De Gaulle, the Savior?

On this day in 1958, Charles de Gaulle was elected the first president of the Fifth Republic. He had retired some five years earlier but returned to bring order to the then French colony of Algeria and stop instability spreading to France. His new mission was none less than that of saviour of the French capitalist class...

Faced with the imminent alternative of civil war and a possible communistt-controlled uprising, the French capitalist class through its politiical representatives, acted to protect its interests in the only way left open. They acquiesced to the demands of their mutinous officers in Algeria and called upon General De Gaulle to lead them out of the political wilderness in which they find themselves. The Chamber of Deputies, its back to the wall, promptly abdicated its power, invested the General and his government with full authority for a period of six months and called for a referendum to alter the present parliamentary basis of the Fourth Republic.

General De Gaulle, on the other hand, just as promptly demonstrated whose interests he means to protect by naming civilian politicians to head important cabinet posts and himself as Minister for Algeria. He wasted no time in putting his military leaders in Algeria in their proper place. "You have no more revolutions to make," he told his disappointed Committee of Public Safety, "because the revolution is already accomplished." General Massu, M. Soustelle and M. Delbecque were informed in no uncertain terms who their boss happens to be. But on the other hand, if he is not fully aware already, General De Gaulle himself will discover soon enough that the orders and dictates he is scheduled to utter will not be of his making. The needs of French capitalism must in the final analysis determine his action to the same degree as they have influenced the 25 governments of the Fourth Republic.

Economic Decline

Despite popular belief to the contrary, France's continuing troubles at home and throughout her diminishing empire are not in any way directly due to the multi-party system and lack of strong government which their present Constitution guarantees. In fact proportional representation is in many ways more democratic than a two party system and despite the continuing upset of French regimes in recent years, the successive governments were always pretty much made up of the same men. Only the positions were shuffled. The attempt to understand a nation's affair by concentrating upon its polttics rather than its economic and financial structure is usual procedure but not sound. In the case of France the Chamber of Deputies, which someone has labeled as "600 screaming anarchists" is not a cause of her woes but merely a reflection. The troubles of France stem directly from her system of society, capitalism.

For one reason or another, France has steadily declined in this century as a world power. Insofar as importance in industry is concerned, she ranks far down the list, even below Sweden and SwitzerJand. Raymond Aron, a French writer, tells us in the June 1958 issue of The Atlantic that, in fact, France actually seemed "almost as backward as China and India," and that she has "an economy hovering somewhere between the Middle Ages and the twentieth century." In short, France has been, in our times, reduced to the status of a "Mama and Papa" business surrounded by super-markets.

"In 1900," he tells us, "the percentage of industrial manpower, relative to the number of persons between 15 and 59 years of age (25%), was higher in France than it was in Germany, Holland and, Denmark, Norway, or Sweden. But for the next half century it falled to rise, and today the figure is lower than that of all the other countries of Western Europe with the exception of Holland." Furthermore, it seems that the percentage of man-power employed in agriculture in France is higher than in any other country of Western Europe, even higher than for Denmark and Holland, running some 32% in 1950. " ... the conclusion is undeniable," says Mr. Arons, "a century ago. .. France was still the most highly industrtalized country on the continent; today she leads Southern Europe but trails behind Northern Europe."

Nor despite some tendency toward mass industry in recent years, such as automobiles and airplanes, has there been much progress in this century in the degree of industrialization. Whereas businesses employing more than twenty workers represented 4 per cent of the total in 1906, in 1950 they represented 8.5 per cent of the total. Furthermore, even in agriculture has small farming remained the order of the day with 40 per cent of French farms having a gross income of less than 300,000 franes (about $860.00).

In other words, as long as a nation's position in the world was based mainly up on small scale agriculture, France was considered a wealthy nation. In this industrial era, however, France has fallen far behind in the race. She has been particularly lacking in such vital minerals as coal which England and Germany had in plentiful supply, As a result, despite her utter defeat in two world wars, Western Germany today stands far ahead of France as an industrial nation.

One of the reasons given for the decline or France as a power has been the decline in its rate of birth. It seems that in the period since World War I the French population increased much less than that of her rival nations. Whether or not this factor had as much to do with the lack of investment in their own country by French capitalists as some would have it, it is still a fact that there has been a proportionately much higher rate of investment of surplus capital by French businessmen in foreign countries. Like capitalists everywhere, patriotism is considered to be all very well and indeed necessary for the working class, but business is business.

Since the end of World War Il France has declined steadily and rapidly and has lost large pieces of her empire. Her influence in Syria and the Near East in general is gone. Her rich Indo-China colony is gone. Tunisia and Morocco have slipped from her grasp and for several years now the Algerian nationalists have been trying to emulate their Arab neighbors. The ensuing Aigerian War, which still continues despite De Gaulle's visit and offers of equality to the 9 million Moslems of that land, has been unsurpassed in our times for down right brutality, certainly as much on the part of the civilized French as the "barbarous" Arabs. A book by Henri Alleg, reviewed in the N. Y. Sunday Times for June 7, 1958 reveals the systematic torture employed by the French arrny, notably by the paratroops of Brig. Gen. Massu, to get conressions. The author, a French editor of a Communist Algerian daily newspaper was himself a victim of Massu's torture by electricity, by drowning (water forced into his mouth from a tap), torture by fire, thirst, etc."

The Algerian situation has been a hot potato which the French capitalist class has been somehow attempting to hold onto. It has been a cause of the downfall of several of the recent French governments. That General De Gaulle has been finally called upon to salvage this last important outpost of the French empire is but an indication of how far the capitalists will go to save themselves from economic ruin. They are willing even to give up much of their own political rights, to place power in the person of an individual they dislike so long as it enables them to retain control of the money-bags.

French Capitalist Interests

In his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx analyzed the rise to power of Napoleon III in much this way. No more than in December 1851 was the Republic "taken by surprise." Despite the coup of the army officers in Algeria and the ostensible forcing of De Gaulle up on an unwilling ruling class; despite the threat of civil war and a possible Communist overthrowal of the government; despite these things the interests of French national capital are best served at this particular time by installing De Gaulle as a sort of strong man and every evidence pomts to the fact that Gen. De Gaulle will do all in his power to protect these interests. Not that he will find this task any easier or be any more successful than his predecessors. The handwriting in Algeria is still on the wall for the French capttaltsts.

While we deplore any loss of freedom by the working class, even the limited type of freedom enjoyed in the Fourth Republic, the basic position in society of the French working class will not be different from what it has been. Whether ruled by kings, emperors, dictators, president or a Chamber of Deputies, they will continue to be exploited; will continue to live in poverty and insecurrty; wiIl be maimed and murdered in wars and suffer degredation generally in peacetime. Only the outright abolition of capitalism and the institution of a class-less society - socialism - is the answer.

Harmo

The Western Socialist May-June,