WHAT IS THE THIRD FORCE?
BURNHAM, JAMES
What Is the Third Force? By James Burnham THERE is 111' this country an almost pathetic misunderstanding of that tendency to European poliwhich has earn* to be known as «^he Third Force."...
...And while there are important difference* springing from thm coloration of national background, the world has much to learn from the observation of strategy, policies, personalities, on the French scene...
...with around 40 percent for DeGaulle, and 20 percent or somewhat more for the Communists...
...In France, the Third Force has its ewn particular local form...
...The Constitution is so arranged, however, that (until November, 1950) new general elections for a new Assembly can take place only if approved by the existing Assembly...
...To hang on to the Constitutional crutches, keeping just alive by massive intravenous injections of U. S. Treasury credits, which had just as well be poured into the sewer for all the chance that they can cure the Third Force's anemia...
...Then, compelled to action both by the intransigent Cominform line and by the growth of the Gaullist movement, they had to drop their Communist colleagues from the Cabinet...
...The French crisis, and the key to its possible solution, are predominantly political...
...Again, this paper is not necessarily in agreement with all the opinions expressed by these writers on this subject to date...
...by the "Left Wing," as it is called, of the Socialists...
...The Neu Leader invites comment on the articles that have appeared to date on the subject of today's France and the new series by James Burnham...
...anti-Stalinist camp...
...The October, 1947, result was not, perhaps, in itself a sufficient occasion, from a democratic standpoint, to call for new elections...
...Fantastic as this may seem, they apjiPSrently believe that, if they can meanwhile stay on their tightrope, they Will be able to remain neutral...
...Absurd...
...Whether or not this Third Force policy may be judged an attractive attitude in the midst of the world struggle for the survival of a minimum •f civilization, its absurdity i# worth reflecting upon...
...The European Third Forcers expect a war between the Soviet Union and the United States...
...Until Spring, 1947, they shared the government, as Third Forces will, with the Communists...
...It is understandable therefore that contemporary France should be the focal point for a good deal of the concreteneti of present discussion regarding world politics...
...In addition to the dramatic and crucial problems that make France so worthy of close and critical attention, wet nation also serves as a kind of symbol embodying the clashes of the important divergent forces that are currently grappling in Europe...
...Will Edousrd Herriot stamp out the black marketers and the financial manipulators who fatten on the Third Force's weakness and vote the Third Force ticket...
...BUT EVERY EVENT since October, 1947, has proved that the people's rejection of the Third Force parties has endured and expanded...
...our aim, rather, is to provide a meeting place on this subject for divergent points of view, representing the differences of approach by a number of well-informed writers and analysts of the democratic...
...Surprisingly enough, the internal economic situation of France is, though hard, not hopeless...
...Our hope ii, that out of the opposition of views, our readers will enjoy a clarified view of the total problem...
...The municipal elections of October, 1947, proved that the Third Force parties, though sustained as the government by their continuing parliamentary majority, were supported by a minority of the electorate—by, it would seem, less than a third...
...Neither these intellectuals nor their feelings have any practical importance...
...The Third Force governments rest structurally upon the Constitution of 1946...
...Henri Guisot...
...These conclusions can be confirmed by an analysis of the complicated vote, in the autumn of 1948, for the Council of the Republic...
...ARE WE TO EXPECT these governments of tbe Third Force, repudiated by the people and trembling alternately before De Gaulle and Thorez, to turn the key...
...and if so, responsible statesmanship should rightly have hesitated to throw the country into the turmoil of a general election...
...but, on the advice of DeGaulle speaking as an individual, about 40 percent abstained frorp^ the vote (the normal abstention in a vote of this kind would have been 15 percent or so...
...What, then, is the further perspective of the Third Force...
...Our democratic Knights of the Third Force, however, are not dismayed...
...With this article, we begin a three-part seris by James Burnham^ tbe distinguished political analyst Mr...
...Burnham is also the author of 'The Managerial Revolution," 'The MachieevUUahi" and other works...
...And then they will call on De Oaulle to take over, and to save their wobbling necks...
...The RPF (Gaullist) strength has increased until it is now quite possibly an absolute majority...
...De Gaulle and major world political problems...
...Not only do they bar the gate to the very thought of new general elections...
...There it Jtoame manifest, after the fall of the iesmadier government in late 1047, as Parliamentary combination of the fNalists, the MRP (the post-war Catholic party) and the Radical Socialists (together with a few minor groups...
...It was favored by all of the present parties of the Third Force and also by the Communists (who had had a good deal to sav in dralting it...
...This Constitution, which amounts in any case to a guarantee of permanent governmental paralysis, was voted by a minority of the French electorate...
...and tragically, in the absence of a trenchant resistance position, they can stand as portents of what is to come...
...Though the Third Force type, in order to save its parliamentary life, is capable of almost snythlng (anything, that It, except a clear, consistent policy based on principle), a new Popular Front does seem almost too much...
...They will rail at De Gaulle as Enemy No...
...The plain fact is that the Third Force cannot govern France, and does not want to let anyone else govern...
...THAT THE Third Force is basically nothing more than the attempt to squeeze between Washington and Moscow is recognized by everyone in Europe, and is often stated, in the press or/in parliamentary speeches, by the Third Force leaders themselves...
...And perhaps—but, ah, this must not be too publicly talked about—to readmit the Communists into the government, on their promise to give up "their allegiance to Moscow," to reform, and to stop sabotaging the country...
...in part (MRP) clerical and in the remainder doggedly secularist...
...In our age, those countries in the path of terroristic aggression who have not yet succumbed still have within them the opportunity of avoiding dire future possibilities by relying on past knowledge and resolve...
...The popular feeling might have been episodic or capable of various interpretations...
...Taken subjectively gad sentimentally, certain European intellectuals try to express in the idea •f the Third force their distaste for, «s they put it, "dictatorships whether of the left or of the right...
...Burnham recently returned from a stay in France' and is the co-author of a book of political dialogue, between him and Andre Malraux, on France...
...The RPF was not then in existence...
...Couched behind their Constitutional shields, brandishing their legalistic banner, they sit unbudged before the popular will...
...In The New Leader...
...Is it Leon Blum who is going to persuade the workers that a 20 percent absenteeism rate in the mines is too high, and that France cannot now afford the luxury of a 40-hour week...
...In addition, enough votes were cast against it so that adoption was in fact secured by somewhat less than 40 percent of the total electorate...
...we have printed articles—representing divergent points of view—by Leon Blum...
...Will Socialist Daniel Mayer, who knows that the inflated bureaucracy is his party's chief constituency, be the one to put governmental finances into order...
...The Communist electoral support has remained at about the same percentage as in 1947...
...The role of the Communist has, since the founding of the Com inform, been made too exceedingly obvious to everyman...
...Thus the French Third Forcers—sheltered from the Red Army by the atomic threat, and pricked by their bottomless need for dollars—yield, for the time being, to Washington, though not without some squirming as they look ever their shoulders at their local Communists...
...In modest defiance of law and tradition, they have postponed the cantonal elections which were due last autumn—elections which, in a very direct way, would have shown what the electorate thought of them...
...But this "solution" is supported by Herriot and his wing of the Radical Socialists...
...in part (Socialist) antimilitarist, in the rest nationalist and imperialist...
...The 1948 harvest has been excellent, with the wheat crop more than double last year's...
...The second at Sale in this series by Ms...
...Thus Benes—a typical Third Force figure, and a personal and political friend of the west-European Third Force leaders—yielded to the Bolsheviks, with the usual result for himself, his party, and his country...
...1, as Leon Blum rates him, and hang on, until then their hopeless endunworkable policy lets the country sink into the immediate full threat of financial bankruptcy or armed insurrection...
...Boris Sapir and others...
...The first election under the new Constitution gave a parliamentary majority to the parties now making up the Third Force (the RPF, still not in existence, had of course no candidates...
...In spite of all the strikes and sabotage, the level of industrial production is noticeably above that of 1938...
...Barehssa will appear next week...
...and it is being advocated openly by Bourdet, editor of Combat, and by others of the Third Force intellectuals...
...Is a coherent policy to issue out of a coalition which in part (Socialist and MRP) is for controlled economy, in remainder (Radical Socialist) for free economy...
...The serious political meaning of the Third Force, in its relation to present political realities, is simply: neither Washington nor Moscow — or rather, more accurately: either Washington or Moscow, according to the relative pressure applied, or capable of being applied, at the given moment...
...Will Robert Schuman or Rene Mayer convince the peasants, who are doing very well, that they should stop starving the cities and start paying taxes...
...AT FACTS instead of phrases suggests a certain skepticism about the French Third Force's claim to exclusive embodiment of French "democracy...
...A LOOK...
...The phrase, "Third Force," was, indeed, first used in its contemporary meaning by Juan Peron, who quite frankly applied it to his own policy of trying to steer clear of both the Soviet and the American orbits...
...Out of this combination, tossing desperately between the rock of the French Communist Party and the whirlpool of De Gaulle's RPF, have issued the various cabinets that succeed each other every few months...
Vol. 32 • January 1949 • No. 3
