HER REPUBLIC IS SO FEEBLE

FRANCE’S HISTORY SINCE 1789 SHOWS WHY :

By John.Archer NEVER since the great French Revolution of 1789 has the French capitalist class, the revolution’s main beneficiary, been able to take into its hands the leadership _of the whole people.

It has not united society politically. Tt has not, as in Britain, been able to govern directly, through its own party and politicians, with the support of the petty bourgeoisie.

Between 1789 and 1871. France was ruled without universal suffrage by the civil service, the police and the army, headed by autocratic but. precariously poised Royalist or Bonapartist figures.

Only an ‘arbiter’, raised ‘above classes’, could maintain social ON CANA CAAA ALAC A CAA NAA AUN ACA AN ANNAN AN ANN ANA This is the second of four articles by John Archer which are a. contribution to the debate on de Gaulle’s coming to power.

PPP PP PD DPD D SSE DLS SII DIDI I ELI I DID IID IIL peace. No single section of the propertied classes could unite the rest in support of its aims.

The nation consisted of a heterogeneous mass, -in which the interests of remnants of the old régime, new landed proprietors, financial magnates, industrialists, peasants; traders and artisans conflicted with each other.

1789 so thoroughly wiped out the old aristocracy that no Junker class remained, as in. Germany, to impose upon the State its administrators and its ideolegy of ‘discipline’.

Instability of successive ‘arbiters’

Hehce ihe instability of the successive Royalist and Bonapartist ‘arbiters’, from Louis XVIII to Louis Bonaparte.

The industrial capitalists, growing slowly, but growing, had reason enough in 1871 to reject the last nineteenth-century ‘Bonaparte’, Louis Napoleon.

He had taxed them and wasted their substance in serving Record of unstable governments The multiplicity of parties and instability of coalition governments was not the fault of the electoral system. Rather the electoral system produced its natural results; for, despite the extreme efforts of the constitution-makers in 1945, the Fourth Republic has an even worse record of unstable governments than ‘the Third.

Political life quickly came to consist more and more. of ‘empty compromises. Parliamentarism commanded less and less respect.

People learned, in time and through experience, that deputies ~ of different parties have more in common with each other than with the members of their own party outside the Chamber.

The Republic has been convulsed’ by successive exposures of corruption, such as the Panama scandal in 1889, the Dreyfus ‘affaire’ in 1894, and the Stavisky case in 1934.

‘Thus was shaped the outlook of France’s rulers. ‘Philosophy’, as taught in French lycées (State secondary. schools), means finding formulas rather than solutions to problems.

The poor ambitious boy learns that the race is to the clever, especially the clever manipulator of words.

Politicians’ bright, futile chatter Only for a short time in 1917, in the extreme emergency. of the first world war, could Clemenceau get national unity.

Hence the narrow selfishness of the French bourgeoisie; hence the bright, futile chatter of the politicians; hence the cynicism of Frenchmen of all parties towards the Fourth Republic. -Hence too the mighty impact on. French workers and in- ; tellectuals of the Russian Revolution, which showed how through the dictatorship of the proletariat the one progressive class produced by history can take the leadership of the nation —but only if it dares to lay hands on capitalist property.

-In the world crisis of 1958,.the Fourth Republic, which satisfies no one but a handful of venal politicians of Radicalism, is one of the first casualties.

From a Special Correspondent