A Socialist to Reckon With

Out of the milling confusion of France's indecisive election, one man emerged as someone to be reckoned with. He is a softspoken, 50-year-old ex-professor of English named Guy Mollet. As boss of the Socialist Party, Mollet may be the first man President Coty asks to try to form a Cabinet.

Mollet linked his Socialists with Pierre Mendes-France's Radicals in a left-of-center Republican Front. On election day the Socialists won 94 Deputies to Mendes' 50, thus giving Mollet a claim to being the senior partner. Mollet's claim rested on the fact that the Socialists picked up 455,000 new votes to poll a solid 3,188,000--their first increase since 1945, though through the inequities of the electoral system, the party actually dropped eight seats. The governing center-right coalition had lost even more, could no longer put together a majority without the Socialists.

France's politicians of the center, flanked by the Communists on one side and the tax-defying Poujadists on the other, made the usual noises last week about submerging differences. But Mollet firmly rejected a "national union" of all the democratic center parties, as likely to bring only more immobilism. As "victor," he said, the Republican Front should form a government alone.

For or Against. France's political elders were shocked. "Getting a majority is like getting married; it takes more than one party," quipped the irrepressible Premier Faure. Mollet insisted: "We are persuaded that people can govern together only if they are in agreement on one program, however limited. We will say before the Assembly--this is our program. Those who will be for will vote for. Those who will be against will vote against." For France, the idea was almost revolutionary.

The only hope of a government with so narrow a base is that on matters of foreign policy it could pick up center-right votes and on domestic issues it could pick up Communist votes. This is known as the pendulum theory: getting support from the Communists without becoming beholden to them.

In its early history, the French Socialist Party alternately feuded and fused with its Communist rivals. The present party was born in 1920, when Leon Blum rebelled against accepting direction from the Kremlin. By 1936 the Socialists had 149 seats in the Assembly, and Blum's Popular Front government ruled France with Communist support. The two parted angrily over the Hitler-Stalin pact, made up when Hitler's invasion of Russia made resistance fighters of them all, stayed uneasy friends until Socialist Premier Paul Ramadier threw the Communists out of his government in 1947.

Weaver's Son. Dry, meticulous Guy Mollet, a dedicated antiCommunist, was elected Deputy from Pas-de-Calais department at the first postwar election. His father was a weaver who died early,, and his widowed mother worked as a concierge to give young Mollet enough schooling to qualify him as a professor of literature. An early and militant Socialist, the young professor was soon fired for political activity, became secretary of the CGT teachers' union. After serving gallantly in the Socialist underground. Mollet caught the eye of the aging Leon Blum, soon was secretary-general of the Socialist Party.

Doctrinaire, too intellectual to attract the working classes, the Socialist Party declined steadily from its 1945 peak. It became overloaded with civil servants, postmen, schoolteachers and "leather-chair" (French equivalent of whitecollar) workers, and had little strength in the factories and fields. When the Socialists joined conservative governments, disillusioned supporters deserted to the Communists. In 1951 Mollet declared a policy of nonparticipation, and kept his Socialists out of government and in the posture of general opposition for four years.

No Deals. Under Mollet, however, there is small danger that the Socialists will renew their Popular Front with the Communists. As a man trained in Marxism, Mollet has no serious quarrel with many of their economic doctrines. He simply considers them "representatives of the Soviet Union." One of his favorite sayings is that the Communists "are not left but East." One of France's most ardent "Europeans" and a last-ditch supporter of EDC (he has never quite forgiven his new ally Mendes for letting EDC die), Mollet is also a dedicated friend of the Atlantic Alliance. "If there had been five U.S. soldiers in Europe in 1939, war would never have happened," he says.

As for the Communists, "we will treat them like any other party," said Mollet last week. "We won't attempt to have our Cabinet defeated, but we won't make deals." In other words, Mollet would take support where he could get it, and hope he could get away with it.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.