BY LEON TROTSKY  
The greatest danger in France is that the revolutionary energy of the masses will be dissipated in spurts, in isolated explosions like Toulon, Brest, and Limoges, and give way to apathy. Only conscious traitors or hopeless muddleheads are capable of thinking that in the present situation it is possible to keep the masses immobilized up to the moment when they will be blessed from above by the government of the People’s Front. Strikes, protests, street clashes, direct uprisings, are absolutely inevitable in the present situation. The task of the proletarian party consists not in checking and paralyzing these movements but in unifying them and investing them with the greatest possible force.

The reformists and Stalinists fear above all to frighten the Radicals. The apparatus of the united front quite consciously plays the role of disorganizer in relation to sporadic movements of the masses. The “leftists” of the Marceau Pivert type serve to shield this apparatus from the indignation of the masses. The situation can be saved only by aiding the struggling masses to create a new apparatus in the process of the struggle itself, which meets the requirements of the moment. The committees of action are intended for this very purpose. During the struggle in Toulon and Brest the workers would have created without any hesitation a local fighting organization, had they been called upon to do so. On the very next day after the bloody assault in Limoges, the workers and a considerable section of the petty bourgeoisie would have indubitably revealed their readiness to create an elected committee to investigate the bloody events and to prevent them in the future. During the movement in the barracks in the summer of this year against Rabiot [the extension of the term of military service], the soldiers without much ado would have elected battalion, regimental, and garrison committees of action had such a course been suggested to them. Similar situations arise and will continue to arise at every step—in most cases on a local but often also on a national scale. The task is to avoid missing a single situation of this kind. The first condition for this is a clear understanding of the import of the committee of action as the only means of breaking the antirevolutionary opposition of the party and trade union apparatuses.

Does this mean to say that the committees of action are substitutes for party and trade union organizations? It would be stupid to pose the question in this manner. The masses enter into the struggle with all their ideas, traditions, groupings, and organizations. The parties continue to exist and to struggle. During elections to the committees of action each party will naturally seek to elect its own adherents. The committees of action will arrive at decisions through a majority (given complete freedom of party and factional groupings). In relation to parties the committees of action may be called a revolutionary parliament: the parties are not excluded—on the contrary they are necessarily presupposed—at the same time they are tested in action, and the masses learn to free themselves from the influence of rotten parties.

Does this mean then that the committees of action are simply—soviets? Under certain conditions the committees of action can transform themselves into soviets. However, it would be incorrect to call the committees of action by this name. Today, in 1935, the popular masses have become accustomed to associate with the word soviets the concept of power already conquered; but France today is still considerably removed from this. The Russian soviets during their initial stages were not at all what they later became, and in those days they were often called by the modest name of workers’ or strike committees. Committees of action at their present stage have as their task to unite the toiling masses of France in a defensive struggle and thus imbue these masses with the consciousness of their own power for the coming offensive. Whether matters will reach the point of genuine soviets depends on whether the present critical situation in France will unfold to the ultimate revolutionary conclusions. This of course depends not only upon the will of the revolutionary vanguard but also upon a number of objective conditions; in any case, the mass movement that has today run up against the barrier of the People’s Front will be unable to move forward without the committees of action.

Such tasks as the creation of a workers’ militia, the arming of the workers, the preparation of a general strike, will remain on paper if the struggling masses themselves through their authoritative organs do not occupy themselves with these tasks. Only committees of action born in the struggle can assure a real militia numbering fighters not by the thousands but by the tens of thousands. Only committees of action embracing the most important centers of the country will be able to choose the moment for the transition to more decisive methods of struggle, the leadership of which will be rightly theirs.

From the propositions sketched above flow a number of conclusions for the political activity of the proletarian revolutionists in France. The cardinal conclusion touches upon the so-called Revolutionary Left. This grouping is characterized by a complete lack of understanding of the laws that govern the movement of the revolutionary masses. No matter how much the centrists babble about the “masses,” they always orient themselves to the reformist apparatus. Repeating this or that revolutionary slogan, Marceau Pivert subordinates it to the abstract principle of “organizational unity,” which in action turns out to be unity with the patriots against the revolutionists.  
 
 
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