SOCIALIST VS. COMMUNISTS IN FRANCE

...The Socialist trump card is Frangois Mitterrand...

...It will accept a minority role, including minor ministerial posts...

...What began as a classic French struggle between "left" and "right," with the leftist alliance strongly favored, has become over the past few months a far more complex struggle, thanks to the split within the left...

...It is therefore useless to look for the channels by which an order of Brezhnev could have reached Marchais, an order such as: "Break up the Union of the Left...

...But here is where "deals" take place, with weaker candidates withdrawing in favor of the stronger, so that most districts end up with 19 merely two candidates—one representing the "right," the other the "left...

...I was too late," Ivan says...

...The working class of France is unsure of itself and its role...

...At the moment we know only that the CP leadership plans to meet in January to take stock of the situation, to evaluate its violent campaign against the Socialists and the affects this has had on the CP's consolidation and membership recruitment...

...Most important, the French workers, including those most directly influenced by the Communists (party members and CGT unionists), no longer propose to ape the Soviet Union, once the "workers' paradise...

...This might be decisive in the election and can easily force a showdown in the few days between the two electoral rounds, now announced for March 12 and 19...

...But what will happen now...

...But why has Marchais now for all practical purposes deliberately ended the alliance, much to the obvious satisfaction of the Russians...

...Marchais boasts that 30,000 party cell leaders (the famous "cadres"), at meetings in October, unanimously endorsed the new party line...

...The tone of the Communist press hardened slightly...

...power over independent institutions of French society, and power over the state...

...But I was too late...

...a telephone call, so to say, will do the trick...

...We don't let them appear often enough on television...

...alos, national defense, with the Communists opting for a "neutral" France and the Socialists favoring limited cooperation in NATO, pending a general disarmament...

...What effect this might have on the March voting is impossible to foretell...

...Ivan arrives at the concentration camp and is asked by another inmate why he was arrested...

...He said his new suit fell apart the first time he wore it, and I said it was because the party can't do anything right...

...What was expected to be a simple editorial procedure, taking into account events of the past five years, would end dramatically in September at a final meeting that adjourned sine die after Marchais scornfully rejected new Socialist proposals on nationalization as unworthy of consideration...

...This is agreed upon by all observers who have contact with the party...

...Indeed, no...

...However, matters are far from simple...

...H ow did France arrive at this point...

...In any case, should an Alliance government be formed in March, we shall see the CP both in it and out of it simultaneously...

...Then why the rupture...

...if the return of the CP "to the ghetto" has intensified its isolation, then the "hard-line" may be reconsidered or, at the very least, the internal struggle known to be going on within the CP may take on new forms...

...He said the beef was getting scarce again, and I said yes, and that there would be another long wait for a new apartment...

...but the Socialists were the principal gainers—so it was time to break, and change course...

...I woke up and realized that Vasily could send me to a concentration camp if he denounced me for what I'd said...

...Nor is it any less nervous over the threat of Eurocommunism...

...More important, will those who are not party members, the floating electorate whose votes are often decisive in close campaigns, go to the polls to vote Communist on the second round...

...he is suspected of an anti-Soviet bias, of sympathy for the Russian dissidents and the East European opposition...

...Whatever evolution the French CP has undergone, greater openness of discussion is not part of it...

...Even though the party has done with the chilling unanimity characteristic of this once most Stalinist of Europe's Stalinist parties, the ancient slogan "dictatorship of the proletariat" was dropped...

...He is a friend of the Bonn Social Democratic government, of Schmidt and Willy Brandt (one of the 1'Humanitê' headlines read: "The Hand of Bonn...

...Except for some old-time Stalinized workers only too happy once again to be on the outs with the Socialists, the general membership is sceptical about the leadership, and the party's word is not accepted as unquestioned as it once was...

...No party in France, no leader, and no union can claim any longer its blind devotion...

...Nor is it a secret that the Russians prefer the moderate, somewhat neutralist and cool-to-the-Americans regime represented by 21 Giscard to a Socialist Foreign Ministry in a Mitterrand government...

...Five years of a Unity pact served its limited purpose...

...Seriously doubtful...

...Strategically, the Communists seek a gradual accretion of power—political and parliamentary power, union power, and power over the nationalized industries...

...It is for more than 20 years the product of the need that exists within every highly complex multinational organism to assure the relative cohesion of the whole without going too far in checking the initiative and vitality of the elements that form it...

...From "Silent Fall," Malcolm W. Browne, New York Times, October 23, 1977 economy was failing to respond to fiscal stimuli, and there was growing inequity in the social sphere...

...And—to everyone's great surprise— the combined Socialists and Communists still have the support (52 percent) of the majority of French voters—down from the high point of 54 percent, but still a clear majority...

...Most important, the tendency of Eurocommunism was born...

...If need be, the Alliance can be picked up again...

...Many middle-class French who would not vote Communist on the second round would vote Socialist...

...Meanwhile, the economic picture in France darkened...

...Its temper is moderate, somewhat left-ofcenter...

...The violence of the split had already been anticipated in August when a Communist-CGT workers' delegation from a plant involved in building the Concorde plane invaded and momentarily seized control of a TV news broadcasting studio, in an action defended by the party to the consternation of the Socialists and the general public...

...I also realized I could send Vasilytoaconcentration camp, but I realized that he realized it, too...

...Further, despite problems on the left, the Gaullists on the right continue to compete against their partners, the supporters of Giscard d'Estaing and his Republican party...

...The simple fact is that today, since the rupture, Moscow remains just as jittery and apprehensive about the French party as before...

...Its membership is inexperienced, its Stalinist faction is disruptive, its influence over the left intellectuals of France has become nil, its Leninist-centralized machinery creaks when called upon to act...

...taxation, minimum wage level and wage differentials, education, and a host of other problems...

...The CP, though much less successful, nevertheless also can claim gains from the Alliance—with a strengthened hold over local municipalities and working-class suburbs, expansion of its trade-union activities, the party militants coming out of their shell...

...The fact that the PCF belongs to the international Communist movement . . does not imply that Brezhnev at present has the power or the will to impose his views upon Marchais...

...In 1974 its leader, Mitterrand, came within a hairsbreath of winning the presidency...

...From the Socialist viewpoint, the Alliance can easily be reformed...

...This was the meaning of last year's fanfare surrounding the party's dropping of the "dictatorship of the proletariat...

...The right, unified for the moment by the miseries of the left—to the point of producing a common election manifesto—is clearly in for trouble over the determined drive for power mounted by Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris and leader of the neo-Gaullists, an outright reactionary who is after the moderate liberal Giscard's head...

...More than the prospect of governing France with a hostile, uncooperative Communist party, he fears a destruction of the Socialist party such as occurred under the Fourth Republic when the SP took part in coalition governments with the right...

...The Soviet Union's hostility to Mitterrand is scarcely a secret...

...The alliance proved to be successful beyond expectations...

...The now-broken Alliance (whose program included a proposal to drop the strange electoral system just described and to replace it with some form of proportional representation) provided for withdrawal of all but the strongest left candidate—Socialist, Communist, or Radical—who then, bolstered by the votes of the left Alliance, would face the candidate of the right...

...a few byelections and municipal elections found the CP not doing what it was expected to do, i.e., withdrawing in favor of its stronger partner...

...Rupture...

...France is ready for change, but vas y molo (take it easy...

...But at 3 A.M...

...In fact, the PCF's reconquest of a degree of autonomy is not the product of a recent conversion to Eurocommunism...

...The great majority of the French now hold the Communists primarily responsible for the breakup of the alliance established five years ago...

...So I got up and went to the police station to denounce him first...

...Doubtful...

...So it went, until the bar closed and we went home...

...Annie Kriegel, a former Communist leader who now writes for Figaro, rejected this simplistic hypothesis in the September 26, 1977 issue: Has the French CP, which has gone so far and so brusquely, Eurocommunized itself in the past two years, has it suddenly made a turnabout under the pressure of Moscow...

...Turning to his Prime Minister Raymond Barre, Giscard says, "They're right, you know...

...Important as these disagreements are, it is the strategy of governance—one's vision of the France of the future—that really counts...

...Therefore, to prevent me from denouncing him to protect myself from his denunciation, he would have to denounce me first...

...The French Communist party is not the machine it once was...

...Does this mean that the Communists want to deal only with a weak Socialist movement...

...The French left has managed to deal itself a heavy, damaging blow...

...No candidate, no matter how low his vote percentage, is automatically eliminated after the first round...

...One of the complaints appearing in Pravda about the Parti Communiste Francais was that its leadership contains "too many Jews...

...It is hard to foresee what may occur in the three months that remain before the election...

...We know that what has been called the postwar era, during which the country, roughly since 1947, lived under conservative-Gaullist rule, is drawing to an end...

...to form a socialist-center government after the elections...

...The real crunch, however, came in the summer when the tripartite commission met to discuss updating (actualisation) of the Common Program...

...it judges by actions that relate to its condition of life, its influence in the shop and in political institutions, its right to its own say...

...As for the Communists, they have hinted more than once, so deep are their differences with the Socialists now, that they will not withdraw in their favor—either they will maintain their candidacy, thus splitting the left vote and assuring a rightist victory, or they will support the liberal-centrist Giscardiens...

...The Louis Harris Institute of France now gives Chirac's neo-Gaullists only 20 percent of the vote, with Giscard's party drawing 22 percent...

...in fact, they care very little about Russia...

...If the antiSocialist "hard-line" has been successful, it will be pursued and the possibility of repairing the alliance will be dim...

...There was the growing inflation, unemployment topping the million mark, and thus the closing of the door to immigrant workers from Southern Europe...

...Victory on the first round requires 51 percent of the votes...

...But early in 1977 some new signs made their appearance...

...Now each of the left parties is pursuing its own electoral campaign, running its candidates in all the districts of the country and aiming to poll as many first-round seats as possible in March...

...Implicit in this action was the CP's abandonment of the insurrectionary road to power and at least a partial acceptance of the rules of parliamentary democracy...

...But will the local SP bodies go along with this policy in all cases...

...the decisive election takes place on the following Sunday, le deuxieme tour...

...This can be turned to Socialist advantage, particularly electorally where the party aims at a 40 percent vote...

...The differences between the two left parties are not only over how many larger industrial combines with their affiliates are to be taken over, but include such matters as how these are to be nationalized, the issue of compensation, how they are to be run after nationalization (workers' control, etc...

...A small Stalinist gang exists within the party, tightly controlled, but the new Marchais leadership (75 percent of the French CP membership has joined the party since the end of World War II) is carving out an alternative road to power that rejects insurrection, subversion, armed struggle...

...But from the outside—holding the Socialist majority responsible, of course—it will criticize, play the demagogue, apply pressure through its CGT unions...

...23 The large French middle class is even less enchanted with the Soviets and is quite familiar with Solzhenitsyn and the facts about Gulag and the Russian dissident movement...

...The Union de la Gauche was formed, with its carefully hammered-out Programme Commun, to be applied when the left would take power...

...Opinion polls now show a steady drop in the leftist majority, so impressive in the summer, with the outcome uncertain...

...if there's no socialist candidate they would prefer a moderate-centrist (a Giscardien), to a Communist candidate...

...But not today...

...but this has not changed the wide-spread mood of anger, frustration, and disgust on the part of many with the left in general...

...We do know, however, that the party's rank and file is bewildered and unhappy, that a vague and confused struggle goes on at every level of the party...

...This election simply does not lend itself to predictions...

...If the Soviet bureaucracy's opposition to the French party's alliance was there from the beginning (1972), Marchais, the party leader, nevertheless went ahead on his own...

...The reality was, however, that the Communist paper 1'Humanitl, scheduled to appear the following day, had already been printed and was being distributed with a banner headline already announcing the rupture, denouncing the Socialists and with a centerfold printed in six million copies to be posted throughout France, attacking the Socialist party...

...Why...

...Why, above all now, on the eve of electoral victory...

...FRANcois MITTERRAND, after the rupture of the CP-SP Alliance, Le Monde, September 27, 1977 A cartoon in the Paris rightist daily Figaro shows a gleeful (President of the Republic) Valery Giscard d'Estaing watching a television screen on which Francois Mitterrand (Socialist party), Georges Marchais (Communist party) and Robert Fabr6 (LeftRadicals) attack one another...

...Whether the CP can attain these goals is another matter...

...Is this a real, a good question...

...Immediate execution...

...One immediate explanation was the hypothesis that Marchais was yielding to Russian pressure...

...And now its membership has reached one-quarter of a million, with a major influx of new workers, middle-class professionals, technicians, gov20 ernment employees into the party...

...The answer lies in the CP's national situation and its leaders' estimation of the party's perspective as it reaches out for political power...

...The hard crust of dogma and impenetrability that has always surrounded this once most Stalinist of Stalinist parties remains...

...Does it disturb them that popular hope henceforth moves in our direction, toward our ideas and the future that we project...

...The first round usually is far from decisive, with only about 20 percent of the seats being filled...

...As for our partners, they have stayed at the level where they were...

...The SP came back to life...

...In 1972 the two parties of the left, one sunk in its "ghetto" and unable to gain more than 15 percent of the electorate, the other in a state of inner collapse and disintegration, joined forces...

...The strategy is to act as if the rupture had not occurred...

...Here we can only speculate...

...Little wonder then, that even le Monde (France's leading paper, which had urged conciliationism with the French Communists for some time) published an angry editorial against the Communists entitled "The Hand of Moscow...

...This turn has been to the decided advantage of the Socialists, whose regenerated party has drawn largely upon new workers in the provinces...

...All may run again if they choose to do so in the following week's runoff election...

...Asked what he means, Ivan explains: "Vasily and I were talking last night...

...On other occasions things have happened in this way between Moscow and Paris...

...The Socialists, following the "high road" set for them by Mitterrand, have indicated their intention to withdraw those of their candidates who lag behind the Communists on the first round...

...Georges Marchais once referred...

...And with good reason: national communism will not vanish from the political scene...

...Either way, an exasperated Mitterrand will have his hands full.* But a revitalized Socialist party has many things operating in its favor...

...Undermining the Socialist party and its growing influence is a major element in this long-range strategy...

...Still, 20 percent of those polled remain undecided at this point: a decisive factor...

...Thus the victory of the left in the approaching parliamentary elections seemed certain...

...In general, the CP will pursue its own path...

...the French Too Late...

...this is not the world of Popular Front France of 1936, and workingclass experience over the past 40 years has been embittering and disillusioning...

...This is why, once more, the Socialist leader Francois Mitterrand continues to reject any thought of abandoning the left-wing Alliance, and threatens to expel from his party anyone advocating cooperation with the centrists (Giscardiens, etc...