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From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 46, 14 November 1949, pp. 1. & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
PARIS, Oct. 29 – The military budget of the new Bidault government in France provides an ironical commentary on the politics of the government parties and especially of the Socialist Party.
As previously reported, the French workers have been fighting a losing battle with the rising cost of living. This is partly due to profiteering, blackmarketing, tax evasion and the leadership of the French unions, both reformist and Stalinist. And it is partly due to concentration on rebuilding heavy industry and generally replacing the outworn plant of the country. But most of all it is due to the overwhelming drain of the military budget, especially because of what is commonly referred to now, in France, as the “dirty war” in Indo-China.
Nevertheless, the outgoing SP defense minister, Paul Ramadier (a “Socialist”), proposed an INCREASE in the military budget from 350 billion francs in 1949 to 473 billion in 1950! Ironically, the “non-political expert” who occupies the finance ministry, Petsche, insisted on cutting off 50 billion from this increase before he would consent to take office.
What a commentary on the degeneracy of the French social-democracy! The financier in the cabinet has to rule that the French bourgeoisie just cannot afford to spend as much on its colonial wars of oppression as the “Socialists” would like!
In view of this military budget, which is bleeding the country to death, we can take it for granted that the.new cabinet will not in any way offer a satisfactory answer to the pressing demands of the trade unions for an increase in real wages. However, certain layers of French society ARE satisfied with the present government; and in view of considerable loose talk even in the social-democratic press abroad about the growing strength of the government coalition (the so-called Third Force), it is worthwhile to report on the latest local elections in France and the trends they show.
Elections were held in October in three communities, so distinct in type from each other as to constitute an excellent cross-section of the country. These three were Pontin, solidly proletarian suburb of Paris; Sceaux, also a Paris suburb but primarily the seat of many higher technical schools, and thus having a petty-bourgeois population with an intellectual tinge; and Rouen, big commercial center and river port in conservative, Catholic Normandy.
In Pontin, in the so-called “red belt” around Paris, the Communist Party retained first place, losing a small number of votes. The Gaullists lost 20 per cent of their votes but remained in second place in the town. The MRP (Catholic party) and SP gained slightly. This time, the Stalinists outnumbered the SP by only 4 to 1 in voting strength! But since the CP did not have an absolute majority in the new town council, all the other parties joined to elect a Gaullist mayor.
In Sceaux, the Socialists gained greatly, the Gaullists lost 60 pet cent and the Stalinists and MRP remained as insignificant as they had been previously.
Finally, in conservative Rouen, the Gaullists, previously far in the lead, collapsed completely; the conservative Independent Republican Party gained tremendously; the SP stood still; the CP lost moderately.
The general trend seems quite consistent. The CP, based primarily on the working-class vote, held on. It DID lose, but not much. In no sense did the election results indicate that the government parties had made significant gains among the Stalinist workers. On the other hand, the collapse of the Gaullists was overwhelming in all three cities.
It seems clear that the total paralysis of the workers’ organizations during the last two years, since the Stalinists’ disastrously converted the 1947 strike wave into a political maneuver, has reassured the normal conservative vote. Totalitarianism, the mystique of De Gaulle, and the rest of it, is at best an expensive and dangerous business. The less fanatical of the voters that flocked to De Gaulle are now satisfied. The country is in reasonably stable shape – for them. The workers are properly demoralized and passive, from their point of view. And the “victory” of the Third Force turns out to have bought the support of the new once more “democratic” and “parliamentary” bourgeoisie by steadfastly refusing the demands of the workers and by achieving, therefore, no links with the workers.
At the same time, the passive, negative nature of the support which the workers give the Stalinists (also previously reported) has just been forcefully demonstrated by the election of committees in the great mine basin of the North of France. Out of 125,764 miners, only 73,648 voted.
As a result ALL of the Unions lost heavily by comparison with the last election. But of those voting the Stalinist-led CGT received 71.6 per cent of the votes, the reformist Force Ouvrière a miserable 18 per cent, and the Catholic CFTC 10 per cent. There is the social situation in a nutshell – in heavy industry the other unions are pygmies compared .with the Stalinists. Yet so many workers have been driven into cynicism and passivity that even the largest union, the CGT, cannot claim the support of the majority.
More than ever it is incumbent on the growing militant minorities in the Force Ouvrière and CFTC, and on the militant leadership of the smaller Autonomous Federation, to achieve the closest possible combination and linking up of their efforts, along the following lines:
To this end, the left wing that is trying to fight inside the Force Ouvrière and the left wing outside it would do well to consider themselves as allies, not as rivals – as comrades whose experience can run along different channels for the time being, only to reinforce each other in the long run.
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