ABSTRACT
When François Mitterrand was elected on 10 May 1981 people took to the streets in their tens of thousands to celebrate this significant victory. For the first time since the Popular Front of 1936, a predominantly socialist government was to be formed and since the great French revolution of 1789 France had only known three years of truly left-wing government. Moreover, the programme on which President Mitterrand had been elected was a radical one which drew much from the PCF/PS Programme commun of the 1970s. The new president and his colleagues had spoken unequivocally of a ‘break with capitalism’ where emancipation of the ordinary French person was the guiding principle and where the demands of the hitherto ruling class were to be brushed aside. The day after Mitterrand’s victory capitalist dismay was expressed by the value of shares on the Paris Bourse going into free fall and the value of the franc dropping to the lowest point the European Monetary System would allow. It seemed as if a new era was dawning in French political history, and indeed it was. But by the time of his re-election in 1988 it was clear that the most significant point about the Mitterrand revolution was that it had actually sought to make and had succeeded in making peace between the dominant forces of the left and capitalism, rather than achieving a break with capitalism. How could this be so?
