EUROCOMMUNISM-MYTH, HOPE, DELUSION?:SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
Howe, Irving
The recent developments in the West European Communist parties have evoked a major discussion within socialist ranks. We too, in and near Dissent, have joined in this discussion—naturally, with a...
...II There are other, more local reasons for the appearance of Eurocommunism...
...And, I think, we are witnessing the merest beginnings of this phenomenon...
...These changes point to a major historical crisis for the Communist movement, and by the same token, to major political opportunities for European socialism...
...What matters most is the gradual penetration of the ideas, the passionate outcries of the East European dissidents into the minds of some—how many...
...The Austrian Prime Minister Bruno Kreisky, a right-wing social democrat, puts it dryly but well: "Social democrats have no reason to consider it a defeat when the two largest Communist parties in democratic Europe formally reject political formulae that belong to the most immutable principles of so-called Marxism-Leninism...
...My interest here is not to discuss the specific situation in France, which Stanley Plastrik does on another page...
...middle-level party officials ambitious for office and power but quite alien to revolutionary perspectives (can you imagine the Communist mayor of Bologna rushing off to rifle practice if the CP were to make a political shift leftward...
...It is most useful to think of them as new kinds of parties for which we don't yet have an adequate name...
...Well, Cunhal, the fanatical leader of the Portuguese party, does...
...Who, in the world of West European Communism, still believes in "the dictatorship of the proletariat...
...no doubt some functionaries and rank-and-filers of the French party do...
...but most of all: the fact that the French working class, even though large portions of it continue to vote for the CP, has come to be absorbed into the "system," enjoying a better material life and, while still committed to social change, showing few if any signs of revolutionary insurgency...
...in which even the more heterodox Communists retain some of the traits of Stalinism...
...it is a question whether mass parties, increasingly integrated into the social life of their countries, can be revolutionary...
...it is just to say, something new...
...But the one view not to be taken seriously is that of the neoconservatives and right-wing social democrats (in the U.S., almost indistinguishable) that Eurocommunism represents a tactical maneuver, perhaps even secretly blessed by Moscow, or that since there is in the world some eternal essence called Communism, that essence must survive eternally...
...Nor is there any reason to deny that the entry of Communists into West European governments would pose serious problems...
...the loss of support among intellectuals, not dramatic but a steady erosion...
...Diverse tendencies, conflicting interests, incipient disagreements—all these are just beginning to manifest themselves, and we may expect political zig-zags, confusion, factional struggles and perhaps splits...
...It will be a long, tortuous process, but at the end looms the possibility—that, but no more—of a disintegration of the Communist movement, an end to the stranglehold it has held on the workers of certain European countries, and perhaps, thereby, a renewal of a militant and democratic socialism...
...This is a fact of historical importance...
...Whether this will lead to a genuine and final change of heart on the part of the Western European Communists is impossible to predict...
...But nevertheless it is of some importance in the long-term that even Communists now admit the inherent value of the basic rights and political freedoms of bourgeois democracy...
...That some of the West European CPs seek new political approaches testifies to the relative stability of democracy...
...We too, in and near Dissent, have joined in this discussion—naturally, with a variety of opinions and emphases...
...but most of all: the realization that any attempt to achieve "structural reforms" will have to rest on "more than 51 percent" of the population...
...In our modest way, we must help it along...
...Temporarily this may even help the CP: we don't know...
...new intellectuals ranging from careerist parrots to people seriously engaged in political thought...
...In the discussion below, we start with the view of two Dissent editors...
...and end with two comments on Kolakowski's article (to which, of course, he has been invited to reply if he wishes to...
...I agree with those who urge a healthy skepticism toward the Communist parties of Western Europe, or who point to the many ways (ideology, organizational structure, habits of thought, etc...
...In our modest way, we must help it along...
...The second opportunity, beckoning along the road of "competitive collaboration," is that of helping to accelerate and deepen the tendencies within the Communist movement that seem to be pointing toward a democratic socialist perspective...
...I think it does, but with a good many obvious risks...
...The Communist parties of Italy and Spain, that of France somewhat less so, are not Leninist or Stalinist parties, though they retain considerable elements of the latter...
...others offer a qualified hope that they will slowly transform themselves in a democratic spirit...
...It is startling, especially as a symptom, that an Italian CP magazine should ask for regular writings from Roy Medvedev, the Russian dissident historian who in his own country is denied publication...
...True, things are bad in Italy, but even there the CP leadership realizes that the "revolutionary perspective," whether traditional Leninist or Stalinist adulteration, is obsolete...
...Once that is shattered, further heresies and deviations are inevitable...
...It has, like almost everything else in the world, its dangers...
...By "competitive collaboration" I mean a policy of agreeing to limited and cautious electoral blocs, as in France, while continuing to express a fundamental criticism of all brands of totalitarianism, especially that of Moscow...
...But we are talking here about those countries where the Communist party is very strong, though experiencing various degrees of crisis, and the question is whether the recent turn or drift toward Eurocommunism offers new possibilities for the socialists...
...Still another cause for the rise of Eurocommunism, hard to measure but foolish to underestimate, is the influence the East European dissidents have had upon at least some Western Communists...
...What I want to stress is that, just as it is fatuous to speak of the Communist parties of Italy, France, and Spain as having become democratic, so it is foolish to deny that significant changes have occurred...
...but the old unity of belief has been shattered...
...genuine, half-veiled intellectual developments among crucial segments of the party, with some members of its Central Committee publicly advancing the view (recently expressed by the Spanish CP leader Carrillo) that the Soviet Union is not a socialist society, but a bureaucratic or state capitalist dictatorship...
...These comprise less than ideological transformations, though in part, also, they are that...
...Formally abandoning "the dictatorship of the proletariat" as a perspective and coming out for pluralist, multiparty democracy, these parties tacitly and in some instances openly recognize that their old versions of Leninism simply do not work...
...Nevertheless: something new has occurred, becoming sharper and clearer in the last few years...
...To say, something new, is not necessarily to say something good...
...the widespread circulation and acceptance of Solzhenitsyn's reports on Gulag Archipelago, so that (according to expert French observers) many people who vote for the French CP do so out of a desire for social change but certainly do not want to see anything like a duplication of East Europe...
...continue with the views of the noted Polish philosopher in exile, Leszek Kolakowski (reprinted with permission from Encounter magazine...
...Some of these divergent tendencies, like Maoism, are repugnant to socialists...
...In France: pressures of the student uprisings of 1968 that provided ideological competition to the CP...
...the recent 27 growth of the Socialist party, competing successfully for the adherence of the "new" or technical working class...
...The Italian CP has studied the Chilean experience rather carefully and some of its spokesmen have indicated an awareness of the way overly hasty measures, unnecessarily antagonizing "middle" segments of the population, contributed to the downfall of the leftist Allende government...
...Since we confront here a process, rather than an accomplished fact, there are likely to be ebbs and flows, forward and backward steps, allowing hope to those excessively optimistic and reinforcement to those excessively pessimistic...
...That this policy can work we see from recent events in France, where the Communists, fearful of organizational losses to the Socialist party, have decided to rupture the electoral alliance...
...The first opportunity is that of electoral blocs that would enable the left to move beyond the permanent frustration of being locked into minority status or of accepting posts in coalition regimes that by 28 their very nature cannot satisfy socialist expectations...
...Ideology and slogans catch up, slowly, painfully with reality...
...29...
...But in the long run, provided the Socialists maintain a principled radical politics, the CP will probably lose, either because it retreats to the sterility of isolation, able to pursue successfully neither a revolutionary nor a reformist course, or because it shows itself to be faltering in its efforts to escape that sterility...
...One hopes that the leadership of European socialism will be both principled and bold enough to seize the day...
...It began with Tito, continued with Mao, and has now spread to many of the Communist parties that 26 long proclaimed undeviating loyalty to Moscow...
...Not only the structural monolith of Communism, but also its ideological system ("Marxism-Leninism") is crumbling...
...still, we socialists and liberals ought to find encouragement in its appearance...
...But the process alone represents a turning point in the history of the Communist parties which is well worth our careful consideration...
...Within these parties there are clotted remains of Stalinism...
...who knows?—Communist intellectuals and activists, the bulk of whom, by the way, joined their parties after the Khrushchev revelations and were not directly touched by the worst excesses of Stalinism...
...Many of the Communist parties in Western Europe, both large and small, are undergoing changes...
...There can be disagreement as to when it began, or the extent of the newness, or the likelihood of still further, deeper changes...
...A process of great significance is taking place: the gradual, perhaps inexorable breakup of the Communist monolith...
...But there can be no doubt that, from socialist and democratic premises, the process of division within the Communist world is a desirable one...
...Regarding the significance of this I would quote with agreement from Horst Ehmke, a member of the Executive of the German Social Democratic party, not notorious for leftism: All three Communist parties—the Italian, the Spanish, and even the French—accept that ideological, political, and social pluralism should be maintained even during the process of building up socialism, and have declared that they would be prepared at any time to bow to the decision of the electorate...
...EDS...
...hence, the catch-all, "Eurocommunism...
...Much of this is a question of tactics...
...These comprise more than tactical maneuvers, though in part, of course, they are that...
...workers sincerely committed to some version of radicalism but in their style of life utterly unprepared for revolutionary action...
...In Italy: the massive institutionalization of the CP in the country's political and social life, so that it begins to have a stake in preventing a socioeconomic catastrophe...
...nor to examine the strategic and tactical problems that Eurocommunism poses for socialists and democrats in Europe...
...Neither are they social democratic parties, though the Italian CP comes increasingly to resemble one...
...whatever else it may be, Eurocommunism— or the range of political phenomena we conveniently bunch under that label—represents something new...
...III Blessed is the country without a Communist movement, or at least with a weak one...
...Far more than formal statements of the West European parties in defense of dissidents' rights is at stake...
...the inherent limits, frustrations faced by a party large enough to gather 20 percent of the vote yet cut off from political rule and unable, probably unwilling, to play a revolutionary role yet also severely limited in its capacity to play a reformist one...
...The Communist parties of France and Italy have not been revolutionary, in any sense, for some years...
Vol. 25 • January 1978 • No. 1
