Fighting It Out in France

...Perhaps no single development is more symbolic than the changed status of the best known dissenter, Jean El-leinstein...

...This worries Chirac, who fears that the new selection method may endow the body with greater legitimacy and tempt it to exceed its mandate...

...And Rocard and Mauroy intend to continue grass roots campaigning for their conception of Socialism in the hopes of winning the majority to their side...

...Whether Chirac's prescriptions for France's economic ills are sound is difficult to say...

...On the policy level, Mitterrand and Rocard disagree sharply about how to restore unity between the PCF and SP...

...Rocard polled around 21 per cent...

...Nevertheless, for the present, there should be no minimizing the significance of Mitterrand's victory...

...On the French Left, relations between the PCF and the SP bear some interesting similarities to those between the Center-Right parties...

...When the Union of the Left was formed in 1972, the PCF was the larger and more influential partner...

...Until now, Assembly members have been picked by their parliaments...

...The most significant disagreements between the two men stem from their conceptions of Socialism and how to achieve it...

...Rocard wants the Socialists to stop trying to woo the Communists into a formal alliance...

...As matters turned out, though, it was the Socialists who profited spectacularly from the alliance to become the dominant force on the Left and subsequently the leading party in France...

...For Mitterrand's position portends a hardening of the polarization that has so often characterized French life and politics...

...A man of boundless energy and ambition, Chirac has become increasingly frustrated at seeing the numerically dominant RPR crowded out of any significant role in determining the policies of Giscard and his present prime minister, Raymond Barre...

...Mauroy about 17 per cent, ceres, since 1974 the official minority wing of the party, amassed 14 per cent...

...The result assured Mitterrand reelection as first secretary and gave him and his followers exclusive control of the national secretariat, the party's administrative organ...

...THE POLITICS OF POLARIZATION Fighting It Out m FrjunLccBY norman jacobs MICHEL ROCARD Paris liberie, liberie cherie" (liberty, beloved liberty) (reads a famous line of the "Marseillaise...

...It has shaken up the top brass of the Paris party federation, has denied prominent dissidents renewal of their membership, and has fired or forced the resignation of rebellious staffers on PCF publications...

...Yet conflict exists within these two groups as well...

...A second target has been Giscard's stand on Europe...

...He and other disaffected members plan to hold a coun-tercongress to present views they anticipate will not be aired at the official gathering...

...and this was merely the first of a series of broadsides that culminated with one of the RPR chiefs closest advisors charging Giscard with trying to introduce "covert fascism" into France...

...That "uneasy coalition" no longer exists: It broke apart at the SP congress held in Metz (April 6-8), where intense efforts to arrive at a unanimous program failed...

...and he expresses confidence that if the country continues to follow his economic game plan, unemployment eventually will begin to recede...

...Accordingly, Chirac has taken the offensive, speaking out against policies that he disapproves of...

...Now that the 23rd Congress is approaching, the PCF apparatus is trying to stamp out dissident activities permanently...

...Subsequently, Mitterrand announced he would create a new majority by bringing ceres into the secretariat . (All party groups are represented on the highest policy organs, the central committee and executive bureau, in proportion to their strength in the party federations...

...The Fifth Republic, for example, is currently more disunified politically than at any time since its inception in 1958...

...The SP should simply concentrate on increasing its strength he argues, and eventually the Communists will be compelled to again link up with it...

...When the votes for the different proposals were tabulated, Mitterrand emerged the victor with some 47 per cent of the ballots...

...He notes that the government is encouraging investment in sectors where it is vitally needed and not otherwise available...

...Barre contends that reflation would quickly give renewed impetus to inflation, erode the value of the franc and produce a deficit in the balance of payments, while the employment situation would only improve in the short run...

...Another group of dissidents is currently preparing a petition criticizing the party's attitude toward the Socialists...

...Todate, he has not been noticeably successful, and his chances of making any progress in the future are now even worse...

...This, in turn, is sure to have an impact on the French political scene as a whole...

...Consequently, he and other RPR leaders have demanded— unsuccessfully—that Giscard secure a written commitment for the heads of the Common Market nations affirming that the popularly elected Assembly would not have any new powers...

...Mitterrand, who came to Marxism relatively late in life, is much the more orthodox...

...Although the leadership quickly moved to bring the situation under control, the discontent was never wholly suppressed—and in various party circles it still smolders...

...There is discontent too within the Communist Party (PCF), scheduled to hold its 23rd Congress May 9-13, and the Socialist Party (SP), which concluded its own congress last month with a split in the five-year-old majority coalition...

...Last December, Chirac accused the President and his followers of serving foreign interests in seeking to sacrifice French independence on the altar of a united Europe Norman Jacobs, long associated with Tw Nrw 1 h'Ain R. now lives in Pans...

...Nor does Chirac's campaign appear to have enhanced the RPR's appeal to the French electorate...

...Rocard, in contrast, sees the construction of a Socialist society as a process that will take years, and he warns against ignoring market restraints...

...By choosing him as its leader, the Socialist party has moved decisively toward the Left...

...This unforeseen development, observers agree, is what prompted the PCF to disrupt the Union and thus doom it to defeat in last year's legislative election...

...Francois Mitterrand has unquestionably won the battle to determine the SP program, but the war is far from over...

...Over on the Center-Right, President Valery Giscard d'Es-taing's Union for French Democracy (UDF) and Jacques Chirac's Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR)—together the ruling bloc in the National Assembly—have been bitterly quarrelling...

...He proposes, instead, a Socialist system that would devolve authority geographically from the center to the regions and localities, and decentralize it functionally through "autogestion" (workers' self-management...

...In his view, if the Left comes to power, it must break with capitalism quickly and decisively, putting the means of production into the hands of the State and instituting centralized planning to direct the economy...

...Chirac has criticized the Prime Minister for pursuing an overly austere, deflationary course, and for relying too heavily on market forces to turn the economy around...

...Obviously embarrassed by Chirac's efforts to create an issue where none existed, a number of RPR government ministers recently disassociated themselves from their leader, declaring in a public statement that Giscard's policy toward Europe was perfectly Gaullist in orientation...

...Further, Barre dismisses Chirac's charge that his is a policy of "laissez-faire gone wild...

...Rocard continues to score highest in opinion polls as the party's favorite candidate in the 1981 elections...

...He has urged the government to reflate...

...Although he is a sincere exponent of Democratic Socialism, he also believes that France's road to a just society is paved with the class struggle...

...Mitterrand's brand of Socialism, he fears, risks creating a bureaucratic monster that would endanger personal liberties...

...In fact, there is no significant difference between Giscard and Chirac in their approaches to "building Europe": Both agree that European unity must be based on a confederation of sovereign nation-states...

...The partnership of the Giscardians and the Chiraquians has always been uneasy, but relations have reached a new low...

...In the Socialist camp, significant changes have occurred since last September, when I wrote: "The Socialist Party is officially divided into a majority and a minority, with proportional representation determining the makeup of all its elective bodies...

...Soon after the break with the Socialists, a crisis erupted inside the PCF, as some party members sharply criticized the politburo for its tactics...

...The divisions go beyond that of the Left and Right, historically hostile toward each other...

...Among his chief targets has been Barre's management of the economy, today experiencing its highest unemployment rate of the postwar period, with over 1.3 million workers looking for jobs...

...Last year, shortly after the Center-Right's won the national legislative elections, President Giscard d'Estaing announced that one of his major goals during the term of the new Legislature would be to restore unity to the French people...

...In next month's election, however, delegates will be chosen by popular vote...

...Today, it is widely rumored that Elleinstein will be barred from attending the 23rd congress as a delegate...

...if it doesn't, he warns, unemployment will mount and bring France to the brink of a social upheaval that will endanger the prospects of the Center-Right in the 1981 presidential elections...

...Rocard and Mauroy upset the former SP majority over issues of power and policy...

...But the author of the French national anthem also should have sung the praises of unite...

...The occasion for these attacks is, of course, the balloting for the European Assembly of Common Market Nations scheduled to be held in June...

...Ever since, the PCF has waged bitter political warfare against the SP...

...Mitterrand favors a more direct approach based on a contractual relationship...

...For in the history of France's five republics, the presence of internal political discord has been more of a problem than the absence of liberty...

...During the 22nd Communist Party Congress, held in 1976, Georges Marchais is said to have remarked that he wished the party had 100,000 more intellectuals like Elleinstein...

...Personality factors partly explain why the RPR leader is close to the breaking point with the President, whom he served as prime minister until his resignation in 1976...

...As for Chirac's cries about the dangers of popular election of the European Assembly, it would be hard to interpret them as anything more than flag-waving demagoguery...

...But the divisions do not stop there...

...The two men feel they have a better chance of ultimately gaining control of the party by fighting openly for their views than by submitting to the constraints of a coalition dominated by Mitterrand and the younger generation of followers he has brought in— among whom, it is well known, he intends to groom his successor...

...The Communists hoped to exploit the newly formed Union to win wider respectability at the grass roots level and thereby gain additional strength and influence...

...the so-called majority consists of an uneasy coalition of three groups led, respectively, by Pierre Mauroy, Michel Rocard and Francois Mitterrand" ("French Socialists in Search of a Program," NL, September 25, 1978...