By TIM BUCK

ae & hational congress
by ta Communist Party of
Beet, be Ce made a marked im-
Yefore public opinion. ‘Never
Pet ane Capitalist newspa-
Retty pee congress of the
2 hays Such attention, still
htt cone they acknowledged

€rn by report and com-

Or

de, gore, the daily Le

IS re €voted two full pages

wqport and commentary on
Ochet’s report to the

‘ € national television

halt France broadcast a
a 0 interview with

Out the Congress.

- Ca

a ntalist press was prob-

Piro ese that the Con-
ey, ected so. much that
a that matter, it is
© Soci € that the leaders
Ed to lalist Party also had
1 Be ee or at least to
ylicy defo evelopment of party
the Put re the 17th Congress.
_ le, official organ of

hay

St Party, commented

The
Natigng communist Party’s 17th
tep stan eres while giving
; teas 3 tus to Maurice Tho-
nL tthe *ttainly let it be known
i u Orld has changed .. .
Malis Agreement between
imped Communists, for-
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ged now be more easily

Oe Popa .
es ose and: all the non-
Foyeson 4, Press gave the im-
cteg at a dramatic and
the : Change was initiated
y'Btege U8tess. Actually, the
peorsed the line and
ed Nat had been broadly
_ im the party since

the
congas of the discussion
ear Tences were held in
ling “ents of France and
Nd proposals put for-
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of th Were voted on in
broad €m. In the sense of
the » public method by
ti,  P?oposals were devel-
Ould be said that the
- til pas a stage, crucial
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. hun @Xening” of the non-
of th Press to the signifi-
als Communist Party’s
Ona) Very important. The

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ay and newspapers
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Keni,’ above this fact, the
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Ng the truth when it:

The De Gaulle regime has
been one of social retrogression.
Enormous expenditures on arma-
ments have been the cause of
continual increases in taxation
and the prices of necessities and
‘the background of increasingly
bitter resistance to wage increas-
es, with the result that the stan-
dard of living of the French
working class has declined in
relation to other countries.

Sixty percent of the total
revenue secured by the personal
income tax is taken out of
wages. The prices of necessities
compared with the price level
in other European countries are
high; some prices are compar-
able with those in Canada. For
example, creamery butter costs
10 francs a kilo, equal to more
than 90 cents a pound.

The building of houses has
failed to keep pace with the
growth of population and even
more with the increasing con-
centration of population in in-
dustrial centres. Only in munici-
palities where Communist may-
ors are elected consistently is
housing construction maintained.
One result is that in the larger
centres, such as Paris, the hous-
ing conditions of a large propor-
tion of the working people are
unbelievably bad. In some sec-
tions two out of five families
have no bath or inside plumbing.

The average wage level is in-
dicated by the fact that highly
skilled automobile mechanics,
with high seniority in a union

shop, employed by the publicly-
owned transit system of Paris,
earn the equivalent of 93 cents
an hour. It takes the edge off
the desire for shorter hours and
it‘says much for the understand-
ing of the municipal transport
workers as well as for their
militancy that they have main-
tained their 4714-hour week. At
the lower end of the wage scale
there are hundreds of thousands
of workers who earn only the
equivalent of $80 to $90 a month.

Thus, the workers of France
have seen the overall economic

activity of the country expand °

to virtually full employment and
tremendous increases in the pro-
fits of the monopolies, while
their own conditions of life be-
come harder. Their children are
robbed of opportunity for edu-
cation because the Gaullist re-
gime starves education so as to
spend 30 percent of its revenues
cn armaments.

Ommunists seek unity aa ate
for a democratic alternative to De Gaulle

The Arch de Triomphe in Paris, the world’s largest triumphal
arch, towers over the tomb of France’s unknown soldier.

Social services become more
and more inadequate as the pri-
ces of all the necessities of life
continue to rise. On top of the
worsening conditions of life the
workers in industry are being
subjected to ever-increasing
speedup.

All these material sacrifices
are demanded of the people by
De Gaulle, in the name of his
drive to achieve what he des-
cribes as “the grandeur of
France,” or even of French

growth.
‘But, instead of strengthening

TIM BUCK reports on his recent

visit to France where he attended
the 17th national congress of the

French Communist Party.

France, De Gaulle is undermin-
ing her sovereignty. Even while
trying to surpass Western Ger-
many in military strength. and
posing as the alternative to Uni-
ted States imperialism, he is
facilitating the penetration of
French economy by U.S. and
West Germany monopoly-capital
and he is actually “speeding-up”
the resurgence of German mili-
tarism.

The reaction of the workers
to this systematic sacrifice of
France was shown in the 1962
elections when the Gaullist vote
dropped by almost five million.
The election system is rigged in
such a way that, although De
Gaulle’s candidates obtained
only 35 percent of the popular
vote, they received a clear ma-
jority of the seats in the Na-
tional Assembly. Yet in spite of
all the rigging the Communist
Party increased its seats from
10 to 40.

This was so largely because
the Communist Party alone had
identified itself with the demo-
cratic aspirations of the masses
of the people. Combining the
struggles for livelihood and to
maintain the authority of elec-
ted municipal councils with the
overall national necessity for a
democratic alternative to the po-
licy of De Gaulle, the party has
gradually won the admiration of
all democratic French: people.

This is why since the party’s
16th Congress, 30,000 new mem-
bers flocked into its ranks, why

it has 800 more plant branches °
organized in factories and mines, ”

why the overall number of its
branches has increased from 16,-
000 to 18,000, why the majority
of the delegates at the 17th Con-
gress were in their 20’s or early
30’s. ee

The 17th Congress was, above
all, the national consolidation of
the marked gains made and of
the method of* political work
which have been such big fac-
tors in making of the gains. The
party’s slogan, “For a True De-
mocracy and a French Policy of
Peace and Progress,’’ encompas-
ses the concept of a far-reaching

‘democratization of France, in-

cluding popular curbs on the
power of the monopolies. One of
the aims proclaimed by the Con-
gress is to make this the slogan
of a united front of all democra-
tic forces.

As Waldeck Rochet declared
in his report:

“This signifies that, during the
still lengthy period which sepa-
rates us from the presidential
election we will not neglect any
possibility of arriving at an
agreement between democratic
parties upon a common program,
because this is the objective that
we must attain. Meanwhile, if
our proposals are rejected, the
Communist Party will be com-
pelled“to present its own can-
didates when the time comes.”

It should be noted that ihe

June 12, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 7

party is not asking for an organi-
zation or even a committee to
lead the united action, solely
agreement by democratic par-
ties upon a common immediate
program and a joint candidate.
‘Maurice Thorez emphasized this
strongly in his appeal to the de-
mocratic people of France. om

The: 17th Congress placed

great emphasis on the impor-

tance of gearing the party’s acti-
vities to this aim, on the organi-
zation and style of its work.

In a comprehensive report
Georges Marchais analyzed the
structure and style of work of

_the party from the shop and

street branches up to the central
committee with emphasis on the
need for more and more “out-
wardness” in every field.

It will be of interest to -Fri-
bune readers to know that one
need he emphasized strongly is
for more work among the 2.6
million immigrants who have
settled in France since the end
of the Second World War.

It would-be wrong to leave the
impression that organizational

. details .were allowed to over-

shadow the main theme of the
Congress. Nevertheless, the em-
phasis upon “What we do and
how we do it” was quite mark-

‘ed.

For example, Roger Garaudy,
in his brilliant report on the
radical changes taking place in
ideas which, until recently, were
considered axiomatic, gave the
delegates a really beautiful short
explanation why we must care-
fully choose the words we use
to explain our ideas. Our under-
standing of reality and changes
in it can be communicated to
non-Communists only to the ex-
tent that we explain it in words
which are at once correct and
easily understood.

* * *

I could not help but be deeply
impressed at the close of the
Congress. I had watched dele-
gates arrive Thursday morning,

“coming straight from bus or

train to the Mutualite where the
sessions were held. Sessions
were from 8.30 a.m. until 8 p.m.
(once until 9 pm.) with only
the midday meal adjournment.
The delegates had to travel out
to Ivry for their evening meal
and then travel to the homes of
the party members with whom
they were billeted.

“It requires no imagination to
recognize that by Monday eve-
ning they were tired. Yet, they
streamed out of the Mutualite,
carrying. their bags on their way
to buses and trains to start work
Tuesday morning with shining
eyes; proud to be members of
the Party of a Happy Future
for France. :