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AS THESE WORDS are being written, workers in France are locking the bosses out of factories in a massive defiance of the authorities unparalleled in Western Europe since World War II. The Minister of the Interior has spoken out against 'anarchy', the Daily Telegraph has reported the appearance of red and black anarchist flags in Paris, and the Daily Mail has described the situation as one of 'open revolt against traditional forms of authority'. At this moment it is impossible to tell whether the end will be a return to 'law and order' brought about by the unleashing of the truncheons, guns and poison gas of the Security Forces on the workers and students, the replacement of the present administration by a more 'liberal' regime (with or without De Gaulle), or a flare-up into open social revolution. But, whatever the outcome, the importance of these events goes far beyond France.
First of all these events have smashed the talk put about by liberal sociologists and Maoists that the workers of the Western World have become too corrupted by increasing prosperity to fight capitalism. Within a fortnight the demands of the students unleashed forces that officially are out of date in the era of the Welfare State. Barricades have been built in Paris, buildings seized, and bosses taken prisoner. Official reaction has been predictable. The brutality of De Gaulle's CRS has been completely naked and unconcealed. This has been brought home to all by the reports in the British press of police clubbing passers-by indiscriminately and dragging the wounded off stretchers to beat them up. No matter how 'liberal or 'progressive' capitalism may seem at a particular time, as soon as it is challenged it reveals itself as ultimately based on naked barbarism.
Looking at the French situation we also see the impotence of the traditional left leadership. The capitalist press, so fond of attributing all opposition as a 'communist plot', is forced to admit that when the students first took to the streets the French Communist Party dismissed them as 'adventurers' (just as the British Communist Party dismissed the organisers of the March 17 Grosvenor Square demonstration). Of course, when the student demonstrations were massive successes, the French Communists were forced to revise their line but in spite of their climbing on the bandwagon the libertarian nature of the movement is evident. No directives are being issued from on high. Instead the students have seized the Paris Odeon for use as a forum to discuss revolutionary strategy freely. The true danger of Communist influence is that it will lead to a repetition of the events of 1936 when French capitalism was shaken by another wave of stay-in strikes and the French Communists diverted the militancy into support of the liberal 'Popular Front' whose compromises so demoralised the French workers that it was an easy thing for Fascism to triumph in 1940. Today this is a similar threat. Moscow is currently for 'peaceful co- existence' and would be greatly embarrassed by the participation of Communists in a social revolutionary movement in France particularly in view of the friendly relations between Russia and the Gaullist regime. But, sell-out or no sell-out, the French workers and students have demonstrated the insecurity of the system which we fight. All over the Western world a new revolutionary movement is being built. In Germany the SDS is the only real opposition to the coalition. In Poland demonstrations have shaken the Gomulka regime. In the USA the government arms itself for war in the cities this summer. And in Britain events such as the Grosvenor Square demonstration have shown that the potential for a similar movement exists. Soon, perhaps, it may be Wilson's turn to tremble. ROGER SANDELL.
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