The Pact of the Left

The Communist Party is the second largest political organization in France. Outnumbered only by De Gaulle's massive Union pour la Nouvelle Republique, it can count on drawing at least 20% of the votes in any nationwide election, and on winning at least 10% of the seats in the National Assembly. Despite its strength, however, it does not play a significant role in French politics. Since 1947, when the cold war began in earnest, the Communists have been rebellious outcasts, shunned by bourgeois parties and by the non-Communist left as well.

Last week their isolation abruptly ended. Wearing a broad smile and a television-blue shirt, Party Secretary-General Waldeck Rochet told a crowded news conference that the Communists had just signed an agreement to collaborate with two major non-Communist parties--the Socialists and Radicals --and a group of small but highly influential leftist "political clubs." Seated quietly beside Rochet, in a grand display of their new-found unity, were Socialist Party Secretary-General Guy Mollet and Franc,ois Mitterrand, president of the powerful Federation of the Democratic Socialist Left.

Good or Bad. To many Frenchmen, the scene recalled the Popular Fronts that surged to power in the '30s under the banner of militant antifascism. For all the fanfare, however, the new leftist pact was a far cry from that. Although the new league agreed in general that such things as De Gaulle's force de frappe and the American bombing of North Viet Nam were bad and that birth control and capital-gains taxes were good, its members found much more to disagree on, such as whether NATO was good or bad. So divided were the parties, in fact, that the only specific action to which they would commit themselves was to work together to try to defeat Gaullist candidates in the parliamentary elections next March. Even that collaboration will be limited. It applies only to runoff elections in which two leftist candidates face one Gaullist. In such cases, one of the leftists will be expected to withdraw and throw his votes to the other.

There was no guarantee that all parties would adhere to the pact. Despite Communist objections, the democratic leftists announced that in some elections they might throw their support behind candidates of Jean Lecanuet's Progressive Catholic Party. (Cracked Socialist Mollet: "Hell does not begin just to the right of the Radical Party.") The Socialist vice president of the National Assembly, Jean Montalat, went even one step further. Pact or no pact, he warned stoutly, he would refuse to bow out to a Communist if he faced a run-off election.

With so much dissension and so many restrictions to haunt them, it might be wondered why the French leftist parties had bothered to sign the agreement at all. Their motive was simple: a desperate attempt to stop "the regime of personal power" of Charles de Gaulle. In the present Assembly, De Gaulle enjoys a commanding majority of 265 seats over all other parties combined--and, as proved by straw votes and recent municipal elections, he is still running strong.

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