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parties evoution of. in coolast eurose
The following text was adopted by a meeting of the Political Bureaus of the European sections of the Fourth International held early in November. 1- The Communist parties, founded as revolutionary vanguard parties of the proletariat after the Social Democracy's 1914 capitulation to imperialism and the victory of the October socialist revolution, have undergone a process of bureaucratic degeneration parallel to that of the Soviet Union. Under the pressure of the Communist International controlled by the Stalinist foction of the Soviet CP, these parties progressively lost their infernal democratic structure and their ability to elaborate a political line in accordance with the needs of the class struggle on a national and international scale. They have been transformed into tools of the diplomatic maneuvers of the Soviet bureaucracy. This process culminated in the German CP's capitulation to Hitler without a fight in 1933 and the acceptance of this capitulation by all the other CPs without self-criticism or serious politicol examination of the line the Communist International had followed from 1929 to 1933. Since then the political line of the bureaucratized and Stalinized CPs has followed the zigzogs of the Kremlin's policy, in accordance with the exigencies of the bureaucratic defense of the "Soviet bulwark. " The interests of the international revolution have been systematically subordinated to this defense, in line with the logic of the theory of "socialism in one country. " The successive zigzags are:
*the rightist line of 1925-28 (support to the Kuomintang, Anglo-Russion Committee, etc..);
*the ultraleft policy of the so-called third period, 1929-34;
*the right-wing policy of alliance with the "democratic" bourgeoisie and the antifascist Popular Front, 1934-38;
*the sudden change in course and more leftistsounding phraseology during the 1939-41 period of the Hirler-Stalin pact (with, however, criminal accommodation to Nazi imperialism, especially in 1940);
*the policy of "national front" with the Western Imperialist bourgeoisie within the framework of the alliance between the USSR and Anglo-American imperialism in 1941-47. If led in particular to to the French, Italian, and Greek CPs" liquidation of the revolutionary possibilities that opened up in these countr es of the end of the second world war and to their active participation in the reconstruction of the bourgeois state and army and the capitalist economy; it was followed to the point of lending cover to the colonial wars of French Imperialism;
*the "hard-line" policy against American imperialism coinciding with the beginning of the Cold War and its exacerbation in the Koreon war and the Indochina war (1948-53), This policy combined a temporary anti-U.S. -imperialist phraseology and activism (as in the Ridgeway demonstrations) with the right-wing strategic line of "new democracy" and: "revolution by stages, " which clearly differentiated the policy from that followed during the "third period" or the 1939-41 period. The nature of the bureaucratized and Stalinized CPs emerges from this whole historicol experience of 30 years duration (1923-1953). They are bureaucratized workers parties that in origin, program, tradition, and the way they are regarded by both the imperialist bourgeoisie and the proletariat, as well as in their social composition and their objective role in society, continue to be a part of the organized worker movement, buf their polifical line at any given moment is a reflection of the interests of neither the bourgeoisie nor the petty bourgeoisie, but of the bureaucracy that has usurped power in the workers state of the USSR. If is this allegiance to the USSR, a degenerated workers state, that fundamentally differentiates the CPs from the Social Democratic parties, the objective foundations of whose political orientation consist of conciliation and capitulation to the imperialist bourgeoisie. Even when they render historically decisive serices to the bourgeoisie, as they did at the time of the Popular Front or in the 1944-1947 period, the CPs do so not because of any allegiance to big capital, but because of the counterre volufionary politics of the Soviet bureaucracy. 2. Beginning with the end of the Cold Wor (first Geneva Conference, 1954) a long period of rapprochement and relative collaboration between the Soviet bureaucracy and imperialism opened up. The present phase of this development, the so-called détente, is only the latest of many lend of the first Indochina war, Eisenhower-Khrushchey meeting,
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Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting, halting of atmospheric nuclear testing, etc.). For twenty years now, the basic orientation of the CPs in capitalist Europe has undergone no fundamental zigzags, but has been marked by the strategic line of "peaceful coexistence, "excluding the possibility of proletarian revolution and revolutionary struggle for the conquest of power in the imperialist countries. This strategy is fundamentally based on the following propositions: a. The struggle between the "socialist camp" and the "imperialist camp" is the principal manifestation of the class struggle on a world scale (a "revised and corrected" version of the theory of "socialism in one country"). b. As long as the economic relationship of forces between the "socialist camp" and the "imperialist camp" is not fundamentally modified (in particular by a greater per capita productivity in the USSR than in the imperialist countries), the "passage to socialism" is Impossible in the West. c. Between the system of monopoly capitalism os it now functions in the West and the overthrow of the capitalist system there is an intermediary phase of "antimonopoly alliance" - on interclass alliance of the working class, the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie, and the "antimonopoly" section of the bourgeoisie. This alliance requires the elimination from the CPs* action programs of all objectives tending to question the existence of the capitalist system as a whole. It presupposes the survival of the bourgeois state apparatus, which is to be subjected to a process of "democratization. " d. Having emerged from the Cold War period in a state of extreme political isolation in relation to all the other political forces in their respective countries, the CPs set os their main priority ending this isolation, porticularly by seeking an alliance with the Social Democracy and the trade-union bureaucracy. For this reason they must systematically avoid any political orientation that would lead to head-on opposition to the reformist bureaucracy (particularly in the unions or during strikes). The "international détente" is seen especially as facilitating breaking down the isolation in which the CPs Find themse Ives. The fact that in spite of certain minor turns the CPs In capitalist Europe have been following this basic orientation for twenty years now, without essential zigzags and without periodic returns to an anticapitalist or revolutionary phraseology or interna! education comparable to the past, cannot but have profound effects on the level of consciousness and the nature of the acfivity of their members and sympathizers. These effects are sufficient to amply justify the idea of an evolution of the CPs and the beginning of their fransformation. But the evolution of the CPs is not simply a function of this long-term alignment on the strategy of the "peaceful, reformist, and electoral rood to socialism. " It is also influenced by the international crisis of Stalinism, by the repercussions within the CPs of the development of a new mass vanguard in Europe, and by the Impetuous new rise of workers struggle and radicalIzation. We are concerned here with analyzing the combined effects of these three processes on the nature of the CPs. 28
3. The twenty-year-long systematic alignment of the European CPs on the strategy of the "antimonopoly alliance" and of "advanced democracy" has given rise to a process of Social Democratizotion of these CPs in the following sense: a. These parties considerably reinforce reformist ideologies and illusions within the workers movement and the working class that were formerly represented by classical Social Democracy: an essentally electoralist orientation; systematic encouragement of illusions in the bourgeois parliament and bourgeois parliament members; attempts to contain strikes within a strictly economic framework; absence of any revolutionary education, etc. b. With the exception of some survivors of the old generation (almost all of whom are bureaucrats), CP members retain almost no continuity of thought or, more important, of experience with the programmatic bases of the Communist International or the teachings of Lenin on bourgeois democracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the world revolution, the rejection of coalition governments with the bourgeoisie, etc. Militants systematically educated in a day-to-day neoreformist practice will be progressively less capable of making a rapid turn toward an essentially different sort of practice (as was also the case with the majority of Social Democratic militants in 1914). e. The limited but real success of the CPs neoreformist orientation in several countries of capitalist Europe (winning majorities on town councils, gains within the trade-union apparatus, parliamentary positions, positions within the "mass organizations" like cooperatives, women's and cultural organizations, etc.) creates an objective social dynamic in the direction of Social Democratization. Part of the apparatuses of the CPs, especially the mass CPs, is winning positions within the bourgeoisparliamentary state and bourgeois society comparable to those won by classical Social Democracy. As was the cose with classical Social Democracy, these positions are increasingly less counterbalanced by systematic anticapitalist education and practice. d. The long period of relative stability of capitalIsm in Western Europe (1949-1968) and the absence of large-scale revolutionary explosions in that part of the world during that period have considerably reinforced the evolution of the CPs, playing a role analogous to that played by the period of Imperialist expansion in Europe from 1893 to 1914. Nevertheless, while it is legitimate to speak of a process of Social Democratization of the CPs in capitalist Europe as currently in progress, it would be wrong to conclude that this process is already completed and that the CPs have alreody been transformed into pure and simple Social Democratic parties. The following factors indicate that this evolution is not yet complete and that the CPs have not yet undergone a qualitative modification of their social character: a. The CPs of capitalist Europe have not yet broken their privileged connections with the Soviet bureaucracy. These connections are material (we must not underestimate the scope of financial aid that continues to flow in from the bureaucratized workers states, the advantages the CP leaders draw from
this aid, the various links between the leading cadres of the CPs and those of the workers states, etc.). These connections are also (and in the first place) political, reference to the Soviet Union and the "international communist movement" being the principal mark distinguishing the CPs from the Social Democratic parties and the justification both for their separate existence before the broader masses of workers and for their right-wing line in the eyes of the most hard-core of their own working-class militants. In the event of acute conflict between their own imperialist bourgeoisie and the USSR, whether direct conflict or conflict through "interposed countries" (es in the Middle East or Africa), the CPs are not yet at the point of crossing bag and baggage into the camp opposed to the USSR. The ongoing process of Social Democratization of these parties means that in case of such a conflict parts of the CP apparatus would certainly take such a position (as they already did in 193940). But until there is proof to the contrary we can say that the majority of the apparatus is not inclined toward such a definitive capitulation to imperialism. b. The CPs of capitalist Europe continue to attract the most experienced and militant odult worker militants (not the young): those having a vague but real anticapitalist consciousness and, in a number of countries, those demorstrating a degree of militancy widely superior to that of the Social Democratic reformist militants. c. The imperialist bourgeoisie of capitalist Europe continues to regard the Communist parties and their apparatuses as a socially alien body, not integrated and unable to be integrated into the bourgeoisie. Even when governmental collaboration with the CP is accepted as a last-resort solution aimed at averting a revolutionary social crisis, this collaboration is strictly limited to certain given areas of the state and related apparatuses, The bourgeoisie rejects any penetration by the CP of the army, the repressive apparatus, or the diplomatic corps. There are no CP leaders or cadres on the boards of the big _ private capitalist firms. Consequently, the Communist parties of the countries of capitalist Europe are most correctly defined as bureaucratic workers parties in process of Social Democratization but continuing to align themselves Fundamentally with the historic interests of the Soviet bureaucracy (as expressed indirectly through the ideology of the "socialist camp"). 4. The international crisis of Stalinism has also profoundly influenced the evolution of the CPs of Western Europe, The Kremlin's break first with the Yugoslav CP and then with the Chinese CP (two indirect demonstrations of the irreconcilable opposition between the Soviet bureaucracy and the progress of the world revolution, however deformed); the repression by armies commanded by the Soviet bureaucracy first of the Hungarian revolution and then of the "Prague spring"; the partial reconciliation between Moscow and Belgrade; the rise of a political-intellectual opposition in the USSR and its repercussions in the West; the repercussions of the Cuban revolution's triumphing independently of the Kremlin and against the line of the Cuban CP; the vicissitudes of the Indochinese revolution; the emergence of a number of mass CPs developing independently of Moscow and Peking (the Indian CP-M, the Japanese CP, the Vietnamese CP) - all these manifestations of the international crisis of Stalinism have had more and more marked effects on the orientation of the CPs of capitalist Europe. A certain number of CPs have increasingly taken their distance from traditional Stalinism, and have started to openly criticize the attitude of the Soviet bureaucracy - both its international orientation and certain of its internal political decisions. This has particularly been the case with the Italian, Dutch, and Spanish CPs and the "interior" Faction of the Greek CP. While the questioning of some of the classic theses of Stalinism has remained more timid in certain cases than in others; while the alignment behind Soviet diplomacy has remained predominant, even though no longer unconditional; and while the dogma of the "guiding state" and "guiding party" has been openly rejected only in a few cases, it nevertheless must be stressed that a significant step was token down the road of CP "polycentrism" during the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies: The majority of the CPs of capitalist Europe condemned the invasion; anly the West German, Finnish, Luxembourg, Portuguese, and Greek ("exterior") CPs expressed unconditional approval. To be sure, this still timid "disengagement" from the Kremlin was followed by a capitulationist "backsliding" in regard to the "normalization" Imposed on the Czechoslovak CP. But the attitude that has been adopted in relation to the persecution of oppositional intellectuals in the USSR confirms that the behavior of the majority of the CPs of Western Europe in August 1968 was not an isolated event. Unconditional alignment behind any attitude or decision (whether international or internal) taken by the leaders of the Soviet Communist party is becoming more and more difficult for the CP leaders in Western Europe. This sort of unconditional alignment still occurs only in exceptional cases that are accounted for by a clearer and more immediate material dependence on the Kremlin on the part of some CPs (the West German or Finnish, for example, or the Portuguese and Greek CPs in exile before the fall of the dictatorships in these two countries). By all evidence, the fundamental dynamic points in the opposite direction. This dynamic is nevertheless fundamentally contradictory. On the one hand, it is an expression within the CPs of capitalist Europe of the changes that have occurred in the world situation and in the situation in the USSR itself, changes that are making the fundamental dogmas of Stalinism ever less credible. The concept of the "besieged fortress" no longer stands up since the victory of the Chinese revolution and the emergence of the USSR as the principal Eurasion military power. The imperatives of Realpolitik no longer seem embodied in the policy of the Kremlin in that the Kremlin itself appears at least co-responsible for the division of the "socialist camp" resulting from the Sino-Soviet conflict, It is becoming more and more obvious that bureaucratic centralism, bureaucratic privilege, and the absence of Soviet democracy in the USSR play a braking role both in the economic and cultural progress of the USSR and in the power of attraction exerted by the Soviet model of socialism" on the Western working class. Under these condifions, opposing any public criticism of the Soviet bureaucracy becomes simply rear-guard skirmishing
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ithin the CPs of Western Europe, in whose postans sensational changes are inevitable. (The atude of the French CP on the Solzhenitsyn affair an example.) t on the other hond, this toking distance from the wiet bureaucrocy also corresponds to a pressure erted by the Immediate social surroundings of the %, by the imperatives of rapprochement with the cial Democracy at any price, by the attempt to new contact with the intelligentsia and the al" bourgeoisie, by the desire to gain at any price respectability that is supposed to lead to re-entry to coalition governments. The change in attitude the Common Market and on the participation of heir" countries in NATO by CPs that are aiming participating soon in coalition government is ry significant in this regard. While the first more for the criticiss of the Kremlin leaves open • possibility of the development of the CPs (or lis from the CPs) Toward centrist or even leftntrist positions, the second fits perfectly into the amework of an evolution of these parties to the aht, that is, toward further Social Democratizaon. This is undeniably the dominant element in a contradictory development of the CPs, an eleent that the occasional, limited, and essentially. portunist differentiations from the Kremlin can ly confirm. A distinction has to be made between the CPs at have a moss influence and play a predominant le in the workers movements of their countries sentially the Italian, French, Portuguese, and anish CPs, and, to a lesser extent, the Greek ) and the "small" CPs that have only a minority metimes even marginal influence within the ornized workers movement. To be sure, there are ermediary cases, such as the Finnish CP, which ile holding a minority position within the class nevertheless incontestably a party with a mass luence both on the political plane and in the de-union movement, and such as the British CP, ich, while it is insignificant on the political ine, holds preponderant positions among the most mbative sections of the trade-union movement. vertheless, the distinction between these two legories is extremely useful. Government partiction is a realistic possibility in the short or mein term only in the coses of parties with a most Tuence. (The cose of the Finnish CP can be asilated to the first category in this regard, and viously the possibility cannot be ruled out of a alitative change in the relationship of forces in workers movement of additional countries, folring an exceptional upsurge in the mass movent during which the Social Democracy is unable adapt in time, and the local CP experiences a rp growth.) structural process of Social Democratization is arly more advanced in the mass parties than in "small" CPs. For the latter cafegory, neither ir already acquired positions within the bouris state nor the perspective of governmental ticipation in the near future provides a material • for these parties taking greater distance from Soviet bureaucracy. (An exception to this rule he Dutch CP, whose break with the Kremlin er the outbreak of the Sino-Soviet conflict went furthest.)
This does not mean that these parties are following a less right-wing line than the mass CPs or that their political Social Democratization is less pronounced. But it does mean that their function in the mass workers movement (especially in the trodeunion movement and during strikes) is objectively different and is seen differently by the masses. In comparison with the Social Democratic apparatuses that continue to dominate the trode unions, the milTants of the "small" CPs continue to be seen as much more combative workers leaders who give greater stimuli to struggles, which they do not breok, although they do orient them toward reformIst paths and class collaborafion. Under these conditions any radicalization of the workers movement can thus more easily find expression in an increased trade-union Influence of CP militants. Moreover, the fact that the mass CPs can be led to adopt political positions critical of the Soviet bureaucracy with a view to facilitating their ministerial participation is not considered a tragedy by the Kremlin. In the changed world situation resulting from the overall weakening of imperialism, the moss CPs of Western Europe have less the function of exerting pro-USSR pressure on their own bourgeoisies than of demonstrating to them that the bureaucracy has ceased to be a force favoring the overthrow of capitalism. It is precisely through their control of the workers movement during serious social crises and through the medium of governmental participation that the CPs can best fulfill this function. Thus, anything that favors the occomplishment of such a task is not in contradiction with the basic strategic designs of the Kremlin. 6. The CPs of capitalist Europe were initially taken by surprise both by the appearance of a new mass vanguard in capitalist Europe (stimulated Firsf by the youth radicalization and later by the sudden rise in workers struggles) and by the progressive and reciprocal politicization of the different components of this vanguard. The CPs understood the scale of the phenomenon only belatedly, and they were thus broadly outflanked. The sectarian attitude adopted toward student explosions, wildcot strikes, and radical forms of organization and moss struggles, and the condemnation of these phenomena en bloc as "petty-bourgeois ultraleftism, " "anarchism, * "left opportunism, " etc., contributed to the CPs being outflanked and facilitated the formation of significant for-left organizations to the left of the CPs, thus changing the relationship of forces within the workers-movement, albeit in a still modest and initial wayBut the very scale of the crisis of the whole of bourgeois social relations, the progressive deterioration of the economic climate, and the increasingly pronounced new rise of working-class struggles had to have an effect over the long term within the CPs themselves. The CPs could not remain impervious to the aspirations and hopes of millions of men and women. In practically every country of capitalist Europe the CPs have made a belated but not ineffective "turn to the youth." After having ignored the mass student movement, they now offer it primarily an answer to the principal concern of its politicized vanguard layer: the search for a link with the working class and the workers movement. Also belatedly, and with more ambiguous aims, they tried to take the lead in class struggles, both in
order to avert a growing influence of the far-left orgonizations in the factories and at the same time to strengthen their negotiating and blackmail positions vis-d-vis the bourgeoisie, with a view toward breaking out of their political isolation and getting into the government in given cases. To be sure, this more marked participation in mass movements since 1969 has been characterized by numerous contradictions. While the CPs no longer try to "wreck" or stifle mass struggles head-on, but rather channel them toward the neoreformist objectives the CPs are seeking, they have to face the real danger that any encouragement of the struggle runs the risk of its breaking through the narrow framework in which they try to contain it. On the other hand, the more the CPs participate in the struggle, the more chance there is of the deepgoing rodicalization of the working class and youth having an inFluence within these parties and feeding new opposition currents, this time squarely from the left. The fact that the bourgeoisie has doubts about the CPs! ability to effectively control and channel the explosive moss struggle in the case of a coalition govemment with CP participation makes it hesitate to play this desperate hand in order to save its regime. Finally, the rapprochement with the Social Democracy, or even the formation of a bloc with It (as in France), threaters to accentuate the existing contradictions and even to provoke new ones. The SP can try to bypass the CP on the left, especially in regard to trade-union militancy (CFDT) and to cerrain slogans with on anticopitalist and anfibureaucratic axis ("self-managing socialism"), becouse the SP is concerned with reconquering a working-class base, reestablishing electoral parity with the CP, and even challenging the hegemony of the CP over the organized workers movement in certain countries: In countering these maneuvers, the CP is hindered by its own rejection of any head-on atlack on the Social Democracy, by its fear of giving way to "ultraleftism, *and by tis continuing fies to the Soviet bureaucracy. But the main obstacle is its inability to modify it basic strategic orientation. It is therefore by no means excluded that after some initial electoral success and some success in recruitIng young people, the CP could eventually begin to suffer electoral losses and see the relationship of forces within the organized workers movement shift at its expense. This is already beginning to loom ahead in France, Belgium, and Holland. This process may focilitate the beginning of the challenging of the CP's strategy within the party itself, especially if it coincides with a serious political crisis in the USSR or a revolutionary rise in Western Europe. 7. While the fall of the Allende regime in Chile was seen as a very serious defeat by the CPs in capitalist Europe - since the Chilean CP had procficed the same strategy with which they have identifled themselves for many years - the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship, coming ofter Mitterrand's 49 percent of the vote in France, has incontestably increased the credibility of this strategy in the eyes of part of the working class and even of its vanguard in capitalist Europe. A whole series of centrist groups that only a short time ago held a sectarian ultraleftist position in regard to the CPs are now sketching out a rapprochement and even lining up behind the policy of the CPs. The split within the Bandera Roja group in Spain, where part of the leadership has rejoined the CP, is one of the most spectocular manifestations of this development. Without going into a more detailed analysis of the purely conjunctural or even "national" aspects of this phenomenon, we should point to certain structural aspects that explain it in part: a. The new rise of workers struggles and the politicization of very broad layers of the working masses has had the classic effect of cousing the mass workers parties to gain much more on their right than they lose on their left to the centrist and revolutionary organizations. This is particularly true with layer just awakening to political life in small and medium-sized industry, in the provincial towns, among white-collar workers and technicians, in rural areas, etc., and is in no way opposed to a sometimes very radical militancy in the same circles. b. The CPs* reformist strategy has a real credibility in the absence of a moss revolutionary party. Even the most radical layers of the proletariat, who want to go beyond the "electoral road to socialism" sense that in the absence of such a party a revolutionary victory in the short term is improbable. An experiment with governments of workers parties or even with a "new democracy" government oppears to them as the only proctical alternative to the mismanagement and growing structural crisis of capitalism in decline. c. The very fact of the oggravation of the crisis of the system initially strengthens the attraction of the solutions offered by the mass CPs, because the sharpened crisis places the question of the government and of political power in the center of the concerns of the masses, which slows down the lendency to resort to generalized direct action not leading to a visible political conclusion. It is for this reason that Communist worker militonts, who in the preceding phase were increasingly falling back on union octivism and in this framework had come closer to revolutionary militants, are now taking their distance by capitalizing on the renewed credibility of the political project of certain CPs in capitalist Europe. A new and higher level of moss struggle will have to be reached to reverse this dynamic temporarily favoring a rise in the credibility of the CPs: Either the scale of the mass struggle must reach the level of mass strikes with factory occupations that lead to the emergence of potential organs of dual power, thereby posing a tangible revolutionary alternative to the reformist "solutions" and accelerating the appearance of revolutionary workers parties with a mass audience; or else the participation of the CPs in the government must again lead them to confront the mass struggle head-on (as in Portugal), which would stimulate not inconsiderable sections of the working class to bypass the CPs. B. The revolutionary Marxist analysis of the evolu-: fion of the Cfs in capitalist Europe is not an acodemic exercise, but is intended to aid us in inserting ourselves into the class struggle, our political struggle against Stalinism and reformism, and our task of building the revolutionary party. Toward this and the definition of the political orientation of the CPs
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and the main axes of our polemic against it should be made as rigorously as possible. In this sense it is absolutely inadequate to characterize their orientation today as being on the whole a "popular front orientation." It is of course perfectly possible to define the popular front policy so vaguely and broadly as to include the practice of all workers parties having a reformist line. If "popular front" means every form of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, then the Social Democracy has been practicing the "popular front" universally since 1914 if not since 1900, and the CPs of capitalist Europe have been practicing it since 1934. But this definition is so vague as to throw peil-mell into the same bag the holy alliance governments of 1914, the Kerensky government of 1917, the Ebert-Scheidemann govemment of 1918, the British and Swedish labor governments, the Blum and Azaña governments of 1936, the de Gaulle government of 1944, the Mollet-Mendes govern= ment of 1955, and even the Waldeck-RousseauMillerand government of 1903, It loses all value in guiding the responding tactics of revolutionaries. It is clear that the principal tactical slogans of revolutionaries could not be the same in all the above coses. It is possible to restrict the notion of "popular front" slightly by defining it as every form of coalftion government with the bourgeoisie. But apart from the fact that it is perfectly possible to practice o procapitalist, counterrevolufionary policy without necessarily having bourgeois ministers in the cabinet (Ebert-Scheidemann government, Attlee and Wilson governments, Social Democratic governments in Sweden), this first restriction is still largely insufficient to distinguish what is peculiar to the popular front. Indeed, the 1940 Churchill government, like the French government in 1914, not to mention the Waldeck-Rousseou- Millerand government in France or the Brandt and Schmidt governments in the German Federal Republic, were all "coalition governments with the bourgeoisie" and can clearly not be classified as "popular front govemments." It would be more correct to define popular front governments os coalition governments of workers parties (including the CPs) and bourgeois parties in a prere volutionary or revolutionary situation in which the anticapitalist will and revolutionary potential of the masses are deflected toward paths compatible with the survival of the capitalist system under the justification (or rather, pretext) that the coalition with the bourgeoisie is the only alternative to the victory of the counterrevolution (Isarist, fascist, militarist, etc.). It is because the coalition with the ("anti-sarist, " "antifascist, " antidictatorship, * "anti-imperialist, " according to situation) bourgeois parties is at the very heart of of CP and Socialist party strategy in these specific cases that the demand "Throw out the bourgeois ministers" acquires its full meaning; and, if this demand is perchance realized, it permits the development of a higher level of mass experience with the ineffectiveness of reformist "solutions" without bourgeois ministers. But in situations in which the existing government is viewed by the masses not as a coalition government with the bourgeoisie, but already as a government of the workers parties themselves (independently of whether or not one or another individual 32 capitalist is involved, as has moreover been the case in all the Labour governments in Britain), and in situations in which the principal illusion that must be combated is not that of "alliance with the bourgeois parties" but that of collaboration with the employers ond of toleration of the bourgeois state apparatus, the main axis of revolutionary Marxist polemic should clearly be directed against this form of class collaboration, and not against the presence of a few bourgeois-liberal extras within the cabinet. This was the situation in Germany in 1918-19, in Britain in 1945-51, 1964, and 1974; it was the situation in Chile in 1972-73. It would also be the situation in France if the "Union de la Gauche" were to come to power in its present form. In all these cases, to adopt as the principal axis of agitation the slogan "Throw out the bourgeois ministers" would be to miss the central controdictions, both in the objective situation and in the state of mind of the masses. The principal axis in exposing the counterrevolutionary policy of the CP and SP leaders should on the contrary consist of slogans unmasking their collaboration with the employers and the bourgeois state: nationalization without compensation and under workers control of the foctories, banks, and transport enterprises; dismantling of the bourgeois army and the repressive apparatus and arming of the proletariat; formation, generalization, federation, and unification of organs of dual power, etc. It may be necessary to raise intermediary demands between immediate and transitional slogans, for example, a workers government responsible to the workers organizations. But the slogan "Throw out the copitalist ministers" in cases in which these ministers are neither the justification for nor the principal embodiment of class collaboration in the eyes of the mosses is clearly of tertiary importance, and not central. This means that while the slogan should not be abandoned, it must not be made the central one in our propaganda or especially in our agitation. The situation is completely different in the case of a government alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Italian CP in the framework of the "historic compromise" being sought by the CP, especially if this should coincide with a prerevolutionary upsurge of mass struggle. In that case the slogan demanding the break-up of the coalition would be a central political slogan, while serving as a rallying point for a totality of transitional demands fending to generalize the mass struggle and to give rise to committees of a pre-soviet or soviet type. It is in this sense that the definition of the CPs as bureaucratized workers parties in process of Social Democratization - even though in the last analysis they remain aligned with the Soviet bureaucracy -entails an important political consequence for our movement. This definition places the fight against reformist ideologies and illusions (electoralism, parliamentarism, class collaboration) in the center of the tasks of the revolutionary Marxists among the working masses. Helping the masses to overcome these reformist illusions in proctice is on essential condition for promoting both the transformation of a prerevalutionary situation into a revolutionary situation and the transformation of the revolutionary organizations into mass revolutionary parties. An intelligent policy toward the Cfs combining unity in action and oufflanking the leadership should obviously help in this process. O
SOUTH AFRICA BEHNI