Less than two months ago, things weren't going very well between the Communist Party (CP) and the Socialist Party (SP) The SP, strengthened by the size of the abstentions at the referendum, was proposing that the non-communist lett should but up a single candidate for the legislative elections right from the start. G. Marchais wrote in the CP's paper L. 'Humanite: Everything is happening as if the main aim of the SP today - while contemplating an agreement with our party - is to reduce our influence". So will this agreement, which we are told is so important, wipe out all the old differences? Is it likely that the two parties plans, so clearly divergent a few weeks ago, are now suddenly found to have soli'd common ground for agreement?
WHY THE AGREEMENT?
The tactical agreement of 27 June has as its origin the recognition of two factors common to the CP and the SP.
1. The acuteness of the political crisis of the regime, shown by the absence ofa ready prepared alternative team for the bourgeoisie, and the acuteness of the social crisis illustrated by the high level of workers militancy even on the eve of the holidays, for power. Those politicians who see only the sad electoral ladder ahead, feel themselves "called" to power, feel obliged to start climbing the rungs now while they have as many trumps in hand as possible otherwise others will bypass them. So. programme in hand they find themselves at the starting line, putting out guarantees of "seriousness", of their belief in progress", of their will to govern'. They affirm they are ready whether the elections are brough: forward or not. If it is a Programme of government they have signed and not simply an electoral agreement, this is because the latter would have no credibility in the face of workers' struggles which directly confront the strong state and its police. If they sign so quickly it's not because they want to but beause the gangrenous state of the Governing team and "really' on the left, cleansed of the role the socialists played during the Algerian war, Guy Mollet's presence in De Gaulle's first government, his dispatching of troops to Algeria - with special powers too - etc. (for the list is long). In the long term the SP strives to ensure for itself the possibility of playing leap-frog using the back of the CP and its militants to climb to power in "76. For the CP the signature of the agreement is the warranty of a favourable relationship of forces with the SP. It shows to the left electorate that it is the SP which has to. submit to the dishonouring conditions of Advanced Democracy' and not Marchais having to bow before the aspiring BonaparteMitterand.
SOME EXPLOSIVE CONTRADICTIONS Both have realised that from now on they have to fight for power and also that to do so they need each other. But the disagreements which already exist impose two contradictions onto the government programme which in the end threaten to be explosive.
1. In the first place, the CP-SP Programme is "unifying" only at first sight.At bottom it the rumours of an early election push them to do so. Marchais (CP) and Mitterand (SP) are not making history as they sip champagne following the signing of the agreement; they merely reflect in a distorted way, because of the electoral level, the increased tension of the class struggle in France.
That Mitlerand had to go "so far" in compromising with the CP proves that he is not in control of the profound reasons for the agreement: that Marchais has accepted so many concessions on the original aims of the party - allowing the minimum threshold for nationalisations to fall from 25 to 13 companies, only goes to show that he too is not in control.
2. The second acknowledgement common to the two parties is that they cannot dispense with each other to realise their aims. For the SP, the 27 June agreement is the price to pay in order to reappear as a political force is clear that in the hesitations, the shirkings of the real issues, the nit-picking nuances and above all in the tactical function which both parties assign to each other, the electoral plan is only the true reflection of the relative incompatibility of both their aims. For how can one take seriously as an axis for the construction of proletarian power in France, a programme whose key point, nationalisations, has been the object of incessant haggling and is only the result of a rotten compromise between grocers? Such a programme can hardly represent something coherent and constructive for the masses.
2. On the other hand, and this is the second contradiction, while adopting the programme, neither has renounced its basic aim - to govern by climbing on the back of the other. The SP, in taking the CP for its running mate for the 1976 elections, is stealing the CP's room for manoeuvre during an election in the hope of carrying out a lengthy period of 'Socialism' of the Brandt or Swedish variety, and allowing an integrated working class to pick up the crumbs of expansion. The CP, in utilising the SP and the left wing radicals would have the necessary spring board to leap to the fateful 51 percent. The party bureaucrats really believe in their traditional patter about the conquest of the middle classes. When they cut up society into little slices, getting out a programme for each one, when they yoke the working class to the rickety chariot of the middle classes, constantly hesitating between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, when they refuse to carry out an offensive policy vis-a-vis the middle classes by calling on them to follow the working class instead of the other way round, all this is not so much to justify their betrayals. They genuinely believe in the possibility of power under Communist hegemony; but a power which is neither bourgeois nor proletarian, where a class alliance excludes only the monopolistic bourgeoisie, merely a fraction of the dominant class. This tactic of the gradual conquest of power, at once reformist and Utopian, which can only lead to Communist ministers carrying out the policies of a section of the bourgeoisie, is implicit in this privileged alliance with the SP.
The essential preoccupation for the CY as much as for the SP is to build a decisive relationship of forces for the day when they think they can govern together. On this question, the contradiction between their two schemes is explosive, as numerous polemics since the agreement was signed have shown.
For the SP, Mitterand set the tone the day after signing the agreement when he said at the Vienna Conference of the Socialist International: "Our main objective is to rebuild a big Socialist Party on the ground occupied by the CP itself. in order to show that of the 5 million Communist electorate, three million can vote "Socialist'! This is the reason for the agreement... the awakening of the great Socialist Party, orientated towards the left to regain its authenticity, but also taking the position nearest to the masses." And L 'Humanite regrets the cynicism of this false friend Mitterand in trying to win the Communist electorate and not the "thousands of electors" still under the grip of reaction. The Socialists continue in the same direction: *We are certainly not alone with the Communists. Already quite a lot of democrats and radicals understand the choice that is being posed to them. One is not alone when surrounded with 8, 10, 12, or 13 million Frenchmen."
These declarations are designed to reassure the gut anti-Communist wing of the SP which finds the price to pay much too expensive and which is frightened by the traditional right accusing them of treating with the devil.
As for the CP, anxiety is growing as the SP ceases to be a mere apparatus and takes on flesh and blood. Mistrust prevails. And it is not so long since the referendum when the CP didn't hesitate to drop unity to prevent Mitterand from reviving the socialist corpse.
Thus it is not so much a period of unity as that of a struggle, with each opponent attacking the other to reinforce himself. This battle, symbolised on a small sclae by the Arbes Municipal elections, where the CP candidate was elected without the support of the socialist, could well get out of the control of the two friendly seeming opponents. The referendum proves it, and the Mar iage of Convenience may very well be an unhappy one. -Rouge