THE MEANING OF THE FRENCH ELECTION

...THE great surprise of the election certainly is the startling success of the Christian Democrats who, for the first time, participated in a national election and succeeded in attaining with one stroke a position of equality with the Socialists, thereby becoming the third largest party of France...

...The program stresses the need for a new humanistic socialism and underlines the necessity to achieve a synthesis between the ideas of freedom and planning...

...There will thus be plenty of reasons for discontent in the coming months and the Communists will only be too eager to take advantage of the grave situation...

...However, the latter will seek its revenge during the coming debates on the future constitution...

...BUT what the French voted for is a question far more difficult to answer...

...Socialists and Communists together have an absolute majority, and yet a Socialist-Communist Government is out of the question...

...Relations between the Communists on the one hand and both Socialists and GauIIists on the other are extremely strained...

...Its program, however, varies strongly from the one of the pre-war rightists...

...although the cleavage between Socialists and Communists is so very deep, they continue to hold regular meetings to discuss means for amalgamation of the two parties...

...The Communist Party undoubtedly will be the main opposition party...

...Although some advance has been made in the industrial sphere recently, production still stands at only about one-half of the pre-war level...

...In a certain sense, the elections were above all a show of strength between the Communists and de Gaulle— the Communists being the most determined advocates of a fully sovereign assembly against de Gaulle's proposal of limited powers...

...THIS change in the composition of the Socialist party, combined with the strong dislike of the Communists on the part of its main leadership, has caused its close relationship with de Gaulle...

...But the cleavage in aims must become apparent sooner or later...

...Many of their newer members, who form the circle of de Gaulle's intimates, will urge the need for a constitution that gives strong powers to the executive and restricts popular sovereignty...

...French coal imports before the war were 3,700,000 tons per month—this August they amounted to one million tons, which was already a great advance over the previous months...

...This is why a governmental alliance between the Communists and the other two main parties—jointly or separately—is practically impossible...

...Sinee in foreign policy de Gaulle recently has been converted to the need for stronger collaboration between France and England—which had been favored by the Socialists for many months already—it seems as if in the immediate future there will hardly be any deep practical difference between the Socialists and the Christian Democrats, though the former are traditionally free-thinkers and the latter Catholics...

...The returns indicate clearly what the French voted against: the Third Republic...

...Here again, the trend which has made for a general shift of votes from the parties on the right to the party immediately following on the left has made for an influx of middle-class and peasant eleinents which are in their outlook very far from the traditional socialist program...

...the parties of free enterprise and unfettered capitalism, will retain less than 100 seats in the new Assembly...

...Both were right...

...In addition, the black market continues to flourish and prices are more and more out of step with wages and salaries...

...Thus, the decisive fronts in French domestic affairs are not determined by economic programs but by foreign policy considerations—a phenomenon typical for a power no longer among the "great" and therefore compelled to follow the lead of one of the Big Three...

...Certain nationalizations of industries and a much higher degree of economic planning were the program of the Socialists, the Communists, and also the Christian Democrats (or Popular Republican Movement, as they are now called...

...As occasion arises, this Government will rely on conservative reinforcements against the Communists and—though much less frequently—on Communist votes against the conservatives...

...It has seen an influx of many rightist elements who, while trying to safeguard the privileges they had acquired during the Third Republic, have been quick enough to sense that they need now adapt themselves to the new climate...

...Extremes meet and a government of universal suffrage and theoretical equality may under conditions which impel the change, most readily become a despotism...

...When the demands of a hungry people conflict with "military necessities," the Socialists might be in the very uncomfortable situation of having to choose between de Gaulle and continued mass support...

...It will oppose every proposal aimed at strengthening the executive against the legislative, not, as the naive may think, because of its high regard for democracy, but because it can thus attempt to discredit de Gaulle and snatch the followers from the Socialist Party...

...It is in this respect that the Socialists may soon have to regret their close alliance with Gen de Gaulle...

...The October elections have definitely condemned the Third Republic...

...and power, and, as a general, he thinks of greatness in terms of military might...

...The Socialist Party is no longer a predominantly working-class party, but rather the party of smaller and medium farmers, of civil servants, shopkeepers, and the like—though there are still industrial regions, especially the north, where the Socialists have remained the traditional working-class party...

...this Winter some fuel will be available but certainly not enough to provide adequate heating...

...de Gaulle, it would be the right place for those who wanted to be among the "ins...

...The French are strongly against free enterprise as it existed under the Third Republic...

...We are not the saviors of bourgeois capitalism...

...It will depend to no small degree on the bitter political fights that will mark the coming months...

...The official food rations allow for 1,400 calories as against an average of 3,000 calories per head consumed by the French before the war...

...Certainly they voted for deep-going economic reforms...

...they will be closest to Gen...

...de Gaulle and mainly composed of Socialists and Christian Democrats...

...de Gaulle...

...Though formally the program has remained the same, the party has become something entirely different from what the young Resistance leaders had meant when they founded it...

...The Paris organ of the Communists, L'Humanite, as well as the Russian press, almost daily attack Leon Blum, leader of the Socialist Party, and Gen...

...de Gaulle, for favoring a Western European Bloc which they allege would be directed against Soviet Russia...

...While it may have lost many of the radical intellectuals and some middle-class elements whom it had attracted during the Resistance period, it has maintained the allegiance of the major part of the French working class, especially in the big urban centers...

...It recruited only secondarily among progressive Catholic unionists and intellectuals, but above all in strongly Catholic districts which had formerly been represented by rightist parties...

...the Radical Socialist together with the right-wing parties, i.e...

...The Communist Party emerges as the strongest party of France with 147 seats in the Constituent Assembly and a popular vote of over four and a half million...

...Though some of their leaders are acutely cognizant of the Bonapartist dangers inherent in de Gaulle's recent policies, they never have felt strong enough to dare evolve an independent line...

...Since de Gaulle has moved closer to England and in general has chosen the Western as against the Eastern orientation, the CP has .been extremely vocal in its criticism of his policies—while nevertheless maintaining its ministers in his Cabinet...

...Steel production in August, in spite of the most intensive efforts, was still only 26 per cent of pre-war output...

...It is symptomatic in this connection that only after much prodding did he finally consent to a cut of one-third in army expenditures after the end of the war, Agreement on the necessity of a planned economy will thus be hardly enough, as long as it isn't clear what is being planned: a strongly armed France, striving desperately at reconquering her place among the big Powers, or an economy directed toward ultimately increasing the well-being of the French population within the framework of a European Federation...

...The Christian Democrats will represent the right wing in the new governmental combination...

...The Socialist Party is faced with a somewhat similar predicament...

...The general is bent on rebuilding an empire of "greatness...

...As I stated in an earlier article in The Progressive, there are only two great political power blocs today: the Communists and the Gaullists...

...But to conclude from this that, these three parties, which obtained 143,147, and 135 seats respectively and together will hold the great majority of seats in the new Assembly, will constitute the coming Government, would be to count without the intricacies of the French political situation...

...Moreover, it has been literally swamped by office holders and job seekers who felt that since this was the party closest to Gen...

...Thus the logic of the party's pro-Gaullist policy has forced it into the rather awkward position of supporting de Gaulle's proposal for the limitation of the Constituent Assembly's powers—a proposal without any doubt anti-democratic in form and content—in order to weaken the Communists...

...Leon Blum recently complained that "we have at the moment many friends, even a few too many...

...Another leader of the party, Jules Moch, exclaimed at the recent party congress: "Certain of our municipal victories frighten me more than they make me rejoice— it seems'as if we were to become a new radical-socialist party...

...The Socialists have not succeeded in developing a line of their own and lately have been following more or less the Gaullist head so as to become almost a governmental party...

...French politics are subtle indeed...

...These differences may be masked for a certain time since no matter what ulterior aims are pursued, it will be necessary to rebuild the shattered industrial apparatus...

...In fact, the fundamental differences which split France into warring camps before the war have not at all disappeared...

...The Meaning Of The French Election By LOUIS CLAIR LAST week some of the New York evening papers carried the headlines, "REDS GET MOST VOTES IN FRANCE," while others announced: "DE GAULLE WINS LANDSLIDE VICTORY...

...Suffice it to say that it has been in turn pro-and anti-de Gaulle, leftist and rightist, conservative and radical—always following the needs of Russian foreign policy...

...Last Winter, most homes in France went without heat...

...Most probably, the new Government will be headed by Gen...

...In the national elections, with proportional representation, personalities played a lesser role than in the cantonal and municipal contests and furthermore, in spite of a rather unfair system of representation, cities were relatively better represented...

...Thus de Gaulle has temporarily won a victory over the CP...

...In other words, together they will have fewer seats than any one of the three big parties that stand for some sort of planned economy...

...The Christian Democrats recently have been well described as "a conservative party with a progressive program...

...Thus the Christian Democrats today are very different from what they were meant to be—much to the dismay of many of its early founders who now complain in private that their creation is being taken away from them...

...In this respect the national elections have only stressed the trend already apparent in the earlier municipal and cantonal elections...

...But the political framework of this new economic order is still very vague indeed...

...For there despotism advances in the name and with the might of the people...

...Unfettered capitalism and the traditional forms of liberal individualism are irrevocably doomed...

...He will thus tend to strain all efforts toward the creation of a strong army...

...THE months ahead will be extremely hard in France...

...They might well ponder Henry George's famous warning: "Forms are nothing when substance has gone, and the forms of popular government are those from which the substance of freedom may most easily go...

...IN the political sphere also, French Socialists one day may find out that it was a grave mistake to have thrown their weight on the side wf the potentially authoritarian forces...

...they have only moved onto another plane...

...In spite of the great strength of the Communist vote, the de Gaullist proposals were accepted with a comfortable majority (66 per cent...

...By far too much space would be needed to describe only the most important turns of this party in recent months...

...More than 95 per cent of the electorate voted for a new constitution, while the traditional party of pre-war days, the Radical-Socialist Party, has been completely defeated (it will have only 23 seats in the new Assembly...

...It had been framed by a rather small group of liberal Catholics,—among them the present Minister of Foreign Affairs, George Bidault—during the period of Resistance, and states, as one main plank, that "the economy must no longer be guided by the laws of profit but directed in the interest of the people...

...It should be recalled in this connection that the cantonal councils were the traditional breeding grounds of the ultra-conservative French Senate...

...On the other hand, de Gaulle is today in a position stronger than ever, since the electorate at a great majority accepted his constitutional proposals (1) to frame a new constitution, and (2) to limit the powers of the newly elected Constituent Assembly in order to strengthen the powers of the executive...