70
PARTISAN REVIEW
here, during the cabinet crisis and the brief battle over the nationaliza–
tion of credit.
To begin with, the Constituent Assembly bears only an accidental
resemblance to the pre-war Chamber of Deputies. This is due, not
simply to the left-wing landslide (such a shift to the left is a constant of
French politics, viz. the elections that followed the last war) but to the
new method of voting, adopted by the Prov1sional Government at the
insistence of the resistance movements, the C.G.T. and the left-wing
parties. In the Third Republic, each voting district had its represen–
tatives: one voted for individuals one knew as much as, or rather than,
for a party. Consequently, the Chamber was full of "personalities," each
familiar (in the manner of Tammany ward-heelers) with the local
problems of his constituency and all extremely independent with respect
to party discipline. Thus, when Mille_rand or Briand was offered a min–
istry, he simply resigned from his party (the Socialists were, of course,
in the Opposition throughout the twenties) and accepted his "national"
mission. This meant that the ex-Socialisf ran against a member of his
former party at the next elections and usually, thanks to the prestige
and pork-barrel of his ministry, he won. He won even if the Socialists
"carried" his district, since voters were allowed to
panacher,
i.e. to
designate deputies from more than one list. Theoretically, it was quite
possible for J ean Dupont to vote for one Socialist, one Communist,
and for his old classmate, Pierre, a member of the Croix de Feu.
This year, voters were obliged to
.P~signate
a
list,
and the lists were
constituted by the parties. Moreover, there was a complicated system of
proportional representation, which made it possible for parties to "use"
the votes they received in the districts in which they were defeated; so
that there are deputies in the Assembly who represent no district, but
only the left-over votes of a party. The logical next step would be to
give parties the power of recall-which the French electorate has never
had-and this, I am quite confident, will be written into the Statute of
the Parties by the Electoral Commission of the Constituent.
The result, of course, is that nothing is decided in the Chamber
and everything in the political bureaus of the parties. The deputies–
no one seems to know their names-are simply raised right hands; the
debates are lifeless and uninspired, since the outcome is settled in
advance by caucuses; the only
independent
deputies are the few scat–
tered representatives of the Right, and those of the waning "assimilated"
groups, like the
Mouvements unifies de la Resistance.
Thus, although the F1·ench Stalinists have not given up hope of
splitting the Socialist Party, the latter has actually gained in cohesion
and manoeuvrability in the new chamber. Indeed, all parties now wield
over their members a power comparable to that which the Communists
