The Dinosaur and the Soft Steps – Folha de S. Paulo, April 6, 1978
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The press has already said everything about the elections in France. Thus, attention is no longer focused on the polls but on their aftermath, which is slowly taking shape.
The topic is interesting and important.
It is interesting because solving the country’s problems will require the French president to play a delicate political game. Giscard d’Estaing clearly has his own agenda, and he must seek the party combination that will most reliably enable him to carry it out. This means seeking parties that will demand minimal changes to his program and give him maximum parliamentary strength. Which way will he cast his net in search of allies? To the left? To the center?
This question raises others. Not all groups that make up the winning majority are equally secure for Giscard. Perhaps he finds some opposition sectors more comfortable and influential allies than others in the current situation. But influential centrist sectors may view his alliance with part of the left very negatively.
Thus, political calculations and maneuvers unfold in a nimble trapeze act that requires lucidity, subtlety, and dexterity, and the exercise of which can entertain the general public for some time.
These circumstances make it interesting to analyze the aftermath of the French elections, which is important as well.
Alongside England, Germany, and Japan, France is counted among the great nations, second only to the two superpowers: the genuine one, the United States, and the illusory, or merely ostensible, one, Russia.
I refrain from mentioning China on this list because its internal nightmare consumes it entirely.
Nor do I mention OPEC, an economic and financial power with political influence rather than a defined, organized state.
With France thus positioned, it is easy to understand the important role it plays in today’s world and the significance of its internal and external political evolution.
I say all this so the reader feels that I am analyzing the panorama of France and the world in unison with him, and does not imagine me to be a dreamer when I put pen to paper and write the following statement: Everything Giscard can do at this moment is in the order of major events for the country and, in some way, for the world. Not, however, in the order of super-events.
Here is the French super-event, which I do not see mentioned in any of the reports our daily press transmits from Europe and North America: According to data from the French Ministry of the Interior on the second round of elections, and counting the votes from constituencies where the result was decided in the first round, the centrist majority won 51.59% of the vote. The leftist minority (communists, socialists, and left-wing radicals) received 48.441%.
Under these conditions, the difference between the majority and the minority was 3.18%. This difference is small enough to be compared to a temperature change from 96.8°F to 97.7°F or a blood pressure change from 110 by 60 to 130 by 70 in an individual; any small fortuitous event can cause or modify it.
Therefore, the big question is: “Where is France headed in choosing between the current society and the communist regime?” The answer is that, with a tie in the number of voters, it is at a crossroads.
This does not represent a victory or a defeat for either side. It is little more than indecision.
Under these conditions, the big, super-big questions, next to which the others pale, are: Will there be a significant and perhaps irreversible tiebreaker in the next electoral contest? Which way will it go? To the left? To the center? These are the first set of questions.
As we shall see, answering these questions requires explaining this other one. With the vote almost tied, the center proudly proclaimed itself the winner because, under the peculiarities of French electoral law, it won a majority of seats in the Chamber. This is a common form of unilateralism in politics. And, as such, it is self-explanatory.
But the left could have protested this one-sidedness and pointed out that, although it was defeated in terms of the number of seats, it was not – or almost not – defeated in terms of the number of votes. It could also have noted that the area in which it suffered this defeat (the number of seats in the Assembly) is more superficial than the area in which there was almost a tie (the number of voters), for it is the latter that expresses the deep tendencies of the electorate.
Why did the French leftists not trumpet this? Why did the French Communist Party not proclaim it to the world?
I will now answer this second set of questions. This will bring me quickly to the first set.
After analyzing the results of the first round of elections (the second round, under the “ballotage” system, is ambiguous), official data from the Ministry of the Interior show that the Communist vote was 20.56%. This vote, which is not insignificant, has remained roughly the same for a long time (it was 21.4% in 1973). This highlights the extraordinary difficulty the Communist Party has faced in growing despite its Eurocommunist “makeover.”
Every Communist Party aims not only to achieve power but also to carry out the greatest transformation a country can undergo, namely its “communistization.”
Napoleon once said that the most challenging thing is not to seize power but to hold on to it. The communists are well aware of this truth, which is both important and somewhat banal. They know that to come to power and carry out their program, they need the support of well over half of the French people. Yet they are still far from achieving even half the electorate on their own!
For the FCP, the consequence is crystal clear. Either it comes to power on the backs of its allies, then swallows them up and, strengthened by their substance, remains in power; or the FCP must renounce victory and become a mere club of ideologues.
The Socialist Party is the FCP’s great natural ally, whose back seems made for it to climb on.
Unlike the FCP, which is rigid, compact, and monolithic, the SP is a hodgepodge of diverse leftist tendencies. It offers socialism for all tastes. The constant friction among its varied shades creates an illusion of freedom. All this satisfies ordinary, indecisive, eclectic, and superficial minds, hence the SP’s ability to absorb large sections of the public, far greater than that of the CP.
The CP expects much more from the SP’s growth than from the numerical increase in communist ranks.
Now – and here’s the point – based on recent election results, the SP has grown only slightly: from 19.2% in 1973 to 22.6% in 1978.
In itself, this is disappointing but not very serious.
However, in recent years, the greatest advertising and propaganda efforts have been directed toward favoring the SP. To mention just one example, French progressives, whose hands control most of the advertising levers of Catholic opinion, did everything possible and impossible for the SP. For this publicity campaign, they wisely deployed momentum, skill, and discretion. The result was clear. Like a poorly constituted organism, the SP stubbornly resisted all vitamins, fortifiers, and super-feeding regimes. This makes its expansion in the next elections extremely unlikely. The SP leaders are more or less disguised communists, and so are the hardline members of its electorate. But its soft-line members are often people who have been led astray by doctrinal misconceptions, propaganda fraud, or pure oppositionist tantrums. All it takes for these soft-line members to vote for the center is for a communist victory to seem more likely.
Therefore, the SP as a whole is not the proper ladder to communism, for a ladder with some hard steps and some soft ones cannot lift a dinosaur to the top.
So? Here we are: the French election results showed a left that is powerless to grow substantially and, above all, to stay at the heights it reaches.
The bottom line: hopes for a stable victory for communism are deferred until the year 2000, if at all.
Let’s broaden our horizons. This is the case in France; in Spain, communists have to disguise themselves as monarchists to get a place in the sun; they’ve had to retreat in Portugal and are terrified of elections in Italy (as is their partner, the Christian-Democratic Party). Elections are also a specter for the British Labour Party and have recently taught the Swedish and German socialists a harsh lesson. What real possibilities does the communist dragon have of swallowing Europe, and above all, of digesting it once it has been swallowed?
The disappointing answer to all these questions explains the silence of the FCP and the SP in the face of the center’s triumphant trumpets.
