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John West

The Meaning of the French Elections

(9 May 1945)


From New Militant, Vol. II No. 18, 9 May 1945, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).


COLD and sober analysis is necessary in order to estimate at their true value the results of the French elections. Demagogues, liberals, and reformists are at liberty to spin out dreams and illusions; it is the business of Marxists to base their theoretical and practical conclusions on an understanding of reality.

If we were to accept the Stalinist account of the French elections, we would now believe that the danger of Fascism in France has passed, that the crisis in France is in a position to be solved rapidly and tranquilly under the benign aegis of the People’s Front majority. Unfortunately, we remember other Stalinist accounts of other events: We remember how, in the autumn of 1932, the decline in the Nazi vote in Germany proved to the satisfaction of the Comintern analysts that the power of Hitler was broken and would soon disappear; and how, in March 1933, it was so stirringly prophecied by these same brave augurs that Hitler could not remain in power longer than a bare six months.

A glance at the bourgeois press during the past few days might alone be enough to cause a doubt or two to begin with. The Wall Street Journal records itself as well satisfied with the outcome. The Times notes that little difficulty is to be expected from sudden changes in French foreign policy, since all of the French political parties have based their programs on solid proposals for strong national defense. The New York Evening Post, in a long editorial, notes that the elections were a great blow both at fascism “and at communism.” Ludwig Lore, in his Post column, in the midst of his song of victory, pauses parenthetically to observe that the program of the People’s Front is no more radical than Roosevelt’s New Deal. In France itself, the “repudiated” premier, Sarraut, was so overwhelmed – as not to find it necessary even to resign.

What has changed in France? What is the significance of these elections?

Without doubt, the elections record the movement further to the left of large sections of the French proletariat and the lower peasantry. This is marked sufficiently by the spectacular increase in the Communist vote, and the substantial increase in the Socialist vote, making the representation of the latter party the largest in the new Chamber. This, in turn, is a symbol of the deeper process which has been unfolding in France during the past three years: the gradual cleavage of the French population into the two mighty divisions of the basically opposing class forces.

But, first and last in commenting upon these elections, it must be observed that the increase in the votes of the working-class parties occurred at the expense not of the Right but of the Center – of the Radical Socialist and the lesser petty-bourgeois parties. The parties of the Right, far from losing strength, actually gained more than twenty seats in the new Chamber. Thus, even on the electoral field, we find on examination that the “mighty blow to reaction” turns out to be the hallucination of bureaucratic minds: the Right emerges from the elections not weaker but stronger.

The increase in the votes of the working-class parties, as well as the increase on the Right was, then, accomplished at the expense of the parties of the Center, above all of the Radical Socialists. The Radical Socialist Party, for many years the largest parliamentary party in France, will enter the new Chamber with approximately twenty fewer representatives than the Socialist Party. Thus these elections demonstrate incontestably the truth of the Marxist prediction that under the impact of the process of basic class differentiation the petty-bourgeois parties of the Center must necessarily disintegrate, their following sifting out into one class division or the other. The relations in the Chamber do not, however, indicate by any means the full extent of the disintegration of the Radical Socialists. Further evidence is provided by the fact that many of the most popular traditional leaders of the Radical Socialists – including Herriot himself – failed to secure election in the first day of voting, and were returned on the second ballot only with the support of the Communists and Socialists; and in a number of cases lost out altogether.

The disintegration of the Radical Socialists is both symbol and proof of the fact that the crisis in France is too deep to permit of solution along the customary lines of modern French politics. For decades the French bourgeoisie has maintained its social and economic dictatorship through the utilization of the Radical Socialists as its chief governmental agents. The Radical Socialist leaders, in turn, maintained the support of their mass petty-bourgeois following for French imperialism. But today the results of the profound and continuing economic depression and the approach of the new war demand a sterner answer. The alternative is posed to France: Fascism or Socialism; and the alternative is inescapable. Thus the voice of the Radical Socialist preachers of “the middle way” is lost in the rising social tumult. And their following slips out of their hands, to the right and to the left.

If is in the light of this process of differentiation that the strategy of the People’s Front policy must be judged. And, so judged, it is seen to be precisely the betrayal of the revolutionary struggle which the realities of French society places on the order of the day. Nothing could make this clearer than the recent elections. The Radical Socialist Party, its policies and its leadership, stand discredited before the French masses. Its policies have led to nothing but disaster; its leaders have been openly shown to be shot through with every form of corruption and venality. And, at just the time when this is becoming apparent to the consciousness of the masses, the working class parties form a bloc with the Radical Socialists – which puts forward as its program exactly the program of the Radical Socialists; which accepts as its outstanding leaders, both in and out of Parliament, these same repudiated Radical Socialist chiefs; and which in the elections throws the working-class vote over to the Radical Socialist candidates.

When every demand of history and every teaching of Marxism called for an open and intransigent revolutionary proletarian policy, for the hastening of the dissolution of the Radical Socialist party by resolutely drawing the lower strata of its following behind the proletarian ranks under the banner of a revolutionary program, the Stalinists and Socialists of France have, through the People’s Front, been engaged in exhausting the energies of the proletariat for the sake of – slowing down the dissolution of the Radical Socialists, bolstering up their credit and prestige with the masses, salvaging their bankrupt program, and aiding them in their loyal task of preventing the preparations for revolutionary struggle.

The disillusionment of the petty-bourgeois masses with Radical Socialism will not be permanently altered by changing the name of Radical Socialism to the People’s Front. Why should they pick up again what they have discarded merely for the sake of a pretty new label? Already, the elections show, they are in large numbers turning not to the left but to the right, where at least there are confident leaders to speak out boldly for a new road and a new solution. The continuation of the People’s Front policy means that this trend of the petty bourgeoisie will necessarily continue and increase. When the blows of history strip off the new clothes of the People’s Front to show more obviously the Radical Socialist skeleton beneath, it will lose what attractive power it now has for the petty bourgeoisie, and they will drift faster toward the fascist camp. The proletariat can win and hold the petty bourgeois masses only by drawing them in under its own revolutionary banner, never by creeping in under the tattered petty-bourgeois tent.

What has been changed in France by these elections, hailed by the swarm of liberals, reformists, and social-patriots as the dawn of France’s salvation? Essentially, nothing. Even in the Chamber of Deputies, in spite of the electoral shift, the basic relations are unaltered. The Communist and Socialist parties together have only about 35% of the votes in the Chamber. Thus they can control legislation and governmental policy only with the assistance of the Radical Socialists, who have about 20%. But this means that all measures actually taken will have to be Radical Socialist measures, and that any type or variation of a People’s Front government could be in practice only another Radical Socialist government. The Radical Socialists keep the same relative position which they held in the last Chamber.

In many important respects, the nominal majority of the People’s Front taken together with the minority position of the working-class parties is an added danger rather than an improvement. For example, it enables the French bourgeoisie to carry through any social and economic measures which they see fit, from wage reductions to devaluation to war, and at the same time to slough off all responsibility for such measures on to the People’s Front In this way, the bourgeoisie can convincingly maintain before the French masses that the continuing and increasing ills from which they suffer are actually due to the People’s Front and its inspirers, the working-class parties. Thug the basis is laid for unanswerable propaganda to weaken the mass standing and authority of Socialism and Communism, and to draw the petty bourgeoisie and even many layers of the working class to the only other road – to Fascism. It will be observed that it is the policy of the People’s Front which has placed the working class parties in this equivocal and possibly fatal position. To date, in drawing up the balance sheet of the People’s Front, the Socialist and Communist parties have paid out: revolutionary theory, revolutionary policies, revolutionary strategy; and have received: a paper majority for the People’s Front – which is either no majority at all, or a majority for the Radical Socialists, since the majority can be maintained only at the whim and pleasure of the Radical Socialists. But Such a majority, far from representing an asset, is only an additional liability, burdening the working class parties with all the heavy debts and crimes of Radical Socialism.

The election results do not alter by a hair’s breadth the underlying causes of the French crisis. Unemployment, low wages, high costs, the increasing misery of the lower strata of the peasantry, high taxes, the threat of devaluation, the approach of war: these remain now as they were a month ago. And every year of modern history, especially every year since the last War, proves that the reformist schemes of the People’s Front cannot change materially for the better a single one of them. Every lesson of our times teaches that they demand as the single possible answer: the workers’ revolution and socialism.

And the French Fascists? Defeated by the parliamentary warriors of the People’s Front? Buried beneath the clouds of ballots? The very conception is sufficiently ludicrous. The Fascists participated only to a small degree in the elections. For the most part, they swung their votes to the traditional Right parties, many of the leaders of which are more openly moving toward a Fascist position in recent months. Meanwhile, the ranks of the Fascists are intact. Their knives and revolvers and machine guns and armored cars and tanks and airplanes are safe and growing in number. Their influence in the army is mounting. They prepare systematically, in their own fashion, for the struggle ahead. And French finance-capital directs their progress, holding them temporarily in check from too precipitous action before it is needed. Finance-capital makes it its business to learn from history: and the lessons of Italy, Germany and Austria were not taught it in vain. It knows that crucial political issues are not settled by ballots.

The proletariat of France will do well to follow such an example. Its basic struggle must be transferred from parliament to the streets and the countryside. The subordination of the proletariat to the program and tactics of the petty bourgeoisie through the People’s Front must be resolutely broken. The People’s Front itself must be smashed through, and in its place, to secure concerted and coordinated action, must be built the fighting united front of the workers, which will draw behind it the lower ranks of the petty bourgeoisie. The revolutionary slogans must be brought before the masses, and made concrete in action; and to meet the armed bands of the Fascists, the workers’ defense must be armed and organized. The answer to the crisis of France must he given boldly: the workers’ revolution.

But each of these tasks, without the accomplishment of which the workers of France are doomed to the fate of their German comrades, demands as its first and decisive precondition the reassembling of the revolutionary forces of the French proletariat, the forging of the revolutionary party, which can alone achieve the victory.


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