Poujade and the Sickness of France

...they want to be left alone except when they need help...

...However, intelligent antagonists like J.-M...

...They collaborate with another ex-member of the Action francaise, a certain Chevallet, who directs the party's much-touted ecole des cadres, and ensures the liaison with the North African groups of Presence franfaise...

...11 When opponents brand his movement as Fascist, Poujade replies that Fascism recruited its troops among workers disgusted with Socialism— that it is in fact a development of Socialist doctrine and working-class frustration—whereas Poujadism is merely a combination of good French common sense that has too long been lacking and of middle-class frustration...

...Poujade etses chaperons rouges," of which "Poujadeand his red riding hoods" would be either a partial or tendentious translation...

...It is the revolt of the little people (Poujade's petits—of which he is one), of the classic little man so dear to the heart of the Third Republic, so dear to the heart of the Radical bourgeoisie, against the growing oppressiveness of state and moneypower...

...So, one must wait and see...

...If we incline to underrate such reasons for Poujadist success, we should recall Mussolini's remark: "Fascism was not given out to the wet nurse of a doctrine elaborated beforehand round a table: it was born of the need for action...

...He won fifty-two...

...Hence the very characteristic absence of a program, which makes the movement so adaptable, and so difficult to place...

...It is true that during the past year, apart from a few gestures designed to catch the public eye, the UDCA has stagnated...

...It is among this class that the propaganda of the small shopkeepers of the Poujadist UDCA has apparently made real inroads...

...Some of these deputies have since been turned out by deft parliamentary maneuvering and others have resigned...

...See page 187.—Ed.] The Poujadist UDCA emerges as the party of middle-class protest in small towns and in the countryside, representing a public relatively stagnant and backward, opposed to changes which might threaten the established order and economic advantages it enjoys, yet impatient of the established order which seems weak, indecisive, inefficient, hardly a trustworthy champion of internal order or national prestige...

...How far the UDCA is being discredited, how soon (if ever) it will be forgotten, depends less on what it does than on what its rivals, nearer the levers of power, do or fail to do...

...It displeases fewer people than a positive platform might well do, it makes him more "available," it leaves his hands free for opportunistic action...

...Traditionally, a protest should manifest itself as a vote further Left...

...This seems a fair judgment of the present reality and of the danger inherent in it...

...Traditionally hostile to the foreigner and anti-Semitic because of its hatred of the money power," this bourgeoisie "has been reinforced in numbers since the Dreyfus affair, when it absorbed the remnants of the old royalist and Catholic parties...

...As with an attack unexpectedly carried well beyond its objectives, Poujadists have felt the need to halt, regroup, and reassess the situation...

...Here is a ground on which persons moved by vague and contradictory • E. Renan, La Reforme Intellectuelle et Morale, Oeuvres I, Paris 1947, p. 347...

...To this woman, comments Domenach, a vote for the Left is a vote of protest—"c'est embeter le gouvernement...

...It already presented two peculiar and paradoxical characteristics—the Communist connection, indicating that Communists had helped foster the movement,* and the North African connection, underscored when the first national congress of the UDCA was held in Algiers...

...aims and dissatisfactions can meet with profit...

...These peasants are not necessarily in distress...

...For the moment, in spite of defeats and desertions, it continues to appear as the most successful of the many "leagues" which have haunted the Third and Fourth Republics...

...But for reasons that are presented in the article below, it would be a mistake to assume that his movement, or one like it, may not be of • importance in the political future of France...

...it was not a party, but in its first two years it was a movement against all parties...

...and the "reaction" for which it stands is the stronger for being, in effect, largely a stubborn wistfulness for a lost past which makes even the Third Republic look beautiful under the Fourth, and a dull resentment against a present to which it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to adjust...

...The absurdities spouted by Hitler and Mussolini served a double purpose, however...

...Poujade has none of the intelligence or the sensitivity of De Gaulle...

...In 1954 the lagging movement had drawn strength from its North African supporters (it still does today...

...Its violence is only one side of its nature...

...It appealed to few intellectuals, to few industrial workers, and to sections of the upper class largely as a stick with which to beat the established order...

...Writing in Esprit, Jean-Marie Domenach quotes a concierge who declares on election morning: "I am going to vote Left: I will vote for Poujade...

...above all they firmly refuse all sacrifice to interests, ideals or glories which they cannot concretely conceive...

...This latter, together with Maurice Bardeche, and the ex-Vichy propagandist Jeanneret, provide the brain-trust of the movement...

...However, the extreme Left has now been reached by many, tried for some time, and found ineffective...

...And that might be another point to be counted in his favor, as a contender for political power today...

...It was, in effect, much the same thing that M. Domenach knows as Poujadism, and M. Domenach and many other Frenchmen who remember such rotten growths in the pre-war decade cannot fail to recognize the connection...

...As far as one can judge, Poujade's relations with the right-wing leagues have remained close...

...In spite of this, most people still snickered at the idea of any significant showing at the polls, and • P. Poujade, J'ai Choisi le Combat, Saint C&6, 1955, p. 174: In December1953 the president of the Lot Chamberof Commerce speaks of "M...

...Disgusted, but politically naive and ready to believe that decision will solve difficulties apparently due to indecision...

...Poujade's diagnosis seems to have been that the movement was becoming infected by success, succumbing to the notoriously corrupting air of the Chamber...

...Envisaged thus, this movement of commercial travelers, small shopkeepers, businessmen, country pedlars, barkeepers and rentiers appears as a revolt of the provinces against the capital, an aspect of the "Girondist" revolt that Albert Thibaudet described before the war, when he pointed out that the successful politician is the one who governs against Paris...

...They have met on it before— before the First World War, and again before the Second: Sorel and Maurras, Doriot and Deat and Laval, are only theorists or leaders interpreting the tendency, using the possibility.* In these circumstances, the fact that Poujade lacks a program or a doctrine is, if anything, an advantage...

...a little Fascism for little Frenchmen...

...These people have not changed much since Renan described their aspirations after the elections of 1869.* They want a government that is not too costly, not too showy, not too interfering...

...It recruited its troops from the "small men"—the lower and lower-middle class in the country, in provincial towns, in unpromising unorganized urban employment...

...Increasingly popular in the provinces, its next task was the conquest of Paris: throughout 1955 great public meetings, an apparently successful intimidation of the Chamber over the tax issue, attempts to organize a taxpayers' strike, all publicized the new movement and its aggressive, photogenic young leader...

...Poujade himself was branded a vain braggart when he voiced his hope of winning forty seats in January...

...For it is action that Poujade holds out to millions of Frenchmen disgusted by the inactivity of an inane government, and by its tragic consequences—at home, in Indochina, in North Africa, at Suez, in the Saar...

...The appearance of the UDCA in a position from which it can most conveniently throw a spanner into these alreadyrickety works may be merely another passing manifestation of present discontent, fated to disintegrate like De Gaulle's RPF...

...Roland DorgBres, leader of the pre-war Green Shirts, had been a close adviser until a recent quarrel separated the two men...

...On the other hand Poujade is not clearly a man of the Right, any more than General Boulanger was...

...It was born in the summer of 1953 when, warned by a Communist colleague, Pierre Poujade defeated an attempt to make a routine fiscal investigation in the little town of Saint-Cer6 (Lot...

...December brought nationwide success, topped off by the election of the whole Poujadist slate in Paris...

...The Poujadist Union de Defense des Commercants et Artisans is a mushroom party that had contested no other general election...

...Already on August 15, 1912, Jean Neybour was writing in the Revue Socialiste about the strange sympathy between certain syndicalists and the Action francaise: "Cette tendance tout a fait curieuse quirapproche les th@oriticiens d'extrtmedroite e t d'extreme-gauche a aussi sacause dans un mepris accentu@ du parlementarisme...

...The appearance of 52 Poujadists in the French Chamber of Deputies came as a shock to all parties...

...but they find it awkward and uncomfortable to adapt themselves and their methods of exp'.oitation to changing market conditions, they resent the profits of middlemen, the increasing difficulties that face the small farmer...

...In terms of actual numbers they stood fourth—after the Communists, Socialists, and Moderates, but ahead of the Catholic MRP and the various Radical factions...

...Fascism, as a matter of fact, borrowed Nationalist slogans from its dupes and Socialist slogans from its enemies, but it is true that its main appeal was to men who, squeezed between great capitalist monopolies and growing state control, looked towards it for a promise of survival...

...cit., p. 225...

...As Domenach says, the objection that Poujade is a fool has no value...

...in 1956 it would recover its purity by returning "to the healthy provincial climate" of Saint-Cere, perhaps even by a resignation en masse of its deputies...

...Poujadism is an authoritarian formula for the middle-class...

...This was nothing new...

...but the reality of their two and a half million votes, over 12 per cent of the total in the election of January 1956, remains...

...The cure has not proved effective...

...Its record is a long tale of costly failure...

...Le Temps, January 13, 1909, Lettres de Province...

...In France as in other countries, such Fascist, nationalist, anti-Semitic, chauvinistic leagues appeared between * Esprit, February 1956, p. 258...

...they reassured their opponents on the Left who believed in the good sense of the public, and they appealed to those elements among the masses who find reasonable expression too tiring...

...But that depends rather on the ability of the groups still in control of power to deal with the causes of the discontent, to stem the disillusion, on which Poujade has cashed in...

...Domenach point out that such a distinction is hardly a valid one: "What Fascism was to Socialism, Poujadism is to Radical-Socialism," writes Domenach...

...and Poujadism is their protest...

...But many of the same ilk have remained, and dominate the party...

...There is no good reason why the UDCA should not disintegrate like the RPF, its representatives tempted by prospects of the profits to be made from collaboration...

...By the end of 1954 it had rolled through the South-West and into North Africa...

...Already in 1909 we can find Le Temps asserting that the provinces no longer felt the moral influence of any great party.* And, some twenty years later, Seignobos provided a perceptive sketch of the disgruntled small bourgeois adherent or sympathizer of such Right-wing movements—of Radical origin, of vaguely rebellious temper, without political experience, but traditionally anti whatever the government in power...

...the wars—movements of disillusion, discontent and protest, based on contempt for the existing political parties, machinery, and institutions...

...Against the wiles of these Leviathans, Poujade invokes, "La vieille France," "La pure tradition francaise," the symbolic rooster, sharp of spur "qui chantera encore cocorico et non pas cocacola...

...The UDCA newspaper, Fraternite Francaise, was run by two ex-writers of the collaborationist Je Suis PartoutJeantet and Barb...

...And, he might have added, it was a movement against the accepted political machinery and institutions...

...It is the revolt of the "decent people" (Poujade's braves gens) against the sink of corruption that is ruining the country...

...they want to be treated as equals in principle, while far too shrewd to believe in equality in practice...

...It continues to demand the calling of an Estates General of the nation, free of the incurably rotten influences of everyday politics, which alone can reform the country and its constitution...

...U gruntled provincial middle-class, but also to a peasantry in traditionally close relations with the small country town...

...The following study was written before the Parisian by-election, but retains its full interest as an analysis of a recurrent malaise in French politics...

...He could remember similar doldrums before— in 1954, even in 1955—each followed by a new surge forward...

...As some had predicted, electoral success does seem to have had the effect of slowing down the original impetus...

...As for the possibility that Poujade himself might succumb to disillusion, or despair of ever achieving his great work, and give up like Charles de Gaulle, there is little hope of that...

...And M. Domenach thinks that the greatest danger of Poujadism lies in this very mixture of stupidity and cunning that is served up by the leader, and on which the lieutenants are able to capitalize...

...There has been talk of a "malaise du mouvement," of disorder and insubordination, of a "flottement des esprits...

...We shall never know whether Hitler was intelligent...

...The present French regime represents a fraction of an electorate from which the 25 per cent Communist vote is permanently and ipso facto excluded...

...But if my assumption concerning the sources of Poujade's strength is correct, it applies not only to the dis * Poujade, op...

...And ready also to enjoy the opportunity of unaccustomed activity and adventure, of passionate and exciting doings, of escape from dreary everyday routine...

...But for that sort of operation one must have solid profits to offer, and this implies an improvement in French affairs and in the state of the nation—an improvement whose prospect is compromised by the Poujadist success itself...