the Franco dictatorship. Nor did the working class return to passivity after 1968. But in terms of the overall political situation it was ridiculous to make a comparison to the inter-war period or to revolution.
In the famous formula of Lenin for revolution to take place it is 'not enough tor une explorea ana oppressca diasses lo realise the impossibility of living in the old way, for a revolution it is essential that 'the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. Not simply was the working class in Western Europe after 1968 not engaged in revolutionary struggles comparable to the inter-war struggles but the situation was not revolutionary.
In the inter-war period the ruling classes had literally been unable to carry on in the old way. The revolutions in Germany, Hungary, and Austria led to the collapse of the German monarchy and the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The crisis in 1929-33 led to the destruction of the Weimar republic and the victory of fascism. In the 1930s first the monarchy then bourgeois collapsed in Spain to be followed by the triumph of fascism. In France the growth of the right in the early 1930s was followed first by the Popular Front and then by the effective collapse these events was the dislocation of economic production in 1917-21 in Cenral Europe, and then economic collaps ifter 1929 throughout Europ No such events took place in Europe after 1968. There was economic recession, but it is ridiculous to compare it to the immense breakdown of either politics or the productive system in 1917-21 or after 1929. The ruling class was able to go on in the old wav. in the sense ot not tacing ni her a collapse in its power or a collar s economv conoarasie to me Period. What the bourgeoisie to do was to adjust the mechanisms by which it ruled.
Here it is worth noting, again that, even if it had wished, the methods open to the bourgeoisie in the 1970s were no longer comparable to those of the interwar period. The economic recession from the mid-1970s placed on the bourgeoisie the necessity to increase profits. But the economic and social formulas open to enable it to achieve this were very different to the 1920s or 1930s. bourgeoisie had mobilised the mass inter-war petty-bourgeoisie oisie the tooth the pette - both the bourgeoisie BUC peasants and rural petty-bourgeoisie -for a direct assault to smash the workers movement by violence. This was the political formula of fascism.
Such a social formula is impossible today. The mass reactionary peasant vote that sustained Hitler even in his periods of isolation in the 1920s, or which provided the base of Mussolini or the French right of the early 1930s, simply doesn't exist anymore. It was destroyed by the post-war boom. Even the urban petty-bourgeoisie has declined significantly. Quite different tactics are required by the bourgeoisie today than old style fascism.
In a sense the policies of the West European bourgeoisies in the 1970s and 1980s are modelled more on those of the British ruling class during the 1930s than of fascism. This is no accident as the British was itself a ruling class in a coun try in which the petty-bourgeoisie had declined too far for a fascist solution to be viable.
CONTINUON
LA GREV LE APITA MEURT Continue the strike, capitalism is dying The British bourgeoisie in the 1930s had, above all, sought to split the working class. Although the 1930s are remembered as a period of desperate poverty and unemployment the truth is that this was true only for one section of the working class. For many the 1930s in Britain were a period of prosperity. Real wages for those in work grew rapidly, new industries were created in the south, house building and motor car building booms took place, Britain benefitted from a sharp turn in the international terms of trade against the colonial countries. The working class was completely split with radicalisation among a minoritv but with the Conservative Par Eyelative unity of the working class tes. picking up its largest ever votes. only recreated in 1945 and in the post-war boom - from which all sections of the working class gained to differing degrees.
When the economic recession began in the mid-1970s the bourgeoisies in Western Europe, following the contemporary model of Japan and the United States, began a job of splitting the work ng class. Their instrument was the 'dua society' - the creation of a core of still secure, well paid, white, and chiefly male, workers surrounded by a periphery of low paid, unskilled, insecure, frequently black, workers whose conditions rapidly deteriorated. Outside even these lav the widening pool of the unemployed. It is Into unis sucture matue radicausabot of the left, the growth of the extreme right, and the victories of right wing social democracy such as Mitterrand al fit.
Taking first the development of right wing social democracy, its base is both these overall social changes and, more specifically, the crucial change in the relations between the United States and Western Europe which took place after 1968.
The changing economic relation of the US to Western Europe, the fact that it was no longer subsidising but striking blows against its European allies, broke the back of the pro-American currents in the European Socialist Parties. Nowhere was that clearer than in France. The old French socialist party was on the verge of extinction by 1969 - gaining only five per cent of the vote in the presidential election of that year. Only a rapid turn by the party in the early 1970s under Mitterrand revived the party.
In France, as elswhere in Western Europe, the right wing of the socialist parties began to adopt a new rhetoric — pro-EEC, pro-austerity, in some cases demagogically anti-American. The current what became right 'Eurosocialism' — Mitterrand in France, Gonzales in Spain, Craxi in Italy developed from this. The right wing of the European social democracy now saw its saviour not in the United States but in the EEC — a course advocated in Britain today by Stuart Holland, Frances Morrell and, increasingly, Neil Kinnock. Mitterrand, with his pro-European armaments, pro-European austerity, pro-EEC stance is a perfect example of this current. This right wing social democracy is today the most powerful current in the workers movement in Europe.
In this policy social democracy is even more successful, in certain countries, than the traditional bourgeois parties. The EEC means the untrammelled supremacy of big capital. It means eroding the power of localised small capital and farmers - the traditional base of the national bourgeois parties. In most European countries, therefore, the capitalist parties have split into strongly pro-EEC currents and those pursuing a more 'national' orientation. In West Germany this split lies between the strongly pro-EEC Free Democratic Party (FDP), passing through the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Kohl, to the Christian Social Union (CSU) of Franz Josef Strauss. In France, where national 'Gaullist' currents have been strong historically, it has created a particular split between the forces of Giscard d'Estaing/Barre (UDF), Chirac (Gaullist), and now Le Pen. Equally in Spain the bourgeois parties have remained divided and weak.
In such situations the right wing social democracy, with its firm pro-EEC oriention apa bulk be cohesion stability for bourgeoisie. In France the government of Mitterrand, with its policy of economic austerity, its nuclear build up, and its Shoring up the system firm support for the siting of Cruise Missiles in Europe, has been the best possible government for the French bourgeoisie.
The social bloc represented by such a current is also clear. It fits directly into the dual society. It is an alliance of the best off sections of the working class — of the employed workers, of the skilled, of those in the core, of those least touch ed by the austerity - with big capital. For capital it is an attempt to create a real European capitalist competitor to the United States.
The development of both the left and the right in Western Europe fits into this framework. Because the forces which are excluded from this right wing social Put your head in and see our programme: UDR (de Gaulle's party) democratic bloc are precisely the unskill. ed and semi-skilled section of the working class created by the post-war boom -layers that are overwhelmingly women and black. The formula of the right wing social democracy is an alliance of the bureacracy and best off sections of the working class with big capital against the worst off sections of the working class.
In that framework the rise of both the left and of Le Pen is logical. They are the forces pushed outside the orbit of right wing social democracy. The enormous emphasis in the left wing currents on women and black people, as well as ecology and other themes, reflects the social recomposition of the working class since World War II.
But this social development also creates the ambiguity in the situation. On the one hand it creates the space for left wing political developments. But on the other, as Le Pen's vote makes horrifyingly clear, it also creates space for the right.
Le Pen's vote in France includes authentically some of the most deprived and socially depressed sections of the white working class. For example in the traditional Communist strongholds around Paris of Montreuil and St Denis the National Front gained 18 and 20 per cent of the vote respective ly. Le Pen demagogically appealed to sections of the white working class who share the race for increasingly scarce jobs with immigrant workers and who felt, and in reality have been, totally deserted by the traditional workers organisatons Le Pen's is the most advanced political expression of the same process which has seen the rise in racist attacks in Britain and the rise of xenophobia and racism against immigrant workers in West Germany. The combination of right wing social democracy with the rise of both the left and the right is an entirely logical development.
So far in Western Europe the consequences of the crisis, and of right wing Socialist Parties, had been primarily to strengthen the left — the Greens in Germany, the left socialist parties in Denmark, the left in the Labour Party in Britain. But Le Pen's is a very stron reminder that the same social forces cat rise to extreme right wing developents. That it should do so so first in France, with its strong nationalist tradition, its still relatively strong petty bourgeoisie, its strongly nationalist, and declining Communist Party, and its now seven year experience of a right wing Socialist Party in office is entirely logical.
In an article in this month's Marxism Today Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques claim that "The 20th anniversary of 1968 has a strange almost eerie character. It is not like the 10th anniversary in 1978. Then the lines of continuity were still strong. Now, the umbilical cord has been cut. In the West, at least, we are living in a different era.
The events in France show just how wrong is that judgement. Jacques and Hall arrive at that conclusion only because they, ironically like some of the left, continue to regard May 1968 as some far away romanticised vision of the revolunon. It was not. It was a seismi event which unleashed the present political situation in Europe. It is an event whose shadow grows ever longer.
From the barricades errected across the streets of Paris on the night of 10 May 1968 grew not the revolution but, in a sense, something still more powerful. That night the entire political structure of Europe began to change. It is still changing under the impact of the vast force! unleashed by it.
May 1968 was not the revolution. It was not even the 'dress rehearsal' of the revolution. It unleashed social forces which twenty years later are working themselves out with no sign of stopping. If anyone contents themselves simply with the memory it is because they are unable to understand the originality, the uniqueness of what was created - how 1l failed to correspond to the reality of what anyone, or any class, foresaw at the time It corresponded to the great truth of Lenin that reality is "infinitely more complex than forseen by any party.
The real celebration of May 1968 is not just to remember. It is to try to understand what has taken place. Because understanding is to create the firmest basis for action.
And Le Pen's success in France, as well as the left wing developments in other countries, shows how urgent that understanding is.
8 Socialist Action May 1988 THE REVOLUTION began in the which at times assumed rather tense form gle, lacking clarity in theory, but extremeCOR