'Front Popuiaire' in France?
LOTTMAN, HERBERT R.
'EVOLUTION' ON THE LEFT 'Front Populaire' in France? By Herbert R. Lottman PARIS Is another Popular Front shaping up in France? Although no pact has been signed, leading French Communists and...
...Thus there is continual talk of the creation of a new "democratic party" which would rise from a merger of the Radicals and the Catholic MRPprobably without the Socialists, although its first important decision might be whether to support Defferre's candidacy...
...And, indeed, the cantonal elections of March 1964 involved a number of popular front-style arrangements, most of which benefited the Communists (who doubled the number of seats they held among those being contested...
...Of greater significance where a Front Populaire is concerned, 31 per cent of all French men, but 39 per cent of Socialists, were favorfavorable to the return of Communist ministers to the government (32 per cent of Socialists were indifferent, and only 20 per cent opposed...
...On May 31, Dupont was elected with 55 per cent of the vote...
...Still, what ultimately happens in December's Presidential election may in large measure be determined by the results as well as the events surrounding next month's municipal elections...
...Defferre, in additon, has trailed behind the Socialists on the issue of unity with the Communists, to the point where explanations have been necessary...
...candidate 30 per cent, and the Socialist (SFIO) only eight per cent...
...Yet, while he occupies a political position somewhat to the right of and above party chief Guy Mollet and the SFIO apparatus, Defferre has not discouraged the new relation ship...
...On the first ballot, May 24, the Communist (FCP) candidate Louis Dupont received 47 per cent of the vote, the Gaullist (UNR) HERBERT R. LOTTMAN, a previous contributor to these pages, is an American writer living in Paris...
...L'Express suggested that the attitude revealed toward Communists could be explained by such developments as "the end of the cold war" and the fact that young Frenchmen know nothing of Spain, the Moscow trials, the Hitler-Stalin pact, the Resistance, and the Hungarian uprising...
...in the choice against de Gaulle alone, he had 23 per cent to de Gaulle's 43 per cent...
...One tends to forget that in 1947 Thorez was Deputy Premier and that the then Minister of Defense, Francois Billoux, was one of four FCP Cabinet ministers...
...But theoretical debates presume laboratory conditions, while events continue to change the face of political France...
...The Communist reply in L'Humanite began March 17...
...In a June interview he clarified a controversial statement he had made earlier, upon his return from a visit to Yugoslavia...
...The dilemma was probably most aptly stated by Claude Fuzier, in an editorial for Le Populaire: "Socialism, its generosity concretized in an ideology, feels at ease neither in confrontation with Communism, even evolving, nor with capitalism, even renovated...
...Nor did French Communist party Secretary-General Waldeck Rochet hesitate to attribute these electoral successes to the "union of democrats...
...Any attack against our candidate is considered by our militants as an attack on them," Gerard Jaquet announced recently...
...Despite the conduct of a very shy Socialist bride, the French Communists applauded the results as "a victory of unity...
...Similarly, 59 per cent of the Socialists hoped the FCP would expand or maintain its present role in French political life...
...L'Humanite answered with another question: If the Socialists recognize that there is no danger of Soviet aggression, why the Atlantic Pact...
...Shortly afterward, during a special election to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of a Gaullist deputy in the industrial city of Longwy, Rochet again appealed for a union of Communists, Socialists, and "republicans" (read "antiGaullists") against the new Gaullist candidate...
...When Frenchmen were presented a choice between de Gaulle, Defferre and a Communist candidate in mid-year opinion polls, Defferre's percentage dropped considerably compared to his chances in a race without a Communist-he was given only 13 per cent, the Communist candidate 10 per cent, and de Gaulle 42 per cent...
...Socialist-Communist cooperation has also had its effect on the Right, which has had to forge its own compromises...
...He said the Socialists refused to follow FCP reasoning that silence should be maintained on differences...
...What about internal democracy within the CPs...
...Before his death Maurice Thorez regretted that the Socialist candidate "rather seemed to want to patch up" the Fifth Republic Presidential regime and not eliminate it...
...When Thorez conceded that the Communists did not oppose all of de Gaulle's acts, particularly the recognition of Communist China, the plea for Vietnam neutrality, and friendliness to Castro, he was crisply slapped down by the Socialist newspaper Le PopuZaire: "Silence would have been preferable to this type of statement...
...I avoid any kind of offense against either the Communist party or any other party...
...Are the Socialists now expected to conform to Defferre's policy on a popular front, or vice-versa...
...Yet one must agree with French political analyst Maurice Duverger that if an anti-Gaullist cannot win without Communist votes, neither can he win in a formal alliance with the Communist party, for then moderate voters would flee to the Gaullists...
...Le Populaire had criticized the FCP'S "unconditional" allegiance to Moscow, even to the prejudice of Socialism...
...To accentuate the defeat of the UNR we wish to extend our coalitions wherever it will be necessary...
...As if to underline Fajon's analysis, in July the Left-wing weekly L'Express carried a story headlined, "The French Are No Longer Afraid of Communists...
...where Politburo member Etienne Fajon noted that Communist votes on the first ballot in the cantonal contests amounted to 21.6 per cent (a loss of only .6 per cent from pre-Gaullist times...
...The Socialists had expressed concern that a dictatorship of the proletariat might endanger democracy's very substance...
...I hope," he said last June, "that Communist electors will vote for me...
...Perhaps more important, few remember the days almost 30 years ago when Leon Blum's Popular Front of Communists, Socialists and Radicals tried futilely to govern France...
...The extent of its strength was detailed at an FCP central committee meeting following the elections last March...
...The question has its importance...
...More Frenchmen with Communist friends said they agreed with them in political discussions than disagreed...
...At the end of the War, too, with the Communists riding high as heroes of the Resistance (although the question of their heroism is still hotly debated), Charles de Gaulle named their late chief Maurice Thorez a minister of state in his provisional government...
...The FCP declared that it would not impose a single party on the traditional French system...
...The "important divergences" noted in the exchange did not in the past prevent "beneficial unity of action...
...Thus they should not be invoked today to put brakes on "the necessary unity of action against Gaullism, for real democracy, for peace and well-being...
...This, Fajon pointed out, made the FCP the leading party in France...
...a race which is ours...
...The first clear test of Communist Socialist cooperation, however, will come next March 14 and 21 when Frenchmen go to the polls in municipal elections...
...Denying the implications which Communists had read into his words, Mollet insisted that political democracy could not be sacrificed to economic dern racy...
...In the post-Thorez Communist party, Rochet is an enigma, certainly regarding collaboration with the non-Communist Left...
...Defferre's position conflicts with the decision of the French Socialist party's national council, which at the end of November decided to "admit" coalitions with the Communists in cities of over 30,000...
...L'Humanite, the Communist paper, then urged all "democrats" to support Dupont in the runoff scheduled between the two leading contenders...
...Even before the January meeting, Socialist spokesman Gerard Jaquet took the trouble to make clear that local alliances have no particular relation to national policies...
...Thorez' successor, Rochet, has continued the attack...
...Moreover, while 44 per cent of all Frenchmen thought that Communist officials on the municipal and local levels made significant contributions, 60 per cent of the Socialists thought so...
...But, "When the USSR stands firm or moves ahead, world imperialism, the exploiter of every people, receives an irreparable blow...
...The two parties met in early January and published a joint communique announcing an accord in 39 suburban Paris communes and 14 capital electoral districts...
...Citing the recent visit of an SFIO delegation to Moscow, which included a nine-hour talk with Khrushchev, L'Humanite asked why this could be done 1,800 miles from Paris but not in Paris itself...
...Defferre was not quite the free choice of the Socialists...
...Only 17 per cent of the latter characterized the FCP'S role as harmful...
...The Communists also chided the Socialists about the fact that their Presidential candidate, Gaston Defferre, has not been a supporter of unity of action and plans to exclude Communists from his own anti-Gaullist front in Mar seilles...
...At the close of 1963, through it would have been hard to speak of a clear pattern of rapprochement with the Communists in SFIO public statements...
...Nevertheless, he cautioned that "history has known other thaws.' If the Socialists seemed to be taking a hard line on reconciliation, they had at least opened a discussion...
...And the danger in popular fronts of even a temporary nature cannot escape the Socialist chiefs: Just as Gaullism has served as a guide for authoritarian tendencies in developing nations and third force attitudes in international relations, so could a popular front on the national level in the political proving ground of France point the way toward similar alliances in other countries...
...No Communist Presidential candidate was likely to achieve a majority, he observed, so to run one would merely be to play into the hands of the Gaullists...
...Guy Mollet would have seemed the more natural choice were it not for his role in the Algerian war cabinets and in de Gaulle's return to power...
...L'Humanite responded by expounding the Leninist theory of just and unjust war...
...Finally, any attempt to draw tentative conclusions about prospects for a Front Populaire must take account of other efforts at fusion on the drawing boards...
...Skirting any reference to Stalinism in the Soviet Union, the FCP reply justified "democratic centralism," and then took the opportunity to criticize the manner in which Gaston Defferre was imposed on the Socialist party: "Our conception of democracy would not allow any Communist to designate himself as candidate for any job at all, to define 'his' program and pose his conditions to his party...
...but without of course concluding with our new associates the slightest agreement on general policy...
...The Communists quickly put them at ease: "For a country like France, it is permissable to state that this temporary period [of dictatorship of the proletariat] can be much shorter [than in the USSR], thanks mainly to the blows already delivered against the world bourgeoisie...
...The Communist party will not necessarily [be] weakened, because it has become an almost permanent institution necessary for the political balance of France...
...Last June's election of a new chairman of the Paris City Council (he is Paris' "mayor") saw the Gaullist UNR party supporting a Rightist who had fought de Gaulle and favored Algerie Francaise, in order to block the Socialist candidate supported by the Communists...
...It is obvious," responded L'Humanite, "that the campaign for the municipal elections forms part of the general combat against the Gaullist regime and that the agreements made on this occasion won't fail to have weight tomorrow, for better or for worse...
...Designed to counter the recent elimination of proportional representation, the move is an attempt to guarantee that both Communists and Socialists will retain their present seats and thus continue to dominate local administration...
...The problem, of course, is that the apparent durability of the Fifth Republic has weakened Socialist resolution against collaboration with a Communist party that has remained strong under de Gaulle...
...L'Express sees the party entering a period of internal crisis...
...Aren't certain aspects of what we call political democracy really rather vain aspects...
...But the "new associates" appear to view the situation differently...
...Roger Quilliot, spokesman for the SFIO, began by reminding readers that this "public dialogue" had been decided on at the June 1963 SFIO congress (suggesting that six months of thought had gone into the matter...
...Glamorized by the widely read L'Express, he was a "consensus" choice of moderate Left opinion before he became an official candidate...
...In May, Mollet criticized the "insufficiency" and "mediocrity" of Communist unity statements, though he predicted an inevitable "evolution...
...Rochet represents the liberal tendency, but Thorez made sure to surround him with men of the hard line and planned to serve as arbiter...
...The Socialist candidate refused to recommend voting for Dupont, and Longwy Socialist leaders approved his reticence, but the departmental Socialist federation called for the election of "the unique candidate of the Left," i.e., the Communist...
...With Thorez gone, Rochet will have to depend on the "liberals': to combat the party apparatus-if he dares...
...Don't certain forms of economic democracy lead to new forms of political democracy...
...Socialism operates for a third of humanity, it went on, yet when Social Democrats have taken power in European states they have never abolished or even threatened capitalism...
...As logically arranged as the LincolnDouglas debates, it opened with a series of set pieces in Le Populaire that ran from mid-January to the end of February...
...Concluding the debate, the Communists expressed the desire for a meeting of the leadership of the two parties...
...In July, the Socialist newspaper's chief editor paid his respects to the dead Thorez: Whatever our differences, he wrote, Thorez belonged to "a race which makes the world advance and without which man would not have accomplished so many conquests...
...It remains to be seen whether the Communists will accept the passive role they are being invited to play in the December 5 Presidential elections...
...Le Monde's Pierre Viansson-Ponte saw in this a prefiguration of the coalitions likely to be formed in future elections-a prospect which alarms even some Gaullists...
...L'Humanite declared that there was no longer a centralized International, that all Communist parties were independent and equal...
...It seemed to be a way of asking a leopard if he would not like to change his spots, and at the time the Communists welcomed the bid as "significant...
...he had asked...
...Fifty per cent of all Frenchmen said they had close friends or relatives who were Communists...
...Citing a poll carried but by the Institut Francais d'Opinion Publique, it reported that 38 per cent of all Frenchmen felt the FCP'S role since the Liberation had been useful, and 55 per cent of Socialist voters or sympathizers felt this to be the case...
...The stakes are not the creation of a future governmental majority," he said on December 22...
...The most important Socialist development since the advent of the Fifth Republic has been Defferre's candidacy...
...In December 1946, 77 out of 102 Socialists backed Thorez for Premier (he received 259 votes out of 579...
...Repudiating "the often-repeated statement [that] Defferre acts like a bad Socialist when he refuses to negotiate with the Communist party," Jaquet also emphasized that from the beginning of his campaign Defferre has acted in full accord with the SFIO...
...Summing up the history of the FCP, he called it the "avant-garde of Stalinist subversion," but noted a change of tone in recent times...
...In Le Populaire, the Socialists had challenged the Communists to repudiate revolutionary war just as Khrushchev had opposed nuclear war...
...Now, should a Socialist become President of the Republic, Mollet would be barred even as Premier-a CenterLeft coalition would insist that the two top offices be allotted to different parties...
...Meanwhile, an equally murky pattern was emerging from the first real confrontation between Socialists and Communists since the Liberation, a dialogue conducted through their respective papers...
...Quilliot had asked whether the Communists agreed that French interests could not be reduced to Soviet interests and strategy...
...One does not expect the Communists to alter their unity line, of course...
...Touche...
...His analysis, he further explained, "did not stem from anti-Communism...
...Although no pact has been signed, leading French Communists and Socialists have for some time been in a timid courtship that one hostile politician has described as the "Front Populaire which dares not say its name...
Vol. 48 • February 1965 • No. 3
