in the bourgeois State, in the miracie of transubstantiation popular will is transformed power of the ruling class, to the will of the party rank-and-fide into the power of the leadership.
Have they considered the following fact? The BCETIERINEL reproduces leadership and enables it 10 irremovable, through all its str and tactical turns mistakes lacement by 'new generations" wh ave not known the struggles an hardships of five, ten or twenty years ago, and who in their tur are thrown into the Tray on the saigen ou heories", slogans or promises, to be uft up aller a lew years.
are there so many former Communists more than even the official membership of the party? Why militants who have dropped out active invelvement? Why are #enerations ofutilitants who have been Hed in struggle (the Resistance, War, Vietnam, Algeria, 1968, completely absent from both from its activity and at any of leadership? The party, "State apparatus, has found the famous "The people have lost ace in their leaders? There Is but to clect a new Periodically.
One cantin leave is at the lo-clo the party, nor even at the character y it political practic. it in nocessary t discuss the polia al relationahip of ibi party to the broad music, therefore it litical Line, and the decisive queiton of political linel the question The essens of a party and a line is Marxist tradition considers that it is the action of the broad masses which is workins chiss mult oc conceired in Ene ighi. Te is from the broad masses that Have come He historica the popular conquest of the Liberation Committees in 1944-45, the imamense surprise spit a party judges leel May primarily by its ability to link up with the needs und initiatives of the popular mases.
On this absolutely decisive question of a close relationship with the masses, the party was able at one time to take a position. It is a lendency in ils historyBut there is also an which has continually reappeared and become more 4E the into the i transformed From the studen of over them! In geneti continual should be ta listen to the masses Consciounes its consciousness by lagging of entire characterised by Cold conceived etc.) the problem to of alliances.
All Mars Communist defended th The working alone, its sit to the next, the solo' (Mar:
But ther And here 1 But as LEACHE HE 4 tha or all the 1968 an which is not under the control of the which can amies becuuse it did not have contro 4 its instinctive For us apparatus, meuns that it starts off a good way bebind in advance, the truth about what is ing to happer, when ib first task Mats always The party leadership calauly this principle to the letter without suspecting its irony, it ensures It is dear that, depending on the relationships which the party main tains with the musses living, attentive, the other hand mistrist, deafness, and delay). so its political line will be differenily: broad and Nexible while remaining correct, or, Ol authortarian and rigid EVEN IS CITOO WELDeROSECUTE on the central question above', OTTOO LOCITY TREETTI Thai шессі» le sould be a Sure alliano and alaunco o conceptions limits comi Cich ober: Either 0n fiances In termos of as proprietors" of their electorate, or che they are conceived in terms of a struggle led try the organised. section of the working class in order to LOUIS ALTHUSSER upgiving a juridical and in the first case, question of Led with the contract "from above". in the second case, we are talking about a conception which, while respecting pluralism and allowing for a juridical contract from plunges the party directly into the mass struggle to extend is audience nd win broader poutions above all würking bourgeoisie. The question ole of primacy: contract, or primacy of struggle.
The ared chat ME COD IS a SULLIE correct sogan could leadership, cor the mass, 10 give the Union a real basis, the leadership substituted the struggle between arganisations under Propramme. replacing unitary clectoralism ('right opportunism') cloctoralism, which claimed to pass off the domination of one party another as a real hegemony, a leading influence of the working class in the popular movement. electoralist -ever tunist. The leadership went so far as to the drama of September ('Everything SCENES SUSPI at che l'Humanite fete), so far as to use this astounding first round of che clections into a egantic "national petition" for the updating Programme and Communists!' What were they dreaming of, when from 1972 to 1977 nothing had been done to stimulate or develop rank-and-file initiatives and forms of unity manual workers. Indeed, any suggestion popular committees had been rebuffed hecause of the risks of manipulation petty And then. having basically finally appealed to the order to prevent "mamipulation" they ended up quite simply by manipulating WEBSESSEN. appeal of the party leadership, they wanted the masses sudony. to mobilise and transform their vote as citizens into a 'petition" to support the bartle led by the party inside the Union of the Left!
That is what happens when one opts for a conception of the Union as a contract between leaderships and when one tries desperasely to compensate for its chects by socksop to write in, at the It this succeeded last moment, sectarian increased over struggle, SUE 1 W SUIL indeed, more so than opporGeorges Marchais Tormula: Make the could have good support for the in workers" popular unity and intellectual The broken which At the final desperate years 1973-75.
drew still remains, the heavens hold struggle Into the worsened, and confusion Dy an appeal for the mobilisation of the masses who have previously been kept TRACE It would however have been perfectly possible to policy of the Union as a policy of mass monsation and struggle: as a bolic of popular unity, tying the contract struggle at the base in which the party extended its audience beyond the buffer This refers to the sable, but limited, proportion of the electorate who vote for the CP — cds!
thas case would have Straightaway writlen the contract into the struggle and acted in such a way as to give priority to the unitary struggle of the masses. One would have had confidence in the masses to give short shrift to manocuvres and manipulal Sons, and stopped manipulating thei object of a bourgeois practice — in order to create the conditions for a and people's policy of deep-rooted, stubborn and thoroughgoing mistrust shown by the leadership towards the masses ruled out this liberaling choice for the party It fell hack on a policy of agreement the Union was run *fron above'. The party literally did not wish to bear the slogan of 'popular unity massive contingents of workers in the There was a fear of taking risks, disguised as a fear of adventurism, or, in tho last analysis, pure and simple routinism (who knows apparatus would acknowledget) The leadership with into old habits as into protective fortress, dragging the party in with it. The left has lost; the fortress SOCIALIST CHALLENGE 4 May 1978 page
Social Percevery posit Att forgotten.
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THE DECISIVE QUESTION: THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE MASSES
LIVING IN A DREAM WORED