HIGHEST EXPRESSION OF KHRUSHCHEVISM
By Pierre Frank
In the crisis of the international Communist movement, which has been accentuated by the Sino-Soviet dispute, the Khrushchev leadership has been granted the approval of the Central Committee of the French CP. The Chinese leadership was criticized throughout the session that was just concluded, first in passing in a general report by R. Guyot, then. in a report by Assistant General Secretary Waldeck Rochet devoted entirely to this dispute, then in a speech by Thorez himself dedicated to nothing but the conflict, finally in a special resolution on the subject. In all, four to five pages of 1'Humanité [central organ of the French Communist party] were taken up. .
We will leave aside the arguments that merely repeat what is to be. found in documents drawn up in Moscow. .While the Central Committee accuses the Chinese CP of maintaining "the pretention that one Communist party is infallible," the Thorez leadership itself sticks to its old habit of preparing reports and resolutions in which sentences are lifted in their entirety from Pravda. .
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-Let us note in passing that the venerable custom of slandering. opponents has not been lost. (It is true that neither the Soviets nor the Chinese have lost it either.) Thus, we are told, the Chinese hold a position identical to that of de Gaulle; they benefit from the support not only of "renegades," "oppositionists" and "Trotskyists" (they have been given for some time to making rather subtle distinctions); but also ‘from Francots-Spain and Adenauer's Germany ~- the latter, apparently, because Chinese documents can be found in-these countries! A comic note wag nonetheless struck in this. The Central Committee waxes indignant over insults levelled by the Chinese at Khrushchev, forgetting the ses-— sion a little after the Twentieth Congress when Thorez, banking on the victory of Molotov and Co., characterized the same Khrushchev as a dwarf, .
. ‘That Thorez, the last of the Stalinists, accuses the Chinese of defending Stalin, is not without irony. When Thorez declares that in the USSR “a. great wind of democracy has blown...a certain liberation is in operation," we can conclude that Thorez does not fear Khrushchev the way he feared Stalin, The victory of the Chinese Revolution was not for nothing, although Thorez will scarcely admit it.
Apropos. the. "great wind of democracy," a charge levelled by the leadership of the French Communist party is worth noting. The Chinese, they say, "went to immense efforts to spread their writings." Thorez thus reveals his concept of workers democracy. Communists in disagreement with Khrushchev's line, who wish to disseminate their point of .. View, carry on “undermining activities," "factional work" that endangers "the unity of the- international Communist movement." -According to this conception of "democracy," each leadership must line up behind: the guiding party and the rank and file behind their national leaderships.
The principal argument of the Thorez leadership is that no choice exists but the one between “peaceful coexistence" and thermonuclear war, “peaceful coexistence" signifying not only seeking diplomatic agreements (which no revolutionary Marxist can condemn), but also the march toward socialism exclusively along peaceful roads. In this regard, the French CP leadership completely distort the positions of the Chinese on the one hand, and the Trotskyists on the other -- without mentioning what they do to the positions of Lenin. We quote from the resolution passed by the Central Committee:
"The Chinese leaders advance the 'argument! that there is no thistoric precedent for the peaceful passage of capitalism to socialism.!. But the characteristic of Marxist-Leninist theory, its force, is precisely to outstrip action, to clarify on the basis of a profound analysis the principal traits of the historic epoch in which it is engaged. To limit oneself to repeating definitions formulated a half century ago, when imperialism was the determining force of historic evolution, is not only to ignore the profound transformations of the present world, but also to deny the possibility of a creative development of Marxism-* Leninism, :
"In maintaining that the armed struggle for power is always and everywhere the only valid method, the Chinese leaders are developing old
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ideas combatted by Lenin and the International Communist movement against the 'permenent revolution,! armed minorities, 'war as a means of stimulating revolution,! peace which 'justifies! imperialism.
"Such a theory breaks completely with Marxism which has always rejected giving a thelping hand! to revolutions, which develop in accordance with the aggravation of class contradictions. It is danger- ‘ous, because in systematically identifying revolution and violence, it justifies the slanders of the big bourgeoisie who seek to make the people believe that the sqcialist revolution is necessarily a civil war. It is adventurist, because it ends in isolating the party from the masses and causing the working class to lose its allies, to the sole benefit of the power of the monopolies, The transformation of society cannot be the deed of a faction organized in the dark, the consequence of a plot doing violence to the majority of a people. It can be realized only by millions of men decided to resolve the vital problems posed before the nation,”
Trotsky, it may at once be recalled, vigorously combatted the view that favored "exporting". revolution at the point of a bayonet during the years of civil war in Russia (to the Baltic countries, Poland, Georgia), without thereby prejudging the case where an appeal from a revolution in danger requires armed aid.
But in the passage which we have just cited, ‘the lines that denounce the revolutionary struggle for power as. "well as the building of a party capable of leading. such a struggle -- "isolating the party, from the masses...,a faction organized in the dark...a plot doing violence to the majority of a people..." -- are more or less textual: repetitions of the arguments advanced by Blum at the Congress of Tours in 1920 against adhering to the Communist International. “One can be certain that they will give Guy Mollet great pleasure.
There is not a single instance of peaceful passage to socialism. © This argument, advanced jointly by the Trotskyists, the Chinese and the Cubans is a little embarrassing to the Khrushchevists. Thus they believed it necessary in their resolution to advance an argument that ends up by boomeranging against them:
"Life itself has demonstrated that if the peoples of Vietnam and Algeria had to conduct a heroic war to win their independence, other peoples in Black Africa have conquered it without employing arms,"
But what kind of "independence" is enjoyed by the peoples of the Ivory Coast, Senegal, _Dahoney, the Brazzaville Congo? In the latter country wasn't there first attempt at a mass uprising to try to add something to the independence" provided by the priest Fulbert Youlou? From that “independence™ to socialism there is need of a revolution == and up to this day, we repeat, no such revolution is known to have occurred peacefully, Not because "Trotskyist" or "Chinese" adventurers want it that way, but because the capitalist class has never willingly ceded power,
. One cannot but appreciate at their true value these words of Thorez: ",..without the support of the proletariat of the metropolitan center, the struggle of our Vietnamese comrades, the struggle of the Algerian people would have been much more difficult."
Thorez prefers to talk about this "support" himself rather than cite the opinion of the Vietnamese or Algerians on the subject. People, it seems, have short memories. However, there are still not a few who will recall that the leadership of the French Communist party characterized Dienbienphu as. a defeat. As for aid to the Algerians, it would not be uninstructive to draw up a list of members of the party who were expelled for having helped the Algerians in France.
In his speech, Thorez argues that "the revolution of the colonial masses is part of the proletarian revolution." The idea is quite correct. It follows, moreover, from the theory of the permanent revolution although one does not exactly find this expressed in the resolution ~ adopted by the Central Committee. There it is simply a question of an "objective alliance between the workers of the imperialist metropolitan centers and the peoples struggling for their independence,"
. The colonial revolution is an integral part of the proletarian revolution, of the socialist revolution, because the national bourgeoisie is incapable of genuinely liberating the colonial and semicolonial countries from the imperialist yoke, and only the overturning of bourgeois power, the installation of a workers state can make possible the realization of the democratic tasks while at the same time beginning construction of the premises for a socialist society. co
We do not ask Thorez to explain the theory of permanent revolution to us -- he knows better how to slander it -- but if he maintains that the colonial revolution is part of the proletarian revolution, he must explain why, throughout the course of the Algerian war, the French CP leadership, with him at the head, claimed that it was a question only of a national struggle and not of a struggle for socialism; why, even at the moment independerre was won, this leadership saw only the perspective of a. democratic republic; and why they maintained this position even when the Tripoli program set construction of -a socialist Algeria as the goal,
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As for the activities and perspectives of the Communist party in France, the question for a long time has evidently not been that of the proletarian revolution but of "the installation of a genuinely democratic regime," of "profound democratic reforms," in one word of a Radical Socialist program of the best epoch. No lessons are to be drawn from the experiences of the "Popular Front" and of "tripartisme*(1). As for de Gaullism, it will probably fall after some "big national campaigns" the way the walls of Jericho fell at the sound of trumpets!
Truth to tell, this democratic program is proposed only to permit the French CP to vote in the next presidential election for a candidate who might represent "the democratic forces." Another repetition of that
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alliance on a bourgeois program of which Marx, a hundred years ago, “wrote: “In place of drawing supplemental forces to the proletariat, the democratic party infected the latter with its own wealmess." But a condition is posed: "We have asked,'t Guyot declares, "that in accordance with democratic procedure place be made for our.party in the various existing European institutions where we will come with our criticisms, our proposals, and our suggestions.” . oo - What energy! Peaceful ways of transforming the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community! The entire Khrushchevist program here finds its highest expression,
October ll, 1963
(1) At the end of World War II the French Communist party formed a coalition with the Socialist party and the Christian Democrats, "Three partyism' helped stabilize the badly shaken structure of French capitalism,
' | | NEXT WEEK ’ : .
Some of the far-reaching implications of the issues at ~ stake in the ideological conflict between -Moscow.and Peking can be more clearly and easily grasped by taking into account the viewpoints of other currents whose fate may be involved in the final outcome, Next week we present, the translation of an article that does not take a direct. position on the main dispute. The policy it advocates, however, stands in such glaring contrast to the one.defended by the Central Com mittee of the French Communist party, which Pierre Frank dis-