election defeat is beginning to sink home inside the French Communist Party [PCF]. MARTIN METEXARD reports.
Two days after the second round of the clections, oll 21 March, a statement by the PCF ronncal sureau was Dudisnco in the party daily, L' Humanite. This stated clearly that the PCF "bears no responsibility for the Just Over i week later, of the PCF Central Committee, lines to a meeting of the party's that the Socialist Party (PS) pous ine tun sponsonas SWALLOW Few PCF militants have found it casy to swallow this line whole. At a meeting party: members in the district of Paris, for instance. the speaker thenies of Fiterman's report KELLESTU HIS CE criticisms. growing amusement Quite unexpectedly Africa woke up on the morning of l6 June to a black pupils and students revolt. The issue was the enforced teaching using Afrikaans (South Alrican Dulchi.
Within Lays There enormous marches of black students in Johanbesburg's South Western Townships (So-we-to) and Pretoria. movement snowballed. By June young militants in Cape Town took to the streets.
against NATEL individuals and government Beer halls, slicheens, municipal ing, hones of police and those with opprevan were targets KILLED A remarkable feature of the roune militanes' revol is the high humber of people who were killed by the police and Even conservative estimates agree on the figure of 1000 dead.
The number of people kille:
during 1976 was th 1960. This is because Varsier N In eger-happy chan thai of bis nredecessor Verwoerd.
When Lie Pan African CoDeress in J9) made it cal for blacks to march to their ponce SOLUTE deflance of the pass laws. a great many of those who took part were workers. In those SOCIALIST CHALLENGE 13 April 1978 page 13 The meaning of the left fild The peak lighter penthe parties to thi RESPONSE surprising Jean memher of the colonial brand of the party's France Nouvelle. oint in a short article in 1a defeat', he wroie, 'shouldn't a party examine if something androt application? The PCF Political Bureau excludes this possibility straightaway.
Rony'sarticle was the first in a scries of public criticisms by have been published in the liberal Dourecols Monde or the far left weekly Politiqoe Hebdo. They have surfaced here because the party regime offers no channels extending the discussion be of yond individual party units. 5th PCF leader Cieorges Marchais has predictably the this a campaign of the big bourgeoisie Own television. -800 press But as the dissidents UntE In this instalment of his series on South Africa, SAM MHIONGO compares the 1976 uprising with the protests of 1960 and the Sharpeville massacre. South When news of the shootings at Sharpeville and Cape Town other ghetto area demonstrations swis from wore. The flehr o capital after Sharpeville war surprising considering the mood workers.
The IGNORED In the pupils" and students" revolt of 1976 the workers were not involved from the start The voung militants ignored the workers and only belatediy hrought them in Black workers in Johannesburg and over s0 per cent of Cape Towa's Coloured labour force saved away from work.
The young militante mis Irust of the workere grew bul ol i number of factors. Poltical repression and oppressia Had depraved this generasion of the CUTES CES EAST TREES CESE Many of them are in prison or nave sea the counts This vacuum has been filled Bye back pony cougeon in ciligensin fram the colleges black nationalism are the dominani DEPRIVED The South African Students' Organisation and the Black People's Convention are the representatives par of these trends. Deprived of any interbaniona open up the party press to this Insiead, however, all that L Humanite carries is veiled replies by.
Kony, untamed chis - a ridiculous spectacle which satisities nomain weekly, The demand for real party MADELIC democracy beart of this discussion. In the last three years a series of major policy have carned out withour any prior stralegy 9v-10-19% TELEVISION Thus the proposal to drop the reference to the dictatorship of the proletariar* was first announced television! The same method was adopted leadership decided to support for May 1977.
The last straw came with the caminan, the PCP ranks were seen in no mure than stunned spee tators of the leadership's twists by a00 Turns. hopes of the entire working class were at stake. And when easily assimlated Black Power prilosoplis reseen Winexism was the ideas of Frantz Faron - theraselves a perty bourgeois trend, Fanonism fitted well in The their general scheme off Ching since il dismissed outright the warking class as a force loc social change.
The African working class 1s a privileged class in distinction to the enscable that makes up ibe petty bocrgebisic. Fanon's conclusions naturally have an imerne appeal to the African September pelly bourgeoisie SCIENTIFIC Marxists need to demonatrate to these young multines the elcar distinction between mcco black scientific sociatise.
There were, however, gains power excellence Mantist connections they took on the | Soweto 1976 PCF leaders is indeed at the been the contained.
Throughout evidence of their break Stalinism. intellectuals But this time the THENAT have shattered. the the and in so doing movernent aluence CP has no responsibility' for defeat. doubts could no longer be base itself on the leadership's The PCF leadership claims to parody be quite happy that there i a discussion going on inside the party. Indeed, they cite it as Molina and Yves Vargas, go But as six PCF published - including well philosophers Louis Party.
Althusser and Erienne Balibar bul, austed Insistence that this debate must liberal routinism militants i DE 1976. regulation requiring them to be lorcibly taught in Alrixaans In the urban areas the blacks their car affairs, but because hands of the urhen municipal The Government restated its proposal to allow urban blacks to buy their own houses on a recently also analysis can only lead to the of discussion' Two other dissidents, Gerard further in a reccotly Dialogue Inside ibe French Communist They argue that Stalinist routinism has been by pelly-bourgeois This rubbish was put out by the Communist-becked Worker Commissions in Salamarca.
challenge control over their leaders. The only difference is that now Marchais and Co. bow lo bourgeois public орінов' instead of to Moscow FUTURE Molina and Vargas point out that revolstionary democracy is the freedom of militants to discuss future, bourgeois democracy is only Ene trodom to discuss BIE What more and more the right not simply to discuss hut to decide the party's pollcy Forrbis time it is not a case of a few isolated intellectuals Many of those who have publicly expressed their oppo sition are members of PC Tederal"
LILI committees, Leaders of preLONELY class Tederations such as the North and Meurthe-et-Moselle have criticised the crude workerism' of the party's clection campaign.
ECHO In any case, the debate is only now beginning A sustained campaign for revolutionary polifics can find an increasing echo inside the PCF as the leadership tries to CONCIL tracks. Already an opposition ситгелі the Max -Pierrat collective", has proposed debate with the Trotskyist LCX in the latter's paper, Ronge Such discussions, with the struggle against the governmen! s austerits measures wil be decisive in shaping the Tuture of working class politics in 1978 Co. DO Doll Saran