‘The War Against the Riffs and the Socialist Party of France’ by Andre Marty from Workers Monthly. Vol. 4 No. 12. October, 1925.

THE Painleve government decided under the hypocritical formula: “Respect for treaties and the sovereignty of the Sultan!” (an insignificant puppet of the French government) to carry on war against the Riffs. It could not have been otherwise. When among the most important members of a ministry there are men such as Briand, an upstart adventurer, Caillaux, a typical banker, Schrameck, a born policeman and Steeg, a slave-holder, the hand of capital does not need to pull very hard on the wires with which it controls its marionettes, in order to guide them as it desires; a breath is sufficient.

Every bourgeois government of this country feels itself compelled to destroy the Riffs by military means and by the blockade, for the following chief reasons:

1. The greed of the banks desires at last to “bestow peace”—as they call it—on Morocco, so that they can exploit it to their heart’s content.

2. The free Republic of the Riffs would spur on all the oppressed Arabian peoples of North Africa, Morocco and Tunis to a revolutionary fight for freedom. This however would be a fearful blow to imperialism, especially to the French.

This is why the bourgeois government felt compelled at a moment’s notice to carry on war to the end. The leaders of the Socialist Party (including Blum, Renaudel, Bedouce) who really belong to the left wing of the bourgeoisie, have joined in.

The attitude of the socialists was dictated by their anxiety to remain a government party. Why? Because since May 11, 1924, the Socialist Party (S.F.I.O.) has, with almost incredible rapidity, drawn close to the bourgeoisie.

When it became a government party, it attracted a large number of electors of the cartel who took their cards of membership not out of enthusiasm for the Socialist Party, but to ensure for themselves the protection of the mighty ones of the day. In numerous communities it has absorbed those “radical” elements, which form a number of election committees, but no party. Many young lawyers and young doctors “with a brilliant future” have joined the party and, in the majority of the socialist provincial section, a “brilliant” general staff discusses policy from the point of view of merchants, which has nothing at all in common with the “empty and interminably long discussions of old Guesde who only began to realize the seriousness of the times in the fire of war.” (These are the words of a young and “brilliant” advocate of the Socialist Party). As early as ten months ago— on the occasion of voting with regard to the secret funds— this development became clear in the eyes of those who are less informed. Today it alarms even the old socialists to such a degree that one of them (on June 12, in a Leaflet of the S.F.I.O.) writes as follows:

“It (the S.F.I.O.) is assuming more and more the aspect of a bourgeois democratic party of the Left.”

A dreadful saying, for it takes up again Zinoviev’s thesis, about which there was such a hue and cry years ago and according to which Social Democracy is classified as belonging to the left of the bourgeoisie and not to the right of the proletariat. (A propos that party comrade of Renaudel may have been accused by Renaudel of having sold himself to Moscow.)

The socialist leaders are in a dilemma from which they see no issue.

The one possibility is for them to continue to support the government; in this case they risk losing their last Labor elements which will go over to the Communists. Renaudel does not seem to mind very much, as he showed at the session of the Chamber on May 27, when he said to our Comrade Doriot: “Let them go to you.”

And Poucet, in order to emphasize his contempt for the working class added (session of the Chamber on the 27th of May):

“We shall not lose much by it.”

It does not matter to them if a few workers leave the party; the support of those in power today will bring them a number of new place-hunters which will exceed the number of those departing.

The other possibility is for them to join the opposition: then however, they will become an election party and a void will be formed, as they will have no chance of rising, the party will be discouraged, and the really revolutionary workers will, more than ever, go over to the Communists.

This is the reason for the vacillating, oscillating attitude of the Socialist Party since the end of May. Their fraction in Parliament which is guiding them, and that dictatorially (see the last National Council) has allowed its internal dissensions and its confusion in all votings since that of May 29 with regard to the Morocco question to become evident, on the one hand by violent disputes in the full hall of assembly as to the division on May 29 for the government (six refraining from voting), or especially at the session of June 16, when there were two socialist votes for the Communists, 84 abstained from voting and 17 gave nationalist votes (!) Finally at the last division on July 9 with regard to credits for the Morocco war, the socialists refrained from voting, but emphatically declared—through Blum—that this indicated no lack of confidence in the government, and that they were opposed to the evacuation of Morocco.

Be it remarked that abstaining from voting is the normal refuge of those who are too cowardly to take sides. These persons who reproach the Communists with “thinking,” funk a discussion in which it is a case of pronouncing a clear and consistent opinion on so simple a question as that of Morocco.

In recent times there has been talk of the formation of a “Left” in the Socialist Party which is grouped around Bracke’s periodical, “Spark.” This opinion has been confirmed by the fact that our press has published resolutions against Morocco which were signed by the socialist sections. The name “Left” seems to me incorrect. The name, however, which was recently taken by a fraction of the socialist section of Beziers, is much more exact: “resisters.” The group of “Spark” is really trying to “resist” Renaudel, but— in favor of Bracke. It feels that the party will be compelled to join the parliametary opposition, as Painleve and Briand have contemptously declared that they can do without the socialists. The financial projects of M. Caillaux which have been opposed to those of M. Vincent Auriol (socialist) are evidence of the poor opinion which the government has of the socialists.

In any case the support of the socialists is of no use to the government, indeed in a certain sense it interferes with the termination of the war; they are therefore turned out of the majority.

The “résisters” are therefore trying to overthrow Renaudel and to replace him by Bracke and Blum as they fear that the present tactics of the party will only bring them the real hostility of the working class and still more of the reformist trade unions of the industrial districts and will drive the workers to the revolutionary trade unions, to the Cc, G. T. U., or to the Communist Party, thus leaving the Socialist Party as a handful of intellectuals and functionaries,

If this new formation were a socialist Left, if it were Marxist, as it claims to be, it would not be content to demand peace in general terms, but it would have to demand the military evacuation of Morocco and to recognize the right of independence of the colonies. It would not even have to make these demands according to Lenin, but simply according to Paul Lafargue who, in 1883 wrote from the prison of Ste. Pelagie:

“The manufacturers travel through the world to find markets for their accumulated goods, they compel their governments to annex the Congo, to take possession of Tonkin, to make a breach in the Chinese Wall by cannonade, in order to sell their cotton products there. In the last century there was a mortal duel between France and England as to which of the two should have the exclusive right of a market for its goods in America and India. Thousands of young, strong men stained the sea red with their blood during the colonial wars of the 15th, 17th and 18th centuries.

“There is a surplus of capital as of goods. The financiers do not know where to invest it; they go therefore to the ‘fortunate’ nations and build railways for them, construct factories and bring them the curse of work. And this export of French capital ends one fine day in diplomatic complications; in Egypt, France, England and Germany -were on the point of flying at one another in order to know which employer should be paid first; or by the war in Mexico whither French soldiers were sent in order to get the debts paid through armed intervention…”

If there were a Marxist Left in the party of the S.F.I.O., they would on the strength of these words of Lafargue insist upon the application of the proposal of the Federation of the S.F.I.O. of the Seine, dated May 10th, 1911, i.e., the evacuation of the country of Fez.

But these brave socialist resisters do not even dare to demand that the right of self-determination of peoples should be observed, for they are against the evacuation of “French” (!) Morocco. In order to justify this scandalous claim, they speak of the “rights earned by the French in their colonies.” (Auguste Reynaud, du Var). Everyone knows that in the colonies the soil was taken from the natives by brute force. Only recently, last November, the “Petit Oranais” revealed the scandal of the expropriation of the Zerruki tribe who, when it made claims before the administration of Mascara (Algiers), was simply driven back by the Spahis with firearms. Comrade Jacques Doriot, in his brochure on the Morocco war has described how Captain Huot plundered the Bendjates in Morocco and then drove them off their own soil. In that the “Left” does not demand the evacuation of Morocco, it condones the brutal exploitation of the colonial peoples. It tries to be pacifist and to draw the whole party into pacifism, but it recognizes the right to “protect” the colonies; it is therefore fundamentally imperialist and slavetrading.

The Workers Monthly began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Party publication. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and the Communist Party began publishing The Communist as its theoretical magazine. Editors included Earl Browder and Max Bedacht as the magazine continued the Liberator’s use of graphics and art.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/wm/1925/v4n12-oct-1925.pdf