The name is absent

TO SURVIVE DE GAULLE

belongs to the Right. The institutional reforms written into the constitution
of the Fifth Republic were similar to those which had been proposed from
the Right for three-quarters of a century.³⁷ Again, however, the criterion is
of dubious value. The Radical-Socialist ideal of weak, assembly government
was born in the era of the “stalemate society,” when most Frenchmen feared
political change, and when the strong executives in recent memory were
all antidemocratic.³* The Jacobins, it must be recalled, were believers in
strong government; and present-day socialists clearly would need a strong
executive if ever they were in a position (and still inclined) to implement
their creed.

If Gaullism is to the Right in its attitudes toward the state, its affinity is
with the Bonapartist tradition more than with recent French parties of the
Right.³⁰ In its heterogeneous clientele, in its suspicion of parliaments and of
intermediary bodies generally, in its reliance on the plebiscite, in its com-
bination of stability and progress —■ in all of these respects Gaullism be-
longs in the Bonapartist tradition. Yet the analogy must not be exaggerated.
Gaullists are committed to democratic rights and freedoms in a way which
clearly sets them apart from nineteenth-century Bonapartists, as does their
passion for modernization. Moreover, though still passionately nationalistic,
Gaullists evidence few imperialist pretentions; indeed, it was de Gaulle who
presided over the dismantling of the French Empire.

In the test of economic policy — capitalism versus socialism — Gaul-
lism wins a more mixed rating, partly because of its ambivalent stand.
Bankers, businessmen, and orthodox economists have had strong influence
in the Fifth Republic.¹" Indeed, as a dynamic movement intent upon en-
couraging economic efficiency and expansion, Gaullism finds itself drawn
to large, modern enterprises, and badly estranged from small marginal
producers and all on the political Center and Right who for genera-
tions have rigidly defended vested interests. Nonetheless, the nationaliza-
tion of industries under the first de Gaulle government, the insistence of
Gaullists on controlling vested interests of all sorts, the Gaullist experiments
with schemes for improving labor-management relations (usually against
business protests), the frequent pledges of greater social justice, and the
existence of a strong Left wing within the movement — all of these facts
suggest that the UNR is not simply a modern capitalist party.

When one takes foreign policy as the test of “Leftism," Gaullism falls
more to the Left than to the Right. Though vehemently opposed to domestic
communism, and clearly aligned with the West in time of crisis, France
under de Gaulle has outdone the democratic Left in France in freeing the
colonies, establishing French independence from the United States and en-
couraging others to do likewise, withdrawing from NATO, and seeking a
rapprochement with Eastern Europe and with the U.S.S.R.ⁿ

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