French Communist Party

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Parti communiste français




Leader	Marie-George Buffet (General Secretary)

Founded	1920 (SFIC) 1921 (PCF)
Headquarters	2, place du colonel Fabien 75019 Paris

Political Ideology	Communism, Marxism, Eurocommunism
European Affiliation	European Left
International Affiliation	unknown
Colours	Red, Yellow

2007 Presidential candidate	Marie-George Buffet

Website	www.pcf.fr

See also	Constitution of France France Politics French Parliament French Government French President Political parties Elections

The French Communist Party (French: Parti communiste français or PCF) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. Although its electoral support has greatly declined since 1980, it remains the largest party in France advocating communist views, and retains a large membership (behind only the UMP and the PS) and considerable influence in French politics. It is a member of the European Left group. Since its participation in François Mitterrand's government, however, it is sometimes considered by the far left as a social-democrat party, especially since Robert Hue's "mutation". It supports alter-globalization movements although it may sometimes also criticize them (in particular their lack of organization).

1 History
2 Publications
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Foundation

The PCF was founded in 1920 by those in the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) who supported the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and opposed the First World War. Tensions within the Socialist Party had emerged in 1914 with the start of the First World War, which saw the majority of the SFIO take what left-wing socialists called a "social-chauvinist" line in support of the French war effort. At the Tours congress of the SFIO in 1920, the left-wing faction (Boris Souvarine, Fernand Loriot) and the center faction (Ludovic Frossard, Marcel Cachin) had accepted to join the Third International, obtained 3/4 of the votes and split away to form the SFIC (Section Française de l'Internationale Communiste). They took with themselves the party paper L'Humanité, founded by Jean Jaurès in 1904, with them, which remained tied to the party until the 1990s. The newly created party, later renamed Parti Communiste Français (PCF), was three times larger than the SFIO (120 000 members). Ho Chi Minh, who would create the Viet Minh in 1941 and then declare the independence of Vietnam, was one of the founding members.

[edit] The 1920s and early 1930s

Further information: French Third Republic, France in the twentieth century, and Cartel des gauches

Counter exhibition to the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris (during which human beings were displayed in cages), organized by the PCF. Titled Truth on the Colonies, the first section was dedicated to abuses committed during the colonial conquests, and quoted Albert Londres and André Gide's criticisms of forced labour while the second one made an compared the of the Soviets policy on nationalities compared to 'imperialist colonialism'.

Although at first the PCF rivalled the SFIO for leadership of the French socialist movement, but many members were expelled from the party (including Boris Souvarine), and within a few years its support declined, and for most of the 1920s it was a small and isolated party. Its first elected deputies were opposed to the Cartel des gauches ("Left-wing coalition") formed by the SFIO and the Radical-Socialists. The first Cartel governed from 1924 to 1926.

The Communist Party attracted various intellectuals and artists in the 1920s, including André Breton, the leader of the surrealist movement, Henri Lefebvre (who would be expelled in 1958), Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, etc.

In the late 1920s the policies of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, under which the PCF denounced the SFIO as "social fascists" and refused any co-operation, kept the left weak and divided. Like all Comintern parties, the PCF underwent a process of "Stalinisation" in which a pro-Stalin leadership under Maurice Thorez was installed in 1930 and all internal dissent banned.

The PCF was the main organizator of a counter-exhibition to the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris, called "The Truth on the Colonies". In the first section, it recalled Albert Londres and André Gide's critics of forced labour in the colonies and others crimes of the New Imperialism period; in the second section, it opposed "imperialist colonialism" to "the Soviets' policy on nationalities".

The second Cartel des gauches was elected in 1932. This time, although the PCF didn't take part in the coalition, it did support the government without participating in it (soutien sans participation), in the same way that before World War I (1914-18) the socialists had supported the Republicans and the Radicals' governments without participating. This second Cartel fell following the far-right 6 February 1934 riots, which forced president of the Council Edouard Daladier to pass on the power to conservative Gaston Doumergue. Following this crisis, the PCF, as the whole of the socialist movement, feared that a fascist conspiracy had almost succeeded. Furthermore, Adolf Hitler's access to power in 1933 and the destruction of the German Communist Party (KDP) following the 27 February 1933 Reichstag fire and Stalin's new "popular front" policy led the PCF to get closer to the SFIO. Thus, the Popular Front was prepared, and got elected in 1936.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression, which affected France in 1931, caused much anxiety and disturbance, as in other countries. As economic liberalism failed, new solutions were being looked for. The technocracy ideas were born during this time (Groupe X-Crise), as well as autarky and corporativism in the fascism movement, which advocated union of workers' and employers. Some socialist members became attracted to these new ideas, among whom Jacques Doriot. A member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern from 1922 on, and from 1923 on Secretary of the French Federation of Young Communists, later elected to the French Chamber of Deputies, he came to advocate an alliance between the Communists and Fascists with whom Doriot sympathized on a number of issues. Doriot was then expelled in 1934, and with his followers, he soon formed the Parti Populaire Français, which would be one of the most collaborationist party during Vichy.

[edit] The Popular Front

Main article: Popular Front (France)

During the 1930s the PCF grew rapidly in size and influence, its growth fuelled by the popularity of the Comintern's Popular Front strategy, which allowed an alliance with the SFIO and the Radicals to fight against fascism. The Popular Front won the 1936 elections, and Léon Blum formed a Socialist-Radical government. The PCF supported this government but did not join it. The Popular Front government soon collapsed under the strain of domestic (financial problems, including inflation) and foreign policy issues (the radicals were against an intervention in the Spanish Civil War while the socialists and communists were in favour), and was replaced by Edouard Daladier's government.

[edit] World War II

Further information: World War II and Vichy France

After the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the PCF was declared a proscribed organisation by Edouard Daladier's government. The PCF pursued an anti-war course during the early part of the Second World War. Thorez deserted from the French Army and fled to the Soviet Union. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the PCF was the first to organize the Resistance, which was easier for it since it had been used to clandestinity. It thus regained credibility as an anti-fascist force. By 1944 the PCF had reached the height of its influence, controlling large areas of the country through the Resistance units under its command. Some in the PCF wanted to launch a revolution as the Germans withdrew from the country, but the leadership, acting on Stalin's instructions, opposed this and adopted a policy of co-operating with the Allied powers and advocating a new Popular Front government. Many well-known figures joined the party during the war, including Pablo Picasso, who joined the PCF in 1944.

[edit] The liberation of France and the Fourth Republic (1947-58)

Further information: French Fourth Republic and France in the twentieth century

With the liberation of France in 1944, the PCF, along with other resistance groups, entered the government of Charles de Gaulle. As in Italy, the communists were at that time very popular and a strong political force. Nicknamed the "party of the 75 000 executed people" (le parti des 75 000 fusillés) because of its important role during the Resistance, it was the first party in votes, ahead the SFIO and the Christian-democrat People's Republican Movement (MRP). The Radical-Socialist Party was too discredited because of its role during the 1930s. After governing a while, de Gaulle, who despised what he called the "parties' system" (le système des partis) quit the power and wasn't to return until the May 1958 crisis, in the midst of turmoils caused by the Algerian War (1954-62).

However, as in Italy, the PCF was forced to quit Paul Ramadier's government in May 1947 because of the Cold War. While the Italian Communist Party (PCI) would never get back to power, despite the historic compromise attempt in the 1970s, the PCF would also be isolated until François Mitterrand's electoral victory in 1981. A strong political force, the PCF remained nevertheless alone due to persistent anti-communism. It thus began to pursue a more militant policy, alienating it from the SFIO and allowing the right-wing parties to stay in power.

During the 1950s, the PCF critically supported French imperialism during the Indochina War (1947-54) and the Algerian War (1954-62), although many French communists also worked against colonialism. For hence, Jean-Paul Sartre, a "comrade" of the Communist party, actively supported the National Liberation Front (FLN) (the porteurs de valises networks, in which Henri Curiel took part). Long debates took place on the role of conscription. While this stance by the PCF may have helped it retain widespread popularity in metropolitan France, it lost it credibility on the radical left. During his scholarship to study radio engineering in Paris (from 1949 to 1953), Pol Pot, as many other colonial elites educated in France (Ho Chi Minh in 1920), joined the French Communist Party.

The second half of the 1950s was also marked by some dissatisfaction with the pro-Moscow line continuously pursued by party leaders. However, no definitive eurocommunist aspirations developed at the time. A major split occurred as maoists left during the late 1950s. Some moderate communist intellectuals, such as historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, disillusioned with the actual policies of the USSR, left the party after the violent suppression of 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

[edit] The 1960s and '70s

Further information: French Fifth Republic and France in the twentieth century

The French Communist Party headquarters in Place du Colonel Fabien in Paris, was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and constructed between 1967 and 1972.

In 1958, the PCF was the only big party which opposed to De Gaulle's come back and to the Fifth Republic. Little by little, it was joined in oppososition by the center and center-left parties. It advocated the left-wing union against De Gaulle. Waldeck Rochet became PCF leader after Thorez's death in 1964.

For the 1965 presidential election, thinking a Communist candidate could not obtain a good result, it supported the candidacy of François Mitterrand. Then, it did an electoral agreement with the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left, in view to the 1967 legislative election.

In May 1968 widespread student riots and strikes broke out in France. The PCF supported the general strike but opposed the revolutionary student movement, which was dominated by Trotskyists, Maoists and Anarchists and the so-called "new social movements" (including ecologists, gays movements, prisoners' movement — see Michel Foucault, etc.). The PCF also alienated many on the left by supporting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

Nevertheless, the PCF benefited from the left-wing mood of the period, and from the collapse of the socialists. Due to Waldeck Rochet's ill health, Jacques Duclos was the candidate at the 1969 presidential election. Duclos polled 21% of the vote, completely eclipsing the SFIO whom, represented by Gaston Defferre, arrived third at the first turn. For the second round, the PCF refused to distinguish between Gaullist Georges Pompidou and Centerist Alain Poher, considering that was "six of one and half a dozen of the other" (in French: blanc bonnet ou bonnet blanc').

In 1970, Roger Garaudy, a member of the Central Committee of the PCF from 1945 on, was expelled from the party for his revisionist tendencies, being criticised for his tentative to reconcile Marxism with Roman Catholicism. Starting in 1982, Garaudy emerged as a major Holocaust denier and was effectively condemned in 1998.

In 1972 Waldeck Rochet was succeeded by Georges Marchais, who had effectively controlled the party since 1970. Marchais began a moderate liberalisation of the party's policies and internal life, although dissident members, particularly intellectuals, continued to be expelled. The PCF entered an alliance with Mitterrand's new Socialist Party (PS). They signed a Common Programme in view to the 1973 legislative election. The difference between the two parties decreased: the PCF had taken 21.5% of the vote as against 19% for the PS.^[1]

Nominally the French communists supported Mitterrand's candidacy in 1974 presidential election, but the Soviet ambassador to Paris and the director of L'Humanité did not hide their satisfaction with Mitterrand's defeat. According to Jean Lacouture, Raymond Aron and François Mitterrand himself, the Soviet government and the French communist leaders had done everything in order to prevent Mitterrand from being elected: they regarded him as too anti-communist and too skilful in his strategy of rebalancing the Left on account of PCF.

During Mitterrand's term as PS first secretary, the socialists re-emerged as the principal party of the left. Indeed, Marchais asked to update the Common Programme, but the negociations failed. The PS accused Marchais to be responsible of the division of the left and of its defeat at the 1978 legislative election. For the first time since 1936, the PCF lost its place of "first left-wing party", from the benefit of the Socialists.

At the 22nd party congress in February 1976, reeling from fallout caused by the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, the PCF abandoned the reference to and the dictatorship of the proletariat;^[2] it began to follow a line closer to that of the Italian Communist Party's eurocommunism. However, this was only a relative change of direction, as the PCF globally remained loyal to Moscow, and in 1979, Georges Marchais supported the invasion of Afghanistan. It judged the assessment of the Soviet and East-European Communist governments was "fairly positive".

Marchais was candidate at the 1981 presidential election. During the campaign, he criticized the "right-wing drift" of the PS. But some Communist voters, wanting the left-wing union in order to win after 23 years in opposition, chosen Mitterrand. In this, the PS leader obtained 25% against 15% for Marchais. For the second round, the PCF called to vote Mitterrand, who was elected President of France.

[edit] Decline

Further information: French Fifth Republic and France in the twentieth century

Under Mitterrand the PCF held ministerial office for the first time since 1947, but this had the effect of locking the PCF into Mitterrand's reformist agenda, and the PCF's more moderate supporters drained away to the PS.

While the PCF ministers resigned in 1984, in order to protest against the change of economic policy, the party's electoral decline accelerated. André Lajoinie obtained 6.7% at the 1988 presidential election. From 1988 to 1993, the PCF supported the Socialists governments in function of the themes.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a crisis in the PCF, but it did not follow the example of some other European communist parties of dissolving itself or changing its name. In 1994 Marchais retired and was succeeded by Robert Hue. Under Hue the party embarked on a process called la mutation. La mutation, which included the thorough reorganization of party structure and to move away from Leninist dogmas, was intended to vitalize the stagnant left and to attract non-affiliated leftists to join the party. But in effect it only resulted in increasing the pace of the decline of the party. Under Lionel Jospin, the PCF again held ministerial offices from 1997 to 2002 (Jean-Claude Gayssot as Minister of Transportation, etc.). The party became riddled with internal conflict, as many sectors opposed la mutation and the policy of co-governing with the Socialists.

During a street protest in 2005 in Paris

Hue only received 3.4% of the votes in the 2002 presidential elections. For the first time, the PCF candidate obtained less votes than the Trotskyst representings (Arlette Laguiller and Olivier Besancenot). At the 2002 legislative elections, the PCF arrived fourth, polling 4.8% of the vote (the same as the center-right UDF) and won 21 seats (out of 567). Chirac's UMP came in first, followed by the Socialist Party, the National Front, UDF, PCF, the Greens, and then the trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and Lutte Ouvrière. Eventually Robert Hue had to resign, and in 2002 Marie-George Buffet took over the leadership of the party. Under Buffet the party embarked on a process of reconstruction, reversing some of the moves done during la mutation.

On proposed European constitution issue, French communists fought alongside extreme left-wing groups, half of the Socialist Party, the Greens, and right wing eurosceptics for 'no'. The victory of the 'No' in the 2005 French plebiscite on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE), along with the campaign against the Bolkestein directive, served as a major boost for the party. Under the referendum campaign the party was vitalized, with a resurgence of the work in the party cells. The PCF's retains some strength in the Paris suburbs, in the industrial areas around Lille, and in some areas of the south such as Marseille.

In 2005, the social conflict at the SNCM in Marseilles, then the 4 October 2005 demonstration against the New Employment Contract (CNE) marked the opposition to Dominique de Villepin's right-wing government, whom shared his authority with Nicolas Sarkozy as Ministry of Interior, leader of the UMP right-wing party, and probable contender for the 2007 presidential election. Marie-George Buffet also heavily criticized the government's response to the riots in autumn, speaking of a deliberate "strategy of tension" employed by Sarkozy whom called the youth from the housing project "scum" (racaille) which needed to be clean-up with a "Kärcher" high pressure cleaner. While most of the Socialist deputies voted for the instauration of the state of emergency during the riots, which lasted until January 2006, the PCF, along with the Greens, opposed itself to it.

2006 was marked by the protests against the First Employment Contract, which finally forced president Chirac to scrap plans for the controversial law aimed at creating a more flexible labour law.

In view to the 2007 presidential election, Buffet wanted, in vain, her candidacy was supported by the left-wing non-formal groups who had led campaign for the "no" in the EU referendum.

[edit] Publications

The PCF publishes the following:

Economie et Politique homepage
L'Humanité homepage
Communistes (Communists)
Info Hebdo (Fortnightly Information)
Economie et Politique (Economics and Politics)

Traditionally, it was also the owner of the French daily L'Humanité (Humanity), founded by Jean Jaures. Although the newspaper is now independent, it remains close to the PCF. The paper is sustained by the annual Fête de L'Humanité festival, held in La Courneuve, a working class suburb of Paris.

During the 1970s, the PCF registered success with the children's magazine it founded, Pif gadget.