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Organization and Leadership of the French Communist Party

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Charles A. Micaud
Charles A. Micaud
Affiliation:
Woodrow Wilson School of Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia
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Extract

In the general election of June 1951, the French Communist Party lost almost 10 per cent of the votes it had obtained in 1946 and, thanks to an electoral system that was designed to reduce its parliamentary representation, almost half of its deputies. These results should not be interpreted as a serious defeat for a party that still holds the allegiance of one-quarter of the French people. Its loss of votes, particularly among peasant and middle-class elements, did not affect its major strongholds in industrial areas and in some agricultural regions. Communism in France remains a major political force in a position to threaten both political stability and capacity for effective military defense. The presence of a strong Communist Party, and to a lesser extent of a Gaullist Party that is in part its by-product, prevents the coalition government from adopting a forceful and constructive policy and giving the French people a sense of effective leadership.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , April 1952 , pp. 318 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1952

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References

1 Rossi, A., Physiologie du Parti Communiste Français, Paris, 1948, p. 359.Google Scholar

2 This quotation and those which follow were obtained from interviews with former French Communist Party leaders and militants and a small number of present party members, for a field study of the French Communist Party which was carried on from March until August 1951 as part of the “Appeals of Communism” project of the Center of International Studies.

3 The successful penetration of the Communist movement into other elements of the French population is reflected in the rapid proliferation of neighborhood and rural cells in the last fifteen years. Rural cells were created in 1945. While there were twice as many factory cells in 1946 as in 1937, there were more than three times as many neighborhood and rural cells.

4 For the composition of the Central Committee and Political Bureau, see the Bulletin de l'Association d'Etudes et d'Informations Politiques Internationales, No. 39, January 16–31, 1951, pp. 1–4. For the formal organization of the party, see Jean-Marie Domenach's excellent study in Einaudi, , Domenach, , and Garosci, , Communism in Western Europe, Ithaca, N.Y., 1951.Google Scholar

5 Rossi, , op. cit., pp. 302–3.Google Scholar See also Monnerot, Jules, Sociologie du Communisme, Paris, 1949.Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Berelson, Bernard, and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice, New York, 1948Google Scholar; Shils, Edward A. and Janowitz, Morris, “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht,” Public Opinion Quarterly (Summer, 1948), pp. 280 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shils, Edward A., “The Study of the Primary Group,” in Lerner, and Lasswell, , eds., The Policy Sciences, Stanford, 1951Google Scholar; Dunn, Frederick S., War and the Minds of Men, New York, 1950, pp. 71 ff.Google Scholar

7 See Lettre aux Militants, No. 3, February 19, 1951.

8 Bulletin de l'Association d'Etudes et d'Informations Politiques Internationales, No. 39, January 16, 1951, p. 2.

9 The present system of apparentements could be maintained that allows an electoral coalition to present a common front against the extremes. If the plurality system were then used, as in England and the United States, to give all the seats to the victorious list, the parliamentary representatives of the two extremes would be sharply reduced.