The following article explains more fully the LCR's proposals for an alternative in the March elections and beyond and the sort of campaign it is waging. • almost like a liberation. Today the parties that won in 1981 seem headed What alternative for for defeat in the midst of resignation, and passivity on the part of working people and aggressiveness and a new radicalism on the part of working people?
The Communist Party, which hoped to escape from its traditional ghetto by its alliance with the social democrats and a role in government, finds itself confined to a smaller space than ever. Its supreme ambition seems to be not to fall below 10 per cent of the vote, about half its traditional share, in particular not to fall below the vote of the ultrafascist-like National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, which might get about 10 per cent. To try to hold its vote the CP has failen back on its old methods of bluff and sectarianism.
The Socialist Party's supreme ambition, on the other hand, seems to be just to get a big enough vote to force the bourgeois parties to bargain with it.
"In fact all the big parties are only concerned about the post-1986 period," Alain Krivine wrote in Rouge, No. 1189, the paper of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR - French section of the Fourth International).
"The only debates that interest the Socialist Party leadership are 'cohabitation' (the coexistence of a right-wing parliamentary majority and a socialist president), participation in
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986
FRANCIS SITEL
At its Sixth Congress, the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR, French section of the Fourth International) decided to make a unity proposal to organizations, activists and working people posing the problem of developing an alterclass-collaborationist policy of the Socialist and Communist
In order to lend added weight to this initiative, the LCR made public its congress discussions, in the conviction that they would be of interest to many other forces. austerity, against a capitalist Europe, which it organized in May 1984 in Le Bourget [just outside Paris], to organizations desiring to discuss the issues facing
This approach was subsequently further concretized in the appeals for "assembling a united anticapitalist force."
What were the bases of this initiative? First of all, there was the assessment that while the situation is still unfavourable, it is at least generating a recomposition in the workers' movement. The crisis in the workers' movement has not yet provoked more than a limited fightback, mobilizations in particular remaining weak. So, what the LCR should do is not fall back on itself but confront this crisis, involve itself in the processes that are underway and try to offer a perspective.
The real objectives of this exercise, therefore, are to make links with Communist and Socialist party activists disoriented by the crises of their leaderships, with trade unionists who reject class collaboration and with far-left activists who have drawn the balance sheet of their past orientations and are determined not to fall back into passivity. More than this, our goal is to build links with all those who are drawing the lessons of the present experience and are seeking ways to continue the struggle.
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government
LCR activists are finding and working with such potential fellow fighters every day in the unions, in the mass movement - for example, in the women's movement and the antiracist movement - and in mobilizations, such as those in support of the Kanak people's struggle.
The difficulties we face in giving a general political expression to all these convergences are related the general climate of disorientation and especially to the lack of big mobilizations around the basic social questions. Only mobilizations on such issues could bring to a head the present crisis in the workers' movement and pose the question "on a grand scale" of a political and organizational alternative.
However, since it is not enough just to wait for this to happen and it being necessary to act today to prepare the way for the future, the LCR has tried to pinpoint what concrete proposals could be made to facilitate the unity and the recomposition of the forces to the left of the reformist left. It was necessary to look for practical tests to clarify what is possible.
Therefore, long before the elections came to dominate the horizon, the LCR was striving to promote the formation of united collectives in the cities, directed toward grouping together activists and working people who wanted to discuss and work together. These collectives were to be focuses for debating the lessons to be drawn from the experience of the reformist left in government and the perspectives to be put forward. They were to be centers for action and the main issues of the day - the fight against austerity and unemployment, the struggle against racism, international solidarity, the defense anticapitalist policies. About 60 collectives exist.
For the March 1986 elections, the LCR proposed the formation a broad electoral coalition, extending from the LCR and Lutte Ouvriere (LO, a group that identifies with Trotskyism and focusses on lectives that existed were not a strong enough grassroots base for mobilizing forces to put over such a perspective. tional presence, sectarianism, narroworganizations, and real political differences blocked the sort of convergence that would have made it possible to present a united front
For example, the Green party, which hopes to polarize the envir-
This disoriented organizations Gauche Alternative (FGA Parti pour une muniste (PAC, the former Communist Party - Marxist Leninist), and the Parti Socialiste Unifie (PSU), which were anxious to get a for a Green Alternative." Thus, it kept them from entering into a dialogue on the national level with the LCR.
Moreover, LO [which has been a close ally of the LCR] not only refused to join in this fight for unity with the LCR but used its disagreements with this initiative as a pretext for rejecting an electoral agreement was possible, and in fact had been reached in many preceding
As for the International Communist which also identifies with Trotksyism), it engaged in a project of its own,
Party (MPPT). It showed no interest whatever in any move to forces. It continued to make sacrifices to its household sectarianism and manipulation.
In March 1986, the far left, therefore, is going to offer a lamentable spectacle of greater than ever division, sible for the great majority of workers. When the workers are drawing balance sheet of the failure of the left government, they are going to have to sort out appeals for votes from competing slates put up by LO, the MPPT, the Greens or various "alternative" slates.
Such a situation cannot be explained only by the sectarianism or irresponsibility result of a general crisis of from it - spared the far left. This is why it was essential to put forward a clear policy that could offer perdisorientation. no way be done in a sectarian way. It was necessary to demonstrate desire for unity, which was the only thing that would convince activists and workers plagued by discouragement that it was possible to fight and to get out of the present ruts.
This is what the LCR has done and what it will continue to do throughout the election campaign.
The LCR is campaigning in around 40 departments [out of around 100, including those overseas], with more than 23 million voters. Despite everything the campaign has borne fruit. In around half of these departments, the LCR is running on united slates or slates put up by local collectives, or on the basis of accords with other Democratique Bretonne, nationalist group; the PSU; the FGA; the PAC and some local environning a common slate with LO in the Maine-et-Loire department.
Moreover, the LCR is running in the most important departments possible to form united slates. This will give the organization a national presence in these elections. (The LCR slates for the legislative elections are made up 50 per cent of men and 50 per cent of women. The average age of the candidates is 34. The over whelming majority of them are wage workers in industry, the public services and commerce. Four of the slates are in the Paris region and 16 are in the
Thus, the LCR is putting up a fight on a considerable scale.
and-file work in the factories)
environmentalists, to campaign the on some key issues
- opposition to the return of the right to power, opposition to the class-collaborationist
La droite and austerity policy of the Socialist and Communist parties, support for into a perspective demands that fit of breaking with capitalism.
Such a coalition, if it had been possible to put it together, would have offered a real alternative to the repelled by the policy of workers the Communist and Socialist parties.
But this, unfortunately, could not
ICUE COMMUNIS be done.
In the first place, the united col-
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"Another voice for March 1986"
пойде.
ICR
EVOLUTIONNAIRE
"The right means the end" — see Red
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986
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voix pour me autre mars 86 une vrair gauche un bon gauche. La riposte- cest le K.O. Voyez, 4
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CHAD between blitzkriegs the military conducted by Mitterrand, as well as by Giscard and de Gaulle before him, stopped
France has never being involved in Chad. From 1961 to 1965, the French army directly administered the northem provinces, while the southern ones were "governed" by the dictator Tombalbaye, who was kept in his presidential chair by Paris.
Ever since, France has never stopped playing a behind-the-scenes role in the various regimes. It remained
THE SENDING of yet another French expeditionary force to Chad has become closely intertwined with the campaign for the March
16 parliamentary elections. On the one hand, it points up the fact that the "left" government has continued to pursue France's traditional imperialist policies. On the other, it has been interpreted as a show of force to reassure the right that the socialist government can be as "tough" as a right-wing one. The following articles indicate the response of the French section of the Fourth International to this new imperialist adventure and the way that it has linked the issue to its own campaign for the parliamentary elections on March
16. They are from the February 10 issue of Rouge, the paper of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR).
CLAUDE GABRIEL
For the fourth time since 1968, the French army has intervened in a conflict that has been going on for
26 years, ever since Chad became independent. Over this period configuration of forces combat has shifted as factions broke up or made alliances according to the circumstances. France has also shifted its support around. It has allied itself with various forces. But one thing is certain: over a quarter of a century, the French have remained constantly involved in Chad.
In this respect, French president
Francois Mitterrand's policy is similar in all points to those of his predecessors. It is all fancy footwork and interference in Chad. In 1981, the
Socialists supported the Transitional over to Hissene Habre when he overthrew Goukouni on June
Then in August 1983, in response to an appeal from Habre, the
French army intervened against
GUNT, which was fighting in the northern part of the country.
This intervention, Operation Manta, led finally to the partition country. To the north of the famous red line, which roughly follows the
15th parallel, was desert, palm groves, and the domain of the GUNT and its
Libyan allies. To the south lay the
"useful part" of Chad, the cottongrowing area, which was occupied by the French army.
The year 1984 was marked by the
Mitterrand-Qadhafi meeting.
An
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986 agreement for withdrawal by both sides was concluded. The French expeditionary force retreated over the southern border of the country to the Bangui base in the Central African Republic. For a moment the guns were still.
The new French operation that has just been launched seems to be connected to renewed fighting initiated by the GUNT, aided by the Qadhafi regime.
Does this mean that it was "green imperialism" (1), the Libyan danger, that prompted this action by Paris? France certainly does not want to see "the Guide" [Qadhafi] operating in its former colonial possessions. Above all, the government has to reassure its allies, such as Zaire, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. But that is not the fundamental reason for the French interventions.
First of all, it must be said that
O Miles 200 LIBYA CHADY
CHAD SUDAN MIGER assaguer Ndjamen
NIGERIA undou • Sar /CAMEROO CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC enmeshed in the country's economic machinery, and has kept on training the official Chadian army.
Thus, for 25 years, French imperialism has been holding up a semblance of a Chadian state apparatus. In its present juridical form, this state is an arbitrary construction. It provides a legal framework for controlling a vast buffer zone between Central Africa, West Africa, and North Africa. It is a totally different thing from a national state developing out of the history of the peoples living in the territory themselves. Southern regions, and in many cases within these regions themselves, the economic and cultural disparities are immense. The colonialists were never able to unify these lands. a centralizing state in this country, colonial institutions, as well as the borders established
Recognizing the illegitimacy of the central government in Chad would imply recognizing the illegitimacy of all the other corrupt and repressive regimes that maintain themselves only by their capacity to centralize states by force. French imperialism cannot take such a risk. The contending factions
At the same time, this hope, which is as vain as it is reactionary, that a centralizing state can be established, has brought about the imbroglio in Chad and continues to aggravate it.
The successive regimes have all proved incapable of unifying the territory. The three major military expeditions carried out up until now have all left behind a still greater fragmentation of the contending factions. Far from sticking the pieces
Green is the color of Islam, of when rech Qadhafi claims to be a paladin. The Book, " a list of quotations from Qadhafi, is the Tripoli regime s equivalent of Mao's "Little Red Book.
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