REJUVENATION OF THE FRENGH. COMMUNIST PARTY? .—
| By Pierre Prank _
“the seventeenth congress of the French Communist party EPoF],. which was held in Paris May 15-18, has been widely interpreted as marking a. significant. turn in the’ history of the party, the main workers!. party in France and one.of the most important Communist... parties in the world, Even Le Populaire, organ of the Socialist party, formerly one of the most rabid in denouncing everything connected with the PCF, took the lead in emphasizing and Greeting a kind of ‘rejuvenation in this ‘party.
Did rejuvenation, or changes, occur? If "50, . what are they? What. perspectives have been opened? oo
First of all, let us indicate what has not changed, There: | was no change in political line. A few phrases can be found, indi-. cating a certain "Italian" influence (in other,words, nuances towards the right), but this was incidental and the line of the PCF remained essentially one of seeking a “senuine democracy" to replace the Gaullist regime, of peaceful co-existence and of "peaceful roads" to. socialism, Hence nothing fundamentally. different from the reformist program whi ch the party has advocated for many years,
Nor: was there any change in the procedures, of. the .congress, which was an image of the preceding congresses -- no genuine discussion, no oonfrontation of ideas. .This congress, like those held.in the past, was a kind of meeting, stretched out, for several days,- The speeches of the big leaders and.the delegate of the Communist. party of the Soviet Union, Suslov himself, were interlarded with speeches by small and medium functionaries who. talked about the activities of their regions and sections, Nor was there any change in the unanimity that was displayed from beginning tor end of the congress.
No change in policy, but a certain change in personnel ~~ that was the main characteristic of this congress,
The change in personnel was more or less dictated by a certain number of considerations, First of all, independently of all.other | circumstances, it would not have been possiblé to keep men of 65 and even older. in the leading spheres much longer, While the French . population ~~ and consequently the French working class -~ is undergoing a drop in average age, the oldest political leaders still stand at the head of the state (do Gaulle), and at the head of the workers! parties,
But another weighty consideration is felt by the POF, kEveryone knows that this party was one of the most resistant among the Communist organizations to "desStalinization.". Its old leaders | were capable of switching politically in 24 hours and even quicker if necessary, but they acquired extremely rigid organizational |
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habits during.the many political turns which they carried out during the years, If the ranks of the PCF at present feel no real hostility toward the party's policies, they do feel uneasy about the impression of sclerosis given by the party, and the tendency is to think that the- age of the leadership has something to do with it.
Thus it. was necessary to undertake some changes and the most spectacular among them was the replacement of Secretary General Thorez, for: whom a new post was created of undetermined nature, that of: "president! of the PCF,
Thorez belonged to the generation of youth, who, with the veterans of the war of 1914-18, created the Communist party following that conflict... In 1924 his sympathies were with the Opposition and he circulated Trotsky's New Course in his federation, Pas-de- : Galais. But his oppositional inclinations lost momentum when he was offered a post in the Political Bureau in Paris in 1925, It is probable that he belonged to the first truly Stalinist nucleus organ ized in France in 1926, me He did not beobme the main leader of the PCF until toward 1930, with the liquidation of. the policy of the "third period," Com pletely faithful Stalinist though he was, he had a tendency.in general to remain in the background during left turns, and he intervened vigorously each time it was necessary to make a big shift to the right, His article, “Letts Speak Up," did not aim at re-establishing democracy in tho- party, but at making the transition from the "third period" to a rightist course, At the height of the movement to occupy the factories, in June 1936, he made his speech "It Is Necessary to Know How to End a.Strike, <
After the war, as vice-president of the Council under the presidency of de Gaulle, he called for the. disarmament of the people!s militia in the name of "a single state, a single army, a single police," and he was one of the most rabid protagonists of Nyoroduce first, tt especially with regard to. the miners of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais,
After the death of Stalin, he did not immediately fall in line with Khrushchev, After the Twentieth Congress, in the Central Committee he denounced "dwarfs" who attack a giant. But, after the liquidation of the “antiparty group," he did not delay in coming to an.understanding with Khrushchev, the latter giving him -carte blanche against Casanova and Servin, At the Moscow conference of 1960, he was one of Khrushchev's main allics against the Chinese,
The PCF press has not failed for years to attribute the qualities of a great thinker to him, of a theoretician of Marxixm, Among the blind, the one-eyed are kings. His main political quality ~— if it can be called that -- was, after the general line had been set in Moscow, to know better than anyone else how to draw all the consequences and. make all the applications in the various fields of the .
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party's activities, In addition, he kept a firm hand on the vast party apparatus and its ramifications in many organizations, More than once he knew when to undertake sometimes extensive purges to block crises and potential oppositions, He dominated the PCF the way de Gaulle today dominates the state, For a long time, the PCF while being the main workers! party was also in a certain sense "the party of Maurice Thorez."
_ What are the limits of the changes undertaken at the seven= teenth congress of the (PCF?
First of all, these changes were not undertaken against Thorez but in agreement with him or in bargaining with him at the highest. summits of the PCF, He remains in the Political Bureau, and with him quite a few others and not the weakest ones, In truth, the Political Bureau is the body least affected by the changes in comparison to the Central Committee and the Secretariat of the party.
In addition, the new general secretary, Waldeck Rochet, is 59, replacing a man of 64, These two figures in their way testify to the extent of rejuvenation" of the thought of the leading team, Waldeck Rochet is a product of the apparatus, . He was chosen while young for this, He climbed “through all the posts. He was even made Assistant General Secretary at the preceding congress, Nothing in his biography stands out in the least. He is pictured as a “peasant,” ‘but with about just as much right to the title as Thorez has to the one of "miner,"
An incident at the congress likewise shows the limit of the changes. Pierre Kahn, the head of the Union of Communist Students VEC], was not invited to the congress, and the sergeants at arms carefully watched to see that no one brought in copies of the UEC organ Clarté, which was printed without the approval of the party.
As in the past, the party ended up with a leadership named from above, not one elected democratically by the ranks, What the congress did was to give a democratic appearance to a certain trans fer of powers. The top boss in selecting the apparatus is no Longer Thorez but Waldeok Rochet. ‘At the same time approval has been given to a slow adaptation -- which the leadership intends to keep.under : firm control -- of the gears and functioning of the party for new conditions,
The leadership of the PCF, which was able from the beginning of "de-Stalinization" up to now to control. developments in the party, showed at the seventeenth congress that it hopes to be able to cons tinue to control a slow evolution that will maintain the most dis-~ tinctivs traits of the party. But any change involves an unknown element and the new equilibrium at the summit of the PCF can have -consequences which cannot be discerned today.
A factor which has operated to the benefit of. the leadership
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in the past is the objective situation that has existed in’Franoe since de Gaulle came to power, That defeat of the working class and the considerable political apathy from which the country has suffered operated in a favorable way for the leadership. But new currents are now appearing, new tendencies, particularly toward a rapprochement of the two workers parties, and these will not be without consequences in the PCF, a
The leadership of the Socialist party hopes that the situation will prove to be in its benefit and that is why it greeted the seventeenth congress, Without any doubt, the rightist currents oexisting in the. PCF, nourished and encouraged by so many years of opportunist policies and by the economic conjuncture of western Europe,. will not fail to demand more than a mere change in personnel. The example of the Italian Communist party attracts many revisionists, To what extent the Socialist party can profit from this is not easy to say; this party has little about it that is attractive.
On the other hand, nothing would be more erroneous than to see nothing but the liberation of frankly opportunist and revision~ ist.currents. The crisis in: the UEC shows that despite a conjuncture favorable to the right, .currents exist among the youth that reject opportunist policies and that seek, in great confusion it is true, a return to revolutionary policies.
“In the. background of this ‘congress, there was the internation-~ al crisis of Stalinism, In this area, a veritable anti-Chinese festival was staged, Nevertheless, some delegates, like those from the Italian CP, refrained from joining in the demand for an international conference of Communist parties formulated by the Communist party of the Soviet Union - and supported without reserve by Thorez and Waldeck Rochet. :
A long period in the life of the PCF came toa close with the seventeenth congress, It is much too early to determine even the major lines of the period now opening, It will without doubt be a period marked by the shake-up of everything Stalinism has imprinted in it, The revolutionary currents will seek to disengage themselves, but it is certain that this party, as such, will never return to its pre-Stalinist beginnings,
BOYCOTT OF BOLIVIAN ELECTIONS
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