A NEW STAGE IN THE CRISIS OF THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL France
The bitter fight that has broken out in the French Communist Party, with the Thorez leadership attacking Marcel Servin and Laurent Casanova, is the conclusion, according to the testimony of Maurice Thorez himself, of polemies that have been going on "for years" within the leadership of the CP. What is the significance of such a situation at the heart of the monolithic leadership of the most monolithic of the mass Stalinist Parties in the capitalist countries? On what were these polemics centred? Why did Thorez feel the need to break them off abruptly just now, before the XVIth Party Congress is held? Such are the main questions raised by this new episode in the continuing crisis inside the French CP, which thousands of workers in that CP and in the workers' movement in general are asking.
This is the third important "affair" concerning influential members of the leadership that has broken out since 1952, when the Marty-Tillon business exploded. It is therefore a process of almost uninterrupted crisis that has been shaking the leadership of this party. It cannot, moreover, be considered as a phenomenon limited to this leadership, but rather as the expression of a deep crisis which, quashed by this party's extraordinarily bureaucratic and rigid methods, has nevertheless been going on steadily for more than ten years.
The Servin-Casanova affair differs from previous episodes in ways that it is important to note, for they express precisely the fact that this French C P crisis is really different, if not in kind, at least in degree.
First of all, the leaders who are called up on the carpet today were able for several years — since 1958, at least -to present, inside the CP leadership, positions that were hardly those of Thorez. Marty and Tillon were not accorded such tolerance, which is explicable this time only by the fact that it was impossible for Thorez to liquidate with the same brutality as in the past any contradiction or opposition to his policy.
Next, Servin and Casanova (between whose positions, what is more, there exist serious differences, Casanova being of a rightist tendency, and Servin having for some time now expressed criticisms leaning to the left) were not the only ones concerned. Other cadres, among them KriegelValrimont, Calas, Pronteau, and Vigier, are objects of Thorez's spite in one way or another, and, it seems, do not engage in self-criticism; whereas earlier victims, especially Marty, remained isolated when faced by Thorez's attack.
And lastly, the very tone used by Thorez is more flexible and even more defensive than in the preceding affairs. He is, so far, using the arguments of a politician rather than those of a cop. It is also not without interest to note that, whereas in earlier cases other members of the leadership acted as prosecuting attorneys, this time it is Thorez himself who is playing that role — which indicates a different situation inside the top leading staff and forces Thorez himself to undertake a chore for which he was not able to find anyone else who was capable... or willing.
As for reactions among the party rank and file, it is also worthy of note that, whereas in the case of Marty, who enjoyed immense popularity throughout the party, the leadership very quickly obtained mass condemnation of him, the present defendants, even though far less popular (especially Casanova, held in contempt by the intellectuals especially, have not been the objects of rapid mass condemnation. What is more — something quite new in the party — many rank-and-file organisms are asking to hear the defendants' point of view.
All this denotes a deep change both in the relations
63 between the ranks and the leadership of the French C P, and in reactions among the party ranks themselves. For all those who have for years been following the quite extraordinary phenomenon of this super-bureaucratized mass Stalinist party, these symptoms of change, even though they are still only rather furtive flashes, are nevertheless the foresigns of the breadth and violence nf the crisis that will shake the party under the influence of an internal and international conjuncture of intensified class struggles.
And what are the polemics about? In view of the Stalinist method of making known only the indictment without publishing the defendants' point of view, it is mainly from that indictment itself that the ideas in controversy can be deduced. And this time, because he has to defend himself at the same time that he attacks, Thorez, while engaging in deformations and amalgams according the best Stalinist methods, permits us to deduce a lot of he accusations brought, in particular by Servin.
First of all, during his analysis of the referendum, Thorez uses a curious expression to characterize the attitude of the Algerian Communist Party (whose wretched past as a satellite of the French CP cut it off from any possibility of playing an important part in the present stage of the Algerian revolution, despite the personally heroic attitude of certain of its members). The Algerian Communist Party, he said, "didn't behave badly at all" - which seems to be precisely the answer to criticisms tending to show that it did behave quite badly.
But the combined attack-and-defense of Thorez shows mainly that it was the essential points of the Stalinist and even Khrushchevian policy that were brought into question during the polemics — first of all peaceful cocxistence, in which the defendants saw "the consolidation of the governments of the imperialist countries as a result of coexistence." To this Thorez answered, with South Korea, and - as if the anti-capitalist fight of the masses in those countries was a result of the "coexistence" policy!
As for France itself, the defendants criticized the lack of any Communist Party policy permitting a consistent anti-capitalist struggle; the lack of a policy in favor a proletarian united front (running from the shameful vote of special powers in 1956 to the refusal to participate in the 27 October 1960 demonstration against the war in Algeria; and the lack of any effective fight against the Algerian war in general. On this point Thorez defended himself by a brutal attack on the most positive forms of vanguard demonstrations that have occurred in recent months — the Letter of the 121, and networks for support of the FLN and of French deserters - branding them means of "disorienting the masses.
On the matter of disorienting the masses, which the poliey of the French CP has certainly done, the oppositionals must also have attacked. This fact emerges from a sentence used by Thorez: "We have not understood the idle discussions about the order of our tasks: which comes first, which has priority." The discussion is not idle, however, for those who know that, at the moment when the whole rhythm of political and social life in France is determined by the struggle between French imperialism and the Algerian revolution, the CP puts forward as the essential goal of its policy... the struggle against German reärmament and the setting up of German bases in France. It doesn't matter, Thorez answers: "We think that to struggle for disarmament helps the combat of the Algerian people for its liberation."
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The obvious feebleness of such answers also indicates how precarious is Thorez's position compared to that in the struggles he has carried on in the past. We shall not conclude, certainly, that he will not once more succeed in imposing his position on the party ranks. But in view of the pitch of the crisis inside the French CP, the level of the problems raised, and the extensiveness of the stratum of militants who are bringing up one or another of these problems, "the oppositionals," whose existence since 1956-7 is now officially recognized by Thorez _ another very. important change in the bureaucratic yoke on the P C F — will not for all that be reduced to silence.
Why is it just now that Thorez abruptly attacks, after long a discussion in the Political Bureau? In his deciding on the moment to launch this attack against the opposition within the leadership, the principal reason was certainly the development of the crisis in the international post-Stalinist movement. His attack just after the Conference of the 81 Parties in Moscow
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL and just before the XVIth Congress of the French CP. The Thorez clique could not tolerate the continuance in the party leadership (and perhaps in the party itself - later operations will be revealing) of persons likely to head up a whole current in the party on the basis of problems concerning such points of international Stalinist policy as coexistence and their Thorezian application in France itself.
Thorez will no doubt once more win out over his opponents. Nevertheless, the positions on which he SO solidly built the dictatorship of his clique are now fundamentally undermined both internationally and in France. A spreading and deepening of the crisis of international Stalinism, currently expressed by the Sino-Soviet polemies, might well worsen this situation in a definitive way. The revival of the workers' movement in France and the fight against a dictatorial regime which will be its outcome will prove to be the other shattering blow that will finish off the Thorezian period in the French CP.
USA