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From International Socialism, No.69, May 1974, p.6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
AT THE time of writing it seems likely that the second round of the French Presidential election will see a narrow majority for the conservative former Finance Minister Giscard d’Estaing. The only possibility of a victory for Francois Mitterand, candidate of the ‘United Left’ – Communists, Socialists and ‘left’ Radicals – is if a proportion of the ‘orthodox Gaullist’ electorate votes Mitterand or abstains.
But whoever wins one thing is certain. It is the end of an era in French politics. The humiliating defeat imposed by Giscard on his Gaullist rival Chaban-Delmas marks the abandonment by the French ruling class of the Gaullist strategy as France moves more and more towards economic crisis.
Gaullism got the French ruling class out of a crisis in 1958 essentially by allowing De Gaulle to call in sections of both the extreme right and the centre left to impose a solution to the Algerian war on the traditional right.
Chaban personified a number of aspects of Gaullism. He was a nationalist, opposed to too close dependence on the US or the EEC. He stood for a strategy of ‘cooling-out’ the working-class by limited social reforms. And he personified the political wheeler-dealing which had won for the predominantly right-wing UDR party a part of the radical middle-class vote.
Giscard is quite different. He represents the open interests of French big-business. His much-vaunted liberalism consists in being ready to abandon both the extreme right and the social reformers in the Gaullist electorate in order to unite with the ‘modernist’ elements in French business – the ‘internationalists’ representing the multi-national trusts. Equally he appeals to those elements on the right who had always disliked De Gaulle’s anti-Americanism and his idiosyncratic foreign policy, as well as to the most traditional elements on the far right who distrusted De Gaulle’s radical rhetoric and his appeals to ‘the people’. Giscard’s solutions to crisis will be those of austerity and an anti-working-class policy of measures to control inflation – a package familiar to British workers.
French big business can no longer afford the radical rhetoric of Gaullism. The mass movement of May 1968 was the beginning of the end. What little hold Gaullism had had over the working-class started to disappear and the emergence of a strengthened left was paralleled by the creation of an orthodox capitalist conservatism.
Now France is beginning to feel the effects of the world crisis. Inflation is already running near to the 15 per cent mark and the LIP occupation against closure was only one of a number of fights marking the beginnings of major difficulties for French big business. Gaullism’s ‘New Society’ rhetoric has no place where business is concerned to make workers bear the brunt of this situation.
Things will be little different if Mitterand wins. From 1945 to 1970 Mitterand’s career ran parallel with that of a whole number of politicians of the ‘moderate’ left. He was a minister in most of the left-centre coalitions of the pre-De Gaulle era, including the Ramadier government which finally kicked the Communists out of the post-war coalition in 1947. He was Minister of the Interior in the ‘centre left’ Mendes-France government which first sent conscripts to fight the Algerian liberation movement. In the 1956 Mollet government he was Minister of Justice and as such was responsible for allowing the execution of a young Communist for helping the Algerians. He was in this same government when it sent French troops to invade Egypt at Suez. All these governments were distinguished by their desperate manoeuvres to create a centre left coalition which kept out the Communists.
But Gaullism and even more the creation of a relatively stable conservative grouping which has followed Gaullism meant that the ‘centre left’ had to look for new allies. This meant a link with the Communists. The old parties of the ‘moderate left’ were disunited and in chaos. The Communist Party would have dominated a coalition. No-one wanted this – least of all the Communists anxious not to frighten the ruling class. So the moderate left was dragged into unity in the ‘new’ Socialist Party and Mitterand came in as leader with the aim of building a force which could counter-balance the Communist
Party in a future coalition. With the aid of the Communist Party itself he has succeeded. The corpse of French social democracy has been given the kiss of life by the very people who had replaced it on the left.
Now Socialists, Communists and PSU are vying with each other to win the Gaullist vote, appealing to nationalism against Giscard’s pro-American line and to the ‘progressive content’ of De Gaulle’s tradition – a tradition which the Communist Party once described as ‘semi-fascist’.
A Mitterand victory would mean something very similar to a Labour victory in Britain – the call for sacrifices in the national interest. But after 16 years of unbroken rule by the right, there is no doubt that it would represent a victory for the working class over their open enemies. And although these hopes would be rapidly betrayed it could give the working class a new self-confidence on which real struggles could be based.
This possibility, of new waves of struggle whoever wins, has been given a boost by the excellent result of the revolutionary socialists who totalled nearly 700,000 votes on the first round. 595,000 of these went to Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle) candidate Arlette Laguiller, one of the main leaders of the March bank workers’ strike. In a dynamic and forceful campaign she concentrated on the day-to-day issues facing workers. As the first-ever woman candidate she stressed issues like abortion (still illegal in France) and equal pay. And she appealed to workers not to give a blank cheque to the anti-communist opportunist Mitterand. Above all she stressed the need to show that workers would fight for a decent living standard whoever won. Now she and the other revolutionary socialist candidate Krivine are appealing to workers to unite to beat the right in voting Mitterand.
The evolution of French politics reflects the growth of the crisis. Whoever wins the working class faces major struggles and major possibilities. The crucial question for the revolutionary socialist left will be to intervene in these struggles. The vote on the first round shows the potential. Now it must be seized.
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