Family Feud on the Left

The differences grow between quarreling partners

While 20,000 party members sipped beer, munched on pate sandwiches and applauded mightily in the vast Pavilion de Paris last week, France's fiery Communist chief Georges Marchais berated the enemy. No, not the Gaullists, but Socialist Party Leader Francois Mitterrand, Marchais's partner in France's swiftly disintegrating leftist coalition. "Mitterrand has dismissed the case," he declared, referring to the collapse of talks between the parties on revising the common program, the coalition's campaign platform for the March 1978 elections. Shouted Marchais: "The Socialist Party's behavior shows that it has changed, that it is threatening the heart of the common program, that it is turning away from the union of the left. This is serious!"

The same day, Mitterrand held forth before a mob of reporters and TV cameramen in a tapestry-lined, marble-walled room in the National Assembly building. Sounding a bit more conciliatory than Marchais, the Socialist leader offered the Communists "an extended hand and an open heart." Nonetheless, he made it clear that his party would not cave in to Communist demands for a platform threatening wholesale nationalization of French industry. "Indisputably," Mitterrand noted, "the political landscape is troubled."

That was a gross understatement. Five months of wrangling within the coalition reached a climax three weeks ago when the Socialists and the small Left Radical Movement broke off talks with the Communists over the question of updating the common program (TIME, Sept. 26). Ostensibly, the issue in dispute was the number of private firms to be nationalized if the leftist alliance comes to power next March. When the program was first hammered out in 1972, the parties had agreed that there should be government ownership of nine major industrial groups; the question of how many of their subsidiaries should also be nationalized was left deliberately vague. In the recent talks, the Communists demanded the takeover of 729 companies, while the Socialists insisted that no more than 227 be nationalized. The impasse on numbers reflected a serious ideological gap: the Socialists and the Radicals want to preserve a mixed economy, with a significant private sector. The Communists seem determined to establish a collectivized society.

One public opinion poll taken just before the talks broke down showed that the leftist alliance was still favored by 52% of the voters. Many of them anticipated the split. Several polls have shown that a majority thought the Communists and Socialists would probably not get along in a coalition government, even though they wanted the left to come to power anyway. To the delight of centrists and right-wing politicians, the quarreling partners went out of their way last week to emphasize their differences. The Communist daily L'Humanite issued a special 6 million-copy supplement blaming the Socialists for the split; an editorial accused Mitterrand's party of denying workers "a really better life" by refusing "to accept the need to challenge the privileges of the very rich." Anti-Socialist demonstrations by Communist workers were denounced as a "provocation" by Gaston Defferre, the Socialist mayor of Marseille. Questioning the Communists' much-vaunted devotion to Western-style democracy, Defferre sardonically observed that they preferred "a popular democracy of the type Czechoslovakia has to endure." Angered by the attacks on him, Mitterrand complained at a Socialist meeting that the Communists had been "committing aggression against us nearly every day and accusing us of every sin in the world."

Was there a secret political strategy behind the quarrel? Some commentators speculated that the Communists really do not want to see a leftist victory in March.

According to this theory, the Socialists will get about 30% of the popular vote, while the Communists will win about 20%. In light of Mitterrand's frequent assurances that the Socialists in power would "control" their Communist allies, some experts argue that Marchais and his colleagues have decided it would be better to stay in opposition than play second fiddle to the Socialists. Another theory is that the Communists fear a Mitterrand volte-face: once in office he would jettison Marchais and try to form a broader alliance with centrist parties headed by President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

Some experts believe that if the Communists fail to get their revised version of the common program as well as the right to veto any Socialist policy in a leftist government, they will sabotage the election effort. Mitterrand's dilemma last week was acute. If the quarrel is not resolved, the defection of only 2% or 3% of the Socialist vote could prevent the left from getting the 54% it needs to win a majority in the National Assembly. On the other hand, if Mitterrand yields to Communist demands for widespread nationalization, the Socialists could lose the support of moderate voters who fear Communist supremacy.

Still, many observers thought that the Communists and Socialists would ultimately kiss and make up. According to Jerome Jaffre, a director of France's largest polling organization, the fracturing of the alliance will not necessarily send voters scurrying back to the conservative-centrist coalition. "One important element in the Left's strength has always been the poor opinion that people have of the present government," Jaffre noted.

"They blame it for inflation and unemployment and think it's time for a change." Political Scientist Raymond Aron concurred: "The left has not necessarily lost the election. The country is in a bad mood and tired of seeing the same faces in government. Indeed, the Socialists might even get more votes if they are not linked to the Communists."

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