R W Johnson: The Long March of the French Left, Macmillan Press, 1981, £8.95
R W Johnson's conclusion in The Long March of the French Left is that 'if the Left could not keep hope alive its long march might well become a march without an end'. His assessment is correct but has been overtaken by history. The wave of enthusiasm which broke all over France on the announcement of Socialist Party (PS) leader Francois Mitterand's win in the presidential elections this year is a clear mark of what Mitterand himself in his inaugural speech at the Elysée called 'the victory of hope'
Johnson's book is extremely interesting and well-informed, if expensive, The task he sets himself is ambitious but necessary if one to understand the present political situation in France: to analyse the reasons for the break-up of the Union of the Left and to assess the prospects of its future re-emergence. The first section reads as a brilliant essay presenting the reader with a few well-chosen and well-portrayed 'scenes of France' from the sweeping victory of the left in the 1977 municipal elections to the bitter image of the riot police savagely attacking striking steelworkers with the Communist Party (PCF) unable to do anything but restrain the victims, For the author, this is symbolic of the failure of the Union of the Left
Johnson presents us with a detailed political history of France since the last time the left was in office: the 'tripartite' government of 1944-7, in which the SFIO (the forerunner of the PS) participated together with the PCF and the bourgeois MRP, to which de Gaulle belonged at the time. His insightful journey through the past highlights the chequered history of the workers' parties, their internal struggles and the consequences for their political lines, the well-orchestrated campaign to expel the PCF from government, and the evolution of the major unions in the post-war period. He also provides a clear insight into de Gaulle's role in the creation of 'Gaullism' and the way in which the left was excluded from power in the Fifth Republic.
It is fascinating to trace through Johnson's account, the careers of all the 'new names' in Mitterand's cabinet: the role of Mauroy, today the Prime Minister, in the evolution of the present balance of political positions within the PS; the ministry of Defferre, multi-millionaire mayor of Marseilles and a renowned right-winger within the party, in the Fourth Republic government of Guy Mollet: the defection of Rocard from the leftist PSU to join the PS at the 'Assises du Socialisme' striking a deal with Mitterand which allowed Mitterand to expel the left-wing CERES group from the leadership of the party at the Pau Congress in January 1975
Today, CERES leader Chevénement is Minister of Technology and Research while Rocard, his right-wing rival, is Minister of State Planning, Savary, also a great opponent of the PCF, and at one time eliminated from the leadership by Mitterand, is now Minister of Education while Michel Crepeau, whose victory in the leadership elections of the Left Radicals (MRG) is analysed by Johnson, Minister of the Environment
Despite his efforts to present himself as an objective purveyor of fact. Johnson's account reveals his own biases, He is dismissive in his presentation of the far left's view that the POR bears a grave responsibility for failing to oppose the disarming of the 'maquisards' in 1945 and for not taking power in 1968 when the opportunity was there. Johnson argues that the PCF was being realistic while the 'gauchistes' were either badly informed or irresponsible, a charge familiar to all revolutionaries; indeed, even his use of the term 'gauchistes', which is the reformist left's derogatory label for the revolutionaries (the English equivalent would be 'the ultra-left'), places him firmly, if not uncritically, in the reformist camp.
As for the further charge against the PCF that it broke unity in 1978, here Johnson admits that it is quite true but denies that the reason lay in the party's unwillingness or inability to take office; rather it was a tactical matter of internal quarrels within the Politbureau (Marchais having to prove to Leroy that he was not a soft opponent to Mitterand) and alarm at the growing influence enjoyed by the PS.
One of the great strengths of Johnson's book is the section in which he presents a serious sociological account of voting patterns over the last five years and shows how the building of the new PS out of the ruins of the SFIO, and the emergence of Mitterand's own brand of leadership, has had important electoral consequences for the PCF even though it has not effectively threatened the latter's organisational hold on the working class or its industrial implantation
Johnson's broad conclusion is that only left unity can consolidate the gains of the last decade; but the unity he advocates is not the unity in struggle fought for by revolutionaries but a narrower electoral and policy unity, The book was completed before the May presidential elections and some of the pessimism of its conclusion has been overtaken by events. Despite the PCF's crackdown on opposition in its own ranks after 1978 and the clashing ambitions and trajectories of the various currents inside the PS both of which are critically and acutely reviewed by the author — the elections have ended with a Socialist in the Elysée, as Communist voter followed the direction to vote Mitterand in the second [illegible] that their leaders had given so reluctantly,
But the fact that France has voted 'left' despite the absence of a Common campaign does not disprove Johnson's central thesis; it merely demonstrates the depth of the workers' desire to be rid of Giscard, The fate of the left depends crucially on whether unity can be achieved and on what terms
But even if the PCF, shaken by Marchais' poor showing in May, accepts Mitterand's tough terms for a common campaign in the legislative elections scheduled for June: even if, as is highly likely to the horror of the right, France's new government include PCF ministers, the question remains: will Mitterand's government follow the road of the 1944 coalition and of all the other social democratic governments in Europe today the road of austerity against the working class? This last question will be answered by the strength of another kind of unity: the unity in struggle of the working class for which the French Trotskyists, whose history and [illegible] are so absent from Johnson's book, have been campaigning throughout the last five years