time from outside the party.
Semprun is best recent PCE Congress.
Revolutionary Communist League. Last week we reprinted an article by Louis Althusser on the crisis in the French Communist Party. On this page are two further contributions to the debate — this JORGE SEMPRUN writes on the report presented by general secretary Georges Marchais to the recent Central Committee, Semprun is a former leader of the Spanish Communist Party ( PCE), expelled in 1965 after he and Fernando Claudin had presented a devastating attack on the party's Stalinist practice.
known 8S An anthor screenwriter. His films include Z and L'Aveu. He was the only journalist to be refused press credentials at the The other contribution is from ALAIN KRIVINE, editor of Rouge, the daily paper of the Trotskyist Three times in little more and than twenty Central Committee of the French Communist Party [PCF] has helped to block the possibility of opening and renewal inside the Communisi movement.
First the Union — cheoretical relationship Then in 1968, movement of May Tre gosstosaly years the political begemony in France.
capitalist Crechoslovakia.
RETROGRADE Prague was only 1956 when Khrusheher's secret report to LOTEECSS Communist Party of the Soviet in spite oi its gross deficiencios obiectively opened the way Eu destalitisation, to the achieve Ment o1 a new autonomy and a the when the opened up • LITOLLIdI undoubtedly complex proocss democratic rupture → of an overthrow of and On this occasion the attitude of the PCF leadership not only consolidated the power of the cqually outlawed any concrete support to the democratic and socialist To 'reject" or :disapprove of the Russian intervention in an empty the strategy of the PCF had the same retrograde significance as the arnied diplomacy of the Today, for the thind time, by the given Georges Marchais, the PC.F has "to confirmed its arrogant blindness, its burcaucratic complacency. its historic choice of a ,fragmen and ILUSUEAC HIS Or HI The bistorians will not fail And hove the lasting nature of its political choice is revealed in a conrinuity of "Certain people', said Thorez 14:h have called for permanent discussión withoul exception: asii we were ID ENE THTLY Qu W questIOEl plaving305 a club, a debating school, anc not a vanguard detachment o the working class, a party of I action which is preparing itself There is certainly room for Lhe Jevel establish patro anything else"
chic Die base! How a PCF pamphlet was consored: the left-hand page in the spread on democratie rights at the top shows Plerre Juquin, ofr behall of the PCF, greeting Soviet dissident Leonid Plyushch. But hard-line Stalinists in the apparatus protested, and so a million copies were pulped! The final version (below| played saia with a picture of the party's 22nd Congress instead.
Irony on these 'revolutionary sions tasks', for which the party is so constantly preparing iscit thal it lends to forget about theai once they are realisable.
But the key thing to note is cbe paint at which Marchais wooden language CNCNIO with that of Thorez from more wan Twenty seara dao nism"
"It is clear' says the presen General Secretary of the PCF ense, that permanent discu sion amounts in the end lo a CvCr. paralysis of decision making action. democratic party, we are not a discussion club..
Marchais poes ONLC
better: *The Connonist Part is a revolutionar party, vanguard party, and there are tendencies towards a cult of spontaneity, anarcbist tenden cies 1o which we cannot siek withour renouncing the ver existence of a party capabile of vanguard role. (Those who specialise in such signs will note in passing chis kind of tautological reasoning: we are a vanguard party and that is why we must play vanguard rolet)
Thus, and contrary to the strategy sketched out in the articles by Louis Althasser (ser last wock's Socialis Challenge) - and which are worth a more extended analysis for their radical novelty: the philosopher finally understands that just tea theondical prnbien today is tisar of the Communist Party's practice, that it is at this that i is necese tf Line demarcatien" and prooved 1o "epistemological break PCF leadersbir has chosen to shut inself up i the fortress and constantly to preserve tright Thinking, But could one expect Did hot the strateey of the PCF Icad inevitabls to this conclusion, ro this freering of possible dialectic hetwcen the leaders and the militants, the party and the masses, the organisation and society?
Did it not include already this reproduction of the capitalis: division of labour between ll knoledge of the (small time leaders and the daily practice of thar decisions or the PCF Contral that ss n -thr Committee will have repercusNEW JOURNALS THE Paris weekly Nouvel Ohservafeur tenorts olans to Inunch a nes left-wing weekly discussion TOULLE Septentber. This would involve Jean Elleinstein and other PCI intelioctuals, the CERES wing Onitte Socialist Party st) the Socinlist Party; and Revolutionary Comunist League taki on tae tar beEt the editorial team of' the journa ouase-reCu SE DUSSE aiso Regis Debray and Nicos serious ones only an the evolution of the left in France, but also in Southern Europe; and more concretely, on the Communist parties ot this region.
In fact, the choice made by IDC TLT TOUS TOC KOCE TO EOC Grin for *EuroconcuUndoubredly the latter har not yet gone beyond the stagt of rather liazy formulations, of declarations or intent. How constituted the theoretical project whose real practice remained lo b worked out of a new road avoiding the impasses of Social Democracy as well as chose of To survive as a practice of the masses, rosting ibeit in their rcal movemenl, communism', had to pose clearly the historic problem of the revolation in the West problem which if bas rather tended to dodge up to now The blow delivered by the PCF will undoubtedly check the present novement. One can foresee that it will turn in on Itself and become crystailised into ser actitudes of "right" and "left* - both prohably isolated from the real social terrain of the class struggle.
But, on the other hand, the leading group of the PCF has clarified the situaticin, dispelling a number of illasions and possible 'wrong readings' of thé Communist srategy in Western Europe.
Beneath the understandable tacticul (and bistorical -SInd cultural) ditferences, which run the THEINS "histonic compromise to the breaking of the Union of the Lett in France. by way of the •democratic concentration' of the Spanish Communist Party, thore exists In effect a common basis for the policy of all these Communise TAnTES TINE CEHE HaTECHauL!
of the salus guo, thai of the rejection end. existing socia and political hegemony Faituful to an already long tradition, the PCF has hIst rentioded us once more that the that the rant o the transformation society is not its objcctive. Thar is its message for those whh know how to listen to it