SOCIALISTS & COMMUNISTS IN EUROPEAN POLITICS

...Various Dissent contributors have already noted some signs of these: the efforts of the Italian and Spanish parties to achieve a measure of autonomy vis a vis Moscow...

...Such groups and disputes are an absolute prerequisite for a democratic party...

...To gain that, it must maneuver within the parliamentary system, since it has neither the wish nor capacity for revolutionary coups, nor the ability to gain a majority of the Italian vote and rule on its own...

...There are other troubling scenarios...

...You can reconcile these by mumbling something about "different circumstances," or you can let them rub against one another in your mind without trying to reconcile them...

...Even for the most heterodox of CPs, the myth of the Soviet Union remains a crucial defining factor, one of the major supports of its claims to historical distinctiveness and necessity...

...that in the mass Communist parties many members attend branch meetings no more than once or twice a year...

...THERE have been important changes in the West European Communist parties...

...At least some of the following factors should be noted: • In countries like Italy the CP bureaucracy has become enormous...

...The young fanatics who recite the catechism of Mao-by the way, a mediocre academic poet-commit not only an esthetic and intellectual error but also a moral one...

...Should they enter the kinds of electoral alliances with Communists that the French and Italian Socialist parties have entered but other Socialists deplore...

...the public statements by Italian CP leaders attacking the Portuguese CP for its neo-Stalinist course...

...Still less is it a reason for calling the West European CPs "left social democratic," as some writers have...

...LET us now glance at some of the reasons for deep skepticism regarding the "new face" of the West European Communist parties...

...386...

...That this ideology may be more and more vestigial, that it is not tied to revolutionary practice (or, as some American friends say, praxis), may well be true...

...And the irony of it all is that those European Socialist parties best in a position to effect such a policy tend to be those that least need consider electoral alliances with the Communists...

...No mass party, such as the CPs of France and Italy have become, can long remain faithful to the Bolshevik model, especially if functioning for any length of time in a parliamentary system that is stable and popular...

...Just as it is impossible right now to find a proper label for the Italian or Spanish CP(neither merely totalitarian nor democratic), so must one see these parties as in process of change and confusion...

...McInnes remarks:, "Even when western CPs concede that East European society has certain inadequacies, that `mistakes' have been made there, and that upon occasion legality has been infringed there, they will not specify the oppression of political opposition and the intolerance of criticism among those 'shortcomings...

...Every dictatorship, whether of man or of party, leads to the two forms that schizophrenia loves most: the monologue and the mausoleum...

...But for how long...

...And there are surely people in the Italian and Spanish parties, also perhaps in the French, who are struggling and stumbling toward new ideas...

...their criticisms of the Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia and of Russian persecution of dissident writers...

...it cares more about the substance of power than the vision of revolt...

...And even if we agree to regard the Portuguese party as an exception in the ranks of the West European Communists, there are surely significant numbers of "Portuguese" within the other CPs, old hacks and devoted militants who in the proper circumstances could suddenly become "Portuguese...

...I cannot say that, from where I sit, the European Socialist movement as a whole has the intellectual force and self-confidence that would be required for such a difficult policy...

...One would prefer that democracy be elevated not just from a tactic to a strategy but from a strategy to a principle, a moral imperative...

...The sensible conclusion is that these avowals have no single or precise meaning...

...And it discovers appetites for larger shares of power—national power...

...it should be developed in every sense...

...Not accidentally, the Communist parties are feeble in the "northern" countries, strong in the "southern" ones...

...Lenin said that no one had ever invented a "sincerometer," and about that, at least, he was right...

...In quiet times, these people may suppress their deeper persuasions...

...their readiness to enter blocs not only with Socialists but with moderate bourgeois parties...

...Ocrnvio PAZ SOCIALISTS & COMMUNISTS IN EUROPEAN POLITICS 383 party is one that favors more stringent socioeconomic changes than most social democrats favor...

...Obviously, this is more likely to happen in some countries than in others...

...The best of circumstances would of course be a Communist movement so weak it need not be taken seriously, a blessing not enjoyed by French or Italian Socialists...

...This July Berlinguer, the Italian CP leader, and Carillo, the Spanish CP leader, issued a declaration that "their conception of the democratic advance toward socialism in peace and freedom is not a tactical attitude but a strategic conviction...

...There have been serious disputes between the Russians and the Italian and Spanish parties, but they remain "comrades," they come together at conferences, they maintain relations, they share a common language, ideology, tradition, cause...

...It holds major offices in large cities and provinces...

...To abandon this ideology would be to forego the strongest argument for maintaining a separate Communist organization...

...How "sincere" is the Italian CP in all this...

...A "left social democratic" Monologue & Mausoleum Whatever the limitations of Western democracy (which are many and grave), there can be no political life without freedom of criticism...

...Active participation in the Communist movement entails quasi-religious, quasi-fanati384 IRVING HOWE cal structures of belief, sometimes rabid, sometimes mild, but almost always present...

...what matters is that the CPs, even the "best" of them, remain far from the democratic ethos that, even with bureaucratic flaws, prevails in the Socialist parties of Europe...

...The CPs remain, with whatever modulations or embarrassment, committed to precisely the ideology of "Marxism-Leninism" that the more sensitive elements within them find increasingly dubious...

...Ties with the Soviet Union remain crucial...

...For some veteran party leaders and no doubt a layer of aging party members, the democratic professions are seen mainly as a dialectical deceit to prepare for the final acquisition of power and party hegemony...

...McInnes has accumulated rich detail about the structure and functioning of the West European Communist parties to show that they are moving away from, if they have not yet wholly abandoned, the model of the Bolshevik "vanguard" party...

...Will it speak with the courage and forthrightness of Mario Snares and his friends in Portugal who have developed a sustained, principled criticism of left-authoritarianism...

...Among working-class militants in the French or Italian CP, there are many who hold sincerely both to the myth of the October Revolution and the party's parliamentary course today...

...It favors stability in the areas it controls, it works out deals with other parties, it finds office very comfortable...

...Within the CPs there survive pockets of "true believers," old Stalinists and younger neo-Stalinists, some in the top leadership, others among functionaries and workers, who cling to an esoteric doctrine of "revolution" and "the dictatorship of the proletariat...

...Above all, they are reluctant, they are afraid to surrender that most powerful form of secular faith in our century: the ideology of "Marxism-Leninism...

...but it still proposes to function within the limits of parliamentary democracy...

...I am inclined to think that finally the myth of the October Revolution remains the single most powerful force in keeping alive a Communist "culture...

...The point is not just to come out for or against such alliances, the justification for which, if there is one, depends largely on local circumstances...

...And at a time when the CP appears to be becoming less and less different in its day-to-day politics from most Socialist parties, the CP leaders have an acute need for arguments justifying their "vanguard," with all the powers and privileges it yields them...

...That the Communist parties of France and Italy no longer conform to the Bolshevik model of the party is, of course, hardly news...

...the evident preference the CP leaders of Spain show in public for Snares, the Portuguese Socialist, over Cunhal, the Portuguese Communist...

...So long as this myth does remain powerful within Communist ranks, the protestations of the CP to democracy must be suspect...

...but, as he notes, this is not ground for saying that it is no longer an authoritarian party with strong antidemocratic biases and characteristics...

...People of the anti-Stalinist Left, myself among them, have often underestimated the extent to which the Communist leaderships and militants take seriously their ideological claims...

...The European Socialist parties appear to be split along geographical lines, with the "northern" parties (England, Scandinavia, West Germany) opposed to such electoral blocs and the "southern" (Italy, France, Spain) inclined to favor them...

...The CP political machine follows, though only in part, the modes and rhythms of all political machines...

...Hence, the policy of electoral blocs, which necessarily leads to the practice and language of parliamentarism...

...The extent to which the French or Italian CP still adheres to the amorphous doctrine of "democratic centralism" is a fine point of dispute for scholastics...

...Nevertheless, something is happening and, so far as one can tell, something that comes to more than, though it may also include, a tactical maneuver...

...Indeed, anything that reinforces the myth that the SOCIALISTS & COMMUNISTS IN EUROPEAN POLITICS 385 Communists represent a "wave of the future," is against the interests of democracy and socialism...

...One would feel easier if Carillo, while praising democracy, did not also continue to defend the Stalinist suppression of anarchists and Trotskyists during the Spanish Civil War (in a recent book, Demain 1'Espagne: entretiens avec Regis Debray et Max Gallo...

...What, then, are we to make of the democratic avowals of certain West European Communist parties, their statements favoring multiparty regimes, parliamentarism, freedom of speech, etc...

...And beyond the Soviet Union looms the still greater myth of the Bolshevik Revolution...

...Echoes of this discussion are now heard in Dissent and, naturally, with a range of opinions...

...It is also aware that even a legal ascent to power raises major dangers of civil dissension, perhaps civil war...

...the point is to stress that even if we reluctantly conclude that such alliances may be necessary in some countries there must still be great caution and, above all, a deep-going intellectual offensive against every shade of authoritarian thought, whether "Marxist-Leninist," Stalinist, Brezh= nevite, Maoist, Castroite, or whatever...

...they are neither mere deceptions nor changes of heart undertaken in good faith...

...And the fact that a party may be "loose" in structure (though the "looseness" of a Communist party is different in kind from that of other parties) is not yet sufficient reason for supposing that it has genuinely accepted the terms of parliamentary democracy...

...it is not just bourgeois...

...But in moments of crisis, they could become a serious force pressing for an authoritarian "solution": they could spring forth as the "true Communists" within the party, the fierce thin man within the flabby fat one...

...These are some of the problems our European friends face today: problems that entail grave dangers but could yield enormous opportunities...

...And one would certainly take more seriously the democratic protestations of such French CP leaders as Georges Marchais if they did not point to East European countries as examples of what they mean by a multiparty regime...

...that when ideological crises occur, as that after the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, party members are more inclined to doubt and disaffection than nonparty Communist voters...

...For the inner changes and crises within the Communist parties ought to be regarded as a major opportunity for breaking the hold these parties have on the French and Italian working classes...

...The members care more about ideology than the voters, while the voters care more about immediate socioeconomic issues than the members—not true in all instances, but true enough to be a significant factor...

...We learn that in the major European countries no more than one out of every two or three CP members takes the party paper...

...Will it see beyond shortrange advantages and try to recreate a new community of the democratic Left, one that will draw both younger, independent people and the better elements of the CP...

...but it is also a major barrier to democratic politics...

...382 These signs of ideological change and confusion, perhaps because_ they are finally so important, are the most difficult to evaluate...

...An electoral alliance poses not merely tactical advantages for the Communists but strategic dangers, and one reason the French CP has lately become so truculent with regard to the Socialists is that it foresees the possibility, shown to be acute in the recent elections, that it will be replaced by them as the leading party of the French Left...

...I wish to put down a few notes expressing my own views and disagreeing with those who take, I suspect, an overly optimistic view of these electoral blocs...

...In practice if not profession, these parties moved away from that model as early as the years directly after World War II (some would say, even earlier...

...And in an interview with C. L. Sulzberger of the New York Times, Carillo has said: "Democracy represents a large popular advance...

...It may just be enough for concluding that, for the time at least, it cannot act with much effectiveness beyond the bounds of parliamentary democracy...

...that the turnover in CP membership is enormous (66 percent in France between 1969 and 1972...

...In practice they leave behind them increasing portions of their "MarxismLeninism," yet they remain uncertain about "bourgeois democracy...

...Further testimony is provided by Neil McInnes's The Communist Parties of Western Europe (Oxford University Press, 1975), a work scholarly in character and without polemical intent...

...And a "left social democratic" party neither continues to support the Russian dictatorship, as the CPs do, nor functions by the authoritarian procedures that Communists call "democratic centralism...

...The biggest danger one can foresee is not a revolutionary coup but a situation something like this: a Communist-Socialist bloc wins an election by a narrow margin, it enacts portions of its joint program, sections of the middle class grow fearful, a crisis verging on civil war follows, and in the ensuing social chaos the hard-line Communists, grown stronger within the party and entrenched in government offices, try to grab power...

...It may be, however, that to refuse pointblank to enter into electoral alliances with the Communists in such countries as France and Italy is a form of political sterility...

...Such a vision probably makes CP officials nervous—you can't easily imagine the Communist mayor of Bologna rushing off to the woods for some rifle practice in a revolutionary militia...

...Students of the French CP report that the proletarian veterans tend to be most inclined to approve Soviet repressions in the name of "socialist discipline...

...The Communist parties retain a strongly authoritarian structure, not quite as rigid as it used to be but still refusing to accept open factional groups and disputes within its ranks...

...Even in the uneasy balance of power that today prevails in Europe, a major growth of Communist influence in Italy, Spain, or France could lead to enormous crisis, perhaps confrontation...

...Have the Communists changed sufficiently so as to be regarded as appropriate allies in electoral blocs that might lead to social change through democratic means...

...it has developed its own social and economic interests...

...McInnes shows that the CP of France or Italy is no longer a revolutionary party in the traditional Leninist sense, or even in its Stalinist caricature...

...Critical thinking cannot be sacrificed on the altars of accelerated development, the revolutionary idea, the leader's prestige and infallibility, or any other mirage...

...Will it persist, electoral bloc or not, in basic criticisms of authoritarianism...

...What is happening today in the West European Communist parties is a complicated mixture of opportunist tactic and ideological crisis...

...Hence they will cling, if not to the substance, then to the slogans, language, and myths of "Marxism-Leninism...

...The practice goes, the ideology remains...

...In fact, the changes in organizational structure had begun to occur in the French CP when it was still quite Stalinist—changes enforced simply by the requirements of maintaining a party with hundreds of thousands of members...

...Otherwise, the label of "left social democratic" is counterfeit...

...their statements favoring multiparty regimes...

...What seems to me the crucial factor in judging the advisability of electoral alliances is the condition of the socialist movement in a given country...

...Will it be aggressive and lucid in espousing democratic values...