The Double Game of French Socialism: Gradual in Strategy, Radical in Goal

Introduction

On December 9, 1981, a striking six-page public interest advertisement appeared in The Washington Post and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the first two in a series of such publications to appear throughout the West. In the advertisements, the Societies for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) jointly addressed the public of their respective nations in a message entitled “What Does Self-Managing Socialism Mean for Communism: A Barrier? Or a Bridgehead?” The Message was written by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, the founder and president of the Brazilian TFP. It exposes Francois Mitterrand’s program of self-managing socialism and its ambitious designs for the West.

The Message was subsequently published in other leading newspapers in 18 countries of the Free World, bringing the total number of papers in which it appeared up to 44. To date, it has been published in the following countries: the United States, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, England, Germany, Italy, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The scope of the campaign against self-managing socialism was extended when a one page summary of the Message was published in six of South Africa’s major newspapers. Later, an advertisement summarizing the Message and its world-wide repercussions was published in three papers in Germany, two in Ireland, one in Austria, two in Australia, two in New Zealand, one in Costa Rica, and one in the Philippines.

A Far-Reaching Message with Even Farther-Reaching Effects

What have been the effects of this weighty document since it was first published in December?
The amount of correspondence the TFP centers and bureaus have received is astounding, with thousands of letters and coupons requesting copies of the work to distribute to relatives, friends, libraries and universities. The majority of people expressed enthusiastic support for the campaign, while the very few who showed disagreement sometimes couched it in insulting terms and almost always remained anonymous.

We can say that socialism, recently proud of the promotion it had been receiving abroad and its successes in many countries, has now taken a discreet and reserved attitude. Something has changed in the politico-ideological scene of the whole West.
What happened in France surprised and confused the optimistic and the naive.
Since French self-managing socialism boasted of being democratic and open-minded in politics, the Message published without the slightest difficulty in the democratic press of the whole West should have encountered no obstacle in the major French newspapers of the center and right. But when the thirteen TFPs contacted the six largest Parisian dailies they received dry and inexplicable refusals. Of these papers, one of the most important that had signed a contract to publish the document broke it abruptly soon afterwards. The unanimous conduct of these papers is all the more inexplicable since the Message is a very large paid advertisement that no publishing company would normally refuse.

With the publication in France thus prevented, the thirteen TFPs had to content themselves with a mass-mailing of 300,000 copies of the Message all over the country. This drew a large and enthusiastic response and, according to many observers, played an important role in enlightening French public opinion. There followed the significant defeat of the socialist-communist coalition in the recent regional elections.

The refusals to publish the Message gave rise to the communiqué entitled “France: The Fist Crushes the Rose,” also by Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira. Published in 23 papers of 11 countries, it denounced to world public opinion the presumable interference of the French socialist government in the strange and despotic curtailment of the TFPs’ freedom of speech.

The communiqué pointed out that since a socialist government can deprive any company owner of his rights, reduce him to a mere worker, and even expel him from his own company, the newspaper-owner’s independence from the government is only an illusion. This finding has a far-reaching scope: Except for the promise of freedom, all that is left to the self-managing regime is its similarity to communism.

This Message was published in the following newspapers:
United States: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Dallas Morning News;

Canada: The Globe and Mail (Toronto) and La Presse (Montreal);

Germany: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung;

Italy: Il Tempo (Rome) and Il Giornale Nuovo (Milan);

England: The Observer (London);

Portugal: O Comércio do Porto (Oporto) and Diário de Notícias (Lisbon);

Spain: La Vanguardia (Barcelona) and Hoja del Lunes (Madrid, Bilbao, Seville and Valencia);

Switzerland: Tribune de Genève;

Australia: The Australian (Sydney);

Brazil: Folha de S.Paulo; Última Hora (Rio de Janeiro), A Tarde (Salvador), Estado de Minas (Belo Horizonte), Jornal do Commercio (Recife), O Estado do Paraná (Curitiba), O Popular (Goiania) and Jornal de Santa Catarina (Blumenau);

Argentina: La Nacion (Buenos Aires);

Chile: El Mercurio (Santiago);

Uruguay: El Pais (Montevideo);

Bolivia: El Diario (La Paz) and El Mundo (Santa Cruz);

Ecuador: El Tiempo and El Comercio (Quito) and El Universo (Guayaquil);

Columbia: El Tiempo (Bogota), El País (Cali) and El Colombiano (Medellin);

Venezuela: Diario de Caracas, El Universal and El Mundo (Caracas), El Impulso (Barquisimeto) and Panorama (Maracaibo);

Peru: El Comercio (Lima).

The French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, the revolutionary tremors of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the ideological and temperamental explosion of the Sorbonne in 1968 were important milestones not only in the history of France but in the annals of the West as a whole.

Indeed, these movements, each in its own way and in its own specific proportions, gave international expression to aspirations and doctrines some of which arose in France and others elsewhere, but all of which had germinated in that country with an altogether unique capacity to spread. The historical events thus generated in France encountered and put in motion, in the spirits of the various peoples of the West, aspirations, tendencies and ideologies whose rise marked their psychological, cultural, political and socio-economic development in the centuries that followed.

Similar effects are now being felt from the unbloody but no less profound “revolution,” with its own chain of causes and effects, set in motion by the victory of the Socialist Party in last year’s May 10 elections and the consequent rise of Mitterrand to the Presidency. The crises affecting (in different degrees) communist and capitalist regimes are awakening all over the world tendencies and movements that boast of being especially modern and whose adherents believe that the clear, concise and victorious expression of everything, or nearly everything, they think and desire is inherent in the self-managing socialism now ruling in Paris. Naturally, this sets them on the way to achieving, in their own countries, similar successes to the profit and joy of international communism, of which self-managing socialism is but a trainbearer and fellow traveler.

PART I

• The Illusion
• A Look at the Real SP
• The Great Factor in the Rise of Socialism in France: Abstention Prevails in the Center and the Right
• The Crossroads
• Choosing a Strategy: Aspects of French Socialism

PART II

• “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” in the Socialist Program
• The SP, the Center and the Right
• The SP and Communism – The Strategy of Gradualism
• Corporate Self-Management a Socio-Economic Revolution
• Self-Management Must Encompass Society and Man as a Whole
• Why Corporate Reform Requires a Reform of Man
• The Self-Managing Society and the Family
• Leisure
• Control of Lifestyle
• Education
• The Right of Property in the Self-Managing Regime
• Rural Property in the Socialist Program

PART III

• The Rights of Man in the Self-Managing Society: to Become Informed, Dialogue and Vote
• Religion and religions in the Program
• The Attitude of the French Episcopate Toward the SP
PART IV
• The glorious future of France according to Saint Pius X

I. The Center and the Right in the Face of French Socialism: Optimistic Illusion, Scope of the Defeat, and the Crossroads

1. The Illusion

For the “man in the street” in most countries of the West, the French Socialist Party is, like so many others, the result of a mere combination of personal interests and ambitions centered around a party program accepted with varying degrees of conviction.

This is easy to understand. World public opinion is informed about socialism mainly through television, radio and the press. The image, partly implicit and partly explicit, of the Socialist Party (SP) projected by the media is usually: a) an electorate consisting mostly of blue collar workers imbued in different degrees with the mentality of the party, but also including many middle class voters whose conciliatory socio-economic tendencies converge at one point or another with vague philosophical sympathies for a “philanthropic” socialism; b) a party leadership consisting. at least on the upper and middle levels, of professional politicians concerned above all with gaining power, and consequently accustomed to flexibility and daring, as well as to prudence and every compromise necessary for success.

This general view of socialism is not very objective. It corresponds to the optimistic illusions of many political opponents of the SP, illusions which used considerably to the Party’s recent victory, and which have now placed the French voters of the center and the right at a critical pass.

2. A Look at the Real SP

When observed without illusion or optimism, the SP manifests an unflagging and monolithic ideological character. It systematically deduces its entire political, economic and social program from the philosophical principles it accepts. And the complete and inexorable application of this program to every individual and every nation to France as well as to all mankind – is the final goal of the concrete action advocated by the Party. To what means does it resort to attain this gigantic objective? It gradually manipulates culture, science, man and nature by resorting to sophisticated tactics of dissimulation. When the Party comes to power, all State agencies become instruments for achieving this goal.

According to the SP, while this must be done with the slow gradualism that circumstances almost always demand, it must be accelerated as much as possible. During this whole process, no word must be said, no step taken that does not have as its supreme goal the final anarchy (in the etymological sense) also desired by communist theoreticians.

This character of the SP appears clearly in its official documents, in books by authors representative of its thinking and also in writings for internal circulation intended primarily for the training of its members.

Besides circulating in the SP’s ranks. this material is also disseminated among leftists of different hues, intellectuals and politicians outside the left, and so on, thus gradually increasing the number of party sympathizers. The man in the street, however, knows little or nothing of this material.¹

3. The Great Factor in the Rise of Socialism in France: Abstention Prevails in the Center and the Right

Observers and analysts of the recent presidential elections in France are certain that the victorious leftist candidate was helped by votes from considerable sectors of the center and the right. Since Mitterrand&rsqup;s margin over his opponent was 1,065,956 votes (3.1% of the net valid votes not counting blank and void ballots) in the second round of the elections, the shift of centrist and rightist votes to the socialist candidate was a considerable – perhaps decisive – factor in the tight electoral race. One only need consider that a change of just half this number would have meant a tie.
This shift is shocking. Twenty years ago, every self-respecting centrist and rightist considered it treason to vote for a candidate of the SP, particularly one who was part of an open coalition with the Communist Party (CP).² In 1981 this sense of consistency failed in many centrists and rightists of all ages,³ who, with a sometimes indolent or thoughtless tranquility, voted for Mitterrand. How could this have happened?
But the failures of the right and the center did not stop there. Their lukewarm election campaigns lacked the dynamism and force de frappe indispensable for generating popular support. These elements were not lacking in the socialist-communist campaigns.

This lack of dynamism, naturally more noticeable in the parliamentary elections, had yet another consequence: increased abstentions. In an election so decisive for the future of France and the world, no less than 10,783,694 voters (29.6707% of the electorate) abstained in the first round of voting. Significantly, the abstentions outnumbered the votes for the SP (9,432,537).

The great loss in the final runoff was suffered by the center-right, whose total vote fell from 14,316,724 in the first round of the presidential elections (April 26) to 10,892,968 in the first round of the parliamentary elections (June 14) – a loss of 3,423,756 votes in this extremely brief period. Since between the two elections the number of abstentions increased by 3,900,917 and the total leftist vote increased only slightly in all likelihood most of those abstaining belonged to the center and the right. Many of them probably failed to vote because of party infighting, or simply to spend election Sunday the way they deemed most comfortable and entertaining.

An illusion held by the non-voters that a victory by an undoubtedly leftist, but easygoing, party would not have dramatic consequences accounted in large measure for their critical non-participation in the electoral process. Another consequence of this optimistic view was that petty personal and regional considerations, as well as the excitement generated by Mitterrand’s victory, led many centrists and rightists to cast their ballots for the SP. This helped to bring about a shift similar to that which had taken place in the presidential elections.

Everything leads one to believe that the greatest number of abstentions and largest leakage of votes must have occurred in the less rigidly organized parties, unless we were to imagine a SP or a CP softening its discipline or trying to outdo its centrist and rightist adversaries in abstentionist apathy.

So the SP won, but its victory by no means indicates any increase in the socialist electorate, as skillful leftist propaganda around the world would have it.
A comparison of the 1978 and 1981 parliamentary elections shows that the leftist vote remained practically unchanged: 14,169,440 in 1978 and 14,026,385 in 1981. (In both cases these are first round figures since, due to the peculiarities of the French electoral system, that is the only round in which comparisons are possible.) But since the number of eligible voters increased by 1,138,675 in this period while the total leftist vote stayed about the same, it is clear that the left’s share of the vote actually diminished. Thus, the left, which in 1978 had the support of 40.25% of the total electorate, now drew only 38.59% – far from a majority.

It is clear that the recent victory of the SP was due less to a real strengthening of the left than to lack of interest and some dispersion in the center and right. As we will see later, this dispersion was partly due to the disorientation and fragmentation of a considerable portion of the Catholic electorate.

If the socialist victory were due to an increase of specifically leftist voters, it might be very difficult to reverse. But since it was caused by disorientation in the center and the right, the situation is not irreversible; the SP’s victory of 1981 may be followed by its defeat in future elections.

May these considerations be an encouragement to those who imagine that the advance of socialism is definitive and who, instead of making use of their political liberties to mount an orderly but fiery, unyielding and fruitful opposition, run to shake hands and collaborate with the victors. Thus they give up the fight to halt their country’s slide down the ramp of socialism (which they themselves call slippery) toward communism (which they recognize as fatal). Their explanation: the socialist victory is definitive – as though anything were really definitive in today’s unstable world.

4. The Crossroads: What Is to Be Done Now that the SP Has Won?

The fact is that now the SP has the Presidency. Even without the support of the 44 deputies of the Communist Party and 20 other deputies of small leftist parties, it has an absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies, with 265 out of 491 seats. To reverse their losses, French centrists and rightists must select an effective strategy for dealing with the SP. To do this they must make explicit to themselves what the SP is. They must choose between the somewhat cosmetic image of an opportunistic and easy-going SP and the reality of an efficient SP leading a gradual but unwavering march toward total collectivism.

The repercussions of the victory of the SP and the establishment of the socialist regime in France will increase the dynamism of socialist movements in other countries. In addition, the announced intention of the present French government to interfere abroad poses a similar question of strategy for the center and right in other countries. The victory of French socialism is already giving leftist politicians in Europe and the Americas the impression that their banner has suddenly acquired a new power to attract multitudes throughout the West. They imagine the electoral power socialism has shown in France to be much greater than it really is, and sparks of socialist enthusiasm are beginning to flare up in various nations. If the easy-going image of the SP is real, this situation is not a major threat. If, however, French socialism aims at precisely the same ultimate goals as communism, then it is necessary to enlighten and alert public opinion about it; for no one knows how far a leftist tendency in public opinion may go when manipulated by the revolutionary psychological warfare that Moscow wages so successfully all over the world.

5. Choosing a Strategy: Aspects of French Socialism

Doubtless, the more objective and true-to-life an image the public now forms of the SP, the faster and more appropriate its choice of strategy will be. While it is impossible to exhaust such a vast matter in this general summary, it seems timely to expose several characteristic features of the doctrine and tactics of the French SP so as to sweep away the optimistic illusions that may impede and slacken the fight against this grave danger.

__________________________

II. Doctrine and Strategy in the Socialist Program for France

1. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” in the Socialist Program

Every motto by nature should be substantial and precise.

This is not so with the trilogy, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” of the French Revolution. Some of the many interpretations and applications which it has occasioned have left in history marks of impiety, madness and blood that will never be erased.⁴

One of the trilogy’s more radical interpretations can be enunciated as follows: Justice demands that there be absolute equality among men. Equality alone, by suppressing all authority, completely attains liberty and fraternity. Liberty can have only one limit, namely, whatever is indispensable for preventing more gifted men from setting up for their own benefit any superiority of command, prestige or possessions. True fraternity characterizes the relations among entirely free and equal men.

Inspired by interpretations of the famous trilogy, the successive revolutionary leaders from 1789 to 1794 came closer and closer to this radical enunciation. The French Revolution, so ostentatiously moderate in its beginnings, suffered clearly communist spasms during its last agony. As though repeating this revolutionary process in slow motion, the democratic world took – or is completing the process of taking – the political leveling of classes to its ultimate consequences, though it still preserves markedly hierarchical aspects in its culture and socio-economic regime.

One can debate which events, places and dates marked the beginning, in the nineteenth century, of the principal movements for cultural and socio-economic leveling. But the fact is that by the middle of the century these movements had spread to many countries and had become solidly established in several, even to the extent of inspiring events such as the Revolution of 1848 in France and the Paris Commune of 1871. Furthermore, in our century they were clearly present among the profound causes of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the consequent propagation of communist regimes in countries behind and beyond the Iron and Bamboo Curtains.⁵ This, not to mention all the communist revolutions and agitation which have shaken various parts of the world, including the explosion of the Sorbonne in May 1968.

The SP’s platform in the latest elections is presented explicitly and even proudly as part of this general movement. It is the Project Socialiste pour la France des annees 80 (“Socialist Program for the France of the 80’s,” which we will henceforth refer to as the Program cf. footnote 1).⁶ Upon reading it one clearly verifies that its ultimate goal is complete equality, from which full liberty and fraternity will supposedly rise.⁷ According to this program, the main purpose of power is to prevent liberty from producing inequalities.⁸ True, it calls the total suppression of authority utopia. But it implies that this utopia is not a void beyond which one plunges into the chaos of anarchism. On the contrary, it views it as a horizon toward which one must ever reach, using every means to come as close as possible to the unattainable, that is, the suppression of an evil deemed necessary but so unpleasant: authority.⁹

2. The SP, the Center and the Right

The global perspective presented in the last paragraph is the key to understanding the whole Program.¹⁰

The Program accepts and adopts in its entirety the radically egalitarian political heritage that was built up in France starting in 1789. It considers useful the various laws hitherto applied to reduce socio-economic inequalities. It further intends to resolutely move today’s France toward the most radical application of the controversial trilogy.¹¹

The difference between the SP on one hand, and the center and right on the other is that the latter two – for the most part – accept the trilogy, but not with the radical interpretation of the SP. Thus, instead of expressing the desire to reach the ultimate egalitarian goal, they say or imply that they would like to stop at some undefined distance from it.¹²

3. The SP and Communism – The Strategy of Gradualism

Is there a clear difference between the strategy of the SP and that of communism for reaching the ultimate goal of total equality? Yes: a) The SP fears that immediate implementation of a regime of total equality would stir up undesirable reactions; b) For this reason, which is purely a question of circumstances, opportunism and strategy, the SP holds that communist principles must be applied gradually, and in stages so gauged as to avoid excessive shocks.¹³

A certain initial moderation of the French socialists in the transition to total equality is not the result of kindness, compassion or indulgence for a defeated adversary, but rather the consequence of a strictly utilitarian calculation made long before their victory.

However, it should be emphasized that in its radical egalitarianism the French SP draws on the socio-economic experience – which we know to be harsh and disappointing – of all the countries in which communism is or has been put into practice. Thus, to a great extent the SP avoids the nationalization so characteristic of old-fashioned communism and aims to establish, in all or nearly all enterprises that have hitherto been private, another form of democratic and radical egalitarianism: self-management.¹⁴

4. Corporate Self-Management: a Socio-Economic Revolution

Self-management is the implementation of the principles and form of government of the Revolution of 1789 in business enterprises.¹⁵

The whole Program appears to find in employer-employee relations a residual image of the relations between the king and the people. It aims to “dethrone” the “king,” eliminate his sovereignty in the business enterprise, and transfer all power to the “plebeians,” that is, the employees, and particularly to the manual laborers. The Revolution has employed various means to prevent the resurgence of different types of aristocracy in the political sphere. Similarly, the Program endeavors to prevent corporate managers and technicians from surviving as an aristocracy in “republicanized” firms. In “large” corporations the individual proprietor disappears immediately. The traditional concept of a business is itself broadened. Not only do those employed by a particular concern share real rights over the company and what it produces, but those rights extend, via representative organizations, to consumers, purveyors, and so on. In fact, these rights belong to society as a whole, represented by delegates of organizations or groups more closely related to the enterprise (see Chart – The Ideal Self-Managing Enterprise Proposed by the Socialists).

Like a democratic republic, each company ultimately will be ruled by a voting majority of its workers. The company will hold assemblies to keep the workers informed about all of its business. “Representatives” or “deputies” will be elected to form a directorate (something like a soviet). The employee-managers will be mere executors of the directorate’s will.

This system is defined as self-managing and affirmed as the logical socio-economic consequence of the people’s political sovereignty. According to this notion, a republic is a politically self-managing nation. A self-managing regime entails the “republicanization” of the socio-economic structure.¹⁶ In other words, it is the establishment of a corporate regime in which the orientation given by specialists and technicians is subject to assemblies and organizations made up mostly of people with less intellectual development.

5. Self-Management Must Encompass Society and Man as a Whole

This “republicanization” must include not only corporations and businesses but the whole social structure as well. Indeed, according to the Program the full implementation of self-management presupposes a profound transformation in man and the application of the most radical interpretation of the trilogy Liberty, Equality, Fraternity in all fields of activity comprised in society, including corporations, the family, culture, teaching, and even leisure itself.¹⁷

6. Why Corporate Reform Requires a Reform of Man

When it comes to reforming mankind, the Program runs into exactly the same difficulties encountered by statist communism.

Although they may have lent themselves to abuse, the economic principles in force in the West emanate from human nature itself. In brief, the common characteristic of these principles is the affirmation of the legitimacy of private property, initiative and profit.

The socialists, however, propose to establish another economic system directed toward other ends and stimulated by other incentives (cf. Program, p. 173). What they call profit only for some must be gradually replaced by the criteria of social utility, determined by the sovereign will of the people. In other words the socialists, like the communists, hold that the individual exists for society and should produce, not for his own good, but directly for the good of the community to which he belongs.

Under this system, the best incentive for work disappears, production necessarily drops, and indolence and misery prevail in all of society.

Every man seeks, both by the light of reason and by a continuous, powerful and fruitful instinctive movement, to provide first for his personal needs and those of his family. When self-preservation is at stake, the human intelligence fights more easily against its limitations and grows in both sharpness and agility The will overcomes laziness more easily and confronts obstacles and struggles with greater vigor. In short, the worker attains a level of productivity quantitatively and qualitatively commensurate with the real necessities and decorum of society. From this initial impulse imbued with legitimate love of himself and his own, a man’s love of his neighbor extends like concentric waves that should ultimately encompass society as a whole. In this way, far from benefiting only his small family group, his activity assumes a scope proportional to society.

Socialism instills discouragement in every worker by abolishing this powerful and natural initial incentive to work and by replacing it with an increasingly egalitarian wage system that fails to reward the more capable proportionately.

Thus, the whole impulse of a nation’s work force drops and becomes weak and insufficient, as so obviously happens in Russia and its satellite countries. This also happens, though perhaps less obviously, in Yugoslavia. And analogously this is what is going to happen in self-managing France.¹⁸

Here we stress the strength of incentive provided by inequality and the depressive effect of both general equal and microscopic inequalities.

The wage ceiling in an egalitarian society will inevitably be equal for all, or only slightly unequal, as can be verified by comparing wage ceilings in communist countries with those in the West.

By the very nature of things work capacity varies immensely from man to man. The overall productivity of a nation presupposes the full stimulation of all capacities, especially those of the extremely capable.

The legitimate ambitions of the extremely capable can be almost unlimited in the socio-economic regime of the West. Once set in motion, they successfully stimulate the whole hierarchy of necessarily lesser capacities which also have before them proportionate possibilities of success. Once the rise of the very capable or the capable is limited, their productive drive decreases. Furthermore, when the very capable work below capacity, the capable also become discouraged, and the overall production level drops.

Thus, egalitarianism necessarily leads to a production inferior to the sum of a country’s work capacities. The more radical the egalitarianism, the lower the level of productivity.

Now, it seems that the ceiling allowed by the Program responds only to the modest aspirations of the average.

7. The Self-Managing Society and the Family

The Program‘s authors apparently imagine that the family the immediate object of man’s love and the intermediate step between him and society dampens his love for the latter instead of multiplying it. Therefore, without banning the family (which would of course be shocking and not exactly gradual), the Program declares in a veiled way that it is unnecessary to the common good and places it on the same level as free love and homosexual unions. The Program¹⁹ separates the procreative function intrinsic to the family from its natural end and considers it a mere fulfillment of the individual. The sterility of this function is permitted and facilitated in every possible way.²⁰ Equality between men and women must be as complete as possible both in their access to the most diverse professions and in their performance of domestic tasks.²¹

Under self-managing socialism the family will become unstable and sterile, lose its identity, and be confounded with any other union. One of the walls supporting every individual’s personality will thus crumble. As we will see later, the Program also aims to deliver the entire educational mission so naturally proper to the family to a preferably monopolistic, secularist and socialist school system, and that from the child’s first years.

So, all alone, cut off from the family (which is reduced in fact to a mere couple), man is left with only one environment, the self-managing enterprise, which is thus given the most favorable conditions to absorb him entirely, quite in the socialist style.

8. Leisure

To complete this absorption, a SP as totalitarian on behalf of the self-managing society as communism is on behalf of the Party, likewise strives to organize and utilize human leisure.

In fact, the Program also covers leisure which, if unregulated, would be the last haven of human freedom in a self-managing world; for man finds in leisure singular possibilities to know and express himself, and to establish relationships and friendships.

Gradualistic as always, the SP states that it recognizes man’s right to leisure. The average reader becomes favorably impressed and does not realize that the SP – fundamentally organizing and demanding as far as work is concerned – professes a new concept of leisure which eliminates the distinction between leisure and work, making both subject to simultaneous planning. The SP disapproves of individual and personalizing leisure. It desires collective leisure and plans leisure even inside people’s own homes in order to better manipulate and prepare them for the rough and sterile drudgery of self-managing life.²²

9. Control of Lifestyles

In a self-managing society the company organizes work-leisure in a totalitarian way. Who will organize leisure-work? In this field the establishment of strict regulatory organizations becomes necessary precisely because the SP aims to weaken and finally destroy the family, the preeminent natural ambience for true leisure. To this end the SP encourages the creation of neighborhood organizations and the like which are apparently expected to play a decisive role in the distribution of dwellings and the non-segregative reassignment of people to existing or planned neighborhoods. Moreover, it will even take care of the interior arrangement of the homes.

Furthermore, company-related organizations will favor the socialist plan by absorbing the moments, the remnants of energy, the very breath of life not taken up by the company’s activities. The victim of this whole process is the individual, regimented and fitted into the self-managing communities and entirely absorbed by the company-related organizations combination.²³

The outline of the argumentation with which the SP tries to justify this gigantic absorption is always the same:

a) the proclamation of an individual right;
b) the affirmation of a social function of this right;
c) rigid planning of the exercise of this right using the pretext that it must fulfill this social function;
d) the consequent absorption of this right by the planning authority.

10. Education

We turn now to the formation of children and youth.

Self-managing education, according to the Program, begins no later than two years of age, when it is most desirable that the child be handed over to a pre-primary or nursery school. But complete preparations must be made to receive those children whose mothers choose to deliver them to socialist education at any age, even when newborn.

How well all of this fits in with the planned sterility of the self-managing family!²⁴

Some schools may still remain in private hands for a period of “gradual” transition. But even they will be tied to the State educational machinery, which will encompass all levels, from pre-primary through university and post-graduate school. Principals, teachers and other staff members in public or private schools will have roles very similar, though not identical, to those of managers and technicians in self-managing companies. According to the principle of “democratic planning,” fathers and mothers and other interested persons will likewise participate in the process of education. The “commoners” of the school, that is, the students, will have – to all imaginable degrees, and even to an unimaginable degree – rights analogous to those of the workers in the self-managing company.²⁵

But that is not all. In the school as well as in the family, child or adolescent “plebeians” will be motivated and encouraged to wage a systematic class struggle against educational and domestic authorities, and will hold their own assemblies, tribunals, appellate courts and so on.²⁶

In nationalized or self-managing schools, the curriculum, the whole teaching staff, and the secularist and socialist formation of the intellect will be subject to the State.²⁷

The Program does not make entirely clear which schools will be allowed to go on surviving – or dying – in private hands to the degree that the gradualist strategy determines. Nevertheless, it is not hard to conjecture that they will manage to evade the State’s influence and power only to a small and uncertain degree, if at all.²⁸

Isn’t this educational network totalitarian? The Program tries to evade this embarrassing question by citing an education plan to be prepared democratically so that each and every one may be able to express his opinion. Supposedly, this plan would thus represent the will of all.

On the basis of this sophistry, the socialists claim that the unified system of education is not a monopoly. Even though this system is unified, they contend that everyone is invited to participate in it. So how can anyone brand it a monopoly?

One sees very well that the Program achieves “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” quite in its own way. At the moment of the collective decision, everyone is equal because the power of decision belongs to the majority, which decides all educational matters. It is for the minority to obey. When, then, is individual liberty achieved? At the very moment of the voting, because every one is free to argue and to vote as he likes. But only at that moment …

11. The Right of Property in the Self-Managing Regime

Everything expounded up until now clarifies the global socialist meaning (and not merely the application to business, as many imagine) of the self-managing regime. It also brings out the gradualism of the SP’s strategy.

Now let us analyze the self-managing enterprise in more detail.
A reader conversant with today’s businesses may imagine that the application of the standards of political democracy to the economic and social life of self-managing businesses is more rhetorical than real. This is an illusion.

As mentioned previously, the sovereign power deciding all important matters in the self-managing enterprise is really the workers’ assembly. This assembly will determine the organization of governing bodies and elect their members (an important detail: the Program does not speak of a secret ballot). At meetings, the governing bodies will apparently supply information and provide the opportunity for discussion, both of which will guide the voters in their choices. Their idea, it seems, is that each workers’ assembly will try to reenact somehow the direct democracy of the ancient Greek cities.

Naturally, in certain matters these deliberations should be held in conjunction with consumers or clients and representatives of the community (see Chart – The Ideal Self-Managing Enterprise Proposed by the Socialists).

Will private property survive in the regime contemplated in the Program? Beware. From the Program‘s language one sees that if you question a French Socialist his answers may be very reassuring…and utterly empty.

In current language, state property is distinct from private property.²⁹ Therefore, from a certain standpoint the self-managing enterprise can be considered private, for its relationship to the State is distinct from that of a nationalized enterprise.

The Program calls the self-managing enterprise “socialized,” that is, not belonging to the State (therefore private), but not belonging to any individual either, for in a general way the owner’s attributes will be transferred to the workers’ assembly.

Will, then, private property survive under the socialist regime? As far as large enterprises are concerned, for a very short time, the Program answers. Medium and small-sized enterprises will continue somewhat longer, depending on the circumstances.³⁰

What determines what a small, medium, and large business enterprise is? We have notions about this matter based on common sense and in accordance with mental habits formed in the present order of things. But the new society does not fit these mental habits; it will generate other habits. So, the “size” of an enterprise will be determined by the law, and the State will be able to “gradually” pare down the amount of property a person may own.³¹ Within a few years enterprises now considered medium-sized will have to bear the severe taxation now imposed on large enterprises, and enterprises now considered small will be deemed medium-sized. As a result, the number of small private properties (now favored in the fiscal plan) will be ever more limited.

Of course, considered in the overall context of the Program, private property appears contradictory even when reduced to meager proportions, for it maintains its individual character amidst a wholly socialized system. Hence it follows that the end result of socialist gradualism will be the complete extinction of all private property.³²

Indeed, the Program‘s gradualist strategy rejects the immediate extinction of all private properties but provides for stages leading to their gradual extinction. According to the Program. the self-managing regime will temporarily permit small, medium-sized and even large properties, but, to say the least, the latter two will be moribund categories. Who can say, considering the logic of its iron-fisted egalitarianism, that the self-managing State does not intend to eliminate small properties after it has done away with medium-sized and large ones?

Furthermore, how can the worker in a self-managing regime rise to proprietorship by accumulating only what remains of his earnings after providing for his subsistence? How many years of work will that take? And all this to enjoy his property for only a few years? Is he going to leave it to the offspring of one of his unions, a child handed over in earliest infancy to the State which alone molded his mentality and made him a stranger to his own parents, who probably will also be strangers to each other since their union was unstable? These questions make it quite clear how property, even though it be small, is really extraneous to the self-managing world, where it survives only as long as gradualistic tactics require.³³

12. Rural Property in the Socialist Program

The Program is apparent much more in its goals than in the stages it allows or tolerates out of strategic necessity.

In this perspective, how does rural property – that is, the small family-sized property – stand in a society molded by the SP? This question presupposes the previous elimination of large and medium-sized properties.

Both the Program and the Declaration of the Government’s General Policy made by Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy are vague and ambiguous on this point.

The Program proposes, measures that at first seem to be inspired by common sense and a desire to protect the farmer: increased productivity, organized markets, restoration of the farmer’s status and the guarantee of his land. The sole exception is a price-protection system for agricultural products which will almost certainly benefit only the small producers. Let the other producers, tolerated out of gradualism, survive as they can, or wither.

What do the rights of the small land-owner amount to? The principal element of the socialist proposition, is the creation of land offices which, among other things, will organize the markets and be “in charge of ensuring a better distribution and utilization of the soil.”

Furthermore, these land offices will be elements of a collective self-management of all arable land by both small land-owners and consumers. This would continuously subject the small property to divisions, changes in size, or amalgamations in a situation of permanent land reform under dictatorially regulated prices for agricultural products.³⁴

*          *          *

When one considers what the Program as a whole lays down for the self-managing society, some questions come to mind: What is the essence of its inspiration? Is it really liberal? What does it say about religion? This is what we will see now.

III. The Doctrinal Core of the Socialist Program: Secularism – “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”

1. The Rights of Man in the Self-Managing Society: to Become Informed, Dialogue and Vote

We have already seen that the SP plans to educate the citizen from the cradle to the grave, molding his soul at work and leisure, in culture and art, and influencing even the arrangement of his own home. How will this affect individual freedom?

At this point what was said in the beginning about the relationship between and liberty and equality in the trilogy of the French revolution is confirmed. Indeed, if liberty means having nothing and no one above oneself, and consequently doing anything one wishes – for this is the radical and anarchical sense of the term – the self-managing citizen is only apparently free. But at no moment of his life will he be really free.

The self-managing citizen will find the realm of his purely individual choices, in which he manifests the unique and unmistakable character of his personality, ever more restricted. Both at work and at leisure he will be free to become informed, to dialogue and to vote. But decisions will normally be made by the community. His freedom will be limited to saying what he wishes in public debates and to voting as he likes. As a voter, he is free to choose names and cast his ballot in the decision-making assemblies. As an individual, he is pushed by the Program to the very limits of nonbeing.³⁵ This is not done directly by the State, but rather by a social fabric or mechanism comprising business and non-business self-managing groups.

The real power structure in the self-managing society starts out from the assemblies, moves up through the committees and other agencies of society until it finally reaches the State – that is, until self-management heads for the final dissolution of the State and the distribution of its powers to small, autonomous communities.³⁶ The worker could envision the power structure in the shape of a diamond. At one end is his own company, in which he is a speaking and voting molecule. At the opposite end is the State. But the State would be at the top of the diamond and the workers’ assembly at the bottom. We are not suggesting here that self-management, once established, would be a mere façade behind which the State would manipulate everything. That could happen. But we are not discussing the deformations that a self-managed society could suffer once established. We are only considering what the genuine socialist mirage would be if applied in its entirety.

So, it would be consistent with the Program to suppose that:

a) Once the self-managing society is established, the powers of the State will “gradualistically” wither;

b) But in establishing it by law, the State is omnipotent. As long as the law serves as the foundation and rule of that society, it will live by virtue of the omnipotence of that act which organized and established it. And at least as long as the State exists, it may at any time abrogate or expand this act as it wishes;

c) In the societies of the West, the State does not exercise such ample powers. Countries in both East and West have generally adopted the principle of the sovereignty of universal suffrage. But in the West this sovereignty is self restrained by the recognition of greater or lesser individual liberties. In the East the principle of government by the people has no practical value, and it is clear that it will have none in the self-managing society, where the liberty of the individual is restricted to speaking and voting in the assemblies.

The State decides everything in a self-managing society. It annihilates the family and supplants it. It allots to the self-managing molecules the tatters of rights that will remain for them in society. It has unlimited power to legislate on all self-managing undertakings, whether they be businesses, schools, or what have you. It teaches. It forms. It levels. It fills one’s leisure time. In short, it installs itself in the mind of the individual. All that is left to him is his condition as a robot whose only signs of life are becoming informed, dialoging, and voting. This trilogy would be the concrete implementation of the other: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

In a word, the self-managing society has its own morality and its own philosophy,³⁷ which the robotized worker will inhale even in the air he breathes.

2. Religion and religions in the Program

The self-managing society does not confine itself to eliminating or restricting the individual’s liberties but, as we have seen, it even seeks to form his very conscience.

These considerations naturally prompt one to ascertain to what extent the Program mutilates the rights of Religion:

a) One could say that every word, every letter of the Program is laicist. There is no thought of God in it. According to the program, the source of all rights is not God but man and society. It entirely ignores the next life, Revelation, and the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ.”³⁸

b) Religion, or rather, religions – as far as the Program is concerned, since it does not recognize the supernatural character of any of them – are merely social realities which have always existed and still exist. They are realities extrinsic to the self-managing society that clash head-on with its laicism. This leads one to foresee that the self-managing society, which tends to destroy everything extrinsic and contradictory to it, will work to extinguish religions “gradualistically.” True, the Program guarantees freedom of worship. But this freedom is restricted to a bare minimum in a world opposed to the Church in everything that society conceives and implements regarding the economy, social organization, political totalitarianism, perpetuation of the human species, the family, and even man himself.³⁹

The Program implies such a global vision of society that it necessarily presupposes – although not explicitly – a global vision of the Universe. For the Universe is, in a certain way, the context of society. A global, laicist and self-sufficient society corresponds to an analogously global, laicist and self-sufficient universe.

In turn, a vision of the Universe implies either an affirmation or a denial of God, a denial perfectly real even though expressed by silence.⁴⁰ The Program is therefore “atheist,” without God.

It is licit to ask whether or not the Program‘s silence about God is merely a “gradualist” stage leading to some kind of a plausibly evolutionist pantheism.

This reference to a possible pantheism is made because the Program attributes a kind of redemptive function to society as a whole. There the individual is rescued from the shipwreck into which his very condition as an individual puts him. It is the path to the solution of all problems.⁴¹

The reference to evolutionism is, in turn, related to the arbitrary, anti-natural and artificial character of socialist reformism, and even more closely related to the fundamental relativism that it holds.⁴² On the basis of very obscure philosophical concepts with whose influence it is nevertheless thoroughly permeated, the Program denies most fundamental principles of the natural order (such as the distinction between the mission of men and women, the family, marital authority, patria potestas, as well as the principle of authority at all levels and in all fields, private property and the right of inheritance). The Program, warring against the work of the Creator, aims at reconstructing a human society diametrically opposed to the God-given nature of man.

All of this presupposes that nature, which the SP holds to be indefinitely malleable, can be molded by man as he wishes. This is suggestive of evolutionism.

3. The Attitude of the French Episcopate Toward the SP

In view of all this, we as Catholics cannot fail to express our astonishment – an astonishment that will be shared by all nations until the end of time once the present confusion in people’s minds is dispelled – that the French Bishops’ Conference uttered not a single word of warning about the country’s peril in elections capable of bringing the mentors and leaders of the SP to power and threatening the Church and the still living remnants of Christendom. Indeed, in the two statements that it released (February 10 and June 1, 1981), the Standing Committee of the French Episcopate expressed its neutrality toward all candidates, affirmed that it did not “wish to influence the personal decisions” of French Catholics, and made an appeal for the electoral campaign to take place in a climate of ‘respect’ for men and groups, including adversaries” (Statement of February 10, 1981).⁴³

In their statement of June 1, entitled “On the Occasion of the Parliamentary Elections,” the bishops pointed out that “it is proper to a democratic society” to choose between “opposing” projects and programs. Thus, the Catholic Church was presenting “her own reflections on the near future of our society… not to support a group or to oppose anyone, but to draw attention to the essential values of the personal and communitarian life of men.” In so doing, the bishops wanted to contribute “to the dignity and generosity of the debate.”⁴⁴

This attitude of the bishops is consistent with the document “For a Christian Practice of Politics,” which they approved almost unanimously in Lourdes in 1972 (cf. “Politique, Eglise et Foi” in Le Centurion, Lourdes, 1972, pp. 75-110). In this document the prelates state that “French Catholics today can be found through the whole fan of the political chessboard [sic]” (op. cit., p. 80). That is to say, in the SP and CP as well. In face of this monumental fact, the bishops merely affirm the legitimacy of pluralism and comment with obvious sympathy on the commitment of “numerous Christians” to the “collective movement of liberation” animated by Marxist-inspired class struggle, which they do not condemn clearly.⁴⁵

In view of these precedents, the fact – astonishing in itself – that for ten years now socialist doctrine has been penetrating with impunity into the fold entrusted by the Holy Ghost to the zeal and vigilance of the French Shepherds, is no longer a matter of great surprise. Now, the votes of Catholics who have strayed into the ranks of the socialist electorate contributed considerably to the victory of self-management in the recent elections.⁴⁶

Considering these facts – and there are so many more in today’s world – one better understands how true it is that the Holy Church finds Herself as Paul VI noted, in a mysterious process of “self-destruction” (Allocution of 12/7/68) and penetrated by the “smoke of Satan” (Allocution of 6/29/72).

IV. Is this Interference in France’s Internal Affairs?

The elections of a chief of state and representatives to the Chamber of Deputies are internal affairs of each country. Freedom to do this without foreign interference is a fundamental element of its sovereignty. So, an objection could be raised: How can thirteen associations, twelve of them from countries other than France, judge that they should publish throughout the West a commentary whose essential theme is the recent French elections with the object of fostering the choice of a strategy in view of their outcome?

This objection is conceivable only in someone unaware of the full scope of the Socialist Program, of the nature of the French SP and of the inevitable and extensive repercussion of the socialist victory in the political and cultural life of the various nations of the West.

The Program actually states that one of its goals is interference in the internal politics, and more particularly in the class warfare, of other countries. Therefore, since the SP has risen to power, we must fear that it will use the resources of the French State and France’s international influence to “achieve this goal.⁴⁷ Thus, for the twelve foreign associations to take a position alongside the esteemed and promising French TFP on the goals and action of the SP in a document published in France and in their respective countries, is not to interfere in exclusively internal affairs of another country but rather to take precautionary action to safeguard the future of their own countries. By publishing this pronouncement, the TFPs and similar associations of the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela, in conjunction with the TFP of France, are doing nothing more than exercising their legitimate right of self-defense.

It is therefore appropriate for associations from twelve Western countries to address their fellow-countrymen, alerting them to the problems that can be expected from the rise of the French Socialist Party. It is also proper for these associations, with the support of their French brothers-in-ideal, to make the French people aware of the internal complications into which Socialist Program’s predominantly ideologico-imperialistic approach to international politics may entangle them.

Providence has conferred on France such a position among the nations of the West that issues and debates arising there are, more often than not, related to universal problems. The French genius, agile in coming to grips with problems, lucid in thinking, brilliant in expression, has shown in numerous historical junctures that it knows how to discuss these issues on a level that relates them to the universal thoughts of the human mind. Thus, in dealing with France’s current situation, the societies signing this Message clearly realize that many issues presently in varying stages of fermentation in their own countries may be hastened, or even thrust, to a critical point as a consequence of the worldwide repercussion of what may happen in France in the coming months (cf. Chap. 1, no. 4). This is one more reason to affirm that self-managing socialism represents a grave threat not only to France but also to the whole world.

The Glorious Future of France According to Saint Pius X

We close these considerations beseeching Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, to confirm with events the words of prophetic resonance of the holy and unsurpassable Pontiff Saint Pius X concerning France: “A day will come, and we hope it is not far off, when France, like Saul on the road to Damascus, will be enveloped in a celestial light and hear a voice that repeats to her: ‘My daughter, why dost thou persecute me?’ And to her response, ‘Who art thou, Lord’ the voice will reply: ‘I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. It is hard to thee to kick against the goad, because in thine obstinacy thou destroyest thyself.’ And she, trembling and filled with wonder, will say; ‘Lord, what wouldst thou have me do?’ And He: ‘Arise, wash away the stains that have disfigured thee, awaken in thy breast the dormant sentiments and the pact of our alliance and go, first-born daughter of the Church, predestined nation, vessel of election, go as in the past, bear my name before all the peoples and the kings of the earth” (Consistorial Allocution Vi ringrazio, of November 29, 1911, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Typis Poliglottis Vaticanis, Rome, 1911, p. 657).

“In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph,” Our Lady promised at Fatima. This is what we ask Her for France and for the world.

On the 64^th anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady at Fatima.

Sao Paulo, October 13, 1981

American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property
Association Française pour la Défense de la Tradition, Famille et Propriété
Centro Cultural Reconquista (Portugal)
Sociedad Argentina de Defensa de la Tradicion, Familia y Propiedad
Sociedade Brasileira de Defesa da Tradiçao, Familia e Propriedade
Sociedad Chilena de Defensa de la Tradicion, Familia y Propiedad
Sociedad Colombiana de Defensa de la Tradicion, Familia y Propiedad
Sociedad Ecuatoriana de Defensa de la Tradicion, Familia y Propiedad
Sociedad Uruguaya de Defensa de la Tradicion, Familia y Propiedad
Sociedad Venezolana de Defensa de la Tradicion, Familia y Propiedad
Young Canadians for a Christian Civilization
Jovenes Bolivianos pro Civilizacion Cristiana
Sociedad Cultural Covadonga – TFP (Spain)