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PARTISAN REVIEW
Pen's votes came from all categories. But two groups are over–
represented: on the one hand, the
"poujadiste"
types (small artisans
and dealers who in 1956 voted for Pierre Poujade) who were uneasy
about modernization and the opening up of the European market
and manifested their anxiety in the form of this vote of protest; on
the other hand, the young unemployed, without degrees or qualifi–
cations and unable to get first jobs, who looked for symbolic integra–
tion by excluding others. This double
poujadiste
current shows that
the phenomenon of Le Pen is linked to deep changes in French soci–
ety. Economic modernization, to which the socialists, a bit con–
strained, had rallied, created groups of people incapable of entering
an ever more exigent job market in a time of crisis. And the Com–
munist Party and its associated organizations, whose role as social
stabilizer had been considerable, no longer assures the control and
the integration of alienated groups. The church organizations also
no longer play their traditional role in social integration. This young
and badly integrated population, which lives in the 'Jails" of the
suburbs of French cities, had massively voted for the candidate of
the extreme right. The workers of the right (approximately a third of
all workers), who for a long time had voted for the Gaullists, voted
for Le Pen. The presence of the immigrants and the inevitable prob–
lems they posed, by bringing their numbers and different cultures to
the local population, gave the primitive themes of the National Front
an apparent justification - reanimating the vigor of the xenophobic
political right which always has existed in France but has been
deprived of political expression since the Second World War.
In the course of Mitterrand's tenure, the 25
%
of protest votes
the French electorate always scores has moved from the extreme left
(the P.C.F. still had 18% of its voters in 1981) to the extreme right.
Mitterrand's politics have contributed actively to the destruction of
the Communist Party. He certainly was helped by the Stalinist
character of the party; the gap between economic and social
realities; the wooden language its functionaries held on to; the
deterioration of the image of the communist countries; the decline of
large, heavy industry on which the party and the C.G.T. have a
hold . But this situation , for which one gladly gives some credit
to
the
President, resulted in the birth of the extreme right as the new
political opposition. On the social level , the extreme right will not be
able for a long time to bring about the same control and the same in–
tegration of the lower classes as the communist machine.
Politically, the effect of its presence is to deter the political right
