FRANCE: Family Feud on the Left

The differences grow between quarreling partners

While 20,000 party members sipped beer, munched on páté sandwiches and applauded mightily in the vast Pavilion de Paris last week, France's fiery Communist chief Georges Marchais berated the enemy. No, not the Gaullists, but Socialist Party Leader Francois Mitterrand, Marchais's partner in France's swiftly disintegrating leftist coalition. "Mitterrand has dismissed the case," he declared, referring to the collapse of talks between the parties on revising the common program, the coalition's campaign platform for the March 1978 elections. Shouted Marchais: "The Socialist Party's behavior shows...

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