THE QUESTION OF POWER IS POSED
The explosion of the students’ anger against the situation which created them played a role in triggering the current movement. The great day of 13 May, organised by the unions to show their solidarity towards the students and to demand satisfaction of their claims, allowed workers to demonstrate the strength of their unity. The struggle has since widened day by day, and calls into question two policies: that of the business owners and that of the Gaullist government – which are inextricably linked.
The Gaullist regime has been characterised from 1958 to be one of state monopoly capitalism which “combines the power of monopolies and the state into a single mechanism to save the capitalist system, to maximise the profits of the imperialist bourgeoisie, for the exploitation of the working class and the looting of large sections of the nation “(Declaration of 81 Communist and Workers Parties – 1961).
Such a system creates the objective conditions of its own extinction by requiring every strata of the nation, the victims of its policy, to unite to bring it down. The battle must be made on two fronts: in the businesses by a struggle for worker’s claims, and across the whole country by the political struggle of all the democratic forces. The leading role therefore belongs to the working class organised into unions which alone can challenge the foundations of capitalism, that is to say exploitation.
An outcome consistent with the interests of the masses can only be discovered in a profound change in society: the elimination of the power of the huge monopolies and the establishment of a democratic regime. The problem of the unity of the Left is posed: the parties of the Left and the unions that objectively represent the working and middle classes must unite on a common program of government that embodies the claims of different classes of French people currently engage in the struggle. Without this unity, there is no possibility of democracy, only that of a reactionary regime.
This common program of government must give emphasis to nationalisation. Indeed nationalisation is the indispensable means by which democratic power can effectively exercise the control of real economic power, that is to say, modern mass production.
The Communist Party emphatically reiterates its proposals to the F.G.D.S. and other democratic forces for the establishment of a socially progressive joint program. The conquest of the State by democratic forces not only deals a blow to the political domination of monopolies, but also leads to a basic change in the economic relations in society: the monopolies will no longer have access to the intervention of the State, which is currently essential for the maintenance of their profits. This is why the question of power of the State is essential.
This rise to power of the democratic forces can only be achieved by the development of struggles throughout the whole country, in an expansion of the students’ struggle.
Developing these struggles can only be done on substantial bases, that is to say in a programme of protest specific to each class of the French people who suffer under Gaullist policy. The convergence of all these struggles will be powerful enough to force the defeat of the regime of the monopolies. The democratic regime, will thus be established, along with the inevitable revolutionary process of the institution of socialism; that is to say : the end of capitalist exploitation.
Union of Communist Students
May 21
Documents from May 1968 