Belgian Social Democracy has just suffered the worst defeat in its history -- one Socialist voter out of four turned away from it in the May 235 iegislative elections. This was the inevitable result of participating for four years in a bourgeois coalition ‘government and systematically betraying all the hopes and aims of the general strike of December 1960-January 1961 (which in a certain. sense brought the Socialists back into the government).
The years of betrayal had a dual outcome. The most politically conscious workers broke with the Social Democracy and voted for candidates to the left of the Belgian Socialist party [PSB]. Workers with less political understanding, showing the effect of the discouragement and demoralization caused by the Social Democracy, voted for the bourgeois opposition parties, the "Parti de la Liberté et du Progres" (the former Liberal party which has ambitions of assembling together all the conservative middle classes) and the Flemish nationalist "Volksunie,."
Of the 470,000 votes lost by the PSB, it can be concluded that one-third went to the left and two-thirds to the right. On this basis, the outstanding feature of the elections was undoubtedly a shift to the right, the secondary tendency being crystallization of a radical labor current at the extreme left. Nevertheless, the overall figures give a somewhat distorted picture of the extent of the shift to the right. In Walloon, where slates to the left of the PSB appeared practically everywhere, giving voters a reasonable chance to make their votes "count," more than 50% of the votes lost by the PSB went to the left. In Antwerp, the only Flemish city with an analogous situation, more than 70% of the votes lost by the Social Democracy went to the left (in Lidge, it was 65%). But in the rest of Flanders there was no genuine alternative for the workers. The Communist party is extremely weak there; it received no more than 1% or 2% of the votes and often less than 1%. No left socialist slate was put up. Thus more than 85% f the votes lost by the PSB went to the right, greatly affecting the national average. The truth of the matter is that Socialist voters leaving the Social Democrac voted for the left wherever they had the possibility of doing this in an effective way. ,
The slates to the left of the PSB doubled their electoral strength, In 1961 the Communist party won 160,000 votes. In the current election its slates taken together won close to 330,000. This proves beyond doubt the existence of a current of radicalization among the masses, even if it involves as yet only a minority (for the voters as a whole, the percentage of votes won by the
extreme left ran from 3% to 6%.
Nevertheless, the representation of the extreme left in parliament did not increase proportionately. In 1961 there were five Communist deputies and one Communist senator. As this is written the exact composition of the senate is not yet known, since part of the members are elected by indirect ballot, but the results appear to be as follows: five deputies for the Communist party, two deputies for the new left socialist party [Union de la Gauche Socialiste -Parti des Travailleurs Wallons], one deputy for the “front Wallon" (Robert Moreau, a former assistant national secretary of the Fédéra~ tion Générale des Travailleurs de Belgique and lieutenant of the late André Renard), three senators for the Communist party and one senator for the UGS~PTW.
The UGS-PTW, founded a few months before the elections, faced insurmountable difficulties in participating effectively in the election campaign. It sought to meet these difficulties by forming an electoral bloc with the Khrushchevist Communist party everywhere except in the Liége and Verviers districts. (An appeal was made to the pro»Chinese Communist party to participate in the bloc but the appeal was turned down flat.)
In Lidge and Verviers the vote for the new left socialist party was 24,000 votes as against 55,000 for the Conmunist party (which received 40,000 in 1961). It is rather difficult to estinate the number of votes cast for the left socialists in the rest of the country, due to the existence of the bloc. The only basis for calculation is the 1961 elections; but at that time the Communist party had not yet split into "Khrushchevists" and "pro=Chinese," It can be considered certain that all the ballots cast for the pro- Chinese in 1965 came from people who voted Communist in 1961. From this it can be concluded that even without the bloc with the left socialists, the Communist party would have gained votes in the 1965 elections, but to a variable degree on the regional level.
Carrying through rather complicated calculations, the conclusion is reached that the left socialists actually won 60,000 votes (including 24,000 in Liége, 13,000 in Brussels, 12,000 in Namur, 7,000 in Hainaut). The pro-Chinese Communist party won 24,000 votes in the country as a whole; the "Front Wallon" mentioned above likewise won 24,0003; the Camille Huysmans slate in Antwerp got 16,000. Thus the Khrushchevist Communist party received a little less than _ 200,000 votes, an increase of 25% in-relation to the elections of | 1961.
An examination of the "preference votes" yields interesting results. A Belgian voter can cast his ballot in two ways ~- either | for the candidate heading the list, which signifies voting a straight ticket, or for individual candidates on the slate. [This could conceivably alter the "preference," putting a different candidate at the
head of the list.] The majority of Belgians vote for the candidate heading the list.. In the elections in Brussels for the chamber of deputies, the bloc of the "Union de la Gauche Socialist=Parti.Communiste" received 30,500 votes of which 23,500 were cast for the candidate- heading the slate while 7,000 indicated "preferences." ‘The latter were equally divided between the left-socialist and Communist party candidates, the leading left-socialist candidate Pierre Le. Gréve getting the highest number (2,300) and topping the -former Com munist deputy Moulin. The left-socialist candidates on the slates of the bloc in the other regions ran up thousands of votes, showing that in any case a considerable part of the votes for the bloc came from voters favoring the left socialists. (The head of the slate in Nivelles for the senate got 1,000 votes; in Charleroi the candidate in similar position got 2 , 0003 the head of the slate in Namur for the Shamber of deputies received 7,000; in Soignies it was 1,000, etc.
The left socialists in general conducted their electoral campaign on class lines, and their program -- promulgated practically everywhere independently of the Communist party with which the bloc had beem formed ~- was by far the one furthest to the left in the election. In Brussels, Nivelles, Charleroi, Soignies, Thuin, the campaign was centered on the following ideas: "Against the bourgeois coalition government; for a workers government. " "Nationalization of the coal mines, gas, okectricity. oil, banks, insurance, the holdings of all the credit companies. " Norkers control." “Letts get out of NATO." "Full support to the freedom struggle of the colonial peoples." ‘Get the American troops out of Vietnam and Santo Domingo." “Fora national health service," and so on.
In the joint electoral publicity issued by the Communist party and the left socialists, the opposition between the two lines appearing in the same piece of literature was striking. Thus an election newspaper distributed among all the homes of Charleroi carried face to face an appeal of the Communist party and an appeal of the Parti Wallon des Travailleurs. The CP appeal carried the headline: "The Communist party poses the following questions to you." The other appeal carried the headline: "The Wallon Workers party appeals to the workers to go into action for the following..." The minimum program presented in common by the two parties was considerably radicalized on the insistence of the left socialists, the Conmunists finally including the formulas about a workers government, workers control, getting out of NATO, and anticapitalist structural reforms, formulas which they have opposed for years...
At the height of the election campaign, the question of a demonstration against the intervention of American imperialism in Vietnam was posed. The Khrushchevist Communist party accepted the idea of a joint demonstration of all the left forces (including the "pro-Chinese" Communist party), but wanted "supple" slogans like "Peace in Vietnam" or "Negotiations for Peace in Vietnam." The
slogans of the pro-Chinese Communist party were in general more cor= rect and more militant ("Get the American Troops Out of Vietnam"), but they put up a sectarian opposition to any demonstration in common with the Khrushchevist Communist party. The left socialists upheld the idea of a united demonstration, but on correct anti-~ imperialist slogans. On April 24 the pro-Chinese went it alone, but could only mobilize 250 demonstrators. Finally on May 15 a demonstration took place on the correct line called for by the left socialists, the pro~Chinese Communist party being compelled to participate in it also. There were 1,500 demonstrators. No doubt the difference between the two figures was noted in Peking...
In general, the appearance of a new party to the left of the Khrushchevist Communist party, but following a nonsectarian line, has placed both the reformists and the pro-Chinese in an embarrassing position, They are trying to get out of it by calling the new party "Trotskyist,"