EVENING REFLECTIONS

THE EMOLLIENT DECLARATION

In the 313 votes obtained by the ministry, the socialists entered for exactly one third. They therefore voted as one man for Mr. Herriot. But they were keen to make it clear, in a declaration read from the podium, that if they mix up their ballot in the ballot box with those of the Cartel, they do not intend to renounce their principles.

No stable, lasting and powerful organization, they said, can be conceived or realized outside a regime of social property and sovereignty of labor.

At first glance, this reservation seems quite modest and almost harmless. Stable and lasting organization: don't you find that these expressions have a little reassuring air for the bourgeois. To speak of stability and organization is to let believe that the program that one wants to realize is not very bad.

At first sight, how can one rebel against the sovereignty of Labor? Are not the idle people people who are completely devoid of interest? Is it not appropriate to castigate the lazy and all those who live, without doing anything, on the community?

Even this expression: social property regime, is misleading. You say that we want to abolish property? Not at all. We are maintaining it. It will only be called social property. Does it not already exist, moreover? Are there not streets and boulevards common to everyone, squares and public gardens, libraries and museums where one can set foot without asking anyone's permission?

The socialists have put on kid gloves, this time, because the situation was delicate. They were not going to explain their vote by exposing collectivism under the horrified gaze of the radical left and adorning their buttonholes with a red eglantine that would have frightened Mr. Loucheur's economic liberalism. Not so stupid! We have more than one trick up our sleeve and we don't catch flies with vinegar, as the proverb says.

No, no! An emollient and vaseline declaration, one of those nice little declarations of all rest that don't give anyone the shivers. No off-the-cuff words: it's good in Saint-Etienne or in Le Creusot. No of this revolutionary recovery of the means of production and exchange. No expropriation (with or without compensation?). A small, peaceful, soothing piece, in the genre of the interventionist repertoire, which gives the impression of courage outside the confines of the Palais-Bourbon and which pleases Thomson and allows him to evoke, if necessary, the figure of Gambetta.

But, behind this screen, no one doubts it, Collectivism subsists. If we do not mince words, this regime of social property is only the product of the revolution, the culmination of the class struggle, the triumph of one of them over all the others, the dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet enslavement, the last stage, at least for the moment, of the Red Army.

Collectivism is there, fierce. with its ukases, its knout and its numbering. If the socialists did not exhibit it. the other day, it is because it was neither the place nor the time. If they left him behind the curtain, it was because it was not opportune. It was because they did not want to compromise the President of the Council.

But, rest assured, it was not for his pretty eyes that they took on these airs of Sainte-Nitouche; Mr. Herriot is not a comrade. His policy is acceptable only to the extent that it allows them to take stronger positions in view of the final struggle. Let the government remain itself, they affirm. It is because the government is doing their business, while waiting for them to be able to do it all by themselves.

The time for revolutionary solutions has not come. But, do not doubt it. It will come. Only, on that day, the 234 will have had little ones.

ANDRE PAYER,