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Parti Communiste français - 1946-1947 - Fourth Republic

Its plans for the constitution of the Fourth Republic were accordingly keyed to solutions which would most favor the transition of a multi-party to a one-party administration. It had to hurdle two barriers to political dominance. Alone, it had no basis for constitutional government as it represented only twenty-five to twenty-six per cent of the electorate. Since the liberation it had therefore tried to cajole the Socialists into joining forces with it. Such a fusion would give it the necessary majority for further action. Although the Socialists had constantly refused to heed these pleas, they might be forced to enter into a more or less stable coalition with the PCF by a combination of outside pressure and pressure from within their own ranks.

If the PCF staked all its cards on framing a constitution which gave the majority free rein, it took a big political risk. The combination of both parties might not be able to hold a majority of seats in future assemblies, thus opening the way to unchecked rule by a Right-Center coalition. It was even more likely that the Socialists would split or at least tacitly allow enough of their members to veer to the Center to make a Left-Center government without, or even against, the PCF possible. Even so, the PCF figured that it stood a better chance of winning its objectives through an all-powerful Parlement than through a constitutional set-up containing numerous checks and balances, all framed to work against the CP. Maurice Thorez, then the CP Vice President of the Council, devised a plan for the thorough reform of the French personnel administration which would severely limit the importance of the upper ranks of bureaucracy.

The party now joined forces with the Socialist Party to form a government and Thorez became deputy prime minister (1946-47). On 22 March French Communist representatives voted against war in Indochina. By their attitude they weakened the three-party coalition for the general elections of November 1946, and they openly criticized the policy of wage and price freezes that was defended by the socialist Council President Paul Ramadier. Moreover, on 5 May the government dismissed Communist ministers after they supported strikes at Renault factories. French public opinion really began to turn against Communist activists, who were seen as likely to stir up controversy against the security of the state. Ramadier accused the French Communist Party (FCP) of being a "clandestine conductor, able to lead the assault against the democratic authority, and able to open a crisis for the regime.

The main outcome of the battle of the 10 November 1946 elections was the increasing polarization of French political life into two camps, Communists and representatives of the middle class (MRP, the Radical Socialists and the Rightists). The Socialists were rapidly dwindling in political force. Between October, 1945, and November, 1946, they lost over a million votes. In the November election they lost 700,000. As part of these lost votes went to the Right, the Left consequently incurred a loss, even while the Communists grew in strength.

In March 1947, President Truman openly proclaimed America's "get-tough-with-Russia" policy-the so-called Truman Doctrine of containing the Soviet Union and supporting any faction anywhere in the world that was opposing Russia or communism. In April, 1947, the militant and messianic General de Gaulle returned to the tempestuous French political arena at the head of a new rightist party named Rally of the French People. This party was made up of extreme nationalists, militarists, Roman Catholic clergy, and various conservative groups. It was militantly anti-Communist, and advocated a rightist authoritarian type of government. To its banner were drawn many of the more Conservative members of the Popular Republican party.

Between 1944 and April 1947, the PCF were in government together with the Socialist Party (SFIO) and the bourgeois MRP. On 05 May 1947, the communist ministers were dismissed from the coalition governments in Italy and France. In May 1947 the French Communists broke away from the leftist coalition, supported labor groups who were striking against the government's wage freeze, and lined up with the Soviet Union against the United States in foreign policy. Since the Communists represented approximately one-fourth of the French people at the time, this was a serious defection. The PCF left the government, rejecting at the same time the Indochinese policy and the division of increasingly heavy governmental liabilities for serious economic situation and social.

At the end of June 1947 the FCP's anti-Americanism became evident during a party congress. Maurice Thorez, who steered a strong Communist Party comprising a quarter of the French electorate, strongly criticized "American expansionism," drawing his arguments from the Leninist analysis of imperialism. For the FCP this was no time to make wide political alliances. Besides the usual peaceful arguments in favor of defending colonized peoples, the FCP added speeches in favor of the Soviet Union. A good part of the French intelligentsia adopted an anti-American and pacifist attitude, and some of them embraced the Communist vision of the world.

In the autumn 1947, PCF conducted a virulent anti-Socialist campaign and affirmed itself to be a completely Stalinist party. French Communists warned that the Marshall Plan was a Trojan horse for American imperialism. The extreme Communists, the ones who went even beyond the trade union movement, criticized anything the Americans did. The US made food deliveries under the Marshall Plan. They criticized that. They'd say that powdered eggs from America are bad for you. The French had a bad harvest in 1947, and the Marshall Plan sent massive quantities of cornmeal as a substitute for flour. Cornmeal was new to them, and the Communists said that this is fed only to pigs.

"L'Humanité", the French Communist newspaper, ran a large cartoon criticizing the Marshall Plan. It showed a ship being unloaded and they included in the cartoon what they claimed were the three worst things the Americans were shipping to France-the three things the Communists wanted to criticize most. One was armament - it showed a cannon being off-loaded; then big barrels of powdered eggs coming off, which would give any Frenchman indigestion just seeing it; and the third worst thing were cases marked Champagne from California - "Champagne de Californie". But the Communists couldn't go too far out; they could play on popular frames of reference and prejudices and things of that sort, but they couldn't get too directly anti-American, because the French people did regard the Americans as their liberators.

Charles de Gaulle, having denounced the PCF's allegiance to the Soviet Union, warned that Soviet tanks were "two stages of the cycle Tour de France" deep into the country. On 18 September 1947 European Communist parties actively undertook to support the policies of the Soviet Union, and that position was joined by representatives to the National Assembly, Jacques Duclos and Etienne Fajon.

On 5 October 1947 the Soviet Union created Comintern to oppose the Marshall Plan. In October and November 1947, taking advantage of the explosive economic and social situation, insurrectionary strikes organized by the Confédération Générale du Travail broke out in France. Jules Moch, the home secretary, quelled the strikes, but it was evident that an appeal for American help was the only way that France could counter a major Communist threat because France already was in the grip of Ho Chi Minh's guerrilla warfare in Indochina.

The defeat of the crippling Communist led strikes in France was the result: of vigorous and effective action by the Schuman Government and the growing split in French labor between Communists and non-Communists. The Government gained in prestige through its victory over the Communists. Communist prestige and support had been correspondingly reduced and the Communists suffered a setback in their aim to wreck the French economy. However, they caused a serious loss in production of coal and other industrial products which adversely affected the European recovery program.

Although the French Communists had been defeated in their first effort to employ against the Government the full economic power inherent in their control of labor; they continued to wield economic power for, political gains. Their objectives remained unchanged: to wreck the French economy, to render US aid ineffective, and eventually to assume control in France. The Communists continued to exercise their capability to dislocate the French economy by sabotage, and violence.

In late November 1947 the US Ambassador Dunn in Rome received a document, which was evaluated as "authoritative," relating to a recent special Cominform conference in Poland. The document indicated that: (a) the Soviet Politburo was directing a coordinated all out Communist campaign to take over the French and Italian Governments by violence rather than constitutional methods; (b) although the initial emphasis was apparently on the use of general strikes timed to block the operation of the European recovery program, the Communists would not be restricted to this method; (c) the campaign was personally directed from Moscow by Zhdanov, secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party, through his "personal representative," Foreign Minister Ana Pauker of Rumania; (d) Mrs. Pauker is a member of a new special committee in Belgrade composed of representatives of the Soviet, Yugoslav; French, and Italian Communist Parties which operated independently of the Cominform and was to regulate and synchronize Communist action in France and Italy; and (e) the committee had been assured unlimited means apparently including financing, food, and military stores in order to carry out its cam¬paign effectively.

CIA suggested, preliminary to the receipt of the reported document, that the document was: (a) an Italian Government plant for the purpose of expediting interim aid by impressing on the US Congress the urgent need for countermeasures against Soviet'plans; (b) a Cominform device to stimulate activity on the part of the Italian and French Communists and did not reflect any real intention to take the course indicated; or (c) an authentic and accurate indication of Soviet plans, which have as their maximum objective Communist seizure of the French and Italian Governments and as their minimum objective the creation of such economic and political chaos in France and Italy as will preclude the successful implementation of the European recovery program.

CIA did not believe that the French or Italian Communists were capable of seizing control of their respective Governments without material outside support. The supplying of such support, however, would involve the risk, of a major conflict for which the USSR was unprepared.

CIA belived that, under direction from the Kremlin, the French Communists may even engage in such direct action as to cause their Party to be outlawed in France but, even in that event, they will be capable of disruptive clandestine action. CIA noted the increasing tendency of Communist shock troops to attempt sabotage and to provoke the police to militant action. Such actions might eventually cause the Government to outlaw the Communist Party. Some were puzzled by the apparent readiness of the USSR to, risk driving underground "one of the best organized Communist parties in Europe" unless this reflected "Soviet willingness to face general war in the near future." US Embassy and US Military Attache Paris were skeptical of this conclusion.

CIA noted that, in its efforts to sabotage the European recovery program, which was the USSR's immediate and primary target, the Kremlin might be willing even to risk the sacrifice of the French and Italian Communist Parties. If these Parties were defeated and driven underground, the USSR will have lost no more than it would lose by the success of the European recovery program. CIA believed that the unexpectedly rapid progress of the Marshall program had upset the timetable of the Kremlin and forced this desperate action as the last available countermeasure.

In any case, the newly-strengthened Schuman Government faced difficult tasks. While trying to prevent further work stoppages, the Government must: (1) seek to overcome the serious economic setback resulting from the recent strikes; (a) resolve anticipated disagreements between Socialists and Radical socialists in the coalition regarding methods for economic recovery; and (3) weather, the adverse effects of a hard winter and the unpopular measures which it must take to combat elation. If the Government can succeed in all these respects, it maybe able both to defeat the Communists and to remove the possibility of De Gaulle's return to power. If Schuman failed, a Gaullist solution would become probable, and Schuman's vigorous action against the Communists would have prevented them from forcing De Gaulle to power prematurely.

In 1947, there was a civil war in Greece and civil conflict in Turkey, two million Europeans were starving. On 25 February 1948 the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia revealed the Soviet Union's influence in a country not occupied militarily by Soviet troops. The Czech coup d'etat served as an electric shock treatment for the undecideds on all sides. The Soviet Union showed also its refusal to organize free elections in the countries that it controlled, in violation of the Yalta agreements. In 1948, Berlin was permanently divided by the Berlin crisis. In 1949, the Soviet Union set off a nuclear weapon five years sooner than expected in the West, and the Chinese Communists won the Civil War.

The PCF channeled its wartime record into electoral success; from November 1946 to 1956, the Communists won a greater share of the popular vote than any other party. Their base lay among France's working class, which remained a loyal and reliable constituency, and they constituted the dominant force on the French left.

Legislative elections were held in France on 17 June 1951 to elect the second National Assembly of the Fourth Republic. After the Second World War, the three parties which took a major part in the French Resistance to the German occupation dominated the political scene and government: the French Communist Party (PCF), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO, socialist party) and the Christian democratic Popular Republican Movement (MRP). The forces associated with the Third Republic and the 1940 disaster (the Radical Party and the classical Right) were considered as archaic and were the losers of the post-war elections. Due to the ballot system, the Communist Party, which won more votes than any other party, was only third in terms of the number of seats won.

Dr. Lamaze introduced Natural Childbirth (ASD) in France in 1951. In the midst of the Cold War, Lamaze was a sympathizer, although not a member of the Communist Party (PCF). He ran a maternity clinic for the CGT, a union affiliated with the PCE During a trip to Russia in 1951, he discovered a new method to relieve pain in labour through a psychological technique inspired by Pavlov. Upon his return, when he dedicated his energies towards the popularization of ASD, he looked for support from the PCF and to draw upon their propaganda network; this subsequently aroused suspicion and hostility. A few years later, ASD received the blessing of women's groups won over by its improvements to birthing. At the moment of Lamaze's triumph, he fell victim to a resurgence of Stalinism. With his team, he denounced the Soviet invasion of Hungary and lost the financial support of the unions which owned the clinic. Exhausted and profoundly disappointed, he died in March 1957.

The political positions occupied by Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty since 1945 resemble "a kind of ballet or square-dance." Merleau-Ponty's 'new left' of 1955 resembled Sartre's Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire of 1948, and his Marxist 'waiting game' was closer to Sartre's pro-Communist stance than to the 'non-Communism' he set out in Les Aventures de la dialectique.

The PCF channeled its wartime record into electoral success; from November 1946 to 1956, the Communists won a greater share of the popular vote than any other party. Their base lay among France's working class, which remained a loyal and reliable constituency, and they constituted the dominant force on the French left. After 1956, the French Communists entered a slow decline. With the slow, gradual destruction of the Soviet Union's credibility in the West, the PCF - tightly linked to the USSR - reached a ceiling of support. Many French voters simply would never vote communist. Then, in 1969, the Socialist Party (Parti socialiste, PS) was founded, sounding the death knell of the Communists.