PARIS LETTER
281
for their own cowardice. But whatever the reasons for the demonstration,
it was-when one considers the real grievances of French workers, the
abysmally low wages and the constantly spiraling prices, the whole mis–
carriage of the Liberation-an amazingly good-humored affair.
One cannot conclude from this that the mood of the workers is a
happy one, except in the sense that everyone feels happy, after a long
and miserable winter, to walk in the sun. I am tempted by the suspicion
that the French abandon themselves all the more freely to the pleasures
of the spring weather-like the couples who embrace so shamelessly
OI\
street-benches-because they find themselves so constantly birked and
thwarted in their political and economic aspirations. K tells me that
about 600 Renault workers, after dutifully demonstrating on the Champs
de Mars, turned in their CGT cards and denounced their union leaders
as agents of their employers. (Their employers, in this case, are the
government!) And indeed there have been rumblings all over the coun–
try against the CGT leadership, which has transformed the French
unions into the merest political instruments. The Communists have "sup–
ported" every government formed since the Liberation, so that-aside
from a few demagogic gestures-their role has been to keep the workers
quiet, i.e., to keep their wages constant, while the government floundered
vainly in the attempt to hold down prices. Indeed, this is one of the
reasons for the strange antics of
L'Humanite,
for in order to keep the
workers behind them, the Communists must at least appear
to
solicit
their support. At the same time, French workers have-like everybody
else in this country-developed the deep-seated feeling that
~a
ne tourne
pas rand,
something is rotten in the coalition to which they have been
committed. I don't know if the American papers have done anythin.g
like justice to the long series of "scandals" inaugurated by the ex-Food
Minister, Yves Farge. What is important in all these affairs is that each
of them begins by having a more or less incidental political angle and
then, very rapidly, becomes
essentially
political. Malafosse, Joanovici,
Crestois, Alamichel-all these cases in a country really united by a
covenant, a regime consecrated by genuine general consent, would be
handled through criminal investigation and the normal channels of
justice. In France, there is no covenant, and for at least one group there
has been none since the French Revolution. Moreover, all the parties of
the Fourth Republic, despite their pre-war roots, have been profoundly
transformed by the rise of the CP. It is customary here for anti-Commu–
nists to say that the CP is not
"un parti comme les autres."
By this is
meant that the fundamental attitude of the CP, with respect to the
state and even the nation, is the determination to use them for an end
which is alleged to transcend them. Consequently, the CP, even while
operating within the system, deliberately places itself outside of it. It
