Affluence and the French Worker in the Fourth Republic 9781400886265

Table of contents :
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN TEXT
I. Introduction
PART ONE: The Workers in French Society
II. The Fourth Republic Background—The Parties and the Unions
III. The Position of the Workers: Politics and Issues
IV. The Position of the Workers: The Economic and Social Condition
V. Pro-Soviet and Revolutionary Workers
PART TWO: The Role of Deprivations
VI. Skill and Politics
VII. Income and Politics
VIII. Standard of Living and Politics: Automobiles, Homes, and Luxuries
I. Unemployment and Job Insecurity
PART THREE: The Channels of Influence
X. Factory Life and the Unions
XI. Size of City, Region, and Religion
XII. Affluence and the French Workers
APPENDIX A: THE SURVEYS
APPENDIX B: A NOTE ON SEX AND POLITICS
APPENDIX C: REGIONS
NAME INDEX
SUBJECT INDEX

Citation preview

A F F L U E N C E AND T H E FRENCH WORKER IN T H E F O U R T H R E P U B L I C

PUBLISHED FOR T H E C E N T E R OF I N T E R N A T I O N A L STUDIES, PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY.

A LIST OF O T H E R C E N T E R PUBLICATIONS A P P E A R S AT THE BACK OF T H E B O O K

AFFLUENCE AND T H E

FRENCH

WORKER

IN T H E

FOURTH

REPUBLIC

R I C H A R D F. H A M I L T O N

PRINCETON, PRINCETON

1967

NEW

JERSEY

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Princeton Legacy Library edition 2017 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-62311-5 Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-691-65492-8

Copyright © 1967 by Princeton University Press ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

L.C. Card: 67-11033 Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press Publication of this book has been aided by the Whitney Darrow Publication Reserve Fund of Princeton University Press

TO

CARL

AND

TILMAN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book owes more to Juan Linz than to any other individual. He first suggested the topic, made available to me the surveys on which the study is based, and was always available to discuss findings, formulations, and alternative lines of investigation. Among the many who in one way or another aided this effort were Herbert Hyman, David Hapgood, Jacques Boulle, and Dorothy Hollmann. Otto Kirchheimer was also most generous in his suggestions and support. The study received financial support from the Research Foundation of the State of New York and from the Center of International Studies at Princeton. Klaus Knorr, the Director of the Center, was most helpful both in supporting revision of the original study and in his substantive contributions. Without the original surveys of the National Institute for Public Opinion and the National Institute for Demographic Studies this study obviously would not have been possible. Their contribution is most gratefully acknowledged. I wish especially to thank the twenty or so persons who undertook the routine typing and machine-running labors. Schifferstadt 16 August 1966

Richard F. Hamilton

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments List of Party and Union Designations I·

Introduction

PART O N E :

II ·

The Workers in French Society

III·

The Position of the Workers: Politics and Issues

IV·

The Position of the Workers: The Economic and Social Condition Pro-Soviet and Revolutionary Workers

PART T W O :

VI · VII · VIII · IX·

The Role of Deprivations

3 17 19 40 68 103 119

SkUl and Politics

121

Income and Politics

135

Standard of Living and Politics: Automobiles, Homes, and Luxuries

158

Unemployment and Job Insecurity

186

The Channels of Influence

203

PART T H R E E :

X·

2

The Fourth Republic Background—The Parties and the Unions

V·

vii

Factory Life and the Unions

205

XI ·

Size of City, Region, and Religion

245

XII ·

Affluence and the French Workers

275

Appendix A:

The Surveys

299

Appendix B:

A Note on Sex and Politics

311

Appendix C:

Regions

315

Indexes

317

AFFLUENCE AND THE FRENCH WORKER IN THE FOURTH REPUBLIC

A B B R E V I A T I O N S U S E D IN T E X T CFDT Confederation frangaise democratique du travail (Successor to the CFTC) CFTC Confederation frangaise des travailleurs Chretiens (Christian Democratic Trade Union Federation) CGT Confederation generate du travail (Largest trade union federation, mostly Communist) FO Force ouvriere (Trade union federation, Socialist links) JOC Jeunesse ouvriere chretienne (Young Christian workers organization) MRP Mouvement republicain populaire (Popular Republicans— Christian Democrats) PCF Parti communiste frangais (Communists) RGR Rassemblement des gaudies republicaines (Coalition of centrist parties, the largest of which was the Radicals) RPF Rassemblement du peuple frangais (Gaullist, Fourth Republic) SFIO Section frangaise de l'internationate ouvriere (Socialists) UDSR Union democratique et socialiste de la resistance (Minor party, member of the RGR) UNR Union pour la nouvelle republique (Gaullist, Fifth Republic) URAS Union des republicains et d'action sociale (Successor to the RPF)

C H A P T E R

I

INTRODUCTION This is a study of the social bases of French working-class politics. Its primary concern is to locate the social structural roots of po­ litical attitudes and voting behavior. Our basic assumption is that a group's location in its society, par­ ticularly the occupational setting, involves typical patterns of social relationship and communication. We assume that these exert on the group social and psychological pressures favoring acceptance of in­ formation, values, and behavior "consonant" with the milieu and favoring rejection of "dissonant" values. This assumption—put sim­ ply that people influence each other—is the central assumption of sociology. We focus on occupation on the assumption that, since adult males typically spend more waking hours in the working role than in any other single one, the characteristics associated with work will con­ stitute the most important single set of determinants of their be­ havior. More than merely a time factor is involved, however; one study found that loss of one's job at retirement was more upsetting than the death of one's wife. In addition to the temporal and psy­ chological aspects, the job will characteristically influence the range of social contacts, both at and away from work (the latter by help­ ing to determine housing choices). The wife's role is largely depend­ ent on the determinants present in the husband's job. Her "life chances" and status, in great measure, hinge on facilities and con­ tacts resulting from his occupation. People can of course "fake" status claims, but even this ability will be limited by what the job has to offer.1 ι A brief sampling of works focusing on or arguing for the centrality of occu­ pation as a determinant of attitudes and life chances would include the following: Richard Centers, The Psychology of Social Classes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949); S. M. Lipset and Reinhard Bendix, Social Mobility in Industrial So­ ciety (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959); Edward Gross, Work and Society (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1958). Two studies showing the im­ portance of occupation as a predictor of other indices of socioeconomic status are those of Godfrey Hochbaum et al., "Socioeconomic Variables in a Large City," American Journal of Sociology 61 (1955) 31-38; and Joseph A. KaM and James A. Davis, "A Comparison of Indexes of Socio-Economic Status," American Sociological Review 20 (1955) 317-325. The study comparing the involvement in job and family is Zena Blau's "Old Age: A Study of Change in Status" (unpublished Ph.D. dis­ sertation, Department of Sociology, Columbia University, 1955). The relationship between occupation and behavior in other institutional areas is considered in: Daniel R. Miller and Guy E. Swanson, The Changing American Parent (New York: Wiley &

• 3·

INTRODUCTION

In contrast to this "social pressures" orientation is the individualistic view that a person's political values and behavior are reactions to the economic rewards or deprivations in his life. This hypothesis, again put simply, holds that people will be satisfied and conservative when they are financially rewarded by society, and that they will be radical and disposed toward making institutional changes when they are deprived. This view is found primarily in popular accounts, but on occasion it occurs in the works of professional sociologists.2 Obviously these two approaches are not mutually exclusive, since people are subject to both social pressures and economic rewards. Marx, for example, theorized that it took deprivation plus the social concentration of workers to create a revolutionary situation—poverty alone, as among the peasantry, was an insufficient condition.3 Yet for better or for worse, in more popular writing at least, both Marxists and non-Marxists have dropped the sociological dimension in favor of the more strictly economic explanation. This work is concerned with both assumptions; each will be explored and assessed, since they represent two major motivational orientations in contemporary social theory. We shall also explore the interrelationships between the two. In Part One we introduce the subject, review the characteristics of the studies, and present the relevant background information. This section compares the party choices and political values of the working class with those of other major occupational groups in French society. We also present data on the economic position of these groups and on their social condition. In Part Two we are concerned with exploring the role of deprivaSons, 1958); Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957); William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956), and, by the same author, Is Anybody Listening? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952); and S. M. Lipset, Martin Trow, and James S. Coleman, Union Democracy (Glencoe: Free Press, 1956). 2 This view may be found in the works of the following writers: Frederick Lewis Allen, Peter Drucker, Clinton Rossiter, Robert Heilbroner, and John Kenneth GaIbraith. Within the field of sociology the following have all taken "changes in the income distribution" in the United States as the determinant of working-class moderation—David Riesman, Seymour M. Lipset, and Daniel Bell. A straightforward presentation of this position is to be found in Kurt Mayer, Class and Society (New York: Random House, 1955) and his "Recent Changes in the Class Structure of the United States," Transactions of the Third World Congress of Sociology, Vol. 3, 66-80. For further discussion and specific references see our Chapters 7 and 8. s Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, pp. 221-311 in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1951), see especially pp. 302-303. The failure of the peasant revolt was attributed by the Marxist Franz Mehring to the isolation of the peasants and their lack of organization. Again, misery was not sufficient. See his Deutsche Geschichte vom Ausgange des Mittelalters (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1947), pp. 35-39. To be sure, "social pressures" may also constitute rewards and deprivations. It is merely for the sake of stylistic convenience that we refer to pressures and rewards to indicate, respectively, the social and economic components.

•4 ·

INTRODUCTION

tions as determinants of working-class politics. Here we will examine the effects of skill differentiations, work satisfactions, income, standard of living, unemployment, and job insecurity on politics and political attitudes. Part Three takes up, rather briefly, for reasons to be explained below, the social pressures hypothesis. Here we explore the pressures associated with workplaces of different sizes, the influence of city size, the role of the unions, and the role of regions. In both Parts Two and Three our primary focus is on differentiations within the working class. A brief comment is necessary on the use of the word "class." Rather than detail the specific economic and social determinants associated with each job, it makes sense to group occupations into general categories. For this purpose we have taken, as our most general terms, those of "working class" and "middle class." By this we mean no more than the distinction between manual and nonmanual jobs. In the former, which are the primary objects of our attention, are included the skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled laborers (ouvriers qualifiSs, ouvriers specialises, and manoeuvres). As used here, "working class" refers simply to all persons in these occupations together with their immediate families; it implies nothing at all about the state of their "consciousness." It is a task for research to discover the extent of identification as members of the working class and the extent to which communal orientations are adopted. A brief word is also in order on the meaning of the term "radical." By this, we are referring to a preference—by individuals, parties, or voluntary organizations—for basic institutional changes in the character of the society, for changes in the character of its stratification, in the structure of the economy, and in the kind and extent of political controls. In effect, in discussing France of this period, this term applies to the Communist Party and its most important organizational affiliate, the General Confederation of Labor. As is appropriate in a study of workers, we are considering only the radical left alternative. In a working-class setting, the major alternative orientation is a moderate, reformist, or "liberal" one. These terms refer to the preference for accepting the basic structure of society but for taxing and redistributing the surplus so as to alleviate the more grievous strains. In the France of the Fourth Republic, this meant effectively the programs of the Socialists and the Popular Republicans together with those of their allied unions. These terms, obviously, can only be used as very crude rule-of-thumb guides. It is recognized that the "radicalism of the masses" and the "rad-

•5·

INTRODUCTION

icalism of the party" are frequently very different matters, the former being characterized by a bread-and-butter "economism," the latter being ideologically guided and at times involving a willingness to sacrifice the short-run interests felt by the rank-and-file voters. We may therefore have instances of moderate voters supporting a radical party or vice versa. Some Communist voters, for example, are not radical at all; that is, they are not interested in far-reaching social transformations; they support the party as a response to friends' influence or are simply following the lead of the family head. Part of our concern is with just these cases—the people who make objectively radical choices even though their personal preferences do not accord with this action. It is, after all, this objective choice which plays a role in determining the nation's politics, not the "unexpressed" personal feeling. Following our basic sociological assumption we anticipate that economic rewards and deprivations will have little direct impact on political preferences. The fact of rising or falling income, by itself, carries no political lesson. Any political significance, any lesson learned, is going to depend on the frame of reference of the individuals concerned. Such frames of reference, in turn, are usually learned from informal opinion leaders, that is, from friends, neighbors, co-workers, or relatives, from persons who are trusted because of close and long-standing personal acquaintance rather than because of their formal training or official position. The frame of reference, we are arguing, will depend on what the informal, primary group leadership is teaching rather than on the "objective" facts of the case. The same economic fact will be assessed quite differently by a Communist militant, a Catholic trade unionist, or a Socialist Party adherent. Contrary to general prevailing assumptions, then, we do not assume that individuals necessarily respond in an automatic way by rewarding friends and punishing enemies. For most people, without some leadership to show them, the link between economic events and the political sphere is so obscure that the question "who do we shoot" does not have a ready answer. The very processes of industrialization which bring workers a considerable improvement in real income also, we argue, bring them into contact with more radical opinion leaders. Consider what happens when a rural or small-town worker moves to the city in search of a better-paying job. In the small town he was employed in a small, low-paying, traditional plant. The worker's economic frame

•6'

INTRODUCTION

of reference was similar in many points to that of the plant-owner, a man with whom he had much on-the-job contact and a passing acquaintance off the job. At minimum the worker knew where his patron lived and he had some idea of his living standards. The worker's analysis of his own situation was usually fatalistic. He learned this from his employer, and all the indications in his environment supported this view, which stressed competition, dwindling markets, and so on. He saw that the firm was not expanding, could not afford many badly needed items, and that the employer's own living standard was modest. In response to this hopeless situation, the younger worker emigrates to a larger city where there are better-paying jobs in the larger, more advanced firms. But in his new job and setting the worker's frame of analysis is no longer identical with that of the employer-owner, for this man is more removed, separated by many layers of hierarchy, much architectural impedimenta, and by a gatekeeping secretarial staff. The framework now will be provided by working-class organizations, usually by the trade unions, and it will be optimistic and demanding, in contrast to the case of the traditional setting. Here too, there is every indication of the big plant's ability to pay, in contrast to the penury of the small shop. Apart from the job, the small town had some conventional standards which set a topmost limit to consumption. Both the workshop and the community provided checks or restraints which prevented a "revolution of rising expectations." In the city, however, these restraints disappear, with the result that the levels of aspiration are swiftly "revolutionized." This too, results in increased demands on the firm and less willingness to consent to the existing order. In these respects, we are suggesting that economic development may, given certain kinds of social organization, be correlated with an increase in radical demands rather than with satiety. If this is true, we need not be surprised that the political left in some countries has maintained its strength or even grown in the face of increasing affluence. What relationship does exist between deprivation and radicalism, we argue, will depend on underlying group pressures which may both provide a frame of reference and activate or channel grievances that would otherwise remain latent, without any political significance. In general, our findings support this assumption. We have intentionally stressed the role of leadership as opposed to the essentially passive role of events. Do the events have no importance whatsoever? Even in this brief sketch, however, we see

• 7'

INTRODUCTION

that the "facts" do have significance; the firms' obvious ability or inability to pay higher wages in our two polar instances would make the analyses provided by the opinion leaders believable. We might try to imagine what would happen if things were reversed, that is, if working-class leaders argued that the small firm was able to pay more and if the employer in the large firm said he could not. In the first case, the claim might well be derided as Utopian or fantastic, while the latter statement might be treated with contempt, as an obvious falsehood. A related question is whether the attitudes we find hold generally or only in the transitional period when a worker is making this move from small town to city. Perhaps the moderation presumably caused by affluence will appear among the second-generation urban workers. The answer to this question is obviously of major significance for the future politics of France and other industrial nations. Unfortunately we have little to offer in this connection. All we can say here is that the evidence supports our assumptions with respect to French workers during the time in question, 1952 to 1956. We can only make plausible inferences about other times and other situations. Relation to Previous Studies The present study differs from previous work in political sociology in a number of ways.4 The first difference is in the level of analysis. Much of the previous work has been concerned with basic cross tabulations of politics and major background variables such as class, income, size of community, and personal characteristics such as age and sex. Data of this kind were summarized in 1937 by Herbert Tingsten and again by Lipset and his associates in the 1950s.5 For most purposes this line of endeavor has come to a dead end. Aside from the possibility of detecting changes, one more study *For a review of the works in political sociology see the following: R. Bendix and S. M. Lipset, "Political Sociology—A Trend Report and Bibliography," Current Sociology 6 (1957), 79-169; S. M. Lipset, "Political Sociology, 1945-1955," in H. Zetterberg, ed., Sociology in the United States of America (Paris: UNESCO, 1956), pp. 43-55; S. M. Lipset, Chap. 3, "Political Sociology," in Robert K. Merton et ah, Sociology Today (New York: Basic Books, 1959); Joseph R. Gusfield, "The Sociology of Politics," in Joseph B. Gittler, ed., Review of Sociology (New York: John Wiley, 1957), pp. 520-530. For further references see Lipset, Political Man, and Linz, "Social Bases . . . ," cited in footnote 5). 5 Herbert Tingsten, Political Behavior: Studies in Election Statistics (London: P. S. King & Sons, 1937); S. M. Lipset, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Allen H. Barton, and Juan Linz, "The Psychology of Voting; An Analysis of Political Behavior," in Gardner Lindzey, Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Addison and

•8·

INTRODUCTION

of the relationship of class and voting, or sex and the vote, adds little to our knowledge in an area where the hypotheses are already well supported. To find once more that workers are more radical than the middle class would, in itself, tell us nothing more than "now we know how it is in France." But questions of explanation still remain open. We know that workers are more radical than the middle class, but we do not know why they are so. Although we may know that workers in large plants are more radical than those in small plants, we do not know what it is about a large plant that makes them more radical. Indeed, on the basis of simple cross tabulations, we cannot even be sure it is the large plant which "causes" the radical attitude. A third factor might be independently correlated with both large plants and radical atti­ tudes: the size of the city where the plants are located, or perhaps the origin of the labor force in these plants (e.g., they might be sec­ ond- or third-generation workers). We seek to answer some of these questions. We will be testing hypotheses about the "mechanisms" or "processes" which operate to bring about the original findings. We will therefore be controlling the obvious third factors that might independently contribute to the observed results. Our major chapters will review and discuss the previous hypotheses, recheck the findings, control for related factors to see if a connection is genuine or spurious, and then attempt to spell out and test explanatory hypotheses. In Merton's terms, we will attempt a specification of the inde­ pendent variables. Our concern is with a charting of the social struc­ ture rather than with exploration of the "meaning" or consequences of political attitudes or of voting behavior. We are mainly interested in the sources of political orientations rather than with their impact 6 on the performance of political systems. A second point of difference has to do with the "deviant cases" Wesley, 1954), pp. 1124-1175; S. M. Lipset and Juan Linz, The Social Bases of Diversity in Western Democracy (Stanford: Center for Advanced Study in the Be­ havioral Sciences, 1956, mimeographed); S. M. Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City: Doubleday, 1960); Herbert Hyman, Political So­ cialization (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959); Heinz Eulau, Samuel J. Eldersveld, and Morris Janowitz, eds., Political Behavior (Glencoe: Free Press, 1956). Juan Linz, "The Social Bases of West German Politics" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, De­ partment of Sociology, Columbia University, 1959), contains a review of relevant theory and research in addition to new data on West Germany. β The relationship between voting inputs and legislative outputs in France has always been somewhat unpredictable. Frequently the electorate has moved to the left while the newly elected legislature has moved to the right. For an excellent picture of the "independence" of the legislature see Nathan Leites, On the Game of Politics in France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959).

•9 '

INTRODUCTION

—those not accounted for by an hypothesis. In a basic cross tabula­ tion of, for example, class and politics, we discover both "Tory workers" and radical middle-class persons.7 All too frequently an author will note the support for his hypothesis and will omit any dis­ cussion of these exceptions. Thus he overlooks a significant ques­ tion: the sources of internal differentiation within a class. As an example, the recent study of V. O. Key, Jr., shows the ex­ pected and long since documented relationship between occupa­ tional level and conservatism on domestic issues.8 Yet Key's table also shows that the same percentage of businessmen think more should be done with respect to housing, unemployment, education, etc. as think the government has already done too much. This opens up a host of questions. Who are the liberal and who are the con­ servative businessmen? Do they differ in terms of the size of their businesses? Or ethnic or class background? What are the implica­ tions for social and political organization? Similar questions may be asked about the workers. Studies in all countries agree on the basic finding that workers are more radical than any other occupational group (except, in some countries, agri­ cultural laborers). But in distributions of worker opinion, there are frequently found large minorities voting for conservative parties and holding conservative views on issues.9 Few researchers have fol­ lowed up these minorities to find out what makes them different from the majority of the workers. Is it rural social origins? Religious influences? Downward mobility? This work also attempts to go beyond previous studies in the ex­ tent of empirical support for its claims. We will try to limit our in­ ferences to the minimum, and wherever possible—if we do not have 7 A table in Lipset's Political Man (p. 225) shows 22 per cent of the industrial workers voting for either the Radicals, the Independents, the URAS (De Gaulle), or Poujade. Seven per cent of the merchants, according to the same table, voted Communist and 21 per cent Socialist. Mattei Dogan found very large amounts of "non-left" attitudes in the French working class. Reviewing survey data, he found that a majority in 1950 favored the West European Union and 29 per cent favored a continuation of the Indo-China war; in 1953, 42 per cent would refuse civil servants the right to strike. See Mattei Dogan, "Les clivages politiques de la classe ouvriere," pp. 101-143 in Leo Hamon, ed., Les nouveaux comportements politiques de la classe ouvriere (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962). β Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 124. a For example, Engels writes the following to Marx, "What do you say to the elections in the factory districts? Once again the proletariat has discredited itself terribly . . . the increase of working-class votes has brought the Tories more than their simple percentage increase; it has improved their relative position. . . . It re­ mains a disastrous certificate of poverty for the English proletariat. . . ." (Letter of November 18, 1868). For all the sense of outrage evidenced by both Marx and Engels, they pay precious little attention to the question of the "discredited" worker. See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On Britain (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), pp. 499-500.

• IO ·

INTRODUCTION

direct evidence from the French data—we will cite parallel findings from other countries. As an example, let us take the following case. Michel Collinet, a respected scholar and student of French labor problems, remarks that: . . . [After Budapest in 1956] . . . within the working class, the [Communist] party activists were suddenly isolated and abandoned by considerable groups of former sympathizers. The French working class, like other French classes, underwent a genuine psychological shock. The suppression of the Hungarian workers stirred memories of the Paris Commune. . . .10 By 1958 however, Collinet continues, there was a reversal in the attitude toward the Communists because of price rises, a decline in real wages, and the continuation of the Algerian war. Later in 1958 there was another shift, this time away from the party, because of an attack by Khrushchev on De Gaulle which alienated many former members of the resistance and also because the Communists were defending the Algerian National Liberation Front and were silent on such acts of terror as the killing of innocent workers. These statements are all hypotheses—some implicit, some explicit—that need supporting evidence. Is it true that the party activists were isolated and abandoned? Did workers recollect the Paris Commune? If so, how many did and how did they react? How many of them dropped their Communism because of this? Communist strength substantially declined in the 1957 by-elections—which agrees with the Collinet thesis—but there is no hard information to link this decline with the events of Budapest. The same is true of the price changes and Khrushchev's attack on De Gaulle. All of Collinet's hypotheses imply a clear and direct relationship between the events and the voter's perception of those events—as if all the information on Budapest was somehow brought directly and without "editing" to the worker for his assessment and judgment. In addition to the magnitude questions (i.e., How many were influenced?), we also want to investigate the "linkage" question— Through what channels are people informed about events outside their immediate surroundings? All communication is selective, after all, and in the transmission of news different agents will obviously vary the emphasis. Hence we want to know what selection of facts gets transmitted to persons in various social positions, and we want to know what agencies do the selecting. Another question to be considered in connection with linkage is that of the social controls. io "The French C. P. Signs of Crisis?" Problems of Communism 1959) 22-27. • II

'

8 (May-June

INTRODUCTION

People approve or disapprove of one another's opinions, and even though "unbiased" information may get through to a person, the punishments meted out in his environment may lead him to abandon or soft-pedal his views.11 This study is explicitly concerned with comparison. As far as the data allow, the findings about French workers are contrasted with the experience in West Germany, England, Italy, and the United States to see where generalizations are to be discovered or, if there is an exception to a well-established finding, to seek an explanation for it. In this respect, we are carrying out the suggestion of the political scientist, Sidney Verba: Without material from other political systems it is difficult to tell to what extent the hypothesized relationships between psychological or demographic variables and political behavior are specific to the American political system. As a case in point, Verba notes: A study of the rates of participation in Norway indicates that there is no regular relationship between level of education and participation in politics, and that the relationship between occupation and participation is in striking contrast to that in the United States.12 If we knew only the United States' experience we might have tried to account for the finding in terms of differences in information, breadth of perspective, and knowledge of politics, etc. The Norwegian data force us to reconsider this easy imputation of causes and take into account differences in social organization; in Norway, the working-class organizations mobilize the poor. The comparative approach, by bringing a wider, more diverse range of experience to our attention, forces the development of more adequate charting and explanation.13 In summary, this work (1) considers the major current hypotheses about politics and social structure, reconfirms the findings of previous research, and, more importantly, attempts an explanation of them; (2) attempts to explain the "deviant cases"; (3) attempts n For experimental data on this process see S. E. Asch, "Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgments," in Guy E. Swanson, Theodore M. Newcomb, and Eugene Hartley, eds., Readings in Social Psychology, rev. ed. (New York: Henry Holt, 1952), pp. 2-11. The entire question of the media linkages and the role of primary groups in the communication process has been discussed in Joseph T. Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960). See also V. O. Key (cited in n. 8), Chs. 14, 15. 12 "Political Behavior and Politics," World Politics 12 (January 1960) 280-291. is See Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. & enl. ed. (Glencoe: Free Press, 1957), Chap. 3, "The Bearing of Empirical Research on Sociological Theory." • 12 ·

INTRODUCTION

to provide detailed empirical support for its claims; and (4) takes the comparative approach. There is no suggestion intended that these are completely new directions. Essentially the same scheme has been followed in Juan Linz's work, "The Social Bases of West German Politics," to which the present account owes a great and obvious debt. What is intended here is to push further than hitherto in these directions. The Procedure The method used is a secondary analysis of survey research; that is, we are reanalyzing surveys originally designed for other purposes.14 The principal surveys were based on quota sampling techniques.16 Three were made by the Institut Frangais d'Opinion Publique and one by the Institut National d'fitudes Demographiques. One of the main difficulties in secondary analysis is that questions we might have wanted to ask were never asked. When this was the case we had to work indirectly, using distant indicators for the variables we were interested in. To show community involvement we have used such indirect indicators as what the respondent did during his vacation (stayed home or went away), what he would like to do on his vacation, and whether his housing complaints include discontent with the neighborhood (quartier). Counterbalancing this limitation is an advantage which has only infrequently been noticed. Since questionnaires are planned to check out hypotheses prevalent in the current literature, the questions are always relevant to topical theoretical concerns. Questions relevant to other possible orientations are thus omitted. In a study designed for another purpose, however, questions may frequently be found that would not ordinarily be germane to current sociological theories, and their presence invites their use. In fact, on occasion, in i* For discussion of the methodology of secondary analysis see Patricia L. Kendall and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, "Problems of Survey Analysis," pp. 133-196 in Robert K. Merton and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, eds., Continuities in Social Research (Glencoe: Free Press, 1950) and Ernest Greenwood, Experimental Sociology (New York: King's Crown Press, 1945). 1 S To the best of this writer's knowledge, there were no national probability samples (that is, the most accurate of cross sections) drawn from the French population during the 1950s, the period of this study. One reason for this was the obvious cost. A second was, and still is, the high non-response rate, which would vitiate the aims of even the best probability sample. The refusal rate on political questions ran to better than 40 per cent even with the quota samples, which obviously involved respondents of more than average cooperativeness. The justification for the use of quota samples is that they constitute the best available procedure for getting detailed attitudinal information about cross sections of the French population during this period. As a precaution, analyses were based on as many of the four surveys as was possible, thus providing a cross check to give additional support where there was a question about the validity of a finding.

' 13 ·

INTRODUCTION

the search for indicators one may be forced to use them. This may re­ sult in significant new findings and the opening up of new theoretical directions. For example, a question in one of the surveys we used, asking if the respondent had a garden, appeared at first sight to be a useless bit of trivia. In following up a discussion by Engels, the garden appeared as an important wage supplement for some work­ ers, alleviating an otherwise seriously deprived condition. This al­ lowed us to consider the political impact of the "anti-Socialist" cityplanning movement that took workers from Paris slums and relo­ cated them on suburban plots with their own houses and garden areas. At many points our analysis may be considered triply hazardous; it is based on quota samples, uses indirect indicators, and rests on a small number of cases. We nevertheless present this evidence on the grounds that the claim makes sense theoretically and that although only flimsily supported it provides a fruitful hypothesis that can be followed up later with more adequate research tools. To omit the find­ ing would force a later "independent rediscovery" of the hypothesis. We engage at times in what is sometimes referred to as "testing the obvious." The information so obtained is duly reported. The "obvious," it should be said, is usually unsupported and often un­ true. It is frequently assumed, for example, that high income is cor­ related with greater conservatism, yet in a study of American auto workers, it was found that among the semiskilled workers, the well paid were just as likely to be Democrats as the less well paid.16 Sim­ ilarly we find the better-paid skilled workers in France to be as favorably disposed toward the Soviet Union as the poorer ones. Many assume that since France is a Catholic nation, it is not worth the effort to ask about the state of belief in that country. Yet when we do ask, we find 9 per cent saying they are "without religion," another 12 per cent who say they are indifferent, and 33 per cent describing themselves as nonpracticing. Some refused to answer the question, and a small percentage identified with other religions. This leaves only 39 per cent who describe themselves as practicing Cath­ 17 olics. As another example, it is frequently said that people in Eu­ ropean countries are "rooted," that they have a sense of place in stable, organized communities. A study of what was presumed to be a stable community in rural France found that only one-quarter 16 Arthur Kornhauser, Harold L. Sheppard, Albert J. Mayer, When Labor Votes (New York: University Books, 1956), p. 278. i? These data are from the Population Survey described below and in Appendix A.

' Η'

INTRODUCTION

of the population had been born in the commune. This percentage differs little from the figure found in an American community.18 "Testing the obvious" also allows some other advantages. Two studies may both support the hypothesis that radicalism varies directly with size of plant. The degree of the relationship may, however, differ in the two studies, being very marked in one and slight in the other. There may also be differences in the degree of radicalism found at a given level: the small plants in one country may have a high level of radicalism, in the other country a very low one. Such a finding then allows us to explore what is operative—whether it is greater religiosity, greater traditionalism, or more of a craft tradition in the latter case. The testing of an obvious hypothesis in this case points up a not very obvious difference, which in turn leads us to further original and important lines of inquiry. The Surveys19 This work is based on four representative cross-sectional surveys of the French population or special subgroups thereof. Our main source of information is a large sample of male manual workers questioned by the Institut Francais d'Opinion Publique (IFOP) in October 1955. We will refer to it as the Worker Survey. This survey also includes smaller samplings of white-collar workers and of managerial cadres for purposes of comparison. (The special problems of this study will be considered in more detail in Chapter 5.) The other three surveys represent the whole of the French adult population, all occupations and both sexes. In one of these, the Religion Survey (also by IFOP), only baptized Catholics were interviewed thus yielding a serious bias in a country where a large number of working-class people are unchurched. The other two surveys are referred to throughout as the Politics Survey (IFOP) and the Population Survey, dated 1952 and 1956 respectively. The latter survey is the work of the Institut National d'Etudes Demographiques (INED). is For the claim of European rootedness see Dwight Macdonald's "America, America!" Dissent 5 (Autumn 1958) 313-323, where he says "Our values are not anchored securely, not in the past (tradition) and not in the present (community)." For the figures on the French community see Charles Bettelheim and Suzanne Frere, Auxerre en 1950 (Paris: A. Colin, 1950), p. 78. For a similar picture of an American community see Arthur J. Vidich and Joseph Bensman, Small Town in Mass Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), p. 18. The whole question of "testing the obvious" has been discussed by Paul Lazarsfeld, "The American Soldier—An Expository Review," Public Opinion Quarterly 13 (Fall 1949) 377-404, especially p. 380. is The surveys are discussed in greater detail in Appendix A together with references to the original presentations of the results. • I5

·

INTRODUCTION

Two of the surveys are dated 1952, one was conducted in late 1955, and one in mid-1956. We are confined, obviously, to the events of the Fourth Republic. More specifically, we are concerned with a period characterized by rapid industrialization and continuously improving living standards. This happens to be of great value in testing the deprivation hypothesis. Since the Politics Survey was made "before affluence," while both the Worker and Population Surveys were made (to some extent, at least) afterward, we can attempt a limited trend analysis rather than merely contrasting poor and well-off workers at a given point in time. Trend studies are in general exceedingly rare, and studies of the effects of trends in affluence over the short term are even rarer. We can make no claim, therefore, that the political consequences we have found associated with "increased affluence" over this four-year period are typical. In fact, we shall argue that the French experience is in some respects more likely to be atypical. Whether the findings in this study recurred even in France during the ten years subsequent to our last survey remains to be seen. One additional precautionary statement is perhaps in order—the reader who expects to find familiar persons and events will be disappointed. Those looking for General de Gaulle or Maurice Thorez, for the street demonstrations or the strikes, for the curious era of Piney and Laniel, for the not-so-veiled threats from John Foster Dulles, for the reactions to Dien Bien Phu, or for Mendes-France campaigning against wine drinking will not find them here. Even where we might want to tie in the worker's reaction to such events, the means at hand simply do not allow it. While we could imaginatively resurrect these events and inject them into our account at many points, we could only speculate about their possible meanings to the worker. One guess is that for most workers such events were of little importance, since they were very distant and had little direct impact on their immediate circumstances. For workers, the everyday routines are more important. They are the overwhelming, dominating events, and, in great measure, it is aspects of these routines which have been the focus of this study. Nevertheless, even here much has escaped us—the summer heat in the factory, the smell of the oil jet that lubricates the lathe, or the jarring rhythm of the punch press, the deafening volume of noise, the journey to the factory in the early grey hours of the morning, and the uncertain sleep in a crumbling hundredyear-old house are all missing.

• 16 ·

P

A

THE

R

T

O

N

WORKERS

IN F R E N C H

SOCIETY

E

C H A P T E R

THE FOURTH

I I

REPUBLIC

BACKGROUND— THE P A R T I E S AND THE

UNIONS

In describing the Liberation Era of 1944-45, Gordon Wright says: No Frenchman . . . is likely to forget the mood of impassioned idealism, confidence, and hope that suffused the nation in those dramatic months. The disintegration of Vichy seemed to prove the bankruptcy of the Republic's enemies. . . . The flame of the resistance seemed to have fused together all patriotic Frenchmen, producing a unity the nation had not known for a generation.1 With the old elites discredited, the new leaders, brought to power through the resistance movement, promised the first serious reforms since the days of the Popular Front in 1936. Mass involvement, the new political parties, and their initial unity led to a sense of hope, long absent from the French scene. The first Constituent Assembly proceeded rapidly to nationalize basic industries and the property of collaborators. Extensive social welfare legislation was enacted, allowing payments for the support of large families, and social security was broadened to provide extensive medical coverage. The major task of the Constituent Assembly was, however, the writing of a constitution. The task was ^France in Modern Times (Chicago: Rand McNaIIy, 1960), p. 527. There is little need for an extensive description of the events of the Fourth Republic since there are already numerous competent works on the subject which may be consulted. The most important single work in English is Philip Williams' Politics in Post-War France: Parties and Constitution in the Fourth Republic, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1958). All references in this work are to the second edition. A revised third edition appears under the title Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic (Longmans, 1964). Williams' work is extremely useful on all points covered in this chapter and has numerous references not included here. Other books which are useful are the following: Warren C. Baum, The French Economy and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958); Edward M. Earle, ed., Modern France: Problems of the Third and Fourth Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951); Jacques Fauvet, La quatrieme rapublique (Paris: A. Fayard, 1959); Stanley Hoffmann et al., In Search of France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963); Francois Goguel, France under the Fourth Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952); Herbert Luethy, France Against Herself (New York: Meridian Books, 1957); Russell E. Planck, "Public Opinion in France after the Liberation, 1944-1949," pp. 184-241 in Mirra Komarovsky, ed., Common Frontiers of the Social Sciences (Glencoe: Free Press, 1957); O. R. Taylor, The Fourth Republic of France (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1951); Alexander Werth, France, 1940-1955 (New York: Henry Holt, 1956).

• 79 '

PART ONE: THE WORKERS

IN FRENCH

SOCIETY

accomplished, after one defeat, but then only at the cost of much friction among the major parties of the coalition and the withdrawal from active participation of the wartime leader, General Charles de Gaulle. After these beginnings, the reform effort came to a halt. The coalition of resistance forces split up, and immediate economic problems, particularly food shortages and inflation, precluded further social legislation. In Indo-China, France became involved in the first of two long colonial wars. A basic problem of the Fourth Republic was one of high expectations and high demands which were frustrated by the colonial struggle and by a political system that prevented any move to satisfy these demands. Frustration produced a strong reaction, some evidence of which appears in a 1948 comparative investigation that showed the population of France to be the most pessimistic in the nine countries studied.2 Political events were always a cause for pessimism throughout the life of the Fourth Republic. The unity of the resistance parties was permanently destroyed by the strikes of late 1947 and the U.S. pressures for a Cold War commitment. No stable majority could be formed among the fragmented center parties, and, lacking even a minimal consensus on issues, significant legislation was either blocked or hopelessly compromised. Problems accumulated, and at one point it proved expedient for the parties to support a premier who would cut down on the backlog of unsolved issues—Pierre Mendes-France in 1954. But after this interlude politics returned once again to "normal" immobilisme, which lasted for all practical purposes to the end of the Republic in May 1958. Economic developments, however, took a different course during those years. While the political situation stagnated, the economy, to almost everyone's surprise, was performing spectacularly. Although as late as 1953 the political commentator Herbert Luethy could write that French industry showed no signs of ever exceeding its 1929 record, only three years later it topped 1929 by almost 50 per 2 William Buchanan and Hadley Cantril, How Nations See Each Other (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953), pp. 27 and 147. The question asked: "When the war ended, did you expect you would be getting along better, worse or about the same, as you are actually getting along at the present time?" Eighty-one per cent of the French thought they would be doing better. The next highest percentage was 58 for Australia. Among West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States, the range runs from 40 to 50 per cent. Another indication of the public reaction to post-liberation events comes from a question in the same study asking about the government's position. General sentiment held that it was too rightist. The greatest resentment over the policies of the government was found in the "poor" and "below average" economic groups, among the males, and among the youth of the country. Ibid., pp. 150-151. • 20 '

THE FOURTH

REPUBLIC

BACKGROUND

3

cent. Production increased, and, more important, the profits were distributed so that substantial increases in real income were achieved by the "average" Frenchman. Despite official reports of steady increases in real income, half of the French workers kept on voting Communist. In all five elections of the Fourth Republic, the Communists, with monotonous regular­ ity, gained just over one-quarter of the votes cast in the first ballot.4 Their percentage in 1956 was exactly the same as in October 1945, despite the economic gains of those eleven years (Table 2.1). Only in the first "De Gaulle election" of November 1958 did the Com­ munist share fall sharply to just under one-fifth of the votes cast, and even then much of the lost ground was regained in subsequent elections. Thus, in their voting the French workers did not substan­ tiate the well-known hypothesis which holds that moderation in pol­ itics increases with income. Why the French left, and particularly the workers, did not respond as the hypothesis predicts is the central problem of this work. The French Working Class— The Social and Political Context The census of May 1954 gave the total population of France as 42,777,174.5 Of this total, 19,182,000, roughly 45 per cent of all France's inhabitants, were gainfully employed, a figure which differs little from the equivalent American percentage. About 6.5 million, one-third of the active population, were manual workers. This third of the population, together with their families, is the subject of our study. A working class that constitutes only a little more than one-third of the employed population is small by comparison to that of most 3 This point is made in Philip Williams, p. xxvii. For a brief summary picture of this development see Nicholas WaM, The Fifth Republic (New York: Random House, 1959), p. 21, and Roy C. Macridis and Bernard E. Brown, The De Gaulle Republic: Quest for Unity (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1960), pp. 20-22. A basic source is Institut National de la Statistique et des fitudes ficonomiques, Mouvement aconomique en France de 1944 ά 1957 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958). *The entire field of candidates contend in the first election. Unless one of them gains an absolute majority, a run-off election is held on the following Sunday. Since candidates usually withdraw, advising their followers to support one of the leading contenders, the second tour does not give an accurate indication of party strength. All discussion in this work is based on first-ballot preferences. 5 Ministere de l'lnterieur, Recensement de 1954: Population de la France (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1954). This volume actually presents the census results minus one commune which had not yet reported as the volume went to press. The revised figure, which may be found in the United Nations' Demographic Yearbook, is 42,843,520. See also the I.N.S.E.E. publication Mouvement economique en France . . . and A. Sauvy, "Les tendances de la population active en France," Population 10 (July-September 1955) 413-429. • 21 '

.

•

K) K)

5,005 5,154 5,431 4,934 5,517 3,882

2,546 2,540 3,073 2,295 3,180 4,092

RGR 2,131 2,295 2,136 1,980 3,246 2,695 4,266 837 3,603

RPF UNR

Socialist 150 129 105 107 99 40

161 153 183 101 150 10 140 169 167 96 84 57

MRP 28 32 43 76 75 37

RGR 29 21 27 19 19 —

UDSR

120 22 189

64 67 71 98 97 132

4 15 22 10 50 1

Others

4,965 4,482 5,505 4,861 4,618 6,747

19,190 19,881 19,218 18,952 21,478 20,489

RPF UNR

165 115 155 239 2,815 670

Others

Abstentions

Total votes

Conservative

SIX ASSEMBLIES (FRANCE AND OVERSEAS)

4,780 5,589 4,989 2,454 2,362 2,379

Communist

4,561 4,188 3,434 2,784 3,229 3,176

MRP

Conservative

SIX GENERAL ELECTIONS (METROPOLITAN FRANCE ONLY)

Socialist

586 586 618 627 596 466

Total seats

24,623 24,697 25,083 24,522 26,768 27,236

Electorate

Note: See page 2 for party abbreviations.

«The data for the first five elections come from Williams (pp. 440-441, cited in footnote 1). bThe data for 1958 come from Roy C. Macridis and Bernard E. Brown, The DeGaulle Republic (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1960), p. 258, and are for Metropolitan France only.

Oct. 21, 1945 June 2, 1946 Nov. 10, 1946 June 17, 1951 Jan. 2, 1956 Nov. 23, 1958"

Date 3

Oct. 21, 1945 June 2, 1946 Nov. 10, 1946 June 17, 1951 Jan. 2, 1956 Nov. 23, 195db

Date a

Communist

TABLE 2.1 Postwar Elections in France

hi

O

Ol

HJ

hi

¾

hi

^1 » *

hi

*

3

O

»3 1 H

M

THE FOURTH

REPUBLIC

BACKGROUND

other West European countries. In France, as in Italy, a high proportion of the population is in agriculture, and a high proportion is self-employed. Compared with advanced countries, France is remarkable for the size of its "old," independent middle class. This difference may account for some of the peculiarities of French politics. The parties must pay greater attention to the interests of farmers and small businessmen than, for example, is the case in Great Britain or the United States. If the occupational structure of France were similar to that of, say, Great Britain, where farmers and small businessmen are less numerous, the strength of the Radicals and Conservatives would presumably have been greatly reduced. An enlarged new middle class supporting the center—particularly the Socialists and the Mouvement republicain populaire —would have made possible a stable majority and might even have led to something of a two-party system. The French population is also characterized by its low degree of urbanization.6 For the working class, this means less of the clustering that is typical of industrial societies, and, as we shall see, this gives rise to some peculiarities in the outlook of the French worker.7 The many workers in "backward" or underdeveloped France do not see the productive potential visible to the workers in advanced industries. Living in a small town is accompanied by work in small plants. Roughly half of the workers in France are in firms having fewer than one hundred employees, compared with only a quarter in the United States. Such plants are usually nonexpanding family firms, which means the daily experience of these workers contains little to give any hope for improvement. with which we will concern ourselves here are the three that receive the majority of working-class votes, the Communists, the Socialists, and the Mouvement republicain populaire* THE PARTIES

6 For French urbanization in the comparative perspective see William E. Cole, Urban Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), p. 32, and also the United Nations' Demographic Yearbook. For a comparative view of city development in the nineteenth century see Adna F. Weber, The Growth of Cities in the 19th Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963). 7 This is especially the case in France, given the peculiarities of their urban split. About a fifth of the French population lives in Paris or its environs, the city itself having 2,850,000 in 1954. The next largest city, Marseilles, is less than a quarter the size of Paris (661,500); it is followed by Lyons with 471,000. There are five cities with between two and three hundred thousand—Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nice, Nantes, and Strasbourg—and sixteen with between one and two hundred thousand. 8 See Williams, pp. 44-153, for a summary discussion plus references to the major sources.

• 2J ·

PART

ONE:

THE WORKERS

IN FRENCH

SOCIETY

The Communists The Parti communiste frangais (PCF) is the most important political unit to be considered in any discussion of French workers and their politics.9 Understanding of the party and the workers' relation to it has frequently been hindered by theoretical models, explicit or implicit, which see the party as a monolithic structure capable of achieving total allegiance and near-instant response from its members. Lenin and other party spokesmen have been cited to the effect that the Communists demand the "whole of their [members'] lives" and that the party will be a transmission belt passing orders and information from the center to its members. These analyses overlook the gap between what the party desires and what it actually achieves. Alexis de Tocqueville argued that centralization can never be successful—that a central authority can never know about all the needs of the society, that it could not govern adequately even if it did know, and that centralization cripples local leadership. Many students of Communism nevertheless accept the totalitarian model as adequate. Organizational experts who know of the necessity for delegating authority and know the multiple commitments of organization members will still, on this subject, fall back to the view that power can be and is centralized, and that the contributors can have only one commitment. Analysts of Soviet Communism have stated the monolithic view in their introductions while later stressing the members' multiple commitments, the secret delegation of power, and the styles of corruption involved in evading the authority of the center.10 Our analysis will focus on these "submerged" features of the party, which are characteristically omitted from discussions that assume a totalitarian model. These features of the party are just as important as its control aspects, for purposes of both analysis and policy-making. If popular analyses stress only the control features of the party, one is easily led to the conclusion that no strategy can successfully oppose such a monolith, short of adopting an identical garrison-state organization. On the other hand, if we are aware of the centrifugal disintegrating characteristics of the party, we may see 9 In addition to those works cited in Williams, the following are also of some interest: Richard Barron, Parties and Politics in Modern France (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1959); Roger Hagnauer, Histoire du parti communiste (Paris, 1962); and Charles A. Micaud, Communism and the French Left (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963). io See, for example, Raymond A. Bauer, Alex Inkeles, and Clyde Kluckhohn, How the Soviet System Works (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956).

• 2/f. '

THE FOURTH

REPUBLIC

BACKGROUND

alternative democratic strategies for dealing with it, strategies that avoid a morale-sapping fatalism.11 PARTY MEMBERSHIP

A person joining the party must pay an initial ten francs plus a regular monthly sum, which varies with income.12 According to Brayance, one can join simply by cutting a coupon out of a paper and sending it in. He cites Andre Souquiere, the organizational secretary for the Seine (party) federation: "One should give cards to all those who request it, even if they were 'prevented' from coming to meetings, that is, even if they refuse to be effective militants."13 Brayance says that "according to the rules of the P.C.F., every member must be an active member in a base organization . . . [i.e., cell]. In fact, this obligation is not a rigorous one." He reports that in the Seine federation, perhaps the most active, cells of forty persons will get twelve or so out to meetings and only five or six of these will be militants. Ordinarily, he states, only one in five or six members will actually be militant. THE CELLS

Cells are of two major types: factory cells and neighborhood cells (cellules d'entreprise and cellules locales'). The party constantly struggles to shift people into factory cells and hold them there. The members' preference is usually for the neighborhood cells, since the meetings can be planned for times more convenient than just before or after work. Some firms supply transport for their workers. If a worker misses the bus after the shift, because of a meeting, he i i Evidence of this concern has been shown by a few policy-makers in the State Department; Harlan Cleveland, then Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs wrote: "There is a persistent, pervasive myth in the country that the story of the cold war is the story of one long, unbroken retreat by the West before the juggernaut of international communism. . . ." A national magazine quoted by Cleveland said, "No matter which side wins, Communism seems destined to gain in the end." Says Cleveland, "Widespread frustration in this country plainly would endanger the conduct of foreign policy and thus impinge on the national security." The same concern over the "myth of triumphant Communism" is shared by Senator Henry Jackson of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, who said, "Too many people believe that the cards are stacked in favor of totalitarian systems in the 'cold war.' Nothing could be more wrong." The Cleveland quotations are from the New York Times Magazine, November 5, 1961, p. 21. The Jackson quotation is from the New York Times, November 20, 1961, p. 1. 12 Discussions of wages and prices in this work will be in terms of old francs. It took about 350 of these to buy one U.S. dollar. is Alain Brayance, Anatomie du parti communute frangais (Paris: De Noel, 1952). He also quotes Auguste Lecoeur to the same effect. i* He suggests a difficulty in measuring membership by the number of cards issued since more are issued than are sold. The cells pay for those not taken by new clientele.

• 25 *

PART

ONE: THE WORKERS

IN FRENCH

SOCIETY

may have difficulty in finding other transportation. Shift work also interferes with cell activities. In some plants, the introduction of shifts effectively ended cell activity. If the employer is hostile to party work, the threat of penalties or firing always exists for factory cell members. For this reason the married members prefer a safer base of operations in the neighborhood. Brayance notes that the activity of the cells tends to vary with the character of the labor market—high activity in good times and low in bad. Since the party wishes striking forces within the major plants, especially in target industries such as aircraft and munitions, the individual's preference is continuously at odds with the directives coming via the "transmission belt."15 The neighborhood cells have somewhat different goals. They are supposedly made up of workers from firms without party cells as well as some middle-class persons and housewives. These cells meet in homes or in cafes or, on occasion, in the section headquarters. The grievances that occupy them are those of the area—roads, schools, nurseries, street lights, sanitation. The greater variety of membership in these cells makes for more active debate than in plant cells. Neighborhood cells are supposed to bring out a monthly journal, do local propagandizing, and give aid to party front organizations. They are further charged with responsibility for distributing party literature in the area. This is supposed to be an honor, but usually the same few people are active each week. The selling of I'Humanite-Dimanche and various other party publications (La Pensee, Femmes Frangaises) takes place on Sunday, the one free day in the week for most workers. Local cells are also charged with painting wall slogans (e.g., "Ridgway la Peste") and putting up posters. Both of these efforts, it will be noted, make demands on the member's only free time—time which may well also be demanded by his family. Unless the wife is also militant, family and party are at odds, and he is caught in the middle. Since this is his only day off, his personal disposition may tend toward the quiet day at home, conversing with family and friends or working in the garden. Another task for the cells is to provide guards for the headquarters of the sections, federations, newspapers, and the Central Committee. Brayance says that "it is rather difficult to find guards in sufficient number." They are also supposed to drum up support for larger party demonstrations. Says Brayance: "These demonstrations, whether they present a danger or not, never get more than a is Ibid., pp. 26ff. See also Maurice Duverger, Political Parties, Barbara and Robert North, trans. (London: Methuen, 1951), pp. 27-36.

• 20 '

THE FOURTH

REPUBLIC

BACKGROUND

quarter of the enrolled members of the party." Still another job is to raise money and forward it to higher headquarters. This comes from monthly dues, from the sale of publications, and from other fund-raising activities such as festivals, contests, etc. Since all of these functions require considerable time and organizational ability, it is not surprising that many cells have no militant who is both capable and willing. Such cells languish for lack of leadership, turn into social gatherings, or draw only minuscule attendance. On occasion, however, the party may send in an outside militant who can galvanize the group into activity. In a sense, then, these cells play the role of reserve troops. But, as we shall see below, the strength of the reserve troops declined continuously during the Fourth Republic. TRENDS IN PARTY STRENGTH

The number of card-carrying members in 1949 was reported to be 786,000. This figure dropped to 506,000 in 1954 and, according to Figaro, to 230,000 in 1955. A more recent estimate was below 200,000.16 In 1946 the members were organized into 27,000 cells. According to the figures of a party congress, the number had fallen to only 14,000 by 1954. L'Humanite at the time complained of the disappearance of "dozens and dozens of cells." PARTY NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS

Party members made up only about 4 per cent (in 1956) of the Communist electorate. Communist publications provide a link with many of these followers. The aim of the party press is, in Brayance's words, to "inform the reader of the events, always drawing the political conclusion from them." The most important national organ is the daily I'Humanite, which in addition to its fulltime staff tries to get one volunteer in each quartier who will be accredited and given a press pass. This gives the paper free labor and in many cases on-the-spot coverage. The circulation of I'Humanite fell from one-half million in 1946 to 170,000 in 1951. A special "press month" in that year was devoted to increasing circulation, but despite enormous efforts circulation rose by only 15,000 copies. Even if we assume some passing on of the copies, which is likely, and very generously assume five readi* See Edmund Taylor, "Crypto-Gaullism on the French Left," Reporter, March 2, 1961. The New York Times, in Maurice Thorez' obituary (July 13, 1964), gives an estimate of 240,000. Whether this represents a faulty or "official" estimate, or whether it represents a resurgence is difficult to say. If the latter, it only serves to stress once more the importance of our problem, namely that this party can "progress" even in the face of high prosperity.

• 27 ·

PART

ONE:

THE WORKERS

IN FRENCH

SOCIETY

ers per copy, still at best one in five of the Communist voters would come in contact with the message on a daily basis. With the passage of time and the dwindling of the circulation, the proportion of PCF voters reading the paper has become still smaller.17 L'Humanite-Dimanche is a "popular" weekly designed mostly for sale in the provinces. Brayance estimated the circulation (1952) as 300,000 copies. This journal is sold by the Sunday volunteers, and since they take on more than they sell the true circulation is hard to estimate. Even if we take the figure of 300,000 at face value and assume that each issue is passed on to five persons, only one out of three PCF voters in 1951 would have been a reader. If we make a more realistic guess about the number of readers per copy, reckon with over-subscription, and note also that most people do not read the entire newspaper, we must conclude that the influence of this "transmission belt" cannot be very great. The party also has journals for groups with more specialized in­ terests—for intellectuals, farmers, students, teachers, etc. After his discussion of each of these journals, Brayance adds that it is deficitaire—loosing money. The history of party publications since 1946 shows a continuing abandonment of journals, periodicals, and provincial dailies. One journal which perhaps needs special consideration is Radio Liberie, a weekly which discusses programs and provides commen­ tary. It attacks the Radiodiffusion Francaise, the government-con­ trolled radio station, focusing especially on their news broadcasts (emissions d'informations). No figures are given on the number of copies circulated, but it seems likely that only a fraction of the mem­ bers and hence a smaller portion of the voters would be thus influenced. Estimating "influence" by circulation alone is always hazardous. It is difficult to ascertain how many of the copies are read, what the pass-on rate is, or how much use is made of them by opinion leaders 18 who pass on the message by word of mouth. A declining journal, ι? See the Political Handbook of the World (Harpers: Council on Foreign Rela­ tions). Yearbooks from 1953 to 1962 show the circulation of the PCF daily La Marseillaise as having dropped from 100,000 in 1956 to 76,000 in 1961. The Liberie (of Lille) dropped from 84,300 in 1954 to 62,000 in 1959. The "cryptocommunist" journal Les Allobroges dropped from 92,200 in 1953 to 65,000 in 1956. This journal is not cited in later yearbooks and appears to have been abandoned. This may well account for a reported jump in VHumanita subscriptions between 1956 and 1958. After 1959, the downward trend in circulation again appears, the latest figure given (in the 1962 yearbook) being 195,000. is Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence (Glencoe: Free Press, 1955), passim.

• 28 •

THE FOURTH

REPUBLIC

BACKGROUND

moreover, may be competing with others that are declining at an even more rapid rate. AU political journals in France have suffered from falling circulation. The MRP daily, L'Aube, no longer publishes, and the Socialist daily, Le Populate, was made into a "confidential news sheet," and then it too ceased publication.19 The smaller decline of the Communist press, taken together with the influence of the PCF's "informal opinion leaders" in the working-class milieu, may well represent an increase in its relative influence. RELATED PARTY ORGANIZATIONS

Another channel of influence is the controlled organizations which are nominally independent, Le., the front organizations. Brayance's general summing up of these organizations is that they are all weak, of little interest to outsiders, and supported largely by the efforts of the militants. The fronts are centered around the various groups found in any society: occupational groups, veterans, housewives, age groups among children. The most important front organization is the Confederation generate du travail, the largest trade union in France. According to the party rules, it is obligatory for all members who are salaried workers to belong. Brayance says this rule knows no exceptions. Party sources, however, indicate that it has many exceptions, that of those eligible, more than one in four did not belong. The evidence is that the CGT's influence has steadily declined. Membership has dropped despite its insignificant dues. Party activity itself has driven many out. VaI Lorwin, for example, reports that ". . . the continued loss of membership . . . has resulted from the Communists' political manipulation of the CGT. . . ." Micaud cites a study of Grenoble metal workers which showed that a "very large majority" would prefer a single nonpolitical union and strongly condemned CGT political activities. As early as 1954 Lorwin was reporting that "For some years the CGT, although stronger than all its rivals together, has not commanded enough support to wage important strikes on its own." Drexel Godfrey concludes that the union "cannot be counted on for any comprehensive implementation of Communist party aims." In a summary comment on the status of the party today, Philip Williams claims: ". . . the Communists are in disarray. . . . Thenhold on their voters was loosened by De Gaulle in 1958 . . . local by-elections even suggest that in some areas their vote has been is Maurice Duverger, The French Political System, Barbara and Robert North, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 125. • 20 '

PART

ONE:

THE WORKERS

IN FRENCH

SOCIETY

halved. . . . And their hold on their members is weakening too . . . for the moment it is at its lowest ebb in twenty years."20 THE AGE QUESTION

Williams has presented data which show the Communist electorate in 1951 to be younger than that of any other party. It has been a constant theme with the Communists that they are the "wave of the future" and that the other parties are filled with the aged and the sedentary. Since the 1951 election, however, more and more observers have noted "symptoms of advancing senility" in the party. The protest demonstrations organized in 1958 by the Communists were described as "a march of the middle aged." Election surveys as early as 1956 showed that Communist voters were no longer distinguished by their youth, and even in 1952, as we shall see, they did not attract the young workers.21 A similar development took place in the composition of party membership. A 1954 party congress report stated that only 11 per cent of the new members enrolled during the preceding year were under age 25, whereas 29 per cent were over 50. Contrary to the image that the PCF is made up of "professional revolutionaries" who have devoted the "whole of their lives" to their task, the evidence suggests a sizable movement into and out of the party ranks. It seems likely, therefore, that few of the newcomers or marginal members would be thoroughly trained in doctrine and tactics. In the small sample of French party members studied in Gabriel Almond's work, The Appeals of Communism, "37 per cent claimed to be self taught."22 Nearly seven out of ten had no formal education within the party, and many of those who did get such training must have dropped out before it was completed. The evidence that the party increasingly consists of older persons, transients, and the non-militant leads one to suspect that the image of committed youth was spurious to begin with. Some sources point out how youth was pushed into leadership as a calculated s t r a t e g y d e s i g n e d t o c o n v e y j u s t t h i s i m a g e . B r a y a n c e tells h o w d e l e s'' See Charles A. Micaud, "The Bases of Communist Strength in France," Western Political Quarterly 8 (September 1955) 354-366; E. Drexel Godfrey, Jr., "The Communist Presence in France," American Political Science Review 50 (June 1956) 321-338; VaI Lorwin, "Labor and Management under de Gaulle," Current History (May 1959) 289-293; Charles A. Micaud, "Weak Unionism in France," Current History (August 1959) 74-78; Philip Williams, "New Mood on the French Left," Socialist Commentary (May 1961) 19-22. 2iTo be considered in greater detail in Chapter 5. 22 Reported in Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American Communist Party (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957). These authors present information on the short-term involvement of members in a number of countries. They quote Almond in this connection on p. 541.

• 30 ·

THE FOURTH

REPUBLIC

BACKGROUND

gates to federation conferences, which meet yearly, were carefully selected with a view to getting a majority under 30. The rules of the party in 1947 indicated the average age of section committees should not be more than 32-33 and of federation committees not more than 35. Older, experienced militants were often shunted aside to make room for younger persons. Brayance says that some left the party as a result. In summary then, we have a pattern of declining membership, declining interest in party literature, and a growing hostility toward the party and its politicizing efforts. All this happened at a time when living standards were rising, but despite both developments the vote for the party remained constant. A major task of this work consists in accounting for this disparity between the diminishing internal strength of the party and its ability to hold the electorate.23 23 For what it may be worth, it should be noted that all the information in this brief account comes from scholarly sources. An account by Victor Kiesel, a newspaper columnist, speaks in August 1961 of the "hulking guard" at the headquarters of the "most powerful Khrushchev political organization outside the Soviet world." He speaks of the likelihood of the party's seizing power "after De Gaulle," the whole framework of the article being couched in terms of what would happen "if they should take power in France." With respect to the CGT, he passes off the small number of dues-payers (he gives a figure higher than that of most other authors) as being a result of French traditions—it is a country "where unionists rarely sign up or pay their dues for a full year." As against the estimate of 14,000 cells in 1954 that we cited above, he reports "a network of 50,000 Communist cells taking directives." His imagery involves the view of a party that is helpless and cowed before the spectre of De Gaulle; but, he says, "against any other French political leader it could call out its labor cadres and paralyze France with a political strike." Riesel has apparently forgotten the clash of the PCF with the non-Gaullist government in 1947-48, when M. Moch, the Socialist minister of the interior, put the Communist effort down at a time when they were much stronger than now. Since that date, their major efforts have all failed. Williams cites the case where the CGT, with the aid of the other unions and with both governmental and newspaper sympathy, was still too weak to overcome the Michelin owners at ClermondFerrand. In January 1962 the party called for a demonstration in Paris against the right-wing extremist OAS who had machine-gunned their headquarters earlier in the week. Although this demonstration was called for Saturday, and although the Paris area contains a fifth of the French population—and probably more than a fifth of the militant Communists—the number of demonstrators was very small, apparently no larger than 3,000. The New York Times report (January 7, 1962) describes them as "surprisingly unmilitant" and reports further that "turnout was unimpressive . . . the result of the failure would be to call into question the effectiveness of party organization and the militancy of its forces. Certainly there was no sign of a mass demonstration capable of impressing the Secret Army's leaders with the Communists' ability to combat an attempted Right-wing rising." A rough inventory of the materials at the disposal of the American public is given by the listings in the Reader's Guide under the headings "Communist party (France)" and "Communism (France)." During the four years prior to Riesel's article—from March 1957 to February 1961—there was a total of eight references, three to Genet's letters in the New Yorker, two to Newsweek, and one to Time. The other two references are to more specialized sources with limited circulations. Riesel complained that Duclos and Thorez "are almost unknown to the newer generations." The reason is quite simple; there was nothing written about them. There are numerous articles on ducks, none, however, on Duclos.

• 31 -

PART

ONE:

THE WORKERS

IN FRENCH

SOCIETY

The Socialists The Socialist Party is nominally Marxist. It was founded in 1905 with the union of numerous splinter groups and took its name from the Workers International—Section jrangaise de I'internationale ouvriere (SFIO).24 In recent years the Socialists have been far from revolutionary, and the party has lost much of its working-class base, both in the electorate and in the party membership. In 1950 only 13 per cent of the more than 1,800 federal committee members were workers. About half of these members were white-collar workers (new middle class) in government or in private employment.25 In the electorate, workers still constitute the largest occupational group among the Socialist voters, but this amounts to only one-quarter of the party's support (Table 2.2). Because of its age structure and class composition, the SFIO has had difficulty in attracting new members and voters and especially in attracting new working-class voters. Age has been an important factor determining promotion in SFIO. The party's elderly leaders are at a disadvantage in competing with the PCF's artificially created image of youth. Of the three parties we are considering, the Socialists' following is probably the most fragmented in terms of occupational distribution. While similar to the Communists in having a large employee following (53 per cent) and a small independent proprietor and farm group, the Socialist employee group is split into three fragments—workers, civil servants, and private white-collar employees. This means that the range of social bases to which the SFIO must cater is greater than that of most other parties, which have large homogeneous core groups. In most of their outlooks the Socialist voters are like other nonCommunists. Ninety-one per cent of them expect change to occur through reform rather than revolution; they do not think their party should take power by force; a majority favor having their party in the government; and their motives for affiliating with their party are not very different from those of other non-Communist voters. Some of the internal strain within the party may be indicated by the fact that there is considerable demand for greater "intransigence" on the part of their leaders, while another large minority considers the party orientation to be just right. Socialists were, on the whole, poorer than those who voted for 24An account of the history, organization, and clientele of the Socialists is to be found, together with references, in Williams, Politics in Post-War France, pp. 6076. For the results of the IFOP Political Survey, see pp. 452-454. 25 Williams, p. 70.

• 32 ·

•

42% 10 14 6 9 14 6 — (217)

Industrial worker Employee Civil Servant Business Farmer Farm Labor Retired Other N =

23% 14 16 8 16 6 15 1 (406)

Social­ ist

Note: See page 2 for party abbreviations.

Commu­ nist

Head of family 17% 16 8 11 31 6 11 1 (235)

MRP

Occupation and Party Preference or Tendency Population Survey, 1956 (All respondents having preferences)

TABLE 2.2

17% 15 16 10 18 6 14 3 (212)

RGR

Party

8% 7 3 10 50 8 9 4 (311) 11% 5 8 45 17 7 5 2 (82)

Conserva­ tive Poujade 33% 11 14 8 11 9 10 4 (119)

18% 18 15 1 18 9 20 1 (71)

26% 9 5 11 36 1 5 7 (76)

55% 20 8.5 8 25 5.5 14 5.5 (36)

Tendency (Those not indicating a party) Center Left left Center Right

S

to

¾

O C3

ft)

Ώ

Co

03

l

::l

:::I to< !

~

...

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~

to
!

~

iIo.. ~

b:

~

..t>!

t>!

::a

b:

'"i '"i

::a

'a

FACTORY

LIFE

AND

THE

UNIONS

tion. This may be why current income shows little relationship with CGT membership. The basic finding in this regard is that those whose situations have improved are still considerably more likely to affiliate with the CGT than those who have had favorable employment both in the past and present (Table 10.16). The differences are most pronounced in the inactive-union shops, where we find the once-deprived perTABLE 10.16 Union Membership by Past and Present Deprivations, with Level of Union Activity Controlled Worker Survey, 1955 NO UNEMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE

SOME UNEMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE

Fear of unemployment

Union membership CGT FO CFTC N =

None

Some or much

41% 9 21 (81)

58% 16 5 (57)

None

Some or much

UNIONS VERY ACTIVE

63% 14 5 (43)

69% 13 2 (105)

UNIONS INACTIVE

Union membership CGT FO CFTC N =

16% 13 9 (103)

15% 20 9 (80)

51% 3 6 (35)

39% 9 8 (108)

sisting in their CGT affiliation and the never-deprived not affiliating. Moreover, in the inactive setting those with current fears but no past experience also do not affiliate with the CGT to any significant degree. Experience with unemployment, then, leaves a lasting mark which is untouched by subsequent improvements.38 Those persons located amidst active unions but with neither past experience nor present fear of unemployment have a level of CGT membership exceeding that of the doubly deprived group located in an inactive-union setting. In other words, use of the "organizational weapon" appears sufficient to mobilize workers even in good times and in the face of favorable work experience. S8 A similar analysis based on recent standard-of-living improvement rather than job fears showed similar results. See my dissertation, pp. 584-589.

• 237 ·

PART THREE:

CHANNELS

OF

INFLUENCE

Union Membership and Work Satisfaction Contrary to the expectation that union membership is a response to alienating work conditions, Spinrad summarizes the available evidence as follows: ". . . the most general observation here is that participation tends to increase with degree of job satisfaction." In support of this statement he notes that skilled workers in the United States, presumably more satisfied than others, have had the most active and stable unions over the years. The evidence of a more systematic character he presents consists of two studies of American union locals.39 The few other bits of available data offer little to support one hypothesis or the other. In an unpublished manuscript reporting the West German experience Linz found a weak positive relationship between satisfaction and unionism. In the study of the UAW, Kornhauser found that Agreement or disagreement with labor's political position also has little if any linkage with members' overall life satisfactions. . . . there is nothing in the findings to indicate that the deeply dissatisfied or disgruntled are particularly strong supporters of labor political activity.40 The French Experience One question in the Worker Survey asks, "Do you like what you are doing at present?"41 The findings show a clear relationship which offers support to both hypotheses. Membership in the CGT increases with job ifesatisfaction, while reform union membership increases with job satisfaction (Table 10.17). Actually this latter 39 Spinrad, p. 241. The works cited are Lois R. Dean, "Social Integration, Attitudes, and Union Activity," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 8 (October 1954) 49-58; William H. Form and H. K. Dansereau, "Union Member Orientations and Patterns of Social Integration," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 11 (October 1957) 3-12. Also relevant is the study by Toimi E. Kyllonen, "Social Characteristics of Active Unionists," American Journal of Sociology 56 (May 1951) 528-533. 40 Arthur Kornhauser et ah, When Labor Votes (New York: University Books, 1956), p. 187; see also p. 254. This quotation can only be suggestive since it is concerned with life satisfaction and not specifically work satisfaction, and the dependent variable is union political activity, not union activity per se. Another work which deals with the UAW and has argued the validity of the work dissatisfaction thesis is Irving Howe and B. J. Widick, The UAW and Walter Reuther (New York: Random House, 1949), especially Chap. 1. 41 Unfortunately this does not focus specifically on the components of work satisfaction, such as fatigue, routine, supervision, etc., that would allow us to make more detailed examination of this subject. It is also impossible to know whether one person's dissatisfaction is equivalent to another's choice of this same response. Until more work is done specifying components and validating responses, we will be forced to use the present crude indices.

• 238 ·

FACTORY

LIFE AND THE

UNIONS

TABLE 10.17 Work Satisfaction and Union Membership Worker Survey, 1955 Likes work: Very much Union membership: CGT FO CFTC N =

24% 10 7 (345)

Some

Little

Not at all

30% 8 6 (479)

34% 4 7 (95)

47% 5 8 (38)

relationship depends entirely on the Force ouvriere; CFTC membership shows no variation with the level of expressed satisfaction. These differences appeared even when we controlled for level of union activity. The responses to the work-satisfaction and the workfatigue questions were combined, taking those "very satisfied" and having work which they feel is "not very difficult" as having the highest level of satisfaction, to construct a scale with five degrees of difference. With this scale, our finding above was reinforced; the CGT strength rises from 25 per cent to 53 per cent, while the combined FO-CFTC strength drops from 35 per cent to 11 per cent as we move from satisfaction to dissatisfaction (Table 10.18). TABLE 10.18 Work Satisfaction Index* and Union Membership Worker Survey, 1955 Satisfaction index Very high Union memibership: CGT FO CFTC N =

25% 17 18 (65)

High 36% 14 6 (204)

Medium 41% 11 6 (220)

Low 48% 11 8 (110)

Very low 53% 2 9 (43)

a Scale obtained by combining responses to work-satisfaction and work-fatigue questions; see text.

French vs. American Practice— Exclusive vs. Plural Bargaining Agents The disparate findings lead us to review the evidence supporting * 259 '

PART THREE: CHANNELS OF INFLUENCE

the original hypothesis. The Spinrad generalization is based upon two studies, one by Lois Dean and the other by William Form and H. K. Dansereau.42 The Dean study is based on three plants differing in the character of their worker-employer relations, one with placid relations and no strike for eight years, one an intermediate case with two long strikes in the course of 15 years but with the relationship becoming better adjusted in recent years, and the third with a high level of mutual hostility, work stoppage being an almost daily occurrence. In the first two plants, attendance at union meetings was positively related to whether the workers liked their actual job operations. Attendance was also positively related to such factors as associating with fellow workers and length of time employed. These three factors add up to a high level of "social integration" into the plant milieu, which in turn is related to high attendance at meetings. In the plant with the long-term harmonious tradition there was little difference in union activity between workers who were prounion and anti-company and those who were pro-union and procompany. This social-integration factor does not appear to operate in the hostile milieu. As Dean puts it, ". . . negative attitudes toward management tend to be crucial motivation [sic] for regular union activity only where relations between management and the union are continuously and overtly antagonistic." In the non-hostile plants social integration is a more important factor than attitudes toward either the union or management.43 This consideration of the plant milieu might aid in accounting for 4 2 N o t mentioned by Spinrad but also containing some relevant data is t h e Kyllonen article, which reports a direct relationship between attendance and b o t h production rating and supervisor's rating. Kyllonen also finds a direct relation with social integration. T h e plant in question is a small (JV = 208) industrial plant in Missouri which, from internal evidence in the article, would appear t o have fairly amicable social relationships. T h e Lipset and G o r d o n article "Mobility and T r a d e U n i o n Membership," p p . 491-500 in Bendix and Lipset, Class, Status and Power, finds for a sample of the Oakland, California labor force that those with negative attitudes toward their w o r k are m o r e likely to b e active unionists (based o n repercentaging of Table 9, p . 4 9 6 ) . 43 T h e F o r m - D a n s e r e a u study is of a U A W local in Lansing, Michigan. T h e membership involved consists of 3,200 persons from 16 participating units, mostly foundries and forges, metal processing, and chemical concerns. This article is somewhat different in orientation in t h a t it begins by specifying a range of functions performed by unions, assuming that members will value these differently, and proceeds to look at the characteristics of those concerned with each. The functions stressed are ( a ) economic (primarily wages and h o u r s ) , ( b ) "political" (maintaining job control as against management authority), and ( c ) social, that is, entertainment, relaxation, and informal association. In addition, given t h e fact of a union shop, they note that there are two other groups, the apathetic members and the hostile members. Like D e a n they find that plant integration is related to union activity. This "plant integration" is described as " a n index reflecting the degree of satisfaction with the job and the department 'as a place to w o r k . ' " Those who were hostile or apathetic were the most dissatisfied with their jobs, a dissatisfaction which was apparently tied to a desire for job independence, mobility, and greater attachment to t h e larger community as opposed to the class and plant milieu.

• 140 ·

FACTORY

LIFE

AND

THE

UNIONS

the disparate findings thus far reported. In the United States one union gains recognition and thereafter is the exclusive bargaining agent for all the workers, regardless of their varying motives for union involvement. Thus it is conceivable that the "active unionists" are going to be different types in different periods of a union's history. During the organizational period, when faced with a hostile, recalcitrant employer, it is possible that persons with work dissatisfactions will be most active. Upon the achievement of successful organization and mutual accommodation of workers and employer, it is likely that the dissatisfied persons withdraw and that those with a "social" orientation become more active, i.e., those who see the union as an "expressive" rather than as an "instrumental" organization.44 Where the milieu is one of mutual hostility it appears that persons with "political" motivations (Le., concerns with job control) are activated and come to the fore.45 The French situation is quite different because of the plural union setup. The workers in a single plant may have several unions bidding to represent them and their interests. Therefore it is conceivable that those with "social orientations" can join a union with this outlook and those with "political" orientations can join a more appropriate organization. The American system may force apathy on those whose interests are not represented (which assumes that unions will for the most part represent only one interest—it would be difficult to be both accommodating and aggressive at the same time), while the French system allows all interests to be represented by different organizations. The unitary system in West Germany would also account perhaps for the lack of a sharp relationship between work satisfaction and unionism.46 44 Something of this analysis is suggested by Dean's article; in the accommodated firms, the socially integrated were the most active. Similarly, in the small firm reported by Kyllonen it appears that the milieu was one of mutual adjustment, and again the socially oriented were the most active. Since these socially oriented workers are also those satisfied with their work, this would mean that the correlation of satisfaction and union activity depended on the type of relationship developed in the firm. Those workers who were hostile to management, who wanted better working conditions or more job control, would find little attraction in the unions as thus constituted and operated. One would guess that as the work relationship improved, accommodating leadership would be chosen to head the union locals. « Alvin Gouldner's Wildcat Strike (Yellow Springs: Antioch Press, 1954) relates the events accompanying the shift of a unionized firm from a situation of accommodation to one of mutual hostility. Corresponding to this was a shift in the leadership of the union from a clique which was "accommodated" and "well-adjusted" to a group which, in Form and Dansereau's terms, had strong political concerns. This shift in leadership was related to changes in work satisfaction, this being one of the principal reasons for the deterioration of the plant milieu. *e See Linz, where it is seen (p. 383, Table 6) that the greatest dissatisfaction with unions is in the larger plants and (p. 384) that the complaint in large units is that they are "too soft," suggesting a frustrated "political" concern. • 241

'

PART

THREE:

CHANNELS

OF

INFLUENCE

A greater length of time with the firm means, too, that many firmrelated grievances (or satisfactions) will be more salient and will have more of a relationship with various kinds of radicalism than among workers newly employed. Union membership, for example, is more strongly related to work satisfaction among those employed between 10 and 20 years than among those employed 3 to 5 years.47 Industry and Union Membership Union activity and membership patterns vary substantially by in­ dustry. Major industries with a high level of union activity are trans­ port, mines, metals, chemicals, and construction, all of which have close to 30 per cent or more reporting unions very active. Low ac­ tivity or non-union industries are foods, commercial firms, and textiles, none of which have more than 16 per cent of the workers reporting the unions very active and all of which have at least half reporting unions not present. For the most part the active industries are at the same time CGT centers. Chemicals, mines, transport, metals, and construction have between 43 per cent and 27 per cent indicating CGT membership, while textiles, foods, and commerce report 21, 12, and 7 per cent, respectively, in the CGT. Membership in the FO within the eight major branches of industry varies from 5 per cent to 9 per cent, being lowest in textiles and foods. Member­ ship in the CFTC varies between 4 per cent and 10 per cent and tends to be inverse with CGT membership, being strongest in foods and textiles, although it has also some strength in the metal indus­ try. The findings with respect to industry are not a result of the dif­ ferences in typical plant size within the field; the general picture holds even when this factor is controlled. In general, type of industry makes more difference than does size of city or region.48 The industries with radical unions are char­ acterized by large firms, and, perhaps more important, they are ex« The data (Worker Survey): Length of time in current employment 3-5 years 6-10 years 11-20 years Like ΑΪΪ Dice M Like ΑΪΪ work» others work» others worka others

Per cent: CGT 29% 30% 28% 35% 20% 40% Others 21 18 17 19 27 10 N= (80) (168) (81) (130) (58) (95) a "Very much." *8 This finding clearly suggests a need for at least an extended discussion of indus­ try and politics, if not a separate chapter. I originally wrote such a chapter but because of the relatively crude categories involved and the small numbers in each, this project was abandoned. Additional evidence on the importance of industry appears in Robert Blauner, Alienation and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). The following chapter discusses the role of city size and region. • 242

·

FACTORY

LIFE AND THE

UNIONS

panding industries. The moderate ones are stagnant, such as food and textiles, or are industries where the workers are located in small units and have much middle-class contact, as in commerce. The expanding industries, of course, are adding to their labor supply, and, as suggested previously, this will mean for the most part the addition of radical ex-farm populations. The Question of Generations Little relationship appears between age and membership, a finding which on the surface would appear to dispose of the generation question. Some indication of a generation factor does appear, however, when we examine membership by length of time employed in the present firm. Taking only those between ages 25 and 64, thus excluding those not exposed to the immediate postwar events and those already withdrawn from active concerns, we discover the group who began their current employment between October 1945 and October 1949 to have the highest level of CGT membership. In other words those who began their present job in the immediate postwar period and who experienced the general strike of 1947 are the most likely to be with this union. This group, together with those hired in the immediately subsequent period, also has the highest level of reform union membership. The events of this period appear to have galvanized many workers into a state of activity and commitment which has persisted through to the time of our study.49 The drop-off in membership among the recently hired is greater in the reform unions than among the Communist CGT, which suggests that reform supporters are only mobilized during periods of crisis. Further evidence of this same trend is to be seen among the most recently employed. Among those in the firm less than a year, we find an exception to the simple curvilinear pattern, this group having a very high percentage of CGT members. Perhaps this includes CGT activists, who would be highly mobile either due to tactical job shifting or as a result of beingfiredfor political activities. IN SUMMARY, we may make the following points about membership in the major French unions. Current-income and standard-of-living deprivations, by themselves, are insufficient to account for joining. *9 The data (Worker Survey; those aged 25-64): Number of years in current employment Less than _1 1-2 3-5 6-10 11-20 Per cent: CGT 33% 22% 29% 38% 34% Other 12 14 21 21 16 N= (57) (92) (176) (176) (145)

' 243 '

21 or more 25% 17 (80)

PART

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CHANNELS

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Unemployment and job insecurity, however, both show a consistent relationship with CGT membership, the deprived showing the greater tendency to join. On the whole, the presence of a highly active union outweighs the importance of any deprivations; the active union can enlist greater proportions among the nondeprived than can an inactive union among the deprived. The groups enlisted as a result of past deprivations remain with the CGT even after current improvements and the achievement of job stability. The commitments and the social contacts made in the past perhaps insulate them against whatever sentiments might accompany later material improvement. These findings point up sharply the difficulty of analyses that are couched solely in terms of current rewards and current climates of opinion. Past experience, we find, is an important determinant of present behavior. From the viewpoint of the social system, this means that economic cycles leave lasting effects which are not overcome in the course of the subsequent upswing. This in part explains the persistence and stability of the Communist vote in the Fourth Republic long after many people (operating on the commonsense hypothesis) expected it to be "overwhelmed" by the general wellbeing of the society. As for the younger workers, those who have not suffered these major deprivations and who have known only good times, they are finding jobs in large firms and in plants with active unions. For both these reasons, the future promises a longlingering persistence of radical working-class politics. In this work the term "affluence" and the phrase "the general well-being of the society" are used in a relative sense, that is, comparing conditions with those which came before. The fact that things are "better than ever" in no way contradicts the additional fact that there still remain very serious shortages of housing, of schools, and of hospitals and that, for many, living standards are still far from adequate. This is to say that there are still very many real sources for radical politics—even this late in the new affluent age.50 so It has not been possible to give much attention to the FO and the CFTC (now the CFDT). Basically the situation appears to be one of failure for the former and fair successes for the latter. The sources of the CFTC success appear to lie in the fact that they too, like the CGT, have had young militants (coming out of the Catholic Action groups) and, unlike the CGT, these militants possessed a degree of tactical independence which allowed them to outflank the latter in making serious bids to represent worker interests. This in turn has forced greater responsiveness on the CGT, with the result that in recent years there has been an increase in the number of joint actions undertaken by these federations. The FO, by comparison, with its basically negative Cold War orientation, has become increasingly irrelevant to the current scene. See Pierre Belleville, "Perspectives d'action syndicale," Temps Modernes 18 (September-October 1962) 548-582, and G6rard Adam, "Situation de la F.O.," Revue francaise de science politique 14 (February 1964) 95-108. Also by Adam, "Situation de la CGT" ibid. 12 (December 1963) 965-976.

' ^44 '

C H A P T E R

SIZE OF CITY, R E G I O N , AND

XI

RELIGION

In the last chapter we explored the factors directly connected with the individual's work life, the influences and contacts made in the factory, the unions found there, and the changes in environment that are likely to be experienced as the worker gravitates toward larger and better-paying plants. In this chapter we will be concerned with contacts and experiences outside the work situation—in the community and in the region—and with religious influences. Again, rather than making only a static analysis (e.g., leftism varies directly with city size), we will be concerned with the processes of movement from one location to another and the political influences likely to result from the move. The Role of City Size In discussing the importance of the large cities, Engels pointed out that If the concentration of population in urban centres furthers the expansion of middle-class power, at the same time it leads to an even more rapid development among the working classes. The workers begin to feel themselves members of a homogeneous social group. They realize that, although they are weak as individuals, they are strong if united. Urban life tends to divide the proletariat from the middle classes. It helps to weld the proletariat into a compact group with its own ways of life and thought and its own outlook on society. The worker begins to realize that he is being oppressed and the proletariat develops into a class which has both social and political significance. In this way the great cities are the birthplace of the working-class movement.1 The basic hypothesis, both in Engel's work and in that of theorists across the entire political spectrum, is that leftism varies directly with the size of city. The major explanatory hypothesis offered is that the working class in the large city has less interclass contact and is therefore less divided by cross-cutting cleavages. With intra-class communication thus facilitated, the development of class action programs is considerably furthered. For the most part, theorists of all iFriedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, pp. 406S.

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persuasions saw nothing in the future but a further growth of large undifferentiated urban masses; like it or not, there was no control­ ling the process.2 Contemporary research on city size and leftist voting has shown general support for the major hypothesis in all countries for which we have data. This includes West Germany, Australia, Italy, and the United States.3 A specification of these findings suggests that most, if not all, of this variation is found among persons in working-class occupations. Wright and Masters find that, in the State of Michigan, the key consideration further specifying the relationship is the size of the manual labor force within the city, thus tying in with Engels' speculation.4 Previous research has established that the urban popu­ lation is more likely to have opinions on issues. This has been dis­ covered in both the United States and in West Germany.5 This find­ ing indicates both that some factors in the urban setting encourage decision and that many of those still in the rural setting are "open" in their attitudes toward political questions. The French Experience The French pattern bears very little resemblance to the experi­ ence of other countries. Organized Communist-type radicalism (that 2 In 1767 Cesare Beccaria commented on the dangers posed by the "immense moltitudini" of workers clustered in cities. The citation is to be found in Robert Michels, "Psychologie der antikapitalistischen Massenbewegungen," p. 244 in Grundriss der Sozialokonomik, 9. Abteilung: "Das soziale System des Kapitalismus" (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr-Paul Siebeck, 1926). This article also contains many other relevant references. See also the works of Robert Vaughan, The Age of Great Cities: Or, Modern Civilization Viewed in its Relation to Intelligence, Morals, and Religion, 2nd ed. (London, 1843), pp. 221-298; Sir Archibald Alison, Principles of Population (Edinburgh, 1840) Vol. 2, pp. 76-77, 82-83, 135; Andrew Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures (London, 1835). Ure's major observation in this connection is that he finds urbanism associated with a "secret cabal and co-operative union." For De Tocqueville's observations see The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Stuart Gilbert, trans. (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Anchor Books, 1955), pp. 75-76. VaI Lorwin cites the following as illustrative of the attitude of the ruling classes in early nineteenth-century England, "Lord Liverpool, congratulated by Chateaubriand on the solidity of British institutions, pointed to the capital outside his windows and replied: 'What can be stable with these enormous cities? One insurrection in London and all is lost.'" See Lorwin "Working Class Politics and Economic Development in Western Europe," American Historical Review 68 (Janu­ ary 1958) 338-351. The quotation is on p. 341. 3 See Lipset, Political Man, p. 252; V. O. Key, Politics Parties and Pressure Groups (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1952), p. 272; Linz, Chap. 10; Leon D. Epstein, "Size of Place and the Division of the Two Party Vote in Wisconsin," Western Political Quarterly 9 (1956) 138-150 and his Politics in Wisconsin (Madison: Uni­ versity of Wisconsin Press, 1958). * Nicholas Masters and D. S. Wright, "Trends and Variations in the Two Party Vote: The Case of Michigan," American Political Science Review 52 (1958) 10781090; Lipset, Political Man, p. 250; and Richard Centers, The Psychology of Social Classes, p. 226. ο Centers, pp. 122-124, and Linz, p. 349.

• 246 ·

SIZE

OF CITY,

REGION,

AND

RELIGION

is, Pro-Soviet attitude and CGT membership), instead of varying directly with size of place, increases with size to a peak in the larger 6 towns and then shows some decline in the cities (Table 11.1). Even TABLE 11.1 Radicalism and Political Concern, by Size of Place Worker Survey, 1955

Village

Small town

Size of place Large Small town city

Large city

Ranking Soviet Union first Pro-Soviet JV =

16% 41 (185)

11% 31 (157)

25% 49 (122)

17% 39 (174)

21% 41 (184)

Non-response N =

30% (268)

16% (183)

12% (135)

18% (209)

23% (242)

24% 9 (252)

28% 27 (176)

34% 18 (130)

29% 19 (198)

32% 14 (222)

78% (199)

79% (151)

75% (119)

82% (165)

78% (200)

24% (268)

19% (183)

14% (135)

22% (209)

16% (242)

Of those sensing much injustice, per cent who expect change 52% through revolution (94) JV =

41% (61)

46% (82)

40% (119)

Non-response JV =

40% (156)

49% (119)

41% (51) 42% (88)

39% (135)

24% (157)

Much interest in worker protest movements JV =

8% (257)

11% (179)

12% (134)

17% (208)

16% (237)

Union membership CGT Others N = Sensing much injustice N = Non-response JV =

β For ease of expression, rather than continuously referring to "places of five to twenty thousand population," etc., we will refer to the units of 2 thousand or less as "villages," those of 2 to 5 thousand as "small towns," those of 5 to 20 thousand as "large towns," those from 20 to 100 thousand as "small cities," and the units of 100 thousand or more as "large cities."

• ΜΊ ·

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INFLUENCE

this is true only for the Active Pro-Soviets; otherwise there is no dif­ ference in Pro-Soviet sentiment between the villages and the large cities. The revolutionary attitude, however, is most frequent in the villages. Only the interest in worker protest movements shows an increase with city size, and this is likely to be a result of higher edu­ cational levels rather than felt concern. As an additional check on our finding in the Worker Survey, a similar enquiry was made using our other survey material, this time relating the vote, or party preference, and place. If there had been serious disagreement between these latter findings and those of the Worker Survey we would have had cause for doubting the adequacy of that survey.7 As it is, however, these surveys also show no sup­ port for the original assumption of linear increase in radicalism with size of city. The general picture is more or less in agreement with the finding that the greatest radicalism is to be found in the large towns. Taking the male workers in the Population Survey, we have first a problem of small numbers (N = 262) and, second, one of nonresponse, which reduces to 195 those making any kind of response to the political question. The results show something of the curvi­ linear relationship of the Worker Survey, the highest support for the Communists (by 1 per cent) being in the large towns (Table 11.2). The working-class Socialist support varies considerably with size of place; it is lowest in small towns and in large cities, highest in the small cities. The combined left vote follows a pattern similar to that of the Worker Survey, high in the large towns, lower in the cities, and lowest in the small towns.8 ι The Politics Survey contained only 109 male workers who indicated their party choice in the 1951 elections. When the data are broken down by size of community there are obviously too few cases, in each division to allow any reliable judgments. For what it is worth, on the basis of these few cases, among the male workers no relationship exists, either the linear one hypothesized or the curvilinear one dis­ covered above. This is the case whether we include the non-response or not. s This combined "left vote" has obvious difficulties, perhaps the most important being the fact that "Socialism" itself varies with size of place. Alexander Werth, de­ scribing the 1936 election, says, "Rural Socialism . . . is something different from urban Socialism." He tells of an election meeting held by the Socialist "big boss" of Montlucon in a small village in the area. The "boss" attacked the "200 families" and the marchands de canons and the Hitler-Mussolini press. For this he was roundly cheered because the farmers hate the "200" and vote Socialist to be protected against big trusts—"the big milling concerns, and the manufacturers of fertilizers." The meet­ ing became really active only when it got to the discussion of local issues, e.g., the boss "had secured a 10,000 francs subsidy for the water-works; two of the roads had been classified as national roads, and henceforth the State and no longer the commune was responsible for their upkeep." The farmers wanted to know why municipal customs were so high, why city hospitals were not buying their milk, etc. See The Twilight of France (New York: Harper 1942), p. 75.

• 248 '

SIZE OF CITY, REGION,

AND

RELIGION

TABLE 11.2 Party Preference by Size of Place Population Survey, 1956 (Male workers only)

Party preference

Village

Communist 19% Socialist 27 "Left" 16 Total Left 62% Radicals 11 8 Popular Republicans Rightist 3 GauUist 5 Poujade 3 Others 8 N = (37) DK, NA etc. 29% N = (52)

Small town 36% 15 9 60% 15 9 3 6 9 (33) 11% (37)

Size of place Large Small town city 40% 27 6 73% 10 6 2 2 4 2 (48) 27% (66)

31% 41 3 75% 5 10 3 5 3 (39) 23% (51)

Large city 39% 21 8 68% 8 3 5 8 8 (38) 32% (56)

The comparison of worker PCF support (Population Survey) and Pro-Soviet sentiment (Worker Survey) shown in Figure 1 yields one striking disparity in the villages, where the PCF vote is small while Pro-Soviet sentiment is relatively high. One way of reconciling these two findings is to assume that the workers with Pro-Soviet preference are not turning out and voting for the PCF in the same proportions in different sized communities. Another possibility is that the Pro-Soviet village workers may still vote for the traditional party of the region despite their "wandering affections." They may feel cross-pressured when it comes to voting and, for the most part, resolve the problem by falling back on the traditional pattern. In summary, the studies show no clear evidence of the expected direct relationship of radicalism and size of place. Instead we find a curvilinear relationship, with the greatest radicalism in the communities of five to twenty thousand. If we had found this pattern only in one study we might have attributed it to sampling error; however, since the Population Survey also shows evidence of the same pattern we have been led to accept it as genuine. Since the absence of a linear relationship between radicalism and • 249 '

PART

THREE:

CHANNELS

OF

INFLUENCE

size of place was so at variance with our expectations, we controlled for the possible influence of a number of third factors. Controls for size of firm, skill level, and union membership, however, made no Per cent

.Pro-Soviet

50 Jf

(Worker Survey)

45 40

X

35 30 f

Communist

/

(Population Survey)

25 20

/

Village

Small Town

Large Town

Small City

Large City

Figure 1. Pro-Soviet or Communist orientation of workers by size of community. Pro-Soviet, (Worker Survey); Communist, (Population Survey).

difference; the Pro-Soviet concentration in the large towns persisted under each control. An attempt to separate out the small towns in the Paris area (many of which are industrial suburbs) also failed to change the pattern reported here. Our task then, is to account for this "French exception" to the rule. Social Relationships and Community Size The original hypothesis of linear increase in radicalism with size of place is based on the assumption that group pressures determine voting, and that the pressures for left extremism are greater in the large cities due to working-class isolation. The main point that we wish to make with respect to the French exception is that the location of the "isolated masses" appears to be different, having been in part shifted from the metropolitan areas to the large towns. While it is difficult to establish isolation on the basis of survey data, we can give some indication of this through the • 250 ·

SIZE OF CITY, REGION,

AND

RELIGION

analysis of the labor force composition in the large towns and through exploration of the scanty materials on typical social contacts. Community Size and Labor Force Composition In the United States, looking first at the employed nonfarm males, we find that the percentage of manual workers is fairly constant at just over 50 per cent of the labor force in communities of all sizes. The only exception is in the urbanized areas of three million or more, where the percentage drops to slightly less than half. If we include private household workers the percentage is approximately 60 and is again fairly constant for communities of all sizes. The only trends to be noted within this three-fifths of the population is a slight inverse relationship between the percentage of laborers and city size, and correspondingly, a slight direct relationship with respect to service workers. Assuming "normal" social differentiation, we would expect the greatest isolation of the working class in the large cities.9 The Population Survey shows a very different picture for France. Taking nonfarm workers only and excluding also the retired, the pensioners, etc., the large-town population is close to half workers, whereas the cities, both large and small, have only a third in that category.10 Besides the large concentrations of workers in metropolitan areas, in France there is the peculiarity of second centers of worker concentration. In these settings—the industrial suburbs or industrial towns—the workers are either relatively isolated from middle-class contacts, or possibly they dominate the setting, exerting influence on the small proprietors, who may have much in common with their clientele in their social origins and outlook. Size of Community and Social Contacts The evidence from the Worker Survey (shown in Table 11.1) suggests greater intraclass contact in the large towns. There is more union membership in the large towns than in the cities, and, more important, there is more CGT membership. The CGT tends to be 9 Otis Duncan and Albert T. Reiss, Jr., Social Characteristics of Urban and Rural Communities, 1950 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1956), p. 96; Robert E. Lane, Political Life (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959), pp. 265-266. ioThe data (Population Survey): Small Large Small Large Village town town city city Per cent of nonfarm employed male population who are industrial workers 37% 46% 48% 32% 35% JV = (141) (81) (138) (161) (162)

• 25/ *

PART

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OF

INFLUENCE

a working-class union as opposed to the FO and CFTC, both of which, as we have seen, have large middle-class followings. The proportion reporting a high level of union activity is somewhat lower than in the cities, but on the other hand the extent of union influence is greatest, these towns having the smallest proportion of non-union shops.11 The unions show the greatest penetration into small shops in communities of this size. Unfortunately the Worker Survey provides us little data on informal contacts within the communities.12 Some picture of this dimension of the social relations may be gained from the Politics Survey. The question was asked whether the respondents had discussed the elections with their co-workers, friends and neighbors, and family members. While the numbers involved are small and must be treated with caution, the workers in the large towns are more likely to report conversations with co-workers and with friends and neighbors than are workers in either the large cities or the villages, although there is little difference as compared to small towns and small cities. The large-town workers are also more likely to report "liking" political conversations than are others. This would suggest sufficient consensus in such discussions as to not disrupt social relationships, again giving some support to our assumption of class isolation. Some clues may also be found in the Religion Survey, although, for reasons indicated previously, these can at best be taken as suggestive. One type of contact which would be conducive to moderation is that with members of the clergy. If the worker has some strong commitment to the church and/or has regular contact with the clergy we may surmise that some limitation on radicalism would exist. The Religion Survey shows the workers in the large towns to have a relatively low level of religious interest, at least as indicated by the regularity of their church-going. A similar picture is shown with respect to "private" religiosity; there is a relatively large proportion who never pray outside the church. Contact with the clergy i i T h e data (Worker Survey): Village Union in firm where employed: Very active Inactive Nonexistent N=

24% 29 47 (249)

Small town

Large town

Small city

23% 43 34 (180)

32% 47 21 (126)

39% 35 26 (198)

Large city 39% 32 29 (219)

12 The large-town workers apparently like their communities—at least they have the smallest percentage complaining about the neighborhood (quartier pas agreable). This is the case even though the large towns have the largest proportion rating their housing as bad or very bad. • 252 ·

SIZE

OF CITY,

REGION,

AND

RELIGION

is most frequently reported by workers in villages and large cities. Of those who report "personal" acquaintance with a member of the clergy, a relatively low percentage of the large-town workers report seeing them regularly (23 per cent); this figure is markedly lower than in any other size of community, with the exception of the small towns. Of the village workers reporting personal acquaintance, 46 per cent say they have regular contact. Thus the large-town workers have little contact with the clergy, and even those personally acquainted with members of the clergy report few contacts. The village workers by comparison appear to be the most influenced. Why the Worker Concentration in the Large Towns? The location of worker concentrations presumably depends in great measure on the location of firms. The reasons for the French pattern would therefore have to do with whatever factors affect the location of plants. The answer which we can give here is largely a surmise, plausible rather than in any way conclusive. One major difference between France and other Western countries with regard to land use is that this country has had a national rent control law since 1914 which in some respects has "frozen" land uses as of that time. The rent control laws provided that a tenant, including business tenants, could not be expelled from his dwelling. Even after September 1953, when the law was changed so as to exempt business tenants, the property-owner still had to compensate the dispossessed firm with a sum equal to three times the annual rent. Another hindrance to the mobility, or more specifically, to the development of firms in large cities, is the property transfer tax, which runs to between 20 and 25 per cent of the purchase price. The consequence is that the expanding firm finds it difficult to enlarge its operation within the cities and is forced to relocate on the fringes or in smaller cities where the costs of buying or renting land are less. This "distorts apportionment of sites and structures" in such a way that the most progressive firms will not be found in or near the largest cities, as is the case in other countries.13 is This analysis is taken in part from Warren C. Baum, The French Economy and the State. Descriptions of some working-class towns in the Paris suburbs are to be found in the following: Pierre George, "fitude preliminaire des conditions economiques et sociales de la vie politique dans une commune de la Seine: Bourg-laReine," in Etudes de sociologie electorate (Paris: A. Colin, 1947), No. 1, pp. 67-87; Henri Lefebvre, "Les nouveaux ensembles urbains: Un cas concret: Lacq-Moureux et les problemes urbains de la nouvelle classe ouvriere," Revue frangaise de sociologie 1 (1960) 186-201; Genevieve Vailland, "Une Ville Paquebot," Revue de

' 253 ·

PART

THREE:

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OF

INFLUENCE

A move to the smaller cities or the towns frequently means a move into an easier housing market or, if much of the labor force is moving with the firm, it means that houses will have to be built. Hence there has been something of a proliferation of "new towns" in France, many of which have homogeneous working-class populations. This relocation has also been spurred by governmental efforts to limit the growth of the Paris metropolitan area and, for strategic reasons, to take industry away from the German frontier. Some evidence of this locational factor is found in the fact that the large-town workers are somewhat more likely to be employed in the large or giant firms (Table 11.3). In part this may merely TABLE 11.3 Size of Place and Size of Plant Worker Survey, 1955

Size of plant

Village

Less than 50 50-99

58% 16

100-299 300-499 500 or more N =

9 6 11 (254)

Small town 46% 20 12 4 17 (184)

Size of place Large town 42% 15 12 7 25 (136)

Small city 38% 13 14 10 24 (210)

Large city 37% 16 19 8 20 (233)

indicate that they commute; however, even though a quarter of the workers in communities of this size complain about work distance, this is only a few percentage points more than those making the same complaint in the cities. One additional bit of evidence supporting our assumption is that the workers in large towns have been with their firms a shorter time than workers in other communities.14 It is worthwhile noting the probable social structural peculiarities of the industrial "new towns." Where a large or giant firm moves !'action populaire 138 (1960) 607-619. For discussions of relocated industry see Robert Caillot, L'usine: la terre et la cite (Paris: Editions Ouvrieres, 1958); Jean Gouhier, Naissance d'une grande cite: Le Mans (Paris: A. Colin, 1953), pp. 100-104. 14 The data (Worker Survey; workers in firms of 300 or more employees): Small Large Small Large Village town town city city Per cent employed 6 or more years 68% 75% 56% 64% N = (43) (40) (43) (71) (63)

• 254 ·

SIZE

OF CITY,

REGION,

AND

RELIGION

into a relatively small community, it is likely that any "lessons" gained in that work milieu will be spread informally to all other settings in the community. Among the small firms, those in the large towns have the greatest worker-employer hostility and are most likely to have unions present. In the large towns we find another peculiarity: only in this setting is CGT membership greater among the unskilled than among the skilled. The special concentration of resources (perhaps, too, the overlapping of work and neighborhood) apparently permits the CGT activists to "push down" to reach groups otherwise left untouched. About half of the large-town workers live either in the Paris suburbs or in the urban agglomeration of the Nord department. On the hunch that the "large-town" peculiarity was due solely to these urban industrial suburbs, we explored the pattern elsewhere in France but found the same relationship. Even in the religious west, the large towns proved to have higher rates of radicalism than the cities of the area, which includes Le Mans, Rennes, and Nantes. Even in traditional French communities that are not characterized by any large relocation of industry, the workers tend to be isolated both ecologically and in terms of social contacts. The latter, in part, is due to the ability of the Communists to set up a parallel social organizational structure which is able to perform all the important life functions required or desired by their clientele. This is illustrated by the following quotation from Theodore Caplow, describing the situation in Aix-en-Provence: The city, which has a population of 27,000, is characterized by extreme social differentiation. The number of rentiers, professionals and white-collar persons is high, and they are as a class, extraordinarily secure, while at the same time the working class is extremely solidary. The community possesses a small university, a court of appeals, limited health resort facilities, some local industry, a medical center, some suburban functions, and serves as a market center for a very large rural area. About 40 per cent of the electorate are Communist; nearly the same number belong to parties of the extreme right, including a substantial royalist faction. Public opinion studies show an almost complete dichotomization of opinion. The real separation of these two halves of the community is illustrated by the tendency to double all institutions. To match the middle-class university, there is a strong "popular" extension university; the theatres, the bus-lines, and the restaurants are as unequivocally segregated as they might be • 255 ·

PART THREE:

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OF

INFLUENCE

under a caste system. The religious activities of the Church are matched down to such details as lotteries for school children by the parallel activity of the Communist Party.15 Deprivation and Size of Place One possible alternative explanation for the anomalous findings about workers in large towns would be that they are, or see themselves as, an especially underprivileged group. In a very general way there are two observations to be made about the distribution of deprivations: first, skill, high income, and formal education, together with the goods that income can buy, all increase with the size of city;16 and second, stability of employment is inverse with size of city (Table 11.4). The village or small-town TABLE 11.4 Worker Characteristics and Deprivations, by Size of Place Worker Survey, 1955

Characteristics Unskilled N = Primary education or none N = Monthly income of 30,000 frs. or less N = Garden N = Never unemployed N = Wife working N =

Village

Small town

Size of place Large Small town city

Large city

40% (263)

30% (184)

29% (138)

24% (212)

28% (238)

93% (262)

83% (184)

76% (137)

65% (211)

69% (236)

48% (263) 82% (263) 65% (259) 23% (225)

43% (186) 71% (186) 54% (183) 32% (162)

33% (138) 48% (137) 53% (136) 37% (109)

29% (212) 40% (212) 56% (210) 36% (168)

28% (238) 21% (239) 48% (238) 46% (198)

is "Urban Structure in France," American Sociological Review 17 (October 1952) 546. On the suspicion that the French finding might be due to a peculiar ecological development of south European countries, we made a similar run for Italy, using the DOXA survey, which has the same questions as in our Worker Survey. The findings in Italy support the original hypothesis of direct relationship between size and radicalism. ieThe same is true in West Germany and the United States, see Linz, p. 350, and Duncan and Reiss, p. 104.

• 256 '

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AND

RELIGION

worker typically has stable work at a poorly paying job, while the city worker has a high income and a higher standard of living but suffers greater job irregularity. A kind of compensating factor serving to supplement the income of the village and small-town worker, on the other hand, is the possession of a garden. Also connected with size of place is the fact that, either as a choice or as a necessity, in the large cities the wife is more likely to be working.17 Not all rewards and deprivations are neatly distributed in this pattern, however. The leftist large towns, for example, have relatively high percentages of persons with high job security, expecting some improvement in their firm, reporting a recent increase in their standard of living, and expecting that French prosperity will be passed on to them (Table 11.5). If material deprivations were on TABLE 11.5 Weil-Being and Size of Place Worker Survey, 1955

Village No fear of unemployment N = Sure of improvement in firm JV = Standard of living improvement in last five years N = Expect French prosperity to be passed on to respondent N =

Small town

Size of place Large Small town city

Large city

44% (248)

37.5% (179)

48% (136)

42% (204)

46% (237)

12% (242)

21% (165)

25% (132)

25% (192)

17% (230)

38% (245)

43% (163)

44% (124)

48% (185)

40% (217)

49% (164)

57% (108)

55% (96)

52% (132)

50% (173)

the whole a factor in radicalism, they would certainly not be able to account for the radicalism in the large towns, where the conditions « While some speculative sources have indicated that workers dislike having their wives work, we have found no evidence throughout this study to show that workers react with greater feelings of injustice or any increased revolutionary orientation. This would suggest that most instances of dual wage-earning is voluntary and is related to a desire for higher living standards. The increase in income with size of town, incidentally, occurs even when we take single earners only.

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are relatively good on most objective dimensions and where the workers see themselves as fairly well off. The Small Towns and Villages Rural communities provide new urban industrial workers. Hence if we wish to see what the "new additions" to the city will be contributing in the future it is important to examine the small-town and rural values of the present. On the whole, the basic fact to be noted about the respondents in the small towns and rural communes is that, aside from their general prevailing conservatism, there is a large percentage of "don't knows" and non-responses to the survey questions. Also we find them to be the least stable in the direction of their vote.18 In other words, we have large numbers of uncommitted persons in this setting, and large numbers whose party commitment is very limited. Many of these workers, if and when they arrive in the urban milieu, are likely to be easily "brought around" to a more radical outlook. It is clearly not as if they were solid, unwavering conservatives. Still another point worth noting is that in comparison with West Germany, French rural communities are considerably more radical.19 Where West Germany rural society "feeds in" moderate or conservative workers to the cities, French rural society tends to feed in radicals. Political Participation and Size of Place Regular turnout for elections tends to vary inversely with city size. The most conservative communities have the highest turnout, the most radical the lowest (Table 11.6).20 While the radical workers in all communities tend to be regular voters, they too show lower turnout in the large towns and the large cities. The best explanation we can offer is that the non-voters are newcomers to these commuis See Tables 11.1 and 11.2. The volatility of village voting was shown by the Politics Survey. is Linz, p. 347. For some possible sources of this rural conservatism in Germany see Alexander Gerschenkron, Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953). 20 We have taken only those aged 25 or more at the time of the interview, since the legal voting age is 21. Another avenue of influence deserving exploration appears in the fact that listening to radio news varies inversely with city size, while dependence on newspapers varies directly with size of place. The small-towner's use of an "official" news medium may also play some role in his "apolitical" political behavior.

• 255 ·

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AND

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TABLE 11.6 Voting Turnout by Size of Place Worker Survey, 1955 (Workers aged 25 or more)

Village Vote: Always Sometimes Never N=

83% 13 5 (227)

Small town 84% 14 3 (153)

Size of place Large Small town city 77% 20 4 (112)

83% 13 4 (162)

Large city 69% 21 9 (191)

nities and are not yet registered.21 If this is the case, with the reduction of farm-to-city migration and with continued acclimation, the city size differences should be eliminated, thus adding substantially to the overall left vote. Interest in elections varies directly with city size, indicating once again that the small-town and village pattern is one of participation without interest.22 The ability of local notables to convert or "hold" voters, let alone build commitment, is obviously limited. The Regional Factor We can further specify the impact of population transfers by considering the regional dimension. Probably the major movement is between the departments of the center-south and the Paris region.23 In general it appears that the east draws its new recruits from within its own boundaries. The distinctive political characteristics of the center-south workers are their very high levels of left voting preference, their Pro-Soviet outlooks, and, most especially, their 2i The irregular voters in large towns and large cities are younger on the average, which is consistent with the recent-migration hypothesis: Large towns Large cities Vote Occasionally Vote Occasionally regularly or never vote regularly or never vote Per cent who are aged 25-39 45% 50% 36% 50% Af= (86) (26) (132) (58) 22 The same is true of West Germany, see Linz, p p . 368, 371. 23 F o r the boundaries of the regions see Appendix C.

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revolutionary orientation. The same left voting preference appears among the farmers in these areas (Table 11.7).24 Workers coming from these areas are very well "prepared"; that is, they are favorTABLE 11.7 Region and Radicalism Population Survey, 1956, and Worker Survey, 1955 (Those with opinions only) Regiion Paris-north West

East Party preference Communist Socialist "Left" Total Left N =

MALE WORKERS

32% 23 8 63.5% (41)

44% 26 4 74% (57)

Center-south

POPULATION SURVEY

19% 35 — 54% (26)

31% 29 15 75% (65)

WORKER SURVEY

Pro-Soviet 35% Per cent ranking Soviet Union first 14 N = (226) Expect change through revolution8 43% N = (88)

38% 21 (289) 36% (124) FARMERS

Per cent Communist, Socialist, or of Left tendency 21% Radical (RGR) 9 N = (43)

9% 9 (22)

40% 12 (163) 45% (66)

45% 20 (297) 51% (130)

POPULATION SURVEY

16% 5 (63)

33% 16 (89)

a See footnote to Table 6.1.

ably disposed toward radical solutions before coming into contact with left militants, their organizations, and their programs. This most important source of new workers for the advanced urban in2* This finding is especially striking in view of the small-town character of the center-south region. The data (Worker Survey): SeineCenterSize of city East north West south 57% 56% 5,000 or less 13% 55% 5-20,000 13 21 3 12 20,000 or more 30 66 41 33 N= (238) (316) (178) (302) • 260 ·

SJZiE OF CITY,

REGION,

AND

RELIGION

dustrial sector feeds in persons more than half of whom are already leftist in orientation.25 The source of this nativist radicalism, we have argued in Chapter 6, lies in some peculiarities of rural social structure and in the pattern of land tenure. The most important factors singled out were the peculiar mixed size pattern of land-ownership in the Massif Central areas, which makes one's relative deprivation highly visible, and the mixed patterns combining "independence" on one's own plot and a need to work as a tenant or sharecropper on someone else's land. These experiences clearly point up the farmer's loss of status and also show him more desirable alternative possibilities. In addition, in many regions the disappearance of intermediate local leaders or notables, who in the past provided leadership that was considered legitimate and at the same time was politically moderate, has provided at least the necessary conditions for greater radicalism. There is reason to believe that the radicalism of the center-south and of Paris are interdependent. The center serves as a "feeder" region for the Paris area, sending "nativist" radicals into the urban labor force where these predispositions are picked up by the Communists and "reworked" into a somewhat different form of radicalism. Some of these workers return to their place of origin. It appears likely that they retain their "urban" orientations in this setting and exert some influence on the workers who have never left the area. Evidence supporting the thesis of returnees appears in the overall figures on migration of voters. These figures, including both workers and non-workers, show the department of the Seine picking up population of age 21 to 44 and losing population of 45 or more. At the same time the reverse happens in the departments of the center that have high Communist voting, such as Haute Vienne, Dordogne, Correze, Creuse, Cher, and Allier.26 25 There is a much smaller number of farm workers in the sample. Just under half of this group lives somewhere in the center-south. Farm workers in all regions, however, are very much on the left (well over half), and there are no indications of major differences by region. 2eThe evidence comes from the Statistique Annuaire de la France, 1961 edn. (I.N.S.E.E., Imprimerie Nationale), pp. 39-40: Balance of migrations of electors by age; proportion per 1,000 persons for each age group Department Seine Allier Cher Correze Creuse Dordogne Haute Vienne

21-29 +7.0 -2.4 -4.1 -4.9 -7.4 -4.6 -2.8

30-44 +0.6 -1.9 -3.3 -2.1 -5.7 -1.6 -1.8

• 261 ·

45-59 -3.6 +0.6 +0.6 +0.9 -0.6 +1.4 +0.2

60 or more -4.3 +0.9 +0.4 +0.6 +0.1 +1.1 +0.2

PART THREE:

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An illustrative case of what this return process can mean for the "education" of the workers is found in Wylie's study of a village in the Vaucluse, where the PCF secretary was a worker born there of an "old family"; he had migrated to the big city and there received his "Communist education." On his return, he was made the local party secretary. Although he had limited influence, on the occasion of a strike in the local ochre mines it was through his efforts that CGT membership jumped from one (himself) to 100 per cent of the workers. An outside organizer had no effect at all, whereas this "insider" was able to use his primary group connections and local reputation to achieve the ends desired. Incidentally, Wylie reports that higher-ups in the party would have preferred to remove him from his local post because of his intransigence and his "talk of revolution"—which again illustrates the difference between urban and rural Communism.27 The Worker Survey supplies indirect evidence of worker return. It shows the older workers of the center region to have the highest level of Pro-Soviet sentiment of all areas and all age groups. Furthermore, as indicated by the tendency to make first-place rankings of the Soviet Union, this represents a high level of commitment, not just sympathy. This is also the only area where the Pro-Soviet sentiment of the older workers exceeds that of the younger (Table 11.8). TABLE 11.8 Pro-Soviet Attitude by Region and Age Worker Survey, 1955 Region East Per cent Pro-Soviet of those aged: 36% 44 or less N = (119) 35% 45 or more N = (89)

Paris-north

West

Center-south

39% (138)

45% (67)

41% (128)

37% (113)

35% (65)

51% (102)

27 See WyKe, pp. 219-223. Some evidence of the same pattern is to be found in S. S. Nilson, "Le communisme dans les pays du Nord," Revue francaise de science politique 1 (1951) 167-180. This heightened revolutionary sentiment in the underdeveloped areas is also found among the CGT members, which points up a peculiar internal cleavage in their organization. The data (Worker Survey): CGT ParisCentermembers East north West south Per cent: Pro-Soviet 69% (64) 68% (68) 85% (33) 79% (70) Revolutionary 51% (41) 45% (55) 70% (27) 7 1 % (55)

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With the exception of the Paris and north regions, the older workers in this region have shorter tenure in the firm than is the case elsewhere.28 This is especially remarkable because the job opportunities in the center are probably fewer than elsewhere. In Paris the older worker can shift from firm to firm as the opportunities call him, but the small-town worker in the center-south would have few chances for such transfers. As shown in Table 11.9, it is the older workers of TABLE 11.9 Pro-Soviet Attitude of Older Workers by Region and Seniority Worker Survey, 1955 (Those aged 45 or over) Region East Paris-north West Center-south Per cent Pro-Soviet of those with seniority of: 5 years or less 32% N = (19) More than 5 years 35% N = (69)

34% (47) 39% (64)

48% (23) 29% (41)

63% (38) 44% (59)

shorter tenure in the center-south who have the highest level of ProSoviet attitudes.29 Region and Income Given the variation in average size of firm and the fact that the high incomes are paid by the large firms, it should come as no surprise that there are substantial wage differences among the regions. 28 Per cent of workers aged 45 or m o r e employed for less t h a n five years: ParisCenterEast north West south 24% 43% 29% 39% JV= (110) (139) (88) (134) 29 Another way of accounting for the high center-south radicalism involves the possibility of different owner-manager attitudes toward the workers, which might be expected in the firms of a marginal region. On the whole, however, there are no substantial differences among the regions in the amount of hostility perceived between labor and management. This was the case even when we made the obvious control for the size of plant. It is clearly recognized that this whole point about the influence of returnees has only the flimsiest support. All we can offer is data based on inferences such as the following. It would be reasonable to assume that returnees would have more experience with wage levels elsewhere and would more accurately assess them. The returnees would be those of short tenure in the firm. The latter group in the center region are more likely than other workers to judge the wage level of their firm unfavorably.

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In the Paris and north regions the pay is highest, followed by the east, while in the unindustrialized west and center regions the pay is clearly the lowest. There are no major differences in either marital status or in size of family which could account for this difference in income (by causing variations in the family payments). In fact what difference does exist is in the direction of more married persons and larger families in the unindustrialized regions, which would mean that the base income differences are even greater than those shown here (Table 11.10).30 TABLE 11.10 Region and Income Worker Survey, 1955 Monthly income

East

30,000 or less 30-50,000 50,000 or more

32% 42 26

Region West Paris-north 18% 49 34

Center-south

46% 36 19

54% 36 11

Region and the Perception of Income Differences The workers show no clear perception of these objective differences. When they were asked whether they considered themselves favored or unfavored with respect to salaries in comparison with those in other French firms, the results showed very little relation to their actual reported salaries (Table 11.11). The Paris and north regions, which have the highest salaries, have a smaller proportion reporting themselves as favored than is the case with workers in the east and only 2 per cent more saying so than is the case with workers in the center and south. As compared with Paris and the north, only 12 per cent more workers in the center-south say they are disfavored. This is in the face of an objective situation where 54 per cent 30 Income shows little relationship with radicalism in the center region; in fact revolutionary sentiment varies directly with income. The data follow (Workers in the center region): Income (in thousands of francs) ' 30 or less 31 to 50 51 or more Pro-Soviet 44% (124) 49% (77) 38% (26) Revolutionary 37% (106) 42% (59) 62% (21) There is, as would be expected, much less ownership of standard-of-living items in the center-south regions than elsewhere. There is also less of a wish to own these items. Even with income held constant the demand for such goods is still lower in this region. There is also less experience with unemployment in the region.

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TABLE 11.11 Perception of Differences in Income, by Region Worker Survey, 1955 East By comparison with those in other French firms consider self: Favored 26% Equal 37 Disfavored 37 N = (225) Expect to share in French prosperity 64% N = (238) Chances of improvement within firm: Certain 20% Possible 40 Total 60% N = (227)

Region Paris-north West

Center-south

21% 48 31 (289)

21% 46 33 (170)

19% 38 43 (282)

56% (207)

47% (105)

42% (204)

22% 39 61% (297)

15% 46 61% (162)

16% 45 61% (274)

of the center-south workers and only 18 per cent of the workers of Paris and the north report incomes of 30,000 francs or less. The unfavored west departments on the whole perceive their situation no differently than do the workers of the industrialized Paris and the north. Greater variation is found in perception of the future. Those in the unindustrialized regions show a clear tendency to expect less of French prosperity—they do not see it as affecting them. Realistically, fewer workers in these areas are sure of improvement within the firm, but curiously enough there is no difference when we add those thinking there is some chance. There were no differences by region in the percentage seeing their firms as making good or excessive profits. Although living and working in the center departments involves for the average worker substantial objective deprivations compared to other French workers, it is clear that this reality does not constitute his frame of reference. Rather the level of wages within the immediate area appears to be the point of comparison. This limited outlook has the effect, for workers in industrialized France, of "cancelling out" the gratification we would expect in connection • 265 ·

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with high wages, while for those in underdeveloped regions, it reduces the sensed deprivation we would expect from low wages. It is interesting to consider a "what if" question at this point. Many publicists are concerned with communicating the "real" conditions and the "real trends" of wages in an effort to convince the workers that they have in fact been rewarded and have no cause for complaint. What effects might result from replacing the localized frame of reference with the "objective" one? The most important effects would probably occur in the center-south regions and would include increased collective agitation to change the situation once it had been clarified. The geographical separation of these regions seems to have had the result of "insulating" underprivileged workers in such a way as to hold down the level of radicalism in the society. The Religious Factor Next to class, probably the most important factor related to voting behavior in Western democracies is religion. Except for this influence, which puts manual workers in a position of conflict, the vote for the left or Marxist parties in Europe would have shown substantial majorities rather than halting (outside of Scandinavia and England) at, roughly, the 40 per cent level. Religion, furthermore, blunted the direct opposition of classes which would have resulted from a middle-class committed to free enterprise and laissezfaire parties and a working class committed to the Socialists. The presence of religious parties in the field, by dividing both working and middle classes, caused the political struggle to be, at minimum, a three-cornered affair. Proportional representation systems and coalition governments, moreover, led to further fragmentation of the basic party orientations.31 In modern times the most significant type of religious party has been the "center" party—an organization which is more than nominally religious although not ordinarily church affiliated. Center parties have characteristically been committed to a humane welfare program domestically and to international cooperation in foreign affairs. Because they have something to offer the workers, such parties have had some success in gaining worker support, whereas traditional conservative (and religious) parties or middle-class lib31 See Seymour M. Lipset, "Party Systems and the Representation of Social Groups," European Journal of Sociology 1 (1960) 3-38. The political significance of religion in the United States has been pointed out recently in Gerhard Lenski, The Religious Factor (Garden City: Doubleday, 1961) and Benton Johnson, "Ascetic Protestantism and Political Preference," Public Opinion Quarterly 26 (Spring 1962) 35-46.

• 206 '

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eral parties had little to offer and have gained little working-class following. The center party, therefore, cuts across class lines and to some extent fuses workers and middle class in one organization. For the most part, the support for such parties has come from newmiddle-class people rather than from the independents. The forerunner of this type of party was the German Zentrum. Among the modern instances of this type of party are the French Mouvement republican populaire, the Belgian Parti social chretien, and the Dutch Katholiek Voiks Parti]. The most successful are obviously the German and Italian Christian Democrats.32 In general, such parties have an advantage over the Marxist parties in that they can more easily gain the support of women voters. In Socialist and Communist families, as we shall see, there is evidence of a split, the women being more traditional in their voting pattern, the men more radical. The presence of parochial schools also gives these parties an edge in the training of the next generation of the electorate. For the center party clientele, family, school, church, unions, and the party are in substantial value agreement. With the possible exception of the cross-pressures that may occur as a result of contacts in the workplace, there is little basis for value cleavage within the primary group life of the religious workers. In the Socialist and Communist camps, on the other hand, it is frequent to find the women of the family, the school, and the church lined up on one side and the men, the unions, and the parties on the other.33 Religion and Class in France In Chapter 4 we saw the difference between the religiosity of the working and middle classes.34 One-third of the male workers consid32 See Linz, Chaps. 2, 4, and 6; Sigmund Neumann, Modern Political Parties (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); Michael P. Fogarty, Christian Democracy in Western Europe; Maurice Duverger, Political Parties; William Bosworth, Catholicism and Crisis in Modern France, Chap. 7. 33 VaI Lorwin's account of the Belgian and French working-class movements points up some of these factors. He cites a programmatic statement by Monsignor Brys of the Mouvement ouvrier chretien as follows: "A triple idea governs the structure of our great Christian labor organization: that of totality, of complexity, and of unity. . . . Our government must embrace the whole person of the worker, the whole of the worker's life, and whole family of the worker, all workers' needs, and the whole working class. We want the working man and woman, youth and adult, in coming into our movement, to find everything there." In Belgium, given the segregation of the religious and irreligious populations by region, there is greater possibility of achieving this totality than is the case in France, where intermixture must almost necessarily take place within the factories. See his "Labor Organizations and Politics in Belgium and France," pp. 142-168 in Everett M. Kassalow, ed., National Labor Movements in the Postwar World (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963). See also Bosworth, Chap. 4. 3* See Table 4.16. For other supporting data giving a summary of the parish and diocesan studies of religious practice see: "Aspects sociologiques du catholicisme fransais," Vactualite religieuse dans Ie monde, No. 32 (July 15, 1954) and "La pratique religieuse dans les grandes villes francaises," ibid., No. 52 (May 15, 1955).

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ered themselves as completely indifferent or irreligious, while another half said they were nonpracticing. The farm workers showed a similar distribution of religious attitudes, although they did not have quite the same degree of disaffection. The middle classes had a third who described themselves as practicing, and the farmers had better than half doing so. The middle-class-working-class difference in religiosity disappears when we look at the women in this sample. The disparity of orientations within the working-class families is obviously a sizable one, there being two practicing women for every practicing man. A similar gap is found among the farm workers. In all occupations, to be sure, the familiar "excess" of religiosity among the women occurs, but only among manual workers could we say this amounts to a major difference in outlook.35 Religious practice should not be conceived of as a total and exclusive commitment any more than is the case with the commitment to Communism. Many cases, we may surmise, are partial commitments and, in fact, may involve conflicting commitments, as with the 9 per cent who say they are practicing Catholic workers and who indicate support for the Communists. Unlike the popular American analyses wherein people are either one thing or the other (one is either Communist or Catholic) it seems likely that many workers are trying to be both—to maintain some commitment to both faiths.36 as The data (Population Survey; those of all faiths): Occupation of head of household Middle Religiosity Workers class Farmers

Farm labor

MEN

Practicing Nonpracticing Indifferent or without religion N =

16% 47 36 (249)

35% 39 26 (401)

54% 29 17 (254)

25% 40 35 (91)

WOMEN

Practicing Nonpracticing Indifferent or without religion JV =

42% 40 19 (247)

43% 38 20 (448)

66% 19 14 (276)

52% 30 18 (73)

36 A study in Italy found sizable majorities of both Communists and Nenni Socialists saying that one could be a good Communist or Socialist and a good Catholic at the same time. See Fegiz, pp. 966-967. Orvaell R. Gallagher, in "Voluntary Associations in France," Social Forces 36 (December 1957) 153-160, reports the following: "In the rural community discussed above, it was extremely rare that this writer could count more than five male heads at Sunday Mass. Additionally, since 1946, over 25 per cent of the population (800 inhabitants) had consistently voted Communist. Though the question 'belief in God' was not subjected to polling, this writer knows from personal experience that a very large proportion of the male

• 268 '

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Religion and Politics There is a large difference in politics associated with religious commitment (Table 11.12). The practicing Catholic workers give only 17 per cent support to the Communists as against 41 per cent of the nonpracticing and 51 per cent of the indifferent group. The same relationship is shown in the support for the Socialists. More than a third of the religious workers, on the other hand, support the French equivalent of the "center" party, the Mouvement republican populaire (MRP). The remainder of the "religious vote" is scattered among the other non-Marxist parties. The degree of religious commitment indicated by the "nonpracticing" response is associated with only a small difference in the percentage favoring the Marxist parties as compared with the non-religious group. Some formal contact with the church and other regular communicants seems necessary for any marked political impact. Although religion, where present, has a sizable impact, the overall effect on the French working class is small since so few workers are practicing, and even among these one-third favor the left. If we assume that in the absence of religious pressure these workers would vote the same as other workers, there would be an increase of, at maximum, only 6 percentage points in the support for the left parties.37 Among middle-class groups and farmers, the nonpracticing and indifferent persons prefer the Socialists to the Communists, while the practicing Catholics show strong support for the MRP. The vote for the parties of the right tends to vary with religiosity, although here the differences are relatively small. population would deny such belief. However, in this rural community, only one individual had even been buried without benefit of church rites (and even the Communists say this was to have been 'buried like a dog'); no one has failed to take his First Communion, and Communists and non-Communists alike send their children faithfully to classes in religious instruction given by the parish priest. The questions 'attendance at mass habitually' or the 'last two Sundays' would not adequately measure the 'hold' of the Church in a community, where even though (except at Toussaint and Easter) males rarely enter the church, everyone is confirmed, baptized, married, and buried by the Church." "A similar conformity to the rites of the Church is common in the urban community (50,000 pop.). As in most regions of France, males are conspicuously few at Sunday Mass. Probably fewer urban Frenchmen conform to the rites than in the rural community, but most children take their First Communion and the wives of local Communists go to Mass almost as faithfully as those of the local bourgeoisie. A priest told me that 'last week' he had taken the confession of the wife of the departmental leader of the Communist party—'who would come himself, if he dared.'" 37 This is not the only political impact made by religion, since similar processes operate among the middle classes and among the farmers and affect much greater proportions of these populations. At the same time there are obviously other factors inhibiting the development of radicalism in these groups, whereas among the workers religion is of primary importance.

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TABLE 11.12 Religiosity and Party Support, by Major Occupational Groups Population Survey, 1956 (Males with opinions only) Religious orientation* Practicing

Nonpracticing

Indifferent, without religion

WORKERS

Communist Socialist MRP Others N =

17% 17 35 31 (23)

Communist Socialist MRP Others N =

1% 7 42 49 (83)

Communist Socialist MRP Others N =

6% 6 29 59 (17)

Communist Socialist MRP Other N =

2% 1 25 72 (93)

41% 30 5 25 (86)

51% 33 — 16 (49)

URBAN MIDDLE CLASS

11% 42 3 43 (97)

23% 42 2 34 (62)

FARM WORKERS

56% 24 4 16 (25)

42% 21 — 37 (24)

FARMERS

38% 2 60 (50)

24% 34 3 38 (29)

a Does not include a small number of Protestants, Jews, and others.

Regardless of the level of religious involvement, workers are more likely to be Communist and Socialist than are equivalent middleclass groups.38 Seventeen per cent of the practicing workers support the Communists, and the same percentage favor the Socialists, while still another 9 per cent support the anticlerical Radical groups. The 38 Another apparent result of the religious-political strain is the high percentage of those not indicating a political party choice, probably because of cross-pressures (Population Survey; male workers): Practicing Others Per cent with no party choice 42.5% (40) 31% (196)

• 270 *

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support for these same liberal or left parties among other occupations runs to only 8 per cent for the practicing middle-class males and to only 3 per cent for the comparable farm proprietors. Only among the farm laborers, from whose ranks many will be drawn into the industrial working class, do we find any approach to the pattern found among workers. Here 12 per cent of the practicing Catholic laborers support the left. Still, 29 per cent support the MRP and 41 per cent support the parties of the right. Those workers who are religious and moderate have already been encountered in this work. They are located in the east and west regions in France and in the small towns of those regions. It is the workers in the larger cities who are disaffected and indifferent. Unlike West Germany, where the very poor are quite religious, in France this group is markedly irreligious, both in small towns and in cities. This again is tied to the large dechurched and economically underdeveloped center-south region, which has no equivalent in West Germany. The most religious of French workers are those living in small towns and who are well off. This ties in with our assertion in previous chapters that of the well-off workers only those in small towns are able to associate with the middle class and share their attitudes and behavior.39 In the small towns the average and the poor workers are most likely to be nonpracticing rather than indifferent. Their level of attachment remains nominal; it does not disappear completely as is typical of the big-city poor. The small-town worker may feel ill at ease in the church, which is attended primarily by those of the middle class. Hence the worker's reaction, if he is poor, is to avoid the 39 Obviously in some areas emulating the behavior of the village elite would mean being nonreligious. Five of the seven small-town workers who are well off and practicing are in religious regions. Six of the seven well-off, irreligious, small-town workers come from irreligious regions. The data on size of town, wealth, and religiosity follow (Population Survey; male workers only): Well off

well off

Poor

S OF 5,000 OR LESS

Practicing Nonpracticing Without religion, indifferent N =

39% 22 39 (18)

14% 55 31 (42)

20% 47 33 (15)

OF MORE THAN 5,000

Practicing Nonpracticing Without religion, indifferent N =

16% 55 29 (31)

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13% 47 40 (107)

18% 35 47 (17)

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setting. If he is well off and in a position to associate with the village elite, he may well emulate their behavior. The fact that workers in the larger towns and cities are more likely to live in a one-class setting probably accounts for the small differentiation by wealth in their religious commitment. The city parishes are typically of immense size, and the clergy-to-population ratios are relatively unbalanced, because diocesan and parish boundaries have not been changed to handle the rapidly increasing urban population. The poor in these settings probably are either migrants from the nonpracticing groups of workers in the villages, or from the nonpracticing agricultural laborers, or are second and third generations of urban poor. Since many of these have been essentially cut off from church contact for more than a generation, they are either without religion or are completely indifferent. On the whole the extent of religion in French society and in the French working class in particular is very limited, hence the small amount of attention given it here. The French situation is in marked contrast to that of West Germany; only 8 per cent of French male workers support the "Christian Democratic" MRP, whereas in West Germany the comparable support for the CDU and the Zentrum is 25 per cent. When we take the Catholic West German workers only, the figure runs to 36 per cent. Thus we may say that on the whole the religious party in the latter country receives a workingclass following between three to four times as great as its French counterpart. The same minimal response to the religious party appears among the Italian workers, where only 15 per cent support the Christian Democrats. It is obviously difficult to predict future developments in such complex situations, compounded as they are with cross-pressures, conflicting demographic trends, labor-force shifts, and individual social mobility. It is reasonable to expect that some "merger" of the Marxist and Christian electorates will take place in coming years. The Socialists are gradually giving up doctrinaire anticlericalism, and at the same time the church is making more efforts to gain workers. With religion less under attack, both by the parties themselves and informally in the working-class milieu, it may be easier for working-class persons to vote for the religious party. On the other hand, however, the Catholic working-class voter may find it easier to support the Socialists without any feeling of compromising his interests. The decisive factor may be the performance of the related "action" organizations of the church and the parties. With the "withering away" of the internal structure of the Communist party • 272 ·

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and the absence of Socialist youth organizations, the Catholic Action groups may be decisive in winning the next generation. Small as they may be at the present time, still, in conjunction with the unity of values within the family, in the church school system, and in the CFTC, they may have an edge not possessed by other parties in the competition for working-class loyalties. Conclusions Contrary to our expectation, radicalism in France does not increase directly with city size but rather has a curvilinear relationship, being highest in large towns (those with from five to twenty thousand people). This large-town radicalism does not appear to be the result of any peculiar pattern of deprivation in this setting, since, in both objective and subjective indices, the workers there show "average" or better than average standing as compared to other workers. What does appear to be operating is that in these towns there is a greater clustering of workers, and scattered bits of evidence show there is greater isolation from outside contacts in this setting. One possible explanation for the unique clustering of workers in the large towns of France is that a different location of plants is forced on employers by laws which restrict the free use of land. This forces relocation on the outskirts of the large cities or in completely new settings, the latter frequently necessitating the building of "new towns" for the workers. There are some impressionistic suggestions in the literature to the effect that parallel Communist voluntary organizational structures serve to isolate the workers in a castelike separation even within the older large towns. While the small-town workers show the greatest moderation in their attitudes, they also have the highest percentage of those without party choices, suggesting a high level of ambivalence and, at the same time, that they may be easily swayed by active political organizations. This suggests further that, in any migration (or commuting) to larger cities and large plants, they are not likely to provide very solid support for the moderate unions or moderate parties. The secular center-south regions also appear to be "supply areas," feeding pre-radicalized workers into the urban industrial regions. A return or backflow also takes place and probably also plays a role in the political training of the next generation of out-migrants. The objective income differences characterizing the regions are not appreciated by the workers themselves; those in well-paying • 273 ·

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regions fail to see their advantage, while those in poor regions do not recognize their deprived condition. Religion has a very great moderating effect on those workers who have maintained a commitment to the church. Since, however, only a small portion of the workers are religious, the overall political impact of religion in the French working class is a small one.

• m·

C H A P T E R

X I I

A F F L U E N C E AND THE FRENCH WORKERS Our basic problem has been to explain the persistent leftist char­ acter of French working-class politics. How can we account for the immunity of this left voting to real changes in living standards? In this respect, the behavior of French workers challenges the most common expectations of contemporary social science. In attempting to account for this paradox, we have been led to focus on the rural origins of the French working class, on the pe­ culiar sources of agrarian radicalism found in many areas of rural France and on the migration patterns which, in effect, transferred this radicalism into the urban milieu.1 Largely as a result of these origins, French working-class organizations acquired a radical-left political orientation, which in turn was continually fed and rein­ forced by the new recruits coming from the countryside. The later appearance of working-class affluence in France, therefore, took place in a milieu dominated by radical organizations, the Commu­ nist Party and its affiliates. The militants in these organizations, through their domination of informal activities in both factory and neighborhood, have been able to provide workers with a Communist frame of reference for interpreting and judging the meaning of the new affluence. The demonstrated importance of the social structural determi­ nants of politics means, as we have repeatedly stressed, that the "economic" factor plays a pronouncedly secondary role. For the most part our findings, based on French Fourth Republic experi­ ence, lead us to reject the thesis that affluence "makes" conserva­ tives. On the contrary, we have indicated a number of ways in which increased affluence is correlated with social structural changes which increase radicalism. The industrial transformations taking place in France and the associated population movements work for the Com­ munists rather than against them. What economic development does for the Communists is to bring previously inaccessible workers with­ in reach. Workers are removed from small shops, villages, and un­ derdeveloped regions and are brought to large plants in developed regions. In these new locations, where typically the pay and fringe ι As we have noted earlier, agrarian radicalism is also found in those other countries having a large leftist movement—in Italy, Spain, and Finland.

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benefits are considerably higher, the relocated worker comes in contact with Communist activists for the first time. French Working-Class Radicalism: A Summary Review An inferential case (and therefore one with only limited support) has been made in this work for the thesis that French working-class radicalism has its origins in certain areas of French rural life. This rural radicalism is centered in those areas having mixed land-tenure arrangements and farms of varying size, and in which clerical and "aristocratic" influence has declined or disappeared. The radicalizing experiences appear to be connected with sharecropping tenancy, especially in those areas where other land-tenure arrangements also exist. In addition, the dampening influence of conservative clerical and lay opinion leaders, who can back up their opinions with some important sanctions, is not present to check leftist tendencies. Radical opinion leaders, however, are present in the persons of those who commute daily (or on a less frequent basis) to large, wellpaying plants outside the area and who bring back a political message learned in the plant. Others have returned in advanced years to their home communities after having spent their adult lifetimes in the industrialized regions. These people, although few in numbers, apparently play key roles in transmitting the radical message into an otherwise inaccessible milieu. Their informal connections in the rural social structure give them an advantage, a degree of success, which would not be possible for an outside organizer or militant. The rural economic and social structures, therefore, predispose the inhabitants toward radical solutions; the influence of the returnees serves to refine the crude, simple, nativist radical response. It is the de-Christianization of the countryside that gives the returnee pattern its importance. Without de-Christianization the influence of returnees would probably be insignificant. Organized radicalism originates relatively high up in the working-class social structure, among those having the intellectual abilities needed to proliferate programs and to link events and solutions and also the necessary organizational abilities. The development of a mass left party depends on its ability to push both the lesson and the organization "down" into the social structure. "Pushing down" is by no means a simple task. Diminishing organizational resources, plus the increasing inaccessibility (physically, psychologically, or because other leadership dominates) of the poorer clientele makes this no easy or natural avenue for a radical party. In France, the left gains a peculiar, unplanned—and therefore un• 276 ·

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foreseen—advantage. As we have seen, religiosity within the French working class varies directly with well-being, whereas in West Germany, by comparison, the relationship is inverse. This means that in France there is less resistance from the bottom to the efforts of the political left. The de-Christianized rural areas are open to their activities, and so too are the urban unskilled and semiskilled ranks, which in large measure are recruited from ex-farmers and sons of farmers. So it is probably easier for the working-class returnee to transmit a radical lesson in rural France than for the West German returnee to do so in rural Germany. In the transfer process by which the rural population is shifted into the urban labor force, the ports of entry and the influences exerted at these points play a key role. For ex-farmers and the children of farmers, the available jobs prove to be semiskilled and unskilled jobs, particularly those where there is some carry-over of rural skills. This means that they usually make their first entry into construction work and, to a lesser extent, into the metal, automobile, and chemical industries. While the specific industrial ports of entry may be similar in all advanced countries, their significance will vary depending on who exercises political influence at these points. On the whole, if one went by the objective character of the work situation alone, one would say that construction workers "should" be radicals. In the United States, however, they have never been singled out as such, and in fact, if judged by their union leaders, we would list them as among the most conservative of manual workers. In the French case, the unions in the building trades have long been Communist dominated (and before that were in the revolutionary wing of the CGT); hence workers who are radically disposed by their rural experience or who have been influenced by kinsmen returning from the industrial labor force receive an even more decisive political education at the point of entry into the urban industrial society. By comparison, in the United States or in West Germany none of these educational experiences occur. As we suggested earlier, farmers who have become manual workers prefer work in small shops, these being less bureaucratized and closer to their previous work experience. They may have some fear or awe of the giant plants. In these small shops in France the level of union membership is twice that in West Germany. Many of these unionists, apparently, have carried their membership with them from another setting, undoubtedly from the larger unionized plants. (Whether the small plant is in a big city or in a rural area makes little difference for the immediate purpose, since both are likely to

. 2JJ .

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be entry points for new recruits from the farm.) While these unionists may well be isolated members, their role should not be underemphasized, especially in a politically inactive or ideologically unstructured milieu.2 Another important difference in the West German-French contrast is that in the former we have nonpolitical unions whereas in France the opposite is the case. The marked differences in union orientation in different countries may be traced back to historical sources—to the time of the initial organizational efforts or to later power struggles and resultant shifts in leadership. These early, determining events may well be the result of such adventitious factors as who stayed the longest for a crucial vote, how many delegates were disaccredited at a key meeting, and the relative leadership abilities of the factions at the time of the founding. Parallel organizational support is also important. The CGT is most successful where PCF support has been present, and the CFTC is strong where allied clerical organizations exist. Regardless of historical origins, however, the unions and their orientations constitute the "givens" of the contemporary situation we are examining, and, depending on the "given," markedly different results will follow. Aside from the role of the unions and parties, the basic economic facts and social structural transformations are roughly the same in all advanced nations. We see the same farm-to-city movements, the same ports of entry, and the same increase in economic rewards associated with the move. These facts then cannot account for the difference in political results. The sources of the French difference, therefore, must lie in other factors. Our evidence points to something about the farm setting, the ports of entry, and the unions in the working-class milieu. The unions constitute the most important influence on workingclass politics to be discovered in this study. The CGT, the most important of the three major unions, dominates the advanced, rapidly growing, large plants in the economy. These locations are the end points of the working-class career. After passing through the ports of entry, the workers move on to big plants, graduating from the outdoor and seasonal work of construction to the more stable jobs in chemicals or in the metal industries. After a two-fold political preparation, then, the worker comes into the setting which offers the highest pay and the handsomest range of fringe benefits. Here, also, are the most active and most highly politicized unions the worker 2 See Lipset, Union Democracy (Garden City: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1962), p. 224n. Brayance notes the ability of PCF militants to galvanize the otherwise latent potential of cells lacking their own activists.

• 2j8 ·

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WORKERS

has ever experienced. Only very special sets of circumstances can insulate or remove workers from these influences, and even then only small groups within these plants can be so isolated. Although most accounts stress the weakness of French unions, offering as evidence their inability significantly to influence wages and hours, in their political influence they appear rather formidable. Within this modern industrial milieu, therefore, we have stressed the primacy of the personal influence factor as opposed to any impact of economic rewards. Our basic finding may be put generally as follows: Regardless of the level of rewards and deprivations, where the influences on the workers are the same, their attitudes are the same. This was explored in the chapters on income and living standards. In the active union settings we found all workers, from the poorest to the best off, sharing the same political outlooks. Only where the unions were not highly active did we find differentiation by income level. In such cases, where union resources are scarce, political pressures are not equally distributed throughout the plant. With our information we cannot demonstrate whether the higher radicalism of the poor in these settings indicates a realistic assessment by the union of its chances and therefore a rational use of its resources, or whether this indicates the union's acceptance of commonsense hypotheses about where the most easily mobilized clientele are to be found. There are two further sources of working-class radicalism which can be put under the heading of losses or, following our previous figure, "ports of exit." The most important loss of "working-class talent" in any society is obviously through mobility into the middle class. We can only touch lightly on these considerations, since they have not been central to the findings of this work. They are, however, likely to be of great importance in accounting for the peculiarities of the French working class. Leftist workers in France appear to be disproportionately "retained" in their occupational milieu; that is, they apparently reject the possibility of a move into the middle class when the occasion arises. Mme Peyre's analysis of educational opportunity in France shows that the children of workers in Paris, where academic education is easily obtained, enter instead the vocational schools which train them for skilled labor jobs. What would otherwise be a serious and continuous drain of the available "left" talents does not take place, at least not in this important Communist center. To the extent that mobility does take place (and the comparative mobility studies make clear that France differs little from other countries in this re• 279 ·

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spect), it is prevalent in nonmetropolitan areas and, also, is more frequent among religious persons, that is, among the non-left workers. This suggests that two processes are operating: a deflection of mobility aims among radical workers, and a continuous loss through mobility of those who might supply conservative or moderate working-class leadership. Workers also remain among their occupational peers because of the peculiar residential patterns in France. Rent control (dating from 1914, it will be remembered) served to freeze land uses and thereby to keep populations in place. The normal sorting out expected in a free market setting was prevented; conservative workers could not move out to other settings as has happened, for example, in the United States. The freezing of land uses in effect keeps moderates in a setting where Communist militants serve as the informal opinion leaders. The Working-Class Moderates Moderation may be "negative," it may be uninformed, a passive, receptive thing, a "moderation of indifference or apathy," or, on the other hand, it may involve a positive choice, an informed commitment to a moderate party. The location of the negative kind of moderation does not give any basis for optimism about the future of moderation in French politics. Those without a political position tend to be located in small shops and small towns. If anything, their economic position is likely to worsen, at least relatively, in the years to come. While such a change of their condition is not likely to make them into Communist supporters (at least in the absence of Communist militants in these locations), it may play a role in their political predispositions that will become important if they move to a larger community where Communist or CGT activists are present. Hence, for the "moderation of apathy" (or je m'en foutisme), economic development means the pushing of these uncommitted persons into the urban industrial labor force, into the ports of entry discussed above, and into a highly politicized milieu dominated by Communists. Most of the committed moderates are Socialists, with small minorities of Radicals and Popular Republicans (MRP), and an even smaller group of supporters of De Gaulle and of the Conservatives. On the whole, these committed moderates also appear to offer little in the way of a "new direction" in French working-class politics. The main point about them, in marked contrast to the Communists, is their limited interest and commitment. Their involvement in pol• 280 ·

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WORKERS

itics usually consists of the mere fact of voting, and even that is associated with little or no understanding of political issues. Repeatedly we found a pattern of "participation without interest" within this group. More detailed study of the well-off moderates showed very little to indicate that affluence had made these workers conservative. Our best guess, supported by indirect evidence, is that the affluent moderates have in a sense "inherited" from their parents both a concern with living standards and a moderate political orientation. Those in this group, from which moderate working-class leadership might be recruited, are likely to set themselves apart from other workers (being concerned with status symbols rather than with status within work groups or in working-class neighborhoods). Any moderating role they might play as informal opinion leaders is thereby lost. Ironically, it is these workers who show little interest in defending the existing social order. They appear to lack the specific requirements needed to defend it, political knowledge and informal access to workers. Their distance from the workers probably stems from the fact that many are downward mobile, falling into the working class from a middle-class position or from the ranks of the independent farmers. Rather than performing an educational task, therefore, they are concerned with reestablishing their former position. Degrees of affluence, as we have seen, show little consistent relationship with moderate politics. This means that any movement aimed at organizing the moderate clientele in the working class will have to bridge the skill levels and cut across sizable income differences; large geographical distances will also have to be spanned. Given these difficulties, together with the likelihood of varying orientations on the part of moderate subgroups (the poor seeking economic betterment, the well off seeking enhanced status), the possibility of moderate unity appears small. The best guess is that these non-Communists will continue to split their vote across the entire spectrum of parties, each suffering gradual attrition in favor of the Communists. The social supports for moderate or conservative voting patterns in urban working-class districts are clearly few and far between. Working in favor of moderation is the fact that the Communist movement in France appears to have a generational character, the vanguard generation now being well along into middle age. This being the case, we might expect some marked transformations, not, to be sure, in the short run but perhaps in the course of a generation. French Communism may change from a movement of Resistance• 281 ·

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and Liberation-tested realists to one dominated by a generation which has only known post-1950 events. Since an organization that has come to dominate the field is hard to displace, perhaps the most one can hope for in the immediate future is a rechanneling of that organization in more tractable directions, toward a lessening of intransigence and a diminution of militance. A peculiar irony pervades the entire case. Nearly every social commentator of any note at one time or another cites and implicitly gives credence to the lesson contained in De Tocqueville's observation that the Revolution took place at a time of rising living standards, not during a period of deprivation or abject poverty. Nevertheless, the prevalent operating assumption is that the "new affluence" will have a moderating effect. If the opposite case, that is, the case for the affiuence-radicalism linkage, were based only on the one citation of De Tocqueville, one might be justified in ignoring it. But as it happens, a rather impressive array of theorists and researchers have argued the same thesis. To be sure, not all of these have been in the mainstream of social science, but then, being in the mainstream does not make one's statement correct or incorrect.3 The findings of this study clearly suggest that despite favorable economic conditions, use of the organizational weapon can still sus3 As Leon Trotsky put it: "In reality, the mere existence of privations is not enough to cause an insurrection; if it were, the masses would always be in revolt." All of the following have in varying ways and contexts pointed to the lack of connection between poverty and radicalism—Crane Brinton, F. E. Dessauer, Sebastian de Grazia, Albert Camus, Edward Banfield, Mirra Komarovsky, Audry Richards, Pitirim Sorokin, H. R. Pitt-Rivers, Eric Hoffer, and Arnold Toynbee. I am indebted to Mohammed Guessous of the Center of International Studies, Princeton University, for bringing many of these to my attention. The De Tocqueville reference is to The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Garden City: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1955), pp. 169ff. Erich Jordan, in a book which has received much less attention than it deserves, has shown how the 1848 revolution in Germany broke out, not in the years of worst famine but after a year of improved harvests. This was at a time when speculative withholding of products from markets was creating an unnecessary prolongation of the famine. The natural catastrophe was understandable and acceptable. The artificial one was not. See his Die Entstehung der konservativen Partei und die preussischen Agrarverhdltnisse von 1848 (Munich and Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot, 1914), especially p. 113. From an entirely different context but still of relevance here is the assertion by Wilbert Moore that "security and initiative are positively not negatively correlated." See his Conduct of the Corporation (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 222 (italics in the original). In this connection, generalizing from the German experience, one author writes, "In the age of unionism labor militance tends to be highest when the labor market is tight and the cost of living rising; the former factor is the condition of successful union struggle, and second the spur to it." See Carl F. Schorske, German Social Democracy, 1905-1907: The Development of the Great Schism (New York: John Wiley Sons, Science Editions, 1955), p. 90. See also pp. 257ff. The correlation of economic well-being and labor militance in Spain is discussed in Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1943), Chap. 4, "The Army and the Syndicalist Struggle in Barcelona, 1916-1923." • 282

·

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tain radical aims, at least as far as voting is concerned. In fact, as we have noted, the economic factor in some ways aids the radical agencies by bringing new clientele into accessible locations. Moreover, it is possible that a period of affluence actually accentuates some grievances. As we have shown, the gap between workers and the middle class has been increasing. While both better their positions absolutely, the distance between them in terms of the highly visible symbols of differentiation may well leave the workers feeling greater grievances (if not insult) over the distribution of the shares. One further point. If our assumption that the major contemporary social developments work in favor of the parties of the left is correct, we should not only expect a stand-off, as in France, where the Communists have merely held their ground, but we should expect them to improve their position. Such has indeed been the case in the "sister country" Italy, where the Communists have increased their vote in every election, from 4,360,000 in 1946 to 7,760,000 in 1963. Their percentage share of the total went from 19 to 25. There were no peculiarities in the turnout or any shifting within the left which might explain this result. The total left vote (including the Communists and the Nenni and Saragat Socialists) increased over the same period from 38 to 45 per cent. Something of the future of Italian politics is indicated by the facts that Communist voting increases with the size of city, that the Christian Democratic vote is strikingly provincial in character, and that the basic move is from the provinces to the cities. Of late, after many years of decline, even party membership has shown an increase. This suggests that the "internal decay" of French Communism might not have been the result of "conditions" but rather, ironically, of French Communism. This is to suggest that its rigid, intransigent, political character made affiliation unattractive and problematic for many members. This was true also for conditions in the CGT. There is evidence that this unintelligent, centralized direction led both the party and the CGT into serious difficulties, difficulties which first appeared in the election results of 1958. These problems, plus the stimulus given by the critique of Stalin, generated internal pressures that led to the adoption of more flexible procedures and a greater tactical freedom for grass-roots agencies. As one possible, likely result we find that the party regained much of its 1958 losses in the 1962 legislative elections. One survey covering this election indicates that the major sources of 1958 losses were in abstentions and in shifts to the Socialists. In 1962, both groups were regained. Even more striking is the fact that in 1962, for the first time in years, the • 283 ·

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party reported a net gain in members, a trend which continued through at least the first nine months of 1963. The picture within the CGT closely parallels the experience of the party itself. Figures for CGT membership given at biennial congresses show a steady decline up to 1957. This has been followed by regular increases up to 1963, the number going from 1,238,498 to 1,692,725. There is also evidence now that they are doing slightly better in social security elections.4 The Importance of Sequence Much theorizing about industrialization assumes a uniform process of development. Any peculiar national deviation will be erased by the inherent necessities of the "logic of industrialization."5 Among the factors focused on in the "logic" are rising real incomes, improved living standards, increased education, and the legal-technical requirements that force moderate leadership to the forefront in labor-management negotiations. Radical labor unions and parties become anachronistic impediments to this process and are destined to disappear from the scene in short order. An alternative outlook, one more in accord with the French experience, treats social structures and values in terms of stages or equilibria which are largely independent of gradual secular changes in the economic base. If this is the case, then we must deal with periods, each characterized by a distinctive distribution of voting preferences, a distribution that is more or less stable despite continuous changes taking place in the economy. This would include even dramatic transformations in living standards achieved by previously deprived groups.6 * In order, the references covering these two paragraphs are the following: Christine Alix and Genevieve Bibes, "Les elections I6gislatives italiennes d'Avril, 1963," Revue frangaise de science politique 13 (December 1963) 911-950; Joseph LaPalombara, Interest Groups in Italian Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 92; Leopold Labedz, ed., International Communism after Khrushchev (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1965), p. 61; William E. Griffith, Communism in Europe: Continuity, Change, and the Sino-Soviet Dispute (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1964), Vol. 1, Chap. 5, "Italian Communism," by Giorgio Galli; Jean Ranger, "L'evolution du parti communiste francais," Revue frangaise de science politique 13 (December 1963) 951-965; Georges Dupeux, "Le comportement des electeurs francais de 1958 a 1962," Revue frangaise de science politique 16 (February 1964) 52-71; G6rard Adam, "Situation de la C.G.T.," Revue frangaise de science politique 13 (December 1963) 965-976. 5 Clark Kerr, John T. Dunlop, Frederick H. Harbison, and Charles A. Myers, Industrialism and Industrial Man (New York: Oxford University Press, Galaxy Book, 1964). e The significance of such original "inputs" and their immunity to the "logic of industrialization" is shown by American voting studies, which have long since documented the widely variant politics of Catholics and Protestants even when they, to all appearances, have the same occupational location. The "social inheritance," in other words, appears to be more important than transformation of the "objective conditions."

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Various realigning events upset and transform these long-term equilibria—wars, depressions, or candidates who deviate markedly from conventional expectations. Such events might shift, say, 10 per cent of the voters and thus establish a new equilibrium level. With­ out such realigning events, as long as the existing social processes were maintained, we would expect politics to be passed from father to son without change over many generations. Under these circum­ stances the only important determinant of political change would be differential fertility of the competing parties.7 Short of this pos­ sibility, that is, assuming equal demographic chances, the most im­ portant question concerns the conditions existing when the equilib­ rium was first established. If we are to be consistent with our gen­ eral orientation, we will ask what were the social pressures exerted which first determined the orientation of the groups that interest us. In a sense, the question becomes one of "who got there first?" The relative staying power of various groups is also an important consideration. In France, where the anarchists or syndicalists fre­ quently got there first, they were easily displaced because of their limited organizational commitment. But in the United States, where ethnic leadership and various Landsmannschajten got there first, the Socialists who followed could make only limited entry into an already well-organized field. If this view is justified, then in great measure, it does not matter what income changes take place during a given period. Postwar France and postwar Belgium both achieved sizable increases in real income for manual workers; nevertheless the workers in the one country remained persistently Communist and in the other persist­ ently non-Communist. The difference is that in France the Com­ munists won control of the most important trade unions in the im­ mediate postwar years, while in Belgium the non-Communists scored the victory. In Belgium, the new affluence is analyzed, in­ terpreted, and assessed by moderates; in France, the same assess­ ment is made, for most workers, by Communist militants. Short of some dramatic realigning event, no significant change in working-class voting can be expected (although, to be sure, the meaning of that vote may change) as long as the PCF and its affili­ ates are the major voluntary organizational units in the field. Their domination of the field, and their influence on opinion formation (successfully intervening to counteract the impact of the mass ι For a picture of the equilibria and realignments in New York State, see Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, pp. 128ff. On demographic contributions see Richard F. Hamilton and Raymond H. Wheeler, "A Note on Demography and Politics" (forthcoming).

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media) has apparently been sufficient to check any movement or drift in political sentiment. The conventional liberal or Third Force solution to the problem of working-class radicalism—increasing living standards—clearly will not succeed in a Communist-dominated setting. The policy directions necessary for achieving a moderate labor force appear to involve dominating the field by determining the working-class social organization from the beginning. Strategies for achieving this might include selection of a docile, conservative labor force (by recruiting new workers, for example, from conservative farm regions), outlawing radical parties and movements, attempting to influence working-class voluntary organizations, particularly those present at the ports of entry (special effort, for example, should be made here to win the trade unions in construction), and decentralizing industry so as not to destroy rural social structure. While the author does not find such manipulation at all congenial, these strategies would be appropriate for moderates, given the findings of this book. In the absence of positive alternatives, the laissez aller attitude toward social structure and population movements would appear to ensure the domination of the working class by Communists for, at minimum, an entire generation. Nothing is served by hiding these implications, and perhaps a challenge to conventional liberalism might lead to a "new improved variety." The Short versus the Long Term Perhaps different processes come into play over a longer time span. The Communist militants do fall within one age category, and, conceivably, when that group retires from the labor force the quality of informal working-class life might change. Children of workers who have known only (relative) affluence might no longer share the views of their elders. In the long run, workers may more and more acquire the consumption standards of the middle class and drop politics in favor of status seeking. The insistent Communist theme of "depression around the corner" might not survive many years of uninterrupted good times. The meaning of "Communism" or a Communist vote is not necessarily constant. The percentage voting Communist might well remain unchanged while the internal characteristics of the party are radically transformed and the issues that concern the voters themselves also change. We cannot affirm or deny any of these possibilities with any degree of confidence, lacking as we do experience with the long term. Since an all too frequent tendency, based on current optimistic so• 286 ·

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cial theories, is to dismiss embarrassing short-term experience and to stress the beneficence of the long term, it is worth considering the speculative case against the above possibilities. As to the dwindling number of Communist militants, it should be noted that until militants of another party move in, it is unlikely, given our assumptions, that a shift in voting will occur. The old guard holds on and, lacking some new or outside push, the voters stay in their familiar channels. Hence, if we are to give credence to this possibility, we must indicate the new movement, the new party, and the grass-roots militants who are going to exert the personal influence that will create the change. This may not involve an allat-once transformation but rather a whittling away of traditional Communist voting areas. But even so, we have to show either where it is happening or where it is likely to happen and who is likely to do it. The point about the children of workers is not quite so certain as it may appear. Lipset and Bendix' finding, based on data from a number of countries, is that second-generation workers, that is, the sons of workers, are the most radical group in the entire class. At present they are more to the left than are the sons of farmers and the sons of middle-class parents. If this experience is in any way predictive, we should expect greater radicalism from workers in the future, because the proportion who are at least second-generation workers will be greater as new arrivals from the farm diminish in number.8 The percentage of workers with no cross-pressuring experience in their lives, the percentage with continuous informal working-class educations, will increase. Moreover, the percentage of workers born and raised in homogeneous working-class neighborhoods should also increase. With that as their primary life experience, there is little reason for predicting that moderation, lessened intransigence, or assimilation of middle-class outlooks will occur. A variant on the assimilation theme, admitting that workers may not acquire middle-class values through direct contact, stresses the role of the mass media in presenting middle-class models. But this thesis neglects a number of important points. Most studies have shown the inability of mass media to change basic values. This s Much is made of the movement of workers into "suburbs" and of the consequent "mixing" (cross-pressuring) which occurs there. This overlooks the fact that much of the movement "out" is to working-class suburbs and to industrial satellite cities. Also, it loses sight of the fact that for all those moving out there are many more moving in. That is, workers who in small towns mixed with the middle class migrate to central cities and thereby are "unmixed," that is, they are now in homogeneous working-class neighborhoods.

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might be called the basic lesson of the media-effects studies. It takes informal personal contacts to achieve such changes, or, in the words of the title of a leading work on the subject, it takes Personal Influence.9 The personal influence in working-class settings, however, is likely to be stressing different lessons. To the extent that consumption is increasing, it is likely that the newly acquired goods are fitted into a value scheme which is very different from that of the middle class.10 It is ironic that the assimilation thesis should be stressed at the same time we hear of a lamentable absence of taste. The two lessons are seldom put together. Looking at studded, black leather jackets, or at bright green jackets with dragons stitched on the back, or at pink sequin dresses, social commentators, without a qualm, say that workers are adopting middle-class values and that class differences are not perceptible away from the job. Where the middle class has been acquiring lean and spare furniture designs, the working class still sticks to the overstuffed chairs of the days of yore. Secondly, working-class attention to the mass media is characteristically focused on dramas that do not emphasize consumption standards—thrillers and westerns. Moreover, in the European context, with noncommercial television predominating, consumer "training" does not interrupt the continuity of events—even for spot announcements. Even American television, it should be noted, does not advertise status symbols, but rather cigarettes, soaps, detergents, and pain-killers. As to the opportunity for informal acquisition of the middle-class lesson, there is good reason for thinking that these chances have diminished in recent decades. In the United States, the removal of the middle classes from the central cities reduces the likelihood of interclass contact, thereby enhancing the chance that class-specific cultures will develop. Moreover, one major labor-force trend also indicates an increased separation of the two classes. The decline of household service work (the shift, for example, from a maid to use of the dry-cleaning establishment) means that working-class wives or daughters will not come into middle-class households and have close contact with "the mistress" who, in essence, shows and tells 9 Joseph T. Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication, and Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications (Glencoe: Free Press, 1955). io This is in line with the argument of Eliot Freidson, who says: ". . . the member of the audience selects his mass communications content under a good deal of pressure and guidance from his experience as a member of social groups, . . . in fact his mass communications behavior is part of his social behavior, and . . . mass communications have been absorbed into the social life of the local groups." See his "Communications Research and the Concept of the Mass," American Sociological Review 18 (1953) 313-317.

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in very great detail how to arrange the middle-class trappings properly, how to manage the decor of the middle-class consumption drama. Economic development restricts that kind of personal influence. The wife or daughter now goes either into a factory or into low-status clerical work. In either case, the close surveillance of the middle-class milieu together with personal supervision and the correction of errors is no longer possible. To reduce the strength of a radical left party it is necessary to eliminate its sources of support. On this point, however, the argument against long-term moderation seems to stand on very solid ground. The sources of Communist support, the social processes which make and reinforce Communist dispositions are, on the whole, continuing; that is to say, they are unchanged from the Fourth Republic. The movement from country to town is unchanged; the shifting of workers out of small shops and small cities is unchanged; the more extensive ownership of automobiles by workers brings more small-towners into contact with "big-city" militants; the well-off workers probably still upgrade their expectations, still do not compare themselves with poor workers, and therefore still find themselves with grievances. If the future continues to reproduce the past, the long term will be one in which gaps in consumption levels are even more visible and dramatic than at present. What will be the future content of working-class radicalism? Since our materials allow nothing in the way of an answer to this question (and the same holds for most other studies, which assume moderation and hence do not explore for any other possibilities), we can only speculate. The best clues might be gained from an examination of the free answers to the question in the Worker Survey about injustice in the present state of affairs. (These free answers, unfortunately, were not available for this study.) The fact that even the affluent workers were overwhelming in their assertion that there was "much injustice" and that they differed markedly from equally affluent middle-class groups attests to the presence of a persisting underlying basis for working-class dissent. Claims about workers becoming middle class have been based on a very special selection of the evidence, indicating primarily workermiddle-class equalities found away from the job. The stress has been on identity in consumption standards. Leaving aside the adequacy of the supporting evidence, a serious flaw is involved; there is no consideration of the work life, that is, of the most important hours in a typical weekday. In this respect there are major inequalities. The working-class jobs are characterized by dirt, burdensome • 2S9 ·

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labor, and by authoritarian, hierarchical, and punitive social relationships. Middle-class jobs have cleanliness, ease and flexibility of tasks and procedures, and relative democracy in decision-making (a large grant of autonomy and a lack of punitive sanctions). These differences are perhaps best seen in the contrast between the extensible coffee break in the office, with its jollity and collegiality, as compared with the ten minutes of individual "relief" by the utility man in the shop—relief which comes complete with union and management sanctions against overstepping the limit. In-plant class differences may be a source of contemporary grievances and may continue to be so in the future. Although the worker can now leave his work clothes in a company locker room and go home disguised as Middle Class Man, he cannot disguise to himself the nature of his work. Although social scientists can, with relative ease, overlook eight hours of daily life and the content of that time, the manual worker is likely to find that kind of alchemy a bit difficult. This kind of grievance is likely to give rise to new kinds of response. The responses are likely to vary with the institutional setting, there being no "invariant relationships" here. The most important of these institutional features is likely to be the character of the unions. Given plural, competing unionism as in France, there is incentive to pay attention to these grievances, to make them issues, and to work toward solutions. Given monopoly unionism, as in the United States, combined with oligarchy, incentives are directed instead toward submergence of these concerns. The result is different forms of radicalism, one open, organized, and political, the other consisting of seething resentments at the grass roots which break out in wildcat strikes here and there and on rare occasions result in the overthrow of the union oligarchs. In a sense, this is what happened in Gouldner's account, Wildcat Strike, and on a larger scale in the recent overthrow of the head of the United Steelworkers of America. In the latter case a formidable backlog of local issues had been allowed to accumulate, while attention was paid only to the national contract, particularly to money. In essence, the choice offered was one of being rich and alienated or of being poor and alienated. That choice, however, did not suffice to allay the worker's sense of grievance. An End of Ideology? The expression "end of ideology" has been used loosely, and quite frequently without any very precise definition. Two lines of analysis are clearly discernible. The one refers simply to the "end of radical • 290 ·

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politics," which is attributed to the new affluence. The other refers to the end of intellectual or programmatic guidance of the radical movement. It is in this sense that Daniel Bell, for example, says that "ideology is the conversion of ideas into social levers."11 Such use of ideas has clearly disappeared since World War II. Whatever remains of radical politics is conducted on an issue-by-issue basis, is governed by immediate pragmatic concerns, and is not analyzed as a special case of a more general law of social movement. Following the first variant and counting support for the Communist Party as an indication of "radicalism," we must conclude, given the stability of their vote, that in France there has been no end to radical politics. A possible counterargument is that the "meaning" of a Communist vote has not been constant throughout the period. If the party moderated its position during these years, the same evidence could be taken as indicating support for the thesis. It would be difficult, however, to maintain such a position. The Communists, it should be remembered, were in the government until 1947 and during that period were, by most standards, very moderate in their orientation. They were stressing consensual themes, the need for unity and for rebuilding France, and so on. When the strikes broke out in 1947 the PCF opposed them. It was only after they were "in being" that the party decided it should be leading rather than opposing the movement. After expulsion from the government, the Communists began active opposition to the governments and their policies. In short, there is greater justification for a claim of radicalization than for the moderation thesis. Insofar as the assumption underlying this variant of the thesis is that the affluent workers are repelled or embarrassed by an extreme party position, we can only say that our evidence leads us to be skeptical. At the time of our surveys, the well-off workers did not appear to be especially disaffected. Much of the observed conservatism of the affluent we have suggested to be the result of early political socialization, particularly of experience in middle-class settings. In other words, our evidence leads us to question seriously the claim about the "mechanism" involved in those countries where affluence and political moderation have been observed. Where the radical left is dominant before affluence, it can successfully dominate the working-class milieu. This view reverses the conventional formulation in which the organizations are seen as responding to "conditions." The view presented here is that the ori i Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, rev. ed. (New York: Collier Books, 1961), p. 394. • 20/ ·

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ganization makes the cleavages in the society and makes the attitudes of its members. Such agencies are not helplessly dependent on events or merely "responding to conditions."12 This restructuring of the theoretical order leads us to question the sources of varying organization behavior in different countries. To follow through such an enquiry would take us beyond the scope of the present study, but at least some directions may be suggested. If the conservatizing mechanism is not "affluence," the answer obviously must lie elsewhere. If it does not lie in the behavior of the mass of workers, who, like the mass of people in all walks of life, are passive followers, then the answer must be found in the behavior of the leaders. If the leaders of unions and parties do not mobilize their clientele, then, in the light of our findings, there is a good first case for viewing their behavior as a choice rather than as a necessary response to "conditions" or to mass sentiment. Furthermore, in the light of the general consent to the Iron Law of Oligarchy as a dominating fact of organizational life, it is remarkable that the explanation of the leaders' nonperformance has been sought so persistently in the attitudes of the followers rather than in the concerns of the oligarchs. The abandonment of radical goals is, we suggest, a function of increasing bureaucratization of left unions and parties. The emphasis on routine functions and the call for "no boat rocking" are, after all, practically the defining characteristics of the oligarch. In this view, the claim about the effects of affluence proves to be more than a statement about the presumed "facts." For the oligarch it has useful ideological implications (using the term "ideology" in Mannheim's sense, that is, as a justification for the existing social order). The oligarch can say, in effect, that despite his best intentions, he is a helpless pawn in the hands of the apathetic members who elected him. Ironically, the "end of radical politics" in many countries may well be the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The intellectuals supporting this view succeed in convincing political leaders. These leaders, in turn, believing that people will no longer respond to traditional liberal and leftist issues, now stress other concerns. The newly moderate leaders lose elections (because many voters no longer see them as standing for the issues that interest them). The election results are then taken as additional proof of the rejection of radical politics on the part of the newly affluent masses. The response of the leadership is to call for still more moderation. 12 Along these lines see Lipset, Union Democracy, p. 209, where it is stated: "Few issues that arise in the union are intrinsically party issues; they are made political issues by the parties and their spokesmen." • 292 "

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As an example of this process in the American experience, Lipset writes: . . . it is difficult to recall that sophisticated political observers foresaw in the Republican victory of 1952 the beginning of a long period of G.O.P. ascendancy. Supporting this prediction were sociological assumptions that changes in class and ethnic structures were reducing the proportion of the population who either identified themselves with the 'have-nots' or were anti-elitist. The rapid growth of well-paid professional and technical occupations at the expense of low-paid blue-collar work, the considerable increase in the population living in suburbs and the concomitant decline in the population living in central cities, and the elimination of foreign birth and the immigrant slum as bases for political party identification, all seemed to expand the social strata favorably disposed to the Republican Party and to curtail the ranks that traditionally voted Democratic. And as important as these developments was the constant increase of well-paid, fully employed young voters who knew Roosevelt and the Great Depression only as past history. Adlai Stevenson and his advisers conducted the 1952 and 1956 campaigns on the assumption that the domestic social reform issues of the thirties were no longer viable, that questions of poverty, social welfare, labor legislation and the like were no longer powerful vote-getting issues.13 Lipset goes on to point out that, despite the lack of leadership, the underlying population showed "more deviation from the class pattern in the direction of liberal and Democratic predispositions than toward conservative and Republican ones." The tendencies toward a monistic outlook which occurred in the United States in the fifties were checked in France by the presence of plural parties and unions. The multiplicity of both types of organization made a larger quantity of leadership available, and, since the leaders were competing for the attentions of the mass electorate, they were forced to keep in closer touch with mass demands. This plural social organization is likely to have been of decisive importance in the case of the unions. The fact that moderate, immoderate, and religious unions were all present in the factories meant that, in a sense, there was "something for everyone." Since they were competing, the three sets of leaders were continuously encouraged to develop attractive programs. As in Lipset's analysis of the two-party 13 S. M. Lipset's review of Heinz Eulau's "Class and Party in the Eisenhower Years," American Sociological Review 29 (October 1964) 760.

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International Typographical Union, the French union leadership was forced to "make" new issues. By comparison, a single bargaining agent almost necessarily results in an "accommodation" and in bureaucratic, routine unionism; the heads "lead" the members in "living with the contract." This social organizational response, in effect, creates a union for moderates only and forces all others into apathy. Only under very exceptional circumstances can this be avoided. This apathy too is misrepresented, is read as "consent," and is offered as further proof of the end of ideology. Underlying this reading of the evidence is an implicit democratic assumption—-if members were more radical than their leaders, they would oust them—despite virtual unanimity on the nature of oligarchic leadership in unions and on the organizational disabilities of the followers. The direct test—asking people—is rarely used. In one of the few occasions when this was done, a West German study found workers saying that unions were "zu lasch" (too soft). Only a small minority said they were "zu radical." In the case of the other reading of the "end of ideology," an end of intellectually guided, programmatic radicalism, here too an alternative may be offered which does not depend on "affluence" as an explanation. The alternative suggestion involves the changed role of intellectuals and their social location. Radical programs have characteristically been the work of educated intellectuals of middle-class origins.14 The radicals of working-class origins are much more likely to be bread-and-butter pragmatists. Members of union and party bureaucracies usually share the pragmatic outlook, adding to it an additional conservative impulse stemming from their preference for untroubled routine. The impact of intellectuals on parties is generally greatest when the party is first formed and dwindles continuously from that point on, as their contribution to party policy is countered by an ever larger number of pragmatists and bureaucrats. If, as with the German Social Democrats, the party retained a radical ideology, it was because it had been injected early in the movement's history, had been institutionalized and made part of the routine. Insofar as it is routine, it may be dysfunctional for the party's aims because it is so out i*See Robert Michels, Political Parties, Part Four, Chap. 6, "Intellectuals, and the Need for Them in the Working-class Parties." He cites Eduard Bernstein (with approval) as follows: "The most notable representatives of the revolutionary spirit were members of the bourgeoisie, men of letters, etc., whereas it was leaders of working-class origin who advocated moderate methods." Says Michels, ". . . generally speaking the working-class leaders of proletarian origin have a special tendency to adopt the reformist attitude." Both citations on p. 337.

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of touch with reality. Attempts at rational adjustment of the ideology may nevertheless stimulate hostile, defensive efforts on the part of some members. Again the Social Democrats provide the instructive case, both in the instance of the early revisionist efforts and in the case of the belated (1929) change in the attitude toward "bourgeois" farmers.15 For reasons of organizational dynamics alone we should therefore expect a diminution of ideological politics. Insofar as a radical ideology persists, it is more the work of, in Merton's terms, ritualists than of rebels and as such is as likely to be irrelevant to the current scene as to be radical with respect to it. The larger the organization becomes, the more involvements it has in the society and the more interests it picks up. These interests are, of course, represented by new groups of decision-makers, all of whom constitute a context which more and more works in opposition to ideological innovation on the part of the intellectuals. In a sense, we might say that the institutionalization of the charisma of the original party intellectuals provides the context which forces later intellectuals to be freischwebend rather than engage. Institutionalization drives the intellectuals away. Supplementing this institutionalization, a number of adventitious factors also work to remove intellectuals from positions of influence or to neutralize them. Of special relevance for the French case (although having general significance) is the influence of Stalinism. This, we suggest, had the parallel effects of encouraging the voluntary withdrawal of intellectuals and expelling "deviant" intellectuals. Either way, the intellectuals were removed from an instrument of power over which they might have had some influence, and the organization was left to an ever greater extent in the hands of submissive bureaucrats. The latter's relation to "ideology" was for the most part ritualistic rather than creative, and since the "fit" of their intellectual productions with current conditions was inexact, the "cognitive dissonance" created tended to drive out more of the remaining intellectuals. Since the intellectuals were pushed out one at a time or in small groups and over different issues, it was difficult for them to coalesce and form a new left organization. Then too, they lacked the organization's resources and, more important, its contact with the left's main clientele, the workers. The expulsions leave the party incapable of generating a reasonable, appropriate, and attractive ideology, is Guenther Roth, The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany: A Study in WorkingClass Isolation and National Integration (Totowa, New Jersey, Bedminster Press, 1963). See also Schorske, German Social Democracy.

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since it has driven out all those capable of such an accomplishment. The grass-roots militants are still able to generate issues, while the driven-out intellectuals are condemned to factional politics, individual attitudinizing, and, especially in the United States, cultural criticism. Their isolated and fragmented position forces them to be irrelevant to political events. Stalinism was especially important in the French case. In other countries, and to a lesser extent in France, the role of Nazism also deserves attention. Given the present theoretical preference for the routine, the recurrent, and the systematic, given the attention therefore to the socialization processes and social control mechanisms, such unique and definitive social control mechanisms as murder tend to be overlooked. The Nazis systematically killed their opponents, and among these were Communist leaders. Top party leaders, we can assume, were more likely to be victims than those in lower echelons, and furthermore, because of their relatively high visibility, it is likely that leftist intellectuals were also disproportionately present among the murdered. To attribute a subsequent decline in leftist ideologies to higher living standards in the face of the systematic murder of such ideologists appears to be the height of ingenuousness.16 In summary, while it would be difficult to quarrel with the basic facts of a diminution of radical and of ideologically based politics in most countries, the questions of the "necessity" involved and of the sources of such transformations do provide matter for dispute. Our findings lead us to question seriously the presumed effects of affluence. In its place, we have pointed to a continuous bureaucratization process, to the influence of Stalin, and to the work of the Nazis. Odd Lots—Future Directions This study, like any other, has its range of coverage and omits everything else. Our coverage was in great measure determined by the questions and responses in the original surveys. It is perhaps appropriate to comment briefly on the considerations left out, on those things we were not able to explore but which are likely to be of considerable importance. 16 In the German case, too, it should be noted, the ideological extremes of the Weimar period were located east of the Elbe. The division of Germany cut off the German National Conservative and Communist regions and left West Germany, which significantly was the base for the Center Party in prewar days. Contemporary West Germany includes the areas that were the centers of revisionism in the Social Democratic ranks. See Schorske, passim.

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Since the surveys led us to devote most attention to the relationship between deprivations and political attitudes, we have been "thin" on the details of social structure and personal influences as related to these same attitudes. In general we have had only relatively crude indices of these social structural factors. Hence, the study which we hope will follow this one would be well advised to concentrate on detailing the character of working-class social structures. Although there would be considerable resistance from respondents to such questions, the importance of the PCF and its related organizations makes it necessary to explore this area. What degrees of involvement do respondents have with the party? Or what involvement did they have? What is their perception of the local party leaders and of the party militants? Since the neighborhood cells, although officially discouraged, appear to be extremely important, it is important to get some perception and evaluation of their activities. Although exploration of attention to mass media and assessment of its impact is extremely difficult, it would appear worth while, at a minimum, to enquire as to the principal sources of information and as to the political character of any informal opinion leaders in the respondent's milieu. Equivalent enquiry ought to be made about the work milieu— attitudes toward union militants, particularly those at the grass roots, and the willingness to accept their leadership in workshop affairs. Another area which deserves more detailed exploration is the question of work satisfaction. Other than a few sweeping questions in this study, we were unable to relate such considerations to political attitudes. Since differences in work may be the most persistent and most unyielding of manual-nonmanual differences, theory and research which focus exclusively on the presumed "blurring" which comes through owning equivalent status symbols may be overlooking important sources of cleavage. Little consideration has been given to a number of other institutional areas that are part of every person's life. The most important of these, a discussion of which can be found in any introductory text or in the Lynds' Middletown, are the family, the churches, and the schools. We would add another, again one of those irregular, unpatterned, and "impolite" considerations, namely the impact of military experience. Even if these cannot be probed in any detail, a few opening questions should indicate whether it is worth our effort to enquire further along these lines in later studies. Most of these suggestions focus on the systematic influences of • 297 ·

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key institutions insofar as they might "feed" and affect political behavior. Obviously, the unique occurrences in French history are likely to make French working-class politics "different" and to make cross-national generalizations difficult. Denis Brogan, for example, notes that in World War I, the expectation was for a short war, quickly won. Hence, all males were mobilized. After the shock of the first battle of the Marne and the recognition that the struggle might last some time, the skilled workers were demobilized and returned to the factories to carry on the necessary war production. Such frank and unambiguous discrimination might have left its mark in a clear lesson to the unskilled workers of France. If one adds to this initial discrimination, the experience of Verdun, the rebellions at the Front (together with the retaliatory executions), and the contrast with the "business as usual" atmosphere in Paris as viewed during leaves, there is good reason to believe that these events might have made the lower ranks receptive to radical alternatives, quite independently of the humiliations of the workplace.

• 2g8 ·

APPENDIX

A: T H E

SURVEYS

The Worker Survey The principal source of information for the present work is a survey conducted in October 1955 by the Institut Francais d'Opinion Publique (IFOP) under the direction of Professor Jean Stoetzel. The sample includes 1,039 male manual workers located throughout France. For purposes of comparison, 396 white-collar workers were interviewed and 221 staff members, the majority of whom were foremen. As indicated in the text, this is a quota sample. The major justification for its use is that since it is both the most representative kind of sample from that period and also the largest sample of French workers of the time, it is therefore the best available source of information on the subject. The alternatives are to use either smaller quota samples or guesswork and impressionism. The study was originally conducted for the French magazine Realties, and the questions reflect the popular "economic" tradition (as opposed to the sociological concern) in that they focus primarily on economic deprivations and rewards. There are relatively few questions which allow us to map out the social relations and likely social pressures within working-class subgroups.1 For purposes of simplicity we refer to this as the Worker Survey. One further difficulty with the Worker Survey is that it has no direct question on party choice or affiliation. For this reason we have used it primarily for the discussion of political attitudes, mainly the attitude toward the Soviet Union and toward revolutionary change. It is useful in that it has a question on union membership which allows us to discuss the members of the Communist-linked General Confederation of Labor and compare them with members of reformist unions, the Catholic unions, and the non-affiliated workers. The original questionnaire used in the Worker Survey is here reproduced with permission of the Institut Frangais d'Opinion Publique. i T h e basic findings of this study together with discussion of the sample characteristics may be found in the following sources: "The French Worker," Realitis (English language edition), No. 65 (April 1956) 7-19; Sondages: Revue frangaise de I'opinion publique, 1956, No. 2 (entire issue); Hadley Cantril, The Politics of Despair (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1958); and Hadley Cantril and David Rodnick, On Understanding the French Left (Princeton: Institute for International Social Research, 1956, mimeographed). Incidentally, a parallel study using many of the same questions was conducted among Italian workers at the same time. In a number of places we have made use of this for purposes of comparison.

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A

Institut Frcmsais cTOpinion Fublique 2 0 , Rue d ' A u m a l e ,

PARIS-9' -

TRl

08-38

Itl

21 Octobrft 1955

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8 b . (8auf aux personnes qui sont tris bien !og6es) Dans votre logement actuel, qu'est-ce qui ne vous convient pas ?

Oul Non Ne travaillait pas encore

3

?

Q

Trfes bien plut6t bien Moyennement Plutflt mal

t « 3 4

Tr4s

5

m a l

T r o p

-

Pas assez de pieces Fifeces trop petites Confort insufflsant T

cher

Autres

ifeces

6 b. Pour combien de personnes, au total ?

1 personne 2 personnes » „ . „ „ „ * Personnes * I Z T Z Z 6 personnes 7 personnes 8 personnes et +

7 a, Avez-vous un j a r d i n «

Attenant & la maison

4 troP

, .

sans

« o i g n 6 du

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