France: an End to Politics

...But a government which simply mirrors the shifts of opinion is impossible...

...His remarks, revised by him after the election, form the substance of the following article...

...We are, I think, witnessing a subtle perversion of our political life, and perhaps for good—I do not know...

...De Gaulle today does not speak for certain historical forces aligned against other forces...

...I think, furthermore, that the principal evil of the Fourth Republic— the festering of the parties—has not been cured...

...In our next issue we hope to present other points of view from the French left.—En...

...the effort to break the influence of all the parties, at Ieast on a national level, and to pulverize political life so thoroughly that it will be reduced to petty maneuvers in the circonscriptions (electoral districts...

...And the Socialist Party (SFIO) was the most terrible example of all, with Guy Mollet, its leader, the man who bears the greatest responsibility, since it was he who, as premier, failed to educate public opinion on the problem of Algeria...

...No more politics, that is, if we mean by politics a reasonable calculation of the balance of those forces able to maintain some pressure on the state power...

...We have in France today a strange kind of regime relying upon one man who does not represent politics in the classical democratic sense...

...Finally, and above all, it is this charismatic style of politics which explains many of the features of the new electoral law: the effort to eliminate the Communist Party because it forms a major obstacle to the regime of unanimity...

...The argument for supporting him was strengthened by the fact that these factors coincide with a favorable economic situation which largely rules out the danger of fascism in France (Algeria is another matter: there all the conditions for the coarsest variety of fascism exist...

...the other, the Premier, who is responsible to the national assembly and has very little power...

...Thus far I see no signs of such a renewal of party life in France...

...In France such a party should include the neo-liberals, the non-Communist Marxists and the left Christians...

...And if this analysis is correct, there is little room for political prediction in France, though a great deal of room for betting, gambling and consulting oracles...

...In reality, however, the referendum proved to be a surrender...

...it is a kind of psychology or a politics relying on the magical effects of personal prestige and language...

...III Now the disadvantages...

...his major declarations have always contained deliberately contrived double meanings which gave to both sides—leftists and rightists—the feeling that it was the other which was bound to be disappointed by the leader...

...The Fourth Republic died from lying...

...we have experienced that failure in France...

...The first major consequence of this kind of leadership was the referendum De Gaulle organized on the new constitution, a referendum calculated to make certain an almost unanimous response...

...Is France an example of a universal difficulty, or is it merely a political sport, an exception to the well-being of democratic politics...

...But perhaps even more than the parties it was the men who failed, primarily because of their lack of courage, their failure to say publicly what they were ready to admit privately...

...What we need in France is a new kind of party, a labor or socialist party which would have a practical platform for elections and not simply an ideological stance...

...but if he did, people would say: once De Gaulle accepts independence, that is proof there is nothing else to do...

...Perhaps also for surprises...

...A genuine referendum involves alternatives, and the state accepts the possibility that the decision will be either "yes" or "no...

...The country did not stand up to oppose fascism...

...Because the parties were, in a sense, the only remaining bulwark against Algerian fascism, they managed to survive the collapse of the old regime...

...Let me go directly to the heart of the matter: at present, there is no more politics in France...

...Yet if representation is not the root of power, power becomes mere violence...

...Il...

...This complicated structure represents not a choice between the presidential and parliamentary systems, but a monstrous combination...

...It is the triumph of this "non-partisan" charismatic leadership that explains the curious events of the past six months in France...

...For this charismatic leader must have behind him an undefined nation which no longer relies upon majority rule but instead conforms to the rituals of unanimity...

...And De Gaulle's repudiation of the Gaullist movement on the eve of the elections, was of the same political stamp: an effort to declare himself above the battle of mere partisanship, to show in his person the embodiment of France...

...Thanks to the General, the country is for the moment happy, thinking it has escaped a major crisis and perhaps a civil war...

...But De Gaulle helped the country avoid this danger not with its brains and heart but, if I may say so, with its bowels...

...First, it could become a cure for the political diseases of our country: the liquidation of an embarrassing legacy...

...The disease of the Fourth Republic was to be found in the parties and their leaders, particularly in the left-center and right-center parties which alternated in office...

...and it would also enjoy that inner democracy which has in recent years disappeared from the French Socialist Party...

...The tragedy lies elsewhere...

...These, then, are the reasons that lead one to conclude that De Gaulle's ascent to power had for its purpose the destruction of politics and competition among the various social forces in the country...

...But this is no longer really politics as we know it in democratic states...

...The main trouble with the Fourth Republic was neither its cumbersome constitution nor its governmental arrangements...

...But by following the crowd instead of leading it, the Socialists helped create a public trauma on the problem of Algeria...

...Ordinary life has resumed and we no longer fear the paratroops...

...Everything depends on the solution of the Algerian question and here too, I fear, the new regime is trapped by the same kind of incompatibilities of interest and pressure that the old regime was...

...Let me suggest two possible advantages that might follow, or might have followed, from the new situation...

...It was for this reason that we found it so hard to defend the republic during the May Days [the time of crisis shortly before De Gaulle took power when there was a threat of the paratroops staging a coup.— Ed.] It seemed to us an absurd duty to defend this regime, these people, these parties which, at the last moment, had become the only remaining hope of the republic after having themselves helped bring into being the forces that were now threatening it...

...That is De Gaulle's claim: he represents himself, De Gaulle, and in representing himself he represents France as an undefined and undetermined political force...

...Another consequence of De Gaulle's charismatic leadership is a return to the politics of secrecy...

...These parties failed because for them politics had been reduced to the manipulation of ideologies and the maneuvering of machines...

...And this, for two reasons...

...With this kind of a party we could have a certain responsibility, since it would have to conclude practical agreements on real political issues...

...Through the referendum which created Gaullist France the people said: he will do what he wants to, we are relieved of responsibility...

...First, because he tries to create a role quite without precedent in modern democracy, the role of the supreme arbiter, the chef d'etat who presents himself as above all forces within his country, as a body without weight or gravity...

...In France we see this problem more clearly than elsewhere, since we have had the two dangers in alternating suc cession...

...The new constitution was made for one man, and it will not, I fear, outlast him...

...They are greatly weakened, but in the electoral districts the old machines are still there...

...My fear, therefore, is that we are entering upon a series of constitutional rather than merely governmental crises, moving, that is, from crises of cabinets to crises of regimes...

...11 What are the advantages and disadvantages of this new kind of politics—or rather this absence of politics...

...Perhaps, too, De Gaulle hoped for a balanced parliament, so well balanced between right and left that each side would cancel out the strength of the other and thus together prove impotent before the word of the leader...

...During his half year in office De Gaulle has provided no more than obscure hints about his intentions...

...It lies in the question: will France be able to give birth to something new in politics...

...it absorbed the fascist virus into its system...

...nothing could be more inaccurate than to compare him with the American president...

...We feared tragedy and we may end up repeating the stale old comedy...

...Paul Ricoeur, who collaborates in the direction of the French magazine Esprit and who has previously appeared in our pages, spoke to a DISSENT discussion group in New York shortly before the November elections in France...

...We have already had the great disappointment of 1947, when the Resistance collapsed as a political movement...

...they became the spokesmen for those who trembled at the prospect of Algerian independence out of fear that it might cost them their petty jobs and offices...

...At election time, for example, the issues raised by the parties were the role of the Church, reaction, revolution, economic planning in the abstract—none of them the real problem facing France in the middle of the twentieth century...

...I begin to wonder whether this specific French crisis isn't the manifestation of a latent crisis in all politics...

...As we know, however, this misfired and De Gaulle has an assembly weighted toward reaction...

...The law of democracy, however, is ultimately the law of the majority, and as soon as we substitute unanimity for majorities we have abandoned democracy...

...Encouraged by the mysticism of the leader, they appear to be satisfied with a kind of irresponsibility that manages to aggravate their basic lack of civil sense...

...This problem has become for us so enormous, so traumatic that only a nonpolitical force, one not associated with the traditional parties and thereby the embittered divisions of French politics, seems capable of confronting it...

...thus, an appeal is made to the people and their power thereby recognized as supreme...

...We are not at all sure that the new crisis to which France is drifting may not become a kind of fixation, a conservative drifting...

...Relying upon this doomed segment which represents neither the economic nor culture future of Algeria, the Socialists prepared the way for the collapse of the republic...

...France has never succeeded in surmounting the dilemma: either representative government or personal power...

...The possible liquidation of the excesses of party politics and an imposed solution of the Algerian problem—these could be tremendously important, and to many they seemed to justify support of De Gaulle...

...Now everyone could delegate his courage and his fears to one man...

...it may even have been aggravated...

...If De Gaulle was right in saying that we had a bad constitution under the Fourth Republic, then we should have taken him seriously and created one that would be more durable and worthy...

...In a country as badly divided as France the referendum as a governmental device is very important...

...They had lost all hold on the problems facing the country and had repeatedly substituted slogans of political mythology for concrete analy sis of French society...

...A genuine referendum means a consultation of the country when the state power cannot answer questions that must be raised...

...But perhaps the most alarming fact about the new situation is that Frenchmen now feel relieved of all political responsibility...

...Only, it seemed, an unquestioned leader like De Gaulle would have been invulnerable to racist assault had he agreed to Algerian independence...

...It is clumsy, with two executives: one, the President, who is free of political responsibility and commands the real power...

...They flattered the nationalist passions of those whom one might call the "poor whites" of France...

...De Gaulle's referendum also perverted our political life, because it perverted the very idea of a referendum...

...The difficulty consists in the fact that democracy seems to require a power representing the people, and thus an extreme version of a representative regime would make the central state power into a mere reflective mirror of public opinion and political trends...

...The second possible advantage following the shift to De Gaulle was that his kind of charismatic leadership seemed, by now, the only way of solving the Algerian problem...

...We must therefore discover the dialectical tension between representation and power...

...A practical program which would win from its ideological tendencies agreement on concrete issues, which would be a governmental program for four or five years and would represent a genuine pledge to the electorate rather than being a mere echo of ideologies...

...Perhaps, because issues have not been faced courageously, the result may be that we shall drift back into a version of the Fourth Republic with its squabbling deputies, its local rivalries, its provincial boredom...

...IV Finally, let me say a word about a certain basic problem involved in this crisis...

...I don't think he will do it...

...Here, I would suggest, is an enigma of power in modern so ciety...

...That is why a "no" vote in the referendum had finally no meaning: it was not a genuine referendum but a plebiscite...

...We discovered that a photographic image of a country is not a government and that political power is not merely representation...

...Our electoral system under the Fourth Republic, based on proportional representation, seemed the most just system conceivable, yet it prevented any solution of the various political crises...

...If, however, the triumphant Gaullist movement should now succeed in making him its prisoner, his pretense to being an arbiter will collapse and he will become a partisan leader...

...But our referendum was not genuine because only one solution was offered—to have risked a "no" majority would have meant an adventure into a perilous unknown...

...I say that because we have no consistent political philosophy regarding power in a democracy...

...Second, not only is De Gaulle a man alone, outside of the political game, but more important, he is also trying to create the kind of power that Max Weber called charismatic power: the politics of inspiration...

...The task of the Socialists should have been to explain to the French people that Algerian independence did not necessarily signify the "loss of Algeria," but could open a new era, a healthier relationship with a free people...