My Ties to the French Communist Party
Almost 50 years ago, your great leader Jacques Duclos sent a letter to the Communist Party of the United States which has become part of the treasure house of Party history here and which remains of great significance.
Based upon the unity of the Allies in the Second World War and the ostensible friendship between the governments of the U.S. under Roosevelt and the Soviet Union under Stalin, and based upon a certain dose of democratic rhetoric by the U.S. Government in the prosecution of the anti-Fascist war, Earl Browder, then General Secretary of the CPUSA, with the support of every Party leader but one, concluded that a Communist Party no longer corresponded to “modern realities.” The Party was therefore liquidated.
Not too long thereafter, Duclos sent a scathing rebuke to the U.S. leadership tearing to shreds their stupid illusions. This letter was instrumental in having the Party reconstituted. Now I, alas, lacking the brilliance of your Duclos, lacking the prestige of the French Party at that time, lacking even the authority to speak in the name of the Party here (I am not a member), nevertheless take it upon myself to communicate a number of my concerns about your direction, with no authority except whatever authority attaches to 40 years of struggle on behalf of socialism, world peace, against imperialism and racism.
Moreover, encouraged by the emphasis which your Congress places on dialogue with all, and given the increasing interdependence of our struggles, I venture to hope that I may be given a serious hearing.
The French party has been my teacher. I have been inspired and instructed by the magnificent battles led by your party on behalf of the United Front and the Popular Front, your party’s leading role in the Resistance, and your party’s heroic struggles against the re-militarization of Germany, against the dirty colonial wars in Vietnam and Algeria, and against a new world war. I had the opportunity to observe first-hand your Party’s brilliant work in 1955-56 when I resided in Paris, the period of the peak of your influence in the post-war period.
What a powerful and chilling indictment of the horrors of contemporary society your Manifesto presents! Here is a veritable compendium of capitalist barbarism. Contrast to the meretricious portrait rendered by “New Thinking.” And in what
Is it not sad that there are those calling themselves Communist who even today claim to find something edifying in the deceptions of Gorbachev and his political
cronies?
The Manifesto is eloquent in pointing out the fatal consequences for Communists of forgetting that it is the masses who make history, that one cannot make it for them, that in fact the role of the masses grows ever more crucial in the process of socialist construction.
And the Manifesto is on firm ground in stressing the battle to safeguard and expand democracy in capitalist society in the face of the growing defiance by the ruling class even of bourgeois democratic norms.
Yet despite these and other merits of the 28th Congress documents, it must be stated that the Party is continuing its slide down the path of repudiation — repudiation of Communist theory, repudiation of Communist methods of struggle, repudiation of Communist aims.
Scientific Theory and Our Theoreticians
To begin with, the Manifesto speaks of lessons learned from the defeats of socialism. But what does it mean to draw lessons? Does it not mean that there are laws governing history and society? How can one draw lessons from a purely arbitrary unfolding of events? And if there are such laws, then there is a science of society and of history.
And if there is such a science, is it not one of our supreme duties to master that science, to absorb the lessons of those titans who were able to elaborate for us profound scientific generalizations? Does one imagine that in repudiating the scientific discoveries of our great thinkers one is simply turning one’s back on a relatively small number of intellectuals, analogous, perhaps, to discarding the works of some belletrist whose style one now finds no longer in fashion? To repudiate scientific theory is not only to repudiate its authors but to denigrate the struggles of hundreds of millions of the toiling masses throughout history, to render meaningless their defeats and hollow their victories, for it is scientific theory which sums up those struggles and permits us to use those struggles as steppingstones to our future.
The world’s peoples have paid too heavy a price to allow the precious generalizations of their experience to be swept into oblivion. That Boris Yeltsin and his gang are trying to destroy the memory and message of Lenin is only natural; that the French Party has now embarked on the same path is surprising indeed. One cannot attempt here to even summarize Lenin’s legacy. Suffice it to say that if Lenin had been consulted on the subject of opportunism, perhaps the Frenhc Party would not have made those errors of the 1980s to which it now confesses, errors for which it and the French working people have paid dearly. The Party documents speak proudly of the rich French Party heritage, its rallying of the people to the United Front and the Popular Front, its role in the Resistance. And there is much else of which it can be proud. But were not these party victories the product of its staunch adherence to Marxism-Leninism, to revolutionary principle?
The 28th Congress lays out its vision of the future, detailing the way things should be. It speaks of its social “ideals.” Certainly, we need a vision to inspire us. But what we expect from Communists is an analysis of the objective motion of contemporary society and an elaboration of a strategy and tactics based on that motion. Since the world Communist movement in general and the French Party in particular has acquired in the course of enourmous struggle a body of strategic principles and tactical guidlines which have served it well in the most critical periods of its history, then it is incumbent on those who would abandon those principles to thoroughly justify such abandonment, to thoroughly substantiate the adoption of new principles. Simple reference to the collapse of socialism will not suffice. In fact, our Marxist-Leninist theoretical heritage, rather than having been refuted, has been brilliantly confirmed by the tragic events of recent years.
Let us examine some cases in point.
The Role of Today’s Working Class
The Party documents speak of the changing class structure of contemporary society. It is said that the working class has been transformed and enlarged, with nearly 90 per cent of the population being salaried. Following this, the conclusion is drawn that social liberation is aimed not at giving any particular class a privileged position, but must serve the needs of the entire society.
To begin with, it is one of the most elementary propositions of Marxism that the working class, in fighting for the overthrow of capitalism, gathers behind it all the strata oppressed by the system, and that the victory of the working class results in the victory of the overwhelming proportion of the population, a victory for social advance as a whole. One of the themes of today’s imperialist propaganda is that the working class is no more than a “special interest” often selfishly at odds with the interests of society as a whole. And the now-discredited Gorbachev in a similar vein attempted to counterpose the class interests of the workers with what he called “universal human values.”
The expansion of today’s workforce through the greatly increased participation of women, and the growing approximation of the conditions of professionals, for example, to that of the higher strata of the working class, in no way changes the fundamental relation of the working class to society, its role, its mission. It is not some supposed outmoded “schema” that is responsible for our understanding of the leading role of the working class in social liberation, but rich historical experience. What the changing structure of the workforce actually suggests is that we must take a more nuanced view of the political role of various strata of the working class.
One of the results of the changing structure of the working class is the further opening up of the class to middle class influences. Whatever happened to the middle class in the new sociology of the 28th Congress? It has disappeared. It apparently is inconvenient to deal with the issue of petit-bourgeois influences on the workers movement against which Lenin constantly warned.
The Siren Songs of the Middle Class
Since the working class is made up of practically the whole of society, since we choose to ignore the existence of a middle class, since there is no further validity to a specifically working-class ideology, then why not, according to the new orientation, open the Party to all who “wish to act for social relationships worthy of human beings,” in other words, all well-wishers of humanity, however utopian their views? Immaterial of their social background, irrelevant their ideological commitment. One is reminded of Marx’s struggle to keep the First International free from the hordes of middle class reformers, riders of one or another utopian hobby-horse, crackpot schemers, social philanthropists, all of whom wished to turn the working-class movement to their own ends.
The 28th congress lay stress – and rightfully so – on the need to bring together broad coalitions, on the need to establish the unity of progressive forces. As history has shown, and the French history particularly vividly, is the key to building such unity is the militancy and devotion to principle of the Communist Party, which acts as the driving force and glue of such unity. Of course, a pragmatic unity requiring the sacrifice of principle in the end only serves reactionary ends.
If the Party is not to be guided by a working class ideology, then it will be guided by a petit-bourgeois ideology. For there is no non-class ideology, only petit-bourgeois illusions of a non-class ideology. If special efforts are not made to ensure a predominantly proletarian composition of the Party, then history shows it will spontaneously become flooded with middle-class elements, for organizational participation comes more readily to the middle class for both economic and cultural reasons which are not hard to understand.
Of what human material must the Party be composed? Those most devoted, most capable of sacrifice, the most politically conscious, the most class-conscious, those driven by class warfare to revolutionary conclusions. A party of well-meaning “individuals,” will never be able to stand up to that ruthlessness that shall be exercised when the rulers really feel threatened. A Party of the type now envisaged will never be able to purge the masses of its illusions, especially that most pernicious of illusions, that the ruling class shall fight by the rules of the Marquis of Queensberry.
The middle class has always resented the role which Marxism-Leninism assigns the working-class, has always striven for hegemony over the working class when it enters into alliances. And history has again amply shown that unless the middle class follows behind the working class, a middle/working-class alliance becomes the plaything of Big Capital and an instrument of Big Capital’s domination.
The French Party no longer approves of the word “masses” because it describes an “undifferentiated crowd.” Instead, the Party puts forward the word “individual.” Thus, society is not composed of the entirety of its individuals, which of course is not differentiated at all. Actually, the term “masses” refers to social strata that have something very particular in common: They are all exploited and oppressed by Capital. They are people with fundamental interests in common. The middle class has always resented being put into the category of “masses,” inspired as it is by the notion of rugged individualism. The use of the term “individuals” is truly a return to the bourgeois description of people as social atoms.
Opportunism and Social Democracy
Is opportunism no longer a problem worth discussing? Not a whisper of it in the Party documents! But have not a number of formerly Communist Parties now embraced Social Democracy in Western and Eastern Europe? Have not a number of national-liberation movements not abandoned the anti-imperialist struggle? Is it not the case that opportunism is raging worldwide, has become the dominant mode of thinking on the Left, including within certain Communist Parties – has, in fact, become the most serious problem facing the world Communist movement? And yes, there is such a movement and always will be, whether certain Parties choose to be a part of it or not.
Let us go further into the issue of Social Democracy. The 28th Congress states that the French progressive movement has a long history, the fruit of which was the existence of the Socialist and Communist Parties, and that the CP was created by a desire to have an organization “truly effective in the service of the progressive movement.” Does this not really do violence to the real history of the founding of the Communist Parties? The Communist Party of France, as elsewhere, was created because the Socialist Party had proven itself a betrayer of the interests of the working class, a prop of colonialism, a supporter of their own bourgeoisie in the imperialist slaughter of World War I, a betrayer of democracy, a collaborator in repression against the working class. Is this not the silence in the face of Socialist betrayals of a piece with its collaboration with the Socialist Party of the 1980s? What lessons have then been learned by the leadership of the Party with respect ot that latter-day experience? As a matter of fact the Party Manifesto is quite discreet about this period, has no analysis of what caused the Party to enter into such an alliance on such unholy terms, and therefore inspires no confidence that a similar kind of mistake will not be committed again, even in the near future.
The Bugaboo of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
A word on the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Manifesto places the blame for the increasingly autocratic rule of Stalin on the doorstep of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But as Lenin argued and as the early Bolshevik revolutionary regime demonstrated in practice, the dictatorship of the proletariat was the most democratic form of state rule possible in a class-divided society.
We are prepared to admit that the term itself may have a forbidding ring to it, especially for those who have only the most superficial and commonplace understanding of a word like “dictatorship.” But as to the essence of the matter, nothing in the teachings of Marx, Engels or Lenin on the nature of the state has ever been refuted. Quite the contrary! It remains indisputable that the state under capitalism is an apparatus of the capitalists, an instrument of the rule of Big Capital, an instrument to be used to further its political and economic interests and especially to protect its interests from the challenge of the working class and the masses generally. Has anything happened in the past 70 years to contradict this? And has not the experience of the last seventy years demonstrated over and over again that when the capitalists are overthrown they immediately undertake to recapture power, using any dirty means available to them, abetted by the vast might of international capital, which is what makes them formidable enemies even when internally they enjoy little social support?
The proletarian dictatorship has nothing to do with phenomena such as the cult of the personality of bureaucratism. On the contrary, it is the antithesis of these phenomena. The dictatorship of the proletariat, in alliance with other classes and strata that support social progress and democracy, means nothing over the working people exercising control over their lives, over their future.
We have a number of tragic examples of revolutionary movements which claimed superiority over Marxist models in its adherence to “pluralism,” to democracy of the bourgeois type. The Sandinista party in particular was held up as a post-Marxist model. The Sandinistas believed in giving full liberties to the opposition (even in the midst of civil war) or, rather, they gradually succumbed to international imperialist pressure (especially US pressure), in giving virtually free rein to the counterrevolutionaries, in allowing them to receive US election subsidies, free rein to peddle their lies, to sow demoralization. But still worse, they proclaimed their capitulation a political virtue an example of their devotion to democratic principles. After all, did not they provide multi-party elections and all the formal elements so beloved of the bourgeoisie – freedom of the press, of association, etc.? As it turned out, those elections were undemocratic in the extreme. For the people were intimidated by the murderous operations of the Contras and pressured by war-weariness. And the people were pressured by economic hardships brought by the war. The Sandinistas, in the name of democracy, turned power over to the allies of the Contras and of US imperialism, and as a result, the Nicaraguan people are now experiencing a depth of suffering far worse than during the Contra war. Gone or going are the social gains of the revolution, the land reform, the medical care and educational system designed for the masses. Gone or going is their dignity, their sense of having a real say in their lives. And what was the instrument that delivered the coup de grace? None other than universal suffrage, so vaunted in the 28th Congress Manifesto. “The verdict of universal suffrage will be respected,” says the Manifesto. We have witnessed thousands of elections around the world, and what have these elections demonstrated? Simply that elections are among the poorest means of expressing the popular will, a generally misleading barometer of public sentiment. We do not, of course, oppose universal suffrage. But we find it strange that it should be absolutized in the most naive fashion. Almost 150 years ago Marx pointed to Bonaparte’s skillful use of universal suffrage to empower a gang of rogues and thieves in the service of itself and the bourgeoisie.
Then there is the example of the FMLN, which gave up control of a third of El Salvador in exchange for promises made by petty assassins, in turn guaranteed by assassins on a grand scale, US imperialism. The FMLN loyally carried out its end of the bargain. It lay down its arms. The assassins remain assassins and have assassinated still more. The assassins’ agreement to land reform, democracy, and social justice, who could believe such fairy tales? Children, perhaps, and FMLN leaders who have no taste for proletarian dictatorship. These leaders with such tender feelings for democracy see nothing monstrous about delivering their people back into the hands of the predators, the people’s cruelest oppressors, slavemasters.
There is no more sacred duty for revolutionaries – and if we are not revolutionaries, what are we? – than to prevent the return of barbarism, the capitalist system. There is no higher democratic duty than this! Why should such a commitment frighten anyone who is genuinely on the side of the working people?
Universal Suffrage and Other Painless Remedies
The Manifesto proclaims that “society will not be liberated outside the rigorous respect for individual liberties, pluralism, universal suffrage”…etc. The Manifesto expresses the aim of the Communists to “act on behalf of gaining a majority in Parliament.” In England there elections every five years. As usual, the people find out fairly quickly that they have been hoodwinked and betrayed through the machinations of a venal media and the moneybags who finance and control the politicians. Nevertheless, universal suffrage “has spoken and it must be honored.” Is this democracy? In France, an election for president is held every six years. “Suffer-age” it should be called, rather than suffrage. But even were elections to be held more often – as certainly they should be – has it not become self-evident that elections are ways to manipulate the people, to hinder the exercise of their will, to frustrate their desires, to violate their interests? In the same way a Frenchman once said that people were given language to disguise their thoughts, so one might say that elections are held to thwart popular sovereignty. Communists do not, of course oppose elections, only their being raised to the level of the highest form of struggle, only oppose the illusion that there is a parliamentary road to revolution or parliamentary substitute for revolution. If this frightens the middle class, so be it!
When Modesty Becomes a Disguise for Abdication
Throughout the 28th Party documents, reference is made to CP “hopes to be useful,” its wishes to make a “contribution” to the struggle, to “assist” the struggle, etc. Everyone agrees that modesty is a virtue. Lenin constantly inveighed against Communist arrogance. But there is modesty and there is modesty. It is true that Communists do not have all the answers, nor do they have a monopoly on truth. But what Communists try to do is base themselves on science. And they succeed in doing so far more consistently than any other political grouping. The Communists have usually succeeded in gathering into their ranks the most class-conscious, most far-seeing, most dedicated, most self-sacrificing elements of the people. In a word, Communists represent the flower of the working class and of those coming from other strata who have thrown in their lot with the working class. Modesty is a virtue in combating smugness, in supporting the vital process of self-criticism. But when modesty is promoted to denigrate the role of the Communist Party, the role of the working class, the role of scientific theory, then this is no virtue at all but rather abandonment of revolutionary aims and submission to the leadership of the middle class.
It is mere braggadocio to recall the the United Front and the Popular Front were forged precisely on the basis of the leading role of the Communists, on the basis of Communist initiatives and their ultimately irresistible pressure on the Socialists and other Left forces? Was it not the initiative of the Communists which was instrumental in creating the Resistance and in inspiring other forces? In the somber days of the Cold War when the planet was threatened with annihilation, did not the Communists stand in the forefront, often alone, in preventing the imperialists from launching a third cold war? Did not the Communist Party play the leading role in the struggle against the dirty wars in Algeria and Vietnam? And is it not important to recall that the Socialist Party leadership stood with the imperialists in the Cold War, stood with the colonialists in the dirty wars? What does this all say about the role of the Party? That the Party not only “contributes,” not only is “a tool” for social progress, not only is “useful,” but that the Party has always played and must always play a vanguard role, however distasteful this concept is to the new French leadership. The “modest” talk coming fro the Party leadership now is nothing but a renunciation of that vanguard role. Such a renunciation can only make the Petty impotent, irrelevant, can only render the forging of a true Left unity impossible.
The Roots of the Takeover in the Party of Middle Class Thinking
How has it come to pass that the Party has adopted the mindset of the middle class? The recent period of Party history has been one of relative quiescence of the class war. The ruling class has made important concessions to the working people in order to gain social support for the prosecution of their Cold War aims, for their colonial and neocolonial aims. That period is coming to an end, hastened in its demise by the temporary collapse of the socialist states and the growing worldwide economic crisis.
At the heart of the changing orientation of the Communist Parties of Western Europe, including the French Party, is the prolonged stability in Europe after the Second World War, beginning with postwar reconstruction, a stability, therefore, founded on the corpses of 50 million people and the enormous material damage caused by the war. That stability continued on the basis of pump-priming the economy through the extraordinary and socially useless expenditures of the arms race and the waging of a number of colonial wars, such as in Vietnam and Algeria. That stability rested further on the basis of the unparalleled plunder of the Third World and the accompanying immiseration of the great majority of the world’s peoples. And that stability rested still further on the basis of a parasitic, speculative orgy. This period of the absolute improvement of the conditions of most French people, including the working class, has sapped the class, including the vanguard of the class, of its militancy, of its adherence to revolutionary principles, has opened it up to bourgeois influences. Meanwhile, the middle class has seen its conditions decline and and approximate the conditions of the higher strata of the working class. Its power and status are sharply deteriorating in relation to the big bourgeoisie. Its anger is growing. This argues for the importance of finding allies among the middle class, but on the other hand it increases the danger that the middle class will make the working class its appendage. And if it succeeds, both the working class and the middle class are doomed. It is precisely this struggle for middle class hegemony which is reflected in the present orientation of the French Party leadership and which is threatening to liquidate the French Communist Party in everything but name.
The Manifesto, the program and the Party statuses of the 28th Congress represent a pointed appeal to the middle class. The rejection of Leninism, the pushing to the rear of the Marx’s theoretical legacy, the denial of the leading role of the working class, the claim that it has merged into a homogenized near-universal salariat, the rejection of working class rule upon the victory of the revolution and its need to repress the forces of capitalism for a protracted period especially in a hostile international environment, the promotion of illusions in bourgeois democracy, the disappearance of the concept of revolution and a similar disappearance of the concept of reformism or opportunism, the promotion of a parliamentary road to socialism – all of this points to the triumph of middle class ideology in the Party.
One is struck by the remoteness of the 28th Congress to the realities of class warfare, of the obliviousness to the need for the French working people to have an organization capable of withstanding of rigors of a class war in which the enemy will shrink from nothing to maintain power, wealth and privilege. Rather, the party documents convey the impression that the gigantic stakes involved in political struggle will be decided by the counting of ballots, as if those who have ruled by butchery and by treachery, by arrogantly lording it over the “canaille,” will in the end consider sacred the will of that “canaille” when it threatens their interests! The Party documents speak of the lessons of history, and if history has taught us anything, it is that the ruling classes do not surrender their rule peacefully. Is the Party prepared for this? Is the Party preparing for this?
