FRANCE The spectacular decline of the
French Communist Party In July 1984, when the government of Laurent Fabius was formed, the French Communist Party (PCF) left the government in which it had participated since 1981 in the successive cabinets headed by Pierre Mauroy. Thus ended a stage in the party's history that saw a deepening of the crisis that affected every aspect of its policy and functioning. The PCF's electoral decline reached an unprecedented low. It was on the basis of an electoral defeat that the PCF accepted ministerial responsibilities in the first place, since in the June 1981 legislative elections, it got only 15% of the vote, as against 38% for the Socialist Party (PS).
ization" initiated at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. To back up this statement, the PC's publishing house has recently published for the first time Khrushchev's report to the Twentieth Congress, the speeches of the 1956 leadership of the PCF (Duclos, Thorez, Frachon), and even a collection of texts by Leon Trotsky.
The second historic error, according to the PCF leadership, was to give priority for 25 years to unity with the Socialist Party alone, unity conceived of as a summit agreement between the two parties. The PS was always portrayed as capable of wanting to break with capitalism, which gave it a legitimacy that it was able to use to the detriment of the PCF.
The PCF always misses what is essential. In fact, the crisis cannot be explained as the result of these errors. It is the PCF itself that served as the stepladder for Mitterrand, when the latter was chosen as the single candidate of the left in the 1965 presidential elections. A politician who participated in every cabinet under the Fourth Republic, a figure in small formations representing the enlightened bourgeoisie, Mitterrand was backed by the PCF precisely to prevent a leader of the SFIO (French Section of the Workers International, the precursor of the PS) from becoming the common candidate of the left.
While the Seventeenth Congress of the PCF in 1964 had explicitly mandated the leadership to draw up a Common Program with the PS, the party leaders preferred to carry out a short-sighted operation, accepting Mitterrand as the candidate for the 1965 presidential elections. This enabled Mitterrand to serve as a shield for a Social Democracy discredited by its active participation in the Algeria war. At the time, the line of the PCF was that of a "united front among the parties that claim to represent the working class and unity of all republicans." (3) The goal was to eliminate the system of personal power by De Gaulle. The alliance with Mitterrand, in violation of the decisions of the congress, was sealed on the basis of a "feeling" against the Fifth Republic, against presidential power.
It was the PCF that took on the bulk of the campaign for the common candidate, who had no activist forces of his own. Mitterrand managed to force De Gaulle into a second-round vote. The PCF invested in this campaign the prestige it derived from having opposed the general's constitutional coup d'etat in
These notes have just been published in the book Kremlin-PCF, brought out by the Olivier Orban publishing house. The author named on the title page is "Jean Fabien" a collective pseudonym for the group of PCF members responsible for the work. 2. Nouvel Observateur, July 18, 1984.
. Seventeenth Congress of the PCF: dor ument cited in Cahiers du communisme June-July 1964.
International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
Jean LANTIER
Three years later, on June 17, 1984, at the time of the elections for the European parliament, the fascistic organization, the National Front (FN) did almost as well as the PCF, both groups getting about 11% of the vote. But there is an aspect that is graver still in the crisis in the PCF's relationship with the working class. The plant cells, which have always been a key element of the base of the party are presently experiencing a decline in their public activity, their internal life, and their mass influence. And all these factors reduce the capacities of the PCF to organize and control the workers.
The crisis of the apparatus and the central leadership of the party is no less acute. Traditionally, the PCF has had an apparatus of 20,000 to 30,000 full-timers, which has been the backbone of the party and an effective instrument for squashing any tendency toward debate, or the emergence of any organized opposition. Today this apparatus has come under the blows of the crisis that is hitting the party. It is suffering first of all from a loss of posts and financial resources owing to the decline in the number of city governments held by the party, the number of party members, and the number of those who vote for its candidates.
Secondly, the apparatus is suffering from a loss of political effectiveness, because it is no longer able to decisively quash any public expression of opposition to the leadership. This was illustrated spectacularly by the unauthorized publication of the notes of Jean Kanapa (a member of the Political Bureau who died in 1978 and who had been the special secretary of former secretary general Waldeck-Rochet) dealing with the PCF's relations with Brezhnev and Dubcek during the Prague Spring in 1968. In fact, the group that carried out this operation was made up of PCF members. (1)
During the last plenum of the party Central Committee a previously un-
8 heard-of phenomenon occurred. In the vote on the draft resolution for the Twenty-Fifth Congress, scheduled for February 1985, there were six abstentions. Those who abstained included Pierre Juquin, a member of the Political Bureau and official spokesman of the party; Marcel Rigout, who was minister of training in the three Mauroy governments; and Felix Damette, a former specialist in revised Marxism assigned to helping the leadership with its pseudoscientific political innovations.
Naturally, the PCF's electoral setbacks and its loss of influence in all areas deprive the leadership around Georges Marchais, the incumbent general secretary of the authority necessary to deal with the numerous expressions of opposition in the party. In the discussions going on in the PCF, it is the very future of the party that is at stake: its existence as a mass party is in the melting pot. Two prominent Communist intellectuals, Daniel Karlin and Tony Laine, have said that the PCF has to learn how to democratize its functioning or it will become simply the largest grouplet of the far left (2).
Finally, the PC's political identity is affected by what historically is its outstanding feature, its special ties with the USSR. The PCF has chosen to give unconditional support to the intervention of the Soviet army in Afghanistan, just as it lined up with Jaruzelski at the time of the December 1981 crackdown in Poland. Among the masses of workers as well as among its own adherents, this total support for the USSR and Jaruzelski removes any credibility from the PCF's speeches about freedoms and about the "actually existing socialism" in the East European countries that it continues to defend. It also casts a shadow over the PCF's "socialism in the colors of France."
The PF explains its present crisis as the delayed effect of two historic errors. The first of these was the resistance put up by Maurice Thorez - long time general secretary of the party, who loved to portray himself as "France's No. 1 Stalinist" - and by the party leadership at the time of the "de-Stalin-
1958. Despite the Party's support for the bloody repression against the Hungarian workers councils in 1956, despite its rejection of the report on the crimes of stalin, which it described as the report "attributed to Khrushchev," and despite its hiding behind a bourgeois candidate, it managed to escape from its isolation and introduce itself into the Fifth Republic's system of political alliances.
The prestige of having resisted De Gaulle also served as a protection for the PCF in May-June 1968, when nearly 10 million workers joined in a general strike. After first opposing the mobilization, the PCF and the country's biggest union confederation, the CGT, which it led, administered the strike in order to end it on the cheap in the deal that became known as the Grenelle Accords. While the mass movement was shouting its determination to throw out De Gaulle, the PCF was refusing to offer it a political solution based on mobilizing all the working people. De Gaulle was to write in his memoirs how much he owed to the CGT for its defense of the bourgeois order in France at that moment.
The PCF refused to recognize the power vacuum that existed for several days in May 1968 and to take advantage of it. To the contrary, it seized the first opportunity offered by De Gaulle, when he recovered from his panic, to divert the mass movement into the legislative elections, from which the right were the big gainers. The year 1968 was really a black one for the PCF because it was also the year of the Prague Spring. The note of "disapproval" sent by the party leadership to the CPSU after the intervention of the Warsaw Pact armies was quickly put out of mind by the same leaderships, retightening of control over the party, which was reflected in a reaffirmation of loyalty to the USSR.
After 1968, the PCF leadership devoted itself to building a credible political solution for the aspirations of the working class. But it did this in separation from any dynamic of social struggles, basing itself on elections and with the goal of regaining contro! of all the radicalized workers who had turned their backs on the party during the general strike. Despite all the blows the PCF suffered - the emergence of a strong far left and of the CFDT (which broke from Catholic unionism in 1964 and later was able to offer a trade-union alternative for those whose aspirations were aroused by May 1968) - the party was nonetheless able to win 21% of the vote in the 1969 presidential elections, when De Gaulle fell and Georges Pompidou came to power. At the same time, the SFIO, on the wane, got only 5% of the vote.
This sort of relationship of forces vis-a-vis the Social Democracy led the PCF to make an alliance with the renovated PS led by Mitterrand and the Left Radicals (a tiny bourgeois party). The result was the signing of the International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
Common Program of the Left in 1972.
The question of who was going to dominate this alliance arose immediately. In a book entitled Ma part de verite, which was published in paperback and thus by no means confidential, Mitterrand talked about his scheme for taking 3 million votes away from the PCF. He would ally himself firmly with this party because it had demonstrated its aptitude for class collaboration in 1968. He declared unambiguously his aim of building a new PS along his lines on the back of the PCF. (4)
In a report given in 1979 and kept secret up till 1975, Marchais pointed up the dangers this alliance held: "It is clear that the adoption of a Common Program and the perspective of a government in which the PS would play an important role will give the latter bases for its attempt to strengthen itself at our expense, if we fail to do what we have to do." (5)
Marchais must not have done what was necessary, because the PS moved ahead of the PCF in a series of legislative by-elections in October 1974. The immediate consequence of this was that in the Twenty-First (special) Congress of the PCF held in the same month the task given priority was to alert the party members about the dangers involved in the Union of the Left. But the effect ol this was only to foster doubts inside and around the party about the sincerity of its commitment to the coalition. Dictatorship of proletariat abandoned
On the programmatic level, the PCF's evolution brought it toward the PS, to such an extent that its own identity became obscured. While the Social Democracy was gaining the lead in the competition with the PCF, the latter publicly confirmed in 1976 what it had in fact done a long time ago. It formally abandoned the perspective of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This decision, along with the rejection of the term "Marxist-Leninist" and the adoption of the notion of "socialism in the colors of France" , marked the start of a touching up of the documents. Over a series of congresses, especially the Twenty-Third in 1979 and the TwentyFourth in 1982, this provided the PCF with a reformist program close to that of the PS. Stalinism itself was condemned at these congresses. This evolution toward a more and more reformist course put the PCF in a position where it had difficulty differentiating itself from the PS.
In September 1977, the PCF split the Union of the Left, trying to prove that its positions were more radical than those of the PS. In fact, it sought to break the momentum of the coalition, which was leading the radicalized workers, in particular those who belonged to the unions, to step up their demands.
The breakup of the Union of the
Left, carried over into a division between the trade unions that persists today, led to the PCF reverting to the familiar anti-Social Democrat language. "There is no need for a political solution to win on the big social questions," the PCF and CT leaders were to say. This was despite the fact that they themselves had explained before that "voting is struggle," that they themselves had subordinated mass actions against the right to the 1978 legislative elections, the last target of the Union of the Left.
Parallel to this, the PCF stepped up its "renovating" course, which destroyed any credibility for a split to the left from the alliance with the PS. Everything was abandoned - the Marxist theory of the state, the need for breaking from capitalism, the October revolution as a model, the working class as the fundamental class in society. The concept of breaking from capitalism was replaced by that of self-management.
Socialism was to be built without the prior destruction of the state, which the PCF no longer regarded as bourgeois. Management became a bosses' monopoly that had to be broken so that workers representatives could share in it alongside the bosses. The economic crisis became a vast plot by the French capitalists designed to sell out "Your industry" to foreign buyers. The defence of French industry became the central objective of the PCF. This phase of "sectarianism" toward the PS did not lead, therefore, to a return to "class struggle" language, quite the contrary.
The PCF entered the government in July 1981 in a position of weakness, after having campaigned against the PS. Subsequently, it endorsed all the government's austerity measures down to the last details. The party membership, from the ministers to rank-and-file trade-union activists were called upon to apply to the letter the principle of collective responsibility for the government. Before 1981, the party presented itself as the guarantor of the workers' interests in the Union of the Left, and then, starting in July 1981, it subordinated itself to the PS to the point of dropping any independent policy.
Afraid to come into confliet with the surge of unity that was reflected at the ballot boxes on May 10, 1981, the PCF fell into the tow of the PS. It had no choice. It had been aware of the Social Democrat trap since 1972, but it had no political means for escaping it. It became hopelessly caught, accepting all the government's antilabor measures, such as attacks on social insurance •and unemployment benefits, massive layoffs in the shipbuilding industry and in steel and coal, blocking wage increases followed
Ma part de verite, Francois Mitterrand, Fayard, Paris, 1969. 5. The report was published in the book of PCF leader Etienne Fajon, l'Union est un combat, Editions sociales, 1975.
9
Jane dismanting ou dismantling of ability of the apparatus to back up the in trade-union activity, which offered a cost-of-living increases. leadership in action. In the wake of refuge from the political disaster. This policy followed by the PCF, the breakup of the Union of the Left The bulk of the party activists which helped considerably to marginalize in 1977, an opposition developed led by got only a very temporary comfort from it, was aggravated by the choices the Henri Fiszbin, a member of the Central the PCF's departure from the governparty made in international policy. In Committee and first secretary of the ment. "This is a green light for struggles," particular, the party twice demonstrated party's Paris federation. Its aim was to they thought. It did not take them long its loyalty to the CPSU, supporting the "renew" the party in the Italian sense to recover from their illusions. No, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and of the term, that is, in line with the PCF out of the government did not break Jaruzelski's crackdown. This avowed Italian party's Eurocommunist orient- from the jumble of industrial countersupport for the CPSU played a large ation. plans, all of which placed themselves part in the PC's loss of credibility Fiszbin expressed concern for within the framework of administering the eyes of working-class opinion. The salvaging the Union combination of participating in the demanded a democ of the Left and the crisis. What is more, it expanded on ratic discussion. In them at length in national meetings of administration of and support for aspects of Stalinist party losing in every ed of its prestige wl ed of its prestige, wi declining for many y
The official attempts to explain today as a consequ accord with the PS if you analyze th ations adopted by th of the 1960s. Headgeneral strike in A breakup of the Un 1977, and a succes a good deal to discre
As for the c 1956" (that is de the reality of Sta bottom only a diver Khrushchev reported the PF rejected th idol that it had he pedestal. If, 28 ye accepted these crim better to give its committed by Sta the Kremlin and in W
The PCF is Twenty-Fifth Congre place February 6-1 between the leade document for this concerns of the mas is striking. The mai membership turn ar the USSR, the an existing socialism" party's internal regi centralism, what at the economic crisis of the Fabius governn
Facing these qu ship offers an introdi essential function is equilibrium within apparatus that will 1 avoid drawing a pr of the past three y to avert the deep would result from capitalist austerity July 1981, when the most repellent was finding its way repression led to the unity with the PS sphere what remain- Before "placing hi nich had already been lich had already been party" party" according to , according ears. by the leadership position, which had started a bullet the crisis of the PCF communistes. It br ence of the summit inside and outside , does not stand up who had been invol e successive orient- former political le PCF since the start Nouvelle, which wa on opposition to the of dissident views i /ay-June 1968, the breakup of the Ur ion of the Left in 1977. The evoluti ision of zigzags did grouped around Fis dit the party. closer and closer to t elebrated "delay of lay in recognizing linism), that is at PCF supports auster sionary explanation. I Stalin's crimes, but On May 10, -le indictment of the the second round Iped to put on the elections, thousand ars later, the PCF as faithful Stalinists es, it was in order did not vote for N blessing to those accepting the turn lin's successors in oral victory of the arsaw. was out of the qu on the eve of its presentiment of tł ss, which is to take ences it would have O, 1985. The gap From 1981 t rship's preparatory a continual debate congress and the the validity of ises of its adherents ministers in the go n questions for the carried on in a sem ound the links with The advantages acc alysis of "actually from participation in the East, the leadership of the bo me and democratic to be minute. On th titude to take to party member coul and to the policy month that the PCF nent. austerity policy sestions, the leader reducing the party's actory report whose In the CGT, to find a point of raised essentially b the leadership the party leadershi nake it possible to oppose the gove ecise balance sheet policy. So, in May ars in government, before the PCF left going debate that national meeting o that, and thus to ship, including th he PCF leadership party structures, such as the cells in the back to the path of nationalized enterprises, which represent , he was expelled. 20% of the country's productive plant. mself outside the In the cells in regions that have , the formula used facing attacks from the bosses, the PF's line was subjected to wide-ranging and general criticism. The weekly Revolution, the successor of France Nouvelle, which was presented when it first appeared as weekly, France a magazine for debate, reflected the discussions that took place in the regional leadership of the PCF in Lorraine, the area of the largest concentration of steel production. Several members of the party's Central Committee, the former general secretary of the Communist Youth, leaders coming from plants expressed their concerns. The criticisms focused notably on the centralism of a by-gone L981, the evening of age that remains in force in the party, in the presidential on the fact that developing the political i of PCF members, line of the party is reserved to members i as you could find, of the apparatus, on the unconditional litterrand. For them support given to the USSR, and on the meant by the elect- subordination of the party to the
Union of the Left government. estion. They had a A few days later, in September, le negative conseq- the party's official spokesman, Pierre for the party. Juquin, challenged the taboo of o 1984, there was "democratic" centralism and made a in the party over fervent appeal for a real debate. Then, having Communist former minister Marcel Rigout, one of ernment, but it was the first to join the resistance during the i-official framework. second world war, expressed his regrets ruing to the party at the PCF leaving the government.
in the political The September meeting of the urgeois state proved Central Committee was marked by turle other hand, every bulent sessions. And for the first time, d see month after the party daily, l'Humanite, had to s endorsement of the authorize Central Committee members to was progressively edit summaries of their contributions for ictivity to nothing. publication later.
the challenge was Finally, at the last meeting of the v. activists loyal to Central Committee, in November, the p who wanted to document opening the discussion for the mment's austerity next congress was not approved unanim1984, two months ously. The line proposed in the document the government, a was challenged by many speakers, in f the CGT leader- particular by the six abstainers already e leaders of the mentioned.
block a challenge around grouped industrial unions - practically all PCF
In the preceding debates that took to the leadership
Marchais, which members - showed an absolute majority place in the party, in particular at the has accumulated a damningly negative for a general strike against the austerity time the commitment to the dictatorrecord. policy being conducted by a goverment ship of the proletariat was dropped in
Faithful to its tradition, the PCF in which Communist ministers were 1976 or after the breakup of the Union leadership has no intention that any involved. of the Left in 1977, the leading figures opposition should be able to develop At the rank-and-file level, the were often intellectuals, such as Althusser within the party. From its standpoint, Communist activists in the CGT found or Balibar. But this time there was a new the party's most valuable assets are the themselves unable to defend their party's development. cohesiveness of its apparatus and the policy. A number of them found an out The discussion went through the 10 International Viewpoint 11 February 1985 o the formula used become industrial deserts, in the cells at the time, Fiszbin in called Rencontres ought together, both if the party, activists ved with the party's s liquidated because n its staff after the lion of the Left in on of the current zbin led to positions hose of the PS. ity
Georges Marchais at the Twenty-First Congress of the PCF. (DR)
apparatus and the party's working-class base, which was another reason for the party leadership doing everything possible to choke it off. Opening up a real discussion could have explosive consequences. If people once opened their mouths, the unity of the apparatus would be shattered.
Those who wanted an Italian style" renewal of the party would run into direct conflict with a large part of the apparatus, in particular in the CGT, made up of unconditional supporters of special links with the USSR. Such a debate would have reverberations among the working-class rank-and-file, because the most clearly pro-Soviet leaders combine their loyalty to Moscow with radical anticapitalist talk about defending the workers demands.
The tack the party leadership took was to stand pat. But does the apparatus have the means to pursue its option? There is a force in the party that does not hesitate to turn to the non-party media to explain that it is necessary to take a "national" road to socialism in France, which would involve a break with the USSR.
Facing this operation, the network of pro-Soviet leaders and personalities built up by Jeannette Thorez-Vermeersch — widow of Maurice Thorez, a former member of the Political bureau, and an eminently authoritarian leader herself — reaches working-class and trade-union activists. The Marchais leadership seems incapable of keeping anything under control.
The PCF has already gone through "right" turns, which called for uniting the broad masses of working people behind a democratic, interclass program against fascism, as at the time of the Popular Front in 1938 or at the time of the "National Revival" after the second world war in 1945, or in 1965 against the personal power of De Gaulle.
The alliance with the PS was consumated in 1972 and again in 1981 on the explicit basis of a compromise involving the acceptance of a necessary stage of loyally administering the state apparatus in a way more in accordance with the social interest. International Viewpoint 11 February 1985
At its February 1985 Congress, the PCF will offer, as a new idea, the formula of "a new rallying of the majority of the people" • What does this mean? It means not closing the door to a coalition with the PS but no longer making this the party's sole perspective. It means not rejecting a broader alliance based on the defense of French industry against the attacks of foreign firms. It means, case by case, building a broad front (elected officials of all hues, merchants and artisans, managers of small and medium-sized enterprises) around the defense of businesses threatened with closure in order to achieve an acceptable compromise.
This orientation got its first application in the Toulon shipyards, where the right and its elected officials marched in a workers procession, to the great chagrin of the strikers. This course is distinguished by its failure to offer any central political focus. There is no governmental formula, and in fact this question is not posed. It is, therefore, logical that the economic struggles led by the PCF or its proposals for alternative industrial solutions will turn endlessly like screws in a capitalist system from which the party no longer proposes any break.
The objective of this policy is to gain a foothold in industrial management. It is to reduce the social costs of reconversion, the need for which is not challenged. The supreme objective would be to get the bosses to invest at the same time in job creation, in the introduction of new technology, in improving competitiveness in harmony with increasing the number of jobs.
The example cited by Philippe Herzog, the PCF's chief economist and a member of the Political Bureau, in a letter addressed to the management of the automobile companies - not to the party organizers but to those of the capitalist hierarchy — was that of Fiat! To be sure, Philippe Herzog admits that the president of Fiat, Giani Agnelli, has carried out layoffs. But, he adds, Agnelli has repatriated production processes that had been done abroad, he has recentered Fiat's activity in Italy with remarkable results. And in particular, he made a very special observation for the French bosses, "Agnelli has put money into the operation"
What matter the cassa integrati (6), the victims of the 1980 defeat for the workers at Fiat? What matter the ousting of the most militant workers and the least productive ones, those worn out by decades on the job? The big boss has invested, and that is all that matters.
So, even before the PCF national congress, the CT and the party are holding more and more meetings and playing up industrial schemes for "good" reconversions, "good" vocational education, making geographical mobility easier to impose on the workers, and increasing the competitiveness of French enterprises.
Such a line has two objectives that are linked to the leadership's option of standing pat. The first is to press the PCF members not to act except within the confines of immediate trade-union demands. Moreover, such demands should be justified by the increase in productivity they would mean if they were implemented.
It is clear enough that such an orientation excludes the perspective of a general strike and of building for such an action by unifying demands and struggles focused on jobs and wages. This is a return to the line adopted in 1977, after the breakup of the Union of the Left, which did not make it possible for the mass movement to organize to confront the central power.
The second objective itself reveals a real choice made by the present leadership of the PCF. Falling back on itself, saving what it can save, this leadership is waiting for the PS to discredit itself by having to take sole responsibility for the government. Then, it believes, a new situation would open up, making possible a reshuffling of the cards and the fading of the memory of the cycle initiated by the Common Program in the post-May 1968 period. This line cannot rally the party's working-class base nor even the apparatus for any length of time. Its sole advantage is that it offers the CGT a greater margin of maneuver to try to tap the discontent of the workers so as to rebuild its forces depleted by the support it gave to the government when the PCF was still participating in it.
The democratic aspirations revealed by the struggles and the demands that have been raised are sustained by a rejection of the sort of "socialism" the PCF identifies with, the socialism of Chernenko and Jaruzelski. Whatever price it has to pay for this with respect to public opinion, the PCF remains faithful to the "fatherland of socialism"
Of course, in the party's magazines, the October revolution is portrayed as a model for taking power that was overgeneralized by Lenin, as the abandon6. ut of a compensation tund, the •Cassa Integrati," laid-off workers "Cassa paid Integrazione."
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ment of the dictatorship of the proletariat requires. In these same articles, which in are vogue on the eve of the Twenty-Fifth Congress, the PCF recognizes even that the socialist countries suffer from social conflicts, which is a shocking revision for a number of activists. Likewise, the enlightened spirits in the apparatus recognize Stalin's crimes and the deficiencies of democracy in the East European countries. But there is still a long way to go from that to writing the epitaph for the special relationship with the CPSU.
A clear break is impossible. It would lead immediately, as has been seen in many other parties in capitalist Europe, to the emergence of factions based on support for the USSR. To protect the USSR, the PCF is thus obliged to do a tight-rope act that borders on the grotesque.
The present decline of the PCF is unprecedented in the party's history. While it has experienced periods of While it has experienced periods of retreat in the past, they corresponded to defeats for the working class. This time, to the contrary, the PC's electoral decline and its loss of credibility and influence in the working class accelerated while the working class was showing its determination at the ballot box to get rid of the right. These negative developments have continued to deepen since.
To compensate for its setback, the Communist Party cannot shift into a phase of promoting struggles, without running the risk of setting in motion mobilizations that would go over its head. A prisoner of its need to maintain the internal equilibrium required for unity and survival of the apparatus, the PCF can only organize its retreat on the basis of what remains of its influence. It may be able to stem the decline in membership and the fall in its vote, but it has few means at its disposal for regaining its influence in the working class.
However, the Social Democracy is unable to profit from this critical situation. Bearing virtually the entire responsibility for the government itself, it is experiencing processes similar to those from which the PCF is suffering among its base of electoral supporters and activists.
In the not very distant future, the activists who challenge the PC's present line will express themselves most clearly in the CGT. A number of them are waiting to see what happens at the Twenty-Fifth Congress to decide about their membership in the PCF. An accentuation of the present chauvinist course, playing up industrial counterplans cast in the framework of administering the crisis, the defense of "properly understood" profit, and all this linked to maintaining strict centralism and loyaty to the USSR -that is not a very attractive combination for the rank-and-file activists who are looking for a different sort of response to the problems of their party's decline. • 12
ITALY_