[The following article by a leader of the Front Communiste Révolutionnaire, the French Trotskyist organization that supported the candidacy of Alain Krivine in the presidential election, was published in the May 10 issue of La Gauche, the Belgian Trotskyist weekly. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The main lesson of the first round of the election is the confirmation of a far-reaching political realignment of the French right wing. This realignment is a product of the crisis of the state apparatus established by Gaullism in 1958. Chaban-Delmas, the candidate of the UDR [Union of Democrats for the Republic] "party-state," was routed, receiving only 15 percent of the votes even though he represented the party that has been in power for sixteen years and that was the majority of the former governmental majority.
The bourgeoisie formed a bloc behind Giscard d'Estaing, the minister of finance, who received 32.6 percent of the votes.
Mitterrand, with 43.24 percent, registered the radicalization and the shift to the left by the electorate, receiving one million more votes than the Union of the Left had received during the last legislative elections, in 1973. In percentage terms, his vote was considerably higher than in the 1965 presidential elections and analogous with the 1973 legislative results. The abstention rate was very low (15.77 percent), which generally benefits the right. Mitterrand did not, however, reach the 45 to 46 percent on the first round that he needed to be able to look forward to a fairly easy victory on the second.
A section of the left-wing electorate did not vote for Mitterrand in the first round of the election. And the significant overall result for the far left -between three and four percent — probably reflects the wariness of a part of the workers vanguard and Communist party members toward the politician Mitterrand and the right-wing campaign of the Union of the Left. But an analysis of the far-left votes is more complex.
Arlette Laguiller, the candidate of Lutte Ouvriere, received 595,247 votes, or 2.33 percent of the total. Alain Krivine, for the Front Communiste Révolutionnaire, got 93,990, or 0.36 percent. René Dumont, nominated by the ecology movement, got 337,800, or 1.32 percent; it is very difficult to know how his votes divide up on the political spectrum. But it is important to compare the results of the two candidates who claim to speak for Trotskyism, Arlette Laguiller and Alain Krivine.
The very obvious difference between their votes cannot be explained by the respective degree of implantation of the two organizations (the city-by-city breakdown of the vote indicates that this had little effect), or by their respective capacity to mobilize crowds (the FCR's turnouts in meetings and demonstrations were larger than Lutte Ouvrière's). The difference is explained above all by two differing political choices with respect to the style and content of the campaign.
Once the idea of running Piaget had been given up, the FCR decided on an electoral campaign centered around political education, pointing to the problems that would arise in future struggles, especially if Mitterrand should win. This campaign was considerably better than those of previous years, and much more concrete. We made a considerable effort to "depersonalize" our candidacy, by turning over our platform to many men and women activists during the broadcasts and meetings.
Drawing on examples from the French Popular Front of 1936, from Chile, and from recent workers struggles, our radio and television programs were able to pose problems as varied as the woman question, the role of the army and antimilitarist work (forcing the war minister Galley into a public polemic), the function of strike committees in struggles, and workers self-defense. Its political repercussions were considerable. And the "Krivine" vote was seen as a vote for the socialist revolution.
Lutte Ouvrière opted for another kind of campaign: exposés of capitalist exploitation and the oppression of women, and an elementary expression of distrust toward the bourgeois politician Mitterrand. In doing this, Lutte Ouvrière had to avoid posing the fundamental problems of the struggles that are coming. But Lutte Ouvrière did succeed in crystallizing around Arlette Laguiller (a woman worker and trade unionist) a diversified grouping of minority electoral currents that identified with her candidacy: Communist party members who found it hard to swallow the bitter pill of the Mitterrand candidacy, feminists voting for a woman candidate, and populists voting for a worker. A recent opinion poll by Sofres [Société Française d'Enquêtes par le Sondage - French Association of Public-Opinion Surveys] and Le Figaro [a Paris daily]— whose results should be taken with a grain of salt-indicated that at the opening of the second-round campaign, 42 percent of the "Laguiller electorate" would give their votes to Giscard d'Estaing and only 46 percent to Mitterrand. If this were true, it would indicate an even greater heterogeneity in the Laguiller vote than we had thought.*
A significant number of far-left sympathizers, moreover, voted for Mitterrand on the first round, because they wanted to vote "practical" in the hope that he would win on the first round.
We think that revolutionary militants had the obligation to prepare for the future, rather than aim for "electoral credibility" at the price of watering down their program. That being said, today the FCR and Lutte Ouvrière are committing all their forces to the second-round battle, calling for a vote for Mitterrand to beat Giscard d'Estaing. For it promises to be a close struggle.
The Union of the Left response is to shift its campaign significantly to the right. They see their task as one of winning some Gaullist votes that went to Chaban-Delmas on the first round. The revolutionary militants have the job of making this campaign a class confrontation.
May 9, 1974
*The May 11 Le Monde reported that SOFRES had admitted that its description of the Laguiller electorate was based on a very small sample of "around twenty persons" and that the poll therefore contained "a wide margin of error." Another survey, by Publimetrie, which was reported in the May 10 l'Aurore, indicated that 79 percent of Laguiller's voters would support Mitterrand in the second round; 5% would support Giscard; and 16% were undecided. The same poll indicated that 66% of Krivine's voters would back Mitterrand; 3% would vote for Giscard; and 33% were undecided. - IP