(Translation – Fisera 70)
A CALL from the United Socialist Party
Popular anger is mounting continuously among the workers and students. It is starting to appear among the peasants. Everywhere it has the same grounds: the rejection of a capitalist and centralised society, the challenge to the autocratic powers of the government, of the employers and of the big farm owners.
The movement which emerged from the Latin Quarter has come as far as challenging power in today’s society. Action should now spring from the generalisation of occupations in workplaces, and through the adoption of precise slogans on the establishment of real popular powers:
– The students must organise their power in the schools, the faculties and in the grandes écoles.
– The workers must impose their power and that of the trade-union organisations, creating the necessary conditions for exercising this power.
– The peasants must construct collective organisations on a regional basis, and establish the conditions for the production and commercialisation of their products.
All those who no longer accept submission to the laws of a reactionary state ought to take it upon themselves to manage their own affairs. They should set up Popular Action Committees: committees for students and teachers in the universities and schools, workers committees in companies, peasant committees in the countryside, local committees, neighbourhood committees, committees on the large estates, etc.
The PSU calls on its militants, and on all those who have confidence in it, to join existing committees or to speed up their creation where they do not exist. It is in such committees as these that the form of a new society should express itself, through discussion and confrontation, but also through action and the setting up of effective powers
To all those who wish to confine the peoples movement or to limit its aims in order to control it better, to those who think they can answer the overall challenge to capitalist society by simply changing the parliamentary balance or a governmental formula, to those who are still hesitating because they did not believe in the student revolt and had doubts about the student-worker liaison during the struggle, we must in future respond by opening up new prospects for them.
THE PSU PROPOSES
1. WORKERS’ POWER
in addition to the necessary political and trade-union freedoms:
The right to veto decisions made by the bosses concerning employment and working conditions. Discussions of real wages and the length of working hours. Control of the utilisation of profits and investments.
The right of civil servants to negotiate their pay and working conditions with their employer (the state). The creation of Company committees in administration and public establishments.
Management of public companies by state and workers representatives.
The increase of financial shares in national companies and the extension of the public sector by the nationalisation of centres of economic decision-making.
Workers management of social security.
2. PEASANTS’ POWER
For the peasants, represented by their trade unions and co-operatives:
The management of the organs of regional planning and production.
Control of the methods of processing and selling agricultural products.
3. STUDENTS’ POWER
For the students, the main objectives are those of UNEF:
The immediate establishment of real student power in the faculties, with the right to veto any decisions taken.
Dependent on this first point is the autonomy of the universities and faculties.
The struggle for the recognition of the CAL (School Students’ Action Committees) and for their freedom of expression and action
WE MUST DEMAND
1. INFORMATION serving the workers:
The transformation of ORTF into an autonomous public body, independent of the State and democratically controlled.
Nationalisation of the press printing companies delivery services, advertising, by the creation of national boards managed by workers representatives, and by putting the technical information services at the disposal of the various trends of opinion.
2. A CULTURAL POLICY with a socialist character:
a) the transformation of the activity of the Youth Centres and Culture Centres into free debating and creative centres under the management of young workers;
b) the takeover of other sectors of cultural life by writers and artists who have taken a stand against bourgeois culture.
3. A REGIONAL ORGANISATION
To fight underdevelopment and authoritarian centralisation. It is vital that the Popular Acton Committees co-ordinate their actions at a regional level.
Instead of Gaullist government agents, regional authorities controlled by the people should be created, as embryos of assemblies capable of solving the problems of cultural and economic development (education, employment, industrialisation).
The PSU presents these proposals for open debate by the Popular Action Committees
Documents from May 1968 