he political and theoretical evolution that has brougn the largest Communist parties of the capitalist countrie to adopt so-called Eurocommunism has been under way for twenty years now. In fact, in several respects this evolution goes all the way back to 1935-36. During the 1970s there have been important new developments with the turn of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), the "Italianization" of the French Communist Party (PCF), which culminated in the Twenty-Second Congress of the PCF, and the adoption by the Italian Communist Party (PCI) of Berlinguer's thesis of the "historic compromise." In recent months this evolution has been further stimulated by the partial integration of the PCI into a governing majority, the legalization and electoral participation of the PCE, and the PCF's need to prepare itself for the prospect of a Union of the Left government. Even in Britain, where the Communist Party continues to be relegated to a marginal role, the party has begun a lively discussion on a new document on a "British road to socialism. " It was in this context that three books were published between early March and late May aimed, apart from whatever intrinsic value they may have, at laying down the main lines of "Eurocommunist" theory. The books are: Les communistes et l'Etat (Communists and the State, published by Editions Sociales in France), presented as a collective effort by three members of the PCF, Jean Fabre, François Hincker, and Lucien Sève; the now famous Eurocomunismo y Estado (Eurocommunism and the State, Grupo Editorial Grijalbo) by Santiago Carrillo, the leader of the PCE; and Masse e potere (Masses and Power, Editori Riuniti), by Pietro Ingrao, a leading member of the PCI. These three volumes express differing points of view on some questions, and more generally diversity persists in the conceptual and terminological spheres. To give just one example, the French authors, who are more concerned with articulating a line that preserves at least relative continuity, insist that the Marxist conception of the state is still valid. On more than one occasion in their concrete analysis they denounce the increasingly oppressive character of the state. The PCI leader, on the other hand, highlights the peculiar, "new" aspects of the republic born of the Resistance and codified in the constitution of 1947. This difference is a clear reflection of the differing situations that have taken shape in France and Italy during the past twenty years. The PCI has been able not only to maintain but even to gradually strengthen its positions within the representative institutions, whereas the PCF, on the contrary, has suffered a reduction in its institutional maneuvering room since the defeat of 1958 and the advent of the Gaullist presidential system. Asfor Carrillo's book, it more clearly reflects the author's intention to play the role of an enfant terrible determined to infringe upon the most sacrosanct taboos of the old orthodoxy. It is precisely this that has earned him the virulent attacks of the Kremlin Holy Office. (1) Nevertheless, the more or less important differences do not diminish the import of a growing political and theoretical process of homogenization out of which is arising a new, rather organic tendency in the international workers movefrench, italian, and spanish communis
Theories and!!
of « Eurocor
ment. The definition of this tendency as "Eurocommunist" seems to us acceptable on the whole, apart from its geographical imprecision. (It has been correctly noted that in various respects the Japanese Communist Party falls within the same orbit). It is acceptable for reasons of historic origins and also because, in spite of the resistance of the PCF, what is tending to emerge is an alternative of continental dimensions, an alternative both to the Europe of the EEC and the Social Democracy and to the "models" of the USSR and the other countries of its sphere of influence. General lines of a common strategy "The parties included in the Eurocommunist current, " writes Carrillo (p. 141), "agree on the necessity of moving to socialism with democracy, a multiparty system, a parliament and representative institutions, popular sovereignty exercised regularly through universal suffrage, trade unions independent of the state and the parties, freedom for the opposition, human rights, religious freedoms, freedom of cultural, scientific, and artistic creation, and the development of the broadest forms of popular participation at all levels and in all branches of social activity. Concurrently, these parties demand their independence of any possible international center and all the socialist states, although they have not on that account ceased to be internationalist. They pay great attention to solidarity with the countries of the third world that are struggling against colonialism and neocolonialism and for the growing democratization of international relations."
list parties codify their line
Mystifications
mmunism »
by Livio Maitan The definition is quite clear. But let us try to synthesize the central premises on which it is based, premises which also emerge from the contributions of the authors of the PCF and the PCI. 1. On the theoretical level, the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism has been aired on various occasions by the theoreticians of the workers movement, from a speech by Marx in 1872 and Engels's preface to the 1895 edition of Class Struggles in France to the Leninist hypothesis of the "peaceful development of the revolution" in April 1917. • 2. The state to which Marx, Engels, and even Lenin referred in their generalizations was very different from the state in contemporary capitalist society, which has assumed ever broader tasks and can no longer be characterized primarily as a repressive apparatus. 3. The international context during past decades has evolved unfavorably for the forces dedicated to conserving capitalism and imperialism. According to the three French authors, it must even be noted that "the forces of socialism throughout the world already prevail over those of capitalism." (p.58.). 4. The increasingly oppressive character assumed by monopoly capitalism both socioeconomically and politically has caused an ever sharper antagonistic counterposition between the monopolistic groups and the entire rest of society. (See Carrillo, p.33.) "The only people who really have an interest in the rule of the monopolies, " write the French authors
(p. 130), "are the small number of people who are privileged and profit from the system, from the speculating bourgeoisie to organized crime. " Similar theories, although presented a bit less simplistically, were advanced by the PCI as early as the 1950s and 1960s. 5. From the notion that the "principal contradiction" pits the monopolistic groups against the antimonopoly forces, the "Eurocommunist" theoreticians derive the strategic hypothesis of a phase during which the power of the monopolies is the main target and a democratization of the economic structures and political institutions is achieved through gradual changes in the relationship of class forces. For the PCI, what is involved here is more precisely a "new stage in the democratic, antifascist revolution"; for the PCE it is the "stage of political and economic democracy" (p.99); for the PCF it is the phase of implementation of the Common Program of the Union of the Left, that is, the application in practice of "a comprehensive conception of political, economic, and social democracy during an initial stage which opposes and immediately supplants monopolist power and which will have to reabsorb the monopolistic regime's tragic heritage through determined antimonopoly action. (p. 155.) During the 1960s the content of this phase was detailed when Luigi Longo, who was then secretary of the PCI, introduced the notion of "fair profit" (otherwise known as non-monopoly profit.) Today it is being explained that the monopolies will continue to exist for a whole period and that even the interests of the multinational corporations will be respected. (See the French authors, p. 174 and Carrillo, p. 135. It should also be remembered that the PCI eliminated any demand for nationalizations from its 1976 election program.) 6. The new democratic phase (just after the second world war the watchword was "progressive democracy") will be distinguished by the hegemony of a "new historic bloc" composed of all the non-monopoly forces. As has been noted, the expression "historic bloc" was introduced by the PCI -on the basis of an illegitimate interpretation of Gramsci - and has now been accepted by Carrillo. The PCF continues to express reservations about this formulation (for quite specific reasons), but this party also agrees with the substance of it. (p. 225.) Moreover, in the book of the secretary of the PCE we find the conception of a "new political formation linked to the conception of the hegemony of the bloc of the forces of labor and culture in society," a conception which is supposed to be reflected in "something like a confederation of various political parties and social organizations which acts through consensus and respects the personality and independence of each party and organization. " (p. 130.) In other words, what would be involved would be something between the present Union of the Left in France and the Italian Democratic Popular Front of 1948. 7. The economic and social processes of the "new phase" postulated here will unfold concurrent with a democratic transformation of the state in all its articulations. The subsequent transition to socialism itself will occur through a gradual transformation, without violent leaps or destruction
17
EUROCOMMUNISM of the pre-existing apparatuses. Carrillo is the most explicit in affirming "the possibility, the necessity, of developing a struggle on various fields to turn the ideological apparatuses of the state around in order to use them against capitalist society" and thus to effect a "transformation" of the coercive apparatuses themselves. (pp. 66-67.) But similar concepts recur in the contributions of the theoreticians of the PCI and PCF. Moreover, according to the "Eurocommunists, " one of the essential elements in the transformation of the state and society will be the special utilization of the state economic sector as the guiding sector of the economy as a whole. Revolutionary violence no longer has any place in such a perspective. The most that is foreseen is the possibility of some defensive violence in the event that the ruling classes themselves resort to armed action. (See the French authors, p. 107 and Carrillo, pp. 98, 119, and 168; as for the PCI, such themes were important in the polemics of 1956 and the years immediately following.) 8. Action for reforms and democratization will assume continental dimensions in the context of the reality of the Common Market and its projected enlargement to include other countries, Spain among them. The PCI was the first to break ground in this field, positing the objective of "democratizing" the institutions and mechanisms of the EEC. The PCF had a different position for years, opposing the Common Market from a standpoint permeated with national conservatism, (2) but it later came over to the greater strategic coherence of the Italians, although not without some rearguard skirmishing. As for Carrillo, who expresses some reservations about the conception of socialism in one country, although without drawing the consequences, he has affirmed: "Our objective is a Europe independent of the USSR and the United States, a Europe of the peoples oriented toward socialism in which our country will preserve its own personality. " (p. 134.) Deformation of Marx and Lenin Many of the analyses and conceptions that constitute the patrimony of "Eurocommunism," presented to varying degrees in the theses of the various Communist parties for many years now, have already been systematically criticized by revolutionary Marxists. In a single article it is not possible to broach all the problems that are posed. (3) Thus, here we will limit ourselves to a few of the major points on which the polemic has focussed or will tend to focus. First of all, the references to the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin which run through the three books we are dealing with were already used at the time of the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party (1956), both by supporters of the Soviet bureaucracy and by members of the various Communist parties. Here we can only repeat what we wrote then, among other things reminding our "Eurocommunists" of the need for greater philological accuracy. (In particular they ought to note the fact that there are two versions of Marx's speech and ought not to keep silent about the fact that En18 gels's 1895 preface to Class Struggles in France was falsified by the Social Democracy.) Above all, it must not be forgottenithat, as Lenin himself stressed, Marx had advanced his hypothesis of a peaceful transition to socialism for countries like Britain and the United States precisely on the basis of the observation that neither militarism nor bureaucracy existed in these countries at the time. In Marx's view these were the two institutions that made revolutionary violence in the conquest of power necessary. Do the "Eurocommunists" perhaps think that Spain, Italy, and France have miraculously returned to the conditions that prevailed in Britain and the United States during the nineteenth century? Certainly this does not come through in their own analyses. (Carrillo, for example, forcefully and correctly stresses the decisive weight the army has had in Spanish political struggle.) Next, the analogy with Lenin's theses of April 1917 is devoid of all foundation, quite apart from the fact that the hypothesis was not realized. In reality, Lenin was referring to a peaceful evolution not in the framework of the institutions of a bourgeois democracy but in the framework of the soviets, organs of revolutionary democracy expressing a situation of generalized dual power. "To explain to the masses, " he wrote at the time, "that the soviets of workers deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government. ... No parliamentary republic (returning to this after the soviets of workers deputies would be a step backward), but a republic of the soviets. " A heavy dose of temerity is needed to try to make this Lenin a precursor of "Eurocommunist" neoreformism. (4) Finally, still on the subject of the references to the classic writings, it is significant that our French and Spanish authors resort to the above-mentioned preface by Engels, for this has been one of the battle cries of the Social Democracy for many years, and the "Eurocommunists" bring it up in exactly the same spirit as the Social Democrats do. (See Les communistes et l'Etat, pp. 44, 45, and 56; Eurocomunismo y Estado, pp. 118-122.) Why don't they reflect a bit on the historical fact that it was precisely the sort of practice engaged in by falsifying the famous Engels text that induced such an important portion of the workers movement to mire itself in parliamentarism, to integrate itself into the mechanisms of the system, and to shamelessly capitulate to imperialism in August 1914? Or perhaps we must wait for some more consistent "Eurocommunist to someday propose a radical revision of the Leninist interpretation of the events of 1914 themselves? Second, there is one aspect of the démarche of the neoreformist theoreticians which is peculiar to say the least. While claiming to apply the Marxist method in a more "concrete" manner, they are very little concerned with drawing the lessons of real historical experience. To the extent that they cannot avoid mentioning important revolutionary battles they aim primarily at demonstrating their specific and absolutely non-repeatable character. They completely ignore the fact, among others, that not only Lenin but also the entire Communist International drew strategic and methodological lessons from the Russian revolution which were valid not solely for backward countries like Russia. Carrillo, in fact, con-
firms a positivo the specific value of the Russian experience of 1917, claiming that the dictatorship of the proletariat in its Leninist sense might still prove to be necessary for "underdeveloped countries" (p. 195). He accuses "those who preach a pluralistic and parliamentary development for Vietnam, Laos, and other zones of the third world, for example, " of "baying at the moon. " (p.25.) Carrillo himself advances the argument that the fact that the peaceful road has never been tried is not decisive in itself. (p. 189.) No one contests such an obvious observation. But if one wants to go beyond the level of simple common sense, it must be asked whether the fact that the "peaceful" variant has never come to pass is due solely to specific or occasional factors or whether there are deeper and more permanent causes. For our part, we believe that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, and even Kautsky himself in his own time advanced clear answers to this, in. a direction diametrically opposite to that implicit in the theories of the "Eurocommunists. " In reality, it may be said in passing, the prevalent tendency among the latter is to reduce Marxism and Leninism to a method of analysis and an enunciation of general concepts; in fact, however, both are also (and not secondarily) an organic complex of generalizations on the socioeconomic and more strictly political levels drawn from a timely analysis of the historic trends already operative and from the discovery of the basic trends of development. (5) Lessons of some historical experiences The response to the "Eurocommunists" becomes more concrete if three sets of questions are kept in mind. First of all, let us recall that the strategy proposed - a phase of advanced democracy separated from a socialist phase - is not completely new, even though the theorization is now more explicit and systematic. In the final analysis, the conception of the popular front of the 1930s and still more the conception of progressive democracy of 1944-47 pointed in the same direction. (In fact, the "Eurocommunists" themselves insist on this continuity of their line.) But this strategic project was never put into practice, although it was advanced during periods of prerevolutionary crisis or of great political and social conflict by parties which themselves represented the majority of the working class and substantial sectors of other non-capitalist social strata. In Spain and France in 1936 and in France and Italy immediately after the second world war this strategy led to an impasse and thus to defeat, or at least to conservative restabilization. Why do none of our authors bother to draw a balance-sheet, even a brief one, of these events? Why do they all prefer to focus attention on the non-essential points, such as the effects direct Communist participation in the popular front governments could have had in 1936?(6) Second question: Why don't our authors reflect on a more recent experience, that of the Unidad Popular in Chile? After all, the analogy would not be unfounded. Chile in 1970, although it was a country dependent on imperialism, had a relatively developed economic and social structure;
the urban industrial economy was predominant over the agricultural economy; there was a relatively solid and concentrated working class; the country had deeply rooted bourgeois-democratic institutions and a modern political organization, with strong workers parties and trade unions and a rather rich tradition of student mobilization and motion among other exploited social layers. The Chilean bourgeoisie was not completely averse to the reformist currents (after all, the Christian Democracy itself allowed Allende to become president through its vote in the parliament), nor was the army, which until September 10, 1973, was hailed by Volodia Teitelboim, a leader of the Chilean Communist Party, as "democratic" and alien to "putschism. " Not for nothing did the PCI, PCE, and PCF compete in hailing the significance of the Chilean experience as a pilot experiment in advanced democracy, the prelude to a peaceful transition to socialism. It may be said that Berlinguer did draw the lesson of Chile - and in the tragic month of September 1973 itself. The trouble is that he moved in the direction opposite to the one he should have taken. Instead of thinking self-critically about the practicability of the peaceful road, of the perspective of transforming the state from within, the leader of the PCI added the conclusion that it was also necessary to avoid conflict with the ruling class and to seek to arrive at a long-term compromise, defined as "historic" for precisely that reason. In other words, in order to avoid risks, it was better to renounce placing the problem of the conquest of power and the transition to socialism on the agenda as a current task. The third order of questions relates to a problematic that is not overlooked in the book of Fabre, Hincker, and Sève, nor in Carrillo's. (See pages 121 and 32 respectively.) The basic trend that has been operating since the rise of monopoly capitalism, a trend which has been progressively accentuated as concentration of capital and increasingly intricate interpenetration of the state and the economy have developed, has been the trend toward the emptying of the content of representative institutions and the restriction of the alleged popular sovereignty of constitutions. This is the objective basis of the controversial and sometimes improperly interpreted tendency toward the strong state. This trend receives additional stimulation in a context of general crisis, when the "normal" mechanisms for imposing hegemony become less effective. If one considers the basic political and economic decisions of the past thirty years - such as the adoption of the so-called Marshall Plan with its consequent economic choices, the conclusion of the Atlantic Pact, the initiatives that led to the various imperialist wars in Korea, Algeria, and Vietnam - it is difficult to deny that they were made outside the institutions that theoretically command sovereignty. In fact, these institutions have almost always been reduced to rubber-stamping what has already been decided. By what miracle would such bodies be able to change their nature to the point that they could guarantee the establishment of an "advanced democracy, " followed by a transition to socialism?
19
EUROCOMMUNISM Transform the state from within? We will be answered that especially since 1968 ( a year whose explosive impact is now recognized by the "Eurocommunists" - see Les communistes et l'Etat pp. 103-04 and
Eurocomunismo y Estado pp. 67-68) these institutions have been suffering an ever more profound crisis at all levels, for they are not impervious to pressure from the mass moveIndeed, the changes in the relationship of social forces have been partially reflected in the institutions, and this has been concretized also in the legislative field. (For example, labor code for the workers in Italy has been a crystallization of the altered relationship of forces in the Italian factories and has assured the workers guarantees, even formal ones, which they did not enjoy before.) Moreover, the partial conquests won in the institutional framework have contributed to focussing the attention of the working class itself on elections, which seemed to provide the most natural terrain on which it would be possible to impose a comprehensive political solution, the necessity for which had been more pressingly indicated by the economic crisis. (Here again Italy in 1975-76 provides a good example.) In other words, the structures of bourgeois democracy once again demonstrated their attractive power and flexibility, which in the final analysis confirmed the fact that they function in order to preserve the mechanisms of the system at the most critical moments and to absorb the pressure of the mass movement. More generally, it is crucial never to forget the relative and temporary character of trends and phenomena which arise during periods of "democratization"; even on the institutional level, they are inevitably followed by periods of ebb, with the elimination or the integration of the conquests of the masses. The Italian experience after 1947 and the French experience of the same period, and still more the French experience of 1958, are eloquent testimony to this. As has been pointed out, it is Carrillo who particularly stresses the possibilities of transforming the state from within; these possibilities derive from the unprecedented crisis of the ideological apparatuses in particular: "To make full use, in the final decisive extreme, of the ideological apparatuses of the capitalist state, to strive to turn them around, not raising obstacles to but rather fostering the processes now under way, is a capital part of any modern revolutionary strategy. " (p.43.) The argumentation is not without foundation - inasmuch as the ideological-political crisis of the bourgeoisie has indeed reached unprecedented levels in some countries - but in the end it is specious and one-sided. Recent experience has confirmed that even during the most explosive crisis the apparatus of the ruling class commands inexhaustible resources that can always be used successfully until that apparatus itself is swept away. (An example is provided by Portugal during November of 1975.) 1975, and especially between August and mid-November.) Second, the suggestion that it is possible to systematically use the ideological apparatuses over a protracted period of time in order to transform the repressive apparatuses is absurd for the simple reason that control of the former is extensively conditioned by control of the latter (by the 20 power of state leadership in general). Finally, there must be no confusion between the real possibility of temporarily exploiting the contradictions in the enemy's own apparatus and the non-existent possibility of qualitatively changing the class nature of the structures of the administration of power without revolutionary violence.
In this regard as well historical experience points in just one direction. Regardless of their initial subjective intentions, those who held the illusion that the state could be transformed from within wound up coming under irresistable pressure and adapted to the mechanisms of the system. Do Carrillo and company perhaps think that from the very outset the traditional Social Democrats had the idea of integrating themselves into the structures of capitalism and becoming its honest administrators, to use the famous expression of Léon
Blum? And how can the Communist parties themselves forget the decisions they had to make or subscribe to when they were members of governments? Didn't the PCF have to particpate in the bombing of Algeria in 1945, in the person of its own minister? Don't the PCF theoreticians have to recognize the pressure to which the party was subjected? Wasn't a similar balance-sheet made by the leaders of the PCI many years ago, for example by Scoccimarro, who as minister of finance in a coalition government found it impossible to implement measures he considered urgent, measures with which other ministers claimed to be in agreement? For the rest, Carrillo himself inadvertently offers an indication of how the logic of his policy works, even before the suggested strategy has begun to be implemented. Carried away by his zeal to recruit to the "new historic bloc, " he raises the question of winning over officials, policemen, and industrial leaders commonly known as ejecutivos (executives), and he even strives to offer these people a "new" ideology. But far from being new, the ideology he proposes is merely a scarcely amended re-edition of the old. Carrillo conceives of the army and the police as retaining functions similar to those they now possess not only during the democratic phase, but even during the socialist phase; he guarantees the officials that their "social prestige" will be maintained, based mainly on their technical-scientific qualifcations. In other words, Carrillo projects the indefinite survival of a separate corps of leading functionaries who continue to possess privileges. As for the "ejecutivos, " they will be able to enjoy "the internal satisfaction of those for whom the social utility of their labor is recognized not only by a monopolistic group, but also by the entire collectivity." (pp. 87-90 and 104.) In truth there is no reason to be overly enthusiastic about a society in which such "values" will continue to prevail. A suprahistorical conception of democracy In the final analysis, the neoreformist theses of the Communist parties contain at bottom a suprahistorical conception of democracy which has little to do with Marxism. Here again, while the theoreticians of the PCI have succeeded in partially concealing the substance of this conception with conceptual and terminological sophistication, Carrillo at least has the merit of being more explicit: "In reality, "
he writes, "democracy in one form or another predates the existence of the bourgeoisie as such and will last beyond class society, the state, and socialism. " (p. 186.) In other words, democracy exists independent of the social context; it stands above history. The inevitable corollary is that democratic institutions are viewed as forms which can be filled with varying content. We do not know whether Carrillo is convinced that he is saying something original and quite daring here. But the truth is that he is merely parroting the postulates and hypotheses that have characterized Social Democratic thought and petty-bourgeois radicalism for about a century now. He is trying to peddle hopelessly tarnished goods by packaging them in new labels. But the analogy with traditional Social Democratic conceptions emerges on another level as well. The "peaceful" transition to the new democratic phase and thence to socialism is considered possible because there has been a progressive maturation of the objective conditions - because these conditions are now "ripe, " to use a classic expression of the Social Democracy. It is in this general framework that Carrillo and the others place pluralistic gradualism, which, as is clear in all the documents we have been analyzing here, is not only political - ideological but also economic and social (not only plurality of parties and political institutions, but also plurality of the economic sectors, classes, and social groups more or less integrated into the new "historic bloc"). "The overcoming of social differentiation, " Carrillo teaches for the umpteenth time, "will occur as a natural process; it will not be the consequence of coercive measures, but of the development of the productive forces and social services. " (p. 103.) This evolutionary conception entails, among other things, an incomprehension of social reality and political dynamics. The context presented - that is, an extreme polarization between a handful of monopolists on the one hand and the virtual totality of the population on the other, an analytically simplistic notion - results in an underestimation of the fact that there are significant intermediary layers (not to mention non-monopoly capitalist ones) whose behavior is determined by their own concrete interests and which line up behind the parties of the ruling class not only because they fall victim to political-ideological mystification. As a result, the conflicts the working class will have to face in imposing its own hegemony and in winning power are arbitrarily played down. Internationally, the gradualist project not only entails uncritical adherence to the schema of peaceful coexistence, but more concretely leads to ignoring or completely underestimating the rending consequences that would flow from a working class seizure of power in a West European country. In reality, such an event would open a phase of dramatic confrontation from which there would be only two possible ways out: the extension of the revolution to other countries or the restoration of capitalism in the country temporarily taken out of the orbit of the system. Finally, from the standpoint of method, the thought of the "Eurocommunists" exhibits a mechanistic conception of a neopositivist type, foreign to Marxist dialectical materialism. (7)
Ingrao's analysis Up to now we have concentrated almost exclusively on the books of the French authors and Carrillo, since the theories of the PCI on these problems, to a large extent developed before the other Communist parties, may be traced through many documents, articles, and speeches over a period of twenty years and not only in recent publications. Ingrao's book is of interest on the one hand because of the reputation the author has had for many years in discussions within the PC and on the other hand because he presents certain analyses more rigorously, expresses certain positions more acutely and with less concern for tactics and demagogy, and enumerates some exigencies, primarily that of direct democracy, with greater sensitivity. In the introduction, which for obvious reasons was written more recently than the book itself, (8) the author clarifies the PCI's specific attitude toward the state, to which we have already alluded here. What must be rejected, he writes, is "the thesis of 'continuity' between the old state and the new republican state. " What is affirmed is the thesis of "the break that occurred with the Resistance, the new situation which opened with the defeat of fascism, altered social equilibriums and the condition and consciousness of the broad masses, and determined new 'institutions' in civil society and the state. " (p. 10.) This is a leitmotiv of Togliattism the import of which is further clarified, again in the introduction: "Whether deliberately or not, between the lines of the constitution lies consciousness of the inherent division of capitalist society and the indication of a program of social recomposition that shifts the class bases of the state." (p.38.) What is important to stress here is not so much the arbitrary character of this interpretation as the overall sense of the passage. The more one highlights the rupture between the historic bourgeois state (fascist and prefascist) and the bourgeois republican state, the easier it is to posit a continuity, an evolution uninterrupted by catastrophic breaks, between the present reality and the "new phase of the democratic, antifascist revolution, " which is supposedly the prelude to the transition to socialism. The overall framework is completed by a third step: "Our attitude toward elected assemblies (and parliament above all) constitutes one of the genuine new features of the present strategy of the Communist Party and of the manner in which this party seeks to construct a democratic outlet for the class contradictions which rend society. The new and delicate point lies precisely here. Elected political representative bodies inevitably express, albeit with the distortions which we have noted and denounced, the various levels of contradiction which are operative within society and which find their instruments of mediation in the political parties. To define representative assemblies as such an essential factor (although not the only factor) in this body of conflicts and its development means to accept a given framework for the class dialectic. " (p. 383.) The real import of the peaceful road in its specific parliamentary variant has rarely been expressed more rigorously, so distinctly highlighting what is really at issue: "the class dialectic, " or in other words the class struggle, must unfold primarily within the institutions of representative bourgeois democracy.
21
EUROCOMMUNISM Some further steps are no less interesting in synthetically defining the analytical and strategic project of the PC!. "We link our present strategy, " says Ingrao in a work written last February, "to (those) changes which have altered the range of the social groups that must be engaged in the socialist transformation. We are thus faced with the question of the concrete forms of consciousness by means of which a power bloc guided by the working class can be forged. Our analysis tells us that the participation of new social groups in the struggle for socialism does not occur through the forms of consciousness and organization that have been proper to the most advanced sections of the working class. But (and here is the new potential) these social groups can advance toward a new society even under their own banners, as a result of the collapse of historic divisions and the changes that have been introduced by the great battles for progress that have been waged on a world scale over the past fifty years.... Thus, we therefore postulate that we can alter the range of subjects who can be committed to a battle for socialism, as well as the forms of their association to that battle." In this manner, Ingrao continues, the values of the new pluralism are rooted "in the depths of society, in the productive process, the relations of production, and the struggles which develop therein. " (pp. 240-41.) Thus, the above-mentioned interpenetration between political pluralistic gradualism and social pluralistic gradualism appears rather more clearly in Ingrao's book than in the books of the French authors and Carrillo. Ingrao possesses sufficient intellectual honesty to recognize that such a project "has led to a new formulation of the concepts of hegemony and historic bloc along lines which go beyond Lenin" (and also beyond Gramsci). It may be said that Ingrao's thought is unjustly oversimplified if one eliminates an element which has been one of his recurrent themes for many years but which has been only partially incorporated into the official theses of the party. According to Ingrao, it is essential to establish "an organic intermeshing between representative democracy and direct democracy in such a way as to foster the permanent projection of the popular movement into the state, thus transforming it. " (see p. 91 and also pp. 309, 185-86.) It is interesting to note that in a speech delivered in January 1968 Ingrao furnished rather precise indications on the ob¡ectives the movement from below could and should have set itself in the framework of a strategy of structural reforms and a planning policy that would ultimately result in the "renovation of the state. " (pp. 271-72.) In general, these were objectives which were later achieved in the wake of the great wave of struggles of 1969, which speaks well for the author's political intuition. (Some of these objectives include the conquest of more favorable conditions of struggle in the factories, the maturation of more advanced consciousness, the development of the contractual power of the unions, discussion and assertion of the workers' "orienting" the direction of production, the environment, and working conditions, etc.) But the problem that was not solved in 1969 and successive years was that of overall political projection. The reason this problem (which is a central point that is not dealt with in Ingrao's writings) 22 was not solved was not because (or not only because) of partial errors or misassessments; there was a much more fundamental reason: Although it is true that during a period of great political crisis and mass social mobilization, partial gains, even important ones, can be made within the framework of the system, within the context of the given instititutional structures, political results in terms of power cannot at all be guaranteed within that framework. It is precisely here that Ingrao's conception of the complementary character of institutional democracy and direct democracy reveals its absolute inadequacy. Practice lays bare what formulas may conceal; direct democracy is inevitably subordinated to institutional democracy so long as the framework of the system is accepted. The entire construction thus becomes inoperative from the standpoint of the conquest and subsequent administration of power. (9) Because of his capacity of analysis and his long experience, Ingrao is sometimes able to present a vivid image of the real mechanisms and real functioning of the institutions of the republic "born of the Resistance. " He effectively denounces the reduction of parliament to "a role of sectoral compensation, " that is, to paying primary attention to sectoral interests and patronage. (p. 39.) Toward the end of the book he offers us good one-page summary: "At the risk of being schematic, one may affirm that during past decades we have seen a contradictory process of extension of the power of the state and erosion of the power of the state: The decisive power of the great industrial concentrations has increased, and at the same time there has been an expansion of the sphere of intervention of the state machine in the broadest sense of the term. In this light, it is not very exact to use the expression 'erosion. ' It is not so much that the state has 'lost' power that it used to command; rather what has occurred is a process of stricter determination of the character of state intervention. Although the socialization of the productive process has been accentuated by the extension of the intervention of the state bodies in the direct productive mechanisms, political power has become corporatized in a certain sense: in practice it has tended to limit itself to tasks of compensating the corporations. Essential decisions which increasingly require a state commitment are being made by monopolistic concentrations (which often have an international character these days), without the state machine being able to exercise effective binding influence (even in cases of enterprises in which there is state participation). At the same time, there has been a multiplication and increasing complexity of the action of the political apparatuses in their attempts to counterbalance and mediate from below the consequences on the social and political fabric that derive from decisions made from above by the great monopolistic corporations. In such a context there is still room for activity by the elected assemblies, but it tends to be limited to the sphere of this subordinate action. From this standpoint there is a crisis of the elected assemblies, but their elimination does not flow from this crisis. " (p. 329.) The quotation is a long one, but it makes worthwhile reading, for it offers timely observations about the functioning
of the state. But this rigor on the analytical level makes it even more incongruous to accept the hypothesis of gradually transforming such a state in order to use it in the interests of the working class and in the transition to socialism. The problem is raised again in the introduction: "The more the productive process is socialized, " writes the author, "the more the economy penetrates into the state and alters its functions and apparatuses, and the more it seems that the state has difficulty reordering all its tasks and becomes virtually incapable of assessing its own functioning. of the "continuity" of institutional structures, of the transformation and not breakup and top-to-bottom reconstruction of a new state apparatus, can never unravel. The contemporary state carries out its manifold and ever vaster functions on all levels. This has become a banal everyday observation nowadays. But the state does not function in the abstract, on the basis of objectively valid necessities, in the general interest of the "country" or the "nation. " Rather, it responds to the concrete and organic functioning of the system in order to assure the continuity of the process of accumulation, including during upheavals and crises. How is it possible to think that such an "apparatus" could be susceptible to gradual and peaceful transformation so as to serve diametrically opposite aims, assuming a class content antagonistic to the class content on the basis of which it has been structured? A basic contradiction Here we come to what is in the final analysis the major theoretical aberration of neoreformist Eurocommunism. It is perhaps Ingrao whe makes it appear most clearly, since his analysis is more rigorous and he poses the problems of the dialectic between masses and institutions more explicitly (not for nothing is his book entitled Masses and Power). Let us repeat: To begin with, in general terms it is out of the question to suggest that political institutions which have arisen historically in order to assure the rise and hegemony of an exploiting class which owns the means of production can serve for the accession to power and administration of power by another, qualitatively different class which must no longer rule as an exploiting minority. More precisely today, how can one think that such an apparatus could implement the sort of organic planning of the economy that is increasingly necessary and for which an indispensable precondition is direct and active participation by the masses? The neoreformist conceptions, like the classical reformist ones, thus lead to rejecting the problematic of structures of the soviet type, central in Marx's thought after the Paris Commune and in all Leninist thought. Fabre, Hincker, and Sève do not hesitate to advance the curious notion that soviets are appropriate only in a country in which the proletariat is numerically weak. The reality is that if the transition to socialism is conceived as a gradual process, the very notion of revolutionary crisis or of a qualitative revolutionary leap disappears or is emptied of its content; the objective basis for organs of the soviet type is thus undermined. Revolutionary Marxists, on the contrary, are convinced that the soviet form of organization has not at all been superceded. In fact, only an organization of this type is capable of maximally realizing the enormous potential of the mass movement in a revolutionary democratic framework and then of subsequently ensuring, through the greatest penetration of the social fabric and through the greatest flexibility, the real exercise of power by the working class and its allies. Furthermore, because of their origins and manner of functioning, soviets, more than any other organizations or institutions, are able to prevent the masses from being conditioned by the ruling classes, their institutions, and their ideology. It is not for nothing that organs of the soviet type have frequently arisen, even if only in embryonic forms, during periods of great political and social crisis and of working-class upsurge. Portugal was the most recent example of this, in spite of all the enormous limitations. Why do the "Eurocommunists" not reflect on this experience, which demonstrated how a bourgeois state, even in a situation of advanced disintegration of its apparatuses and in the presence of a representative institution in which the workers parties held the majority, was able to impose a restabilization, even if only a relative one, precisely to the extent that it managed to strangle at birth the organs capable of maximally stimulating the mobilization and revolutionary organization of the masses and to lead the political dialectic back into the traditional institutions. But all the theoretical and political contradictions of neoreformism may be reduced to one basic contradiction, which in the final analysis will trigger a crisis for the neoreformists. They are proposing an organically reformist strategy during a phase in which, particularly in the countries in which the major Communist parties are active, revolutionary solutions are necessary and possible. Paradoxically, there is even a contradiction with respect to the analytical premises of the "Eurocommunists" themselves. Indeed, they cannot avoid noting the structural and comprehensive character of the crisis of the system in the present phase, and the three French authors even affirm: "It is not only a policy but a system which is being challenged; it is the social system itself that has reached its historic limits. " (p. 8.) But al though they start from this premise, they advance the strategic hypothesis of a new "democratic" phase during which the economic mechanisms of the capitalist system and the political structures of bourgeois democracy will continue to operate (remember, even the monopolies would not be eliminated, at least for a certain period). The prospects for socialism are confined to the indefinite future. Is there not a strident contrast between the premises and the conclusions? June 28, 1977 Notes: 1. In this article we will not deal with the section of Carrillo's book criticizing Stalinism and the bureaucratic regime in the USSR. On this subject see the article "Santiago Carrillo and the Nature of the USSR, " by Ernest Mandel, INPRECOR, No. 6 new series, 12 May 1977.
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EUROCOMMUNISM 2. Concessions to chauvinism are a kind of special feature of the PCF, which constantly uses the indecently patriotic slogan "socialism in the colors of France." 3. As far as the experience of the PCI is concerned, which as has been noted preceded all the others, allow us to mention our own book, PCI 1945-1969: Stalinismo e opportunismo, Samonà e Savelli, 1969. 4. Fabre, Hincker, and Sève do not hesitate to quote a passage from Lenin on the necessity of "being able to complete and correct old formulas. " But they do not mention that Lenin was referring not to revolutionary violence but to the formula of the "democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants, "a conception many old Bolsheviks continued to advocate even though it had obviously been overtaken by events. 5. Fabre, Hincker, and Sève write: "What Marx, Engels, and Lenin universally established is the fundamentally oppressive character of the machinery of the bourgeois state; the necessity of the revolutionary conquest and then unfailing defense of power; the necessity of radically transforming the class character of the state, and on that basis the relations of production and all social life in order to begin to construct the classless society; and the necessity of the leading role of the working class in all these transformations." the « new society » in the philippines
(p. 63.) If one remembers that by "revolutionary conquest" the three authors mean "peaceful road" and that Marx spoke not of transformation but of destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus, the illegitimate distortion of Marxist and Leninist theory involved appears only too clearly. 6. It is Carrillo who has advanced the hypothesis that the course of the Spanish revolution might have been different had the Communists entered the government from the beginning; he makes a similar observation in regard to France. (pp. 153-54.) 7. It may be pointed out in passing that one element of the traditional Social Democratic conceptual apparatus, correctly rejected by revolutionary Marxism, is precisely the analogy between the forms of transition from feudal to capitalist domination and the forms of transition from capitalism to socialism. The recent writings of Carrillo repeat just this mistake. (pp.62 and 107.) 8. Ingrao's book consists of a collection of writings and speeches covering the years 1964-77. Ingrao is currently president of the Chamber of Deputies. 9. In its general inspiration, Ingrao's conception is not without some analogy to the positions of those left reformists who just after the Russian revolution preached a combination of parliamentary institutions and organs of the soviet type.
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