PARTIES, MOVEMENTS, . AND CLASSES
509
of collaboration in which members of all parties were involved brought
this inner disintegration to its logical end.
The only parties which did not split over the war question were
the Communists and the Fascists, the former being the only outspoken
supporters of the war even at the price of national ruin, the latter
being the only clear-cut defenders of peace even at the price of foreign
domination. The point, however, is not merely that the extreme
Right had abandoned its traditional nationalism and the extreme Left
its traditional pacifism, but rather that these "parties" could count on
a membership not disturbed by any change of the political line. This
was dramatically exposed during the German-Russian non-aggression
pact, when the Fascists had to drop their main propaganda drive
against "bolshevism" and the Communists had to switch literally
· overnight to an all-out peace propaganda without seriously damaging
the structure of either party. It is well known how strong the Com–
munists remained after their second volte-face less than two years
later, when the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany. They
lost neither the bulk of their leaders nor the bulk of their followers,
and this in spite of the fact that both political lines had involved the
rank and file in serious and dangerous political activities, demanding
of them, under the German occupation, real sacrifices and even mar–
tyrdom.
The two modern movements that had remained united while
facing the important political issues of the time had grown up outside
the traditional party system. And this was not only because of their
boisterous hostility to the parliamentary system, but because they
had placed themselves from the beginning outside the body politic of
the nation, at least in all countries which in the Thirties still retained
the traditional political regime. At that time, they were both consid–
ered by friend and foe alike as the outposts of a foreign nation's ex–
ternal policy; they were both denounced (and rightly so from a na–
tional point of view) as fifth columnists, as traitors to the real inter–
ests of their own people. The Fascists and the Communists certainly
were not French parties in the sense in which the Radical-Socialists
are a French party; they were rather French branches of foreign or
"international" organizations whose headquarters were outside the
national territory. But repeated denunciations have prevented
n~ne
of them from increasing in membership, whereas the undoubted na–
tional rootedness of the Radical Socialists has not saved them from
continual losses.
The point is that these movements, which are "parties" only in
name, were the only ones that functioned properly during the recent
