BOOKS

One big unhappy family

Richard Cobb

The Long March of the French Left R.W. Johnson (Macmillan pp. 345,120).

This is a professional book about the highly skilled, elaborate rough-and-tumble of French politics and parties since the Liberation. It is concerned primarily with the most important aspect of politics, and the very raison-d'être of organised parties and temporary groupings: the winning and losing of elections. For, as the author argues, under the Fifth Republic, politics, while becoming less democratic, less parliamentary, have become more electoral, more plebiscitaire, and more personal. In the simplest terms, it is the choice, on the second ballot, this week between two somewhat similar personalities, Giscard d'Estaing and Francois Mitterand. But, as he goes on to demonstrate, the electoral context in fact takes place within the confines of a much more complicated quadrilateral that encloses two principal groups on the Right and two on the Left.

While the author argues — convincingly — that the Socialist P. S. only exists in terms of impending elections, and is not so much a party as a loose electoral alliance (rassemblement would be an apt description, were it not poached from the other side), the Communist P.C. F. too is an organisation much less concerned with doctrine and theory than with retaining an electoral support ranging from 15 to 25 per cent, and above all, with regaining the electoral leadership over the rival P.S.

A political system so closely geared to short-term aims: the retention or the win ning of the Elysee, is not likely to be domi nated by sustained doctrinal differences, tending, on the contrary, to constantly shift ing allegiances and changes of position, and, for the Left, a 'common programme' that amounts to little more than an electoral pact with regard to the second ballot. This applies as much to the P. C. F. the enormous effectiveness of which has been due to the alert pragmatism of its leaders since the . death of Thorez, as to the other main political organisations. Indeed it would no doubt now be at) over-simplification to suggest that the P.C.F. is still a Marxist party, or even a Communist one (its enemies to the Left would argue that it was neither, but as they represent miniscule and ineffective groups — so ineffective that they can afford the silly luxury of doctrinal purity — what they say is of not the slightest importance).

But it is still a party of class that can effectively boast of having retained the loyalty of the majority of French workers (immigrant workers are disenfranchised and likely to remain so — so that the P.C.F. can afford to ignore them, or, indeed, to bull-dozer them out of their Communist-dominated municipal ghettoes, one of the more cynical changes of front in the present election campaign).

Books about elections are generally boring. But the present book makes fascinating and exciting reading, as well as offering a lucid guide through the murky, muddy deltas of the politics of the Fifth Republic, certainly more strewn with subterranean scandals and unsolved murders than its much-decried predecessor (there was nothing subterranean about les bons d'Arras, le scandale des piastres, the tribulations of General Revers, ones ballets roses). The author is always alert to social shifts in electoral loyalties, to the rapid unfreezing of what had remained for so long a largely immobile geographie electorale, and to the importance of personalities. He suggests, for instance, that demography will tilt the balance in favour of the Left, more and more the parties of the young, at least up till 1990. He illustrates the relative loss to the Right brought by the present catastrophic state of French Catholicism, many of its younger priests engaged in obscene dialogues on such themes as Marxism and Christianity. He emphasises the enormous disparity of wealth within French society, a condition comparable to that of South American republics. There are fascinating glimpses of the steady electoral decline of the P.C.F. in Paris and in its banlieue (which he persists in calling banlieu), due to the departure of working-class and lowermiddle-class elements from the EastCentral Districts and from the XIIIme and their replacement by a single-class population of upper-middle-class professional people; (characteristically, Paris has thus become both a fief of the Right and of the extreme Left, including the Trotskyites), though once, with the Pas-de Calais, the Marseille region, and the Massif Central a Communist stronghold. He illustrates the steady decline of the rural Communist vote, as a result of depopulation and the aging of' the old Resistant militants in areas like the Creuse, the Correze, the Haute-Vienne and the Gers; but he draws attention to more recent P. C.F. gains in Brittany and in the South-West, as well as, briefly, in the steel towns of Lorraine. He points to the survival of the fiefs of local political barons, some of them, like Mauroy in Lille, veterans from the leadership of the old S.F.1.0. while, in Marseille, Defferre has just managed to hold on to a steadily diminishing peau de chagron. Under the new system there has been a marked decrease in the local influence of those characteristic figures of the Third Republic,. deputes-maires.

Old, familiar villains — some so familiar to people of my generation as to be greeted like reminders of lost youth — are trundled out: the dreadful Mollet, the inane Bidault, the unctuous Teitgen, the wily Ramadier, the clerical Schuman (aux yeux de myosotis). Of the old, rather frayed gang, only Dr Queuille, the longest-serving President du Conseil of the Fourth Republic, is missing. Mollet, rightly, comes in for a trouncing, so does Lacoste. But the author is perhaps unduly severe on the energetic and courageous Jules Moch, the scourge of the P.C.F. in 1947-48, le juif Moch in the virulently anti-semitic propaganda of l'Humanite of those years and later. He shows a characteristically English partiality for Pierre Mendes-France, though he does not conceal his mistakes; and he is drily revealing on the subject of Mitterand's tortuous past, l'affaire du Luxembourg, his disastrous pronouncement in June 1968, and his late — and lightning — conversion to Marxism.

Because he is so observant 'of personalities, Mr Johnson's book is great fun to read. His humour is sharp and sly. We hear that, in one of their more difficult meetings, M itterand and Marchais could hit on no other subject of conversation than their common baldness (they could have made a threesome with Giscard). Both apparently possess the enviable gift — shared by Welsh politicians — of being able to blubber in public, a political asset comparable to that of Jacques Doriot, who could sweat to order, thereby convincing his Saint-Denis constituents of his deep sincerity (qu'est qu'il sue, ce type-klt!).

The author might be writing from inside French politics — a great achievement for an Englishman and like an insider he witnesses the scene with a mixture of wry humour, acute understanding of the game, and a consequent deep cynicism. He is not taken in by the spectacle of unrestrained power, nor is he dazzled by the monarchical splendours of both Giscard and Mitterand (how soon, one wonders, will Ministers and supplicants have to walk backwards when leaving the Presidential Presence?). French politics, in his account, appear as unedifying as the leading personalities who play a part in them.

There is a sympathetic — and, in my opinion, accurate — portrait of Maurice Thorez, a man of great warmth and personal chant), self-taught and who had acquired considerable historical scholarship (especially on the subject of the French Revolution, though he told me, in March 1964, that he could not accept my strictures on Robespierre) something of a cult figure with the P.C.F. Mr Johnson argues convincingly that Thorez was genuinely devoted to Stalin, to whom he owed everything, and that his iron `stalinism' owed as much to this personal link (and Stalin liked Thorez as much as he used him) as to his belief that the only help for the French working class could come from direct Soviet aid. The cult within the party of le Fils du Peuple (he was in fact the illegitimate son of a butcher) was derived as much from his engaging niceness as from carefully orchestrated party propaganda, and when Thorez died in July 1964, it seemed to a whole generation of militants that there had died with him both youth and hope, so closely had the good-looking, open-faced, blue-eyed figure in the opennecked shirt become identified with the summer memory of the Front Populaire. And be is equally convincing about Thorez's awful wife, the venomous Jeannette Vermeersch, though it is hard to share his apparent sympathy for the sinister Marty, the executioner of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

With reference to the status of the P. CF. within the newly-formed Cominform, it is salutary to be reminded that the sternest critics of the eminently sensible Duclos and of the French party leadership in 1947 were DPlas, Kardejl, and Anna Pauker (a Rumanian, and not a Czech as the author asserts).

Most French politicians, both old-stagers and newcomers, get their come-uppance, though to myself, at least — and this may owe something to the prejudice of age — the latter seem more abrasive, more pushing, more arrogant (because much younger) than the older generation of charmers, the velvet-voiced persuaders, the tutoyant horse-dealers and fixers, the cultivated and eloquent Herriots and Paul-Boncours. French politics emerge as nastier, more brutal, more professional, and much less fun than in the old back-slapping buvette days of the Third and Fourth Republics, when a deputy was still a person of considerable influence and prestige. Perhaps this is the mirror of a more brutally acquisitive society dominated by technocrats in the 30 to 45 age-group.

Mr Johnson is an ,especially sensitive historian of the P.C.F., of its organisational brilliance, of its municipal effectiveness, of its collective mores, and of its old, but now apparently receding, ghetto mentality, pride in apartness and in being misunderstood and rejected, its deep, ritualistic religiosity — like a properly organised religion, it could even provide the faithful with a calendar with which to guide them, under the maternal wing of the Party, safely through the year. The Journees de la Paix, beneath Picasso's dove — the Party has always been benevolent in the provision of easily recognised symbols and pictorial rallying cries — the Mur des Federes in May, but, of course, not at the same time as the P.S., the P.SU., L.O., and the anarchists — the birthday of Maurice 'Thorez — this was later scrapped, — the annual Fete de ?Hum September, just after la rentree; even Christmas could be accommodated, with suitable dolls representing le.s peuples freres in national costume, and, within each week, a Sunday mobilisation of militants for the sale of l'Huma-Dimanche — its mass joys and sorrows, The French Communist Party is a way of life, a hugely extended family, held together by shared rites and secrets, by a coded language between copains (c'est un copain, the standard recognition signal, like a masonic hand-shake — Mr Johnson indeed hints at strong masonic influence within the Party), by an easy tutoiement as suited between brothers and sisters, by a tone of voice that tends to be hoarse, hectoring and affirmative, as a result of too much fraternal argument and over-indulgence in short shouted slogans, by a manner of dress both decent and unpretentious, by hair styles that reject the hirsute image of the parlour revolutionary and that are reassuringly ftancais moyen — an image increasingly cultivated, like that of the standard-sized family of two children (as on election posters), a reminder that it is a Party of the young, that it loves children (bring them to the Fete de l'Huma, they will be well provided for), and that, within its ample bosom there is a place for la petite famille as well as for la Grande.

And so it offers above all an instant, and indeed permanent (and who could bear to leave?) escape from loneliness, privacy, and nagging doubt, a camaraderie that is constantly to hand, in case of need, to help out, to tide over a domestic difficulty, or to carry out an urgent bit of plumbing, as well as a complete set of standard answers to every imaginable problem (should a comrade spend his holidays in Spain under Franco?), imposing even rules of behaviour (there will be trouble if a copain seduces a copine or makes a pass at her daughter), a sort of puritanical counter-morality. Its appeal is to the primaire, the simplistic, the selfamputated, the inadequate, and to the archetypal 'joiner'. It is both a marriage jaureau, a family picnic (la Fete de l'Huma, that, in 1979, drew in a million) and aJesolute march towards the future (though les lendemains qui chantent seem always to be just across the horizon, a fact which accounts no doubt for the considerable fall-out rate of newcomers, 'here-andflowers' deprived of the realisation of 'instant' revolution — they had indeed gone to the wrong shop). For, as the author reiterates, the P.C.F. is no longer a revolutionary party, indeed ceased being one in 1944, though of course this could not be publicised at the time; it would have been too discouraging to the tens of thousands of new adherents. In short, a complete and integrated society, satisfying every need, and relieving its members from the necessity of any contact with outside. 'The Party will see to it'. It is this negative and exclud ing 'aspect that is perhaps the main source of Party strength: a party of exclus, but also of exclusift.

This may all sound too high-minded and there is perhaps one element in Communist motivation that Mr Johnson fails to emphasise: that of personal ambition. Many of the young agreges who joined the Party in 1944 had left it even before the death of Stalin, because they had discovered that the upward ladder of higher education led through a stage in American universities. At the present time the P.C.F. has carved out for its reliable adherents solid enclaves in the C.N.R.S. and in University posts, so that to join the Party, if one is a young historian or scientist, is to get on. All this at a time when the Party is excluded from power, save at the municipal level. Its expansion, if ever back in power, is not hard to calculate, each sector of State employment wide open to its brilliantly run patronage. It is not just that many French intellectuals have a taste for Marxism; they know who is going to look after their careers. A .P.C.F: share in government would spell out massive colonisation of higher education, at university and lye& level, and the consequent failure to promote unbelievers, doubters, and individualists. The ritual preface: moi qui suis de l' equipe de . . . would leave no doubt about which team was meant. There is a hard, calculating side to joining the most efficient collective. organisation existing in modern France. and one run for the exclusive benefit of its members, In this respect at least the P.C.F. might still be described as having some of the characteristics of a revolutionary body. for such a penetration of positions of power and profit would certainly turn out to be irreversible. Just try and evict a Communist from a position of authority even now, and listen to the well-orchestrated campaign of indignation, echoed at once in Le Monde? It would take more than a change of President or of party to winkle out the entrenched Party members throughout the educational and bureaucratic hierarchies. Why are there still so many Communists in France? It is a question to which the author gives no satisfactory answer, apart from pointing to the stupendous inequalities within French society. Certainly one reason is that to be a Communist brings in very considerable material benefits, in terms of job security, promotion and unionisation, It may well be that the C.G.T. has in recent years been concerned to cut its links with the Party; but higher education unions have fallen to the iron grasp of C.P.F. syndiques, so that even a government of the Right finds it virtually impossible — and certainly imprudent — to remove a Communist lecturer or professor, even if he be as clearly mad as Alth.uss.er. The P.C.F., which has so often claimed to be the party of the future, as'well as that of youth, had, in one respect, carved out for itself a sizeable chunk of the present. Nor do such Communists feel any embarrassment at the truly enormous salaries that they draw from an alien bourgeoisstate. Nor, for that matter, do Party members display any qualms about the possession of a residence secondaire. In short, they are just as bourgeois as most of their fellowcountrymen. Perhaps we should take comfort and reassurance from this.

Mr Johnson's study takes off in a somewhat journalistic flurry, rather like an 'opener' in Time; but it soon settles down to a sober narrative and to an ever alert analysis of social change. He is described as a sociologist; but he writes like a historian. His insistence on the enormous social and economic achievement of the 'tripartite' government of 1944-7 is especially welcome at a time when British opinion has been much too prone to accept gaulliste propaganda on the subject of the 'French miracle' as dating from 1958. It is timely also to be reminded that 1958 was a coup d'etat, and that Mitterand and other democratic parliamentarians protested against it. And though his hook is concerned with the transformation and the hopes and failures of a united French Left, he devotes perceptive chapters to the phenomenon of gaullisme and to the considerable fraction of working-class electoral support enjoyed by the General at his zenith.

His study — not the least of its merits — will be anathema to New Left theorists, to worshippers at the shrines of Althusser and Ellenstein, and to 'impossibilists' of every hue. For he firmly rejects theoretical forms of commitment, cuts ces evenements down to size — that of very bad theatre — and refers to the silly games of nasty, ill-mannered, and ignorant lycee revolutionaries' of 13 and 14. His book is about the realities of politics and power, not about intellectual make-believe and Instant Revolution fantasies. Foucault and Barthes do not even get a mention, Fanon is dismissed in one short, sharp sentence, Debray is shown to be totally irrelevant to the French situation, and there is a derisive allusion to the pilgrimages of the European faithful to the Maspero shrine on the Left Bank. Anyone who wants to come to terms with the mathematical complexities of French elections and the transformations of French society since 1958 should read this excellent 'and well-written book.

It is a pity that an observer so clearly successful in getting inside French politics should show some difficulty in getting inside French spelling; Mr Johnson places accents where they do not belong (Recherche, Guesde, Parlementaire) and omits them when they do belong (Demographique). Something peculiar is going on on the dustcover: Mitterand is brandishing an empty sheet — le Programme Commun? in the direction of Laurent, Leroy and a scowling Marchais. Underneath, a diminutive bowler-hatted Jaures is attempting to push his way up between Mitterand's fingers and those — gauloise-holding, — of Leroy. There must be some symbolism in all this. But what? For Jaures is indeed a giant among these pygmies.