The French Communists under François Mitterrand

Abstract

One of the most historically significant aspects of the presidency of François Mitterrand was his experiment with Communist participation in his government from June 1981 to July 1984. Mitterrand was looking beyond the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) to its working-class constituency, whose alienation from the French political system he hoped to end; the Communists, for their part, were no longer pursuing policies of unity on the left when his victory occurred, and accepted his offer of participation. As the rapid spate of reforms of his first year in power took hold, they rallied to him with enthusiasm, apparently concluding that any improvement in the party's fortunes lay with his success. In the Autumn of 1982 the Socialists adopted a policy of economic ‘rigour’, which by the Spring of 1983 had evolved into a coherent policy of budgetary and wage restraints, suspiciously like the policies of austerity pursued by previous governments of the right. The PCF's attitude toward Mitterrand consequently hardened, and the party sought to distance itself from his economic policies while continuing to support him in the cabinet and in parliament. By the summer of 1984, following the party's decline to 11.2 per cent in elections to the European Parliament, it was apparent that this ambivalent policy was not succeeding, and the PCF used the occasion of the resignation of Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy to withdraw its participation, after it became clear that his successor, Laurent Fabius, was committed to the same economic policies.