The year 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 uprising of workers and students in France. In light of the Yellow Vests protest movement shaking France today, and the continued relevance of the lessons of 1968 for anti-capitalist struggles, Struggle–La Lucha is publishing a series of articles written at that time by Sam Marcy, one of the leading Marxist thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. This piece originally appeared in the June 6, 1968, issue of Workers World newspaper.

June 4, 1968: The key question in the French Revolution of 1968 is the role of the leadership of the working class in the unfolding events. All other questions really merge into this one.

As these lines are written, press reports indicate a back-to-work movement of the French workers following President Charles de Gaulle’s ultimatum and his threat to use force.

Nevertheless, all the basic conditions for the success of the revolution still exist. In fact, a more favorable political situation for a proletarian revolution during peacetime could scarcely be hoped for.

It is fully two weeks since the workers began to take over the large plants — which is a long time in a revolutionary situation. Almost all of the economic arteries of French national life are still in the hands of the working class.

De facto power of workers

Despite the admonition to the workers by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) trade union leaders to accept the government’s wage offer; despite Gaullist threats of force and violence, military conspiracy, parliamentary trickery; despite all these factors, the de facto power, as of today, rests squarely in the hands of the working class.

Even at this late date, the much touted back-to-work movement which the capitalist press throughout the world has hailed with so much advance publicity appears to be a trickle against the vast number of strikers.

The fundamental political problem in France concerns the relationship between the general strike and proletarian revolution.

By all accounts, the general strike is the strongest, most widespread and best organized of any in the history of the modern working-class movement. Indeed, it has few parallels.

The great French strikes of 1936 encompassed at most about three million. As of yesterday, it was 10 million and probably more. It exceeds in numbers, depth and revolutionary intensity the only other general strike in Western Europe which brought a country to an almost complete standstill. And that was the British General Strike of 1926.

Although no one doubts the power of the present French General Strike, until just a few days ago it was questioned as to whether it had any revolutionary significance. By now, however, it is almost universally admitted that the strike has posed a revolutionary threat to the regime.

In fact, it has put on the order of the day the proletarian revolution. What is a proletarian revolution? It is a transfer of power from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Is this what is happening in France?

Capitalist state helpless

The New York Worker of June 2 [publication of the Communist Party USA] stated flatly that there were “ten million strikers who held in their hands the actual power of the French Republic, having paralyzed economic life and rendered the state helpless.” The account in the Worker is based on reports from Paris. We quote the Worker because it is a close friend and political ally of the French Communist Party.

If, as the Worker states, “the strikers hold in their hands the actual power of the French Republic and render the present capitalist state helpless,” is this not a proletarian revolution in the making? But even if we were to disregard the conclusions of the Worker, there are literally scores of reports in the capitalist press which substantiate the same conclusions.

For instance, [journalist] Max Lerner, who was in Paris at approximately the same time, states that “the rebellion which was sparked by the students became a revolt when the unions seized the factories, and it became a full-fledged revolution when they decided to turn down the general strike settlement which their own union leaders had reached with the government and other employers.” (New York Post, June 3)

But aside from any and all assertions and analyses, the objective facts speak for themselves — the workers, the farmers, the students are in a state of utter rebellion. The sea of red flags that hang over the factories is clear and unambiguous evidence of a desire not merely for economic change but for proletarian revolution.

The key question relates to the role of the leaders of the working-class organizations. From the very beginning, they were taken completely by surprise when the workers seized the plants.

It is entirely possible that even the most revolutionary leadership could be taken by surprise by a spontaneous revolutionary outburst of the working class such as in France.

Revolutionary or reformist leadership?

But a revolutionary leadership is distinguished from a reformist, bourgeois type in that it would welcome the revolutionary situation and seek to turn it into a full-scale assumption of proletarian power.

Indeed, if the capitalist “state is rendered helpless,” does it not follow as night follows day that the workers should set up their own state, since they already have de facto power in their hands?

Instead, however, the leaders are desperately trying to reduce the struggle to a narrow economic one, and, while seeking some concessions from the government and the employers, they are in reality desperately trying to abandon the revolutionary struggle of the workers for state power.

Parallel with British General Strike

The general strike is often regarded as a mere economic weapon launched for economic objectives and not as a revolutionary struggle aimed at the regime and social system itself. The apologists for the Communist Party-CGT leadership in France are trying hard to draw on the tragic experience of the British General Strike of 1926 to bolster their reformist thesis.

The parallel with the British General Strike is indeed instructive, but it thoroughly refutes their thesis.

In 1926, the British working class tied up the country when three million workers walked off their jobs in protest against a government recommendation which would have cut the wages of the coal miners. As in France today, all dock workers, steel workers, building workers were out. Everything was down — all transportation by rail or bus, all shipping and all newspapers with the exception of those published by the British workers for the workers.

Prime Minister Baldwin and General de Gaulle

Like the de Gaulle-Pompidou government, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill launched a monstrous red-baiting campaign. It did not measurably influence the workers. On the contrary, it strengthened their resistance. Like de Gaulle, Prime Minister Baldwin launched a series of maneuvers, including the calling up of the army reserves, demonstrations of the armed forces in London, followed by a series of arrests.

Nevertheless, the strike continued strong. It was the leadership, fearing for the existence of the capitalist system, that suddenly caved in and surrendered. Thus was ended the most revolutionary initiative of the British workers since the Chartist Movement of 1848.

This is the true lesson of the British General Strike. There has been nothing like it since. But there are important differences between the 1926 strikes and the great French sit-downs in 1936, and the present strike, which clearly shows how much more favorably situated is the present leadership in France than were the British leaders in 1926 or the French in 1936. In Britain there was no revolutionary movement of the students that generally reflected the discontent of vast middle-class elements. Equally important was the absence of a parallel protest movement in the rural areas and towns of Britain, unlike present-day France.

Nevertheless, all historical accounts of the Great General Strike of 1926 by working-class observers put the failure of the strike on the shoulders of the leadership.

The British General Strike came in the midst of a general political awakening of the British working class. There were evident signs that the empire was beginning to crack. According to the ruling class, the way to salvage the empire and save Britain’s position in the world as a great imperialist power was to take it out of the hides of the workers, just the way de Gaulle and his cohorts want to do. Prime Minister Baldwin was, like General de Gaulle, trying to preserve the grandeur of British imperialism’s world position.

One of the lessons of the general strike was that while its origins and objectives were economic and while it didn’t necessarily aim to go beyond the confines of the capitalist system, its very scope and momentum posed a revolutionary threat to the power of the ruling class.  Because it successfully tied up the economic life of the country, it also showed the workers that their economic strength could, under the circumstances of a general strike, turn into political power for the working class. This was an objective to which the leadership of Cooke and Purcel of the General Council of the British Trade Union were wholly opposed — just like the present CP-CGT leadership.

French peasant rebellion

How different is the situation today in France! It is scarcely possible to find a more favorable political situation. For the first time in many decades the working-class struggle coincides with the profoundest and deepest discontent of the rural population. Take the demonstration in Auch, France, on May 24, just to give one of many examples. Thousands demonstrated in the farming area of southwestern France. Riot police used tear gas grenades to stop the demonstrators from breaking into the capitol building. Their slogan was “down with de Gaulle.” “We are the serfs, the slaves of the modern era,” shouted a young farm leader from the lowland hamlet of Carbonne. Many of the marchers sang the Internationale.

Under these circumstances it is easy to see that the objective conditions for an alliance between poor peasants and workers is all but guaranteed, if the leadership of the working-class organizations has the courage and determination to take advantage of it while the opportunity lasts.

One of the fundamental objective conditions for the failure of the Paris Commune of 1871 was the lack of support from the countryside. Now, the countryside is seething with rebellion. De Gaulle’s common market scheme has meant misery for the rural poor no less than de Gaulle’s anti-labor policy has meant increasing deprivation for the broad masses of the working class.

After the Paris Commune, Marx said that what would be needed for the victory of the French proletariat was “another edition of the Peasant War” of the preceding century. As one reads about how the peasants are now waving pitchforks and chanting “Pompidou resign,” the situation seems to be ready made for a true revolutionary alliance between peasants and workers.

Action Committee

L’Humanite of May 24, organ of the French CP, reports the existence “in many Departments of Action Committees for setting up a government that would rely on the alliance of all Left forces and be guided in its activity by a program meeting the interests of the mass of the people.”

This is incontrovertible evidence of the embryonic existence of proletarian power. These Action Committees in alliance with other elements of the rebellious population can function as organs of workers’ power, especially if they can ally themselves with the students and rural poor.

To effectuate the transition to proletarian power by the Action Committees and other revolutionary forces, it is necessary to make a complete break with bourgeois parliamentary trickery. It is a foregone conclusion that the type of election scheduled by the Gaullist dictatorship to take place late in June is merely a maneuver calculated to divert the attention of the masses and make them oblivious to the fact that they already have power in their hands and oblige them to transfer it back to the bourgeoisie.

The masses already have spoken by their deeds. The CP and CGT and whatever other allies they have should boycott the elections as a fraudulent device, calculated to deprive the masses of the fruit of their victory. By admonishing the masses to accept the wage agreement in the first place, the leadership showed that they were entirely out of touch with the masses. Fortunately the negotiations were broken off with the government and the employers.

Resort to naked military threats

When de Gaulle announced that he would schedule a referendum, the hostile reception he got from the general population further enhanced the revolutionary mood of the popular masses. From this a section of the ruling class drew the conclusion that perhaps de Gaulle ought to resign. So great was the clamor that a virtual split took place in de Gaulle’s own cabinet.

Under the revolutionary pressure of the masses, the bourgeoisie became more isolated and sought to overcome the crisis by resort to naked military threats and conspiracy with the reactionary military camarilla.

All of this was designed to intimidate the CP-CGT leadership and get them to drive the masses back to work and return the plants to the exploiters.

While, on the one hand, rumors of de Gaulle’s resignation were carefully planted, on the other hand, military maneuvers were widely publicized to intimidate the leaders in the hope of paralyzing the masses.

Then came de Gaulle’s carefully planned counteroffensive. This was an open appeal to the anti-communist, anti-working-class and pro-fascist elements, with a strong threat of open civil war, which was meant to serve as an ultimatum to the revolutionary masses to accept still another parliamentary fraud in the form of general elections.

As of now, June 4, the apparent agreement of the Communist Party leaders to participate in the election and the reported agreement of the CGT leaders to recommend negotiations with the de Gaulle government, especially after both organizations made the resignation of the government a demand of the workers, indicates a capitulation to the threat of the use of force and a surrender of the revolutionary struggle of the workers in favor of the same old fraudulent bourgeois parliamentary hoax.

As the New York Times of May 31 pointed out, “de Gaulle’s present tactics are designed to cover his defeat at the hands of the workers.” What a revealing admission! De Gaulle’s aim, this Times editorial affirms, “is to get the strikes ended and the French middle class activated to vote the Gaullist ticket.” Then the Times significantly adds, “the electoral system will help.”

Role of middle class

Indeed! So far as the middle class is concerned, it is well to remember Marx’s classic analysis of it which remains true to this very day. It is a socially heterogeneous and politically divided social formation. It is torn by a thousand inner contradictions, but it has no independent standing in bourgeois society. It stands in the middle, between the two great classes in contemporary society, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

In time of acute class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat such as is taking place now in France, the middle class continually vacillates between the two great class camps. Invariably as throughout all its history, its decisions will be made on the basis of which class shows the greater determination and the greater power in the struggle. If matters are left to be decided by bourgeois parliamentary methods and not by a decisive bid to reconstruct society on the basis of the power the workers hold now, unquestionably a large section of the middle class will line up with Gaullism.

Every strike an embryo revolution

The occupation of the plants and all industries by a phenomenally successful general strike is only a transitional step to the next phase of the struggle. Every strike is an embryo revolution. The occupation of the plants is a threat to private property. The occupation of the plants on a nationwide scale is a threat to the entire bourgeois social order and is a precursor to collective ownership by the proletariat.

The bourgeoisie cannot help but recognize this. The occupation of the plants is a symptom of dual power between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Such a state of affairs cannot endure indefinitely.

Either the proletariat takes over the plants completely, expropriates the bourgeoisie and sets up an alliance with the students, the rural poor and the white-collar workers in the urban centers for the purpose of transforming society, or the bourgeoisie may well crush the working class. The rock-bottom issue in France is proletarian power or ultimately an anti-labor, reactionary bourgeois dictatorship with a military clique to rule over all of France.

Bourgeois vs. proletarian democracy

According to L’Humanite as quoted in the Worker of May 28: “Conditions are rapidly ripening to end the Gaullist power and create a real democracy conforming to the interests of the French people.”

But democracy does not exist in the abstract. There is bourgeois democracy based on a bourgeois parliamentary system as it exists in France today — or a proletarian democracy based upon the popular masses, the working class, the rural poor, the students and the white-collar workers. Nothing could do more to deceive the French working masses than to put up such a fraudulent formulation of democracy.

Alongside this formulation L’Humanite adds: “This democracy will open the road to socialism.” A proletarian democracy based on the proletarian ownership of production and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie will indeed open the road to socialism, but a bourgeois democracy based upon a bourgeois parliament where the bourgeoisie is sure to predominate as it always has is nothing but a new name for an old fraud.

That this nonsense about democracy in general opening the road to socialism, which is being spouted by L’Humanite, should emanate from the land of the Paris Commune, is the worst of all ironies. For it was the Paris Commune which showed that a democracy under Thiers (i.e., de Gaulle) was really a bourgeois dictatorship, while the class rule of the Paris Communards was a proletarian democracy.

Popular Front coalition – on what class structure?

L’Humanite’s solution to the present crisis is a Popular Front. This is a coalition with the leftist section of the bourgeoisie such as with François Mitterand and others of his stripe. A coalition with capitalist politicians, on the basis of the present parliamentary system, which is based on the bourgeoisie as the possessing class, is a class betrayal of proletarian interests. It will simply be a modern version of the coalition between the liberals and the Labour Party of Britain and will mean that leaders of the working-class parties will hold office (even high office) in the cabinet. But they will only be office holders.

This is the most important of all the important distinctions between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy. In a bourgeois coalition based on a bourgeois parliamentary system the cabinet ministers are mere office holders. Power — real power — rests with the class that owns and controls the means of production — in this case, the bourgeoisie which runs the social system and determines the destiny of society as a whole.

But it would be altogether different if the CP and CGT proposed that the Mitterands and colleagues first help the workers expropriate the bourgeoisie and let the workers not merely possess but own the means of production, the peasants the land, the students and teachers the schools and universities and so on and so forth. If the Mitterands and Pierre Mendes-Frances accept this kind of coalition on the basis of proletarian rule, that might serve a progressive purpose. It might in fact be a step in the direction of socialism and a transitional stage to the abolition of all social classes and exploitation of man by man.

It would be wrong to say that we are against a coalition with the Mitterands under any and all circumstances. A coalition with them on the basis of the class rule of the proletariat and its allies may serve a useful purpose, especially if they join in disarming the bourgeoisie and dismantling its military and police apparatus.

Arming the workers

All of this is well and good, we are told, but there is one element that we have consistently left out of the situation and that is the role of the military and the fact that the French proletariat is not armed. It is basic to Marxist-Leninist strategy that no proletarian revolution can succeed without having arms in its possession.

It is true that the French working class is not armed in the sense that it does not now have a formal armed workers’ militia. But the workers are armed in the sense that they control the means of transit, the means of communication and the plants that produce arms and ammunition. Furthermore it is not really true to say that the French working class is totally disarmed.

Thoughtful revolutionary young leaders have undoubtedly given much consideration to just such a revolutionary situation as exists today. The army, that is to say, the army and police as presently constituted, is a small percentage of the population and can exercise great power only if the working class and its allies are apathetic and politically indifferent, confused and without perspective.

But an aroused proletariat having vast popular support among nonproletarian masses, as does the French proletariat, will succeed in arming itself and will disarm the bourgeoisie and its mercenary forces. Those leaders that seek to scare the people with frantic shouts that the workers aren’t armed should be asked why the leaders didn’t arm them. Some of these very same leaders acquiesced in the disarming of the French Partisans at the request of this very same de Gaulle they are now fighting. They should be made to answer rather than to ask questions about arming of the masses.

At any rate, the true answer to the arming of the workers and the prosecution of the proletarian revolution lies in the old maxim, “Whoever wills the objective must will the means thereto.” For a revolutionist that is the best answer.

---

Part 1 – Revolutionary situation in France 1968: Which road for the mass struggle?

On Dec. 19, 2018, President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw U.S. ground troops from Syria by mid-January 2019. This long overdue acknowledgement of the defeat of imperialism’s strategy to dismember the Syrian Arab Republic set off a firestorm in Washington, from liberal Democrats to Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who announced his resignation.

A longstanding U.S. tactic has been to ally itself with Kurdish forces in northern Syria and others grouped under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Trump’s announcement leaves Washington’s Kurdish “allies” to the mercies of their historic enemy, the government of NATO member Turkey, which also seeks the destruction of the Syrian government.

This has led to much confusion on the left, with some groups even calling for continuing the illegal U.S. occupation to “protect” Kurdish Rojava. Some joined Democrats in bemoaning Trump’s “surrender” to Syria and its allies, including Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will follow through on the promised Pentagon withdrawal or if this is another in a long line of imperialist ploys.

Struggle-La Lucha will write more about this situation. For now, we present this article by Sam Marcy, a leading Marxist thinker and fighter of the second half of the 20th century, written shortly after the 1991 U.S. war against Iraq. At that time, some Kurdish forces had similarly aligned themselves with U.S. imperialism against the Saddam Hussein government. Marcy’s article, originally published in the April 18, 1991, issue of Workers World, gives a historic perspective on the Kurdish struggle for self-determination and the imperialist role in the Middle East.

Several years ago, when I was in the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library looking up something in the Encyclopedia Britannica, a Third World student passed by, glanced at the book and said to me rather pointedly, “This book ought to be burned.” He walked on. It astonished me. Then suddenly he turned around, smiled, and said, “Well, not really.”

The other day, when I was attempting to find the exact date of the founding of the People’s Republic of Kurdistan, I looked in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1980 edition. To my surprise, there’s no listing for Kurdistan, or even the word Kurds.

It could have easily been sandwiched in between the Kunlun Mountains and Akiro Kurosawa, the Japanese film director. But it wasn’t there.

The New York Times Encyclopedic Almanac of 1972, which claims on its jacket to be “the most complete and authoritative reference annual ever published for home, school and office,” likewise has no listing for the Kurds or Kurdistan.

Nothing so much offends the sensibilities of oppressed people as ignoring their very existence in art, literature and above all, history.

Imperialist distortion of history

This is one of the many, many examples of how historic issues of great significance are either mangled, distorted or completely omitted by imperialist historiography. This is carried to an extreme in the daily capitalist press, not to speak of the electronic media.

Moreover, the U.S. public can be ambushed by a sudden avalanche of lies and deceit whose influence the ordinary person can scarcely avoid, as for instance with the U.S. aggression in the Persian Gulf.

At the moment, it seems that all stops have been pulled out to demonstrate the humanitarianism and generosity of the Bush administration in its airlift of food to hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people in the stricken areas. Soon, a whole group of charitable organizations will be setting up events, probably with many distinguished entertainers, etc., to raise funds for the suffering Kurds. All of it is calculated to show the despotism and cruelty of the Iraqis as against the poor, friendless, stateless Kurdish people, who have been abandoned by all the world except for a handful of imperialist powers.

What is the truth? Would the Kurdish people of Iraq have opened up military operations against the Iraqi government, provoking an onslaught against them, had it not been for the U.S. government and the CIA — as is publicly admitted today?

Is the U.S. government really concerned about the Kurdish people? Are Britain, France, Germany or Turkey?

It is impossible to consider the plight of the Kurdish people without taking into account some of the salient facts of the modern era, beginning with World War I. In the midst of the war, France, Britain and czarist Russia made a secret agreement, the Sykes-Picot treaty, which among other things included Kurdistan in its framework.

“The British envisaged a series of autonomous Kurdish states to be advised by British political officers, which the French were to be asked to concede in the Wilsonian spirit of self-determination for the Kurdish people.” (From “A Peace to End All Peace” by David Fromkin, Avon Books, New York, 1990.)

The war of 1914-1918 was an imperialist war to redivide the world to correspond to the new relationships among the great capitalist powers. It ended not only in the defeat of Germany but in the liquidation of the Ottoman Empire. That gave U.S. President Woodrow Wilson an opportunity, according to U.S. historians, to plead for self-determination, especially for non-Turkish nationalities in the empire. That’s how the Kurdish question was brought to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, on the initiative of the Kurds.

Wilson is often depicted as an idealist who sought to bring about a new progressive world order, in which the oppressed nationalities would be able to gain their independence. But this is pure bourgeois bunk. The basic idea was to break up the Turkish state in such a way as to make it unviable as a leading power, either in Europe or in the Middle East.

The terms imposed upon Germany, which were harsh enough, nevertheless enabled German imperialism to revive industrially and technologically. Turkey, however, remains to this day mired as a compradore bourgeois state and vassal of the Western imperialist powers.

The Paris Peace Conference was followed by the Sevres Treaty of 1921, which actually liquidated the Ottoman Empire and did in words call for the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, however, made no mention of Kurdistan. Bourgeois historians dwell at length on these diplomatic developments, their viewpoint corresponding to the interests of the particular imperialist power they speak for.

None of this would alter the plight of the masses of Kurdistan in any real measure. However, there was one truly great and momentous event which changed the face of all Asia and gave the Kurds, like other peoples, an impetus to rise from abject poverty and semi-slavery and seek real freedom. That was the Bolshevik Revolution.

Bolshevik Revolution and Asia

The Bolshevik Revolution stirred the Western proletariat to the point of insurrection in Germany and Hungary. It also aroused the latent energy of millions and millions of oppressed people living under the yoke of imperialism and feudal despotism.

After the war, all the predatory imperialist powers, adopting Wilsonian rhetoric, were given to endless platitudes about self-determination and protection of national minorities. But in fact none were really for self-determination of oppressed peoples anywhere in the world. The First World War in and of itself did not change the conditions of exploitation and national oppression by the imperialist powers or eliminate enslavement by feudal despotism.

Had the Russian Revolution remained at the level of February 1917, had it become even the best of bourgeois democratic states, it would not have had any real historic significance in Asia. But the February Revolution was superseded by another kind of revolution in October, a revolution of the working class in alliance with the peasantry, a proletarian revolution. It was the sparks of that revolution that began to burn in Asia.

Self-determination was not a platitude of the Leninist government. It was for real. Notwithstanding all the lies and slanders of the imperialist bourgeoisie, it reached down to the masses and inspired them by the millions.

By that alone, the Bolshevik Revolution would have been a momentous development in history. But the Bolsheviks did not just promote self-determination. They were the carriers of irreconcilable class warfare. This is the sine qua non that fundamentally changed class relations in Asia, contributing to the great Chinese Revolution and the heroic revolutions in Vietnam, Korea and elsewhere.

It is in this connection that we should consider the situation of the people of Kurdistan. The Bolshevik Revolution sparked the ultimate rise of the Tudeh Party in Iran. And while the most immediate and fundamental concern of the oppressed peoples in the Middle East was self-determination, the Bolshevik Revolution opened the war of the oppressed against their age-old native oppressors.

Communism and a Kurdish state

It would have been a monumental development had the Kurdish communists been able to carry out a determined revolutionary struggle of the oppressed people, of the peasants against the landlords, in the same way that it was carried out in China and later in Vietnam.

One difficulty was that the Kurdish people were spread out in parts of east Turkey, northeast Iraq and northwest Iran, with smaller groupings in Syria and what is now Soviet Armenia. But more important was the retreat in the Soviet Union from its revolutionary internationalist position in the global class struggle.

However, even in the most difficult days of the Soviet Union’s struggle for existence during World War II, the communist movement as such in the Middle East, and particularly in Iran, was not disintegrated. This explains the existence of what is scornfully referred to by bourgeois, pro-imperialist historians as the “Soviet-backed Kurdish `Republic.’” (New Columbia Encyclopedia, 1975 edition.)

The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad existed from December 1945 to December 1946 in the northern part of Iran. Its proclaimed program included, among other demands: “The Kurdish people in Iran should have freedom and self-government in the administration of their local affairs and obtain autonomy within the limits of the Iranian state. The Kurdish language should be used in education and be the official language in administrative affairs” (Manifesto by Qazi Mohammad and 105 leading Kurds).

The program was modest enough. It didn’t go beyond autonomy within the limits of the Iranian state.

Its real significance lies in the fact that the republic was established and constituted the nucleus of a future state of Kurdistan. It was the first and only state that the Kurdish people have ever had. Its establishment opened a new era for the Kurds. It opened the possibility of obtaining real independence.

It showed great promise of uniting the Kurds, or at least becoming a cultural center for Kurdish people in other parts of the Middle East and Asia. One can scorn it, revile it, lie about it, diminish its significance, but in all the centuries since the Kurds as a people have existed, it was the first time that they established a state of their own.

Overthrow of Kurdish republic

What happened to it? Was there an internal counterrevolution? Or did the Iranian government on its own under the Shah, then a puppet of British imperialism, overthrow it? No, neither of these things.

What happened was that the Truman administration, in collaboration with the British, gave notice to the Soviet Union that its troops had to evacuate Iran. It was one of the first salvos of the Cold War. After their withdrawal, the Shah, armed by U.S. imperialism, opened a military struggle to destroy the Kurdish republic.

There are very few English-language accounts of what happened. The most detailed one is by Archie Roosevelt, Jr., who served the U.S. government as assistant military attache in Teheran from March 1946 to February 1947. In the Middle East Journal of July 1947 (vol. 1, no. 3) he wrote, “The dream of Kurdish nationalists, an independent Kurdistan, was realized on a miniature scale in Iran from December 1945 to December 1946. The origin of the little Kurdish republic, its brief and stormy history and its sudden collapse is one of the more illuminating stories of the contemporary Middle East.”

Unfortunately, he does little to throw light on the driving forces behind the establishment of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad. He dwells on intertribal struggles and paints the role of the communists in the most lurid colors as nothing but Soviet secret agents.

Whatever one may think of the Kurdish republic of Mahabad as a form of self-determination, it cannot be denied that it became the center of gravity, the pole of attraction for the people of Kurdistan.

No one could have predicted the future of this republic in the light of the international situation. It was wartime. British soldiers were at one end and Soviet forces at the other. Had the Allied powers agreed to a policy whereby both their forces and those of the USSR would withdraw from the area, there would have been a historic opportunity to test whether the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad was the appropriate form of self-determination for the Kurdish people. There may conceivably have been other variants. But no opportunity was afforded.

It is impossible to assess the current political position of the Kurdish people in Iraq and its relation to Iran, Syria and Turkey without understanding the background of the struggle, particularly as it began to emerge immediately after the Bolshevik revolution.

Ba’athism and the socialist perspective

It is the socialist perspective, the perspective of the overthrow of imperialism and capitalism, that has to be borne in mind as the aggression and plundering of the Middle East by the imperialists continues.

Not a day goes by without some new maneuver, some new stance by this or that imperialist power or group. But while the U.S. military machine, in alliance with its imperialist partners, was able to crush Iraq militarily by inflicting vast and incalculable destruction, it has by no means vanquished the people, nor has the regime itself been overthrown.

Whether it was for propagandistic or strategic ends, this was one of the main stated objectives of the Bush administration. It was Bush himself who in early February publicly called for the Iraqi military and Iraqi people to “take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein to step aside.” That hasn’t happened.

The problem in the Middle East from the viewpoint of socialism is that in all the political overturns, all the struggles to rid the region of imperialism, none went beyond the level of the February Revolution in Russia. The most profound revolution, that in Egypt led by Nasser, shows the limits of what can be achieved if the revolution stops at the bourgeois-democratic level. The Iraqi Revolution of 1958 is another example.

These progressive, anti-imperialist revolutions were unable to achieve a transition to a socialist revolution, one that overturns the basic relations of property between the working class and peasants on the one side, and the bourgeoisie on the other, between oppressors and oppressed. What emerged instead was the phenomenon of Ba’athism, which is an eclectic form combining some progressive, or, if you will, socialist measures with the retention of the bourgeoisie as a class.

Mere nationalization of industry, even of oil, does not in and of itself lay the basis for socialism. The nationalization retains within itself the growth of the bourgeoisie. While the level of economic well being can be on a much higher level than in a non-oil-producing country, the retention of the bourgeoisie leads to gross social inequality. In the light of the bourgeoisie’s international connections with imperialism, the country ultimately succumbs to its domination.

Bonapartism in Syria and Iraq

Ba’athism has produced Bonapartist regimes in Syria and, more pertinently, in Iraq. The present ruling group in Iraq is avowedly Ba’athist in its social program. A characteristic feature of such a regime is that it straddles the fence between the working class and peasants on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie. The severe pressure of imperialism has produced the phenomenon of military rule and a number of coups d’etat.

In the struggle against imperialism, it leans heavily on the workers and peasants as its fundamental social support. At the same time, the pressure of bourgeois social forces continually pushes it in an adverse direction.

The oppression of national minorities is a product of this pressure. Oppression of national minorities is consistent with bourgeois interests; it is alien to the socialist objectives of the working class. Therein lies the contradiction of Ba’athism.

On the other hand, oppressed people such as the Kurds, in the conditions of imperialist attack upon Iraq, have the absolute duty to support the Iraqi regime against imperialism or see their standing in the community of oppressed nations completely nullified and themselves reduced to the status of a tool of imperialism. Here again, the adage which applies to Iraq applies also to the Kurds: No nation can itself be free if it helps imperialism oppress another nation.

Wherever Ba’athism has prevailed, it has of course been of a progressive character in relation to outright bourgeois or feudal political domination. But it is a barrier to socialist revolution. It retains the fundamentals of bourgeois rule. The mere existence of a proletariat and a bourgeoisie proves this.

Politically, it makes it enormously difficult for a communist party to function, even where it is legally possible for it to exist and organize in its own name. But more often than not, the party has succumbed to the wiles of Ba’athism. This has meant either being a cooperating element within the political structure, often retaining a program that does not in effect differ from that of the governing Ba’athist party, or, should it seek an independent revolutionary road, being suppressed by force and violence.

The pressure of imperialism on a continuing and more intensive level has created all sorts of phenomena that hinder the development of the class struggle. No nation can be free if it oppresses others. Turkey can never be free as long as it oppresses the Kurds or other peoples. The same applies to Iran and also to Iraq.

This generalization is not limited to the Kurds. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Sri Lanka was oppressed by India, which itself was long oppressed and continues to be dependent to some extent on Anglo-U.S. imperialism. But Sri Lanka has been unable to grant self-determination and freedom to the Tamils, for instance. All this is a product of the irreconcilable class contradictions which prevail in contemporary imperialist global relations.

No substitute for proletarian solidarity

Only a worldwide socialist federation, based on the abolition of class rule and exploitation, can put an end to national oppression. Self-determination alone, independence alone, without touching the foundations of class rule, is absolutely inadequate to deal with the monstrous growth of the imperialist economic colossus.

Only the reconstruction of society into a socialist commonwealth, free of the violent paroxysms of competition which lead to armed warfare and imperil all humanity, will put an end to racial, national and class oppression.

There is no substitute for proletarian, socialist solidarity in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism. It is the only hope for humanity as a whole.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 uprising of workers and students in France. In light of the Yellow Vests protest movement shaking France today, and the continued relevance of the lessons of 1968 for anticapitalist struggles, Struggle—La Lucha is publishing a series of articles written at that time by Sam Marcy, one of the leading Marxist thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. This piece originally appeared in the May 23, 1968, issue of Workers World newspaper.

May 22, 1968 — There can be absolutely no doubt that as of this writing, France is in the throes of one of the deepest and most profound of revolutionary crises. And France, it must be remembered, has had more of them than any other Western nation to date.

What gives this truly great revolutionary upheaval exceptional and extraordinary significance is that it has the very real potential — more than previous crises — not only of ousting the de Gaulle government, but of overturning the entire rotten edifice on which the French capitalist system is built.

Such an event, of course, would not only change the character of the international situation, but would also light the flames of a new revolutionary conflagration that inevitably would sweep all of Western Europe. This in turn would surely mean a reforging of the bonds of class solidarity between the Western proletariat and the revolutionary struggles waged by the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Those bonds, first forged by the victorious October socialist revolution in Russia and the Western proletarian uprisings that followed, were brutally severed by the triumph of opportunism and liquidationism which now hold sway in the USSR, Eastern Europe and most of the Communist parties.

When one considers the rising tide of rebellion in the U.S. today, along with the momentous resurgence in Europe, it is inconceivable that the revolutionary contagion would not also greatly affect the mood as well as the direction of the rank-and-file white American worker and cement a genuine alliance with the Black liberation movement against the U.S. imperialist establishment.

The above prognosis, our cynics will tell you — and they are an international breed — is a revolutionary pipe dream that won’t come true. Perhaps. It is instructive to remember, however, that these very same cynics were telling us only yesterday how stable, prosperous and safe from any revolutionary disorders capitalist France was, under de Gaulle, and that the French workers had become so thoroughly bourgeois that they were beyond revolutionary redemption.

Now, it is plain to see that the French working class, in alliance with the revolutionary students and other social groupings, have what amounts to de facto power in their hands. They have not only paralyzed the economic life of the country — they virtually have it in their hands.

The real issue is whether what they have in their hands will be returned to the absentee owners. This class of ruthless exploiters, a tiny minority of the French people, is now literally at the mercy of an aroused and revolutionary people.

Danger of Popular Frontism

And yet, the ruling classes of Europe and America, while greatly alarmed at the magnitude of the social and political upheaval, seem confident that even if the de Gaulle government is eventually forced out, a new set of leftist politicians will take over, grant a minimum of concessions, a maximum of false promises, and through the medium of the French Communist Party leadership, return the plants back to their “rightful” owners and the workers to exploitation.

A long and protracted parliamentary crisis will then ensue with the cabinet being shuffled and reshuffled and bourgeois, radical, socialist and communist ministers going in and out of the cabinet as through a revolving door. In the end it will be just another case for the French bourgeoisie “doing business as usual during alterations” of their government.

Such a prognosis would have much to recommend it if viewed strictly in the narrow framework of the historical precedent of the 1936-1939 Popular Front period, and also the period immediately following the end of World War II. The French proletariat was armed and might have taken destiny into their own hands were it not for the Socialist Party and Communist Party leadership which disarmed them and returned them back to capitalist slavery.

The present confidence of the French bourgeoisie is based on its conviction that substantially the same type of leadership of the French working-class movement will do a repeat performance and thereby save the bourgeois social order (of which the Communist Party and, to a less influential extent, the Socialist Party are considered to be firm pillars). So much are these working-class parties considered part of the capitalist establishment that the world press, including some of the French, openly and unashamedly speak of them in such terms.

This certainly is a possible variant of development, especially in the light of the two terrible historical precedents referred to.

However, if we look at the revolutionary situation in France today in the light of the entire historical development of the class struggle of the proletariat in France against the bourgeoisie, through all the preceding significant stages, and not merely the last two, one can project an entirely different prognosis.

Such a different prognosis is reinforced when the struggle in France is viewed in the concrete historical context of world relationships as they exist today and not as they existed in 1936-1939 or 1945. Aside from anything else, while the French workers in those two phases of the previous struggle seemed or actually were more revolutionary or more class conscious, they certainly were less well organized than they are today. This is absolutely incontestable.

And as a class — not merely as an economic category in the bourgeois system of economics — the working class has a lot more popular support and sympathy from other class strata and groupings than it had in previous times. Enjoying such support in a revolutionary period is extremely valuable. Hence, the sense of isolation with which the leaders tried to frighten the masses in the earlier periods is certainly not a factor today.

Finally, the sense of dependence on the leadership is no longer an overriding factor as it was then. The unstinted and unquestioning devotion of the very best sons and daughters of the French working class to the Communist Party leadership has given way to healthy skepticism, if not yet to open resistance on a mass scale.

Moreover, a proletarian revolution which seemed so much like a utopian dream in the previous period, must now, after the great Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution and the heroic example of the Vietnamese people, seem not merely a possibility, but an attainable objective entirely within its grasp.

Every French worker knows that there are at least 13 nominally Socialist states even if the political leadership of some of them is as questionable as their own party and union heads. The sense of isolation felt during the Popular Front period when the Soviet Union was an isolated fortress and all of Europe lived under the shadow of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco is not at all a factor today.

Role of the working class

Whereas the confidence of the French bourgeoisie in maintaining their system of exploitation rests almost exclusively on naked terror and on the ability of the Communist Party and Socialist Party leadership to return the masses to the domination of the capitalist establishment, the confidence of the working class, on the other hand, is instinctively based on larger and more significant historical factors.

The role of the working class as a producer, as the key factor in the system of social production, is what in the final analysis has given the French workers, as it will ultimately give all workers, the boldness and audacity to storm the citadels of the bourgeoisie. Even if the class consciousness and revolutionary élan has been watered down by the systematic corruption of the leadership, the working class has gained so much numerically and in other ways that it cannot help but sooner or later emerge as the decisive force in society, become its organizer and its master.

In this connection, it is very important to note that the French proletariat is a unique detachment of the Western working class. The French working class historically has fought its wars against the class enemy always to a finish. True, the battles were lost in the end, but they were fought valiantly with courage and determination.

This is even true of the Great French (bourgeois) Revolution of 1789-1793 to the extent that the French working class was involved at the early period. It was also true in the proletarian insurrections of 1848 and, needless to say, in the Paris Commune of 1871.

The long period of so-called peaceful capitalist development that followed in France after 1871 has as its political foundation the decisive defeat of the heroic Paris Communards who literally fought to the last worker.

But the great struggle of the late 1930s in France and the revolutionary situation that it ushered in were never fought out to the finish with the bourgeoisie. This is a fact of pre-eminent importance. The Popular Front, which was nothing but a new name for an old bourgeois coalition, merely paralyzed the workers but did not end in a decisive defeat of the working class by the bourgeoisie.

In this very important respect, the situation of the French proletariat differs markedly from the decisive defeats which occurred in Spain, Austria and Germany. In these latter countries, fascism triumphed completely by destroying the working-class organizations and ushering in an epoch of historic reaction from which they have not yet significantly recovered.

The French working class maintained its confidence in itself and retained its political organizations and trade unions. The struggle which began with the great strikes of 1936 have only been interrupted and muffled but not really finished. They have now re-emerged apparently stronger than ever.

Bourgeois scholars may not see anything at all in the unique character of the French working class as compared to that of the German, the Spanish, the Austrian and even the Italians. But those French working-class leaders whose objectives are proletarian revolution cannot fail to appreciate its deep significance.

Prosperity and stability based on fraud

During the Popular Front period, the extreme right seemed far, far stronger than the rightist elements of today, whose man incidentally is de Gaulle. In 1936-1939 it was the Popular Front politicians who discredited the cause of the workers by their failure to accomplish anything worthwhile. The right capitalized on the political bankruptcy of the Popular Front. Today, however, it is the right that is discredited because it has, in the person of de Gaulle, held power for ten long years and brought nothing but misery to the broad masses of the people.

The so-called prosperity and stability that the de Gaulle regime brought to France has proven to be a gigantic fraud. De Gaulle has only been able to paper over the crying class contractions inherent in French capitalist society. Not only has he been unable to resolve them, but on the contrary, he has brought these acute class contradictions to the bursting point.

Certainly there has been prosperity for the capitalist class, but, as all of the capitalist newspapers now virtually admit, it has been a prosperity based upon more intensive exploitation of the working class, the city lower middle class and the rural poor. The domination of a handful of monopolists has served as the base from which de Gaulle has sought to mount “greatness” in imperialist French foreign policy.

What it has meant all along, as far as the French working class and the poor and deprived are concerned, is more armaments taken out of their hides. Because the working-class leaders kept quiet about it and refused to heed the grievances of the masses, the bourgeois lie that the workers are “satisfied and happy with their lot” was taken for good coin.

It wasn’t so long ago that Southern senators in the U.S. would get up on the floor of Congress and roundly denounce anybody who so much as hinted at the oppression of the Black people by repeating the lie that “the Negro people are happy with their lot.” Just as the great mass rebellions in the Black communities gave the lie to the talk about the “happy lot” of the Black people in this country, so the revolutionary upheaval in France today has given the lie to all the propaganda of the bourgeoisie, the social democrats and their lackeys.

It is said that all the French workers want is the rectification of some grievances and that their demands are only economic and do not go beyond the limits of the present bourgeois order of society. True enough. But this is the least of all the significant factors in the situation. The demands of the Russian workers and peasants of 1917 were even more modest. Their slogan was bread, land and peace.

Any important strike is an embryo revolution. That is a basic teaching of Leninism.

Relationships of classes in French society

The scope and breadth of the current strike in France, encompassing as of today eight to ten million workers, poses a truly revolutionary threat to the existing social order. It is not the modest character of the demands that is decisive but the manner in which the workers seek to get them achieved. And the manner in which they have gone about it thus far, with speed and with such utter spontaneity, makes it truly characteristic of a revolutionary situation.

However, no revolutionary situation can be considered fully as such unless one also takes into account the situation of the capitalist class and of the reciprocal relationships between all the classes of contemporary French society. The French ruling class is confronted by a series of economic demands just at a moment in its history when the political representatives of the ruling class were seeking to further encroach on the living standards of the people.

It is as though the workers in a certain factory came to the conclusion that their situation was so intolerable that they demanded an immediate raise in pay just at a time when the boss had decided that what was needed was a further cut in pay instead. Economically speaking, this is the situation that prevails on a nationwide scale in France.

Gaullist economists, radical and bourgeois politicians, and the misleaders of labor have all done their share in hiding the true anatomy of class relations in present-day France. That is what is so incredibly wonderful about the manner in which the French working class has put an end to this gross deception. In no other way could it have been brought to the attention of world public opinion, or to the French public generally.

As has happened so many times in history, it took the students to spark the movement, but the students alone, no matter how heroic and self-sacrificing, cannot accomplish the fundamental social change that the workers can, because it is only the workers who operate the basic machinery of society. The student struggle is a symptom of the developing general struggle.

In a true sense, the students acted as a vanguard and initiated the splendid class action of the whole French working class.

But now the question is: How can the struggle be resolved? By parliamentary trickery? By a new bourgeois coalition of left-wing politicians in alliance with the Communist Party and the Socialist Party a la Popular Front days?

This is to tread the old beaten path, the path of treason to the French working class. A call for a so-called referendum embodying some token concessions while maintaining the old system would be a fraudulent device no less vicious than the corrupt political maneuvering of the National Assembly.

Real alternative to capitalist power

Even as these words are being written, the news comes over the radio that the cynical and unrepresentative Assembly refused to censure de Gaulle (May 22).

The failure to pass even a censure vote in the Assembly will reinforce the conviction of the workers that the Assembly is nothing but an instrument of the ruling class and should be completely ignored — that they, the workers, should move on toward resolute, determined mass action to insure their victory.

And some already sense that if the general strike ends without an attempt to politicize and validate the power they have won, if the general strike remains only a general strike, it will end in mere disruption for French capitalist society and frustration for the French masses.

“The entire people is aroused,” says Waldeck-Rochet, the French Communist Party leader. True! What then should be done since “the entire people,” as Waldeck-Rochet puts it, “is aroused”?

Galvanize them to keep the power they have already seized and declare themselves to be the political power of the country — or bring them back to the fraudulent politics of the National Assembly, which is a dead-end street for the working class?

If “the entire people is aroused,” the Communist Party-Socialist Party leaders should ignore the National Assembly and declare the aroused people to be the power in the country through a New National Assembly, composed of workers, students, the rural poor and the lower middle class of the cities.

The students (if the newspapers in this country report it correctly) put forward a call for a “New Estates General.” This may not be exactly what is necessary for the French working people, but it seems to be an attempt to call for a new political power to replace the old one.

Everybody in France knows that it was the Estates General that acted as a rallying point against the established royal power and ultimately resulted in the establishment of the Convention as the revolutionary power — the real power — in the country. But the very idea of posing an alternative to the reactionary bourgeois parliamentary power today has not even been mentioned by the leaders of the Communist Party or Socialist Party.

The alternative that is needed is a national organization of workers’ councils, peasant councils, poor people’s councils, and student councils. That is the real alternative to the discredited National Assembly.

That would be a true Popular Front of the masses, a true coalition of the various strata of the oppressed and exploited peoples — and not a coalition with the bourgeoisie, as Waldeck-Rochet proposes. That would be dual power, and only “dual” as long as the old regime of the exploiters could survive it.

The masses have to establish independent organs of power to validate the possession of the means of production that are presently in their hands and take over the political destiny of the country. Only in this way will they put an end to the reign of the monopolies which breed poverty, reaction and imperialist war.

---

Part 2 – Decisive question in France 1968: Revolutionary or reformist leadership?