Hands up for renewal
IN 1943, Stalin made the liquidation of the Communist International official. At the beginning of the 1960s, the Sino-Soviet split brought an end to the grand conferences of the "world communist movement", which had been reduced to a nebulous gathering. Not without its contradictions - especially after the Soviet Union's intervention in
Czechoslavakia, and particularly for those Parties with strong roots in their own country - Moscow played the role of historical, ideological, and often,
IN THE immediate post-war period the Italian and French Communist Parties (the PCI "A Tale of Two Parties" material, common point of reference.
and PCF) were the strongest and, potentially, most powerful in Western Europe. Their evolution, as many of our readers will know, has been quite different. The PCI split the DANIEL BENSAID - 20 March 1994 majority forming the "social democratic" Party of the Democratic Left; the minority, in collaboration with currents of the revolutionary left, forming a new Party of Communist Refoundation. The PCF, whose recent 28th congress opted for "safety in continuity", continues to bleed members but staggers on regardless. In his introductory essay, Daniel Bensaid identifies the debates and issues which, despite the different reactions, were common to both the Italian and French Parties;
former-Communist Parties. Roland Wood O
International Viewpoint #255 April 1994
N Western Europe, the French and Italian Communist Parties
(PCF and PCI) were the most torn between their links with the
USSR, growing integration into the institutions of their national States common indeed, for Communist parties throughout Western Europe: • Stalinism in general, but specifically the relationship of these Parties to Moscow. • Euro-communism and its "democratic" critique of Stalinism which, for all that, never did too much to genuinely democratise the Parties themselves. The Italians were, in many respects, the "founders" of Euro-communism; their distance from Moscow was longer established. And, it could be argued, the PCI majority at least had the honesty to take Euro-communism to its logical conclusion - abandoning its historic identity and openly embracing social democracy (rather than, as had increasingly been the case, from the beginning of the 1980s at the very least, hiding thoroughly social democratic politics behind a fashioned variant of Marxian new
The PRC, the majority of which are former PCI members, is not, as Livio Maitan explains, a rump Stalinist organisation. The name "Refoundation", as we have said before, was well chosen. It implies a critical spirit, but, as Maitan concludes, the real speak). refoundation of Italian communism, with particular regard to the Party's general The French, on the other hand, were obviously shy. Despite the public declarations and joint press conferences with leaders of the Italian and Spanish Parties, support for strategic orientation, is still to come.
Euro-communism was always faint-hearted. However, their critique, in so far as they developed one, was not the sign of healthy developments but rather a retreat back to the comfort of old habits. Francis Sitel examines this debilitating obsession with "safety in continuity", exemplified by its longer lasting relationship with Moscow. By why of contrast to Italy and France we are also publishing a shorter article on the history and evolution of the Greek Communist Party (KKE). There is some similarity, in that, as Tassos Goudelis says, the KKE also found itself in a potentially powerful and influential position in the immediate post-war period. The contrast however, is that the KKE remained, through necessity, a largely clandestine organisation until the mid-1970s. Its subsequent evolution has been shaped as much by that experience as by the debates which pre-occupied the Italians and French. In future issues we will be examining the developments in other Communist and 14
(including the serious possibility of taking on governmental responsibilities) and their hold on a powerful trade union and social movement, the ultimate source of their legitimacy. Other parties such as the Spanish and Portuguese Communist Parties, were the main political forces in the resistance to Franco and Salazar, and were less directly subjected to this explosive contradiction. But their clandestine existence had other paradoxical effects on them. In Spain, for example, the apparatus had less control over an activist base which itself subjected to the centrifugal effects of the national question.
The Prague Spring of 1968 was the occasion to publicly take one's distance from the international policy of the USSR. In the mid-1970s
"Euro-communism" became the label of a belated and failed renewal. Meetings between the Italian, French and Spanish parties signified the emergence of a political current - in the middle of a European crisis reflected by the fall of the Spanish and Portuguese dictatorships. The 197677 common declarations of Berlinguer, Marchais and Carrillo were both the highpoint of this political current and the beginning of its collapse. The democratic critique of Stalinism served as a cover, in Italy and in Spain, for a rightist turn in the face of the crisis. In
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International Viewpoint #255 April 1994
Italy, this meant the historic compromise and the trade union line of the EUR. In Spain, it meant the Moncloa Pact and the legitimisation of the monarchy.
As for the French Communist Party, from the summer of 1977 it began a period of division of the left that was to lead to the barely hidden call to vote for right-wing candidate Giscard D'Estaing in the second round of the 1981 presidential elections.
These flip-flops could only have a devastating and disorienting effect on Party activists. As such, the first mass reaction to the social consequences of "Euro-communism" found a certain charm in the good old days. During the 1981 congress of the Catalan Communist Party (Spain), the victorious opposition to Euro-communism was called "Afghan" without any offence being taken.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the USSR clearly signal a major historical turning point that requires all Parties with origins in the international communist movement to undertake a radical self-redefinition. The collapse of the common reference point in Moscow has led to re-classifications that have been as unexpected as they have been spectacular. Hereafter, some Parties consider their communist identity to be nul and void. History has to be revised, right up until the Parties' origins. For those who continue to define themselves as communists, formal loyalty to the label is not sufficient to reply to questions of substance: which communism, and with what in the past are they breaking?
The change promises to be all the more painful (and perilous) in that it takes place in a context of social and economic crisis which leaves little place for the traditional reformist policies adopted after the Second World War. This applies in relation to the liberal offensive and the decay of the Welfare State in the imperialist countries, and to support given to bureaucratic populist regimes more or less at the service of the international policy of the USSR. The effects of this can already be seen. Communist Parties have been marginalised by a massive reorganisation of the working class movement (Brazil), others have been dissolved into populism (Mexico), exploded (Algeria), or are going through a crisis of redefinition with tragic consequences (Philippines).
In the countries of Western Europe, the evolution of the majority of the Italian Communist Party is an exception. It is not only the question of a change in name and an abandonment of the communist reference point, but of an attempt to occupy the political space of a social democracy weaker than the Spanish and French Socialist Parties, and morally
The partnership between the Party of the Democratic Left (the former Italian majority and the big social democratic parties on a pan-European level, may very well work to the advantage of this switch. But in other countries where there are still Communist Parties that are weakened but have social roots, the pains of recomposition are going to continue. The crisis of the USSR has definitely affected their long-held identity. The social crisis has eroded their trade union strength and weakened their electoral strongholds.
### Intransigent
At the same time, the effects of the crisis are so deep-going that they spoil initial pseudo-realist reflexes, such as patiently waiting for the end of the tunnel. The need for intransigent resistance is expressed in the presence and activity of the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) in Italy, the left of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and the Workers Commissions (CCOO), and even in the Party of Democratic Socialism in the eastern part of Germany.
Beyond these signs of resistance, the question of the future of the Communist Parties is still there. They may overcome their historic differences with social democracy and the question of re-unification will be posed, or they will be confronted with the need to genuinely deal with their own history, which they will have to if there is to be any authentic renewal.
The case of the French Communist Party is a good illustration. After the electoral defeat of the Socialist Party in 1993, given the inconsistency of the ecologists, the PCF had the chance to lead the social remobilisation on the condition that they make a real effort towards critical renewal. But the apparatus - preserve of conservatism, built upon decades of bureaucratic practices, depoliticised by routine — seems incapable of such an effort. And yet, unlike other European countries, the nearly immobile corpus of this Party is still big enough to hold up the renaissance of a fighting internationalist left on the pan-European level.
Such a recomposition is very much on the order of the day. It has at least a pan-European dimension. After the disappearance of the USSR, it will be principally determined by the redefinition of links with the social movement. the development of a European project and the assertion of a new internationalism in solidarity with the Third World Already, the PRC in Italy, the United Left in the Spanish State and the unitary agreements for the municipal elections in Lisbon provide interesting experiences, insofar as united social mobilisation can develop side by side with democratic practices and political pluralism.
Other factors will intervene in this complex process of re-organisation. The small Communist Parties of northern Europe — who no longer have the support of the Soviet big brother - are becoming simple partners in coalitions with the revolutionary left and greens (Denmark). On the other hand, it is still too early to see what political form resistance to the liberal shock will take in Eastern Europe.
Populist?
And finally, it is not excluded that - in the face of the brutality of the social crisis and the ruinous consequences of unemployment - certain chauvinistic and populist sections of the Communist Parties will swing to the far right. In Russia, this is no longer a hypothesis. In Western Europe, there are only symptoms of this.
It is still difficult to fully grasp the scale of the major historic developments underway. Less than five years ago, the Berlin Wall was still standing. Less than three years ago, the USSR was still cited as the number two superpower. The shake-up which has occurred since then has yet to have its full impact. It will be more powerful than even the most rigid apparatus. Honest activists are leaving aside past certainty and opening up to
Dialogue is indeed taking place, and barriers are falling to the wayside. The first requirement is that of action. To face up to the blows of international capitalist re-organisation, the need of the hour is a common front. But nothing solid will be built without honest collective reflection upon the lessons of recent history, upon political and trade union democracy that can resist bureaucratic tendencies — and upon a revolutionary strategy for our times. *
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