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Socialists and General de Gaulle
SOCIALISTS ARE OPPOSED to what de Gaulle stands for on principle, because he stands for French capitalism, and Socialists do not support any capitalist faction anywhere or at any time. But the Socialist principle on which we oppose de Gaulle just as imperatively lines us up against the French political parties that oppose de Gaulle, the so-called “Communists” and the minority of the French party misnamed Socialist (its majority supports de Gaulle).
The immediate issue which so bewildered de Gaulle’s opponents of a few weeks ago that many of them ended by voting him into power, was the alleged “defence of democracy.” Faced with a threat of civil war from the rebel generals and French settlers in Algeria and their sympathisers in France, they chose what they thought the lesser evil, making de Gaulle head of the government in the hope that he could and would control the generals. The French Communist Party, which defends the Russian dictatorship and still applauds the bloody suppression of Hungarian workers by Russian troops in 1956, came out hypocritically for the “defence of democracy” against the “Fascist” de Gaulle. We need waste no words on them except to wonder whether their failure to back up their outcry against de Gaulle with something more than words may not have been due to a lurking fear—that perhaps de Gaulle may do a deal with the Russian government behind their backs.
But although the Communist Party did not change its ground while the crisis was on, the French Labourites, the so-called Socialist Party, made themselves ridiculous with a series of somersaults. Starting with a resolution not to support de Gaulle in any circumstances, they followed this with a decision to let the M.P.’s have a free hand either to follow their leader Mollet, who backed de Gaulle, or to vote against him; then another decision a few days later to let them abstain from voting on the question of handing over power to de Gaulle. With Mollet and others of their leaders in de Gaulle’s government the party is split into nearly equal halves; with the likelihood that more will swing over to Mollet.
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Declaration of Principles
This
declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because
it is
also an important
historical document dating from the
formation
of the party
in 1904, its original language has been retained.
Object
The establishment of a system of
society based upon the
common ownership and democratic control of the
means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in
the interest of the whole community.
Declaration of Principles
the socialist Party of Great Britain
holds,
1.
That society as at
present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living
(i.e., land, factories, railways,
etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement
of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
2.
That in society,
therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a
class struggle between those who possess but do not produce and those
who produce but do not possess.
3.
That this antagonism
can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the
domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common
property of society of the means of production and distribution, and
their democratic control by the whole people.
4.
That as in the order
of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its
freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the
emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.
5.
That this
emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6.
That as the machinery
of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to
conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from
the workers, the working class must organize consciously and
politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and
local, in order that
this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an
instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the
overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.
7.
That as all political
parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest
of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all
sections of the master class, the party seeking working class
emancipation must be hostile to every other party.
8.
The Socialist Party of
Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action
determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether
alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of
the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end
that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives
them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to
comfort, privilege to equality, and slaver to freedom.
| Socialist Standard July 2008 | 22 |