(The following article has been translated from ROUGE (Red), a "journal of Communist Action", appearing in Paris.
According to LE MONDE, the 12-page newspaper, which appears twice a month, has a circulation of about 25,000 copies.
"It was founded", according to LE MONDE, "by a group of militants who took an active part in the May events, particularly those who belonged to the former Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire, a movement dissolved by the decree of June 13. Its aim, according to those publishing it, is "to rally the layer of militants who mobilised in May to the left of the Communist Party" in order "to create a revolutionary organisation."
A subscription to ROUGE costs 25 francs a year (37/6), and it is distributed in Britain by Pioneer Book Service of 8, Toynbee St., London E1 - individual copies may be bought for 1/10 p.p.
The author, Alain Krivine, a leader of the former Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire, was released from prison, where he had been held by the de Gaulle regime in reprisal for his outstanding role in the May-June events, only to be drafted almost immediately into the Army. [His trial on the] trumped-up charge is still pending.)
Throughout the summer, the right-wing press, getting its tips from the Government, waged a systematic witch-hunt campaign. The grouplets are everywhere, the JCR (Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire) above all. Practising the nefarious tactic of "entrism", it is insinuating itself [illegible] organisations, [illegible] vacation camps in Corsica [illegible]. Not to mention the CVN (Comite National Vietnam - National Vietnam Committee) camp in Cuba where 500 youth were being trained in the use of arms to the great indignation of Baumel- [illegible].
This campaign has a purpose - to make repression a recognised, self-justifying feature of society, to create a climate of all-embracing repression against the conspirators. Because the bourgeoisie was afraid in May, it felt its power tottering. Before May, it was unaware of the vanguard groups or it underestimated them. Now it overestimates them; it sees their hand in everything.
But from one standpoint, if it overestimates their present strength, it is not overestimating the potential danger they represent as a force which threatens the machinery of integration into bourgeois society and which rejects the parliamentary dialogue by which the bourgeois government and the bureaucracy communicate smoothly. For the bourgeoisie, repression is a rational need, which on this occasion has taken on a fury that is a measure of the fears, the humiliations, and the powerlessness it experienced in May.
Some are trying now to distinguish "tendencies" in the government - a liberal tendency represented by Edgar Faure and a "cop" tendency represented by Marcellin*. In fact, the policies of these two differ only in their assessment of the balance of forces. Edgar Faure understands that starting in with fists clenched could set off a resurgence of the student mobilisation of May. Offering his hand first, he hopes that the reformists, or the "serious students", who see "participation" (a demagogic Gaullist slogan pledging involvement of the students and workers in running the country) as a continuation of May, will take it. Once the "incorrigible wildmen" are isolated, Edgar-the-liberal will turn over the reins to Marcellin-the-club; it's a scientific division of labour.
As for us, while we try to exploit any margin of maneouvre offered by divisions of this sort, we consider that all revolutionists worthy of the name are constantly menaced by bourgeois society because they are constantly in conflict with it. It is fine to take full advantage of periods of legality but there should be no illusions about their durability. They are truces, not a normal situation to get used to. This legality will last only as long as no one threatens the established order. The respectable left, including the CP, is trying to obliterate this lesson. But we must revive the consciousness of the temporary nature of this situation.
We must prepare ourselves for repression but not by turning inward, by practising an ostrich-like policy. To the contrary, in OPPOSITION TO THE OFFICIAL REPRESSION of the police, vanguard militants [illegible] the mass movement, IN OPPOSITION TO THE PRO-GOVERNMENT REPRESSION of the secret police and the CDR's (Comites de Defence de la Republique - Committees for the Defence of the Republic - Gaullist and fascist bands) they must develop mass SELF-DEFENCE.
The economic situation of French capitalism will not be catastrophic in the coming months. The buying power inherited from May is stimulating demand. And since the capitalists took advantage of the aborted crisis to make their readjustments, a period of economic expansion is in the offing for the immediate future.
But the effect of price increases for such things as cigarettes, railway fares, gas, electricity, food can be out of proportion to their real economic importance. The workers went back to work in perplexity after May, disillusioned but not crushed. Naturally they are not ready for a general strike every two months. But they realise that the bourgeoisie is trying to take back what it had to concede through a speed-up and price increases, and they feel swindled and cheated. Since the wage increases were proportionally larger for low-wage workers than for the well-paid, there may be sharp struggles in sectors like chemicals or metals.
In this connection, the student movement's capacity to block the government's policy in the universities is important. Of course, I do not think that the student movement can play the role of detonator as it did in [May]. However, the [illegible] workers - those who hope [illegible] since the "republican resurgence" Waldeck Rochet called for in the elections did not come off - will keep their eyes on the movement which was out in front in May: the student movement.
If the students accept Edgar Faure's "participation," if instead of deepening the [gains] they won in May they capitulate to the repression that would be a blow to the movement as a whole, a blow to the morale of the workers. But if the students block the government's plans for the new school year, reject a return to the [illegible] and preserve the spirit of May, they [will give] new hope to the movement as a whole.
The student movement's first task is [to BLOCK THE] GOVERNMENT ON THE UNIVERSITY FRONT, and [the succ]ess of this depends partly on us.
But the students must not stay on the [campus]; they must explain the meaning of their [struggle] in the neighbourhoods and the factories. They must show that the workers and students are in the fight together against "participation." They must expose the other face of "participation." THEY MUST SUPPORT AND PUBLICISE ALL STRUGGLES OPENED UP BY THE WORKING CLASS.
After May the students cannot any longer go out to fight alone; that would mean trapping the movement in the same impotence. The first task of the moment is to RALLY THE EXISTING WORKERS VANGUARD, which appeared in May both inside and outside the unions and the CP. With the Czechoslovak crisis aggravating the post-election malaise of the CP, it is possible today through attractive slogans and a militant style to draw together the nucleus of a workers vanguard.
The arena of this regroupment must be the Action Committees [that grew up among] the youth in movements such as the Mouvements Universitaires pour la Reforme (University Reform Movements) and the Conseil Etudiant de France [illegible] (Student Council of France) and the Union [Nationale des] Etudiants en Medecine (Medical [Students' Union]) [illegible] REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY AND HIGH-SCHOOL [MASSES] based on the Comites d'Action Lyceens (High-School Action Committees), the Comites d'Action Enseignement Technique (Technical High-School Committees), UNEF (Union Nationale des Etudiants Francais - French National Student Union), and the student Action Committees. The best guarantee against any danger of a fascist development is to organise the youth.
[illegible] class strata, and the diversification of areas of work can achieve this. [The] most conscious workers are coming in search of something different from a rehash of the CGT's economic themes, where they hope to find political underpinnings for their action [illegible]. Only more varied social composition [illegible].
The goal this vanguard must set itself is to formulate transitional slogans, to bring the transitional programme up to date. Such slogans were cruelly lacking in May. The only thing the militants knew how to do was repeat the list of CGT demands in a different order or to reaffirm their fidelity to socialism. [illegible] Committees or factory strike committees created embryonic organs of dual [power] [illegible] trade-union action - [illegible] going on the minimum programme to [maximum] programme and vice versa, WITHOUT TRANSITIONAL DEMANDS WHICH WOULD EDUCATE THE MASSES AND MEET THEIR ASPIRATIONS.
To set long-term perspectives, it is also necessary to develop the means for carrying them through, for keeping them from being diverted, for imposing them by a favourable balance of forces. In order to achieve this, the vanguard must be strengthened, educated, and rid of its [illegible] opportunism and its petit-bourgeois habits which are bound up as much with its field of work as its particular social origins. But these faults cannot be eliminated simply by willing it [illegible].
This slow, patient, stubborn work is the fundamental task. But parallel to this, we must counter all the attempts by the Government, the reactionaries, and apolitical types to organise [illegible].
The militants above all must not turn inward in the work of developing this transitional programme. For the themes selected to have any value, the masses must identify with them, become imbued with them, make them theirs. To accomplish this, the vanguard militants must set in motion a vast programme of research into the concrete conditions of the exploitation of the workers, promote collective formulation of slogans, urge that they be tested in practice. This must be done so that at the next crisis, enriched by this preparatory work, the spontaneity of the masses will be on a still higher level than it was in May.
* Appointed Minister of the Interior on May 30, [1968].