Clio_232
De: letouzey <letouzey@crdp6.unicaen.fr>
Sujet: Hfrance FN-PCF
Depuis le 23 avril sur Hfrance, le theme des rapports FN-PCF (ideologies,
dirigeants, electeurs...) a genere un long echange. Cela pose des problemes
de fond (application du concept de totalitarisme - cf aussi dans la revue
"Communisme" un article de Lazard comparant PCI et PCF - , analyse
sociologique a differents niveaux, sondages d'avant ou d'apres election...).
J'ai eu du mal a reperer les analyses scientifiques : Taguieff dans
Universalia a etudie les formes du populisme, les elections presidentielles
de 1995 (la pomme) sont aussi decortiquees. Et l'Histoire a publie un no sur
les droites ou une historienne ne voit pas en 1988 de transfert d'electorat.
Nos collegues americains baignent dans une culture de guerre froide -
Sowerwine pense que pour beaucoup "Communism remains a kind of abstract evil".
J'ai extrait 4 extraits de ce long echange. Si le theme ne vous interesse
pas, la "poubelle" (trash) est en haut a gauche.
>Subject: N.F. and fascists
>Priority: normal
>
>This is in reply to Odile Sarti's question of who supports the
>National Front and are they the same segment of the population who
>had supported interwar French fascism. There has not been a lot of
>work done on who supported fascism in France, but from what I've
>seen, the concensus seems to be that it was a fairly middle-class
>movement. Support varied from group to group with the Croix de Feu
>(only debatably fascist) being largely middle-class, and the PSF of
>Doriot attracting the most working-class support. According to
>Robert Soucy, despite strong efforts to appeal to workers, G.
>Valois's Faisceau failed to attract any meaningful working-class
>support in the 1920s. This was apparently the experience of most
>interwar French fascist groups.
> Others could comment more informedly than I on support for the NF,
>but I recall that the NF created quite a stir in the 80s by
>attracting lots of working-class voters who had previously voted for
>the PCF.
> Bob Fuller, Coker College, SC.
>Dear Bob:
>
>Thanks for the information. I also read recently that many former communist
>members have become supporters of the Front National. Seems to confirm the
>old saying that extremes always meet.
>
>Odile Sarti
From: Charles Sowerwine <c.sowerwine@history.unimelb.edu.au>
Subject: FN/PCF
I support Bob Soucy's excellent formulation of arguments advanced in
extended form in his two excellent books on French Fascism and I support
the views of one of the first contributors (to which Mr Ravitch responded
in such an ill-mannered form). I do think, however, that there is some
ground for the tendency to confuse the issues.
Some of the reasons, the resentments, that lead people to vote PCF are also
factors in the votes of FN types and some, but not anything like a
majority, of FN voters may have voted PCF. But the analysis of those
problems is radically different in the two cases, one being race-driven,
the other class-driven, and the fundamentally different constituencies of
the two reflect this.
>From an Australian perspective, it is clear that movements like the FN can
begin with or without there having been a class-based alternative for those
threatened by large-scale change in the economy. Indeed, it is likely that
it is the absence of such an alternative that leads to a racial or
xenophobic response. In France, it is clearly the decline of the PCF that
left a vaccuum in which some of its former supporters may have turned to
the FN. In Australia, the recent emergence of a xenophobic party coincides
with the consensus of both Labour and Liberal (Australian parlance for
conservative) parties that Australia should accept globalisation, abandon
tariff and other protection for industry, and live with a high level of
unemployment (currently over 8%) and a reduced level of colllective social
justice.
The Labour Party was defeated in 1996, after 13 years in power, because it
had accepted a movement toward American style "enterprise bargaining,"
abandoned a traditional commitment to protecting industry, and initiated
downsizing in government. The Liberal Party promised a "relaxed and
comfortable Australia," but gave even more of the same, with drastic cuts
to budgets, massive sackings, and reduction of the welfare safety net,
going so far as to close down emergency dental assistance for the poor.
During this time, a maverick independent MP named Pauline Hanson has begun
to garner quite high levels of support among the disaffected of all kinds.
She calls for a return to traditional protection and in other ways opposes
what is known here as "economic rationalism," but she blames everything on
Asian immigrants to Australia and on Australian Aboriginals. Her crazed,
conspiratorial views appeal to those who feel deserted by the elites, which
appear to them to have forgotten their responsibility to ensure decent jobs
and lives for ordinary people. In the absence of a party offering an
economic platform for change, Hanson's "One-Nation" party is off to a
flying start.
There is little evidence, however, that the dominant element of support for
either Hanson or the FN comes from disaffected Labor or Communist voters. I
think Soucy is right that working-class supporters of such movements are
largely non-Marxist, young, unemployed. I would add, however, that most of
whatever working-class support there is for Hanson or the FN comes from
industrial areas in less urban contexts. The cross-class populism of Hanson
or the FN attracts other groups, probably in greater number: those
disaffected older people whose resentments might be termed cultural, and
those of the lower middle classes most affected by the new insecurity and
unemployment.
I suspect that most H-France contributors are looking at this question from
an American point of view, in which Communism remains a kind of abstract
evil. It's important to remember, as an early contributor put it, that most
PCF voters were not voting for Stalinism but for social justice. One could
say the same for Labor voters in Australia or indeed for traditional
Democrat voters in the US. The problem comes when that alternative is
discredited and/or ceases to be an alternative. When people feel that
there's no way to change the system, they look for scapegoats.
There is one big difference between the PCF and the various racial or
xenophobic groups and that is the Communists' emphasis on class analysis.
The argument for similarities between the FN and the PCF require
abstracting the French Communist voters into some sort of abstract demon
and omitting what most characterised French Communist discourse, their
insistence on class.
Associate Professor Charles Sowerwine
Department of History
University of Melbourne
From: "philippe RYGIELP (Bourges)" <prygielp%siam@cal.fr>
To: h-france@vm.cc.purdue.edu
Subject: PCF/FN again
Having read professor Sowerwine letter, nodding in agreement most of the
time, I feel compelled to add a few remarks to that long discusion on the
relationship btw PCF and FN. Thinking that they are the two sides of a same
coin seems to me a mistake. We can see where it came from. The PCF, back in
the 70', could call himself " le parti de la classe ouvri=E8re " because a
good part of the working class supported it. Today a large share of the
working class will vote for the FN, in fact more working class members are
voting for the national front than for any other political party. But
concluding from that, and the fact that the FN started to enjoy populat
support when the Pcf started his long decline, that the working class
supporters of the FN are formers commies is wrong, or at least not proven.=
=20
It overlooks a few important facts.=20
- The PCF never had the support of the working class as a whole.=20
- The FN does not have today the support of all the working class, partly
because some of its members vote for other parties, partly because the
working class votes a lot less today than it did before.
- The people who today belong to the working class did not necessary belong
to it twenty or so years ago. We have to allow for mortality, birth, social
mobility and immigration.=20
It means that, from a strictly logical point of view, the FN could,
be the
largest working class party today without any former communist working class
member voting for him (let's say without anybody voting for him today who
was a member of the PCF in 1978 and was then a skilled or unskilled worker).
Of a course it is not so. But the point is that explaining the rise of the
national front by a swing from the PCF to the far right can only be an
hypothesis as long as it is not established that such a swing occured, and
so far the evidence we have, which to my knowledge is not much, does not
seem to point that way.
I also support Prof Sowerwine view that to understand the Pcf you
have to
compare it to that part of the british labour that was most intimately
connected to the unions, or its australian equivalent. I would not say that
Paul Keating being french would have been a prominent membre of the Pcf, but
I would not be so sure for Bob Hawke (when he was an union boss, not when he
cried on TV any time he had the chance).
As for the radical difference btw the ideologies, prof Sowerwine is
perfectly right. The Pcf always presented itself as the "party de la classe
ouvri=E8re" and always refered (and still does) to marxism. I would wish to
say on the other hand that, for a very long time, one could say from 1934 or
from 1941, the Pcf says that communism and patriotism are compatible, even
if it might seem a bit strange, it even pretends to be the champion of
'l'ind=E9pendance nationale". As for the FN, it deems to defend the french
nation and the white race, but also the little guys against the "capital
international' and the "elites", in fact, the closest thing to the FN in
american history might be the Huey Long supporters, or the people supporting
that australian fish and chips lady whose name I have forgotten. I am not
saying that the two parties share ideas, for the communist there is no ling
btw nation and race, and for the member of the FN, the elites are the bad
boys not because, to be a member of the ruling class, you have to behave
like one, namely opress the working class, but because the people in power
have got no morality. I am just saying that class and race are not the only
identities the two groups play or played on.