as so many objective obstacles to the crystallization of a stable leadership and the establishment of a stable proletarian base.
On the other hand, such a result in any case could not have been obtained without a long experience of the movement itself which would have permitted the natural selection of a group of leaders and a concrete understanding of the manner of approaching the living forces of the working class and of acquiring a solid base there.
And such in reality is the general direction of the evolution of our movement in France.
Comparing our post-war movement, with all its still crying inadequacies, despite the crisis, despite the desertions we have known, with what it was before the war, progress is manifest and important. However, it has not been sufficiently ample to counter-balance the influence of centrifugal forces and disturbing pressures from the outside so that the organization could attain genuine stability in its leadership and in its ranks.
As I have said, there is an interaction between a stable leadership and a stable proletarian base. But in reality what has been especially lacking up to recently in our French movement has been the crystallization of a group of revolutionary Marxist leaders, who could work patiently without sensational shifts and turns, and this for a whole period of years, so as to create a solid proletarian base.
[p. 60]
It was not absolutely excluded that such a leadership would arise after an already very long experience of our national and international movement. And if it has not been created up to recently, the fault resides not only in objective conditions but in ourselves in the inadequacy of a profound comprehension by our cadres and our active members in France in what are the necessary subjective conditions to develop and to consolidate a revolutionary Marxist movement, not abstractly in any country whatever, but in a given concrete country, France, having this and that concrete characteristic.
That is to say there was an inability to capitalize sufficiently on the concrete experience of the movement in France and to give it conscious expression through a team of cadres.
When we speak of the primary need of a stable group in the leadership, which has been lacking up to recently in our French movement, we do not only mean by that merely a group which is stable in its composition, but even more, a group which is stable in its profound convictions, in its Bolshevik line, in its real and profound loyalty to the International.
The other present danger in the country was of seeing the leadership being conquered by a kind of activism following in the train of events, of submitting to the influence of the sharp inherent changes in the international situation as well as to the pressure of a fickle public opinion, of losing its head every time, of going from enthusiasm to pessimism, of drowning itself in the accidental, the secondary, the ephemeral, and of never remaining patient and firm for a long period on a principled Marxist revolutionary line, while knowing how to adapt itself tactically to the turns imposed by objective evolution.
In the absence of such maturity and of such political stability several opportunities were lost since the war and far from profiting from them the organization, on the contrary, has constantly declined so far as the extension of its influence is concerned.
The supposition is that with such a mature and stable team, had it fortuitously been the leadership of the French organization since the war — there is no doubt that objective conditions allowed for it as they still do —we could have had here in France one of the strongest sections of the International, counting in large numbers, hundreds of revolutionary Marxist workers.
In the desertion of the right-wingers, subjected at the time to the dominant influence of the Stalinists and in the present desertion subjected to the pressure of the new-anti Stalinist climate which prevails in the public opinion of the country, the common petty-bourgeois class character of both tendencies is evident. What is involved in the case of both tendencies, one opportunist, the other sectarian, which had superficially assimilated the program and the revolutionary Marxist policy of the International, are impressionist tendencies influenced by the dominant pressure of public opinion.
Both the right-wingers and the present deserters had the characteristic in common of completely turning their backs on the principled analysis made from an international point of view of the situation in order therefore to plunge into an activism which was euphemistically called broad mass work, of distrusting the International, to which they wanted to belong as a distinct national entity but without ever totally and unreservedly fusing with it.
The activist impatience of the right-wingers and their fundamental lack of faith in the correctness of a principled line made the party lose all the real possibilities which existed between 1944-1948 to polarize around itself a high number of elements discontented with the policy of the Stalinist and the Socialist parties. Similarly the political failure of the present deserters in understanding the changes which occurred in the situation since the Korean war, and the extreme irresponsibility of their conduct in the internal struggle in the party and against the International, has caused the party to lose real possibilities of successfully adapting itself to the new situation and of losing a year of work, of patient penetration into the Stalinist movement which would already have transformed the entire physiognomy of our movement here in France, as was the case with our movement in England.
It appears to me that to give primary importance as the cause of our difficulties and the lack of our successes here in France to the lack of a team of stable leadership is the first decisive step in understanding the past as well as in preparing a better future.
Such a leadership will reinforce its stability by basing itself on the one hand on the International, and on the other hand, on the broadening of its proletarian base.
It is possible, admitted and even inevitable, that the national cadres of a given country, despite all their good will, may not succeed in outlining a correct political line through all stages, in easily adjusting themselves to the different turns of the situation, etc. But their intimate, confident and loyal collaboration with the International can enormously facilitate their tasks and save their section from the malignant-type crises which we have known here and which arise above all from the injurious, unsettling role which was played by the confusion and irresponsibility of the leading elements.
Loyal collaboration with the International, confidence in it, is not limited to loyal collaboration or to confidence in this or that comrade of the International. None of us is exempt from political or organizational errors. But fortunately the International is not restricted to this or that person. Through its line, the International expresses the reflection and the collective experience of our International movement which have been proved not once, not twice, but over a long period of years as more correct, more just, more mature, more valid than the line of any section taken by itself.
It is infinitely more probable that this or that section can be wrong than the International as a whole, and this is all the more the case when it involves not secondary questions but important questions, on which all the cadres of the International turn to it with seriousness and responsibility.
Such for example is the meaning of the line of the Third World Congress and the Plenums which have followed — a line which has been approved, after reflection, almost unanimously by the international Trotskyist movement. Whoever doubts that must doubt the reality and the seriousness of the International as a whole.
The first reaction of a leadership is not to oppose the International but to desire very seriously to understand its line and to apply it. If a leadership has not yet reached that understanding of this necessary condition for its own functioning and for the health of its own section, it shows its own immaturity and all the dangers that can develop as a consequence of such a situation.
[p. 61]
The stability of the leadership cannot be assured on the other hand in the long run if it does not succeed in penetrating the living forces of the proletariat of its country and of acquiring a solid base there as a result of patient work over a period of several years.
The very orientation toward such a field of work already shows the political maturity, the really Bolshevik character of the group which leads the organization.
Here in France, the living forces of the proletariat, not only now but for a long time have been constituted by the industrial proletariat of the factories, the mines, and the transportation system which follows the CPF. This is the concrete, indisputable, fundamental reality of the French workers' movement.
A revolutionary Marxist organization which does not want to be converted into a club of infantile agitators, sustained by the illusion of revolutionary activity, has to do the impossible to penetrate this nucleus and to establish a base there even if at the beginning this includes only several dozen real adult proletarian elements, well known in their field of work, and emotionally and mentally stable and serious.
The winning of such a base will soon reflect itself throughout the organization, in its internal atmosphere, in its procedure, in its policy, in its practical conduct.
Theoretically we have always been convinced of this fact. In practice, between 1944-1950 up to the Korean war, we have attempted to penetrate into the genuinely revolutionary forces of the French working class influenced by the Stalinist party, through a preliminary conquest of peripheral elements and currents.
I will not examine here to what degree the routine of this work caused us to deviate in practice from our strategic aim. But since the Korean war, which marks a decisive turn in the international situation, it became more and more evident that the manner of carrying through this absolutely necessary penetration had to radically change.
If the crisis we have gone through since this time in our French organization is not to have merely negative effects, but also a positive balance sheet—as every important struggle in our revolutionary movement against ideas and forces, which, under the pressure of events, try to shake our program and to make it deviate from our revolutionary road —then this should show itself in the concrete comprehension realized for the first time here in France by important numbers of cadres of militants, by the manner of working in the real movement of the masses in the country who have been summoned by the developments of the objective situation to rise to the level of proletarian revolution in the near future.
I am convinced that it is through this present struggle that all the experience acquired up to now by our movement in France will finally crystallize and is now in the process of consolidating a group of leadership as well as a revolutionary Marxist group which is determined to place itself firmly on the terrain of political realities and real revolutionary perspectives, both conditioned by the real evolution of the objective situation.
We will not cease to repeat again and again that the entire tactic set forth by the Third World Congress of the International in the different categories of countries is now conditioned by our fundamental estimation that the international situation is evolving irreversibly within a relatively brief period toward a world war of a given character and within a given relationship of forces.
This evaluation which we were the first to make not only within the ranks of the workers' movement, but even to a certain extent of all political movements no one dares to attack directly any longer.
It is not only our deserters who, despite their desire to the contrary who have found nothing to oppose to this analysis, but more and more this inevitable evolution of the situation becomes clear in the consciousness of all serious political movements and all serious political thought.
The difference between us and all others, including our deserters, is that we do not passively make this observation, we do not dream in the depths of our souls for another possible, more agreeable, easier evolution. But not wanting to lull ourselves with illusions, we attempt to act as of now in consequence of this position and in practice.
That is how we differ from all the centrists in particular who, frightened by the scope and the decisive character of the final struggle which is on its way, are caressing the sweet hopes of another evolution in the bottom of their soul, one which is theoretically possible but denied in practice by the real march of the situation.
Our deserters have raised a veritable hue and cry when the International in advance of the confirmation of events, but basing itself on the evolution of the situation toward war, set forth the general line of the policy which the Soviet bureaucracy and the mass CP's would be obliged to follow. This general line, which is not toward the right but a zigzag, determines the dynamics and the perspective of the Stalinist movement in the countries where it has acquired a mass base.
To try to shake up the leadership of this movement from the outside between now and the outbreak of the war becomes impossible in the new conjuncture, and that is the primary reason which conditions the entrist tactic sui generis (of its own kind) within the ranks of this movement.
The second reason is provided by the observation that this movement will develop revolutionary tendencies, not through the conscious will of its leadership but through the pressure of the situation evolving toward war.
It is in these conditions that we have to seriously, responsibly reflect on the best way to influence the revolutionary process of the working class in all countries, where, today, on the eve of the final struggle, it is encased in large organizations which it will not want to leave before the test.
The question of entrism is posed in life.
The difficulties which we have encountered with this tactic arise from the training of some of our cadres in the previous period of independent struggle to attract and to organize workers around another pole of attraction.
There were among the most intransigeant anti-entrists in England and in France workers who had been the banner-bearers of this tactic, correct in a given period, sectarian in another.
As your discussion conies to a close on the entrist tactic which you will henceforth have to apply in France, it appears necessary for me to once again insist on the following points:
A. Entrism neither destroys nor dissolves the Trotskyist organization, but transforms the terrain and the method of its work.
B. The publicity and propaganda field of our ideas (papers, magazines, pamphlets) as well as that of the revolutionary Marxist education of our members, does not disappear, on the contrary it should be extended.
Wherever we employ the entrist tactic we conceive of it with a parallel effort of still further disseminating the whole of our program, and our ideas, of making them live through various organs, papers, magazines, republication of the works of L. Trotsky, publication of pamphlets, etc. On the other hand, the Marxist revolutionary education of our members becomes more than ever a permanent, essential task. That is what we have been doing for some time in England, and that is what we should do on the same if not a larger scale, in countries where we apply an entrist tactic into the Stalinist movement. It is the task of the independent sectors to assure, to guide and to animate this essential activity.
C. We do not become propagandists of Stalinist ideas and methods, but skillful propagandists of ideas and methods of revolutionary Marxist struggle which, em ployed without the Trotskyist label, but concentrating upon one principal idea each time with the aim of activating the revolutionary maturing of the class without however being isolated from the movement and without being thrown out of it.
I would have this to say on the perspective of this tactic:
Before too long it will qualitatively transform our movement here in France and will give effectiveness to the active, conscious Marxist wing of the mass movement now influenced by the Stalinist leadership. Those of our members who for a certain time were in danger of degenerating because of the absence of an adequate milieu of work to fully develop their capacities, can now, as in England, become a leading cadre of a given sector of this movement.
Those of our comrades who have already begun to act in the spirit of the new tactic in the CGT trade unions, have been able to witness the qualitative change in their work, its effects on their own development when they act under the cover of being militants and cadres of the CGT (and not as militants of a third tendency labeled Trotskyist).
The same possibilities and the same effects for their own development will be concretized for our youth who will act as members of the UJRF (Stalinist youth organization), developing multiple initiatives (for example, organizing this organization themselves wherever it does not exist) and in reality little by little all our members (with a few notable exceptions) will find here and there some form of activity in the movement influenced by the Stalinist leadership.
Thus, after a relatively brief period of putting this tactic into practice, we will see as in England that the turn which we are realizing today, far from signifying a retreat — by the fact that a certain number of our forces in France have for the moment preferred to follow the splitting leaders — will on the contrary mark the most decisive step forward realized up to now by our movement in France.
Before us, in the several years to come, there will open the perspective of the European Socialist Revolution, of the socialist revolution in Germany, in France, in Italy, in England.
This is now the next most probable stage of the development of the proletarian revolution in our time.
It is for this now relatively brief perspective, comrades, that you should prepare yourself as seriously as possible, that is to say, by integrating your self firmly, with enthusiasm, with confidence in the indestructible force of the program and of the ideas which we defend, within the real movement of the masses of your country, the movement which will be the force to evolve toward this revolution.
July 12, 1952