Source: The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 50, 13 December 1948, p. 2.
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The strike of the French coal miners which started Oct. 3 was called off Nov. 27 by the Stalinist heads of the General Confederation of Labor after the rank and file had spent eight bitter weeks battling government police and troops.
Despite the savage government assault, the miners had a good chance to win their strike for a $13-a-month wage boost and a sliding scale to protect their standard of living; but the Stalinist union heads led them to defeat.
The Stalinists refused to mobilize the workers of other industries to come to the aid of the miners through a general strike. They insisted on limiting help to the collection of funds and token “whirling” strikes; that is, short stoppages here and there.
When the Queuille regime ordered troops to fire on the strikers, indignation mounted high among the French workers. Even the ranks of the Stalinist Party indicated sentiment in favor of a general strike. But the Stalinist chieftains, fearful of losing control over such a movement and its revolutionary repercussions, did everything possible to stifle this sentiment.
Since the French Trotskyists were among the strongest advocates of a general strike to back the coal miners, the Stalinist chieftains labelled the demand “Trotskyist” and “ultra-left” and at the same time tried to smear it as inspired by the fascist-like De Gaullist movement.
The Stalinist CGT heads organized an energetic campaign to “educate” their own ranks against the demand for a general strike. Benoit Frachon, General Secretary of the CGT, issued a leaflet, distributed by the tens of thousands, ostensibly answering a delegation from the Chenard and Walker metallurgical factory who had demanded that the CGT call a general strike to help the coal miners. This delegation was composed entirely of members of the Stalinist Party.
Frachon said the demand had been raised by “Gaullist agents and Trotskyist elements.” And he added:
“We note with amazement that certain militants are so thoughtless as to be influenced by the propaganda of the enemy agents. But when one is in a leading position, having the honor of being elected by his comrades to the post of leadership, one must never be so thoughtless.”
At the 27th Congress of the CGT the question of the general strike was an important issue since delegations from the mines and other industries favored it. The Stalinists tried to gag those in favor of it and buried the proposal.
The Stalinists argued that a general strike could not be organized because some sections of the working class are more backward than others and would not respond to the call. This argument did not prevent them from advancing the contention in the next breath that a general strike would cause the Queuille regime to fall, there would then be no responsible authorities with whom to carry on negotiations and thus the strike would drag on endlessly!
In explaining why they called off the mine strike, the Stalinist CGT leaders declared, “We must regroup our forces in order to continue the struggle in different ways, to press our claims in a permanent manner so as to succeed.”
The coal strike was broken by armed force employed by the Queuille government; but the government terror and violence could not have smashed the mine strike had it not been for the treacherous policy of the Stalinist leadership.
In a speech at the second congress of the Croatian Communist Party in Zagreb, Nov. 25, Marshall Tito was forced to acknowledge publicly that the 5-year plan for Yugoslavia is not doing so well.
“Today, not through our fault,” said Tito, “certain conditions have come about that precisely this position – help from friendly Socialist countries – has declined to a great extent, and for this reason we have greater difficulties than otherwise.”
In this roundabout way, Tito referred to the brutal pressure which the Stalinist bureaucracy is exerting on his regime to crush every manifestation of independence from the Kremlin. Moscow and the satellite countries of eastern Europe have set up an economic blockade of Yugoslavia, hoping by this to effect a political overturn in Belgrade.
Since the Yugoslav 5-year plan originally envisaged the aid and cooperation of the Soviet Union and the satellite countries, it must now be revised, Tito declared. The revision means sacrificing all local projects and the production of consumers’ goods and concentrating on construction of heavy industry. “Local interests must not dislocate the general plan. We must never lose sight of the principal targets – the blast furnaces, Marten furnaces, foundries, coal, coke, oil, and housing projects for our heavy workers.”
Tito’s proclaimed end is to build socialism in one country, that is, accomplish in Yugoslavia what Stalin could not possibly do on the scale of the Soviet Union. Borba, the official newspaper of the Yugoslav Communist Party, recently boasted that Yugoslavia “possesses all the conditions” for “the normal development of its economy” and the building of socialism.
Since socialism cannot be built in a single country, especially a small, backward, agricultural country like Yugoslavia, revision of the 5-year plan does not mean an end to Tito’s difficulties. The building of socialism requires the cooperative efforts of a number of countries, including industrially advanced lands. To try to build a miniature of socialism in isolated Yugoslavia is not only utopian; it is suicidal.
Already Tito finds himself forced to seek economic ties with the western powers. To replace coke supplies cut off from Poland, he had to apply to the Economic Commission of Europe for coke from the Ruhr, Belgium and Italy. This, of course, is only the beginning.
In addition, driven by Yugoslavia’s economic needs, Tito will find it increasingly difficult to resist the political pressure of Anglo-American imperialism on the one hand and the Moscow bureaucracy on the other.
Only by breaking clean from Stalin’s reactionary theory of of building socialism in one country and returning to the Marxist program of building socialism on a world scale can the Yugoslav dissidents save themselves from disaster.
Last updated on: 29 March 2023