The spectacular decline of the ization" initiated at the Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. To back up house has recently published for the first time Khrushchev's report to the Twentieth Congress, speeches of the 1956 leadership of the PCF (Duelos,
French Communist Party
Thorez, Frachon), and even a collection of texts by Leon Trotsky.
The second historic error, according to the PCF leadership, was to give priority for 25 years to unity with the Socialwhen the government of Laurent Fabius was formed, the
French Communist Party (PCF) left the government in which it had since 1981 in the successive cabinets headed by Pierre participated
Mauroy. Thus ended a stage in the party's history that saw a deepening of crisis that affected every aspect of its policy and functioning. The
PCE's electoral decline reached an unprecedented low. It was on the oasis of an electoral defeat that the PCF accepted ministerial responsibilities in the first place, since in the June 1981 legislative elections, it got only 15% of the vote, as against 38% for the Socialist Party (PS).
Three years later, on June 17, 1984, at the time of the elections for the European parliament, the fascistic organization, the National Front (FN) did almost as well as the PCF, both groups getting about 11% of the vote. But there is an aspect that is graver still in the crisis in the PCF's relationship with the working class. The plant cells, which have always been a key element of the base of presently experiencing a the party are decline in their public activity, their internal life, and their mass influence.
And all these factors reduce the capacities of the PCF to organize and control the
The crisis of the apparatus and the central leadership of the party is no less acute. Traditionally, the PCF has had an of 20,000 to 30,000 timers, which has been the backbone of the party and an effective instrument for squashing any tendency toward debate, emergence of any organized come under the blows of the crisis that is hitting the party. It is suffering first of all from a loss of posts and financial resources owing to the decline number of city governments held by the party, the number of party members, and the number of those who vote for its
Secondly, the apparatus is suffering of political effectiveness, from a loss because it is no longer able to decisively quash any public expression of opposition to the leadership. This was illustrated spectacularly by the unauthorized publication of the notes of Jean Kanapa (a member of the Political Bureau who died in 1978 and who had been the special of former secretary general
Waldeck-Rochet) dealing with the PCF's during the Prague Spring in the group that carried out this operation was made up of PCF members.
During the last plenum of the party
Central Committee a previously un-
8 heard-of phenomenon occurred. In the vote on the draft resolution for the Twenty-Fifth Congress, scheduled for February 1985, there were six abstenabstained included Pierre Juquin, a member of the Political official spokesman of the party; Marcel Rigout, who was minister of training in the three Mauroy governments; and Felix Damette, specialist in revised Marxism assigned to scientific political innovations.
Naturally, the PC's electoral setbacks and its loss of influence in all areas deprive the leadership around Georges Marchais, the incumbent general secretary of the authority necessary to deal with the numerous expressions of opposition in the party. In the discussions going on in the PF, it is the very future of the party that is at stake: its existence as a mass party is in the melting pot. wo prominent Communist intellectuals, Daniel Karlin and Tony Laine, have said that the PCF has to learn how to democratize its functioning or it will become simply the largest grouplet of the far left (2).
Finally, the PCF's political identity is affected by what historically is its outstanding feature, its special ties with the
The PCF has chosen to give unconditional support to the intervention of the Soviet army in Afghanistan, just as it lined up with Jaruzelski at the time of the December 1981 crackdown in Poland. Among the masses of workers as well as among its own adherents, support for the USSR and Jaruzelski removes any credibility from the PCF's about freedoms and about the "actually existing socialism" in the East European countries that it continues to defend. It also casts a shadow over the PC's "socialism in the colors of France."
The PCF explains its present crisis as the delayed effect of two historie errors. The first of these was the resistance put up by Maurice Thorez - long time general secretary of the party, who to portray himself as "France's No. 1 Stalinist" leadership at the time of the "de-Stalinist Party alone, unity conceived of as a summit agreement between the two parties. The PS was always portrayed as capable of wanting to break with capitalism, which gave it a legitimacy that it was able to use to the detriment
The PCF always misses what is essential. In fact, the crisis cannot be explained as the result of these errors. It is the PCF itself that served as the stepladder for Mitterrand, when the latter was chosen as the single candidate of the left in the 1965 presidential elections. A who participated in every cabinet under the Fourth Republic, a figure in small formations representing the enlightened bourgeoisie, was backed by the PCF precisely prevent a leader of the SFIO (French of the Workers International, the precursor of the PS) from becoming the common candidate of the left.
While the Seventeenth Congress of the PCF in 1964 had explicitly mandated the leadership to draw up a Common Program with the PS, the party leaders preferred to carry out a short-sighted operation, accepting Mitterrand as the
This enabled Mitterrand to serve as a shield for a Social Democracy discredited by its active participation in the Algeria war. At the time, the line of the PCF was that of a "united front among the parties that claim to represent the working class and unity of all republicans." (3) The goal was to power by De Gaulle. The with Mitterrand, in violation of the decisions of the congress, was sealed the basis of a "feeling" against the Fifth Republic, against presidential
It was the PCF that took on the bulk of the campaign for the common candidate, who had no activist forces of his own. Mitterrand managed to force De Gaulle into a second-round vote. The PCF invested in this campaign the prestige it derived from having opposed the general's constitutional coup d'etat in
These notes have just been published in the book Kremlin-PCF, brought by the Olivier Orban publishing house. The author a collective pseudonym for the group of PCF named on the title page is "Jean Fabien' members responsible for the work. 2. Nouvel Observateur, July 18, 1984.
Seventeenth Congress of the PF: document cited in Cahiers du communisme, June-July 1964.
International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
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FRANCE
1958. Despite the Party's support for the bloody repression against the Hungarian
1956, despite rejection of the report on the crimes
Khrushchev," and despite its hiding behind a bourgeois candidate, it managed to escape from its isolation and introduce itself into the
Republie's system of prestige of having resisted De Gaulle also served as a protection for the PCF in May-June 1968, when nearly 10 million workers joined in a general strike. After first opposing the mobilization, the PCF and the country's biggest union confederation, the CGT, which it led, administered the strike in order to end it on the cheap in the deal that became known as the Grenelle Accords. While the mass movement was shouting its determination to throw out De Gaulle, the PCF was refusing to offer it a political solution based on mobilizing all the working people. De Gaulle was to write in his memoirs how much he owed to the CGT for its defense of the bourgeois order in France
The PCF refused to recognize the power vacuum that existed for several days in May 1968 and to take advantage of it. To the contrary, it seized the first opportunity offered by De Gaulle, when he recovered from his panic, to divert the mass movement into the legislative elections, from which the right were the
The year 1968 was really a black one for the PCF because it was also the year of the Prague Spring. The note of "disapproval" sent by the party leadership to the CPSU after the intervention of the Warsaw Pact armies was quickly put out of mind by the same leaderships, retightening of control over the party, which was reflected in a reaffirmation of loyalty to the USSR.
After 1968, the PCF leadership devoted itself to building a credible political solution for the aspirations of the working class. But it did this in separation from any dynamie of social struggles, basing itself on elections and with the goal of regaining contro! of all the radicalized workers who had turned their backs on the party during the general strike. Despite all the blows the PCF suffered — the emergence of a strong far left and of the CFDT (which broke from Catholic unionism in 1964 and later was able to offer a trade-union alternative for those whose aspirations were aroused by May 1968) - the party was nonetheless able to win 21% of the vote in the 1969 presidential elections, when De Gaulle fell and Georges Pompidou came to power. At the same time, the SFIO, on the wane, got only 5% of
This sort of relationship of forces vis-a-vis the Social Democracy led the PCF to make an alliance with the renovated PS led by Mitterrand and the Left Radicals (a tiny bourgeois party). International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
Common Program of the Left in 1972.
The question of who was going to dominate this alliance arose immediately. In a book entitled Ma part de verite, which was published in paperback and thus by no means confidential, Mitterand talked about his scheme for taking 3 million votes away from the PCF. He would ally himself firmly with this party because it had demonstrated its aptitude for class collaboration in 1968. He declared unambiguously his aim of building a new PS along his lines on the back of the PCF. (4)
In a report given in 1979 and kept secret up till 1975, Marchais pointed up the dangers this alliance held: "It is clear that the adoption of a Common Program and the perspective of a government in which the PS would play an important role will give the latter bases for its attempt to strengthen itself at our expense, if we fail to do what we have to
Marchais must not have done what was necessary, because ahead of the PCF in a series of legislative by-elections in October 1974. The immediate consequence Congress of the PCF held in the same month the task given priority was to alert the party members about the dangers involved in the Union of the Left. But the effect of this was only to foster doubts inside and around the party about the sincerity of its commitment to Dictatorship of proletariat abandoned the dictatorship the Union of the Left, trying to prove that its positions were more radical than those of the PS. In fact, it sought to break the momentum of the coalition, which was leading the radicalized work-ers, in particular those who belonged to the unions, to step up their demands.
The breakup of the Union of the quite the contrary.
insurance and unemployment benetits, massive layoffs in the shipcoal, blocking wage increases followed Fayard, Paris, 1969. verite, Francois Mitterrand, un combat, Editions sociales, 1975.
Jaruzelski's combination of administration of and support
The
1956"
better to give its committed by place the centralism, what equilibrium to avert the would around grouped record.
10 ation.
Fiszbin the unity with
Before party"
position, which former political
"delay of the the PCF blessing to those successors in
1985. The gap
"actually from the policy austerity
In the the leadership the oppose that thus to ship, including leadership the
Marchais, which in which involved.
At activists placed themselves for concern of the Left and the
France weekly, steel production.
Communist Youth, secretary of the their concerns.
the government.
They had a
Pierre
Juquin, the taboo of the political in of the had to was progressively publication later.
Central in November, the austerity in was mentioned.
1976 or after the breakup of the Union of the Left in 1977, the leading figures were often intellectuals, such as Althusser or Balibar. But this time there was a new development.
The discussion went through the
International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
special observation for the French bosses, has put money into operation"
What matter the cassa integrati (6), the victims of the 1980 defeat for the workers at Fiat? What matter the ousting of the most militant workers and the least productive ones, those worn out by decades on the job? The big boss has invested, and that is all that matters.
So, even before the PCF national congress, the CGT and the party are holding more and more meetings and "good" reconversions, "good" vocational geographical mobility easier to impose on the workers, and increasing the competitiveness of
Such a line has two objectives that
Georges Marchais at the Twenty-First Congress of the PCF. (DR) apparatus and the party's working-class base, which was another reason for the party leadership doing everything possible to choke it off. Opening up a real discussion could have explosive consequences. If people once opened their mouths, the the apparatus would Those who wanted an "Italian style" renewal of the party would run into direct conflict with a large part of the apparatus, in particular in the CGT, made up of unconditional supporters of special links with the USSR. Such a debate would have reverberations among the working-class rank-and-file, because the most clearly pro-Soviet leaders combine their loyalty to Moscow with radical anticapitalist talk about defending the
The tack the party leadership took was to stand pat. But does the apparatus have the means to pursue its option? There is a force in the party that does not hesitate to turn to the non-party media to explain that it is necessary to take a "national" road to socialism in France, which would involve a break with
Facing this operation, the network of pro-Soviet leaders and personalities built up by Jeannette Thorez-Vermeersch — widow of Maurice Thorez, a former member of the Political bureau, and an eminently authoritarian leader herself — reaches working-class and trade-union activists. The Marchais leadership seems incapable of keeping anything under
The PCF has already gone through "right" turns, which called for uniting the broad masses of working people behind a democratic, interclass program against fascism, as at the time of the Popular Front in 1938 or at the time of
"National Revival" after the second world war in 1945, or in 1965 against the personal power of De Gaulle.
The alliance with the PS was consumated in 1972 and again in 1981 on the explicit basis of a compromise involving the acceptance of a necessary stage of loyally administering the state apparatus in a way more in accordance with the International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
At its February 1985 Congress, the PCF will offer, as a new idea, the formula of "a new rallying of the majority of the people". What does this mean? It means not closing the door to a coalition with the PS but no longer making this the party's sole perspective. It means rejecting a broader alliance based on the of French industry against attacks of foreign firms. It means, by case, building a broad front (elected officials of all hues, merchants and artisans, managers of small and medium-sized enterprises) around the defense of businesses threatened with closure in order to achieve an acceptable compro-
This orientation got its first application in the Toulon shipyards, where the right and its elected officials marched in a workers procession, to the great chagrin guished by its failure to offer any central political focus. There is no governmental formula, and in fact this question is not posed. It is, therefore, logical that the economic struggles led by the PCF or its proposals for alternative industrial solutions will turn endlessly like screws in a capitalist system from which the party no longer proposes any break.
The objective of this policy is to gain a foothold in industrial management. It is to reduce the social costs of reconversion, the need for which is not supreme objective would be to get the bosses to invest at the same time in job creation, in the introduction of new technology, in competitiveness in harmony with increasing the number of jobs.
The example cited by Philippe Herzog, the PCF's chief economist and a member of the Political Bureau, in a letter addressed to the management of the automobile companies - not to the party organizers but to those of the capitalist hierarchy - was that of Fiat! To be
Philippe Herzog admits that the president of Fiat, Giani Agnelli, has carried out layoffs. But, he adds, Agnelli has repatriated production processes that had been done abroad, he has recentered Fiat's activity in Italy with remarkable results. And in particular, he made a very are linked to the leadership's option pat. The first is to press members not to act except within the confines of immediate trade-union demands. Moreover, such demands should be justified by the increase in productivity they would mean if they
It is clear enough that such an orientation excludes the perspective of a general strike and of building for such action by unifying demands and struggles focused on jobs and wages. This is a return to the line adopted in 1977, after the breakup of the Union of the Left, which did not make it possible for the mass movement to organize to confront the central power.
The second objective itself reveals a real choice made by the present leadership of the PCF. Falling back on itself, saving what it can save, this leadership is waiting for the PS to discredit itself by having to take sole responsibility for the government. Then, it believes, a new situation would open up, making possible a reshuffling of the cards and the fading of the memory of the cycle initiated by the Common Program in the post-May 1968 period. This line cannot rally the party's working-class base nor even the apparatus for any length of time. Its sole advantage is that it offers the CGT a greater margin of maneuver to try to tap the discontent of the workers so as to rebuild its forces depleted by the support it gave to the government when the PCF was still participating in it.
The democratic aspirations ealed by the struggles and the demands that have been raised are sustained by a rejection of the sort of "socialism" the PCF identifies with, the socialism of Chernenko and Jaruzelski. Whatever price it has to pay for this with respect to public opinion, the PCF remains faithful to the "fatherland of socialism".
Of course, in the party's magazines, the October revolution is portrayed as a model for taking power that was overgeneralized by Lenin, as the abandon-
"Cassa Integrati," laid-off wore Cassa paid out of Integrazione, Compensation fund, the
11
ment of the dictatorship of the proletariat requires. In these same articles, which in are vogue on the eve of the
Twenty-Fifth Congress, the PCF recogeven that the suffer from social conflicts, which is a