PARADOXES IN EUROPEAN COMMUNISM: Old Categories and New Realities
Howe, Irving
I SHOULD LIKE TO OPEN a political discussion about a problem that seems unprecedented, especially in France and Italy. In both countries there are mass Communist parties, allied with the Moscow...
...These are perhaps the largest, certainly the best organized parties in their countries...
...For the crucial variable is this: what do we estimate the political and moral strength of the anti-Communist or nonCommunist Left to be in these countries...
...Yet, I think, neither is it a traditional reformist party...
...And the Soviet Union did not want war at that point...
...They are not the free, if confused, movements the Social Democrats were in the years before World War I. w HEN WE CONFRONT a new political phenomenon, our first impulse is to find an old label for it...
...what they would do beyond that, we can hardly say and it isn't at all certain that they themselves have any notions about it either...
...the U.S., it was calculated in Moscow, would not allow Western Europe to be taken over by the CP's without offering armed resistance...
...Analogies are sometimes made between the condition of the French and Italian CP's today and the Social Democratic parties in the pre-World War I years...
...A second possible course would be for liberalleft parties to enter political and electoral blocs with the CP...
...it keeps its hold on the workers and youth, at least in part through clinging to the mystique of "revolution," even if the social content of that mystique is enfeebled and the moral value eroded...
...Their leadership is experienced and often resourceful...
...they provide an ideal nesting place for aspiring bureaucrats...
...It is many years, even, since they have been "revolutionary" parties of the Stalinist type...
...a portion of their local power depends on that relationship...
...and then there might even open up the perspective of a reunification of the old parties of the Left TO CONTRIBUTORS We strongly urge anyone submitting material to DISSENT to keep a carbon copy...
...Meanwhile, the various ultra-left sects could happily cannibalize one another on the side...
...But with the Social Democratic parties there was, to an extent both significant and difficult to determine, a genuine and sincere tension between competing outlooks...
...and as for their strategic ends, those extending beyond the immediate desire to break out of isolation, they seem not to know...
...Excluded from parliamentary arrangements and both unable and unwilling to act decisively outside of them, the CP's tend to immobilize politically the French and Italian working class and to give the political Right far more power on the top of French and Italian society than they have at the bottom...
...It is many years since these Communist parties were revolutionary parties of the Leninist type...
...but quite another to suppose that this signifies a willingness to go further...
...As the ultra-left students in Paris and Rome charged with some 221 IRVING HOWE accuracy, the thought of "revolution"—indeed, the prospect of large-scale social disruption— fills the CP leaders with repugnance, even fear...
...The latter, apparently, have already taken place...
...A recent poll in France indicates that a majority of the population favors some sort of "socialism," but only 5 percent favor a "Soviet" type of "socialism...
...In Italy that perspective seems, right now, somewhat realistic: the creation of a new center-left bloc which will either include the Communists directly or engage in quiet deals with them...
...And please also be sure to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Gradually, the CP might be absorbed into the parliamentary system, as the Social Democrats were...
...yet they also have independent, national interests of their own, which can bring them into conflict with the Soviet Union...
...Others might enter a close alliance with the Democratic Left and be influenced by it...
...But this effort has not succeeded in reducing significantly the support the CP has within the working class...
...The breathing spell given to Western democratic capitalism by the Communist decision not to attempt a revolutionary coup, together with the aid provided by the Marshall plan, enabled the spectacular economic and social recovery of Western Europe...
...Why so...
...For the Italian CP, entering a left-center cabinet, or having a close relationship with one, is a meaningful goal...
...Why should they...
...nor has it trained its followers to feel loyalty toward this belief...
...Whether they could in fact have done so in the years directly after World War II is a matter for debate and historical investigation...
...Hardly...
...the Communist parties, it is said, do the same...
...This argument would be more persuasive if one were able to believe fully in the idea of . . . "reinvigorated and reformed democratic society...
...Small portions of them might veer to Maoism: good riddance...
...Can this be attributed to the CP leaders and bureaucrats...
...They have a great deal of secondary social power and large amounts of money at their disposal...
...The leaders of the French CP are shrewd enough to recognize how sharply this response limits them: approximately threefourths of those who vote for them don't want a reenactment at home of the blessings of the Russian dictatorship...
...The effort to "isolate" the CP's has succeeded in some ways: they no longer threaten the survival of democratic regimes...
...But if the Italian CP entertains any expectation of reigning exclusively, let alone establishing a one-party dictatorship of the Communist type, it surely cannot suppose this to be an expectation realizable in the next several decades...
...They win between a fifth and a third of the vote in national elections...
...The Social Democratic parties kept using revolutionary rhetoric while in fact adapting themselves to reformist politics...
...What may have been a momentary tactical decision in 1947 has since become a strategic perspective...
...But can one honestly say that contemporary Social Democracy, or other left-liberal groups, in France and Italy have the strength and self-confidence successfully to undertake such a course...
...Because: • it does not proclaim, or work within a tradition of, principled commitment to parliamentary democracy, multi-party politics, free elections as a necessary condition for socialism...
...They do, it would seem, have a perspective of power, but it is by no means clear that they have a clear sense of how it is to be obtained...
...In both countries there are mass Communist parties, allied with the Moscow wing of Communism...
...they rest on working-class support and advance proposals for immediate and "structural" reforms which are sometimes of genuine merit...
...Neither in a serious Marxist nor a popular journalistic sense can it still be considered a revolutionary party...
...mails these days are not exactly at the peak of efficiency and we have had one or two unhappy situations in which articles were lost in the mails...
...In consequence, the CP's of France and Italy have been—in one sense —immobilized: they are frozen out of the mechanism of parliamentary politics (coalition governments, electoral blocs, etc...
...to abandon this would mean to forgo its distinctive reason for existence...
...Perhaps even crisis...
...Yet the French and Italian CP's dominate enormous institutions...
...To some CP youth and intellectuals...
...while at the same time they no longer have any sort of serious revolutionary perspective...
...THE QUESTION THEN ARISES: what kind of party is the French or Italian CP...
...To the CP workers...
...If there were in France and Italy today parties of the Left that (a) were firmly rooted in large plebeian constituencies (b) were free of the authoritarian disease...
...Not, I think, very 222 PARADOXES OF EUROPEAN COMMUNISM much...
...the idea of a coup a la Prague in their own countries can only strike them as, at most, a distant possibility...
...that there was a genuine possibility tempting them at the time seems beyond doubt...
...it declares itself the ally of a state and, more important, a social system, which is inextricably bound up with the one-party dictatorship...
...The decision not to try to seize power was due primarily to the belief that such an effort would precipitate a third world war...
...There is some point in such analogies, but not much...
...They staff unions, front groups, municipal governments...
...c) were boldly committed to a radical-democratic reconstruction of society, then this perspective would be decidedly attractive...
...For then, perhaps, the inner transformation and fracturing of the CP's could be accelerated...
...But these parties are also in varying degrees of internal uncertainty, ferment, doubt, and confusion...
...another to suppose him ready for "militant" action...
...In such an arrangement, it is argued, the CP could/would throw its weight behind progressive governments, thereby enabling the passage of urgent reforms...
...The idea of a mass revolutionary action the present CP leaderships have never held...
...They maintain the allegiance of a major segment, perhaps the majority, of the working class, as well as large elements of the intelligentsia and youth...
...even in a moment of crisis, to join a sit-in strike which employs revolutionary slogans in behalf of substantial immediate reforms...
...For democrats of the Left, whether or not they are socialist, all this presents of course very difficult problems...
...223 FEDERICO MANCINI on a new and democratic basis, so that, in effect, the poison of Stalinism would be flushed out and a new beginning made possible for European socialism...
...So long as the CP in France and Italy remains a mass party, the consequences for both democratic values and socialist transformation remain damaging...
...One possible course is to continue the present policy of "isolation," the argument for it being that slowly the CP's are eroding, gradually their membership is declining and the intensity of its commitment weakening, and with time they will be mere fossils, even if large fossils, with which a reinvigorated and reformed democratic society will be able to cope...
...Yet no one seems quite to know what kind of parties they are, what their ultimate ends may be, or how the Democratic Left in these countries should respond to them...
...But it is better to insist upon the "newness," even if we have no label...
...it neither practices nor expresses commitment to the tradition of intra-party democracy, which means the freedom to organize opposition groupings, factions, etc...
...The Social Democrats were caught in a difficulty that must afflict all socialist parties...
...The Italian and French CP's also must face the complex problem of sensing the nature, depth, and intensity of the support they win...
...and so long as it maintains its ties with the Russian regime, it cannot fundamentally change in the above respects, despite various equivocal formulas calculated to reassure would-be political partners in Italy and France that they have no reason to fear it...
...Perhaps, as with many problems, there is no immediate answer...
...So keep a copy...
...It is one thing for a worker in Paris to participate actively in the CP-led trade unions...
...but the CP's today are caught in a new kind of dilemma...
...Can anything be done about this situation...
...In Italy especially, if one goes by recent accounts, that doesn't seem a likely immediate future...
...It is a perspective as dangerous as it is tempting...
...After the Second World War a decision was made—perhaps by Moscow alone, perhaps by the French and Italian CP's alone, or more likely, by all in consultation—that neither in France nor Italy would these parties try to take power through extra-legal methods...
...More so...
...Perhaps they do not even care...
...They are the allies, and they have been the agents, as to some extent they remain the agents, of a totalitarian, or authoritarian, dictatorship...
...It is one thing for a worker in Milan to vote CP...
...they are intellectually and materially dependent on the system of bureaucratic collectivism which dominates Russia and Eastern Europe...
...224...
...The CP's of France and Italy are neither revolutionary nor reformist parties...
...Meanwhile, the left-liberal parties, including the social democrats, seem doomed to internal division, powerlessness, and drift...
...We take more than usual precautions, but the U.S...
...To put it this way is to put it statically...
Vol. 17 • May 1970 • No. 3
