ABSTRACT
For many years after World War II, the Communist party dominated the French Left. The wellspring of faith in Communism was a belief in the purgative and creative powers of revolution, the elemental force born in France in 1789, reborn in Petrograd in 1917. Fears that Communist ministers could fill the civil service with their appointees were based on their success in so doing in 1944 - 1947. From 1945 to 1953 the extreme Right had won only a minute portion of the vote in France. It rallied with the Poujadiste movement in 1956 but collapsed again after de Gaulle returned to power. In the presidential election of 1965 Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour won only 5-28 percent of the vote. The incidence of crime had climbed steeply in France with the rise of urbanization and prosperity. Between 1963 and 1983 the incidence of burglary, the most common crime, was multiplied by a factor of fourteen.
