The Twenty-Third Congress of the French Communist Party ended May 13 with a coup de théâtre. Roland Leroy, the managing editor of the CP daily l'Humanité, was edged out of the Secretariat, the real leadership of the party. Plissonnier, who is generally considered "Moscow's man," announced it to the congress, and probably to Leroy at the same time.
This semidismissal-for Leroy remains a Political Bureau member and managing editor of l'Humanité-was all the more surprising to observers in that Leroy was considered to have been the initiator, in opposition to Marchaise, of the French CP's new policy toward the SP. But for those who are familiar with the norms of the CP apparatus, Leroy's ouster merely confirmed the fact that the essence of the line he advocated had been adopted by General Secretary Georges Marchais. For Marchais, ousting Leroy meant preventing him from using this success to challenge the general secretary.
A Critical Reassessment of the Union of the Left
In 1974, Paul Laurent, a leading member of the Secretariat in charge of the Paris region, thought that the SP had "broken in practice with class collaboration." That was the period when the CP was singing the praises of the Common Program signed with the Socialists in 1972, and subsequently adopted by the Left Radicals.
But according to the political resolution unanimously adopted at the Twenty-Third Congress, the SP is "actively involved in the capitalist forces' strategy of counteroffensive," and a recent document by the CP leadership on its work in the trade unions condemns the SP as "a right-wing, nonworking-class organization."
These shifts in analysis are in fact designed to justify the changes in the CP's policy toward the SP and the Union of the Left. A balance sheet on the latter was drawn by the CP leadership in a column by Political Bureau member Lajoinie published in l'Humanité:
This governmental pact (the Common Program) gave the SP a kind of good-conduct certificate among the left, fostering illusions about an alleged change in its Social Democratic nature. ...
No agreement at the top can replace the mass movement for unity. It can, in fact, as the Common Program showed, put a brake on it.... For the first time in history, unity around a program did not facilitate the growth of the CP-in fact, it was only the SP that profited from this experience.
Georges Marchais publicly confirmed this analysis on television, declaring that "restabilization in favor of the SP has been bad for the workers."
Breakup of the Union of the Left and the CP's New Policy
In September 1977, six months before the legislative elections, the CP leadership decided to blow up the Union of the Left. It then launched a polemic against the SP, dealing not with the content of the program, but rather with the steps being taken to "bring it up to date."' The number of nationalizations-which the SP wanted to reduce as much as possible-provided the main excuse for initiating the division of the left.
The CP leadership did not want to pursue a policy that mainly profited the SP (from 1972 to 1978, the SP's electoral following doubled, while that of the CP stagnated) at a time when the development of the political and social movement of the working class, in the context of the capitalist crisis, could have made a left victory in the elections explosive.
For the CP this would have meant taking the risk of serving as a steppingstone to the SP's electoral victory, while having to mount the front lines, as the party most implanted in the working class, to apply a policy of managing the crisis for the capitalists, and thus paying the highest price for it within the working class.
To justify this sudden turnabout to its members, while again whipping up party patriotism, the CP leadership stressed the SP leadership's refusal to give Communist ministers in a future government of the Left the role that they deserved.
At that time, as today, the CP in no case offered a different strategy to the working class. Its line was and still is an anti-SP policy, not a prosocialist one.
This new line was ratified by the Twenty-Third Congress. The congress, held more than a year after the March 1978 defeat, and more than eighteen months after the change in policy toward the Union of the Left, officially marked the turning point, and was aimed at putting a full stop to the questions that CP members and sympathizers have asked since. The framework for this new policy is provided by analyzing the crisis of capitalism as "primarily national," even if it has a "specific international aspect."
The purpose of this odd theory (which nevertheless finds it difficult to explain why the crisis is simultaneously hitting all the big imperialist countries, France included!) is to define the CP as a party that does not conceal the responsibilities of the government and of Giscard for the crisis (whereas the SP is ridden with "Giscardism" and has become the harbinger of the "Europe of Giscard and Schmidt"). It also seeks to present the CP as a "national" party, one which defends the interests of the national economy against foreign capitalists and Social Democratic governments.
The Common Program policy failed to bear all the fruits hoped for, but merely strengthened the SP. In contrast to that the new policy rules out an agreement with the SP, at least for the immediate future. It even proscribes agreements, as Lajoinie wrote, "with SP organizations"-that is, with local and rank-and-file bodies of the Socialist Party. To the Union of the Left, the Twenty-Third Congress strictly coun terposes "unity at the bottom," "while not precluding unity at the top," as Political Bureau member Guy Hermier declared in his closing speech to the congress.
It is not a matter of the CP taking an ultraleft course after having followed an opportunist one toward the SP, as has happened so often in the past. The principal reason for this turn is the political, social, and economic situation.
After the elections, the bourgeoisie launched a new version of the Barre plan, much more aggressive than the preceding ones, to try to weaken the working class before the new international wave of recession that is on the horizon. The working class has not remained inert in the face of this bourgeois offensive. Despite all the difficulties-which are chiefly due to the divisionary policy of the CP and SP since the elections—it launched a counteroffensive, as shown by the mobilizations in Lorraine and the Nord.
In this context, the CP could not afford the luxury of an ultraleft sectarian, adventurist course, for this would have threatened to put a match to the powder keg and to be seen by the workers, willy-nilly, as the signal for a general strike.
After an electoral setback, the working masses instinctively move to launch a fightback against the bourgeoisie, using typically working-class means. They seek to win through direct action what they have not obtained through the ballot box.
This is why the CP has had to embark on a sectarian course toward the SP to reaffirm its own standing as "the numberone party of the working class," while at the same time failing to offer any overall political solution. Leaders of the CP have advanced the idea that the overall solution offered by the Common Program downplayed the day-to-day struggles of the workers. Georges Séguy, a member of the Political Bureau and general secretary of the CGT,? recently told the federation's national committee that national actions involving workers in different industries could only come about "through a proliferation of initiatives in action at all levels." And to make sure he got the point across he added that the level of struggles had not yet reached that point "because we are still seeing a tendency to wait for something to come down from above, to wait for a national call that would serve as a spark"!
This policy will be carried out up to the 1981 presidential elections, in which, as Marchais has already stated, there will be a CP candidate. While declaring its "loyalty to the Union [of the Left] against the betrayal of the Socialists," and its eagerness to seek "rank-and-file unity," the CP will continue this policy of splitting the workers ranks for many months if not years. In no way will it point toward an overall working-class response.
The CP will do all it can to prevent the outbreak of a general strike, in face of which it would be totally disarmed. Lacking a class-collaborationist governmental solution of its own it would have to submit to the humiliating terms of the SP.
In order to continue presenting itself as a "national" party, as a "governmental party"-that is, as a party in which the bourgeoisie can place confidence when the time comes-the CP will step up its ultrachauvinist policy of defending "national interests" against the multinational corporations and the "German-dominated Eu-
"Germanrope" (or sometimes the American-dominated Europe").
A Turn, Not a Return to Stalinism a la Thorez and Jeannette Vermeersch
The Twenty-Third Congress represents a continuation of the Twenty-Second. While the Twenty-Second Congress officially took its distance from Leninism and the communist tradition, the Twenty-Third Congress continued this process.
The CP is sinking ever deeper into the road of class collaboration and the socalled "democratie transition to socialism." From now on the references to Leninism (absent, even as a ritual, from the political resolution) will vanish. Proletarian internationalism is replaced by "internationalist solidarity," and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is banished from its vocabulary.
As one contribution to the discussion column of l'Humanité put it, it is no longer a question of setting up "people's committees" or "committees of dual power." In the CP's strategy the key is "mass control over all the democratic openings that have been won step by step."
Moreover, to make clear that the CP does not intend to change its strategy, but will stick within the framework of "Eurocommunism," Marchais hastened to have two meetings with [Italian CP leader] Enrico Berlinguer after the Congress, one in Marseilles and the other in Turin. There he reaffirmed the agreement of the French and Italian CPs on the essential questions.
Within this framework, the Twenty- Third Congress has nevertheless forcefully reaffirmed the "generally positive record of the socialist countries." It even went so far as to assert that "the situation of women in the socialist countries is unequaled anywhere else in the world."
The CP leadership has thus shown the limits of "Eurocommunism." They formally reject that which is an obstacle to the growth of the CP-the repulsion felt by the overwhelming majority of the workers toward Brezhnev's bloody caricature of socialism-and they therefore denounce the most blatant aspects of the bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR and the "people's democracies." But they are very careful not to go so far as to break politically with the Kremlin, and they make their criticisms in extremely measured terms.
Thus the congress, turning a deaf ear, refused to come out in solidarity with the Czechoslovak dissidents of Charter 77 and with Sabata, who came to trial the same week the congress was held.
At the same time, to obtain sufficient latitude vis-à-vis the Kremlin, the French CP leadership maintains special ties with the Western CPs, and is even talking now about the need to reestablish fraternal ties with the People's Republic of China.
Marchais set the tone when he stated that "there's no lack of prophets predicting the death of Eurocommunism. Either they are deceiving themselves, or they're just lying."
Thus, it is in no way a question for the CP leadership of taking up the position of those few who are nostalgic for the good old days of Stalinism-a position expressed last year on television by Jeannette Thorez-Vermeersch.3
There has not been any division within the CP leadership on this score.
and known as a hard-line
Stalinist.-IP/I
At the close of the precongress discussion, the party leadership congratulated itself on the numerical weakness of the vote against its line.
Out of 20,446 delegates to 98 local conferences, 63 reportedly voted against the draft resolution, while 151 abstained.
Out of 28,000 cells, 824 rejected the resolution.*
The first remarkable fact, however, is that opposition votes were expressed to such an extent-that they managed to get past the initial bureaucratic roadblocks. Nothing like this has happened in the French CP in fifty years.
Nevertheless these oppositions, whose ranks were swelled by the divisive policy pursued by the leadership and by the setback of March 1978, are still weak and heterogeneous.
Elleinstein, ® as it turned out, remained an outsider at this Congress. His efforts to pose as the champion of "de-Stalinization" have found definite echo within the party, but he is incapable of offering a real strategic and tactical alternative to the leadership. His fundamental anti- Leninism does not lead to a concrete policy that could mobilize party members "to the right."
Of course his efforts to combat sectarianism toward the Social Democracy have coincided with the aspirations of many members. But they run up against what these same members instinctively see as the purpose of seeking unity with the Socialists: the beginning of a dogged fight, of a united front against the regime and the Barre plan. On this level the CP leadership is quick to reply that the party's edge must be preserved, and that a policy like Elleinstein's would only lead to lining up with the Social Democracy.
As far as the "Althusserians", and intellectuals are concerned, their main weakness is political.
They reject the deepening course toward dropping all ties with Leninism and whatever formally remains of it within the CP. But they have practically nothing to say about the tactics of the party, except, as is the case with many, to advocate a return to the Union of the Left, to a policy of union, without being capable of saying what this means in the present situation, schelon he the paiy a parented in the upper
Only the majority is represented in the po who has preined the leadership to speed upriar Jean Fleinsteir process of "Eurocommunism."-IP/I
after the March 1978 setback and the new political and social situation that ensued.
Nevertheless these critics have been acerbic and have courageously taken a position in favor of solidarity with the victims of repression in the Czechoslovak
Socialist Republic and other countries of
Eastern Europe, as Hélène Parmelin did, for example.
Politically the most vigorous opposition has been expressed in the bulletin Luttes et
Débats (Struggles and Debates), which is edited by some worker militants of the CP.
This bulletin, which is open to contributions by all CP members, tries to compensate for the lack of democratic discussion, which the handpicked discussion columns of l'Humanité or France Nouvelle [the CP weekly] hardly make up for.
A Manifesto of Fifteen Worker Militants has been published by its authors. The Manifesto constitutes a class-struggle alternative to the leadership's strategy. It counterposes the line of a workers united front to the policies of division and class collaboration. It proclaims that:
Reformism can never be fought by sectarianism, but only through action and unity, based on unifying demands that tie every economic struggle to the political struggle. We should press for coordination of struggles, those in progress and those to come. We need to build workers solidarity around these same struggles....
We should propose to the workers that they organize themselves in these struggles (through rank-and-file strike committees) because action is not decreed from above, but motivated and impelled by the ranks. We need to agitate for unity of the workers parties and trade unions on the basis of unifying demands....
A general strike will only be prepared within this framework, not by hoping for some great hypothetical upheaval...
Our party must concretize the political openings for the establishment of a government of the workers parties, the CP and SP, which would have as its program the satisfaction of the demands raised by the workers, and would maintain participatory structures of workers democracy for the toiling masses (rank-and-file committees, factory committees, neighborhood committees). On the basis of a common front of the workers parties and trade unions, we will be able to pose the question of satisfaction of our demands and of political change by means of an indefinite general strike.
We have no use for a program proposing the democratization of bourgeois democracy, or the maintenance of a market economy, despite nationalizations. How can we claim to follow the logic of planning for human needs, while staying within the laws of the capitalist system based on profits? ...
It is as Communists, as militants involved in struggles, that we make this contribution to a debate which is indispensable in the party today.
This orientation unquestionably marks the appearance of an opposition to the left of the CP leadership-something all the more notable in that it has been put forward by workers. But despite its good press, it must be kept in mind that this opposition remains extremely small, and that it does not yet have the forces to take on the leadership, notably through representation at the party congress.
The Coming Crisis
The contradictions with which the CP is riddled were not immediately apparent at the party congress, but that does not mean they have disappeared. This is particularly true as concerns the CGT and its relationship to the CP.
The leadership has been aware of this problem, and published a special feature in l'Humanité on the CP's trade-union worka rare event. The chief aim was to reaffirm the primacy of the party over the unions, and of party activity in the workplace over trade-union activity. It sought in this way to show Socialists in the CGT that the CP was keeping an eye on them, and would not allow them to go too far.
The absence of a political perspective is bitterly felt by trade-union militants, who are the most directly faced with the Barre plan's attacks and the workers desire to fight back.
Isolated on the trade-union level, the CGT in fact has no alternative with which to oppose the "recentering" of the CFDT, and its proclamations about the necessity of struggle inevitably run up against the policy of the CP.
The differences within the bureaucracy were made clear at the most recent National Committee meeting of the CGT. There were some CP militants who favored splitting from the FEN, at least on the local level, and setting up a union tied directly to the CGT. There were expressions of regret over the failure of struggles to lead to significant results. There were problems with carrying out the positions on trade-union unity adopted at the CGT's Fortieth Congress (positions which the most sectarian CPers viewed as a resurrection of the Common Program with the Socialists!). There were Séguy's statements about the nonimplementation of the Fortieth Congress decisions.
These tensions are a distorted reflection of the contradictions being felt in the ranks of the trade-union federation.
It is through the CGT that the CP's divisive, chauvinist, class-collaborationist policies collide most directly with the desires and the struggles of the working class. This is why the crisis of the French CP will have repercussions, especially in the CGT and in the latter's relationship with the CP fraction.
"trade-union" as opposed to "political" on questions.-IP/1
Notes
1. The Common Program, signed in 1972, envisioned continuing economic growth at an annual rate of 6 percent. This was before the economic crisis. Beginning in June 1977 the CP and SP discussed "bringing the program up to date."
2. Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor, one of France's two main trade-union federatione).
3. Widow of former French CP General Secretary Maurice Thorez
4. According to the criteria for representation used by the leadership, 824 cells would represent slightly more than 20,000 members. In fact one is dealing with a few thousand militants.
7. Philosopher Louis Althusser presents himself ga "left citin"
8. Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (French Democratic Federation of Labor, the country's other major trade-union federation). "Recentering" is the term the CFDT leadership has given to its present policy of focusing
9. Fédération de l'Education National (National Education Federation, the country's largest teachers union, organized as an independent federation).-IP/I