REFORMIST IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM

EUROCOMMUNISM IS ANTI - COMMUNISM

III REFORMIST IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM - FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EUROCOMMUNIST PARTIES

As we saw, modern revisionism is expressed in various currents and assumes different appearances according to the concrete political and socio-economic conditions of each country or group of countries. This is the case also with the parties which are now known under the name of Eurocommunist parties. Although they represent. a separate current of modern revisionism, a current which conforms more to the interests of the bourgeosie of the developed capitalist countries, such as the countries of Western Europe, the Italian, French and Spanish revisionist parties also have certain specific features.

The Constitution of the Bourgeois State -the Basis of Togliatti's "Socialism"

Speaking about the third road., which consists of the new strategy of Eurocommunist revisionism, in his report entitled "For Socialism in Peace and Democracy...", delivered at the 15th Congress of the ICP, Berlinguer . gives a rather more complete explanation of what he and his associates mean by this third road. "I'in referring," he says, "to a fortunate expression. .. which we have accepted... We have had the experience of the Second International: the first phase of the struggle of the workers' movement to emerge from, capitalism. . . But this experience... capitulated in the face of the First World War and various kinds of nationalism. "The second phase," continues Berlinguer, "opens with the Russian Revolution of October ... " (E. Berlinguer, For the Socialism in the Peace and the Democracy Throughtout Italy and Europe).

But this, too, according to him should be looked at critically in view of the history and the reality of the Soviet Union, because this experience is not valid, either. And it results that the third phase has begun now with Eurocommunism. The task of the workers' movement in Western Europe, Berlinguer declares, is "to find new roads of advance towards socialism and the construction of socialism" (E. Berlinguer, For the Socialism in the peace and the Democracy Throughtout Italy and Europe).

According to the Italian revisionists, the road to achieve this "society" is "the line laid down by the Republican Constitution to lead Italy to the road of its transformation into a socialist society based on political democracy". (The politics and the organization of the italian communists, Rome 1979). Whereas the French revisionists, who cannot present the De Gaulle Constitution as the basis of their socialism, since not only did they not take part in drafting it, but they also voted against it, do not mention it, although in practice they do not negate it.

The Italian revisionists worked out their idea of achieving "socialism" through the bourgeois Constitution a long time ago. In his speeches, as early as 1944, Togliatti declared that allegedly "the times had changed, the working class had changed and the ways to the seizure of power had also changed. With this he meant that <-(the time of revolutions was over and the time of evolutions had come", that "power cannot be seized except by way of reforms, on the parliamentary road, through votes".

Later, at the meeting of the CC of the Italian Communist Party on June 28, 1956, immediately after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Togliatti said: "we must foresee a socialist advance which takes place precisely on the terrain which the Constitution determines and envisages, which is the terrain of democratic freedoms and progressive social transformations... This Constitution is not yet a socialist Constitution. But since it is an expression of a broad unitary movement of rejuvenation, it differs profoundly from the other bourgeois Constitutions, and represents an effective base for the development of Italian society on the road towards socialism."

That the Italian Constitution differs, for example, from the Constitution of the time of the monarchy and fascism, that a series of democratic principles figure in it, this is understandable, because these principles have been imposed on it by the struggle of the working class and the Italian people against fascism. But the Italian Constitution is not the only one which contains such principles. After the Second World War, the bourgeoisie in all the capitalist countries of Europe tried, to this or that degree, to outflank the working class by giving it certain rights on paper and taking them away in practice.

Those things which the Italian Constitution envisages are formal freedoms and rights which are violated everyday by the bourgeoisie. For example, it envisages a certain restriction of private property. But this has not stopped the FIATs and Montedisons from becoming more and more wealthy and their workers becoming ever more Impoverished. The Constitution envisages the right to work, but this stops neither the capitalist employers, nor their state from throwing about 2 million people out of work. The Constitution guarantees a series of democratic rights but this has not stopped the Italian state, the carabinieri or the police, basing themselves on the rights which the Constitution provides, from acting almost openly to set up that mechanism which is ready for the establishment of a fascist regime. The various fascist commandos, from those of the extreme right to those who call themselves the "Red Brigades" and the terrorists of the Fontana Square, also find their justification in the Italian Constitution.

To think, as the followers of Togliatti do, that the Italian bourgeoisie drafted its well-known Constitution to lead the society towards socialism, is simply absurd. The Italian Constitution, like the other fundamental laws of bourgeois countries, sanctions the undivided political, legislative and executive rule of the bourgeoisie in the country, sanctions the protection of its property and its power to exploit the working masses. It gives a legal basis for the organs of violence to restrict the freedom and democracy of the people, to suppress all and rule over everything. "Beautiful", words such as freedom, equality, fraternity, democracy, justice, etc., may be written in the Constitution for two hundred years, but in practice they will not be realized for another two thousand years, if the capitalist bourgeoisie is not overthrown together with its Constitution and laws.

For the Italian revisionists the existing Constitution is their Bible and the bourgeoisie could not find better advocates to defend it or more zealous propagandists to advertise it. The ardent defence which the Italian revisionists make of the Constitution of their capitalist state shows that they cannot conceive any other social system outside the existing bourgeois society, outside its political, ideological, economic, religious and military institutions. To them socialism and the present-day Italian capitalist state are the same thing. The opportunism in which the leaders of the Italian revisionist party were born and raised, has clouded their eyes and shut off all horizons to them. The Italian revisionists have become the guardians of the capitalist order. They even present this role as a virtue and mention it in their documents. ". ..in these'30 years," say the theses for the 15th Congress of the ICP, " the Communist Party has followed a line of the consistent defence of democratic (read- bourgeois) institutions; a line of the organization and development of democratic life amongst the masses of workers and citizens, a line of struggles for individual and collective freedoms, for observance and the application of the Constitution. The ICP has implemented this policy through continually seeking unity with the ISP', with the other democratic forces, secular and Catholic, and seeking every possible convergence even with Christian Democracy itself, even from the opposition, with the aim of avoiding the damage to the democratic constitutional framework".(The politics and the organization of the italian communists, Rome 1979).

For 35 years on end the Italian bourgeoisie, revisionists, the Church, and so on, have been deceiving the Italian people by telling them that the hard life which they lead, the poverty in which they live, the savage exploitation, corruption, terror, and all the other social evils that characterize Italy are the result of "failure to implement the Constitution consistently". But the situation in Italy has been and still is deplorable, not from failure to implement the Constitution, but because of the system which the Constitution defends. The present situation is the result of the whole development of Italy after the war.

Italy, which suffered the evils of the royal regime of the Savoy dynasty, which experienced the horrors of the fascist regime, which came to know the economic poverty and moral and political degeneration which this regime brought, which suffered the devastation of the Second World War, came out of this war economically ruined and entered a grave political and moral-social crisis which continues to this day.

After the end of the war, Italy was turned into chaos, but also into a circus, in which the role of acrobats and clowns was played by the new hierarchs decked out in the robes of re-constituted parties with "brilliant", titles such as socialist, social-democrat, Christian Democrat, liberal, communist, etc. One posed as the continuer of the party of Gramsci, the other of Don Sturzo, the one of Croce, the other of Mazzini. From a country of silence and closed mouths, which Italy was in the time of fascism, it turned into the country where a deafening clamour is traditional.

If American capital has got one foot in the door in the different countries of Europe, it has both feet firmly planted in Italy. This has occurred because the bourgeoisie of that country is more degenerate, more cosmopolitan, more unpatriotic, and more given to all-round corruption.

The Christian Democrats have always held the reins of Italy in their hands. The other bourgeois parties also want their share in this bargaining, where everything, including Italy itself, is up for sale, wholesale and retail. The innumerable frequent changes of governments are an expression of the struggle for power, of the competition and rivalry between parties. Changes are made, but the Christian Democrat Party always remains the pivot which takes the lion's share. The Christian Democrats have proved to be skilful tight-rope walkers in the formation of ministerial councils, giving their rivals carefully measured rations of authority and leaving the impression that they are and are not the incontestable rulers of the country. In this way they bring on stage sometimes the "centre-left", sometimes the "centre-right", setting up a cabinet sometimes "monotone" in colour, sometimes "two-tone". All these are conjuror's tricks to show that they are allegedly finding a solution to the chaos, poverty, hunger, unemployment, to the terrible all-round crisis the country is in.

At present all sorts of crimes are flourishing in Italy. The new fascism has organized itself in parliamentary parties and possesses countless terrorist squads and groups, which the Italians call the "lambs" of the general secretary of the fascist party, Almirante. The criminal mafia has its claws deeply implanted everywhere, and crime, thefts, murders, kidnappings, have been raised to a modernized industry. No Italian is certain of tomorrow. The army, the carabinieri and the organs of the secret police have become so inflated that the country can hardly breathe. They have been increased allegedly to defend the people and "the democratic order" from the members of the ultraleft and ultra-right brigades. But the truth is that without these organs the big thieves and murderers who occupy the soft seats in parliament or in the staffs of the army, police etc., could not protect themselves. At the same time, Italy is up to its ears in debt while its currency is one of the weakest of all the currencies of the countries of Western Europe. Today it is called the "sick man" of the European Nine. No one trusts this Italy, with this rotten regime it has, this Italy which may take a course dangerous not only for the Italian people but also for its neighbours.

The various Italian governments, not to mention the period of Mussolini fascism, have in general maintained unfriendly stands towards Albania, either openly or in disguise. The treacherous Albanian reaction which fled on board the British ships was gathered together in Italy, was organized and trained by the post-war governments of that country, by the permanent enemy of Albania - the Vatican, as well as by the Anglo-Americans, to operate against the new Albania. In the first years after Liberation, our people had to wage a stern fight against wreckers who landed in our country from Italy. What end they met, is known. However, the end of the others was no better. Some of the fugitive Albanian traitors remained in Italy, the others dispersed to the United States of America, Belgium, Britain, Federal Germany and many other countries where the imperialist espionage services sent them.

Seeing that they could achieve nothing against the new Albania with acts of diversion, the Italian governments began to maintain an "indifferent" political stand towards our country. True, diplomatic relations between the two countries were established, but other relations always remained at a low level. The Italian governments never showed any desire to develop them. No government has ever publicly condemned Mussolini's barbarous acts against Albania. However, these governments did interest themselves in taking the bones of the Italian soldiers killed by our partisans during the National Liberation War from their graves and sent them to Italy to consecrate them as "heroes who had fought for the greatness of Italy", and every year they pay homage to them. Most of the Italian press rarely publishes any positive article about Albania. It has distinguished itself above all the world press for its stand of denigration and misinformation about our country.

The stand of the Italian revisionists has not been and is not any different from this stand of the government leaders and the press of Italy. In 1939, the leaders of the Italian Communist Party stood back and watched the fascist armies which were going to rob a small neighbouring people of their freedom. They did not prove to be even at the level of the Italian socialists, who condemned the imperialism of their country at the time of the war of Vlora in 1920. Even after the war, the main leaders of the Italian Communist Party did not deign to come to Albania, to condemn the crimes of fascism and express their solidarity with the Albanian people who had faced death and destruction and had fought heroically against Italian fascism.

The Italian Communist Party fought and is fighting to eliminate the revolutionary spirit from its members and the Italian proletariat, to foster the idea of class conciliation and wipe out all thought of seizing power from the hands of the capitalists through violence. It is nothing but a social-democratic party like the others, but has been left in opposition and has not been invited to take part in the dance, because it was formerly in the Third International, and because, apparently, the bourgeoisie requires still greater proofs of loyalty from it.

The Italian "democratic" bourgeois state gives billions of lire in subsidies to the Italian Communist Party, as well as to other parliamentary parties. However, the revisionist party also has other large sources of income from trading companies, as well as from various subsidies in the form of commissions. It has its aristocracy and its plebs: the aristocrats are the deputies, senators, chairmen and councillors of municipalities and the permanent functionaries.

The 10th Congress of the Italian Communist Party, which was held in 1962, codified the ideas of Togliatti, his social-democratic line and open departure from Marxism-Leninism. Togliatti was a reformist intellectual and this is what he remained to the end of his life, up till the "Testament of Yalta" in which he re-emphasized his "polycentrism" and pronounced himself in favour of the "pluralism" of parties allegedly to go to socialism, of the "freedom of religion", "freedom of speech", "human rights", etc. This was the road of the socalled Italian socialism.

The 10th Congress presented the "Italian road to socialism" as an original road, as a new development of Marxism, as a superseding of the teachings of the October Revolution and the experience of all the socialist revolutions up to that time. In reality, it was the road of "structural reforms" the revisionist, opportunist road adopted to suit the needs and the situation of Italian monopoly capital.

According to the "theory" of "structural reforms" the transition to socialism will be made through gradual reforms which will be forced from monopoly capital in a peaceful way. These gradual reforms will be made only by means of parliamentarianism, through power of the vote, regardless of the fact that the capitalist monopolies have in their hands the wealth of the country, the weapons, and the running of parliament and the administration. According to the Italian revisionists, the .Kreforms of socio-economic structures" which it is allegedly possible to carry out within the framework of the bourgeois state, "will wipe out exploitation and class inequalities and will make it possible... to gradually overcome the gap between those who rule and those who are ruled, and move towards the complete liberation of man and society " (The politics and the organization of the Italian communists, Rome 1979).

The Italian revisionists have slipped completely into the positions of trade-unionism and social-democracy. They restrict the workers' struggle merely to economic and democratic demands, and think that the consequences of the capitalist order can be avoided while leaving this order intact. However, history has proved this to be utopian, because the consequences cannot be eliminated without eliminating their causes which lie in the capitalist system itself.

Now the Italian revisionist chiefs themselves accept this open transition to the positions of social-democracy, and indeed they even boast that they have been able to take this "historic" step. At the recent congress of the Italian Communist Party, Ingrao, the former chairman of the Italian Parliament and member of the leadership of the party, declared: "We have much to learn from social-democracy." It is true that the leaders of the Italian revisionist party are still young pupils, compared with the old social-democratic professors, in revising Marxism-Leninism and in the struggle against the revolution. However, they can be considered their equals in their unrestrained zeal to serve the bourgeoisie unconditionally and in a servile manner.

The Italian revisionists can preach night and day, can foam and shout in all the squares and pray in all the churches of Italy, but they will never be able to achieve their reformist dreams of the transition to socialism through parliament, the Constitution and the bourgeois state.

The follow-on from Togliatti's line of "structural reforms", has now become the "historic compromise" with the bourgeoisie, proclaimed by Berlinguer. This slogan, with which the Italian revisionist leadership is now comforting itself, was launched precisely at the time when the Italian capitalist bourgeois state was in a very deep crisis. Through the "historic compromise" the Italian Communist Party offered Christian Democracy, the representative of big capital and the top clerical hierarchy, its co-operation in order to get out of this situation and rescue this state.

Berlinguer's "historic compromise" is the continuation of the old orientations of the Italian Communist Party which immediately after the war sought participation in the bourgeois state, and unification with the socialists of Nenni. It is the continuation of its notorious flirtation with the then chairman of the Christian Democrats, Alcide de Gasperi, it is the hand of friendship of Togliatti-Longo offered to the Catholics. Berlinguer turned this orientation from a tactic into a strategy. The "historic compromise". proposed by the Italian Communist Party is the old liberal policy which has always fitted Italy "comme un gant" like a glove (French in the original).

Berlinguer's "historic compromise" was an effort and a hope born under the influence of events in Chile. When the Italian revisionists saw that the socialist Allende was unable to remain in office without the co-operation of the Christian Democratic Party of Frey, they thought that they, too, could neither come to power nor remain in office without the support and collaboration of the Christian Democrats. Fear of the establishment of fascism with the aid of American imperialism led them to major retreats and concessions in principle and practice, to abandoning even that slightly independent position which they had maintained until that time, when they thought they could win the parliamentary majority and govern jointly with a left coalition. Since that time, in order to avoid the events of Chile in Italy, they accepted to play the secondary and subsidiary role in a coalition, no longer of the left, but of the right, together with the Christian Democrats.

When the Italian Communist Party launched the slogan of the "historic compromise" Italy gave the impression that it was being transformed into a powerful industrialized country. At this period, not only to reaction, but also to the Italian "communists" themselves, the -"historic compromise" seemed like a long-term "strategy". However, the crisis came and fascism was revived, became threatening; the bombs began to burst, people were murdered and disappeared. The "historic compromise" began to become more immediate and to seem "reasonable" even to a part of the bourgeoisie and some Christian Democrats. Aldo Moro was a representative of this current, but he was liquidated, because the Christian Democrats were not and are not yet ready to enter this compromise, regardless of the losses they have suffered in elections.

In the present crisis situation, the Christian Democrats have found some ways and forms of co-ordinating activities with the "communists" on certain questions, at the trade-union level and the party level, but still they are afraid of even an Italian Communist Party "à l'eau de rose".

Will Italian monopoly capital accept the hand which the Italian Communist Party is offering it? It wants the revisionists to support the government in parliament, to vote for its program and laws, to come into the "parliamentary majority", into the "government majority", but not into the government, not into power, not into the centres where political decisions for running the country are taken. The United States of America has expressed its opposition to the presence of the European revisionists in the governments of the NATO member countries. The Italian bourgeoisie is carrying out this order of its patrons.

Whenever parliamentary elections are held the Italian Communist Party is faced with a great dilemma. It does not know how to act in case it wins a greater number of votes than the Christian Democrats. Berlinguer, frightened, adheres to the formula that in any case a broad government should be formed of an the parties of the "democratic arch", which would carry out some reforms, of course, in a "pluralist democracy", and Italy would not leave NATO.

Why does Berlinguer hold out this prospect? Because this is the revisionist line of the Italian Communist Party, which is afraid to. accept the responsibility in the face of the crisis and bankruptcy of the bourgeois system which cannot be cured with reforms. On the other hand, the Italian Communist Party is afraid of the masses of the workers and working people of Italy, who if this party should win, will demand not cooperation with the employers, but the seizure of power. The Italian Communist Party does not want this situation and will never permit it. But neither does the American and the Italian monopoly bourgeoisie want it, and they will do everything in their power to avoid such a situation.

An anti- historic compromise might be made in the beginning if the Italian Communist Party wins on the votes, but this compromise- will be ephemeral, just to calm public opinion, until the screws can be tightened. Capital never hands over its weapons, if they are not taken from it by force. The Italian Communist Party is not of those parties which go into revolution. It is not, and never has been, for the establishment of a Socialist society in Italy, either today, tomorrow, or ever.

The Successors of Proudhon in France

Togliatti and his Italian acolytes long ago carried out the theoretical elaboration of the "roads" to the "new socialist society" which the Eurocommunists advocate. At present, however, it is the French revisionists who are making megalomaniacal "philosophical" speeches, who are trying to make up for lost time and emerge as the banner-bearers of Eurocommunism, as those who interpret and state its laws. This role they have undertaken makes them ridiculous and exposes them even more in the eyes of the working class of their own country and the working people of the whole world. Georges Marchais has become a zealous follower of the theories of Roger Garaudy, who made the law ideologically in the French Communist Party in the time of Thorez and who was expelled from that party later. Garaudy strove to "prove" that in the developed capitalist countries the proletariat allegedly no longer exists, that it has been put on the same level as the working people of the administration, the engineers and technicians who according to Garaudy, are all equally exploited. Now Georges Marchais has taken over this theory as his own and has carried it even further. According to him, everyone, not only the working class, not only all the working people, but even the bourgeoisie, and indeed the army and police, are allegedly for the "socialism" which he preaches. In his discourses he says repeatedly, "We want to advance to socialism, but we are hindered by just 25 families, which comprise the strength of capital in France." "How is it possible that we, all this force, should not be able to have our say and overcome this caste which remains in power?" wonders Marchais. And he provides his own answer, that to advance to socialism France requires only economic and political reforms. He deals with the question of overthrowing capital as something which can be easily achieved, just with a few words, by puffing out one's cheeks and blowing it over. Whatever else it may be, the road which the French revisionists advocate can be anything but it has nothing at all to do with the genuine road to socialism.

Marchais compares and equates the present representatives of state power in France with the French aristocracy before the time of the triumph of the bourgeoisie, two centuries ago, and refers to its leaders as "these princes who govern us". However, the French revisionists are not even in the positions of those people who carried out the French bourgeois revolution of 1789. It is known that this revolution cut off the heads of the king and the queen, and of all those "princes" who governed France at that time. The progressive bourgeoisie of that period, which overthrew the monarchy and feudalism, did not stop at that, but carried the revolution further by cutting the heads of all the leaders of the reactionary factions of the bourgeoisie which were emerging: the Feuillants, the Vergniauds and Dantons. This revolution reached its culmination in the dictatorship of the Jacobins led by Robespierre whom bourgeois reaction sent to the guillotine.

Marchais describes Prince Ponyatowski, Giscard d'Estaign's former minister of the interior, as a Versaillese. However, he forgets the Commune of Paris which fought with arms against Thiers and the Versaillese. "The Communards stormed the heaven," said Marx, while Marchais, with his revisionist theories, wages against the Ponyatowskis "1a guerre en dentelles". (French in the original)

The leaders of the French revisionist party try to explain "the underlying reasons- for the decline of France. The theses for the 23rd Congress of the French Communist Party say: "Since 1976, inflation practically stands at a high level; unemployment has increased about 30 per cent; the buying power of the working people has declined; economic growth has ceased.. . Austerity, unemployment and the super-exploitation of the working people are accompanied with an increase in the capitalists' profits.. . In France, which has a multi-branched industrial economy, whole branches, such as iron-steel, shipbuilding, machine building, textile, footwear, etc., are being ruined today. The number of workers employed in industry has fallen by more than 500,000." These things about the situation in France are known. The problem is not to observe the grave situation of the economy and the workers in France, but how to change this situation.

Marx did not restrict himself merely to making his diagnosis of capitalist society, but also defined the road to overthrow it. The modern revisionists have abandoned this scientific road and only prattle to deceive the party and the working class that they are allegedly concerned about its situation.

The French revisionists also speak about the grave crisis which the capitalist world is experiencing today. "The present crisis of the capitalist countries is an international crisis," says Georges Marchais, "it is in the final analysis a crisis of the system of exploitation, domination and plunder of the workers and the peoples." Very good, but how does he intend to utilize this key moment, which not only France, but the whole world is experiencing? With what kind of struggle? With class struggle, or with discourses? Does he hope that with his speeches he will liquidate the French monopoly bourgeoisie which oppresses the proletariat and working people of France with all that army and police force which Marchais thinks he has on his side? No, he indulges in demagogy which is meant, on the one hand, for the "gallery" and on the other, to tranquilize the employers.

Such revisionists base themselves on the pseudo-theories which they have concocted themselves, according to which the situation has now allegedly matured to the point that there is no longer any need for the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to build the new socialist society. Now, according to them, every class in society, indeed every individual, thinks as a socialist. For them, socialism has become so deeply implanted in the consciousness of man that it has become part and parcel of his consciousness. The Resolution adopted by the 23rd Congress of the French Communist Party says, "Socialism. is already being realized, and moreover, being realized in a great diversity of forms." (Cahiers du communisme, June-July, 1979, p.371)

The purpose of these pseudo-theories is to tell the workers that what Lenin did through revolution and bloodshed has now been achieved, moreover under the savage oppression of capital, without revolution and without violence.

The revisionist leaders of the French Communist Party are trying to convince the workers that in the existing society of France, Europe and the world, man has managed to understand that industrial society is no longer a society based on capitalist profit. This is an utterly false theory, because monopoly capital which prevails in this society demands not merely profits, but maximum profits. Georges Marchais also speaks about the export of capital, but he does not say that this export is a means of barbarous exploitation, not only of the workers of the metropolises, but also of the workers of the backward or developing countries. Today the export of capital has become a fundamental feature of neo-colonialism. Georges Marchais goes so far as to claim that in the existing situation, mimperialism is obliged to seek new international solutions which correspond to the needs of the peoples.. How humanitarian this imperialism has become that acts according to the needs of the peoples! However, imperialism remains imperialism and dees not change with the words and analyses of sophists. By preaching such stuff the French Eurocommunist revisionists are simply assisting imperialism by prettifying it, by spreading and nurturing the illusion that it desires to remake a new world.

In a long tirade, at the 22nd Congress of the FCP, Marchais goes so far as to say that the accusation of allegedly wanting to eliminate the wealthy, levelled against the French revisionists, is without foundation. Considering it a slander, he declares openly that they want private property to exist, want the middle bourgeoisie to exist with all its property and want the landed peasantry to exist; that they want only to nationalize all the common state assets and to have all these administered by the people. Social-democracy also defends these capitalist structures which Marchais defends. In this instance he has the right to be angry with those who accuse him of not being one hundred per cent loyal to the bourgeoisie like his social-democratic brothers.

At the beginning of 1979, Georges Marchais wrote: "We want a social democracy, an economic democracy, a political democracy, and we wish to go further, to a radical transformation of social relations so that we can make it possible for the French people to live in a democratic selfadministrative socialism." "L'Humanité"

Thus, Marchais emerges as a follower of Tito who has implemented in Yugoslavia precisely the anarcho-syndicalist theories of Proudhon and Bakunin on "worker self-administration", which Marx and later Lenin sternly condemned. Now Georges Marchais, under the cloak of "creative" Marxism but never "deigning" to use any of the statements of the great teachers of Marxism, does not dare to defend the anti-Marxist views of Proudhon openly and say that he is his disciple. However, in demanding "self-administration", he simply is changing the terms while he carries on the petty-bourgeois theory of Proudhon.

The leaders of the French Communist Party speak a great deal about wages and raise the problem of the reformist struggle for raising them. The buying power of the workers and their families must be increased by giving more to those who get the least, they say. The measures to minimize the inequalities in incomes as well as in bonuses must be increased. The range of wage differentials must be reduced by raising the lower wages. The revisionists raise these problems because at the present time increased pay is a universal demand of the masses.

Georges Marchais asks in amazement how the phenomenon can exist that workers and the elderly do not have the possibility to live properly, do not have the right to speak on the radio and television.

They must win all these things, he says. "My Party has fought and is fighting to increase wages, to reduce taxes, to ensure that parliament will no longer be as it is at present, with intolerable conditions imposed on its functioning and its prerogatives restricted," says he. While restricting the struggle of the working class simply to day-to-day demands, the French revisionists neglect the teachings of Marx who has explained that in a disguised way, wages hide the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists who appropriate a part of the labour, precisely the unpaid labour of the workers, which creates surplus value for the capitalist. They deliberately say nothing about the idea of Marx who says that the solution to the problem does not lie in raising wages, or in equalizing them, as Proudhon, that classic reformist, believed. Marx said that to restrict the struggle of the working class merely to wages was nothing but an attempt to prolong the existence of wage slavery. The final elimination of the exploitation of wage labourers, says Marx, is the only correct and radical solution to the problem.

The French revisionists leave in obscurity Marx's theory about the social character of production and the capitalist, private character of the means of production in capitalism and the relations of production between classes. They deliberately do not mention the fact that these questions involve the interests of different classes which are constantly in struggle with one another to alter the character of ownership. They deal with these problems in general terms, simply as economic questions, just as the theoreticians of economism did. Their "theory" is not the theory of Marx, but the theory. of deviators who came after Marx. Marchais reduces the mission and the struggle of the proletariat to a struggle for economic rights and not for the overthrow of the power of capital. In the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" Marx issued the call: "Workers of all countries, unite!" But why? To carry out the revolution. While Marchais says: Workers, peasants, bourgeois, police, soldiers and officers, unite. .. to carry reforms! The notion "proletariat" is considered by the French revisionists to be a romantic notion about which to create poetry.

Instead of fighting to ensure that the proletariat is in the forefront of the revolution and in close alliance with the working people of town and countryside, the French revisionists try to unite it in "another historic bloc", in a "union of the left", as the French revisionists call their collaboration with the bourgeois parties, or in the "historic compromise", as the Italian revisionists call such a thing.

The French revisionists promote this theory on alliances on the basis of their view that in the present-day capitalist order, the workers everyday "see that the conditions of life are improving" and that "the proletariat, in the true meaning of the term, is disappearing". This is the thesis of the revisionist Garaudy whom the French revisionists keep outside the party in vain. Whether he is inside or outside it, it is all the same so long as the revisionist leaders of the French Communist Party agree that the bourgeois parties should join them in the dance in order to go to socialism. That is where Garaudy and company vegetate, too. The French revisionist leadership criticized and expelled Garaudy from the party, not proceeding from principled positions, but because he came out prematurely with and raised the banner of "the new line", something which according to rank, was up to Marchais and other leaders more senior than he. This leadership is acting in the same way today with Ellenstein and Althuser who want to proceed more quickly on the revisionist road. However, there is no doubt at all that the leadership of the French Communist Party will quickly come to terms and unite, not only with Garaudy and Ellenstein, but also With Mitterrand, Rocard and all the social-democrats. Whether they will pass first through a "union of the left", a "Joint program" or through some other form is of no importance. Since they have the same views and aims, everything else will come about automatically.

The revisionists in general and the French ones in particular in their theories are opposed to the management of the economy by the state in socialism. Marchais says: "We are fighting today against authoritarianism and suffocating centralism... On the contrary, we want the state enterprises to be autonomous in their administration. . . we want the working people - the workers, the clerks, the engineers and the cadres to take part more and more actively in this administration. We also want the communes, districts and regions to become real centres for decision making and democratic administration."- (Le socialisme pour la France, Paris 1976, pp. 84-85).

These views of revisionists in the French Communist Party are totally in accord with the line of Yugoslav "self-administration" and the federalism of Proudhon who said, "there should be only an industrial democracy, a positive anarchy. Whoever speaks of freedom speaks of federalism, or says nothing, whoever speaks of republic, speaks of federalism, or says nothing, whoever speaks of socialism, speaks of federalism, or says nothing." Hence for Proudhon, the federal principle is applied in the economy and in politics. Perhaps Georges Marchais does not describe these questions in the terms which Proudhon used, but when he speaks of his "democratic socialism- he says, -We want a fine society, with justice, freedom, etc.-, and asks whether it is reasonable that the workers should be suppressed for these simple aspirations and that these aspirations should remain only a dream.

Proudhon demanded democracy and freedom, and according to him, these could be won very easily, could be taken from the hands of the capitalists without any trouble. Marchais does not restrict himself merely to this, but stresses that the workers in bourgeois democracy had greater freedom two hundred years ago, they took part in the affairs of the state and the factories, and finally, he is "indignant" that they do not have these freedoms today. However, he goes no further than indignation. And Marchais goes no further, because he does not want to do battle with the capitalists but wants to co-exist with them in peace. All this is like a fairy tale for the "gogos" [the innocent].

Marchais preaches that even in the conditions of the existence of the capitalist order, by means of reforms it can be brought about that the proletariat takes part in the management of the economy. He dreams and says that within this order there can be a social democracy in which all the workers, without exception, can benefit from wealth, that there can be a political democracy in which every citizen can control, manage, and truly be in the leadership, in other words "self-administration". Is this not completely the theory of Proudhon?

In connection with the democratic socialismhe advocates, Marchais also deals with the question of property and the planned running of the economy. He divides property in this society into state and private Property, but the property which he leaves to private owners is colossal. With this he wants to tell the ruling bourgeoisie, don't accuse us French revisionists in vain, because we respect private property, we are not for the for proletarian revolution, we are no longer for "raisind the fist", but for "holding out the hand of friendship". Marchais speaks about municipal, departmental, regional property. He does not use Proudhon's term "federalism", but it amounts to the same thing. When Marchais says, we fight against authoritarianism and suffocating centralism, he implies the struggle against democratic centralism, contrary to the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. And he stresses, we must build up the plan in a democratic way, ensuring that not only the workers and other working people, but also those who have property will take part.

Marchais knows that the planning of the economy is not a method which can be applied in any social system depending on the good will of those who are in the leadership of the country. Unified central planning becomes possible only where complete social ownership has been established over the means of production, and this is characteristic only of socialism. Private property, in whatever form, has not submitted and never will submit to centralized planning. These are objective truths and they cannot change just because this would please Marchais and other Eurocommunist "theoreticians".

Modern revisionism, not only in France but in all capitalist-revisionist countries, is also attacking Marxism-Leninism in the field of literature and the arts, because it wants to use them as means to poison the minds of people and make them degenerate. The revisionist writers, poets and artists have taken the road of bourgeois degeneration. Today it is difficult to distinguish an Aragon from a Beauvoir and an André Stil from a Sagan. This is not referring to a similarity in style and form, but to an identity in the content and purpose of their works which are inspired by anti-Marxist philosophical trends, in order to emerge on the same course, to fight the revolution, to tame the spirits, to make them "dead spirits", equally degenerate.

All the revisionist "theoretieians" advocate the thesis that Marx and Engels allegedly gave very little attention, if any at all, to aesthetics. The .aesthetes of the French Communist Party go even further. They try to "prove" that Marx was allegedly not interested at all in art or did not understand it. Contrary to the facts, they allege that Marx "was unable to understand what it was that gave art an everlasting value irrespective of the historical moments, and was unable to understand how Greek art, linked with the infrastructure of that time, continues to arouse emotions". Such a distortion of Marx is not done without a purpose.

On the one hand, they want to create the impression that there is no Marxist opinion about art and that allegedly the revisionists are elaborating this, and, on the other hand, they are trying to deny the class character of art and to start discussion about whether art "is part of the superstructure or the structure, whether or not it is an ideology, whether or not it is linked with the class and the revolution, to what degree and to what point", etc.

A series of "theoreticians" of the French Communist Party have had different opinions about literature and art at different periods, and this has brought about confusion and chaos in the ranks of the party and its militants and vacillations in the creative literary and artistic work of communist writers and artists. At one period, the French Communist Party fought for that creative work which was based on the people's art, on revolutionary art, and later, on socialist realism. At a later stage anti-Marxist trends penetrated the creative work of communist artists.

With its decadent art, the bourgeoisie exerted an influence not only on the rank-and-file members of the communist party, but also on the cadres engaged in agitation and propaganda. Influengped by this art, these elements propounded theories, gave distorted and incorrect interpreatiols of Lenin, who pointed out that the revolution creates its own art and that the communists do not reject the progressive heritage of the people from the past. These individuals also interpreted in bourgeois and revisionist ways the statements of Lenin, Stalin and Zhdanov, that in socialist society the writers and artists should be free in their creative work, should have personal initiative, but always be realist and create works which truly serve the revolution and socialism.

Certain pseudo-Marxist aesthetes went so far as to defend the thesis that Lenin had allegedly advocated absolute freedom in creative work, The anti-Marxist philosopher Garaudy proclaimed "unlimited realism". Others defend the thesis that when ideology and the party prevail in literature and art, there is no freedom and therefore, no creative work.

What else could one expect in the field of aesthetics, when such people as Andr6 Gide, Malraux or Paul Nizan had influence in the French Communist Party and posed as communists. Together with Aragon, they took part in the First Congress of the Soviet writers in Moscow, but in the end betrayed and became open anti-communists. Such "theoreticians" in France, inside and outside the Communist Party, could have no idea of the value of art based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. The purpose of these elements was to separate art and literature from politics and ideology, of course, from proletarian politics and the Marxist ideology. They struggled to clear the way for the spread of bourgeois ideology and politics, for the development of decadent art, psychoanalist, sexual, crime and pornographic novels, so that the markets, book-shops, show-cases, theatres and cinemas would be filled with such works.

Let us take Picasso. He was a member of the French Communist Party till he died, but he never became a Marxist. This is reflected in his works, while the French Communist Party boasted of him and the only criticism which they made of him was for a scrawl which was called "Portrait of Stalin", and which his friend and comrade Aragon published in the newspaper "Les lettres françaises" of which he was director.

Socialist realism was not supported by th-French Communist Party strongly and with conviction. Some of the writers, philosophers and critics who were party members, such as Marguerite Daras and Claude Roys, deserted. After Khrushchev's slanders against Stalin, the French Communist Party was shaken and such intellectuals were the first to capitulate. It launched the slogan of "complete freedom in art and culture", and such former defenders of socialist realism as Aragon, André Stil, and André Wurmser not only changed their coats but even sold their souls and their hides to revisionism. Thus the French pseudo-communist literary figures began to fall in love with the Lukacses, the Kafkas and the Sartres. Critical discussions began throughout the whole party on the platform which the bourgeoisie desired, such as, "what is the relation between literature and ideology?", "what form should be accepted in art, 'sectarianism in interpretation' or 'opportunist eclecticism'?". Speaking as an "authority", Roland Leroys pronounced the conclusion that, "there cannot be a specific form of proletarian art or art which is completely revolutionary".

Wallowing in opportunism and revisionism, the French Communist Party allowed these antirevolutionary theses to ooze like stagnant waters and become predominant amongst its creative artists.

As a conclusion, we can say that the line of the French Communist Party in literature and art has had its ups and downs. But it has always been wobbly. Its vacillation has been caused by its "orthodoxy" in the preservation of principles, on the one hand, and by the direct and indirect influence of bourgeois ideology in literature and art amongst its intellectuals, on the other hand.

In general, the intellectuals who worked in the field of artistic creativeness have played a role more negative than positive for the French Communist Party. Irrespective of their class origin, they completed their schooling and sought "fame". The party never influenced and guided them with the proletarian ideology and culture. To these intellectuals of the party it was their free, subjective, individual, creative work, and never the true interests of the proletariat and the revolution, that. was important. These elements lived and worked far removed from the working class and isolated from it. For them, the class was the "economy", while the intellectuals were the "godhead" that had to guide the "economic factor". The intellectuals of the French party had been raised and inspired in the Bohemia of Montparnasse, in "closerie des Lilas" "Pavillon de Flore", "Bateau-Lavoir" and in other clubs in which all kinds of decadent trends came together, trends from which emerged the Aragons, the Picassos, the Elsa Triolets and many other friends of the Lazareffs, the Tristan Zaras, the dadaists, cubists, and a thousand and one decadent schools of literature and art. This tradition and this road continued uninterruptedly within the French Communist Party, until it arrived at its 22nd Congress at which the revisionist Georges Marchais flaunted all the anti-Marxist corruption which had long been festering in the French Communist Party.

At this congress, the French revisionists came out officially against the leading role of the party of the working class in the field of art and against the method of socialist realism. Undef the pretext of the struggle against "uniformity" they claimed that socialist culture should be open to all currents, to all kinds of experiments and creations.

In the book which contains his report to the 22nd Congress, the pseudo-Marxist Georges Marchais published a poem by Aragon taken from his book "Elsa's Madman". Elsa was Aragon's wife. Here is what Aragon, a member of the Central Committee of the French Communist Party, says in this verse: "Will there always be fighting and feuds/ Regal behaviour and bowed heads! Children born of mothers unwanted/Wheat destroyed by the locusts?/ Will there always be prisons and torture/ Always massacres in the name of idols (the idols are Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin)/ A mantel of words cast over the corpses/ A gag in the mouth and nailed hands?/ But a day will come with orange colours..." This is Aragon's way of saying that he and his party have abandoned the red colour, communism.

In this way, the French revisionists threw overboard the principles of the immortal theory of Marxism-Leninism. Now their party is floundering in a revisionism which is a mixture of the old utopian theories of Bernstein, Proudhon, Kautsky, and anarchism. Uniting with the ideology of other bourgeois parties, it is fighting to create the idea in France and elsewhere that Marxism has become obsolete, and Eurocommunism must come to the fore instead.

In 1968 the students in Paris clashed with "the forces of law and order" The Trotskyites, Sartre, the theoretician of existentialism, Sirnone de Beauvoir, Cohn-Bendit and others seized on to these clashes to give them an anarchist colour.

And in fact they took place in great disorder. The French Communist Party did not participate. Why did it not participate? Was it that in principle it was opposed to anarchism? I think this is not the reason. The reason is that it did not want to unite with the student youth, which was attacking the De Gaulle government. In fact, it was this movement which forced De Gaulle to hold the referendum, and when he did not win in the way he wanted, he retired to Colombay-Les-Deux-Eglises, where he died.

The French Communist Party stopped the working class from going into action and taking over the leadership of the uprising. The party had the strength to ensure that the flames were spread throughout France, and if not to seize power, at least to shake the power of "princes", or the power of "barons", as they called it at that time. It did not do this, because it was for that road and for those methods which the petty-bourgeois revisionist Georges Marchais advocates.

The French Communist Party has great hopes in a "coalition of the left", which it tried to create with the socialist party of Mitterrand in the elections for the president of France and in the parliamentary elections. The French Communist Party and the French Socialist Party reached a certain agreement, but this was temporary. Not only did they not win in the voting, but after the elections and the triumph of Giscard d'Estaign, it was seen that the love between the communists and the socialists was cooling, and indeed they began to attack one another. Neither the big bourgeoisie, nor its parties, nor even the Socialist Party of Mitterrand will ever want a communist party, even one of an orange colour, such as Aragon describes it, to take part in the government of France. This did not take place with the Popular Front, when Uon Blum was at the head of the Socialist Party, is not taking place today, when Mitterrand is at the head of the Socialist Party, and neither will it take place when someone else emerges at the head of it.

The interests of the French capitalist bourgeoisie and of the two hundred families, which Marchais has reduced to 25 in order to give the impression that today they are dealing with a small reactionary force, are closely linked together to protect their privileges, to protect their great possessions and capital, to increase their profits at the expense of the proletariat and all the working people of France. Of course, the socialists have contradictions with the other parties of the bourgeoisie, but when it comes to the issue that the bourgeois power is threatened by the proletariat, then unity is achieved, not between the communists and the socialists, however, but between the socialists and the bourgeoisie. This is occurring in Italy with the Socialist Party which is uniting with the Christian Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Social-Democratic Party, and is not making a common front even with Togliatti's "communists".

However, assuming for a moment that a cartel of the "left" in France could manage to take Power, for the French communists, even with their orange colour, this would be ephemeral and would change nothing. Why is this? Because this is what happened when De Gaulle, in order to get out of his difficulties, accepted a few communists headed by Thorez in the government, and threw them out again after he had used them as firemen. And when did he do this? He did this at a time when the French Communist Party had emerged from the Second World War with no small authority, as the only party which had fought the occupier consistently. Therefore, Marchais' pretentions that he "is going to take power and build socialism" now, with the Eurocommunist strategy, with the, revisionist ideology of Proudhon and Bernstein, will never be realized. The most that the heads of the French Communist Party might achieve is to; become share-holders in plundering the sweat and' toil of the French proletariat and people, to strengthen the fire brigades of the counter-revolution, but nothing more.

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