Southern Advocate for Workers' Councils Issue 35, July 1947 p. 3-7
Translation by K. J. Kenafick of three articles from the paper Déc 1946-Janvier 1947 'Le Proletaire' issue by the 'Revolutionary Communism' group in France, published in Southern Advocate.
- Winter of Famine / Hiver de Famine - Our Position / Notre Position - The Proletarian Class Struggle / La Lutte de Classe Proletarienne
Our good comrade, K. J. Kenafick, again gives us the opportunity to present the views of revolutionary sections in Europe.
I am forwarding herewith some translations from the French papers mentioned in my last communication.
The first one with which I shall deal is Le Proletaire, organ of Revolutionary Communism, published at Lyons, the issue in question being that of last January.
Its leading article is entitled "Winter of famine, after 18 months of capitalist 'reconstruction' in Europe, and throughout the world."
"'Give us bread, or shoot us!' cry the demonstrators in the towns of Italy.
"'We have sown and we are hungry, we have produced coal and we are cold,' declare the workers of the Ruhr.
"'We have toiled for two years, and the restrictions are the same, if not worse,' agree the workers of France and of the whole world.
"For the French situation is inseparable from the international situation.
"After 18 months of capitalist 'reconstruction,' not only in France, but throughout the whole world, real wages are continuing to fall, prices are continuing to soar, and restrictions are becoming worse in all countries, from England to Russia, from America to Japan
"In Europe and in the colonies, millions of young people, of maimed persons, and children are wandering in rags across devastated and starving countries.
"In Central and Eastern Europe snow covers the ruins on which will fight the armies of the two new blocs which stand face to face.
"Famine is general in Germany, in Greece, in the Ukraine, in the East Indies.
"Strikes follow each other in Italy and in Austria.
"Inflation is shattering Hungary.
"In France the miserable 25 per cent. increase in wages has long been annulled by the giddy and continuing soaring of prices.
"It is the workers of all countries who have lost the war, and it is the capitalists of all countries who have won it.
"It is war economy that is continuing and the means: Guns, aeroplanes, atomic bombs, and not bread, butter, boots, and houses for the workers.
"The avalanche of elections and referenda have changed nothing. It is nothing that in France we have voted eight (8) times since the 'Liberation.' The result? The same bourgeois class and the same oppressor State exploit the workers, carry on their Imperialist war in Indo-China, reduce to slavery 700,000 prisoners of war, and are preparing other things of a similar kind.
"The international bourgeoisie is trying to set the workers of other countries against the American miners. The method is an old one.
"The American miners, in defending their standard of living against capitalist rapacity, show that it is possible to paralyse and to stop the war machine of international capitalism, which, in the final reckoning, depends on the goodwill of the toilers.
"But the American miners' strike also shows that the old Trade Union method is inefficient when confronting the concentrated strength of the State as employer, the boss-State.
"The entire working class must overstep Trade Union limitations, unleash the expropriating general strike, overthrow capitalism and its State, and take possession of the means of production in order to finish, once and for all, with an accursed and condemned regime."
The policy set out briefly in the foregoing article is expended in a long article in the same issue. entitled "Our Position." I shall proceed to give the more interesting and relevant portions.
"Revolutionary ideas cannot be the artificial product of a study circle, which, separated from the working class, 'works out,' in a sealed room, a programme 'for' the working class; we reject such intellectual pretensions, which contain in embryo the whole of bureaucratic degeneration; revolutionary ideas can only be the result of the living experience of the class struggle of the international proletariat, in which all revolutionaries must actively participate.
"The following declaration is the result of long and conscious participation in working class struggles, a landmark in a continuous and unending evolution, and, as such, a modest contribution to …