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Parti Communiste français - 1968-1995 - Fifth Republic

The PCF channeled its wartime record into electoral success; from November 1946 to 1956, the Communists won a greater share of the popular vote than any other party. Their base lay among France's working class, which remained a loyal and reliable constituency, and they constituted the dominant force on the French left. After 1956, the French Communists entered a slow decline. With the slow, gradual destruction of the Soviet Union's credibility in the West, the PCF - tightly linked to the USSR - reached a ceiling of support. Many French voters simply would never vote communist. Then, in 1969, the Socialist Party (Parti socialiste, PS) was founded, sounding the death knell of the Communists.

It was an ironic fact that the one party in France which had always been against Parliament, namely the Communists, had lost out because Parliament had no power under de Gaulle. By liquidating the French Parliament, de Gaulle had made the French Communists powerless. De Gaulle was following a policy of absence. By around 1960 the Italian Communists were developing the idea of "Eurocommunism," which did not go down too well with the French Communists, who always maintained that nothing counts unless it's French.

One of the main effects of the Fifth Republic was sweeping change in France's traditional politics. General de Gaulle's aim was to reduce the influence of political parties through what he thought was their instrument for action: Parliament. Yet, other institutional and political innovations led to much greater changes in the party system. In the period from 1958 to 1974, the parties adapted to the new institutions and the supremacy of the presidency enshrined by the direct election of the President through universal suffrage. The divisions between and within parties separated those that accepted the primacy of the presidency from those that did not. On the left wing, François Mitterrand's rise to the top of the Socialist Party after eliminating a succession of rivals from the democratic left, including Pierre Mendès France, Guy Mollet and Gaston Defferre, was the direct consequence of a presidential strategy that was methodically built up and started with his first campaign against General de Gaulle in 1965. On the other hand, the occasional candidacies of Communist Party hopefuls for the presidency, despite the respectable results of Jacques Duclos in 1969, just made the party's electorate more unpredictable.

The violent events of May and June 1968, which were the greatest class Qonflictin postwar France, and the further intensification of the general crisis of capitalism made it even more necessary and timely to present a democratic alternative to the existing regime and to demand a specific answer to the question ofwhat political perspective the working class and its vanguard were offering inthe present stage. An important result of these efforts was particularly the manifesto "For an Advanced Democracy, for a Socialist France" that the plenum of the French Communist Party Central Committee adopted in Champigny, in December 1968, which presented the party's position on the questions of strategy and tactics.

After the stunning defeat of a divided left in the presidential election of 1969, both men saw that the only path to power was in alliance; each had different ends in mind, however. Mitterrand, after skillfully manipulating the various factions of the Socialist Party into a cohesive unit, hoped to whittle away at the Communist base while establishing a left under his control. Marchais, leading the stronger of the two parties in 1972, hoped to increase the strength of the Communists so that when national power was achieved a true socialist transformation would occur.

The signing of the Common Program of Government between the Communist and Socialist parties on 28 June 1972 heralded an era of hope for both Mitterrand and Marchais. The alliance of leftist forces with a joint government program (1972-1978) was a live and specific experience of the struggle to unite and unify the working-class movement, to form a broad coalition of working-class and democratic forces on an anti-monopolistic basis. The 1970's in France were filled with sharp class struggle over fundamental problems of economic and social development that affected the vital interests of wide working masses. During those years the French working-class movement gained extensive political experience that is interesting and edifying in all its dialectic contradictions, with its strong points and weaknesses, its successes and failures.

The program envisaged significant measures for nationalizing the economy. The Communists proposed to nationalize 25 basic monopolies and the entire financial and banking system, while the Socialists favored a smaller volume of nationalization within industry. In the end it was agreed to plan to nationalize the entire financial and banking system, the large insurance companies, and also nine large monopolies in key industries: engineering, aircraft, chemicals, elec-tronics, and electrical engineering. On the whole the proposed nationalization was selective: it affected only large monopolies in individual industries.

In the presidential elections of 1974 the leftist forces ran a joint candidate, F. Mitterrand. Thanks to the support of the PCF, he obtained over 12 million votes or 49.2 percent of the total, which was significantly more than the number of votes the leftist parties obtained in the National Assembly elections of 1973. Of special significance was the fact that these votes were cast for a candidate running on a progressive program that recognized the need to include the Communists in the government to be formed.

In the 1970s the French, Italian, and Spanish Communists were described as "jockeying for dictatorial power," and as instruments through which the Soviet Union would intervene in the West "through the medium of their Communist parties"[emphasis added]. National Review warned of "tactical" steps to "destroy capitalism," a fear echoed in an observation in Fortune that "Strident and demagogic rhetoric about the menace of multinational corporations does not sound encouraging."

But French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais said, "Moscow cannot be a model or teacher and new ways to socialism must be explored which passnotably through alliances with socialists, social democrats and Christians and include guarantees of individual freedom." It was little wonder, then, that one French observer commented that the Eurocommunist parties were "on the road that led Martin Luther to break with Rome 450 years ago."

During the 1974 campaign, Giscard himself refrained from exploiting the Soviet menace theme, and, although his followers had not hesitated to harp on the evils of Communists in the French government, even they had generally avoided explicit reference to the Soviet Union prior to Poniatowski's appearance. On 17 May 1974 health Michel Poniatowski read a statement on TV describing the dangers for France of communist participation in a Mitterrand government. after declaring the PCF to be in the pay of the Soviets, he charged that all European countries under communist regimes were occupied by Soviet troops and denied basic freedoms, including freedom of political change. Although Poniatowski's statement itself was largely ignored in french press, the PCF reacted quickly, issuing interim reply followed by forceful rebuttal in which Marchais accused Poniatowski of abusing his official functions and of trying to draw attention away from publication of the proposed budget for 1975 issued by Giscard's ministry. he accused Poniatowski of resorting to "the old Hitlerite calumny that Communists are not French."

In a 1975 book which generated a furor in European political circles, Jean-Francois Revel wrote: "... Following the lead of the Communist Party in Italy, the French Communists have been trying to show that they are now dedicated to democratic principles and a pluralistic society and that they are independent of Moscow... ." At Helsingor, Denmark, on January 18,1976, at a conference of 18 EuropeanSocialist Parties, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany opposed cooperation with Communist parties; but in a realistic fashion, he observed: " ... the Communists are large parties in France and Italy, and they won't disappear just because we think their strong appeal to the voters is a bad thing. It would be wrong if by our conduct we contributed to halting the developments that have led to abreak-up of the former monolithic block of communism." One journalist observed in February 1976 that "many anti-Communist Europeans see a historic opportunity if Moscow loses control of the international Communist movement . . . ." (Obviously, "many Europeans" regard Moscow as being still incontrol of the movement.) Another journalist reported: " ... In November, the French and Italian [Communist] parties signed a common charter endorsing participation in a pluralistic political system as opposed to the one-party system preserved in theSoviet Union since 1917 ...."

Marcháis, leader of the Communist Party of France, renewed his call for his party to drop one of the most sacred Marxist-Leninist doctrines, the dictatorshipof the proletariat. Almost all non-Communist Europeans shared with Washington suspicion of the depth and sincerity of the claims of Western Communists to have cast off thechains of Moscow and to have been converted to political democracy. Marchais and his comrades were trying to jump on the bandwagon of national Communism which they denounced - in servile subjection to Moscow-for decades. National Communism, had surfaced with Stalin's explusion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform in the late 1940s. It was the central issue in the Polish mutiny and in the Hungarian revolution against Soviet rule in 1956, as well as in the Sino-Soviet break in the early 1960s. And it played a key role in the'Prague spring' of 1968 which ended withthe Soviet invasion of Czechoáovakia. In all those historic tests of the Communist movement, the French Communist Party had been one of Moscow's most ardent ideological supporters.

At the 22d Congress of the French Communist Party in February 1976, Marchais voiced the party's view concerning its relative position of power in an alliance with the Socialists: "To lead the country out of the crisis, uphold the workers' cause today so that it shall triumph tomorrow, vanquish the big bourgeoisie today and prevent it from encroaching on the people's democratic choice tomorrow, we must have a stronger, more influential and active Communist Party. That is the decisive condition for the triumph of socialism in France."

The Eurocommunism of the 1970s led many observers to link the democratic rhetoric emanating from these West European parties with substantive change - a false impression. During a time when many of the parties chose the electoral path to power instead of the revolutionary path, several characteristics at the heart of a communist party's identity remained unaltered - the structure of democratic centralism, the role of the vanguard, and the commitment to a revolutionary transformation of society. In addition, the French Communist Party had consistently maintained close links to Moscow.

The pragmatic success of the Eurocommunist phenomenon seemed beyond question. In the Italian elections of 20 June 1976, the PCI gained 48 seats. For a time, polls freely predicted a Socialist-Communist coalition victory in the elections due in France in March 1978.

The PCF declared repeatedly that it did not regard the Socialists' consent to take Franceout of the North Atlantic Alliance as a precondition of an alliance with the Socialist Party. At the same time the Communists definitely supported the idea thatFrance must be independent of any military-political bloc and of NATO in particular, and must refuse to participate in any organ of a national nature.

France was alone among the NATO Allies in possessing both an independent nuclear strike force (FNS) and a Communist party with the prospect of playing a key role in a coalition government Historically, the parties of the French Left have been opposed to the FNS and the Atlantic Alliance. Therefore, it was an intriguing volte-face when the Parti Communiste Francais (PCF) announced, prior to the 1978 French General Assembly elections, that it no longer opposed the FNS. There were inconsistencies and contradictions inherent in the PCF positions on the FNS and the co-related issues of force structure, deterrence strategy, and the French role in the Atlantic Alliance. Despite PCF claims of acting in the French tradition of independence, PCF positions on the various issues serve the interests of the USSR to such an extent that implementation of PCF policies would neutralize the French nuclear force and seriously impair the stabilizing effect of NATO.

The alliance of the leftist forces existed for about 6 years and actually disintegrated on the eve of the National Assembly elections held in March of 1978. Unfortunately for Marchais, in a matter of five years the Socialist vote went from five percent to 32 percent of the total number of votes being cast. As the 1978 legislative elections approached, it became apparent that if the left gained power, the Communist Party would be the junior partner in the coalition. For a true communist party, however, such an arrangement would have been unacceptable. When Marchais saw the writing on the wall, he decided to precipitate a rupture in the alliance that up to that point had represented so much hope for the left. The French Communist Party's decision in 1978 to go its own way, however, should have surprised no one, for - despite image-building to the contrary - the party never abandoned its fundamental communist identity.

In the wake of the defeat of the French left in 1978, the facade of liberalism present in the PCF during the years of alliance politics quickly gave way to the realities of totalitarian control. Marchais took the reins and attempted to stifle any dissension resulting from the defeat.

With the 1981 election of Mitterand as President, there came into being a socialist government in France. During the campaign the French communists had been opposed to Mitterand but as soon as he was elected he appointed four high-level ministers from the communist party. One of these was in health. The trends which seem to be clear by 1981 were the establishment of Public Health Clinics which will be patterned after some European totalitarian clinics where the freedom of choice of physician and of hospital will be removed from the patient. These clinics served specified groups of the population by geography and alphabet and were staffed by government paid physicians.

The ideas and proposals forwarded by the French Communist Party in the program adopted by the 26th Congress (December 1987) indicated the goals which would be capable of uniting compatriots in order to achieve, through decisive actions, an active policy in France directed at disarmament and based on national independence and peaceful cooperation between European peoples and states. The French Communist Party wholly supported the Helsinki process, believing that its three most important directions must be developed unweakeningly: measures of trust and disarmament; cooperation in economics, science, culture and nature protection; cooperation in free movement of people and ideas, and measures t odefend and expand human rights.

The party opposed creation of a European nucleus in the North Atlantic bloc and integration of French armed forces into its structure (including creation of a French-West German brigade, the Joint Defense Council and any joint command. It was opposed to France's secret or open retum to the NATO integrated military organiza-tion, and it was opposed to any European production of arms needed for the country's defense. Communist deputies were the only ones in the National Assembly that voted against the law on the military program. The French Communist Party declared that the country should actively join the effort to eliminate allforms of nuclear weapons, including its own attack forces.