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In his first instructions to his new caretaker Cabinet, Charles de Gaulle called for the election, in his words, "of an unquestionable and homogeneous majority"—in other words, renewed Gaullist control of the National Assembly. Gaullist political strategy is to try to bring about the very polarization that Culture Minister André Malraux for many years has forecast as inevitable: De Gaulle v. the Communists. On a televised press conference, Premier Georges Pompidou set the tone for the campaign: "The question is who is for and who is against this totalitarian Communism," he cried. "We call on all citizens, on men of all parties, who are ready to prepare the future with us in ridding France of this totalitarian Communist doctrine." Premier Pompidou thus blithely ignored the aid from behind the scenes that the Communist leadership had provided the Elysée in helping preserve order at the worst of the crisis and the fact that Gaullist foreign policy of increasing cooperation with Communist countries has not changed.
De Gaulle himself appeared on television in a remarkable 55-minute interview with Michel Droit, the editor of the pro-Gaullist Figaro Littéraire, Seated on a tapestry-upholstered Louis XV armchair in the Elyséee Palace, De Gaulle appeared relaxed and regal, chatting avuncularly about his own past and France's future. Predictably, he called on the French people "to rally round their President so that France may live," and he warned that if the election results went against his party, "all is lost,"
Unlikely Note. Then De Gaulle adumbrated a new political ideology for France. "Communism," he reflected, "is a dictatorship that is implacable and perpetual. But capitalism in another way seizes and enslaves man. The worker has no hold on his destiny, as ants in an anthill or termites in a termite pile." Pondered the general: "How to find a human balance for modern mechanical society? That is the great question of the century."
De Gaulle proposed "a third solution." It was a society of participation. As he explained it, it sounded something like a cross between U.S.-style profit sharing and the Communist concept of workers' councils. He envisioned an era in economic cooperation, he said when owners, managers, technicians and laborers would share jointly in the profits and participate in decision making. Similarly, he foresaw the same rule of participation in the universities, where all students and professors would join in reforming those institutions.
Was this bluff or real revolution? Editor Droit asked De Gaulle.
"If real revolution consists in profoundly changing the existing order, then this certainly is one," De Gaulle replied, adding: "I am not at all embarrassed to be a revolutionary." On that unlikely note, France this week entered into 14 days of hectic campaigning.