vinced if the need for a test of strength.
The French massive wage increase Agreements and a million new unionised. toe-hold in the tactories.
television:
either in bourgeois were the most eloThe only way they would have been con factory occupations had developed into a network of urban and rural soviets, thus enabling millions of workers to experience socialist democracy for themselve Having no experience of dual power, French workers could not spontaneously perceive the Communist Party won through the Grenelle workers were The revolutionary left acquired a Waldeck-Rochet, the PCF leader, stated on truth is that throughout the grave events which we have just lived through the French Communist Party conducted itself as a responsible party.? It was one of the few truths spoken by French Stalinism in 1968.
May 1968 revealed in the space of two weeks the central problems of revolutionary strategy which will confront socialists in the West.
The Fifth Republic proved to be a more resilient enemy than Tsarist Ruse is democracy as the torices professional soldiers of the French Army on the Rhine. It was further aided by the non-existence of a revolutionary party.
Petrograd in 1917 had fallen to a revolutionary party basing itself on a strategic minority of the population. It then wooed the majority aided by an inter-imperialist war and a series In the West the opposite will be the case. The involvement of the majority of the working population will be vital right at the start before a socialist revolution is possible. It will be the socialist democracy through organs of workers' power that will create the best conditions for challenging the bourgeois democratic state and defeating its repressive apThis elementary lesson first learnt in Paris was confirmed seven years later in Lisbon.
The revolution has undoubtedly suffered some setbacks in Europe, but the working class has not been defeated. The big tests lie ahead That is one reason why the French general strike needs to be studied closely. It is the reser voir of experience which aids the elaboration of a revolutionary strategy much more than text socialist Challenes 15 May 1980 Page 5