DISPUTE SHARPENS BETWEEN FRENCH CP AND YOUTH
By Pierre Frank
.. .PARIS -- The Union des Etudiants Communistes [UEC -- the Union of Communist Students] is scheduled to hold its congress March 4=7.° For the first time in decades it has been prepared in a democratic ~ way despite the heavy pressure brought to bear by the leadership of the PCF LFrench Communist party]. See World Outlook February 10.]
Clarté, the official publication of the UEC, which published a letter from the National Bureau of the student organization to the Central Committee of the PCF, has now printed a series of documents, resolutions and amendments submitted for discussion which will be presented for Vote at the congress,
The documents voice the most diverse views. While the letter of the Netional Bureau expressed flatly rightist ("Italian") views, other documents like that of the Paris-Lettres sector take a left oppositionist position. A pro-Chinese tendency is likewise represented, , .
Confusion is also evident but this is scarcely surprising. Thousands of youth, attracted by communism, are discovering that in combination with the over-all attraction of the workers states, the official Communist movement is undergoing a crisis of exceptional severity and that the PCF leadership is remaining faithful to its Stalinist past, welded to the most complete political sterility. . Under present conditions in France, these youth, in search of a correct orientation, find that they must still seek their way to the truth through the ideological confusion engendered by Stalinism,
The PCF leadership holds one important advantage. It.can wield considerable influence among the very youngest layers, This is-due to the fact that they did not go through the Algerian war and consequently have not had the personal experience of seeing PCF policies tested in a major question in which they could make an independent judgment. It is clear. that the PCF leadership is aiming at this layer of youth in the special supplementary issue of the weekly France Nouvelle devoted to "The French Communist Party and the Students, . ;
Of the twenty-four pages of this issue, eleven take up a reply to the youth leadership, six more are filled with material from students supporting the PCF leadership, and.only three pages are provided for "extracts" from the letter written by the National Bureau of the student union. These extracts are carefully arranged, of course.
As for the PCF reply, this is one of those instances where quantity is not transformed into quality. It is filled with peremp-
tory assertions, utilizing quotations from the works of Marx and Lenin and of Thorez. The complaints of the youth concerning the methods used against them are dismissed in a single sentence as Slanderous. The document offers the students not even a sketchy explanation of the "cult of the personality," but refers them, for an understanding of the Russian Revolution, to Aragon's Histoire de L'U.R.S.S., & book of which it is difficult to say more than that it signifies nothing.
What is most significant is thet the PCF leadership felt it necessary to publish a special issue of France Nouvelle on this topic. The conflict with the students could not be minimized even though the UEC is a relatively weak organization. As in the case of the university personnel, who are supporting the students, the. POF leadership found that it had to present, even if in an incomplete and distorted way, at least a part of their documents.
Among the cells of the party there is in general no interest in the struggle between the PCF leadership and the UEC. The indifference is symptomatic of the low political level of the party ranks. They see no connection between this battle in the UEC, involving the Political Bureau, and their immediate preoccupations. But this in- > difference also means that the ranks will not follow the leadership in declaring the students and their supporters to be “antiparty," "factionalists," etc.
As for the university personnel who signed the letter concerning the conflict between the UEC and the party leadership [see World Outlook February 19], the policy of the leadership, as.we forecast, is to try to. scatter them in the basic party structure and there bring maximum pressure on each one individually so as to break them. Some, it is hoped, will capitulate; others will give up the struggle; some, considered to be the "instigators,'t will be disciplined, even expelled, :
In battling the opposition, the party leadership is also exploiting the fact that the party is now engaged in the municipal election campaigns throughout France. Their main argument is: "At the very moment when the party. .." This stock "argument," aimed at silencing the opposition within the party, is always used by this leadership for whom now is obviously never the time to discuss politically. ..
FOR THE