The coming elections for the European parliament make it possible, if that were still necessary, to uncover the real character of the policies of the traditional leaderships of the working class.
In this new stage in the construction of a capitalist Europe-whose trademark is the seven million unemployed-the parties that claim to defend the workers are simply transferring their policies of class collaboration to an all-European level.
The European Social Democracy is presenting itself as the motor force for the construction of imperialist Europe. The sirens of "Eurocommunism" sang for only a single summer, before giving way to the realism of the "national roads." As a result, the CPs are not only approaching the elections with their forces scattered but are also putting forward positions that are sometimes diametrically opposed from one country to the next.
While claiming to struggle for a "Europe of the workers," both the SPs and the CPs are in fact only exposing their adaptation to their own bourgeoisies, or to factions of those national bourgeoisies in this campaign.
What is this "Europe of the workers" that Helmut Schmidt, the leading light of the European Socialists, has cooked up with Giscard d'Estaing, the representative of French imperialism? And what kind of "Europe of the workers" do the various Communist parties put forward?
If we listen to the Italian, Belgian, or Spanish CP, it means a greater push toward integration, a parliament with real powers, and enlarging of the membership of the
European Economic Community (EEC).
But if we listen to the French CP, it means defense of the "French nation," sovereignty for the French parliament, and rejection of the countries that have applied for EEC membership.
And according to the English and Irish CPs, it even means the immediate withdrawal of Great Britain and Ireland from the EEC.
All of this has very little to do with the interests of the European workers, as the Lorraine steelworkers are now learning. In the face of these exhibitions of class collaboration, the revolutionary Marxists are focusing their campaigns for the June elections around one essential taskrestoring the true meaning of the anticapitalist struggle of the workers: internationalism.
The Social Democrats
Helmut Schmidt's SPD,' working in the interests of the dominant sector of German capitalism, has long been leading the fight for the consolidation of Europe. In this endeavor Schmidt has found himself in almost total agreement with Giscard d'Estaing. If Schmidt has often appeared to be a more resolute "European" than the French president, that is only because he represents a stronger economy in which the big corporations have an imperative
Schmidt, Giscard: Architects of "new Europe" with 7 million unemployed.
need to move ahead with European consolidation.
Thus the SPD is right where one would expect it to be in the election campaign for the European parliament. The SPD nonetheless put its main trade union leaders at the head of its ticket. This reflects the German Social Democratic leaders' aware ness of the relationship of social forces in Europe.
Under the guidance of its president, Willy Brandt, the SPD has unified the campaigns of all the European Social Democratic parties for this election-even involving those like the French SP that have established a privileged relationship with the Communists in recent years.
In 1973 François Mitterrand's SP held a special convention at Bagnolet on the question of Europe. This convention-held amid the euphoria of the Union of the Left-revolved entirely around "the struggle for socialism in southern Europe" and the fight for a "Europe of the workers." While accepting Europe as it exists, the final declaration focused on two points— the rights of European workers and the struggle against the big multinational corporations. This resolution won the support of the SP's left wing, the CERES,2 and was later adopted by the Nantes convention of the SP in 1977.
In June 1978 the same leadership that had been elected at Nantes signed the platform of the European SPs for the following June's elections. The document, which was worked up by the SPD, is a good program for the consolidation of a capitalist Europe.
The CERES
attacked this campaign platform as a "European Bad Godesberg, particularly with regard to the question of enlarging the EEC (which the French SP had already come out against). To get the platform adopted, Mitterrand explained in July 1978 that he had been able to secure some "changes in nuance" and an "attitude of greater caution, not toward accepting the enlargement of the EEC" but rather to the conditions, arrangements, and "timing" of the enlargement. What he was actually talking about was a short sentence stating that each national parlia ment should discuss the timing of the enlargement.
According to Willy Brandt, this little sentence was added so that "Mitterrand wouldn't have problems with his elected officials from the southwest." But the sentence did not improve the SP's situa tion in southwestern France, a wine producing region that will be particularly hard hit by Spain's entry into the EEC. Socialist notables there have, in fact, seen their share of the vote fall and have suffered the backlash of the chauvinist campaign the CP is waging in the area.
Since March, five local Socialist federations have decided to join the "My country is being skinned alive" movement that is leading the campaign against the enlarge ment of the EEC. But the bulk of the SP has agreed to be part of the Europe-wide ticket. In France itself, acceptance of this platform foreshadows the possibility of a future convergence with the Giscardian majority.
The Italian SP also fell into line with the German Social Democracy on the question of Europe. In the mid-1970s the Italian SP reassessed its long collaboration with the Christian Democrats in center-left governments and decided this collaboration had had negative effects on the party. So it carried out a "left turn."
In line with this, the SP came out against the CP's attempt to establish a "historic compromise" with the Christian Democrats, calling instead for the establishment of a "left alternative" to the Christian Democratic regime along the lines of the French Union of the Left. But because of the difficulty in carrying out such a policy in Italy and the change in the SP's expectations regarding Europe (with the defeat of the Union of the Left), it changed its perspective at its February 1978 convention in Turin.
There it relegated the "left alternative" to the distant future, launched a virulent polemic against the CP's "Leninism," and reaffirming its "Western choice." (We should recall that during the Cold War the Italian SP was the only Social Democratic party that chose to defend the Soviet "camp.")
So the Italian SP hopes that by hitching its wagon to the rising star of European Social Democracy it will make big gains in Italy itself.
The only discordant note in the Euro pean Socialist concert comes from James Callaghan's Labour Party. Although it is pro-European, the Labour Party has to speak for the special needs of British capitalism, which is in a weak position and maintains a special relationship with the United States.
Furthermore, the Labour Party is divided on the question of Europe. The Labour left called for a vote against Britain's entry in the referendum on joining the Common Market.
Callaghan already has enough troubles with the uproar over his wage policy, and he doesn't want to add any more problems.
Mitterrand, Brandt: United
Thus he must simultaneously try to avoid arousing the anti-Europe lobby in his own party while doing nothing to interfere with the process of European consolidation that is already under way.
Despite the reticence of the British, the Social Democracy will put itself forward as a rather homogenous current on a Europe wide scale. While we do not object to the Socialist parties running on a united basis in this election (as the French CP does, accepting the SP's internationalist label for good coin), we do object to the proimperialist orientation the SPs are putting forward.
The "National Roads"
of the Eurocommunists
For all their supposed "Eurocommunism," the attitudes taken toward the elections by the various Communist parties show the full extent of their adaptation to the interests of their own national bourgeoisies.
The argument that broke out last August between the Spanish and French CPs regarding Spain's entry into the Common Market was only the tip of the iceberg of differences between these two parties.
Faced with the French CP's chauvinist campaign in southwestern France against Spain's entry into the EEC, the leaders of the Spanish CP-who view this entry as the cornerstone of Spain's developmentdenounced "Marchais's parochial patriotism" and accused him of "stirring up reactionary demons among the backward farmers."
The French CP self-righteously re sponded with a paragraph in l'Humanité explaining that "each party had the right to freely determine its own positions."
In fact, the positions of the various on procapitalist campaign.
Communist parties go beyond merely be ing discordant, as a brief sampling of their positions shows.
In July 1978, CP leader Georges Marchais wrote in the Gaullist magazine Ap pel:
It is clear that for our part we categorically refuse to be tied to any sort of mini-international or to subordinate our national demands to some Europe-wide party. This would be self-evident if it were not for the fact that we are now seeing a regrettable trend among all the other French parties, without exception, toward formations or groupings that, while calling themselves Europe wide, in the majority of cases actually represent interests that are at the very least in opposition to the national interest.
Leaving aside the French Communist Party, of course, this is true for every other single partyfor the Socialist Party, which worked out a preamble and a list of common proposals with its European partners; as well as for all the rightwing parties, which have united with the reac tionary parties of other European countries.
Despite our deep solidarity with the struggles and aspirations of the European workers, and with the struggle of the Communists of the Nine [countries now in the EEC], we are too conscious of the national interest to act in this manner.
I should point out that this is not something in our attitude. The French Communist new deputies who have been members of the Euro pean parliament since 1973, and who for organizational reasons belong to a European Communist group, have always stated that their sole function in the assembly itself was defense of the French national interest.
In contrast, Giancarlo Pajetta, the Italian CP's shadow minister of foreign af fairs, states:
What is needed is an organization that can really act—one that would be based on a transfer of power agreed to by the governments and parliaments of the member states and could therefore take up the crucial problems that the member states cannot deal with on their own.
The people of the member states will be reas sured about this multinational power if it is based on firm democratic control directly exer cised by the European parliament with much wider powers than it has at present. As we see it, these multinational powers must be very different from those of the present Council of Europe. The powers of the parliament and the commission must be strengthened, and there must be a better balance between these bodies and the Council of Ministers.
It must be a democratic power that can exer cise on a Europe-wide scale those prerogatives that the national parliaments turn over to it, and that can assure effective popular participation in the planning and application of Community policies. Without this, there is no chance of breathing new life into this Community.
Netherlands telet the idea that the
For its part, the Communist Party of the construction of a supranational power should be an inescapable fact" and fights "for the protection of the national sovereignty of our country and for the protection of the Dutch constitution, which stipulates that the Dutch parliament is the sole elected representative of the people."
On the other hand, the Belgian CP holds that:
In reality, it is wrong to counterpose national measures to Community measures as if they were incompatible. To deny the possibility of national economic measures today would be to disarm the working-class and democratic move ment, which of necessity carries out its struggle within national borders. This would, in fact, leave the way free for big capital.
But on the other hand, if we do not also present perspectives at the level of the Common Market, that would allow these same big business forces to make the decisions by themselves at that level-decisions against which "national" resistance would then be more difficult. ... The [economic] problems require coor dinated policies that cannot be carried out without the transfer of certain powers from the national states to integrated bodies, so that decisions made with common consent can be applied.
But the Communist Party of Ireland is "opposed to the direct election of the European 'Parliament'" and favors Ireland's withdrawal from the Common Market.
And the list could go on.
These differing positions reflect the national conditions that are specific to each which the CP's class to country, collaborationist policies are adapted. This means that the Spanish and Italian CPs, which espouse the interests of the big monopolies of their countries and are trying to establish a policy of national union with the representatives of those monopolies, are dyed-in-the wool "Euro peans."
The French CP's anti-Europe campaign combines its traditional chauvinism with its policy of deepening the split with the Socialist Party and its search for a "Union of the People of France."
An analysis of the policies toward Europe of the two principal Communist parties-the Italian and French-shows the divergent paths that can result from identical adaptations to the interests of the national bourgeoisie.
The Italian CP's 'Europeanism'
Since the beginning of the 1960s the Italian CP has followed a pro-European policy as the framework for the "Italian road to socialism." This "road" requires maintaining the international status quo, and one of the existing realities that must
Professor Bogdan Denitch, of the abovementioned institute, made this comment on the policy of the Italian CP:
The Italian Communists made a very, very strong impression. They appeared to be a serious movement, a government party that is not trying to hide from difficulties. There were differences between the various parties, but there were also differences between the Socialists and the Americans present. I think, for example, that the views get forth by [CP] Senator Calamandrei regarding NATO and its role in the maintenance of a strategic equilibrium as a precondition fo. dé tente were very well articulated, reasonable, und certainly represented a basis for discussion. It is true that he presented some reservations-on consultation, standardization of armaments, and limitation of the sphere of influence, for example. But in this the Italian CP did not seem very different from some Social Democratic parties. The Norwegian Undersecretary of Defense said more or less the same thing.
This was a surprise not only for the Ameri cans, but also for some Socialists present, who tend to be more neutralist and to have more reservations than the Italian CP does today regarding the usefulness of the NATO defensive alliance.*
The leaders of the Italian CP are leaving no room for misunderstanding regarding their objective in the consolidation of Europe. Pajetta brought this to mind last September at a public conference in Turin: "I do not think that the socialist transfor mation of Europe is on the agenda." Just as the Italian CP has opted for austerity and national union to save Italian capitalism, it is lining up behind the consolidation of Europe as an indispensable comple ment to this salvage operation.
The French CP's Fight Against National Abandonment'
The French CP has taken up a very different banner-defense of the "French nation," which it claims everyone else wants to sell out for a handful of deutsche marks! Here the CP has sunk to unparalleled depths of chauvinism and, with ob vious relish, is again taking up the "antikraut" accents of its policy during the Second World War.
Even if our criticism of the CP's policy toward Europe was solely limited to attacking its chauvinism, it would still be necessary to wage a strong fight on this ground. Its policy is spreading nationalist poison in the working class, stimulating divisions and opening the way to racism. We are already seeing Communist mayors coming out in favor of limiting the number of immigrant workers in their towns.
Ever since the first step in the consolidation of Europe, the French CP has stood for defending "its nation" against the national abandonment that was showing itself.
Notes
1. Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands- Social Democratic Party of Germany.-IP/1
2. Centre d'Etudes, de Recherches, et d'Education Socialistes-Center for Socialist Studies, Research, and Education.—IP/1
3. The SPD rejected the perspective of the strug gle for socialism at its 1953 convention in Bad Godesberg.
4. Interview in the October 4, 1978, issue of La Republica. The Communist daily l'Unità of the same date also gave extensive coverage to this conference.