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Why the French Communists Stopped the Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Arthur P. Mendel
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Extract

In May, 1968, France was saved from revolution not primarily by de Gaulle and his generals but by the French Communist Party. Nine million striking workers occupied the factories. Militants among the students and young unemployed workers had proven themselves more than ready to play the role of vanguard at the barricades. The peasantry had begun to move from passive grumbling to direct action, fearful that the end of agricultural tariffs in July would further depress their hard lot. Even the middleclass professionals, disenchanted with the hierarchical rigidities and the olympian paternalism of Gaullist society had risen to assert their rights to free expression and meaningful participation. All means of communication and transport and all financial agencies were either directly or indirectly under the control of the workers. At will they could have deprived Paris and other cities of food, water, fuel, electricity and gas.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , January 1969 , pp. 3 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1969

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References

1 The preceding quotations are from a French Communist review of the growth of this Socialist-Communist alliance. La Nouvelle Critique, no. 170 (1965), p. 6. For another chronological survey, see Barrillon, Raymond, La Gauche Française en Mouvement (Paris, 1967), pp. 199–231Google Scholar.

2 “Mitterrand does not go as far as we do,” Jacques Duclos said at the time, “but he goes in the same direction.” Barrillon, , La Gauche Française, p. 200Google Scholar. Letters sent by the Communists to the Socialists urging this electoral alliance are reprinted in Cahiers du Communisme, no. 9, September, 1966, pp. 308–309. The Party took full advantage of the fact that its campaign for unity on the left coincided with the thirtieth anniversary of the Popular Front; throughout 1966 books, pamphlets, special editions of Party periodicals, conferences, congresses and interviews were dedicated to the memory of the 1936 Socialist-Communist union.

3 Barrillon, La Gauche Française, Ch. II.

4 The Declaration was reprinted in Le Monde, February 25–26, 1968, pp. 6–7.

5 Prevost, Claude, “Portrait Robot du Maoisme en France,” La Nouvelle Critique, 06, 1967, pp. 9–14Google Scholar. Waldeck Rochet devoted considerable space in one of his most popular pamphlets to a critique of such extremism, arguing that those who urge “armed insurrection lack confidence in the working class, in its intelligence and its political capacities, its ability to gather the majority of the people in the struggle for their immediate and future interests.” Still more to the point, he added: “the recent experience of Indonesia has unfortunately demonstrated that the use of armed force is not in itself enough to guarantee success.” Rochet, Waldeck, Qu'est-ce Qu'un Révolutionnaire Dans la France de Notre Temps (Paris, 1967), pp. 35, 38Google Scholar.

6 Le Monde, January 4, 1968, p. 7.

7 L'Humanité, April 3, 1968, p. 4 and May 3, 1968, p. 6.

8 See, for example, L'Humanité, February 29, 1968, p. 4.

9 Paradoxically, it was the Socialist luminary Jules Moch who first raised the Prague coup analogy in a lengthy, front-page article published in Figaro on the eve of the Declaration. Figaro, February 20, 1968, pp. 1, 5. Prime Minister Pompidou was first to sound the alarm after the Declaration and to call for a united front of the center and right around the government party. Le Monde, February 28, 1968, p. 8. For other illustrations of this campaign against the united left, see Figaro, 03 4, 1968, p. 6 (Poujade, Robert)Google Scholar; March 5, 1968, p. 6 (Roger Frey); March 12, 1968, p. 8 (Tixier-Vignancour); March 20, 1968, pp. 1, 8 (Louis-Gabriel Robinet); Le Figaro Littéraire, no. 1142, 03 4–10, 1968, pp. 4–5 (Mauriac, Frangois)Google Scholar; Le Monde, March 3–4, 1968, p. 9 (summaries of press response to the Declaration); March 17–18, p. 6 (Robert Poujade).

10 Le Monde, February 27, 1968, pp. 1, 7.

11 Ibid., March 5, 1968, p. 6.

12 As quoted in Le Monde, March 6, 1968, p. 8.

13 Le Monde, March 7, 1968, p. 6.

14 For example: “Socialism must defend its existence by other means than police measures.” “If we take power, the members of the [present majority] can rest assured that none of them would be brought before the exceptional courts, because we will abolish them. We have no need of those weapons.” “There will be no exceptional jurisdiction, no purges or repression. But we have no intention of experiencing either the fate that, in 1924, the first united government suffered through the ‘squeeze’ of the banks or the evolution of the Popular Front.” Figaro, March 11, 1968, p. 6; Le Monde, March 3–4, 1968, p. 8 and March 5, 1968, p. 7.

15 As quoted in Le Monde, March 7, 1968, p. 6.

16 Ibid., March 3–4, 1968, p. 8.

17 Ibid., March 5, 1968, p. 7

18 Ibid., March 6, 1968, p. 6.

19 Ibid., April 10, 1968, p. 6.

20 Le Nouvel Observateur, February 21, 1968, pp. 4–5.

21 Ibid., March 6, 1968, p. 9.

22 Le Monde, March 17, 1968, p. 9.

23 Le Nouvel Observateur, March 6, 1968, p. 9. For Mitterrand's “Athens coup” reference see Le Monde, April 2, 1968, p. 10.

24 Rochet, , Qu'est-ce Qu-un Révolutionnaire, pp. 29–30Google Scholar.

25 L'Humanité, February 21, 1968, p. 6.

26 As quoted in Figaro, March 20, 1968, p. 8.

27 Thorez, Maurice, Textes Choisis sur la Démocratie (Paris, n. d.), p. 48Google Scholar.

28 L'Humanité, March 9, 1968, p. 4.

29 L'Humaniteé Dimanche, February 25, 1968, p. 9.

30 Le Nouvel Observateur, March 20, 1968, p. 13.

31 As quoted in Figaro, March 20, 1968, p. 8.

32 Elgey, Georgette, La Republique des Illusions (Paris, 1965), p. 270Google Scholar.

33 La Nouvelle Critique, June, 1967, p. 5.

34 Ibid., March, 1968, p. 11.

35 Le Nouvel Observateur, February 21, 1968, pp. 6–7.

36 As quoted in Figaro, March 20, 1968, p. 8.

37 Le Nouvel Observateur, April 10, 1968, pp. 4–10.

38 Le Monde, March 5, 1968, p. 7. “There will be no social change in France without an entente of all the parties of the left, including the Communist Party,” Guy Mollet said after the February Declaration. Similarly, Charles Hernu, in spite of his attachment to the center parties, rejected offers from the center for closer relations. “What is essential today,” he said, “is a reevaluation of the economic structure and of the present conditions. But the Center refuses to make any concessions with regard to the economic structure. In allying with the Center the democratic socialists would lose their image, their objective, their basic reason for struggle. In contrast to this, the accord with the Communists is justified by the necessity of changing the economic system.” Le Monde, February 27, 1968, p. 6 and March 5, 1968, p. 6. See also Mollet's comments in ibid., March 20, 1968, p. 10.

39 Similarly, Pierre Juquin wrote in his March, 1968, article for La Nouvelle Critiquethat “contrary to de Gaulle's assertions, the Communists will not seek ways of creating instability and disorder to use to their advantage. This would be the worst of all policies, for it would lead to a rupture within the left and to the return of the right. We want a government of the left to succeed. … It must demonstrate that it can govern better than the right.” La Nouvelle Critique, March, 1968, p. 11.

40 L'Express, March 4–10, 1968, pp. 44–45.

41 Le Monde, February 20, 1968, p. 8.

42 Two weeks afterwards, Gaillard wrote in his party's bulletin that the F. G. D. S. was “an instrument for synthesizing socialism and liberalism,” which L'Humanité correctly read as a synthesis between “the ‘center’ and one party of the left, one that would tie the party of the left with the right.” When asked about the presence of Faure and Gaillard in the leading party of the F. G. D. S., Jean Lecanuet, president of the Democratic Center, said that “he hoped that they would defend there the ideas that are not very different from ours, those for which we ourselves fight.” Similarly, Pierre Abelin of the centrist P. D. M. (Progrés et Démocratic moderne) said that the program of the F. G. D. S., as outlined in the February Declaration, “manifests a clear convergence with that of the democratic center.” Le Monde, February 29, 1968, p. 8; March 8, 1968, p. 7; March 9, 1968, p. 7; April 11, 1968, p. 7. See also the statement by Sudreau, Pierre, another P. D. M. leader, that “no serious frontier separates our group from the parliamentarians of the left.” Le Monde, 03 29, 1968, p. 8Google Scholar.

43 Estier, Claude, deputy from Paris and member of Mitterrand's Convention wing of the F. G. D. S. Aux Ecoutes, no. 2276, 02 28 – March 5, 1968, p. 4Google Scholar.

44 Figaro, March 15, 1968, p. 8.

45 As quoted in Barrillon, , La Gauche Française, p. 211Google Scholar. During the crisis itself, there was strong evidence that Mitterrand might be maneuvering in precisely this direction. He was extremely careful to keep his own actions and those of his party separate from the Communists'; he resisted and publicly rejected Waldeck Rochet's appeals for common policies and tactics; and he made no mention of the Communists in his proposal for a transitional government. But it could be argued that he was reluctant to confront his country with the prospect of Communist ministers at a time when it was already fearful of anarchy and civil war. If Mitterrand was really out to betray the Communists, it is unlikely that they would have continued the electoral alliance with the Socialists, which, incidentally, saved Mitterrand's Assembly seat in June, or to press for the further consolidation of the left parties, as they have continued to do.

46 Le Monde, Sélection Hebdomadaire, August 22–28, p. 7.

47 Although the controversy between Garaudy and the “conservative” Party leaders reached its peak following the Czechoslovak crisis, it was already dramatically evident in their alternative responses to the situation in May. For a discussion of this “young Turk” opposition, see Le Nouvel Observateur, July 10–14, 1968, pp. 12–14.

48 Le Monde, August 31, p. 5.

49 Ibid., September 7, pp. 1, 7.

50 The radicals, responding to their dismay at both the May insurrection and the August invasion, became increasingly anti-Communist throughout the second half of 1968 and seemed to be moving back toward the kind of third force, center-left alliance that Gaston Defferre had unsuccessfully tried to organize before Mitterrand and Mollet led the Socialists toward the Socialist-Communist accord. Le Nouvel Observateur, July 10–14, p. 16; July 15–21, p. 15; August 5–11, pp. 4, 6. Le Monde, September 7, p. 7.

51 New York Times, October 7, 1968, p. 9.

52 Ibid., August 22, 1968, p. 17; October 2, 1968, pp. 1, 10, 13; October 4, 1968, p. 4.

53 Christian Science Monitor, October 8, 1968, p. C3.

54 In addition to the Declaration itself (Le Monde, February 25–26, 1968, pp. 6–7) see Rochet's, Waldeck Central Committee report on it, L'Humanié, 04 20, 1968, p. 4Google Scholar.

55 Le Monde, February 25–26, 1968, p. 7.

56 Figaro, February 20, 1968, p. 1. Moch stated his views on Communist ministers at the January, 1968, Suresnes Socialist congress. Combat, February 19, 1968, p. 3.

57 The French and Italian Communists’ denunciation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia is no more evidence of Communist willingness to accept authentic democratic, electoral processes at home than are comparable anti-Soviet stands taken by Rumania, Yugoslavia, Albania, China, or, for that matter, Czechoslovakia itself, all of whom have easily enough reconciled demands for national independence with varying degrees of Party dictatorship.

58 Le Nouvel Observateur, May 20, 1968, pp. 3–5.

59 Figaro, March 26, 1968, p. 8.