Paris
Has the PCF (Parti Communiste Français - French Communist party] changed? That was the question many commentators asked following the party's Nineteenth Congress.
The question was raised because for the first time in thirty-five years a member of the outgoing Political Committee, Garaudy, who disagreed with the Theses submitted by the leadership, was not expelled prior to the congress. He was able to present his views for a quarter of an hour be fore being relegated to the ranks. He had not been expelled even though he had expressed his views publicly in the preceding months in books, over the radio, and by other means, despite the condemnations of the Political Bureau.
This Nineteenth Congress, then, was marked by a sensational "innovation" for the PCF, an innovation which had a great political importance regardless of how you assess the positions taken by Garaudy. Nonetheless, it can be said that despite this important change, the PCF is still essentially what it has been ever since it was totally conquered by Stalinisma party aligned with the Kremlin's policy of "peaceful coexistence," a party with a reformist line and a bureaucratic structure from which workers democracy is excluded.
If Garaudy had an article published in l'Humanite's precongress "discussion section," if he was able to speak at the congress, this was by no means a matter of exercising a normal right accorded minorities under a system of democratic centralism —it was a favor granted from above.
Like all the participants in the congress, Garaudy had been sifted through a series of skillfully erected filters, starting with the section conferences - if not even the cell delegations to these conferences - and the département conferences. This system was designed to screen out anyone who might have serious disagreements with the Theses presented to the congress, except Garaudy.
It should be added that although formally an equal of the other members of the outgoing Political Bureau, Garaudy did not have the right to sit on the presiding committee along with the rest. He found himself isolated in the hall, shunned like a leper by all the delegates.
The exception, the innovation, that was made for Garaudy did not mean that the congress was going to formulate the party's policy. The Nineteenth Congress, like all that preceded it, was a ritual ceremony designed to praise the party "line" and reenthrone the leadership. What, then, was the meaning of the favor granted to Garaudy? The leaders of the PCF consider themselves "responsible" people; they make no move without a reason.
The PCF leaders would certainly have preferred not to make an inno vation of this kind. Despite its calculated character, it could have consequences in the long run that are not without dangers from their point of view. The example-the first in the history of this super-Stalinized party - of a member of the Political Bureau remaining in his position for months after making his disagreements known publicly and then expressing these disagreements on the floor of a congress is a precedent that might be invoked by others. After all, who knows whether some day this might not even be done by one of the leaders who are casting stones at Garaudy today.
Why did the leadership make this apparently democratic move? First and foremost because the circumstances did not permit it simply to use a steamroller as it has in the past. Throughout the party -in the ranks, among the cadres, and in the apparatus —a great malaise has existed since May 1968 and above all since the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Ifa democratic look had not been put on the party, if Garaudy had been expelled prior to the congress, * the opportunity this event offered for temporarily reducing the malaise would have been lost and the trouble aggravated.
The PCF leadership was confronted with a choice between two evils, and it chose the lesser one. This course was facilitated because, despite his profound differences, Garaudy in general made a convenient target. He declared himself in agreement with the political line of the party (peaceful coexistence, peaceful and parliamentary roads) and was so in fact. Thus, he had no alternative policy to offer and made his fight over issues which could elicit support only from very limited layers of the party.
All this said, however, it is no less true that the PCF leadership was unable to follow the routine of the past decades; it had to maneuver, make a formal concession, and thus it was forced to let Garaudy put his finger on the party's most sensitive point.
There is no doubt that the question that has most shaken the PCF as a whole has been the invasion of Czechoslovakia by troops of its Warsaw Pact "allies." This jolted the party much more than the May movement. This was so first of all because a great many members of the PCF do not have a revolutionary outlook and did not judge May 1968 from that point of view; and, secondly, because the members of the PCF have long been trained in the spirit of unlimited confidence in the Soviet Union and its policy. Of course, the Twentieth Congress already gave them their first big shock, but its effect was cushioned by the argument that the Soviet Union was capable of correcting its errors.
This time the situation took quite a different form. The developments of the "Prague spring" aroused the sympathy of the PCF members and the working class. And at that moment the Soviet government intervened, sending a half million troops, who, as the television showed, met less "democratically" expelled the first time he publishes an article or a book outside the CP bodies or publications.
with the resistance of the entire people, including the great bulk of the Czechoslovak CP. For the first time, doubt was cast on the "leading state" and the sister party. The crisis struck at the heart of the PCF. For opportunistic reasons, the leadership disavowed the Soviet intervention.*
Since then, conscious of the party's vulnerability on this question, the PCF leadership has strained every effort to minimize it. And Garaudy was not the least bit accommodating on this matter. He said that the best thing for Brezhnev and the others to do was resign. Far from weakening on this point, Garaudy directed the most vigorous part of his speech at the congress to the international policy of the workers states. Throughout most of this, he was listened to in silence, probably because the delegates had gotten the word from above.
But this silence ended when he mentioned the anti-Semitism, the arrests of writers, and above all, the shipping of Polish coal to Spain when the Asturias miners were on strike, and the steam power stations that the Sovietswho were directly responsible for dividing the Greek CP-built for the colonels. Then this audience composed overwhelmingly of paid functionaries, up till that point more astonished than outraged, sent up a very significant howl.
It was not these scandalous facts that they condemned but the speaker who raised them and precisely because he dared to do so. It should be added that he took this liberty in the very presence of the high-ranking representatives who came from Moscow expressly to receive the homage of a vassal to his lord. This is also why the report in l'Humanité did not repeat these sacrilegious statements, and stressed Garaudy's "anti-Sovietism" over his "revisionism."
Other accusations the leadership has brought against Garaudy testify to worries equally revealing about the state of the PCF. Garaudy criticized the party regime-he favored using the term "methods"- demanding that minority views like his be put before the party members, as Lenin did when he was in the leadership of the Bolshevik party.
Although Garaudy did not explicitly raise the question of the right of tendencies, he was accused of anti-Leninism for being an advocate of tendencies and factions. The PCF leadership knows that a good many party members are thinking about this question, because there can be no democracy in an organization where tendencies cannot exist, where in effect any minority is bound hand and foot and only the leadership faction has the right of expression.
In connection with this question, another point relating to the party regime aroused the anger and the indignation of the apparatus. Garaudy and certain members of the PCF have mentioned the role played by paid functionaries in the party, especially their role in transmitting the desires of the leadership and in blocking political discussion. On this point also the blow struck home. It was more a matter of material interests than ideology because the bureaucracy is concerned primarily with material interests to which ideology is adapted.
Thus, even though the PCF's general line was not specifically challenged, even though Garaudy's own course is oriented toward the right, the criticisms which he lodged from the podium of the congress against Soviet policy and against the party regime made his speech a considerable political event. It struck at a whole series of the PF's taboos and the monolithism which prevailed to such an extent in this party.
Aside from Garaudy's speech, the Nineteenth Congress resembled the preceding ones. There were the same ritual speeches for the artisans, the peasants, the small businessmen, etc. The only note that was a bit more marked than in previous congresses was the speech addressed to the technicians and research workers, for whom the PF has just started a new publication.
In the preliminary discussion, two or three articles tried to get some clarification on the "advanced democracy" that is supposed to assure a transition from capitalism to socialism by peaceful and parliamentary paths. How could a bourgeois regime give birth to a society building socialism by such means? There was no more clarification in this congress than in the past.
On this point, the Theses of the congress declared that the PCF could not achieve this "advanced democracy" by itself, that it could only do so in collaboration with reformist, democratic, and other types of formations. Hence the necessity, from this point of view, of finding "allies." It has been the same old refrain for many a year; but since May 1968 the fallacious and deceptive character of the policy is more evident than ever. The allies that the leadership needs so much to achieve the victory of this policy are very difficult, if not impossible, to find.
There is no question of the PCF looking for them on its left; it wants nothing to do with anybody in that direction. Besides, the formations to the left of the PCF do not believe in reformist methods. There is the PSU, but this organization exasperates the PCF leaders because of its ambiguous policy, which seems sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left of the PCF's line. Since May 1968, the Radical party has evolved toward the right and is not prepared to get involved with the PF. There used to be Guy Mollet's Socialist party, which made a very convenient ally because it was equally bureaucratized and slow moving. But even in its new form, this party is very anemic. It is a rare spectacle to watch the PC's comic efforts to reinflate this "new" Socialist party led by (!) Savary.
The May 1968 movement came in the period between the eighteenth and nineteenth congresses. There was no analysis of this movement at the congress. It could not be said, however, that the PCF leadership did not concern itself with this question. If you compare the draft theses submitted at the opening of discussion (published in the November 15, 1969, issue of l'Humanité) with the Theses finally adopted, you will note the following: A passage in point No. 13 of the Theses— which was only a repetition of remarks made by Waldeck Rochet in the aftermath of the May-June days— was expurgated; the two paragraphs surrounding this passage show up almost verbatim under point No.
14. These are the lines that disappeared:
Notes
* Garaudy, who has now been "democratically" returned to the ranks, can be no
* In August 1968 the PCF leadership used the terms "reprobation" and "disapproval" in regard to the Czechoslovak invasion. In the theses of the Nineteenth Congress, it was only a "disagreement" over the military intervention. Shadings.