EUROCOMMUNISM - AN IDEOLOGY OF SUBMISSION TO THE BOURGEOISIE AND IMPERIALISM

EUROCOMMUNISM IS ANTI - COMMUNISM

EUROCOMMUNISM - AN IDEOLOGY OF SUBMISSION TO THE BOURGEOISIE AND IMPERIALISM

As we mentioned above, modern revisionism emerged in the period of the sharpening of the general crisis of capitalism. It became an ally of the bourgeoisie and imperialism and joined in their efforts to contain and divert the great tide of proletarian revolutions, national liberation struggles and the peoples' anti-imperialist democratic movement. As such, the new revisionism could not fail to assume different forms and appearances, to use methods and tactics adapted to the needs of capital in each country. It assumed its greatest development, its extension in the communist and workers' movement after Khrushchevite revisionism emerged on the scene.

The betrayal which took place in the Soviet Union was of incalculable assistance to the bourgeoisie and imperialism at the moments most difficult for them. It gave big capital possibilities to attack the Marxist-Leninist theory and the practice of socialist construction, to create doubts about the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat, and to cause the ideological and political degeneration of the communist parties. Above all, the communist and workers' parties of Western Europe which followed the treacherous line of Tito and Khrushchev, were severely shaken ideologically. In these parties, the terrain had long been prepared for them to embrace the Khrushchevite revisionist ideas and practice and carry them further. Their organizational and ideological degeneration to different degrees and in various ways had begun earlier. Pseudo-revolutionary theories and practices had long been applied in their ranks.

The Beginnings of Modern Revisionism

in the Communist Parties of Western Europe

During the Second World War many positive factors which made the transformation of the anti-fascist war into a profound popular revolution both possible and necessary, had emerged in Europe. Fascism had eliminated not only the national independence of the occupied countries, but also all democratic freedoms, and had even buried bourgeois democracy itself. Therefore, the war against fascism had to be not only a war for national liberation but also a war for the defence and development of democracy. As regards the communist parties, the achievement of these two objectives had to be linked with the struggle for socialism.

In the countries of Central and South-eastern Europe, the communist parties knew how to link the tasks of the war for independence and demcracy with the struggle for socialism. They worked out and applied a policy which led to the establishment of the regimes of the new people's democracy. Meanwhile, the communist parties of Western Europe did not prove capable of utilizing the favourable situation created by the Second World War and the victory over fascism. This showed that they had not properly understood and did not apply the directives of the 7th Congress of the Communist International. (The congress was held July 25 to August 21, 1935) This congress instructed that in the course of the opposition and fight against fascism, in certain conditions, the possibilities would be created for the formation of united front governments which would be entirely different from the social-democratic governments. They were to serve the transition from the stage of the fight against fascism to the stage of the fight for democracy and socialism. In France and Italy, however, the war against fascism did not lead to the formation of governments of the type which the Comintern wanted. After the war, governments of the bourgeois type came to power there. The participation of the communists in them did not alter their character. Even the French Communist Party, which up to the end of the Second World War had a correct line in general, was unable to overcome and correct its mistakes, weaknesses and deviations on certain problems, which stemmed among other things from lack of realistic analyses of the internal and external situations.

The French Communist Party played a primary role in the creation of the Popular Front in France. It launched the slogan of the Popular Front at its Congress of Nantes in 1935, a slogan which quickly found an echo among the broad masses of the French people. The Comintern made a high valuation of the efforts and work of the French Communist Party for the creation of the Popular Front. However, it must be said that the party did not know how or was unable to take advantage of the situation and utilize it in favour of the working class.

The Communist Party spoke openly about the danger threatening France from internal and external fascism, denounced this danger and came out in the streets in demonstrations, but it expected the measures against fascism and everything else from the "legal" governments, from the bourgeois governments, formed by combinations in the bourgeois parliament. This was apparent at the time of the creation of the Popular Front which was a success for the French Communist Party, because in the complicated situation of that time it blocked the way to the setting up of a fascist government in France. Although it took some measures in favour of the working class, the Blum government violated and betrayed the program of the Popular Front in its internal and foreign policy. The Communist Party, which did not take part in the Popular Front government, but supported it in Parliament, was unable to stop this process. The struggle of the masses, strikes, demonstrations and actions were replaced by the once a week meetings which Leon Blum held in his home with Thorez and Duclos.

The leader of the Popular Front government was a socialist, and the socialists made up a large part of the government, but the government apparatus at the centre and the base remained what it was. The army remained "la grande muette". It was commanded, just as under all former governments, by the reactionary caste of officers trained at the bourgeois military schools for the purpose of suppressing the French people and occupying colonies, but not fighting fascism and reaction.

The French Communist Party did not carry its actions through to the end, it was not organized for real struggle against fascism and reaction. The propaganda and agitation, the demonstrations and strikes it led, were not on the line of the seizure of power from the hands of the bourgeoisie. Irrespective of the fact that the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism were not denied, the activity and struggle of that party unwittingly and unconsciously assumed the nature of the struggle for reforms, for economic demands on the trade-union level. Of course, the trade-unions, play a revolutionary role when they are under correct leadership and a revolutionary situation is created in them, otherwise the trade-union movement is turned into a routine concocted by the trade-union chiefs through stands which are sometimes correct, sometimes deviationist, sometimes liberal, sometimes opportunist, but which, in the final analysis, end up in fruitless talks and compromises with the employers.

When the war broke out in Spain, the French Communist Party actively assisted the Communist Party of Spain and the Spanish people in the war against Franco with agitation and propaganda and material aid. It called for volunteers to go to Spain, a call to which thousands of members of the party and other French anti-fascists responded, and three thousand of them fell martyrs on Spanish soil. The main leaders of the party took part directly in the war or else went to Spain on various occasions. Most of the volunteers, who set out from many countries to join the International Brigades in Spain, passed through France. It was the French Communist Party which organized their passage.

During the Spanish War the communists and the working class of France gained new experience in battle, and this was added to the old tradition of the revolutionary struggles of the French proletariat. This constituted a great capital, a revolutionary experience gained in organized frontal class battles against the savage Franco reaction, Italian fascists and German nazis, as well as against French and world reaction. This revolutionary capital should have served the party in the critical moments of the Second World War and the occupation of France, but in reality it was not utilized.

The French Communist Party exposed the policy of Munich with which the Daladiers and Bonnets made concessions to Hitler, selling out the interests of the Czechoslovak people with the aim of turning the Hitlerite war machine against the Soviet Union. It unwaveringly defended the Soviet-German non-aggression pact and withstood the slanders and persecutions of the bourgeoisie. It called for resistance and rose boldly in the fight against the German occupiers and their collaborators of Vichy. This struggle, which began with actions, strikes, demonstrations and sabotage, was steadily extended. The FTP [Francs Tireurs et Partisans] created by the Communist Party were the only formations which fought the occupiers, while the Gaullist reseaux, as the name shows, were nothing but a network of the Secret Service to gather military information useful to the Allies. While the Gaullists advocated waiting for a landing before going into action, the Communist Party fought valiantly for the liberation of the country.

In the liberation war the French Communist Party organized and developed the resistance against the occupiers, and tried to and did achieve something in connection with the anti-fascist front. However, as the events showed, it had not considered and had not planned the seizure of power, or if it had planned this, it abandoned the idea.

This is confirmed by the fact that during the war the party created many committees for national liberation, but it did not give any attention to them and did not take any measures to ensure that these committees affirm themselves as the nuclei of the new state power. From beginning to end the partisan formations remained small and without organic links with one another. At no time did the party raise the question of the creation of big formations of a real national liberation army.

The French Communist Party carried on an anti-fascist liberation war which it led itself, but it did not turn this war into a revolutionary war of the whole people. Moreover, it considered it more appropriate and "revolutionary" to beg De Gaulle to be allowed to send one of its representatives to his "Free France Committee". All this meant, "Please, Mr. De Gaulle, accept me into your Committee too." This meant, "Mr. De Gaulle, the French Communist Party and the partisan forces are going under your command and the 'Free France Committee'" This meant, "Mr. De Gaulle, we communists have no intention of carrying out any revolution or of seizing power, all we want is that the old game of parties, the 'democratic' game, will be played in the France of the future and that on the basis of polling we too will take part in the future government."

While the French communists were acting in this way, the bourgeoisie was preparing and organizing its forces to seize power in France, which it would assume when the Anglo-American allies landed there. The National Committee, created and led by the De Gaulle group in London, and turned into a government in Algiers, would be the most suitable force to take over this power. Of course, it would do this together with the internal forces which the bourgeoisie had prepared and set in motion together with the old army commanded by generals who after having served Petain, had placed themselves into the service of De Gaulle, when it became clear that the German ship was sinking.

This was a dangerous situation, which the French Communist Party did not appreciate and assess correctly, or did not analyse thoroughly. It was afraid of complications with the allied forces which were landing, it was afraid of De Gaulle and the forces gathered around him, hence it was afraid of civil war, and especially of war with the Anglo-Americans.

The Communist Party forgot the example of the heroic communards, who encircled by Bismarck's German armies, rose in revolt against the Versaillese, "storming the heavens", as Marx said, and created the Commune of Paris. Theoreticians may try to justify this fatal mistake of the French Communist Party during the Second World War by saying: "The strength of the forces had to be taken into account." Of course, the strength of the forces had to be taken into account. But since the communards, without a party, without organization, without links with the peasantry and the rest of France, and encircled by foreign occupation troops, launched the attack and seized power, the French working class with its party at the head, tempered in battle, enlightened by Marxism-Leninism, and having such a great and powerful ally as the Soviet Union in its struggle, at the head of the working masses and the genuine patriots, could have carried out the immortal deed of the communards a hundred times more successfully.

The leadership of the Communist Party in general proved hesitant and weak in fulfilling with courage and wisdom the desires and aspirations of the French communist militants and proletariat, who fought with determination and heroism against the Hitlerite occupiers. It did not proceed on the Marxist-Leninist road, on the road of revolutionary struggle. It did not follow in the footsteps of the communards.

The anti-fascist war in Italy had its own characteristics and features, but the objectives which the leadership of the Italian Communist Party had set itself, its vacillations and concessions are similar to those of the French Communist Party.

The start of the Second World War found most of the leading cadres of the Italian Communist Party in France. Nearly all of them fell into the hands of the police. Amongst them was the general secretary of the party, Palmiro Togliatti, who as soon as he was released from jail, in March 1941, went to the Soviet Union.

Although the Italian Communist Party took a correct stand towards the aggressive war which the fascist powers launched, and condemned it as a predatory imperialist war, its activity remained restricted. All the efforts of this party were centered on the creation of a coalition of the anti-fascist parties in exile, on issuing a number of appeals, resolutions and propaganda publications.

In March 1943, the party, which had begun to develop its activity within the country from the middle of 1942, managed to organize a series of powerful strikes in various zones, which testified to the rise of the anti-fascist people's movement. These strikes accelerated the developments which led to the overthrow of Mussolini.

Fear of the revolution had made the Italian bourgeoisie and the symbol of its rule, the king, summon Mussolini to power in 1922. This same fear made the bourgeoisie and the king remove Mussolini from power in July 1943.

The overthrow of Mussolini was carried out by means of a coup d'état of the ruling caste. The take-over was the work of the king, of Badoglio, and other leading figures of fascism. Seeing the inevitability of Italy's defeat, by so doing they wanted to forestall the danger that the working class and the people of Italy would rise in struggle and revolution, which would not only overthrow fascism and the monarchy, but would place the domination of the Italian bourgeoisie as a class in jeopardy.

The resistance movement of the Italian people against fascism assumed great development especially after the capitulation of Italy. In Northern Italy, which was still occupied by the Germans, on the initiative of the party, the liberation war, which included the broad masses of anti-fascist workers, peasants, intellectuals and others, was organized. Big regular partisan formations were created, the overwhelming majority of them under the leadership of the party.

Likewise on the initiative of the Communist Party, national liberation committees were formed in Northern Italy, along with the partisan units and detachments. The party struggled to make these committees new organs of the democratic power, but in fact they remained coalitions of different parties. This did not permit them to be transformed into genuine organs of the people's power.

Whereas in Northern Italy the struggle of the party in general was developed on the right road, and could have led not only to the liberation of the country but also to the establishment of the people's power, in the South and on a national scale the party did not raise the question of the seizure of power. It sought only the formation of a strong government with authority, and did not fight for the overthrow of the monarchy and Badoglio. At a time when favourable conditions existed in the country to carry forward the revolution, the program of the Communist Party was minimal. The party was for a parliamentary solution within the framework of the laws of the bourgeois order. Its maximum claim was for its participation in the government with two or three ministers.

In this way, the Italian Communist Party involved itself in bourgeois political combinations and made unprincipled concessions one after the other. On the eve of the liberation of the country it had great political and military strength which it did not know how to use or did not want to use, and it disarmed itself voluntarily to the bourgeoisie. It abandoned the revolutionary road and set out on the parliamentary road, which gradually transformed this party from a party of the revolution into a bourgeois party of the working class for social reforms.

In regard to Spain, it must be said that the directives of the 7th Congress of the Communist International had greater results than in France or Italy. The effect of them was especially apparent during the Civil War. At first the communists did not take part in the Popular Front government, but gave it their support. Nevertheless, the Communist Party criticized the government for its irresolute stand and demanded that it take measures against the fascist danger, against the activity which the fascists carried out, especially the caste of officers, who constituted the immediate danger at that time.

On July 17, 1936 the fascist generals launched their "Pronunciamento". The fascists' plot was well co-ordinated. They had acted under the nose of the leftist government and the authorities established by a government which had emerged from the coalition of the Popular Front. All the anti-fascist forces lined up against this danger. In November the government headed by Largo Caballero was formed with two communist ministers included. Thus a common front was formed to defend the Republic even with arms. The government granted autonomy to the Basques, confiscated the lands of fascists in favour of poor peasants and nationalized all their property.

Right from the start, the Communist Party called on the working class and the people for resistance. The Communist Party did not content itself with appeals, however, but went into action. The members of the party went into the barracks to explain the situation to the soldiers, telling them what the fascists were and what a threat they presented to the workers, the peasants and the people. In Madrid, the capital of Spain, the fascist coup failed.

In other cities, the people, and first of all the working class, attacked the military units which had risen against the Republic and paralysed them. In Asturia the fight of the miners against the fascist troops raged for a month and this province remained in the hands of the people. The fascists could not pass there. The same thing occurred in the Basque region and many parts of Spain.

In the first days of August it seemed that the fascist generals were on the way out and their defeat would have been complete had the troops of fascist Italy and nazi Germany not gone to their assistance immediately, together with the troops recruited in Spanish Morocco and those sent by fascist Portugal.

In a country where the army was led by an old caste of reactionary royalist and fascist officers the fate of the country could not be left to the army, of which a part followed the fascist generals while the rest began to fall apart. Therefore, the Communist Party called for the creation of a new army, an army of the people. The communists set to work to create this army and within a short time managed to set up the Fifth Regiment. On the basis of this regiment, which achieved great fame during the Spanish War, the people's army of the Spanish Republic was built up.

The resolute stand of the Communist Party against the fascist attack, the bold example it set by placing itself at the head of the masses to prevent the advance of fascism, the example which its members set, 60 per cent of whom went to the different fighting fronts of the war, greatly increased the authority and prestige of the party among the masses of the people.

A party grows, wins authority and becomes the leadership of the masses when it has a clear line and hurls itself boldly into struggle to implement it. During the Civil War the Communist Party of Spain became such a party. Between the beginning of the fascist insurrection in July 1936 and the end of that year, the Communist Party increased the number of its members three fold. And despite the fact that in those days people turned to the party, not to cast votes in elections but to give their lives, at no time has any other party, whether the so-called communist party of Carrillo or the other revisionist parties which have opened all their doors to anyone, with religious beliefs or otherwise, workers or bourgeois, who want to join them, been able to show such a growth of its authority and influence as that which the Communist Party of Spain achieved during the time of the Civil War.

The Spanish War came to an end at the beginning of 1939, with the extension of Franco's rule over the whole country. In that war the Communist Party of Spain did not spare its efforts or forces to defeat fascism. If fascism triumphed, this is due, apart from various internal factors, first of all to the intervention of Italian and German fascism, as well as to the capitulationist policy of "non-intervention" followed by the Western powers towards the fascist aggressors.

Many members of the Communist Party of Spain gave their lives during the Civil War. Others fell victim to the Francoite terror. Thousands and thousands of others were thrown into prison where they languished for many years or died. The terror which prevailed in Spain after the victory of the fascists was extremely ferocious.

The Spanish democrats who managed to escape arrest and internment took part in the French resistance and fought valiantly, while the Spanish democrats who went to the Soviet Union entered the ranks of the Red Army and many of them gave their lives fighting against fascism.

Although in extremely difficult conditions, the communists continued the guerrilla war and the organization of resistance within Spain. The majority of them fell into the hands of the Francoite police and were condemned to death.

Franco dealt a heavy blow to the revolutionary vanguard of the working class and the masses of the Spanish people and this had negative consequences for the Communist Party. Losing its soundest, most ideologically prepared, most resolute and courageous element in the armed struggle and during the fascist terror, the Communist Party of Spain came under the negative and destructive influence of the cowardly petty-bourgeois and intellectual element, such as Carrillo and company, who became dominant. They gradually transformed the Communist Party of Spain into an opportunist and revisionist party.

Unity with the Khrushchevite Revisionists

in the Struggle against Marxism-Leninism and the Revolution

The economic and political conditions which were created in Western Europe after the Second World War were even more favourable to the consolidation and spread of those mistaken opportunist views which had existed previously in the leaderships of the communist parties of France, Italy and Spain and further encouraged their spirit of concessions to and compromises with the bourgeoisie.

Amongst others, such factors were the abrogation of fascist laws and of other measures of restriction and compulsion which the European bourgeoisie had adopted from the first days after the triumph of the October Revolution and had maintained up to the outbreak of the war, with the aim of restraining the upsurge of the revolutionary drive of the working class, to hinder its political organization and prevent the spread of the Marxist ideology.

The re-establishment on a more or less extensive scale of bourgeois democracy, by completely legalizing all political parties except the fascist parties; permitting their unhindered participation in the political and ideological life of the country; giving these parties possibilities for active participation in the electoral campaigns, which were now held on the basis of less restrictive laws, for the approval of which the communists and other progressive forces had waged a long struggle, created many reformist illusions among the leaderships of the communist parties. The view began to establish itself among them that fascism was now finished once and for all, that the bourgeoisie was no longer able to restrict the democratic rights of the workers, but on the contrary would be obliged to allow their further development. They began to think that the communists, emerging from the war as the most influential and powerful political, organizing and mobilizing force of the nation, would compel the bourgeoisie to proceed on the course of extending democracy and permitting the ever greater participation of working people in running the country, that through elections and parliament they would have possibilities to take power peacefully and then go on to the socialist transformation of society. These leaderships considered the participation of two or three communist ministers in the post-war governments of France and Italy not as the maximum formal concessions which the bour geoisie would make, but as the beginning of a process which would develop gradually up to the creation of a cabinet consisting entirely of communists.

The development of the economy in the West after the war also exerted a great influence on the spread of opportunist and revisionist ideas in the communist parties. True, Western Europe was devastated by the war but its recovery was carried out relatively quickly. The American capital which poured into Europe through the "Marshall Plan" made it possible to reconstruct the factories, plants, transport and agriculture so that their production extended rapidly. This development opened up many jobs and for a long period, not only absorbed all the free labour force but even created a certain shortage of labour.

This situation, which brought the bourgeoisie great superprofits, allowed it to loosen its pursestrings a little and soften the labour conflicts to some degree. In the social field, in such matters as social insurance, health, education, labour legislation etc., it took some measures for which the working class had fought hard. The obvious improvement of the standard of living of the working people in comparison with that of the time of the war and even before the war, the rapid growth of production, which came as a result of the reconstruction of industry and agriculture and the beginning of the technical and scientific revolution, and the full employment of the work force, opened the way to the flowering amongst the unformed opportunist element of views about the development of capitalism without class conflicts, about its ability to avoid crises, the elimination of the phenomenon of unemployment etc. That major teaching of Marxism-Leninism, that the periods of peaceful development of capitalism become a source for the spread of opportunism, was confirmed once again. The new stratum of the worker aristocracy, which increased considerably during this period, began to exert an ever more negative influence in the ranks of the parties and their leaderships by introducing reformist and opportunist views and ideas.

Under pressure of these circumstances, the programs of these communist parties were reduced more and more to democratic and reformist minimum programs, while the idea of the revolution and socialism became ever more remote. The major strategy of the revolutionary transformation of society gave way to the minor strategy about current problems of the day which was absolutized and became the general political and ideological line.

In this way, after the Second World War, the Italian Communist Party, that of France, of Great Britain and after this, that of Spain too gradually began to deviate from Marxism-Leninism, to adopt revisionist views and theses and to take the course of reformism. When Khrushchevite revisionism emerged on the scene, the terrain was suitable for them to embrace it and unite firmly with it in the struggle against Marxism-Leninism. Apart from the pressure of the bourgeoisie and social democracy within their own countries, the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU exerted a great influence on these parties to go over completely to anti-Marxist, social-democratic positions. The first to embrace the line of the 20th Congress of the CPSU were the Italian revisionists who immediately after that congress, loudly proclaimed the so-called Italian road to socialism. As soon as fascism had been overthrown, the Italian Communist Party had come out with an opportunist political and organizational platform. When Palmiro Togliatti landed in Naples on his return from the Soviet Union in March 1944, he imposed on his party the line of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie and its parties. In the plenum of the National Council of the Party which was held at that time, Togliatti declared, "We do not put forward the seizure of power as the objective of our struggle, because of international and national conditions; we want only to destroy fascism completely and to create a 'truly progressive, anti-fascist democracy'. The ICP 'must view every problem from the angle of the nation, of the Italian state'." (By P. Spriano, The History of The Italian Communist Party, Turin 1975).

In Naples Togliatti put forward for the first time the idea, and indeed the platform, of what he called the "new party of the masses", which differed in class composition, ideology and organizational forms from the communist party of the Leninist type. It was natural that, for a policy of unprincipled alliances and a policy of reforms which Togliatti wanted, he needed a reformist party, a broad unrestricted party which anyone could enter or leave whenever he liked. Many years later a collaborator of Togliatti wrote, "His notion of a mass party which has its roots in the people assumes all its proper value if we link it closely with the national component of the communists' struggle. Their objective, in fact, is to achieve profound changes in society...by means of reforms" ( G. Ceretti, In the Shadow of the Two T, Paris 1973). With the liberation of the country, the working class of Italy hoped for profound social justice, expected that things would change and that at last it would have its say. But this did not occur. And this was because of the organization and managernent of the life of the country by the different bourgeois parties, including the Communist Party. To deceive the masses and to give them the impression that their voice was being heard in the governing of the country, they arranged political life with majority and minority parties, with parties in office and parties in opposition, with all the parliamentary games and tricks, with all their lies and humbug.

At first the Italian Communist Party received two unimportant portofolios, which the big bourgeoisie allowed it within the "democratic" game, in order to strengthen its position, restore its army, the police and all the network of suppression, and in order to use the presence of communists in the government to strangle and paralyse any tendency of the working class and the Italian people to settle accounts with those who exploited them, oppressed them and sent them to rob other peoples of their freedom, leaving the bones of their sons in Abyssinia, Spain, Albania and the Soviet Union. Then, in May 1947, when they no longer wanted them, the bourgeoisie threw the communist ministers out of the government. The possible danger of an attack by the workers had been averted. The working class had been "lined up", incorporated in different unions according to party colours, and thus the struggle for votes, the parliamentary struggle, began.

After the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Togliatti and the Italian Communist Party publicly proclaimed their old revisionist stands. Not only did they approve every sign of liberalism which came from Moscow, but they raced ahead so fast that they put the Khrushchevite revisionists in difficulties, and thus the Italian Communist Party began to become a worry to them. The Togliatti supporters approved the revisionist course of "destalinization", applauded the Khrushchevites' mud slinging at Stalin and bolshevism, applauded the Khrushchevites' course for the destruction of the socialist foundations of the Soviet state, were in favour of revisionist reforms and the policy of opening up to the capitalist states, especially the United States of America. As revisionists, Togliatti and his supporters were fully in agreement with Khrushchevite peaceful coexistence and rapprochement with imperialism. This was their old dream of collaboration with the bourgeoisie on the national and international plane.

On the course on which the Khrushchevite revisionist party had set out in the Soviet Union it needed unity and friendship with the Italian Communist Party, it needed the support, in particular, of the two revisionist parties of the West, of France and Italy, which were two big parties with a certain international authority. This was the reason for the "honours", which the Khrushchevites paid these two parties, and together with the "honours", which were obvious, went big subsidies under the lap.

Just as the Khrushchevites hastened to turn the Soviet Union into a capitalist country, so Togliatti and company hastened to integrate themselves into the Italian capitalist order. In June 1956, in the report submitted to the CC of the Italian Communist Party under the flamboyant title "The Italian Road to Socialism", Palmiro Togliatti launched a series of theses so blatantly anti-communist that Khrushchev was compelled to tell him that he should restrain himself and should not cross his bridges so hastily.

At that time Togliatti put forward the question of the integration of socialism into capitalism, as well as the thesis denying the role of the communist party as the sole and indispensable leader of the struggle of the proletariat for socialism. He said that the impulse towards socialism might come even where there was no communist party. These theses were identical with those of the Yugoslav revisionists.

It is not accidental that the Italian revisionists proved to be ardent supporters of the rehabilitation of the Yugoslav revisionists. Togliatti personally went to Yugoslavia to bend the knee to Tito and to help make him "acceptable" in the international communist movement.

The Italian Communist Party and Togliatti spoke out against Moscow being "the only centre of international communism". They preached "polycentrism", the aim of which was the creation of a new revisionist bloc, headed by the Italian Communist Party, which by opposing the Soviet revisionist bloc, would raise the authority of the Italian Communist Party in the eyes of the Italian and world bourgeoisie. Togliatti thought that he would win the trust of the Italian monopoly capital in this way and be invited to join in its dance. Khrushchev saw the danger of the revisionist parties, both those of the countries which were members of the Warsaw Treaty and those which were outside it, breaking away from the tutelage of Moscow, therefore he tried to preserve "unity".

However, Togliatti's "polycentrism" and Khrushchev's "unity" were opposing and unreal things. Revisionism splits and does not unite.

The revisionist party of Togliatti today, under Longo and Berlinguer, has steered an obscure and by no means clear course. Intellectualist and social-democratic views have made deep impressions on its line and stands. The leader of the Italian Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti, manifested these views with increasing stridency, up to his famous "testament", which he wrote a short time before he died in Yalta. This "testament" represents the code of Italian revisionism on which the views of Eurocommunism in general are based today.

After the 20th Congress of the CPSU modern revisionism found an environment suitable for its spread in the French Communist Party also. The idea of parliamentarianism, the idea of "alliances" with social-democracy and the bourgeoisie, of struggle for reforms, had long been implanted in the leadership of this party. This was not proclaimed openly as it is now, that is, it was not raised to a theory. But the opposition to and struggle against fascism, the struggle for the defence and development of democracy, for the improvement of the situation of the working people, all of these actions correct in principle and also correct as tactics, were not linked by the French Communist Party with the final aim, with the socialist perspective. For the leadership of the French Communist Party, this perspective was obscure, or something which was accepted in theory but was considered to be unrealizable in the conditions of France.

The French Communist Party, as we said, had avoided changing the war for national liberation into a people's revolution, had turned away from the struggle for the armed seizure of state power. The working class and its party shed their blood, but for whom? In fact, for the French bourgeoisie and the Anglo-American imperialists. How should this course of the French Communist Party be described? Bluntly: betrayal of the revolution. Politely: an opportunist liberal line.

It is true that the French Communist Party was not liquidated either by the German occupiers or by reaction, but the negative phenomenon occurred that, with the liberation of the country, the partisan forces which were led by the party were disarmed by the bourgeoisie, or more precisely, the leadership of the party itself took the decision that "they should be disarmed" since "the Homeland had been liberated".

With the liberation of the country, the bourgeoisie again took power while the communists were left out of the banquet. The victor's carriage was prepared for De Gaulle, who was proclaimed the saviour of the French people. To avoid the resistance and strikes of disillusioned and revolted workers, De Gaulle summoned Maurice Thorez; and one or two other communists to the government. The Communist Party paid for this place at the bottom of the table which the bourgeoisie gave it, by adopting stands contrary to the interests and will of the French working class.

One mistake inevitably leads to another. Dizzy with the electoral success which they achieved in the elections of November 10, 1946, where the communists and socialists won the absolute majority of seats in the National Assembly, the leaders of the French Communist Party went even further down the road of reformism. Precisely at this time Maurice Thorez gave an interview to the correspondent of the British newspaper "The Times" in which he said that the development of democratic forces throughout the world and the weakening of the capitalist bourgeoisie after the Second World War induced him to envisage for France "... the transition to socialism on roads other than those which the Russian communists followed thirty years ago... In any case, the road can be different for each country." (M. Thorez, The Sons of the People, Paris 1960).

Perhaps this road to socialism, about which Thorez spoke at that time, was not exactly the Khrushchevite road, the contours of which were laid out later. But in any case "the different road", which Thorez sought then, was not that of the revolution.

The French bourgeoisie and American imperialism did not allow Thorez and the leadership of the French Communist Party to live long with their dreams of the parliamentary road to socialism. Not much later, through a simple decree of the socialist premier of that time, Ramadier, the communists were thrown out of the government.

At its meeting in October 1947, the Central Committee of the French Communist Party was obliged to make self-criticism about its mistaken stands and actions at that period, about its incorrect evaluation of the situation, the ratio of forces, the policy of the Socialist Party etc.

Thus, beginning from the end of 1947, the French Communist Party began to see certain questions more correctly. It raised the working class in important class battles and big strikes, which had a pronounced political character, especially those of the years 1947 and 1948, which caused panic among the French bourgeoisie. At that time the French Communist Party fought against the Marshallization of France and the warmongering policy of American imperialism. It opposed the establishment of American bases in France and rose against the new colonial wars of French imperialism. The party called on the working class to oppose the colonial war in Vietnam, not merely with propaganda but also with concrete actions.

In this struggle the French working class produced from its ranks such heroes and heroines as Raymonde Dien, who lay down on the rails to stop a train loaded with arms for Vietnam.

The French Communist Party took an active part in the meeting of the Information Bureau which examined the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. It condemned and sternly denounced the betrayal by Tito and his group.

However, after the death of Stalin and Khrushchev's advent to power, vacillations and deviations appeared again in the line of the French Communist Party and the stands of its leaders. These vacillations were apparent as early as 1954, in its attitude towards the liberation war of the Algerian people.

What did the French Communist Party do to assist this war? It waged only a propaganda campaign and nothing more. It was its duty to display its internationalism towards the liberation war of the Algerian people in deeds, because in this way it would have fought for the freedom of the French people too. It did not do this because it was guided by opportunist and nationalist stands. The French Communist Party went even further. It stopped the Communist Party of Algeria from taking part in the war. The facts show that when the flames of the national liberation war were sweeping Algeria, the Algerian communists did nothing, while the general secretary of the party, Larbi Buhali, went skiing and broke his leg in the Tatra Mountains of Czechoslovakia.

When Khrushchev and the Khrushchevites began their activity to seize power and bring about the capitalist degeneration of the Soviet Union, when they launched their attack against Stalin at the 20th Congress, it seemed that, in general, the French Communist Party was opposed to Khrushchevite revisionism and the Italian Communist Party. Apparently, Thorez and the leadership of the French Communist Party regarded the changes which were taking place in the Soviet Union with suspicion.

This could be seen in their stand towards the question of Stalin, when they did not associate themselves with Khrushchev's slanders; it was apparent at the time of the events in Poland and Hungary in 1956, when, in general, they maintained correct stands.

However, after Khrushchev and his group liquidated Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and others, after he consolidated his position in the party and the state and took the bit between his teeth, it was seen that the leadership of the French Communist Party headed by Thorez was wavering. Little by little and from concession to concession. it went over from its anti-Khrushchevite position to the position of Khrushchev. Was this fortuitous? Was it an aberration by Thorez? Was it a retreat on his part or on the part of Duclos and the other leaders in the face of the pressures, praises and blandishments of Khrushchev and his other putschist methods? Of course, those methods were used and had their influence in the transition to, and later, the uninterrupted march of the French Communist Party towards revisionism. But these do not account for everything. The true causes must be sought within the French Communist Party itself, in its earlier stands, in its internal structure and organization, in its composition and in the external environment which exerted its own pressure on that party.

The process of the descent of the French Communist Party into revisionism did not take place within one day. Quantity was transformed into quality over a relatively long period. The parliamentary reformist road, the Thorez road of "the extended hand", his admiration for and concessions to a series of intellectuals, some of whom were expelled after their betrayal, while others remained in the party, and developed defeatism, spreading all sorts of theories which distorted Marxism-Leninism, brought the French Communist Party to revisionist positions. The French Communist Party lived surrounded by a bourgeois, revisionist, Trotskyite, anarchist, political and ideological environment which beat ceaselessly at its walls, which penetrated them and caused the party great damage.

Major international events also created great upheavals in the French Communist Party. The publication of Khrushchev's secret report against Stalin, which was exploited by all the European and world bourgeoisie, also created a turbulent situation in the French Communist Party. The stand which this party adopted towards events in Hungary and Poland encountered the stern opposition of the big bourgeoisie of France, the middle bourgeoisie, the liberal intellectuals, as well as opportunists outside and also inside the party.

The events which occurred in France in connection with the war in Algeria also brought about that the old opportunist views and stands again came to the surface and became predominant in the French Communist Party.

All these factors taken together transformed the French Communist Party, from one of the parties with the greatest authority, as it had been known in the past, into a social-democratic reformist revisionist party. In a word, the French Communist Party turned back to the former traditions of the old socialist party from which it had broken away at the Congress of Tours in 1920.

One of the revisionist parties which has come out most fervently with the banner of Eurocommunism is the party of Carrillo. How did it come about that the Communist Party of Spain, a party which distinguished itself for its resolute stand at the time - of the Popular Front and the Civil War, -became united with the Khrushchevites and reached the state of corruption, degeneration and treachery it is in today? The changes did not and could not come about all at once, without a protracted process of decline and degeneration within the Spanish party and especially in its leadership.

In the early years after the Second World War the leadership of the Communist Party of Spain and the majority of its members were in France, where they lived a more or less legal life. The Spanish Republican government was in exile too. This was the time when the communists were still in the governments of countries like France and Italy. The Spanish communists too, began to act like their French and Italian comrades. In 1946 the Spanish Republican government in exile was re-formed in Paris. The Communist Party of Spain sent Santiago Carrillo as its representative to this government.

When the communist ministers were expelled from the governments in France and Italy in May 1947, the situation began to become difficult for the Communist Party of Spain and its cadres and militants, also. In August of the same year the Spanish communists were expelled from the government in exile. The police searches, arrests and other measures against them began anew. The infiltration of French and Francoite police into the ranks of the Spanish communists and democrats became more intensive.

It became ever more difficult for the leaders and cadres of the party to stay and work in France, therefore, they went to Prague, East Berlin, and other countries of people's democracy. Their exodus towards these countries more or less coincided with the time when the Khrushchevite revisionist scum began to surface in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe.

The meetings of the Political Bureau and the Central Committee of the Party began to be held far away from Spain. Those communists, who had known the harsh conditions of the Civil War and illegal life in Spain, the difficulties and privations of life in exile in France, began to get the taste for the luxury and comfort of the castles of Bohemia and Germany, to become acquainted with the blandishments an praise, as well as with the various pressures of the Khrushchevite revisionists, the apparatchiki and their secret agents. As events showed, the leadership of the Communist Party of Spain became one of the most obedient blind tools of Nikita Khrushchev and those of his group.

In 1954 the 5th Congress of the Communist Party of Spain was held. At that congress the first elements of the spirit of pacifism and class conciliation became apparent, of that spirit which, a little later, was to become the platform of Spanish revisionism and would find its most complete expression in Carrillo's ultra-revisionist work of betrayal.

Adopting the Khrushchevite road of peaceful transition to socialism, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain published a document in June 1956, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Civil War, in which it formulated its policy of "national reconciliation". The Communist Party of Spain expressed its support for an agreement between forces which 20 years earlier had fought one another with opposing armies. "A vengeful policy will not help to get the country...out of this situation. Spain needs peace and reconciliation between its sons..." (C. Colombo, The History of The Spanish Communist Party, Milain 1972.) said this declaration.

The time of the resolute stands of the Spanish communists against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. The dictatorial fascist regime of Primo de Rivera ruled in Spain from 1923-1930. and the generals' "pronunciamento", stands which had increased the influence of the communist party among the masses and had strengthened and tempered it, had passed. Now was the time of the line of the most vulgar opportunism, of blandishments and of bending the knee to the bourgeosie and its parties, to the Catholic Church and the Spanish army, a line which was to rank the party of Dolores Ibarruri and Carrillo among the typically social-democratic parties.

We were unaware of the internal process of retrogression which had occurred in the Communist Party of Spain, but at the Meeting of the Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow in November 1960, when the Party of Labour of Albania openly exposed modern revisionism and especially Soviet revisionism, headed by the traitor to and renegade. from Marxism-Leninism, Khrushchev, the Communist Party of Spain and Ibarruri personally attacked us in the most vicious way.

Thus, when it came to defending Marxism-Leninism, the leaders of the Communist Party of Spain savagely attacked the Party of Labour of Albania and defended Khrushchev and his group of traitors to Marxism-Leninism. Time proved that our Party of Labour was on the right road, on the Marxist-Leninist road, while the Communist Party of Spain, headed by Ibarruri, had lined up totally in the camp of renegades from and enemies of communism.

After 1960 major quarrels and differences emerged in the Communist Party of Spain which led to its splitting, as a result of which two anti-Marxist revisionist groups were created: the one pro-Soviet, with Lister at the head, and the other, a faction led by Ibarruri and Carrillo, which sought independence from Moscow in order to adopt the line which later took the name Eurocommunism.

The line of Carrillo became more and more identical with the line of the Italian Communist Party and that of the French Communist Party. Likewise, it conformed with the line of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Thus a still structureless unity began to crystalize between Titoism, the Italian revisionist party, the French revisionist party, and the Spanish revisionist party of Ibarruri.

At the time when this grouping of West European revisionists, including Tito, which wanted to break away from Moscow, was being formed, Mao Zedong's Communist Party of China welcomed Carrillo to Peking and had close and intimate talks with him. What the content of these talks was has not been revealed, but time is showing that the Chinese revisionists and the Spanish revisionists have many things in common. Therefore, open official links between the Chinese revisionist party and the Spanish revisionist party will be established before long.

Carrillo also adopted the political orientations, the aims, strategies and tactics of the Italian and French revisionist parties for the establishment of close collaboration with the reactionary bourgeoisie and the bourgeois capitalist states. However, the Communist Party of Spain still did not have legal status. For this reason, even under Franco, it made great efforts to be legalized within Spain. Francoism and Franco did not allow such a thing. After the death of Franco, with the coming to power of King Juan Carlos, Carrillo achieved some results in the direction of legalizing the party. However, in return for this legality, he had to make such statements and such colossal concessions in principle that even the French Communist Party and the Italian Communist Party had not permitted themselves to make to the capitalist bourgeoisie of their countries.

In order to return to Spain and legalize the party, Carrillo agreed to recognize the regime of King Juan Carlos, indeed he went so far as to praise it and call it "democratic", and accepted the monarchy and its flag. After this submission, the monarchists gave him carte blanche. The Communist Party of Spain was legalized. Carrillo and Ibarruri returned to Spain together with the whole herd of Spanish traitors.

As soon as they returned to Madrid, the revisionist chiefs openly denied the Republic and declared that the Spanish War now belonged to history. Coalition with the other bourgeois parties and the struggle for participation in the government of the country was proclaimed as the foundation of their line. In the various elections which have been held in Spain, Carrillo's party has not won more than 9 per cent of the votes and has a few deputies in parliament. Carrillo has described this as a "great democratic victory which will change the face of Spain". But in fact, the Spanish revisionists can never clean up the face of Spain because what Ibarruri, Carrillo and company have in their hands is not soap but tar. They have rejected the red flag of the revolution and have shamelessly trampled underfoot the blood of tens and hundreds of thousands of heroes of the Spanish War.

In the reformist and opportunist transformation of the communist parties of the Western countries, the line which the Soviet revisionist leadership established in its relations with them played an important role. The aim of the Khrushchevite revisionists of the Soviet Union was to compel the revisionist parties of the different countries to follow them in the policy of establishing their social-imperialist hegemony over the whole world. They demanded that these parties become their assistants in the fiendish activity they had engaged in.

Naturally, the American imperialists and their allies could not approve the hegemonic and expansionist aims of the Soviet social-imperialists. Nor could the revisionist parties of different countries agree with the Soviet policy. Urged by the bourgeoisie of their own countries, they began ever more openly to carry on separate activities independently of the revisionist party of the Soviet Union.

One after the other, the revisionist parties of Western Europe, Latin America and Asia rose to a greater or lesser extent against the Khrushchevite Soviet hegemony, at the same time bringing out new anti-Marxist theories. The "theories" of the big revisionist parties of Western Europe, which took the name Eurocommunism, very quickly became the most complete and most publicized of these theories. As soon as it emerged on the scene, Eurocommunism, like Titoite and Khrushchevite revisionism, began a frontal struggle against Marxism-Leninism, with the aim of revising and discrediting its fundamental principles in the eyes of the workers.

From Revisionist Opportunism to Bourgeois Anti-Communism