Why has the Parti Socialiste come to dominate the French Left?

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Ian Bishop

Why has the Parti Socialiste come to dominate the French Left?

The left wing in France since 1945 has never been a unified political force.  Instead, it has been a divided and pluralistic political community, accommodating both Communists who take on the mantle of the Jacobin left, and far more liberal groups such as the Green Party.   With such diversity within an ideological wing, it has been natural for a strong party representing a particular vein of left wing thought to dominate the bloc.  The traditional leader of French left-wing thought in the twentieth century was the Communist party, yet within just twelve years of the formation of the Parti Socialiste in 1969, these inheritors of the Jacobin legacy had been all but sidelined in French government, replaced by the new Socialist party.  In this short time, the Parti Socialiste established itself as the dominant political party in the French left, a role that it maintains to this day.  Any explanation of its predominance must examine the causes of the meteoric rise of the Parti Socialiste and also the reasons for the sudden apparent collapse of Communism as the main party of the French left, for the reversal in the respective party political roles of the two groups is inextricably linked in any explanation of Socialist Party dominance.  

This dramatic and rapid shift in party fortunes occurred in France as a result of many combined factors.  A superficial examination of the political systems of the Western world might very well lead us to assumes that Communism had simply become an unacceptable ideology in the modern age.  This argument certainly has some validity, as the increasing wealth of the Western world and the continuing antagonism between the Communist Soviet Union and the democratically organised capitalist West exerted a powerful influence on all post-war political thought in the West.  Thus, as the Cold War continued, it can be assumed that those living in Western countries such as France no longer felt inclined to offer their support for a domestic political party that based its policies around the same ideological framework as the USSR.  In France, this process of disenchantment with  Communism was exacerbated by the close links that the French Communist Party had with the Russian government in Moscow.  However, such a model is rather too simplistic for an explanation of the dominance of the socialist party.  It fails to consider or explain why it was only in 1978 that the Parti Socialiste overtook the Communist Party as the main party of the left.  By 1978, the Cold War had been in progress for a long time, and the French populace had shown no desire to abandon Communism during earlier tensions with the USSR.  Furthermore, this explanation does not consider the role of the Parti Socialiste itself in establishing a strong basis of support in previously Communist sections of the electorate.

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Instead of a generalised contextual historic explanation, we must refer to the endeavours of the Parti Socialiste itself in its rise to political predominance in the left wing.  An understanding of the formation of the Parti Socialiste does, however, require an historic context.  The PS was formed in the wake of the May 1968 movement, when student protests had spurred an examination of the constitution of the Fifth Republic.  Furthermore, the May movement shifted the emphasis in the left wing from revolutionary ideology to a more evolutionary approach.  The Communist Party failed to fully resolve its internal debate over ...

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