Communism
in France
Socialisme ou Barbarie, ICO and Echanges
The split of Socialisme ou Barbarie in 1958 was about
organization. After the de Gaulle coup d'etat in May 58, there was an
influx of members into S ou B. These are mainly students fighting
against the Algerian war because of the draft. The number of members
jumped up suddenly from less than 20 to more than 100. The problems
of organization that had previously been discussed almost constantly
became a practical problem and not simply theoretical speculation in
a narrow circle. This problem was closely connected to a political
analysis with two contradictory positions (this opposition never
appeared publicly in the review, but could be seen in the internal
bulletins): on one hand a majority followed, for a short period,
Chaulieu (Cornelius Castoriadis) in foreseeing a workers' revolt
against the "fascism" of de Gaulle; on the other hand the minority
said that de Gaulle was there to solve the problems of French
capitalism and to end the Algerian war.
Two months later, Chaulieu adopted this position but, on the way
he managed to push the minority out of the group using the army of
new recruits who wanted "to fight" to build the new organization in
traditional structures, thinking that, at last it would be the basis
for a new development of the group. We can see that the "wrong"
analysis manipulating the "mass" was then paving the road to the
party. The two proposed structures were not compatible:
- the majority following Chaulieu wanted to create cells which
would meet from time to time in a general assembly to define the
group's policy and to elect a political board which would have the
function to implement the adopted policy. The members would have had
to defend the position of the majority in public and to follow it
even if they disagreed. Disagreements would have to be contained
inside the group as a whole or in the cells.
- the minority wanted to promote autonomous workers cells where
all problems would be discussed, even the general line discussed in
general assemblies. Everybody could express his own ideas at any
moment and through any means. It should be said that neither the
majority nor minority followed what they were looking for on paper.
Socialisme ou Barbarie was active up to the end of the Algerian
war (1962) and then started a slow decline. This decline began after
the split of Pouvoir Ouvrier, when Chaulieu openly dropped Marxism,
and the group disappeared in 1967 after a totally wrong political
statement on the impossibility of a general movement in France.
The ILO was formed with the members that had been obliged to leave
Socialisme ou Barbarie, (mainly students and intellectuals). In order
to follow their ideas, they organized regular workers' meetings with
workers who had a militant extra syndicalist practice in their work
place. Initially these meetings were called the "Inter-factory
Committee." Little by little these meetings became more important
than the ILO meetings and in 1962 the ILO group disappeared and the
other committee was transformed into the ICO. The structure of the
ICO was a practical structure rather than a political or theoretical
structure. In a certain way it was what the ILO dreamed of building
when it split from Socialisme ou Barbarie: Most of the participants
of the regular meetings were informal militants of informal factory
groups. The ICO paper reported the situation and struggles in each
factory according to the regular meeting reports and there was a kind
of consensus around autonomous activity rather than a political
statement. Participants were from various origins, anarchists,
Marxists, or non- aligned militants, but linked by a strong feeling
about class struggle. Interest in other struggles in France and
abroad developed with more contacts, and from time to time in more
general discussions, but the group, though slowly growing, stayed
small up until 1968. In 1968 a lot of people, again mostly students,
became connected with the ICO. The ICO became a kind of federation of
small groups scattered all over the country. During the 15-day May
General Strike, everybody was strongly involved in the struggle at
his place of work and everybody then agreed not to act like a group
"organizing the workers" but to encourage autonomy wherever he
was.
After 1968, the character of the ICO had completely changed. The
group had become more of a political organization with perhaps
several hundred loose participants. The workers were a minority and
voted with their feet as the discussions were moving very far from
their struggles. Several tendencies were fighting to lead the ICO
toward a specific orientation and after four years it burst into
several pieces.
One of these pieces was Echanges. It was again different of what
we had seen previously. Echanges was built to try and maintain the
close international links created during the previous period in
several European countries (mainly through international meetings).
This was the reason why from the start Echanges had an edition in
English and was based more on England rather than France, and more on
individuals in each country connected with, an informal circle of
supporters. Now after more than twenty years Echanges is more
centered on France, with a small group meeting regularly mainly to
discuss politics in general, struggles and the content of the
bulletin. Two years ago, on the proposal of an American comrade we
started a short news bulletin which appears every two months, with a
print run of up to 3000 copies. It is distributed free and seems to
be the start of a new basis of relations again all over the country.
The experience of the past twenty years has taught us practically
what some theoretical discussions had put on the table: there is
presently no room for the kind of traditional organization for which
many people are still looking. For the time going "organization" is
more a kind of network in which everybody, or some affective groups,
defines at any moment their participation in a struggle or in a
publishing activity and the connection between others doing the same
thing. We don't think or don't know if it will be a permanent thing
and if something else will appear. We think that in this important
question, we have to follow ( knowing exactly what we don't want as
workers), but not to precede, to learn and to tell what we have
understood and not to teach.
HS
1/98
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