from THE ECONOMIST
Paris burns May 11, 1968
France's cultural revolution May 18, 1968
A revolution set alight by students, snuffed out by communists May 25, 1968
The general charges into battle June 1, 1968
From general strike to general elections June 8, 1968
Is it the end of the popular front? June 22, 1968
The end of the first act, not the final curtain July 6, 1968
Ayes to the left, noes to the right August 31, 1968
Will this keep the students quiet? October 5, 1968
That's France's left, that was October 12, 1968
From general down to sergeant November 30, 1968
The price of the franc December 7, 1968
The good things get broken, too December 21, 1968
May 11
Paris burns
The carcass of a car or something was burning on the corner of the Boulevard St. Michel and Boulevard Montparnasse. It was 2 o’clock on Wednesday morning. The fire brigade rushing to the spot met a long convoy of black lorries filled with helmeted police armed with shields and long riot truncheons. Moving towards the corner of Raspail, the convoy was overtaken by screaming ambulances. A major drama had just been avoided: the police had thrown tear gas bombs into a cafe that was then closed. The Red Cross had to break in to save people from asphyxiation.
Yet this scene of night violence was not typical of Tuesday, which, compared with its bloody predecessor, was relatively quiet. Its main feature was a long march across Paris by some 25,000 students. Prevented by vast numbers of police from entering their own district, the Latin Quarter, which looked like a besieged fortress, they trekked for hours through the capital, chanting slogans, marching up the Champs-Elysées and then back to the left bank. There seemed to be a tacit agreement between the organizers, the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France, and the police to avoid clashes. Only towards midnight, when the students tried to enter their district, did fights flare up and the atmosphere resemble that of the day before.
Bloody Monday, May 6th, was quite a day. It witnessed the most violent demonstrations the Latin Quarter has known, at least since the war. The government hoped to deal with a handful of extremists. It had to cope with 10,000 students, on this occasion determined not to yield. Though the police were out in impressive numbers and armed to the teeth, they did not have it all their own way. Some of the students had helmets and sticks. Cobblestones answered tear gas. From 3 p.m. to well into the night it was a permanent struggle with skirmishes, battles and tactical retreats. Streets were unpaved to provide ammunition, cars overturned as improvised barricades. Boulevard St. Germain between the Deux Magots and Odéon was no place for strolling tourists. The figures speak for themselves. The police claimed 345 casualties in their ranks. At least 500 demonstrators were wounded and 422 arrested.
Demonstrations are usually much more violent in Paris than in London and, probably, than in any other west European town. The reason seems to be that violence breeds violence. France has shown once again that it has a domestic force de frappe of the first order.
With its Gardes Mobiles and its Compagnies Républicaines de Securité (the initials allow the demonstrators to chant the slogan CRS-SS) France has the troops needed for a civil war and its various regimes have often used them ruthlessly. The classical questions about who started the violence and who was within the law are in France only a part of it. The police did not enter the Sorbonne on May 3 until they were called for, and on Monday they were handling an unauthorised demonstration. But once French policemen get going, they are not particularly tender. The many eyewitness reports of passers-by beaten up, people sitting in cafes getting a taste of truncheons and isolated demonstrators thumped to the ground testify to that.
The efficiency and ruthlessness of repression has as its counterpart, in the long run, an improvement in the techniques of street fighting. The angry young men who went out on Monday were spoiling for a fight.
But it was on the preceding Friday that the trouble had really started. For reasons that are still not quite clear the rector, M. Jean Roche, decided on the historically unprecedented step of calling the police into the Sorbonne. The government complied, probably very willingly, convinced as it was that unrest among students was limited to small groups, to the so-called enragés of Nanterre—the new faculty of arts built in a slum suburb of Paris.
It must have thought that a show of force would solve the problem amid the applause of the populace and the indifference of the rest of the student body. The calculation proved entirely wrong. The closing of the Sorbonne, the brutality of the repression, the stiff sentences passed against demonstrators had the opposite effect. The movement gathered momentum, it spread to the provinces, attracted the support of a number of lecturers and professors.
It is easy to see why the government miscalculated. The revolutionaries of Nanterre are undoubtedly a minority. The various groups—the followers of Mao and of Che Guevara, the admirers of Trotsky and the less precise seekers after some kind of socialist society—are deeply divided among themselves. But the government did not grasp that their mood of rebellion, their rejection of the established order, correspond to the mood of a wider student community.
Swollen by the population bulge the French universities are now undergoing a revolution of numbers. There are now some 600,000 students, more than twice as many as at the beginning of the 1960s. But changes in methods, syllabuses and approach have not kept pace with numbers. The harshest critics describe the universities as factories for misfits. Everybody agrees that they are no longer suited to the needs of the moment.
Many students fall by the wayside. Even those who get a degree are not sure of a job. Students do not worry only about being squeezed lemons at 40, they worry about their immediate prospects. It is not surprising that the movements of protest started among art students. It is not just that students in sociology or philosophy are more concerned with the meaning of society; it is among them that the future unemployed are more likely to be found.
Obviously many of today’s rebels will be absorbed tomorrow and be concerned only with climbing into the establishment or getting their slices of affluence. But they are still young enough to listen with sympathy to slogans about the overthrow of the established society. The truncheon did the rest.
The government was not alone in misjudging the situation. The communist party made the same mistake. It went on vituperating against tiny ultra-leftist “grouplets” when its own young supporters, or ex-supporters, were already flocking to mass demonstrations. It is here that the French case adds a twist to the international analysis of student unrest. It was generally assumed that whereas students in Prague or Warsaw fight against a political order—against the remnants of stalinism—students in western Europe or America rebel against a society, that their revolt is the other side of the coin of political consensus. With a Republican indistinguishable from a Democrat in America—the argument ran—with one Harold resembling another in Britain, with Italy governed by a centre-left and the communists tempted to join), with a coalition ruling in Bonn, the protesters have no alternative. But France was seen as the exception to this rule. Here there was a gaullist government and a hostile opposition, including the communists.
It is significant that the rebels of Nanterre have treated the communists as part of the establishment, part of the consensus; and the communist party did its best, at first, to justify this judgement. Like the government, it was overtaken by events and, to its discomfort, overtaken on its left.
By midweek, after yet another peaceful march on Wednesday night, there were some signs of appeasement. The politicians had at last managed to grasp the importance of what had happened. General de Gaulle said something vague about the need for order and the need for change. The national assembly discussed the subject in a special session. Naturally students alone cannot change society. They cannot even reform the system of higher education. But they can act as a spur or an eye-opener. And Paris was awakened this week.
May 18
France’s cultural revolution
The weather smiled on the victors. Monday night was mild and gay as students directed traffic in the reconquered Latin Quarter. The Sorbonne, whence the police had vanished, was open to all. Soon everybody was going to start talking about France’s “cultural revolution,” but for the moment the atmosphere was more one of Kermesse Héroique, with overtones of the early days of the Cuban revolution. In the courtyard of the Sorbonne a band was playing jazz. In the university’s entrance hall, covered with posters, a notice proclaimed “Il est défendu d’interdire” (it is forbidden to forbid”). In the lecture rooms earnest young men, exhausted and exhilarated, debated until dawn about relations between students and workers, about the place of the university in society, about culture and capitalism.
How many had they been in the streets of Paris on that extraordinary day? They were a human sea which invaded the capital from the Gare de l’Est, where schoolboys, students and professors met at 1:30 p.m. Two hours later, at the Place de la République, this huge wave met another, led by the trade unions, and the combined procession marched through the heart of Paris, across the Seine, up the Boulevard St. Michel to the place Denfert-Rochereau, the meeting place of this revolutionary fortnight. Long after the first marchers reached their destination those at the tail of the procession had not yet started; they did not arrive until after 1 o’clock.
It was the biggest march Paris had seen since the war, the youngest, the most dynamic and, outwardly at least, the most revolutionary. Red flags were flying, clenched fists were held high, the Internationale was a recurring refrain. The fierce slogans were not aimed only at ministers; President de Gaulle himself was denounced as a murderer and called upon to resign. The politicians, men like M. Mitterrand, M. Mendès-France and M. Waldeck Rochet, were lost in the crowd. There were no police in sight. The difference of mood between the generations was most apparent towards the end of the march, when many students wanted to go on to the Elysée, while communists stewards used loudspeakers to tell the crowd to disperse.
How had the face of Paris been changed so suddenly? To understand that, one must go back to Friday, May 10th, and the storming of the barricades in the Latin Quarter. The thing really began that afternoon, when older schoolboys, wanting to express their solidarity with the students, gathered in the Place Denfert-Rochereau to listen to speakers who addressed them from the statue of the Lion of Belfort. In the evening it was the turn of the students and lecturers; at first they marched rather aimlessly, but from time to time their Japanese-inspired rushes added speed to the procession, and there were moments of tension when all side streets were blocked by helmeted policemen ready for the fray. The demonstrators shouted “CRS-SS” at the Compagnies Républicaines de Securité and greeted them with the nazi salute. But once again the student stewards showed that they had the situation under control; linking hands, they acted as barriers and prevented clashes.
When the demonstrators sought to cross the Seine, they found all the bridges blocked by strong police forces. The march was then channeled by way of the Boulevard St. Germain to the Boulevard St. Michel. The choice for the students at this stage was either to disperse or occupy and hold their own districts. Once they decided on the latter course in the face of the formidable array of police that had been brought against them, the building of barricades followed naturally. The barricades sprang up like mushrooms after rain, particularly in the area around the Luxemburg gardens and the Rue Gay-Lussac. Cars and all sorts of other materials were used.
Yet, as Friday night fell, the atmosphere, though tense, was not one of battle. People living in the area—and the Latin Quarter is not very leftish—were giving food to hungry students. (Later they also poured out water to disperse gas and opened their doors to give refuge to hunted students.) Nobody could really believe that the police, if they were going to charge, would first have allowed the barricades to be erected. There were also unfinished negotiations with the authorities. On two points raised by the demonstrators—the withdrawal of troops and the reopening of the Sorbonne—there was no real difficulty. But the third demand was for the release of those arrested in earlier demonstrations. “Libérez nos camarades” had become the marchers’ particular cry, a cry to which the government was to yield—but not until 24 hours later. For the time being its answer was no. The ministers concerned were in uninterrupted conference. At 2 a.m. the decision was taken to storm the barricades.
A quarter of an hour later the attack began with the kind of softening-up process that suggested a real battlefield. Gas grenades were fired at the barricades. “De Gaulle assassin” yelled their defenders through the handkerchiefs protecting their faces. The air was so thick with gas that the police had to retreat when the wind changed direction (they suffered many casualties from burns or gas). But they went forward ruthlessly, taking one barricade after another. The Red Cross was not allowed to move in to evacuate the injured, despite a dramatic appeal by Professor Monod, the Nobel Prize winner. The official count of 367 hurt was certainly too low; many students preferred to lick their wounds quietly rather than invite police attention again. By five in the morning the main battle was over; but, amid the calcinated cars, the police were still pursuing individual leftists into courtyards or even into flats, and herding battered young men into black marias (466 were arrested).
By Saturday morning order had been restored in the Latin Quarter. But for the government it was defeat in victory so obviously that M. Pompidou had to concede to virtually all the students’ demands that very evening. It was too late. The outburst of popular indignation paved the way for Monday’s improvised general strike and mass demonstration. By the middle of this week the student movement had gathered extraordinary momentum. Not only the Sorbonne but most other faculties in Paris and the provinces were occupied by students, who were sitting together with their professors in groups discussing the future of the universities. Divergences have already appeared among them, between the less and the more politically minded, between reformers and revolutionaries, between those concerned more about jobs and those concerned more with the structure of society. What to do about examinations is the least divisive issue. These cleavages may grow. For the moment, however, they are united by a sense of victory and a mood of unprecedented elation.
May 25
A revolution set alight by students, snuffed out by communists
A modern revolution requires the coincidence of a revolutionary situation and a party or organisation ready to seize power. As France comes virtually to a halt, the situation might look revolutionary. But the party which has always claimed the revolutionary role now shows no sign of fulfilling it. The communists have climbed on the bandwagon, but only to put the brakes on. This is not basically because they want to preserve General de Gaulle’s regime. It is because they are using a revolutionary weapon—general and unlimited strikes—in order to achieve a parliamentary aim, the formation of a popular front government.
From student to union power
Students walked out of the Sorbonne, just as night was falling on May 16th, with red flags flying and a banner proclaiming, “The workers will take up from the fragile hands of the students the flag of struggle against the unpopular regime.” That evening marked a vital turning point in the story as strikes began spreading fast around the country.
The celebrating students were living in a dream world. Many of them had been inspired by Trotsky’s history of the Russian revolution. In the setting of the Paris commune they saw their own chance and felt entitled to believe that anything could come true. Hadn’t they, an active minority, precipitated the students’ revolt? Had they not forced the government to hit back and then to surrender? The country was now grinding to a stop. Their dream, it seemed, was coming true.
After the mass demonstrations on the previous Monday, young workers at Sud-Aviation in Nantes had taken over their factory. But the workers’ movement did not really spread until Thursday, May 16th, when the Renault works at Citroen and Flins were seized. This time, it was not a case of Paris being redder than the provinces. The strikes spread fastest in western France, where the discontent is most acute. The disparity was not geographical but between generations. The pattern was everywhere the same; younger workers took the lead and their elders followed.
Once again, the communists had been overtaken by events. But this time they reacted swiftly. The communist-dominated CGT, the biggest French union, first got in touch with its Catholic partner, the CFDT. It then sent instructions to its militant members to endorse the movement, including the sit-in strikes, but to keep the demands to the traditional pattern of higher wages (a monthly minimum of 600 francs for all and a minimum of 1,000 francs in certain factories such as Renault), shorter hours and the abolition of the unpopular decrees on social security.
With the CGT in control, the leftist students from the Sorbonne could not expect a cordial welcome at the Renault works in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. The shutters were down on the understandable ground that provocation must be avoided. Still, students were cheered by workers standing on the roof and the two sides chatted near the gate well into the night. But when, on the following day, the students’ union suggested a big march to the factory, the CGT did not conceal its displeasure. Nevertheless a few thousand students came and the discussions in the square outside the plant were significant. The communists, mobilised for the purpose, repeated the party line about the working class being adult enough not to need lessons from anybody. But they had no answer to student hints that they were scared of a real debate.
There are two reasons for communist coolness. One is specific. Many of the students flocking to Billancourt belonged to Trotskyist or other opposition groups. Braving communist shock tactics, they had been preaching to the workers that their communist leaders were bureaucratic and reformist bosses. Indeed, the only posters as one approached the Renault works this week were warnings against distributors of ultra-left literature.
The second reason is deeper and provides a key to communist behaviour in this crisis. The CGT is frightened of pressure from below. Students dreaming of abolishing the capitalist order will not limit the debate to the pay packet. The communists do want to limit the revolutionary ferment. They want to keep the movement under control.
Whenever one hears somebody on the French radio vituperating against “adventurers” one can be sure that M. Cohn-Bendit or some other leftist student is the target. But one cannot guess the political colour of the speaker. It might be a gaullist or it might be a communist. On the other hand, if somebody talks about revolution, structural changes or socialist society, one is safe in assuming he is not a communist. The CGT is angry with its CFDT partners not only because they are in favour of debates with the students, but also because they have raised the slogan of workers’ control, autogestion.
Similarly, the communists refute suggestions that the present strike is insurrectional. But it is here that the ambiguity begins. The CGT demands may not be concerned with the structure of society, but they are stiff all the same. The French Communist party is using revolutionary means to achieve a parliamentary end. Its political objective seems to be the same as it was on the eve of the crisis: to consolidate its alliance with M. Mitterrand’s Social Democratic federation and so to form a popular front government. The dream is a repeat of 1936, when the Blum government presided over the Matignon agreements in which employers, under pressure, made big concessions to their workers. But then the popular front had already won the election. Now General de Gaulle holds power and shows no intention of yielding it. The contradiction between the communists’ means and their ends makes future action unpredictable. It also provides a smokescreen for their reformist action.
The assembly’s missed chance
French parliamentarians this week showed no sign of grasping the importance of the situation their country is facing. Politicians have been issuing statements for some time with the gaullists calling on the people to rally around the general and with opposition spokesmen echoing M. Mendès-France’s solemn declaration that the only service the discredited regime can now render to the nation is to retire. But the neglected Cinderella of the Fifth Republic, the National Assembly, at last had its moment on Tuesday. For once it had the limelight on itself. It did not make much of its chance.
It was not only that there was no suspense. As soon as M. Giscard d’Estaing and his followers confirmed that they would not vote for the motion of censure and members of M. Duhamel’s Centre party decided to divide there was little question of the government being defeated—the motion fell eleven votes short of success. The real trouble was that deputies and ministers, arguing over facts and figures, did not sound as if they were on the same wavelength as the nation. Ten years as a rubber stamp institution have not prepared the assembly to rise to the occasion. No wonder the demonstrating students by-passed it.
On Wednesday things were somewhat brighter, with a speech by a former gaullist minister, M. Edgar Pisani, announcing that he would vote for the motion of censure and resign his seat. But it was the prime minister, M. Pompidou, who was waited for with interest. And he said that the government was in favor of negotiations with both employers and the unions. At roughly the same time, the leaders of the two main unions, M. Séguy of the CGT and M. Descamps of the CFDT, proclaimed their own willingness to negotiate. The negotiating process has begun.
Trial of strength
When General de Gaulle speaks to the country on Friday, he is understood to be going to announce a referendum to be held in June. It is assumed that he will ask for special powers so as to foster “participation” at all levels, including the factory level. But what matters is how the social conflict will have evolved between now and the middle of next month. When a government behaves as if it almost wanted a revolution, and allegedly revolutionary party does not try to seize the occasion virtually anything can happen.
It looks as if the general has opted for a strategy of attrition. He can rely on time to soften his opponents, and possibly to divide them through granting some concessions. He can rely on it to frighten the patronat (employers’ associations) so that it will be ready to give something away. And above all, he can hope that, as alarm spreads, the bulk of the people will once again rally round him.
But time can work both ways. The country cannot go on for very long in this state of growing paralysis. And the state runs the risk of gradually losing its powers. One illustration of this is the rebellion of the staff of radio and television, the chosen instruments of gaullist policy. The communist CGT is trying to keep events under control. It is braking hard. But it has to compete with the students, the CFDT and the small but active left-wing socialist party, the PSU. As tempers rise among the strikers, the CGT may have to keep up with the mood of its own troops. Thus, though the main official protagonists, General de Gaulle and the communists, still act as if they wanted to reach a compromise, the trial of strength is gaining an explosive logic of its own.
June 1
The general charges into battle
General de Gaulle soldiers on. He went to Colombey-les-deux-Eglises on Wednesday not to resign but to prepare his plan of battle. On the way he apparently held a secret conference with army and police chiefs. On Thursday he ended the suspense by revealing his decision first to the cabinet and then later in the afternoon to the nation.
The general stays. So does the prime minister with a reshuffled government. The National Assembly was dissolved on Thursday. General de Gaulle hopes to hold both a referendum and a general election some time between June 19th and July 9th. But he is aware that this will not be easy. He has hinted that the next stage might be a declaration of a state of siege. The immediate question is not how the French will vote—red, pink or blue. That will come later. The immediate question is whether the gaullists can hold any elections at all.
Is France drifting toward civil war? Is it going to be a violent struggle between soldiers and strikers, the armed forces against the army of labor? Not necessarily. True, both sides seem determined. The general has just shown his own determination. The gaullists are mobilising their powers. By Thursday evening it was their turn to organise a mass march in Paris. On the other side, the strikers are in no mood for yielding. The left-wing opposition has made up its mind to try to take over. For General de Gaulle the problem is how to outstay the strikers, how to wear them out. But the country cannot live in utter paralysis for very much longer. Either side can still yield. If it does not, the trial of strength could turn into civil war.
The general’s critics have already reacted strongly. M. Mitterrand has spoken of the “voice of dictatorship”; a trade unionist of a “declaration of war on the people.” All the big trade unions have proclaimed that the strike goes on.
In a revolutionary situation conventional ideas are obsolete. Comments by outsiders, out of touch with the quickened pulse of Paris, read here like messages from outer space. Constitutional lawyers bother about niceties, politicians about electoral calculations, economists about percentage shifts in the gross national product. All this will be relevant soon. But at this very moment the one vital question in Paris is power—who holds it or who will seize it. It is more accurate to speak of a race for power, rather than a struggle for it, so important is the time factor. The gaullists hope to cling to power till the elections. They bank on the hope that, once again, a frightened nation will vote for the general. The two traditional left-wing partners—the Communists and M. Mitterrand’s Federation of the Left—jockey for position and hope somehow to form a popular front government. And the totally unorganised revolutionaries, who precipitated this upheaval, still hope to crown it with a revolution.
Three major points have already emerged from the turmoil. First, a revolutionary situation can occur in an industrially developed state—the social upheaval provoked by the strikes is already greater than it was in 1936. Second, the French communist party has shown that it is not yet ready or willing to exploit such a situation. Third, a significant revolutionary movement has appeared almost spontaneously to the left of the communist party. And this raises two new questions. Can the communist hierarchy, which is losing much of its rank and file to the new movement, radically alter its original line? Can the new revolutionary left improvise in the heat of battle an effective organisation?
At dawn on Monday, May 25th, all seemed fine in the elegant Hotel de Chatelet. After two sleepless nights and 23 hours of negotiations, the representatives of the trade unions, the employers’ associations and a government team headed by M. Pompidou had reached a draft agreement for settling the strikes in private industry. True the package was bound to be inflationary, but a bout of inflation did not seem too high a price to pay when the spread of the strike movement threatened both the regime and the capitalist structure. The communist-dominated CGT, with a bigger membership than its Catholic and socialist competitors combined, had its own reasons for trying to prevent the situation from getting out of hand. By Monday morning there simply remained the “formality” of getting the settlement endorsed by the workers.
But when Georges Séguy, the 41-year-old boss of the CGT[,] and Benoit Frachon, his veteran predecessor, rushed to the Renault works at Boulogne Billancourt, they were greeted by a vociferous non, which was then echoed at Citroen, Berliet, Sud-Aviation and all the big factories. It was an extraordinary miscalculation for such experienced trade union leaders. they may have been misled by a false historical analogy. Back in 1936, a similar working class explosion had been checked by a tripartite agreement at l’Hotel Matignon, the prime minister’s official residence. But the government then was the popular front government, headed by Léon Blum, and the workers saw it as their own. Besides some of the concessions they obtained at the time—such as the 40-hour week and the introduction of two weeks’ holiday with pay—were a breakthrough for the period. Now what the workers were being offered was essentially a rise in their nominal wages, one likely to be swallowed up by inflation. Feeling instinctively that the offered rewards did not correspond to the sweep of the social upheaval, the workers simply said no and asked for more.
The vagaries of the CGT reflect the bewilderment of the French communist party. Indeed, in its hesitations, changes and successive mistakes,l the communist leaders closely resemble the gaullist government. The party has repeated so often that it stands for the working class that it half believes this itself. It is so used to giving orders from above that it is lost now that the channels of transmission are jammed, despite the size of the apparatus and the number of devoted activists.
The French saw that it is not the cowl that makes the monk. But the French communist party having carried the revolutionary mantle for 50 years, had attracted to itself the most militant radicals, particularly among the workers. These are now the men who are shaken in their convictions, while the intellectuals among them are further shocked by the party’s attitude towards students. It is not only around the Sorbonne that members have had to be kicked out of the party for disobedience.
In party cells everywhere there are discussions bordering on revolt. The communist leaders face their biggest crisis yet.
To some extent the communists have digested all this. Though still not talking about social reforms, they became, in the negotiations about a settlement for the nationalised industries, the hardest bargainers of all. By Wednesday, the marathon march organised by the CGT in Paris was clearly political. The communists by then had the open objective of overthrowing the gaullist regime. Nor were they alone in stepping up the offensive. M. Mitterrrand, the leader of the Federation of the Left, had already proposed the formation of a provisional left-wing government. And M. Mendès-France had, in principle, accepted the job of leading it.
What of the new left? Unlike its American counterpart, the French new left does not depend on students alone: it has managed to attract a sizeable proportion of young trade union members. It is this alliance that allows the revolutionaries to hope for victory. Their revolutionary committees are seen as the Soviets of the new French revolution. Their aim is to spread them throughout the country—in factories, offices and elsewhere—to co-ordinate them and finally to crown them with a central committee of revolutionary action. The question is whether the inspirers of this improvised movement will have time to build their organisation before the tide ebbs. The outcome depends largely on the length of the strike and the mood of the workers. But by now in Paris it is folly to rule out anything. As is written proudly on the walls of the Sorbonne: tout est possible.
General de Gaulle is being paid back in his own coin and paid back with a vengeance. Ten years ago he took over power by keeping in the background an army of paratroops. Now that he is struggling to stay in power, the paratroops are replaced by his opponents’ army of ten million workers. The general has at his disposal 83,000 policemen (of whom 13,500 are members of the special security force, the CRS), 61,000 gendarmes and 261,000 members of the armed forces stationed in France and Germany. But most of the soldiers are national servicemen. Can the regime rely on this force to break so huge a strike? And will it really come to this?
June 8
From general strike to general elections
On Tuesday, Paris suffered one of its worst traffic jams. All its car owners seemed to be out celebrating the resumed flow of petrol. This did not quite mean a return to normal. One cause of the jam was that there was still no public transport in the capital, just as there were no trains running throughout France. All key sectors of the economy were still strike-bound. By Thursday public transport was beginning to seep back into action all over the country. The post office was starting work again. But even earlier in the week tension had clearly been eased. The trial of strength was shifting from the factories to the electoral arena. Political leaders on both sides had agreed to carry their conflict to the polling stations. The election campaign has in effect begun. Frenchmen will vote on June 23rd and 30th for a new national assembly. The parties are already busy preparing platforms, registering candidates and making alliances.
To assess the chances of a gaullist election success, one must consider how the other, more dramatic, crisis somehow fizzled out. Gratitude is probably not a political virtue, and certainly not one of General de Gaulle’s vices. In his fighting broadcast on May 30th, he set the style of the gaullist election campaign by putting the blame for everything on “totalitarian communism”—although he owes his survival, to a large extent, to the cautious conduct of the Communist party.
The French communists did everything in their power to contain the revolutionary wave and, once the general made it plain that he would not abdicate, to direct it back to electoral channels. On the night of May 30th there was a risk of confrontation between the armed forces and the army of labour. Next morning the risk had vanished because the army of strikers had been dispersed. M. Séguy, the boss of the communist-dominated CGT, could not demobilise his followers. But, followed by other trade union leaders, he divided his troops into separate battalions, each seeking additional gains, particularly in wages, from its employers. What had begun to look like a frontal attack against the state rapidly became a series of individual skirmishes. And L’Humanité, the communist daily, started to use the language of an election campaign.
The part played by the communists in this crisis has been crucial. Retrospectively, their role looks essentially negative, in the sense that the bewildered leadership seems to have been guided by no general plan, but by three dominant fears: the fear of being overtaken by a growing revolutionary left; the associated fear of being overwhelmed or deserted by their own rank and file; finally, the fear of gaullist repression. For a few days in late May that last fear almost vanished. The state itself gave the impression of vanishing. Even then the communists opted for a semi-parliamentary solution, for a coalition with M. Mitterrand’s Federation of the Left in a provisional government headed, if necessary, by M. Mendès-France. But when the general declared that the state was still there the communists appeared almost relieved.
Once bitten, twice shy. The union leaders dared not risk a second disavowal by their followers. Many of the workers, feeling vaguely frustrated of a bigger victory, have stepped up their demands. The government has been torn between its wish to see the strike end and its reluctance to make more concessions. The employers’ association has somehow recovered from its state of panic. So the bargaining has proved hard. There are still few signs of compromise in engineering, although police removed strike pickets from the Renault works at Flins on Wednesday night to allow a ballot to take place.
The communist decision to call a retreat and the general’s speech marked the turning point in the crisis. They were more decisive than the big gaullist demonstration that followed the general’s speech on May 30th. Was that march through Paris as massive as the demonstration the left had staged on May 13? The pro-gaullist marchers were certainly more numerous than anybody expected; the organisers, fearing a fiasco, had brought coachloads of supporters from the provinces. The sight of red flags in the streets and on factories, the symbolic burning of the Bourse, the threat to the established order brought out the kind of people who would never normally demonstrate, and led to a reconciliation of the factions of the right. Behind ministers and deputies, the old men of Vichy marched together with the former Free French. That night, triumphant car horns played the rhythm that stands for “Algérie Française.” So much for the hero of the third world.
When people take to the streets and to “civic action,” there is apt to be an alarming side. This time there was the fascist fringe with its unforgivable slogan “Cohn-Bendit à Dachau” (the students’ internationalist slogan had been: “We are all German Jews”). But this was only a fringe. The real difference between the two demonstrations was not so much age (the gaullists were, on the whole, much older) as class. On May 30th fashionable ladies, officers, and company directors appeared among the angry and frightened middle classes. When these ladies and gentlemen chanted “open our factories” it was plain that not many among the thousands present would have been able to man them.
In electoral terms the two big demonstrations carried almost equal weight. But at a time of social upheaval it was those who could paralyse the economy who carried the most. General de Gaulle had no illusions about this. He did not await a demonstration of popular support before making up his mind. We know that he went to Baden Baden the day before his speech to get General Massu’s blessing and a pledge of support from his troops. Whether that would have been enough for his purpose remains a moot point, since the communists decided not to force the issue.
Against this background, it may be ungrateful of General de Gaulle to emphasise the communist menace, but it is a shrewd move. With the franc in jeopardy and the economy in turmoil, with his international monetary policy frustrated and his European hand much weakened, he cannot urge the electorate to let him carry on in the name of grandeur and in recognition of his achievements. But he can exploit people’s fear of the black flag of anarchy and the red flag of revolution. A general strike is a tactic for seizing power, not for persuading voters. If the left had seized power, it would now be the new order itself; but it stopped halfway—after frightening many floating voters among the middle class. A few weeks ago, polls and by-elections indicated that the gaullists could hardly face a parliamentary election. That was why the general wanted only to hold a referendum. Things may be very different now.
The other consequence of the crisis is a further polarisation of the French into two antagonistic blocks, which correspond roughly to the two big Paris demonstrations. There will admittedly be many middle of the road candidates in the elections, since M. Edgar Pisani’s friends will now join the followers of M. Lecanuet and M. Duhamel in the centre of the spectrum. The French electoral system, in which the voter can indicate his preferences on the first ballot, allows for that. But when it comes to the second ballot and the real choice, it will be a choice between gaullism and the popular front. Many of the centrists are then likely to move to the gaullist side. The prime minister, M. Pompidou, is in no mood to make concessions to his reluctant coalition partner, M. Giscard d’Estaing, whose followers want to put up their own separate candidates for seats now held by the opposition. M. Pompidou feels confident that in any such duels on the first ballot the orthodox gaullists will prevail over the “Giscardiens.”
The left wing will also face the first round divided. The communists hope that their claim to be the main force of opposition to gaullism will put them ahead of their partners in the first ballot. The socialist and radical members of M. Mitterrand’s federation are, once again, looking nostalgically toward the centre. The communists and the federation have not yet been able to produce a comprehensive joint programme, any more than they were able to do so last year; but they have been thrown together by events. As to M. Mendès-France, he has not yet revealed whatever lesson he may have drawn from the recent events.
Should one not take account, in this election, of the revolutionaries who precipitated the crisis? Hardly at all. Many of the students do not have votes. Most of the others hold that they did not build barricades to help parties that are content to work within the present system. Only the small Parti Socialiste Unifié could benefit from their vote.
The election depends on two unknowns. One is the impact of the domestic bankruptcy of gaullism. The other is the widespread fear of disorder. Most observers think the latter will prove stronger. They see the gaullists returning with a majority, the workers discovering the lack of substance in nominal wage increases, and the same causes once more producing the same effects. Some prophets already talk of the May days as a dress rehearsal, the 1905 of a new French revolution.
June 22
Is it the end of the popular front?
France’s electors, whether they are stunned or merely puzzled, can summon up little interest in the election campaign. Most of the candidates, like the Bourbons, seem to have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Or perhaps they are too busy vote-catching. The gaullist campaign can be summed up by the small posters splashed all over Paris: these show black and red flags with the slogan “never again.” The gaullists are banking on panic. The left-wing opposition, with the communists showing particular zeal, are trying to reassure an alarmed people. At the same time the opposition is presenting the gaullist argument, but upside down. If you keep the gaullists in power, so goes their warning, you will have to face a much bigger explosion, and sooner rather than later. The centre plays on both fears. “Totalitarian communism,” it says, is the main threat. But gaullists, on their own, are not equipped to meet it. Nobody knows how such crude propaganda will work. Psephologists are numb. France has suffered a traumatic shock and may react with fear, with reason or simply with conditioned reflexes.
The election could itself precipitate the crisis brewing on the French left. It could spell the beginning of the end of popular front tactics. This may seem strange, since the basic assumption of this policy—that the communists can be brought into the existing system of government—seemed to be confirmed by their conduct during the May upheaval. They acted like Fabians, not like revolutionaries. And ever since they have emphasized that their party is one of law and order. They kept silent when the police occupied the Sorbonne. They dissociated themselves publicly from “rabble-rousers and ultra-left provocateurs” and acquiesced in the government’s decision to ban all the small left-wing revolutionary movements.
The communists have chosen the parliamentary road. Do they risk finding themselves in a dead end? to understand why there is such a risk one must reconsider the calculation that drove their socialist partners to choose the popular front line. M. Mitterrand, who leads the Federation of the Left, reckoned that the only way to defeat the gaullists was an alliance between the communists and non-communist left. M. Mitterrand’s good showing at the presidential election in 1965, and the fair success of the left-wing alliance at the parliamentary elections in March 1967, strengthened this view. Indeed, if general elections had taken place two months ago, the odds are that a popular front alliance could have won.
But M. Mitterrand and M. Guy Mollet, the Socialist leader, were assuming that though they needed communist votes to win an election, their own Federation would be the driving force in a popular front government. Though at the last elections the communists won a slightly larger share of the votes than the Federation, the latter had more deputies. The Federation leaders argued that the communists, only too glad to emerge from political solitude, would cheerfully accept a back seat. They would then, so the argument ran, gradually be driven to a different policy in foreign affairs as well as at home.
This was the hope underlying the strategy of M. Mitterrand and M. Mollet. It was both strengthened and shaken during the May crisis. It was strengthened by communist restraint and shaken by communist party. During a revolutionary crisis the number of deputies is of secondary importance and, indeed, the Federation did not count for much. The weight of the communist party and of the communist-dominated union, the CGT, was vital. The Federation’s leaders did not miss this point. And if, on top of this, the Federation were now to do badly at the elections, opponents of the communist alliance—men such as the Radical party leader, M. Gaillard, or the Socialist leader, M. Defferre—could lead an open rebellion. Already they are talking, once again, about a “third force” between communism and gaullism.
In theory the communists could prevent this dissension by electoral manipulations between the ballots. Under the present system, the left-wing parties all put up their own candidates in the first ballot. Then, in the name of “republican discipline,” they leave the left-winger with the most votes to face his right-wing opponent in the second ballot. This is the rule. But it has its exceptions. Last year in 13 cases a communist stood down in favour of a Federation candidate who had fewer votes but a better chance of beating the gaullist. The communist party could always increase the number of such gifts. But in so doing it would confirm that it accepts a political scene in which it is ready to be the junior partner of the Federation.
This could create trouble for the communists from the left, both inside and outside the party. And this is the trouble that communist leaders fear most. The arrest by the government of young militants of the revolutionary movement did not bring France’s ferment to an end. Among the strikers returning to work, there are many who are visibly disappointed with the CGT. This internal crisis will not be fully reflected at the elections. All the same, it may result in a shift of communist votes to the Parti Socialiste Unifié (PSU).
Whenever one mentions this small party, people think of its only well-known member, M. Pierre Mendès-France. Yet he is a case apart. Though political honesty is one of his main assets, his personal popularity creates an ambiguity. During the May crisis M. Mendès-France was the only political figure to attend the mass meeting of revolutionary students and workers at Charlety. At the same time he was picked by M. Mitterrand as the potential prime minister of a transitional left-wing government, and this choice was approved by several politicians from both the centre and the right. M. Mendès-France tried to dispel the ambiguity by asserting that he would accept office only if sponsored by a united left. Clearly he has sympathy and understanding for the students. But he is a radical reformer who can hardly be seen as the leader of a socialist revolution. On the other hand the party to which he loosely belongs is the only one to have some connection with the revolutionary movement.
The PSU, on this occasion, is putting up more than 300 candidates and is waging a distinctive campaign. It openly expresses its sympathy for the young students and workers who precipitated the crisis. It puts the blame for violence on the police—and the blame for the gaullists’ survival on the communist party. The score of the PSU will not measure the full strength of the revolutionary movement. Some of the rebels are too young to vote; some refuse to take part in the “election fraud.” Others will vote communist by habit. Yet the number of votes won by the PSU will be watched anxiously by both communist and Federation leaders.
Election results provide a more or less accurate picture of political preferences in a country at a given moment. This time the picture will be more than usually distorted because France has not recovered its composure. The question is how far the voters will be swayed by fear when they go to the polls on Sunday, and when they return there on June 30th to complete the job. Or rather to complete the election. For the election is not the end of the affair.
End of a phase
The first part of France’s crisis is drawing to an end. The crisis started on May 3rd when the police entered the Sorbonne. Ten days later the students were back in their university and the cultural revolution was on. On Sunday, June 16th, the circle was completed with the police once again occupying the place. Order has not yet been fully restored in the Latin Quarter, since other parts of the university are still occupied by students. But the Sorbonne was a symbol.
As such it had to be stormed. The government’s scheme was pretty obvious. It began with a press campaign about the horrors of the Sorbonne: the drugs, the orgies and the Katangais (supposedly mercenaries from the Congo). But the unkind students did not oblige. They themselves removed the Katangais and started cleaning the place in preparation for summer conferences. And so another reason was found—an investigation into the stabbing of a man outside the Sorbonne on Saturday. Ever since the first riots, the infirmary of the Sorbonne has been used as an emergency ward for the district. The stabbing on Saturday was not an exceptional case, but it provided an excuse for the police to go in. Once inside the Sorbonne, the prefect of police soon made it clear that he was less concerned with an investigation than with the evacuation of the Sorbonne. Some people left the place on their own accord. The occupation committee, consisting of both students and professors, had to be removed by force.
That night the professors involved held a conference to explain what had happened and to announce that they would refuse to teach so long as the Latin Quarter was occupied by the police. Walking through the district afterwards, one saw what they disliked. The famous Boulevard St. Michel looked like an area just taken over by the army. There was no light. Police lorries and vans were all over the place. Helmeted policemen were massed at street corners. Men ready for combat stalked up and down the Boulevard.
This show of strength may win additional votes for the gaullists. But it will not solve the problem of what to do about the university. As M. Pompidou himself said, there is no question of turning the Sorbonne into a barracks for the police. Nobody has seriously suggested that it should become a school for the CRS. And when the police are removed, what will happen?
The strike is also drawing slowly to an end. The Renault works were not quite the first to strike but by May 16th all Renault factories were occupied by the workers. Exactly a month later, last Monday, the workers voted to return to work. Considering their weariness, the fact that the general strike had died down and the determination of the communist-led CGT that the deal with the government must be accepted, the number voting against a return to work was high. It ranged from 22 per cent at Boulogne Billancourt to 44 per cent at Flins.
Despite the victorious headlines in L’Humanité, the mood of many returning workers was not exactly triumphant. They had discovered that they possessed power, but they felt that they had not yet learnt how to use it. If the wage increases prove ephemeral they will plainly feel cheated. On the labour front, too, there could be trouble in the autumn.
To avoid galloping inflation the government will be forced to make some changes in its budget. Several ministers have hinted that this may involve delays in the development of the nuclear strike force. But there is no question of drastic reductions in the military budget. The army commanders were able to remind General de Gaulle during the crisis that they are the defence against revolution. Any further cuts in the conventional forces would be resented. So the only possibility is a slowdown in the nuclear field. Projects for ground-to-ground missiles will probably remain in their files. The Mirages will have to go on flying for longer than planned and the delivery of Polaris-type submarines may be delayed. Some people believe that this slowdown foreshadows the end of an independent strike force. One reply is that what the general now needs is not a force de frappe abroad but at home.
July 6
The end of the first act, not the final curtain
Finita la commedia? At first sight, France’s two months’ crisis has run full circle, with the gaullists back in command of things—only very, very much more so. The barricades and the general strike of May begin to look distant. Communists seek to justify themselves, gaullists and outsiders to find comfort, in analysing the May crisis through June’s electoral prism. Psephologists have taken over from social analysts.
The main reason for the gaullist triumph in the second ballot was that the floating voters of the centre rallied massively to the right. The second reason was that the alliance between the communists and the Federation of the Left, cemented last year by the prospect of victory, was shaken this time by the wind of defeat. The wastage of left-wing votes was small in Paris but high in areas of traditional competition between communists and socialists.
The two factors combined cost the left more than half its seats. The main communist leaders survived, as have the principal members of the Federation—MM. Mitterrand, Mollet, Defferre and Billières scraped through. But M. Mendès-France did not and M. Mitterrand’s young lieutenants, who last year won a series of marginal seats, were now thrown out by the swing. Yet, for the left, loss even on this scale is less harmful than the loss of perspective. Here the political crisis has only begun.
In terms of seats, the gaullist victory is as big as the left’s loss. Sweeping from their strongholds in western and eastern France, the gaullists have reconquered a large part of Paris. They have recovered positions in the industrial north. They have made serious gains in the so-called “red south,” in the apparently impregnable areas around Toulouse and Montpellier. As a result the orthodox gaullists have a comfortable majority on their own and, though the followers of M. Giscard d’Estaing did well, they are no longer indispensable.
Yet this kind of statistics is for static minds. The parliamentary success is useful—not that parliamentary obstacles ever bothered the general—but the crisis has left residues that cannot be swept up as easily as the election could. Men like M. Pompidou, who understood the depth of the social upheaval, cannot simply forget. In his hour of triumph the prime minister soberly reminded his followers that their exceptional victory came at the close of a very serious crisis “of which we should not forget the causes, the features and the consequences.”
The main financial consequence is the swelling of the wage bill. The minimum wage was raised by a third, while other wages should increase this year by roughly 13 per cent, about twice as fast as usual. In general terms, the government has a choice of two methods. It can try to keep prices down and take the opportunity to accelerate industrial concentration. The snag is that this would add to unemployment, which is already approaching the half-million mark. The alternative is to let a rapid rise in prices absorb the nominal gains in wages. This would lead inexorably toward devaluation. It could also provoke a second explosion by workers now conscious of the power of the strike weapon.
The government will probably manoeuvre between the two policies. It may also try to counter-attack through its programme of “participation.” This pet gaullist scheme, a still unspecified elaboration of the general’s old corporatist plan of association capital-travail, may not solve much. It could nevertheless be used to create trouble for the trade unions at a time when many workers feel that their unions did not give them a proper lead during a strike which had started spontaneously. The communist-led CGT has already begun to lose voters to the more militant CFDT.
Has anything been basically changed by the May crisis? The upheaval took almost everybody by surprise, both in France and abroad. The startling, and significant, thing was not that students dared to defy the government and put up barricades. It was that this precipitated the biggest general strike France has ever known, a strike that threatened the regime and sent General de Gaulle seeking reassurance from his army. The other key lesson is that the communist party did not seize this opportunity. It proved stalinist in manner, but fabian in action. Nobody really knows whether, if there were a second explosion, the communists would once again act as the firemen of the regime.
This brings us to the basic division among observers about what happened in May. Some see in it a historical quirk, after which things resume their normal course. Others wonder whether this storm, apparently out of the blue, does not herald a change in the political and social climate of western Europe. For France, a first act is ended and General de Gaulle and M. Pompidou, his rising lieutenant, are seeking to consolidate their position by taking advantage of the interval—an interval that may merely have been extended by the size of their electoral victory.
August 31
Ayes to the left, noes to the right
Politics in the university? After May, what Frenchman should waste his time disputing the idea, even if he disliked it? Yet in fact France’s university world this month has been in uproar about it.
At the centre of this storm is M. Edgar Faure, the new minister of education. His speech to the national assembly last month, outlining his philosophy, was much praised, but especially by those who take seriously, as he seemed to, the notions of “dialogue” and “participation.”
The trouble is that M. Faure has since shown signs of meaning what he says. Some of his ministerial colleagues clearly regard participation as an elysean fantasy; so do their extremist opponents, who in turn are accused by their critics of understanding by “dialogue” nothing more than the sound of their own voice.
Near the extreme is SNE-Sup, one of several unions of university teachers—it organises about one-fifth of them—which in May made common cause with the students. SNE-Sup’s left-wing leaders had previously refused to talk to the regime but changed their minds after studying M. Faure’s placatory approach (unlike the militant students, who refused to talk unless their imprisoned colleagues were released; as they were on August 23rd).
SNE-Sup emerged from M. Faure’s office on August 7th declaring defiantly that the government had two faces, repression and seduction; but evidently half-way seduced. They recorded with satisfaction that the minister seemed to share their views on certain points, in particular that “it is normal that students and teachers should take part in politics on university premises.”
And there the balloon went up. The autonomous (i.e. not politically affiliated) union of teachers in the faculty of letters denounced “this policy of capitulation which hands over the university to subversion.” A committee for “neutrality and reform” in university teaching demanded an immediate ministerial denial and issued fearful warnings of “indoctrination” and “permanent civil war” in the universities. The moderate students’ union feared that free expression would become the prerogative of “a minority of agitators.”
M. Faure hastily explained in a letter to the national federation of autonomous unions of university teachers that all he meant was that it was natural for students to be interested in politics, and they should have places in the university to meet and discuss in. The chairman of the federation cautiously welcomed this revolutionary thought—“the experiment can and should be made”—thereby sending his constituents in the faculty of letters into a froth of internecine rage from which they have not yet emerged.
Simultaneously SNE-Sup’s general secretary, M. Herszberg, was delightedly stirring the coals with a declaration that their most right-wing opponents were “a band of fascists disguised as dons” with whom they would “settle accounts” when the new term begins. Counter-attack from the centre and the right, gloom from M. Raymond Aron, who accused the minister of giving the impression that his moral authority was being exercised in favor of the enragés.
Meanwhile the minister of the interior was delivering a ferocious speech affirming that the government’s readiness for firm action against “subversive groups,” and the castroist student faction was busily funneling its followers, via Belgium, to a student camp in Cuba (where, according to an American report, Frenchmen form a majority of the 300-odd embryo revolutionaries in residence).
At last M. Faure was driven to a third explanation which made some people wonder what the whole row had been about. After a meeting with a group of “moderates” a joint communiqué revealed that by “politics” the minister had not meant “propaganda and permanent demonstrations” but “strictly regulated authorisation of discussions on political themes, on the model of the debating societies in Anglo-Saxon countries.” Neither repression nor permanent revolution, in short, but the Cambridge Union.
October 12
That’s France’s left, that was
One man seems to be working for the French left these days: President de Gaulle, whose reduction last month of “participation,” once “the third way between communism and capitalism,” to some tired phrases about being informed and sharing in the profits, should at least convince Frenchmen looking for a radical change that there is not much for them in the politics of grandpapa.
Everywhere else there is confusion. The Federation of the Left, grouping M. Mollet’s socialists with the radicals and with M. François Mitterrand’s convention of republican clubs, has broken up. The new Social Democrat party which is supposed to replace it on November 7th may be dead before it is born. The radicals are standing aloof; and the conventionnels’ idea of the new party has no great appeal for M. Mollet.
M. Mitterrand on Sunday expectedly announced that he would be no more than a rank-and-file member of the new party. General de Gaulle’s opponent in the 1965 presidential election, he has been severely criticised all summer for this or that alleged tactical error during the May upheaval. The invasion of Czechoslovakia was the last straw, blowing up his, and M. Mollet’s, policy of tactical alliance with the communist party, and driving the radicals, and some socialists, to look hopefully for a grouping not on the left but in the centre.
But in standing down—and he did not even try to convince everyone that this humility was intended to be permanent—M. Mitterrand was challenging M. Mollet to do the same. A new party needed new leaders, he said, and must start from the bottom; there could be no question of the existing party organisations simply enrolling their members in it en bloc.
The conventionnels therefore insist that enrolment in the new party must be individual, and that the groups forming it must wind themselves up first. The structure would be a loose one, with considerable local autonomy. This is not at all what the Mollet socialists, a party devoted to the rule of the apparatus, have in mind; least of all, some people suspect, M. Mollet, an apparatchik to the bone.
Yet even M. Mollet, whose career has rested on this quality, has his local difficulties. A few of his colleagues, after Prague, went to head off rapidly to the centre. Some more important ones, among them M. Gaston Defferre, are ready to demand that France’s communists change their ground on Czechoslovakia, and to blame them for the rupture if they refuse. M. Mollet, still hoping to work together with the communists, finds himself in the minority.
On the real left, the ill-named unified socialist party, which took a revolutionary part in the May troubles, parted with its leader M. Mendès-France in mid-summer. It is now asking hopefully for joint action with the rest of the left on specific battle-fronts, without meeting much response.
Farther left still, if that is the word, the communist party has troubles of its own. M. Waldeck Rochet is trying to manoeuvre delicately between those who accuse the party leadership of being too mealy-mouthed about Czechoslovakia and the surprisingly large number—at least M. Waldeck Rochet was surprised—whom even the spectacle of Soviet militarism and revanchism could not shake from their traditional loyalty to Moscow. There are a significant fraction of the party rank and file, less notable at the top, where the only evident critic of the official line has been Mme Jeannette Vermeersch, widow of Maurice Thorez, who ran the party loyally for the Russians for 30 years until his death in 1964.
Trouble on the other side is far more open. M. Roger Garaudy, director of the centre for Marxist studies, in August spoke to the Czech news agency about “a return to stalinism,” and was promptly disavowed by the party’s political bureau, of which he is a member. Now he is under fire again for writing the preface to a collection of Czech communist writings. Unabashed, M. Garaudy has defended his views—on Radio Luxemburg.
November 30
From general down to sergeant
General de Gaulle has abandoned strategy for discipline. The attempt to prevent a repetition of the events of last May through workers’ “participation” has been dropped, and with it “the search for a third way between capitalism and communism.” The new slogan is law and order. The new method of restoring financial stability is the classical one of deflation, with a tiny disguised devaluation to start with and the prospect of more to come, preferably as part of an international realignment. Having accepted the orthodox rules of the game, General de Gaulle has also become more dependent on international, particularly American support. And this may well limit the scope of his foreign policy.
At first sight it looks unlikely. Last Saturday, when devaluation of the franc was taken for granted, General de Gaulle broadcast his resounding non. Once again it was possible to present him as the French patriot, as the man who astonishes the world. But for a more realistic view of the situation one ought to go back to the crisis of last May.
At that time, on its tenth anniversary, the unsuspecting gaullist regime was almost destroyed, first by the revolutionary students and then by the biggest strike in the country’s history. To save their skins, the government and the employers agreed to wage increases double the normal average. Nominal wages will have risen by about 13 per cent this year compared with an average of just over 6 per cent; prices are expected to rise by about 6 per cent compared with the usual 3 per cent. Then came the general’s electoral victory and the rout of the opposition.
Some of the victors were in a hurry. They wanted to club the students into submission and take away from the workers part of their gain. To put it more diplomatically, they insisted that profit margins must be rapidly restored. More sophisticated than his supporters, General de Gaulle considered how to avoid a repetition of the upheaval and how to make use of the forces of discontent revealed by the students’ rising and the workers’ strike. He made the faithful M. Couve de Murville prime minister to help him in this delicate task; It was the role of the stern M. Marcellin, as minister of the interior, to inspire awe, while the bright M. Edgar Faure was told to get on with university reform. The workers were to be promised a greater say in management; but they could not be expected even to listen to vague schemes of participation if they were deprived of the spoils they won after the May crisis. The solution was a rapid rate of expansion; a planned increase of the gross national product by more than 7 per cent in 1969.
But at this point the government clumsily tried to have it both ways. It increased death duties just as it was lifting exchange control which, in any case, had never been very tight. To stimulate production, the government extended credits and pumped money into the economy. And there were no barriers to prevent it from overflowing into Germany or Switzerland. For a time, however, the policy seemed to work. By the end of October France still had just over $4 billion in its reserves compared with $6 billion in April (the losses, taking into account other credits, amounted to about $3 billion). Production was booming, the trade deficit was narrow and the main doubts were about what would happen next spring. Then came the rumours of German revaluation and the trouble started. The franc looked overvalued, it was hoped that the German mark would be revalued, money was easy, there was uncertainty about future social unrest and the “speculators” were breaking no legal rule. Not surprisingly the flight reached astronomical proportions.
What is still not clear is whether the French government lost its nerve in the middle of the crisis. Last Saturday French papers were merely debating the size of the devaluation and officials were making no effort to correct them. Was this just stage-management for the general, or a change of mind?
In any case, General de Gaulle has made up his mind. He has abandoned his attempt to pursue the middle course—witness the one sentence in his speech against speculation, and a whole concluding paragraph about law and order. On Tuesday M. Couve de Murville brutally elaborated this policy. Even without devaluation, the obvious medicine is a dose of deflation. To widen their profit margins the employers will no longer have to pay a tax on wages and salaries. On the other hand, all rates of value-added tax have been raised. Prices are now expected to rise by about 6 per cent next year. If nominal wages do not increase any faster, the outcome of the May crisis will on the whole have been absorbed.
The new crisis may shake de Gaulle’s foreign policy. But his main problem is a domestic one. Will the workers draw the lesson that it is not worth striking? Or will they, on the contrary, decide that next time they must fight to the bitter end?
December 7
The price of the franc
M. Couve de Murville this week began to pay the political price of President de Gaulle’s franc. It is France’s workers who will pay the economic one, and the prime minister’s meetings with the trade unions were unhappy. The socialists of the Force Ouvrière were no more than critical on Monday; the communists of the far more significant Confédération Générale du Travail on Tuesday declared themselves flatly hostile. They are not going to stop defending working-class living standards, to help de Gaulle defend the franc, they said.
The three major union federations—FO, CGT and the Confédération Démocratique et Française du Travail, which in May was the leftest of the lot—joined forces to back the token strike on Thursday of Renault’s 100,000-odd workers. The leaders of the left-wing students’ union offered their help too. They were politely asked to stay away. Yet Wednesday’s meeting between the students’ union and the CGT may have been significant. The two leaderships were barely on speaking terms after the collapses of the May-June disorders. Then, the students were “disruptive extremists” and the CGT leaders “allies of de Gaulle”; this week a CGT boss discovered that “the students are allies of the wage-earners” after all.
Meanwhile, order—unaided by President de Gaulle’s threat that it would be vigorously restored—has only slowly returned to the universities. Most of them have now got back to work, though in Paris some faculties will not only reopen next week, and some courses not even then.
The next step, due by December 31st, is designation by the education minister, M. Edgar Faure, of the list of departments making up each university, and then the exceedingly complex elections, by all concerned, of representatives who will draw up statutes for their departments and choose delegates to do the same for the university as a whole.
By and large, the far left, both among students and teachers, is prepared to take part in this process, preferring to be in a position to push the process beyond the intentions of the government, or to sabotage it, rather than boycott it. But the disease of left infantilism, familiar to the marxists, has not run its course.
At Nanterre, origin of the March disturbances, an oral examination of a thesis was interrupted last week by fifty-odd revolutionaries whose enthusiasm for a discussion with the acting dean of the faculty led them to strike him to the ground. A similar event at the Sorbonne was broken up with rhythmic laughter, singing of the Internationale and chanting of such slogans as “in 1971 the workers will be in power and the bourgeois in forced labor camps” by 20 horny-handed sons of intellectual toil.
Questioned about the Nanterre incident, M. Bernard Herszberg, secretary-general of the furthest left teachers’ union, replied blithely that “in the event, the violence was useless.” Indeed it was. While M. Herszberg is very pertinently asking M. Faure how he reconciles government economy with the necessary expansion of higher education, the public may have found itself more in tune with the general who, handing over some ex-military buildings to a university faculty at Toulouse, remarked with soldierly tact that it was time for the students to stop playing babies.
December 21
The good things get broken, too
The only achievement of the second round of unrest in French universities may be the negative one of stopping the education minister, M. Faure, from putting his hard-won university reforms into practice. Last weekend, under the pressure of sit-ins, marches, protests and brawling, he gave university rectors authority to suspend suspected troublemakers, prevent them from taking exams and even in extreme cases exclude them from all French universities for up to five years. Students can appeal and the rectors’ powers are said to be only temporary; they will lapse when the joint councils of students and teachers, to be set up under the government reforms, are working normally. But once a rector uses his powers, it may become impossible to obtain the calm conditions which the government says are necessary for the councils to operate.
Some of the protests are the result of educational or local grievances. At Nantes, for example, students occupied university buildings in protest against the shortage of teachers and the dominance of Paris in the educational structure. In Paris itself, the school of pharmacy closed down because of government delays in presenting a bill to improve the professional status of biochemists. But the political element is also important, particularly at Nanterre where the main trouble has been brewing. At Nanterre police arrested a girl who was suspected of taking part in bomb raids on French banks. Four hundred of the students tried to shut down the university until she was released, on the grounds that they knew she had not taken part. The students’ efforts were successful—the girl was released on Wednesday—but when the police were brought in close to the campus and students’ credentials were checked there was more trouble. Left-wing dons refused to lecture under police protection and even the dean of the faculty remarked that the police presence had mobilised the moderates into supporting the strike. The police were withdrawn from the Nanterre Campus on Wednesday; but all students were told by the ministry of education that if they continued to agitate they risked losing their scholarships and deferment of military service.
In Paris, too, extremist students have been disrupting lectures, shouting that “power is in the streets” and that “violence is true power.” On Wednesday, the left-wing students union, UNEF, called for a “day of action” through students’ meetings. But it all went off very quietly.
The government’s reaction has been to say that university authorities must establish a dialogue with their students but that it will not tolerate disorder, even of a minor sort. The French police are in a better position to ward off trouble than they were in May. Public feeling is against the students, and it appears that the police have infiltrated the revolutionary groups, so that they now have some warning about what is likely to happen.
The political divide among the militants themselves is between the communists, who want students’ union to be like industrial unions, concerned only with issues that affect them directly, and those on the left who want students to overturn the existing society. Most young people seem to agree with the communists. In a recent poll of people aged between 15 and 19, 57 per cent thought that students should not demonstrate about general political issues; only 36 per cent thought that they should.
The communists are also aware of the political risks. In the spring they feared there might be a coup from the right if the situation got completely out of hand; so they helped to keep at least some degree of order. They may well fear similar dangers now. On the university reforms, they believe that M. Faure’s changes are at least worth something and that students should take part in the joint student-teacher councils. The left wingers, on the other hand, are all for boycotting the councils. They seem to believe they can recreate the mood of last May and it is said that Maoists, Castroists and Trotskyists have sunk their differences in order to sabotage the new reforms. The vice-president of the left-wing students’ union, M. Jacques Sauvageot, announced that his supporters “are preparing to upset the regime and have no intention of concealing the fact.”