parties of West Europe some con
sequences of the revolutionary rise of the masses on the Communist & Socialist by PIERRE FRANK The European workers movement is the oldest and best structured in the world. Since their accession to power after the second world war, the Communist parties of East Europe have constituted particular cases. In West Europe, Socialist and Communist parties have the support of the overwhelming majority of the working class. With the exception of the Communist party of West Germany, the political structure acquired by the workers movement after the failure of the 1917-1923 revolutionary wave has remained virtually stable, although there were some limited changes just after the second world war. On the one hand there were countries in which the Socialist parties generally held hegemony and the Communist parties had only minimum strength as parties (although many of their members personally 28 held influential positions in the trade unions); on the other hand, there were countries in which the Communist parties held hegemony against Socialist parties more or less strongly implanted in the working class. With May "68 a revolutionary far left reappeared. Since then, there has-been an initial change in this structure: In France the Socialist party, under the leodership of François Mitterrand, has applied a policy of united front with the Communist party and has scored electoral gains to the point of overtaking the CP on this field. But we are now seeing growing tensions in this decadesold structure, within both the Socialist and Communist parties; these tensions are the point of departure for more profound and extensive phenomena.
Differences among the Socialist parties Recently two separate international meetings of West European Socialist parties were held on the same days (May 24 and 25). They could even be called two "tendency" meetings. In Latche in the South of France, Mifterrand's turf, representatives gathered from the Socialist parties of France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal. In Vienna leaders assembled from the Socialist parties of Austria (Bruno Kreisky), Sweden (Olof Palme), and West Germany (Willy Brandt). The Latche meeting was "informal" and issued no communique on its work. But it is known that there was discussion of relations with the Communist parties and of NATO and that it was decided to lend support to Soares, who had been unable to attend the first day's sessions because he had been called back to Lisbon due to the Repüblica affair. With the exception of the Belgian SP, the Socialist parties that came to Latché have to deal with strong Communist parties that they cannot afford to ignore in their political orientation; likewise, they are up against a more powerful upsurge of the masses than the corresponding parties in the other countries. Moreover, some of these parties have o short-term perspective of entering governments that include representatives of the Communist parties, as Soares has already done. Neither Mitterrand nor Soares nor any of the other leaders at the Latché meeting has any special love for the Communist parties; if they could, they would treat the CPs in their countries just as Helmut Schmidt treats the German CP. But Mitterrand and his tablemates jointly examined the problems posed for them by a collaboration with the Communist porties that is ineviOn the other hand, the Socialist parties represented in Vienna apparently have little or nothing to fear from their respective Communist parties, and the masses are not as radicalized in their countries. Nevertheless, they cannot remain indifferent to the collaboration of the other Socialist parties with the Communist parties. Their own governments are not altogether stable, and every election is worrisome for them, The bourgeois parties have not failed to raise the bogey of these Sociolist parties' potentially collaborating with the Communists. In addition, American imperialism, supported by the governments of bourgeois parties in Europe, is certainly putting pressure on these 5Ps to try to provoke a break between Mitterrand, Soares, etc. and their respective Communist parties. The Vienna conference examined "the perspectives and the principled question of democratic socialism" and declared itself "against any collaboration between Social Democratic and Communist parties." (Le Monde, May 27-28.) Some days later, Olof Palme denied this latter point, but it must not be forgotten that he cannot totally ignore the Swedish Communist partyAndré Cools, president of the Belgian Socialist party, explained the current situation among Socialist parties in these terms:
"Here in Belgium we are convinced that we ore in good position to avoid excessive distance between the various conceptions of European socialism. ... Our geographic situation and the political diversity of Belgium put us in position to understand all our friends of the European Socialist family. " (Le Soir, June 25, 1975.) It is to be noted that the British Labour party, for decades the largest of the Socialist parties, did not attend either of the two meetings. If has its own internal problems, which are causing big difficulties. The SP meetings were held just several days before the Common Market referendum, in which Harold Wilson rendered great service to British capitalism by keeping Britain in the EEC. But he was unable to do this without provoking serious tension within the Labour party. In spite of Wilson's ability to maneuver and in spite of the cowardice of the Labour left, the tensions within this party will intensify. The "no" votes in the referendum came essentially from workers who saw the vote as a way to express their discontent. And this discontent will inevitably increase and find expression within the Labour party after the measures taken by the Wilson government in face of the disastrous economic situation. Differences among the Communist parties Recently, the European Communist parties managed to come together and produce a common document on the peasantry, a problem that, given the current state of urbanization and industrialization in West Europe, has only relative importance in comparison with its importance thirty or forty years ago. But when it comes to general policy or to certain burning issues, not only is agreement more difficult to achieve, but differences are manifested publicly. For many months preparations have been under way for a general conference of all European Communist parties (East Europe, West Europe, and the Soviet Union), According to current Communist party rules, a common document is supposed to be drafted before this conference. But preparations have been going on for more than a year now, and according to information from these parties themselves, great difficulties have come up. The task was consigned to commissions and subcommissions. A text prepared by the Sozialistische Einheitsportei Deutschlands (SED - Socialist Unity party of Germany, the East German CP), was immediately rejected by the Italians, Spanish, Yugoslavs, and Rumanians. A "parity"-type commission was said to have been designated lost May. The origins of the differences lie in the refusal of certain parties to line up behind the Kremlin's policies in regard to preparation for a worldwide conference of CPs, condemnation of the Chinese CP, etc. But while these controversies are still being played out in the shadows, it was the question of the policy of the
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SP/CP Portuguese CP that put the torch to the powderkeg. The ban on the Portuguese Christian Democratic party had already been opposed by the Italian Communist party. The question came up of the recent conference of the Italian CP (when the "historic compromise" was reaffirmed), becouse the ban in Portugal was embarrassing the Italion CP in regard to the Italian Christian Democracy. The República affair lent considerable dimensions to the differences among the Communist parties. The Polish and Hungarian CPs either remained silent or observed the strictest neutrolity about what was going on in Portugal. The Yugoslay and Rumanian parties reported the statements of Soares and were more discrete about Cunhal's. Moscow was favorable to Cunhal, but maintained a moderate attitude until the República journalists published a forgery attributed to Soviet CP leader Ponamarev. In West Europe too the issue took on considerable importance. The Italian and Spanish Communist parties disavowed the policy of the Portuguese party. The leadership of the French CP defended the Portuguese party and went even further, Cunhal himself went so far as to state before reporters that the Spanish Communist party "would do better to join the Second International"I French CP leader Georges Marchais, speaking of an anticommunist campaign in which the Socialists were participating, accused the Italian CP of "interfering in the internal affairs" of the Portuguese party, to which Italion CP leader Enrico Berlinguer easily responded that Marchois's intervention itself represented interference in the internal affairs of the Ital -ion party. The differences over the question of Portugal cannot be attributed simply to the various CPs* agreeing or refusing to line up with Moscow. According to reliable information, the leaders of the Socialist party in France -among them Mitterrand, who recently held talks with a Soviet CP delegation headed by Brezhnev — believe that the Kremlin does not want the Portuguese Communist party to seek to eliminate Sores's party or to break with him. That would run counter to the policy of "détente." In fact, the quarrel among West European CPs over the República affair was most lively; this is because these parties were directly affected by this question both in their daily policy and in their basic orienfation. It is easy to see what divides the Communist parties that have been most involved in this quarrel. Those on the one side (the Italian and Spanish parties) are not and do not expect to be in minority positions with respect to the Socialist parties. This is obvious in Italy, especially after the recent elections, in which the CP got nearly three times as many votes as the SP. The same appears to be true in Spain, although it remains to be seen what will happen when the Franco dictatorship falls, political parties are legalized, and the broad masses begin to take action in the political arena. The other Communist parties (in France and Portugal), while they have an advantage over the Socialist porties in terms of the number of militants, presently find themselves in a minority with respect to the Socialist parties on the electoral field. That is a new situation for the French CP, and perhaps was unexpected for the Portu30 guese CP, which in view of its greater implantation and its past record, had had great hopes of overtaking Soares's party after the fall of the dictatorship. The idea that there is a Communist line emanating from Moscow and more or less well adjusted for each country is untenable. From now on, the exigencies imposed by the upsurge of the masses enter into greater consideration in the policy of each mass Communist party, although this of course does not mean that this upsurge could oct to transform these porties into revolutionary parties. Thus, the peculiarities of each party and leadership must be examined. Until a little more than a year ago, Cunhal had never stood at the head of a mass movement. He had long experience in the bureaucratic leadership of a small clandestine organization. He does not yet have the democratic veneer that the French party has acquired during more than thirty-five years of bourgeois parliamentarism. Cunhal's deficiencies are at times manifested in a certain crudity, which was especially remarkable when it was exhibited just after a Socialist electoral victory. The French Communist party hod gone through a honeymoon period with the Socialist party, which had reached its highest point during the presidential campaign of 1974. The CP leaders began to get annoyed in September and October of the same year when they saw that the Union de la Gauche (Union of the Left) was beneFiting the Socialist party more than the CP and that in serving as a supporting prop for the SP the CP was suffering electoral losses and was even coming under attack in the factories. The CP then launched o polemic against the Socialist party, bringing up both old complaints and new ones, real and imagined. Predictably, the CP was able in this way to harden up a good number of its members who bear old grudges against the Socialists, but the polemic was not understood by the broad masses, as nearly all the by-elections have shown. While more or less vigorously waging their polemics against the Socialist parties, the leaders of the Communist parties of France and Portugal have understood that they also have to offer more political responses and, especially, that they have to present pledges, or at least the appearance of pledges, on the point on which they are particularly vulnerable: the subject of democracy, a question on which they are weighed down by their Stalinism. Thus, at a recent Central Committee meeting (at the end of May 1975), Marchais got a "declaration of liberties" adopted in which he in effect promised not to employ the measures that have been taken against oppositionists by the Kremlin; he also presented a new position on Stalinism. It was, I believe, the first time that he used this term - between quotation marks, of course, but he used it abundantly. The new line is to say that Stalin was politically correct up to 1935 and even after, but that ofter that date he began to abuse his authority. This is new for the French CP; but more important, the Central Committee decided to distribute 10 million copies of Marchais's text. The figure is probably exaggerated, but the number will certainly be very high, which attests to the fact that what is involved is
a question that is of interest to the masses not for historical reasons but for very concrete political ones. And let us add that the CP will make this effort in vain; it will not be able to unload its Stalinist past. Moreover, at this some Central Committee meeting Marchais added
Kanapa to the Political Bureau to replace the late Jacques Duelos. Kanapa is a Stalinist of the purest sort, if one may employ such a qualification. As for Cunhal, he has tried, at least verbally, to offer a political response to the problems raised by the upsurge of the masses. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the editorial published in the May 28 issue of Avante, organ of the Portuguese Communist party: "This attitude (of the SP), supported, although feebly, by the PPD (Partido Popular Democrático - Popular Democratic party), throws into rellef the existence of two contradictory dynamics: One, electoralist, aims at setting up a bourgeois-parliamentary democracy of a Social Democratic type; the other, drawing its support from the revolutionary process embodied in the alfiance between the people and the MFA (Armed Forces Movement) aims ar the democratic revolution on the rood to socialism. The electoralism is irreconcilable with the revolutionary process and could even wind up destroying it in the short term. The pact between the parties of the coalition and the MFA is very precise as to the insertion of the electoral process within the revolutionary process. ... • "The realization of the priority tasks of the democratic revolution implies the mobilization of the best energies of our people, their strictest union with the MFA; in this process, the action of the parties really interested in achieving socialism is indispensable. The people's movement goes beyond the parties, creating its own organs that will express the originality of our revolutionary process, which tends in its forms toward the alliance of the people with the armed forces - or more precisely, of the popular movement with the MFA - ossuming a generally unitary and operational character. Workers 'control" in the nationalized state enterprises, the formation of agricultural cooperatives and of peasant organs for agrarion reform, the strengthening and dynamization of the trade-union movement, and the proliferation of workers commissions, tenants commissions, popular assemblies, and other varied forms of popular organs that the process in its dynamic requires in order to assure its own development - all this forms the field of action on which the sons of the people in and out of uniform will create the democratic and socialist Portugol of the future. The general orientation of the Portuguese Communist party - democratic revolution on the road to socialism, alliance with the MEA - is extremely dangerous for the Portuguese revolution. But what the editorial says about popular organs, if they are not simply verbal declarations with no future (and we are afraid that is what they are), if they give rise to even a beginning of implementation, could provide Portuguese revolutionaries a not unimportant link for carrying forward the march of the revolution in their country.
The tensions and differences among the various Socialist parties, among the various Communist parties, within these parties, and in the relations among these parties have a common initial source: the upsurge of the mosses, which has not yet attained its highest point. At a time when the Franco dictatorship is in its death agony, everything points to the approach of big struggles in Europe, as wos predicted in the "Theses on the Building of Revolutionary Parties in Capitalist Europe" adopted in March 1974 by the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth Interational. These theses also stressed the recomposition of the workers movement that was taking place under the pressure of the masses in motion. The phenomena that we have noted in this article constitute only a beginning of this recomposition, which in the long run cannot take place within the fromework of the old traditional parties. The emergence of leftist-oriented tendencies in the Socialist parties, the growing embarrassment of the Communist parties about their own past and their relations with Moscow, and the lively controversy between Socialist and Communist parties even when they are collaborating politically — all this is only the beginning. We will refrain from drawing more precise conclusions at this time, for the development of the class struggle in each country will have uneven effects on variable leaderships. But the European sections of the Fourth International must very closely follow even the smallest changes in the traditional workers parties. These changes will enable our sections to better understand developments in the working class, of which the changes in the traditional workers parties are distorted reflections to a certain extent. They will also permit our sections to better adjust their policies and to intervene more forcefully in the class struggle so as to press forward workers democracy, the creation of organs of the soviet type, and the building of revolutionary Marxist parties. July 2, 1975 correction... An error of translation appeared in the article "The Recession and the Prospects for the International Capitalist Economy, " published in our June 5 issue (No. 27/. 28). The first sentence of the last paragraph on page 15 should reod: "3. The 1974-75 recession did not act -and, in an atmosphere of inflationory "reflating," could not have acted - to detonate a massive devaluation of capital, which is the role a crisis of overproducfion normally plays in improving the conditions of capital profitization - that is, in permitting an increase in the average rate of profit in the short term."
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