ELECTIONS SHOW COMMUNIST DOWNTREND
Guizot, Henri
Report from France: Elections Show Communist Downtrend By Henri Guizot New Leader Correspondent in France Pari* FRENCH COMMUNISM, the strongest European component of Stalin's empire, is on...
...Report from France: Elections Show Communist Downtrend By Henri Guizot New Leader Correspondent in France Pari* FRENCH COMMUNISM, the strongest European component of Stalin's empire, is on the wane...
...A The -Communist party never lacks money...
...But nothing of the kind happened...
...It also means that there is less dissatisfaction with economic conditions, for, thanks to the Marshall Plan, the general level of production in January, 1949, was 12% higher than that of 1938...
...According to the Communist, plan, such a demonstration was to have world-wide significance: it was to show that a vast and growing proportion of the French were against 'heir government, and would decisivey take sides with Stalin's Russia (gainst the United States...
...Both the government, and all the parties that support it, awaited the elections with great misgivings...
...In comparison with the 1946 elections, it lost 339,000 votes, far fewer than the Communists...
...They fear a return of the crisis of 1934-35...
...Apparently accepting Lenin's dictum that a weak piece of string can also be useful in the party economy, they cleverly maneuver with the various fellow-traveler organizations of their own creation, such as the "Progressive Christians" (chretiens pfooresstulstes) or the "Fighters for Peace and Freedom...
...No matter how loudly the Communists shout about their "victories" in the cantonal elections, the figures show that, compared with the legislative elections of 1946, they sustained a loss of 526,000 votes...
...Lately they have Included in this game, the leftist windbags who broke away from the French Socialist party, who took part in the cantonal elections under the label of the "United Socialist Party" (Parti Socialiste Unitaire...
...In 1508 cantons, the Communists obtained 1,689,00ft votes, as against the Socialist vote of 1,206,000...
...1. The prices of agricultural products in France are falling...
...According to the Ministry of Information Commission, which" is in charge of allocating paper to the press, Its average daily circulation in 1947 was 450,000, while on some days it exceeded 500,000...
...The cantons elect general councillors (consettlers generaux) who serve in the Departmental- Assembly...
...The farmers, ' who have become accustomed in recent years to a different and quite secure position, are extremely worried and dissatisfied...
...Taking this into account, as well as the series of difficulties encountered by the Socialist party in recent years (its extreme poverty, and so on), the Socialists might have been expected to sustain an enormous loss of votes...
...This means that a large segment of the population has lost faith in communism...
...Many political leaders and journalists were convinced, on the basis of various "prognoses," that the Communists would win a big victory...
...There was reason to fear that such demagoguery might produce its intended effect upon the farmers, who have a good under - standing of smaller and local problems, but whose insight into world problems is not as keen...
...In the East Stalin will naturally never, allow such, "psychological disarmament...
...PROSPECTS OF COMMUNIST VICTORY in the cantonal elections were enhanced by two objective factors...
...It is wellknown that parties iry power wear out in the course of governing the state, and are often forced, on contact with actuality, to abandon some' of their fine, but not always realizable intentions, programs and promises...
...The elections of these councillors have never before been especially political in character, but this year two parties—the Communists and the de Gaullisfs—decided to turn them into a clear-cut political demonstration...
...DEFEAT OF THE PACT was the chief Communist objective in the cantonal elections...
...The Communist party's loss of 526,000 votes in the cantons has been accompanied by a sharp decline in the circulation of HumaniteK its central and most widely read orgdn...
...Thorez is using this line to obtain millions of signatures for his letter to President Truman, in which he declares: "We deny our government's right to sign the Atlantic Pact...
...The Communist fellow-travelers also' man the "Peuple du Monde," organized in Paris by the "first citizen of the world," Garry Davis...
...This, although they dragged to the polling booths practically everyone who could be counted on to vote communist...
...THOSE COMMUNIST HANGERSON who call themselves the "United Socialist Party" wrote ringing manifestoes and believed in rheir imminent elevation to great heights, when they broke with the Socialist party...
...A canton is a small district, three thousand of which make up the ninety departments which form the administrative framework of France...
...2. Communist propaganda, it was thought, would easily confuse those with a narrow political perspective because it hyppocritically based itself on the sincere desire for peace of the French masses...
...The propaganda of this organization is fully synchronized with that of the Communists: its streams of "integral pacifism" flow only in the direction of people who live west of the Iron Curtain...
...It is only necessary to press a certain button, and millions of franca pour into the party treasury as from a cornucopia...
...This, too, underlines the fact that communism in • France is on the wane, and that the people are turning to non-Soviet solu- . tions to their problems...
...a This is almost a law: people in power, like birds, lose many of their decorative feathers...
...This seemed -a be indicated by the following, rather important considerations: , » • » 1. THE COMMUNISTS CONTROL a huge and well-trained propaganda apparatus, organized on the Soviet model...
...This demonstrates once again that "leftist" socialism is a soap-bubble, and that there is absolutely no room for any serious political formation between socialism and communism...
...When the Communists see- that they have no chance of winning in a given locality, they immediately court successs in a more moderate guise, either as "progressive republicans," or as the "union of republicans and members of the resistance...
...Cunning, unbridled Communist demagoguery has failed to corrupt them...
...No other French party/can turn on a flood of propaganda such as the Communists are capable of...
...But how many voters followed this party...
...Partly, this is because no other party commands funds large enough to permit it to maintain and move throughout the country mobs of agitators, call thousands of meetings, print an endless dream of books, pamphlets and newspapers, and hypnotize the electorate with millions of placards, tracts and posters...
...You may believe this or not, but the fact remains that this "proletarian party" wields enormous funds...
...This would, have meant a vindication of the Soviet aggressor and a denial of Europe's right to resist it...
...This "integral pacifism" is needed by the Thorez and his kind to defeat the Atlantic Pact, and to depict Stalin's Russia as a kind, sweet Cinderella about to be raped by imperialist wolves (the United States, England, France, et al...
...2. Another circumstance spoke in favor ht Communist success in the cantonal elections: their skill in deceiving the simple masses...
...Fortunately, the voting showed that the people of France are politically more astute and- intelligent than was supposed by the pessimists, including this writer...
...On March 15th, 1948, however, its circulation was 355,000, and on March 15th, 1949, it was only 258,000...
...Thft fact clearly emerges from the recent French cantonal elections...
...Humanite will explain that the Central Committee of the party derives this money from collections among the people...
...They hinted that with their departure the Socialist party virtually ceased to exist, since they allegedly represented the Socialist mind in all its purity...
...It was necessary, they explained, to overthrow that government, "since it is ruining our agriculture and importing agricultural products to please the United States" (Humanite, March 14, 1949...
...During the cantonal elections, the Communists made thousands of speeches extolling the blessings -of peace and denouncing the odiousness of war...
...Something like 11,000 out of a total of 7,200,000...
...Communist deputies, propagandists, and agitators, appearing in force at the elections in rural cantons, loudly dinned into the farmers' ears that the government of the Third Force —made up of socialists and radicals— was too inept to save the village from imminent catastrophe...
...This apparatus, appearing in the qulet;r'sleepy ¦ little cantons, and acting with the same energy It displays during elections to legislative bodies, would, of course,'produce the political impression intended by the Communists...
Vol. 32 • April 1949 • No. 15
