[The following was part of a long reply to Trotskyists criticizing the Communist Party of France for a failed strike, which of course, as usual, the Trotskyists did not lead any better. Although the Trotskyists did not organize the workers, the Trotskyists said the workers spontaneously rejected the Communist Party of France. It's important to notice that in 1952 there were a couple conditions in France that do not pertain today: 1) just getting beyond the devastation of World War II 2) a Communist Party that had just received five million votes.]
"If one were to consider only the acts and the contents of conscience, what would have become of the revolutionary elan of the proletariat? And where would its combativeness have gone? Has one ever seen a proletariat without combativeness? And didn't Marx say that it would be revolutionary or it would not exist at all? Now, it exists, it has to exist, otherwise the anti-communist Marxists would lose their hope and their raison d'etre. Therefore, there must exist in the proletariat an elan, duped, misled, warped by the wicked. Can no trace of it be found? That's because it is not directly perceptible to our senses. It will suffice to drag Marx's formula toward psychoanalysis: the conscious is a lie, lies are the reasons it gives itself for acting: the analysis of acts and of their subjective significance directs one to the profound spontaneity which is their source. If you don't admit the existence of spontaneity, you will simply conclude that the workers' abstention, their hesistations, their uncertainties express their objective state of exhaustion. But, if you begin by thinking that the proletarian must be, at all times and in all places, a revolutionary, and if you illuminate his attitude by his historical mission, then the discouragement and inertia which he has displayed can be only the superficial and deceptive appearance of a profound elan. . . ." "Just imagine this: the working class is possessed, it is exorcised;; the instant its devil [referring to the Communist Party--MC5] flies out, the proletariat opens its eyes and breaks into a thousand pieces. Can you see us without a proletariat? If the truth must be told, this eventuality is not likely to terrify the right wing of anti-communism, which goes around repeating that the worker is a fool who believes he is a proletarian; but the left wing can't bear the thought of it: with the disappearance of the Belle Dame sans merci, the non-Stalinist Marxist loses everything, and first of all the honor of being faithful without hope. It is for his personal use that this eclectic notion was perfected: the elan-class. If you look at the world through such glasses, you will see that class everywhere, even if the proletariat has been shattered. And since it's a matter of refusing to give the Party credit for achieving the unity of workers' action, the magic principle of this unification will be situated somewhere between the objective organization of production and the subjectivity of the producer, like individual spontaneity between being and doing, like the Freudian libido between the body and pure consciousness. Strong in its elasticity, this rubber proletariat can stretch itself without snapping or pile itself up without caving in: it stretches out and gets thinner, flows out through the open spaces of its cage and reassembles outside or else it compresses itself, takes off, rolls between the bars of the apparatus and goes bouncing away in the midst of its true friends." [MC5 comments: Sartre believed there was a French proletariat, but he was willing to doubt its existence under very specific conditions which he precisely addressed in 1952. For that matter he went into print openly doubting whether the proletariat existed in Germany of the Nazis. He wondered whether the class existed or whether it was really all so much false consciousness. And Sartre is correct, that according to Marx, being revolutionary is part of the definition of proletariat. The issues in connection to the consciousness of a class come out very clearly in debate with anti- scientific people like the Trotskyists. For them and people like Bob Avakian there is merely a question of "fundamental interest." In this way, the Trotskyists can refer to the proletariat as a passive thing with whatever qualities the Trotskyists need to attribute to it at any moment in their opportunist existence. The fact that they view the class as a thing gets them out of the fact that they are not leading it in the tens of millions. It also allows them to say whatever they want about its consciousness and activity--including counting reactionary consciousness as proletarian--which is inevitable in the united $tates and Western Europe without MIM Thought. Sartre was one to realize that the Trotskyists try to have their cake and eat it too. Marx told us two things: that exploitation breeds resistance and revolution for one. For two, there is a proletariat in Western Europe. Sartre says, look, we cannot have it both ways: either the proletariat demonstrates revolutionary combativeness because of the brutality of its conditions or there is not a proletariat. Again and again he says that it is possible for a proletariat to be shattered like glass, atomized, with some selling themselves to the bourgeoisie--a danger he felt if the Trotskyists succeeded in destroying the Communist Party. In fact, it is even possible for a proletariat to never form--and this is something that many supposed Marxists do not understand when we ask them about that small white minority on the economic bottom of imperialist society that they supposedly champion. Sartre quotes Marx on workers who are "scattered" and "broken up." They may not have sold-out to the bourgeoisie yet, but they plan on it. Of the two things that Marx told us, one is more fundamental than the other. There might not be a proletariat in Western Europe, but exploitation definitely creates revolutionary combativeness. We might have made a mistake in our class analysis, because we may have counted some petty-bourgeoisie as proletariat, and in the imperialist countries, Lenin already explained in detail the relations of production behind that, but we are not throwing out Marx's connection of exploitation to revolution. We see it in too many countries to throw out that thesis just because of the Amerikans and Western Europeans, who Lenin counted as part of the one-quarter of the world's population that is oppressor nations population anyway. That's why for Sartre it was not enough for the Trotskyists to say there is a proletarian elan apart from the Communist Party of 1952 in France. Sartre wanted to see something visible, namely, action, combative action that all proletariats have. It's not possible to say that there is a revolutionary proletariat being held back by the Communist Party without seeing some evidence in action. It's not a question of misleadership if there is no proletariat to begin with. When a fighter is in the ring, he may make many unprofessional moves--not ducking enough, not moving his feet, not using his arm's reach correctly etc. In fact, the fighter may be creamed in the fight, not because of a lack of conditioning or strength. His coach may need to be fired. Nonetheless, we know when a fighter goes into the ring that he is a fighter, not a kindergarten teacher who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sartre adds that a given persyn may have the physical appearance of being proletarian, but without connection to other proletarians in unity, s/he is but a "worker" at best. Sartre reviews Marx on this point and we believe that 50 years ago he already answered the many who think of the proletariat as just a thing, and not even a very precisely defined thing at that.]